A surprisingly virulent sigh escaped from her rib cage.
“What’s the point?”
A sense of relief overwhelmed her. Yes, what was the point? Why not just accept this new Patricia? Why fight her, wage war on her with diets, deprivation, sport, constraints, until she disappeared? What if, instead, she were to welcome this stranger . . . After all, this Patricia was her . . .
She collapsed on the bed.
It’s over! Enough of trying to please! Enough of grinning to get attention! Enough of being scared of turning into a whale! Enough of shopping for clothes and wondering what people will think of me! It’s all over! I’m checking out of the love market. I claim back my life.
She gave a rippling little laugh. “What bliss!”
A minute earlier, she had felt desperate; now she was exultant.
She was free! Her decision had liberated her. She would no longer be the woman other people wanted her to be, or the woman her daughter wanted her to be, but the woman she was. Delighted, she got up and walked through her apartment like a queen. She grabbed a yogurt from the refrigerator, switched on the TV, and sat down in front of it, ready to stuff herself.
The first thing that came up on the screen was a long, repetitive, nagging commercial about a device intended to shrink your belly and help you acquire abs. Sporty American types, badly dubbed in French, appeared one after another to praise the merits of the device with fake enthusiasm.
What a charade!
The women all had orange complexions, and the men had skin the color of caramel. Their tan was like a uniform: they all looked alike.
Incredible how sport attacks your skin! Patricia thought. As soon as human beings start messing about with weights and machines, their color starts to look weird.
And the teeth! Bodybuilding had strange dental consequences: whenever they smiled—which was all the time—these sporty Californian types showed perfectly white canines, incisors, and molars, like a display in a prosthodontist’s cabinet.
A new breed!
Patricia wasn’t looking at ordinary men and women but at mutants. There was Jim the coach: had anyone ever seen a thorax like that, with muscles writhing like snakes beneath his tanned skin? Or what about Carrie, the journalist won over to this fabulous bum and tum device, who looked as bony as a hungry gazelle but still had a bosom and ass so firm and well-rounded they seemed ready to burst? Dipping her vanilla-covered finger into the bottom of the yogurt pot, Patricia concluded that aliens had already landed on Earth and, without arousing suspicion, had invaded the shopping channels.
The credit card payment details flashed up on the screen. Patricia felt a pang, but then calmed down. Once upon a time, she would have ordered this item to appease her conscience—giving her card number over the phone gave her the illusion that she had just done a session at the gym—and a little while later would have received the magical object, which would have joined its cousins, stacked up under her large bed; but today, she had broken her chains. Not only did she switch off the television without giving in to the sirens of market conformism, but she was about to eat the tiramisu she had been saving for her daughter.
Equipped with plate and spoon, her taste buds drunk on the blend of cream, coffee and amaretto, she strolled about her apartment, singing to herself.
Leaning on the windowsill, she saw a figure down there in the middle of the square and quivered.
An almost naked man was tending to the lawn on Place d’Arezzo.
Nobody has the right to be that handsome.
Breaking off her nibbling, she stared at the gardener, his attire of shorts and hiking boots, his slim waist, his chiseled chest with its few well-placed hairs, his fleshy shoulders, his powerful thighs. And that neck . . . so white . . . so pure. The man had a straight neck that just begged to be kissed.
She blushed and bit her lip. Ever since that young man had been hired by the municipal council, he had been getting under her skin. Every day, she would search the street with her eyes, and as soon as he arrived with his tools, she would hide behind the blinds and watch him in secret. Inside her, everything would tense up when he appeared. The desire he aroused in her was overwhelming. She would start breathing heavily, and her body would spiral out of control. It made no sense! She had to go back to when she was thirteen to remember such a strong feeling—in those days, it was her cousin, Denis, a redhead with broad, milky-white arms, who had taken her breath away whenever she watched him playing tennis.
She had found out that the gardener’s name was Hippolyte, a rare name befitting an exceptional individual. Every so often, in order to be near him, she would go down on the pretext that she had an errand to run. As she passed him, he would greet her cheerfully, which touched her so deeply that she struggled to stammer an elementary polite response, and then she would escape by walking faster. Several times, she had thought to take him a cold beer, but that seemed like a trial that was beyond her strength. She liked him so much that he completely disrupted her day: as soon as she sensed his presence, she would lose all composure.
He never changes . . . Nothing affects him . . . Oh, wait, he’s not as tanned as he was last year . . .
She laughed at her own foolishness. Of course he would be less tanned. Winter had only just ended! Maybe it was only now that the weather had allowed him to take off his shirt. She looked at him languishingly: convinced that he had undressed for the first time this season, she was touched at the thought of all that white flesh, protected from the cold by woolen garments for so many months, being exposed to the sun’s rays. The scene took on the sacred nature of an initiation. Hippolyte became an apprehensive virgin dedicating herself to a new life, while Patricia was the sun passing through the windows to strike that timid skin, and she was also the air enveloping his torso, tickling it, making it quiver.
