He looked her up and down, smiled with his eyes, and said in a grave tone, “Come closer.”
The woman approached on her very high heels, her swaying hips erasing her previous image as a widow. Zachary Bidermann sighed. “Did they tell you? I only have seven minutes.”
“That’s up to you,” she replied.
“If you know your job, seven minutes are good enough for me.”
He sat down and unfastened his zipper. The pretend widow kneeled and, being a consummate professional, applied herself to him with skill.
Six minutes later, Zachary Bidermann let out an ecstatic groan, straightened his clothes, and gave her a grateful wink.
“Thank you.”
“At your service.”
“Madame Simone will sort out the details.”
“It’s as agreed.”
He walked her to the door and, just to pull the wool over Singer’s eyes, bade her a respectful farewell, then went back behind his desk and sat down. His anxiety, his tiredness, his cramp had all disappeared. He felt in good shape, ready to go on the attack. Phew! Now he’d be able to carry on with his day at the expected pace.
“Three minutes, I have three minutes left,” he sang to a cheerful tune. “Three minutes before I have to go to Berlaymont.”
He grabbed his personal mail from the table and started looking through it. After two invitations, he opened an envelope that looked different from the others, because it was pale yellow. Inside was a folded sheet with two sentences on it:
Just a note to tell you I love you. Signed: You know who.
He took his head in his hands. He was furious. What kind of idiot was sending him this? Which of his mistresses could have written such a stupid message? Sinéad? Virginie? Oxana? Carmen? Enough! He didn’t want any long-term affairs! Women always ended up getting attached, developing “feelings,” falling into that awful, stinking, sentimental soppiness you couldn’t escape from.
He picked up a lighter and burned the paper.
“Hooray for wives and hooray for hookers! They’re the only women who control themselves.”
2
He had made love to her so well that she hated him.
His long, muscular body, his prominent buttocks and shoulders, his firm, mixed-race skin that smelled of ripe figs, his narrow waist, his powerful thighs, his slender yet strong hands, his pure neck with the invisible joints, everything attracted her, everything teased her, everything set her belly on fire. Faustina wanted to throw herself on him, stop him from resting, beat him.
“I don’t suppose you’re asleep, are you?” she muttered, exasperated. After a night like that, she should have been feeling intense satisfaction, instead of which she was shaking with rage. It was as if he had reduced her to an ulcerated mucous membrane, excited, tense, wanting more. Was it possible that drinking didn’t quench your thirst, only made it worse?
How many times did I come?
She’d lost count of how often she’d climaxed. She and he had plunged into one another endlessly, overflowing with contagious excitement, yielding to sleep only briefly, not to recover but rather to prolong the ecstasy. Without knowing why, she thought of her mother, her respectable mother she wouldn’t be telling about her exploits, her sad mother who had never known such pleasure. Poor Ma . . .
Rubbing her shins, Faustina thought of herself as a sinner and drew pride from the thought. Yes, last night she had been nothing but a body, a woman’s body penetrated by a man, a body that had reached the heights several times, and was still filled with longing.
This bastard has turned me into a slut. She stole a tender, fleeting glance at the sleeping man.
Faustina didn’t like shades of gray. Whether thinking about her contemporaries or about herself, she swung from one extreme to the other. Depending on the moment, a female friend would be labeled an “angel of self-sacrifice” or a “depraved monster of selfishness,” and her mother was either her “beloved Mommy dearest” or “that heartless middle-class bitch I was assigned to by an accident of birth.” As for men, they were deemed handsome, adorable, hateful, generous, stingy, thoughtful, offhand, honest, sly, so timid they wouldn’t say boo to a goose, psychopaths, worthy of “spending the rest of my days with” or “putting out of my mind.” She herself, in her own eyes, would waver between two positions: the pure intellectual devoted to culture, and the slut who wallows in her base instincts.
A balanced opinion would have bored her. What she enjoyed wasn’t thought but lively thought. In other words, feeling . . . At every second of the day, her ideas were guided by her moods, and her words were triggered by her emotions.
She understood the world in conflicting terms and felt divided: whenever she neglected her books to take refuge in her lover’s arms, she would leave one of her personalities for the other; her behavior did not complement the way she had behaved before, but rather denied it; she would change. Faustina saw herself as not so much balanced as double.
“Stop pretending to be asleep,” she repeated.
He didn’t react.
Leaning over to see his face, she noticed that none of his features was moving; worse, his long black eyelashes, thick and curved, which drove girls mad, were motionless.
She felt humiliated by this indifference.
I can’t stand him anymore.
Of course, she knew she was lying to herself; what rubbed her the wrong way was that he wasn’t paying attention to her anymore; what exasperated her was to find that she was so dependent on him after one night.
Male chauvinist!
A deep sigh burst from her, a sigh that meant, Lousy creep, and at the same time, I’m so happy to be a woman.