Hippolyte tore out a dandelion, then stood up, his back arched, to examine it in the light.
Look at those buttocks!
She trembled, shocked at having uttered these words in her head.
A voice inside her insisted, No, really, what beautiful buttocks! . . . Patricia! . . . It’s true. Women look at men’s buttocks. I can say it since I’m no longer in the market.
She sighed contentedly: she had just acquired two qualities, audacity and immunity. From now on, she would express herself freely. Yes, she had the right to think anything she liked, since she was acting without self-interest. She didn’t have to worry about seeming ridiculous anymore, because she was on the outside now, a mere spectator. Before, she’d had to display the restraint of a widow, the dignity of a bourgeoise woman who doesn’t just give herself to the first little savage she encounters; worse, she’d had to conceal just how much Hippolyte fascinated her, or she would have exposed herself to being reminded—by others and especially by herself—that she couldn’t expect to attract him, so alien to one another were they in terms of age, social class, and physical perfection. In other words, for as long as she had hoped to seduce him, her hunger for Hippolyte had made her ridiculous. But if she gave up on the idea, she could admire him to her heart’s content and make any comments she liked. What a pleasure it was!
Grabbing his wheelbarrow and lifting it with a heave of his shoulders, Hippolyte plunged into the trees, a part of the square that was hidden from Patricia’s sight.
She shrugged and went back to the kitchen. As she passed through the hallway, she noticed an envelope the color of fresh butter, looking odd among the bills Albane had placed on the table. She opened it and read the contents:
Just a note to tell you I love you. Signed: You know who.
She reread the message four times, then collapsed into the nearest wing chair.
“No! No!”
The letter horrified her.
“I don’t want this anymore. I really don’t.”
Tears welled up in her eyes.
; “Love is over for me! Over, you understand? Over! Do you hear me?”
She screamed.
She didn’t know who had written her this note, or who she was talking to, but one thing she was certain of: never again would she open her door to love.
6
Come on, kids, hurry up!”
Sitting behind the wheel of his SUV, François-Maxime de Couvigny leaned out of the window and turned his head to Number 6, where the front door was still open; others would have sounded their horn, but the young banker considered it somewhat vulgar to use his horn except in extreme situations.
Four blond children came out of the town house, hurtled down the front steps, and dived into the car. The three girls sat in the back, while the boy, although the youngest, heaved himself up next to his father with the pride of someone who, in spite of being seven, having long hair, a slight profile, and a very high-pitched voice, shared the status of being a male.
Séverine appeared in the white stone doorway, dressed all in beige, her hair held in place by a celadon band; with the sun on her face, she leaned against the door frame to watch her family leave.
“What about Mommy?” François-Maxime exclaimed.
The children immediately turned toward their mother and started making big, highly exaggerated gestures at her, as if shouting in sign language.
As he was about to pull out, François-Maxime de Couvigny noticed the gardener, bare-chested and in shorts, cleaning the lawn on Place d’Arezzo. The apparition made him frown and his eyes clouded over.
A high-pitched voice on his right interrupted him. “You’re right to tell him off, Daddy.”
“What?”
“It’s not nice, Hippolyte is wrong.”
François-Maxime looked at his son. “Who are you talking about, Guillaume?”
“Hippolyte the gardener over there! He shouldn’t go around like that in a city. You should always wear clothes on the street. That’s what Grandma said in Saint-Tropez this summer.”
His eldest sister, Gwendoline, added her contribution from the backseat. “I seem to remember she said it when you wanted to go to the market in your swimming trunks.”
Displeased, Guillaume turned on his sister. “She only had to tell me once, but some people behaved badly all summer.”
“Well done, Guillaume,” François-Maxime de Couvigny said. “It’s good to understand the first time around.”
Once again, he glanced at Hippolyte, who was displaying his chest and thighs in an unseemly manner, then shrugged, started the car, slowly passed the double-parked official limousine with black, reinforced windows into which Zachary Bidermann, one of the glories of the neighborhood, was disappearing, and drove up Avenue Molière.
“So, girls, what classes do you have today?”
In order of age, the girls replied by itemizing the subjects awaiting them.
François-Maxime de Couvigny barely listened to them, just enough to spur them on and relaunch their private discussions. With delight, he felt as much a spectator as an actor in the scene he was experiencing. In the rearview mirror, he watched his daughters, fair-skinned, with perfect teeth, dressed in a manner that suggested the family’s affluence without proclaiming it too boldly; they spoke a fluid, elaborate language, made up of appropriate, carefully-chosen words, with impeccable syntax; even their pronunciation was careful, precise, proof of good upbringing. Above all, their physical resemblance was striking: although aged twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, they had the same shape face, the same brown hair, fine nose, long neck, and narrow body. They seemed to have come from the same mold, a demonstration of their solid lineage. In François-Maxime de Couvigny’s opinion, nothing was more disturbing than dissimilar siblings. When that occurred, he either suspected weak genes or feared the mother had conceived these disparate individuals with several husbands. When you saw the Couvigny children, you knew their parents hadn’t failed in their conjugal duties: they were an advertisement for marital fidelity. Only Guillaume had features different than those of his sisters, but that was all to the good, since he was a boy.