She hesitated. Perhaps it was better not to break this moment . . . And yet she needed to do something, to intervene, no matter how, because the wait was torture. What was she waiting for anyway? For Monsieur to finish resting? To fall asleep herself? Through the drawn curtains, she could see that the sun was rising; in the distance, the parrots and parakeets out on the square were proclaiming the start of the day to late sleepers.
Studying her lover, she decided to kick him out of bed. Then she stopped herself. Would he know why she was attacking him? Did she even know herself?
As soon as he stirs, I’ll throw him out.
Dany rolled onto his back and, without opening his eyes, his hands searched for her, found her, and pulled her to him with a purr.
Soothed as soon as his palms slid down to her hips, she slipped docilely alongside him, pressed her back against his muscular stomach, and growled in the same way.
There was no need for verbiage. A few caresses and quivers relit the spark of sensuality, and desire burned them up. She felt Dany’s desire for her against her buttocks and waggled them to show her acceptance.
Without a word, eyes closed, they started to make love again.
Even though they were both exhausted, the silence and the blindness added the necessary spice to their lovemaking: not being able to see forced them to recognize each other through fingers, chest, skin, genitals—they were both renewing and remembering one another; by expressing themselves through heavy breathing and noises deep in the throat, they renounced humanity, reduced themselves to animals, bodies, organs that obeyed instinct.
After this exceptional bout of lovemaking, Faustina made up her mind: she would stay in bed all day.
Dany got up, full of energy. “No more lounging around. I have meetings at the Palais today.”
Surprised, she saw him—he looked magnificent—grab his watch and gather his scattered clothes.
“You should go like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Naked.”
He turned to her, smiled, and fastened the strap of his watch.
“Naked, with your watch on,” she continued. “I’m sure you’d be a big hit.”
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“With the criminals?”
Taking advantage of the proximity, she put her arms around his neck. “With the female ones, that’s for sure.” She forced a kiss on his mouth. He gave in, amused, but it was obvious to her that he wanted to get dressed. Disconcerted, she didn’t insist. She wished she could come up with an unpleasant remark, but couldn’t think of one.
He went into the bathroom and turned on the water.
“You wear your watch in the shower?”
“First of all, my watch is waterproof. Secondly, it reminds me I’m about to enter a different area of my life: my work.”
The area where I’m not, Faustina thought. She immediately regretted it. How stupid! The reaction of a sentimental idiot. Anyone would think it was the resentment of a jealous woman in love. But she wasn’t jealous. She wasn’t in love either.
We fucked, that’s all. It was great. OK, it was amazing. But that’s all.
She got up and watched him in the shower. She loved seeing men when they were wet, drops of water on their skin, rubbing their bodies; it was a private moment she stole from them. Just then, in fact, Dany was lathering his genitals, firmly and meticulously.
Seeing her watching him, he showed off. “You see, I take care of them.”
“You’d better.”
She pictured the next night she would be with him, and felt impatience pressing on her chest. She looked him up and down. “You’re just sex on legs.”
Flattered, he laughed. “Are you talking about me or yourself?”
She disliked his comment so much, she grimaced.
Already, Faustina was metamorphosing, abandoning the sensual woman who had given herself to this man for hours, thinking now that what had happened last night was his fault: she blamed him for the fact that she had behaved like some kind of sex-crazed bacchante. Of course, she hadn’t been abused . . . but he had led her to perform acts she wouldn’t have performed of her own volition.
Faustina moved away and thought of the tasks awaiting her. She had several novels to read—or at least the summaries. There were journalists to call. And a number of Parisian publishers. She had to look through her accounts.
Within a second, the literary publicist was reborn. Wrapped in her dressing gown, she hesitated. Should she start on her chores right away, or make them something to eat? A tray of steaming coffee, toast, creamy butter, jam, hard-boiled eggs: that might have been a bit too much like the awestruck woman in love, the clingy woman who wants the man to come back. Let him sort himself out. He’ll get a terrible espresso at the Palais de Justice, very black and very bitter. Too bad. At the same time, she realized she was hungry herself, and that she’d love the delicious coffee she knew how to make. Well, I’ll make one for myself but not for him. Dismissing her scruples, she busied herself in the kitchen and set the table, apparently unaware that she was laying it for two.
Dany appeared, fresh-looking in a silk suit, white shirt, and tie. “Mmm . . . smells good,” he said. He looked approvingly at the mouthwatering spread on the table. “The perfect housewife on top of everything else!”
“One more stupid comment, and you’re out of here on an empty stomach.”
He sat down and did full justice to her breakfast.
While he ate, she couldn’t help staring at his fingers and putting herself in the place of everything he touched. She saw his mouth and became the croissant he was chewing, watched his Adam’s apple swallowing and imagined herself as the coffee he was drinking.
Scared by her wild thoughts, she drew back in her chair and asked him about his work as a lawyer. He was happy to discuss it, especially the case of Mehdi Martin, the sex maniac who had made him famous, but he had talked about it so often he had nothing new to add.
How irritating he is! Apart from his skills in bed, there’s nothing at all interesting about him. She felt reassured by this observation.
Dany looked at his watch. Thinking he might miss his first appointment, he darted to the door.
She gave a sigh of relief at the prospect of being rid of him, and decided to remain seated and calmly finish her breakfast.
“Shall we see each other again soon?” he said, coming back to give her a kiss.
“Oh, are we seeing each other again?” she replied, pulling away as she did so.
He was confused. “Well, yes . . . Don’t you want to? I certainly want to.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Faustina, last night, you and me, it was . . . ”
“It was what?
“It was incredible, stupendous, amazing, awesome.”
“Oh, let’s not exaggerate . . . ” Her tone was stiff, like that of a modest office clerk whose talents are finally acknowledged.
He pressed his warm lips to hers and gave her a long, intrusive kiss. She trembled, realizing that she was losing control once again.
He tore himself away, breathless. “I’ll call you later.”
“All right,” she whispered.
He left, slamming the door.
As soon as she was alone, Faustina switched on the radio. She knew how it would be with Dany: the same as with the others. They would see each other again, try to rekindle the magic of that first night, fail, then succeed, but only after a lot of exhausting weekends, and one day, they would stop seeing each other, using work as an excuse. How much longer would this go on? Two months? Three if it dragged on? You know, my girl, you’ve just had the best. It’s good now, but sometimes it’ll be less good, and soon it’ll be boring.
She crossed the apartment and saw an envelope by the door. She picked it up and opened it. The unsigned letter contained a short message:
Just a note to tell you I love you. Signed: You know who.
She was shaken. It was like a sudden explosion. Leaning back against the wall, she cried, “What an idiot I am! He loves me and I’m stopping him from telling me. He loves me and I treat him like a dildo. My poor Dany, too bad for you you’ve wound up with a nutcase like me. Oh, Dany . . . ”
And in a dumb show she would have found ridiculous a few minutes earlier, she got down on her knees, lifted the note to her lips, and kissed it passionately, several times.
3
The two bodies lay together on their sides in the middle of the bed, as symmetrical as two forks in a silverware drawer.
She was asleep, he wasn’t.
Lying there with his eyes open, soothed by the warmth emanating from Joséphine’s body, Baptiste allowed his mind to drift from fantasy to fantasy.
Uncontrolled, he zigzagged between several worlds; at times, he knew perfectly well that he was at home, pressed up against his wife; at other times, he was walking up and down a beach of blinding sand, where menacing characters hid in the bushes, waiting to ambush him; and at other times still, he found himself in his office chair, writing the text he had to hand in . . . Like a car changing lanes, his mind transported him from one world to the other, sometimes by the water, sometimes suspended above the page he had to write, sometimes between the sheets; he moved between them so quickly that the landscapes lost their airtight boundaries: now his enemies were in the room, now Joséphine was tearing his article away and making fun of him.
Baptiste sat up. Shaking his head to dismiss these thoughts, he was annoyed that he had so many anxieties inside him: every day, all he had to do was lower his guard and fear would rear its ugly head.
Joséphine’s soft contours, her high-set hips and delicate shoulders, rested on watered cotton. Her face expressed nothing and her long eyelashes were perfectly still. She must be enjoying the stage of sleep where you’ve stopped dreaming. So lucky . . .
Baptiste yawned.
He envied Joséphine’s peace and quiet. Even though everyone who knew him saw him as a model of serenity, even though he thoug
ht he had achieved a balanced wisdom, his dreams always awakened stubborn demons, and anxiety filled his skull. Was his feigned calm nothing but appearance? Had he achieved merely superficial peace?
He extricated himself from the bed without disturbing Joséphine, looked down admiringly at her relaxed body, and felt pleased to be living with such a woman. Then he quickly washed, put on a pair of boxers and a shirt, and sat down at his desk. It might have verged on the ridiculous, but he was incapable of working when he was dirty or naked. Even though he had no one to obey, no boss to tell him what to do, and could work the hours that suited him, a gnawing necessity drove him to get washed and dressed, and sometimes even scented, before sitting down in his armchair like an employee clocking in at an office.
He switched on his computer and opened the file called Fidelity, which so far contained only three meager, uninspired, enigmatic sentences.
He was embarrassed by the topic, Fidelity, because it required merely a binary comment: either you were in favor of fidelity or you weren’t. Sad, wasn’t it? Either you supported the classic marriage vows, the religious and social ideology, in other words, the established order; or you challenged it in the name of freedom. Both thesis and antithesis were a prison. He couldn’t find his own space between conformism and anti-conformism.
He turned to the square, where the chatter of tropical birds rang out. Did those feathered creatures ask themselves such questions?
To his bewilderment, Baptiste realized that he knew nothing about the behavior of parrots and parakeets. What did fidelity mean to animals? Did the male stick to one female or did he start relationships on impulse, according to chance or the seasons? Might there be a way of filling the pages with this information?
He started doing some research for a while, then gave up. Who cared? Whether or not fidelity was biological, animal behavior couldn’t act as a model, since humans no longer lived in a natural world regulated by instinct.
Fidelity . . . He pushed back his chair. What about him? Was he faithful?