As he stopped at the red traffic light, an identical black SUV—the vehicle of the Ixelles upper middle classes—drew level with his, on his left.
“Oh, look, it’s the Morin-Duponts!” Gwendoline exclaimed.
The Couvigny children called out to the Morin-Dupont children, another tribe with identical features, this one made up, in an exactly reverse symmetry, of three boys and a girl.
François-Maxime de Couvigny greeted the driver of the car, Pascaline Morin-Dupont. She responded with a gracious expression.
A quiver went down the back of François-Maxime’s neck. She liked him and he knew it. His eyes glistened as he watched her, because he was eager to show her that he liked her too.
The result was that their pupils grew misty and they stared at each other a little too long, a little too intensely.
“It’s green, Dad!” Guillaume cried as if this were a major occurrence.
François-Maxime’s lips formed a disappointed smile for the benefit of Pascaline, a pout that meant: “What a shame it’s not possible between us.”
She agreed in her own way, by lowering her shoulders.
They drove off again.
Without saying a word, without the children noticing their complicity, François-Maxime de Couvigny and Pascaline Morin-Dupont had lived through a few delectable seconds, seconds in which a man and a woman admit they like each other but at the same time give up on the idea of an affair. They had just told each other that they were beautiful but would remain faithful.
The two cars took different directions. The Morin-Dupont children studied at the French lycée in Brussels, while the Couvignys attended École Decroly.
François-Maxime thought of his wife: how cute she’d looked earlier, leaning against the door frame, blinded by the sun. Cute and sad . . . Over the past few months, he had caught Séverine on several occasions when she was unaware of being watched, and noticed a morbid sadness, a kind of withdrawal into some unknown sorrow. Was it age? The fact that she was pushing forty? Maybe he should fork out for a gift . . . What if he bought her the marron glacé leather handbag over which she had gone into raptures on Saturday? He had wanted to buy it for her on the spot, but she had resisted, considering it ridiculous that her husband should grant her slightest whim. He had given in on that point, especially since the item cost as much as a piece of jewelry. Money was no object for either of them—she had inherited her wealth, while he had made his through his work—but they did judge prices in moral terms: was the cost exorbitant or not?
At the next red light, while Gwendoline was telling her younger sisters what she was learning in her drama class, a couple of young men in their thirties crossed the street, holding hands.
How ugly they look! How dare they go out on the street when they’re so unpleasant-looking?
He looked at their muddy complexions, their flaccid figures, wide hips, short legs, bloated beer bellies beneath black T-shirts, the green and blue patterns on their arms, their earrings.
Look at those tattoos! And those rings in their ears and nostrils! Like cattle! Branded as if they belonged to a herd of cows! How wretched . . .
Obviously he himself, with his wiry body set off by his severe made-to-measure suits, that purebred body with its precise, economical movements, evoked another world, the world of high finance, of ice-cold predators who, even when they kill, remain refined and courteous.
And I don’t understand the need to parade like that. Do we really have to know that those two sleep together? Why force other people to picture two sperm whales screwing? Have some pity!
He raised an eyebrow and gave a disapproving huff.
When he saw Guillaume looking at him questioningly, he realized that he had once again forgotten to accelerate as soon as the lights turned green—which, in the
boy’s eyes, constituted the yardstick of good manners—and reacted.
The car continued on its way at a senatorial speed until it reached the school.
François-Maxime got out of the car, kissed his children, wished them a good day, watched until they reached the main door, and waited, proud of his family, for them to disappear into the building. Then he got back in the car and drove faster to the Bois de Cambre.
He parked on Rue du Vert-Chasseur, at the edge of the forest, got out his sports bag, and strode enthusiastically across the cobbled courtyard of the Selle Royale riding center. He loved the impatient cacophony of neighing, swishing, snorting, the sound of horseshoes tapping on the ground; even though he generally liked only subtle scents, he couldn’t get enough of the dark smell of dung, with its promise of the pleasures to come.
He greeted the overworked staff and went into a room that served as a changing room, cloakroom, and storeroom. There, he got undressed, changed his socks, and put on his jockey pants, a polo shirt, and a pair of bespoke boots.
While François-Maxime was looking for a coat hanger for his suit, Edmond Platters, another rider, came into the room.
“Hello, François-Maxime.”
“Hello, Edmond.”
“You’re so funny with your bachelor ways.”
François-Maxime’s shoulders quivered. Not only did he hate camaraderie, he detested any joke of which he was the butt.
Edmond continued his mockery. “Why this habit of changing your clothes? Can’t you come here in riding gear like everybody else?”
“First of all, after I finish riding, I don’t go back home but to my bank, where I work until eight in the evening.”
He took care to clearly say “my” bank, because he knew that Edmond was often in financial difficulty. Then he turned and added, calmly, “Tell me, Edmond, when you go to the swimming pool, do you leave home in swimming trunks?”