effort.
And then after a while you realize it’s not going to happen.
So either you become resigned, or you make believe. You waltz around like some nineteenth century heroine, sighing, moaning,weeping—and you lie. And all around you, people call it love.
With Christine there was never any of that. No love at first sight. We hung out with the same group of friends. So we saw a lot of each other and eyed each other and circled around each other for months. I invited her to a party. We went home together. Everything flowed, it was all completely natural. Since then I’ve been thinkingof love as something that flows.
Did it flow between Cécile and me?
Yes.
There’s a woman in her thirties a bit farther down the car; she looks tired. A child asleep with its head on her lap.
Yes.
An adolescent nodding his head, listening to some music the other passengers will never hear, but in his ears it’s exploding.
Yes.
An older man muttering to himself while he reads a magazine aboutthe private lives of the rich and famous.
Yes.
And the two of us, sitting next to each other—we could have been a couple. We could have made believe.
But I’m not sure that Cécile Duffaut is the sort of woman who would make believe. She’s recognized me. She doesn’t want to speak to me. She’s right.
I was almost at the hotel. I could see her on the balcony. I didn’t feel like going in, explaining,negotiating, arguing. I thought she would have packed her bags. I went to a pub on the corner of the street. I don’t remember the name, just the color. Red, with gilded letters.
It was starting to fill up with locals. I drank three or four pints. Enough to tear down the language barrier. I fraternized with a group of Brits my age who were planning a trip to France to go girl-hunting, becauseit was a well-known fact, aah, those French girls, etc.
Jerks.
The kind you find in every country.
You find them mainly in bars, after office hours. Herds of guys, with their coarse laughter, spilling booze on their T-shirts, and saying they’ll do anything to get laid. I couldn’t understand half of what these guys were saying but it hardly mattered. I felt good. I was a jerk. I’m not sayingthis out of bitterness. Or out of scorn. It’s just a fact.
One of them was making racist jokes about Pakistanis, and I laughed like an idiot. Laughed, maybe, but I was uncomfortable all the same, because back in France I wouldn’t have put up with intolerance. Laterthat evening I spoke with this guy Andrew, who was quieter. He was getting drunk methodically, to forget that he hadn’t had a girlfriendin over a year. The two of us went on to a nightclub.
It was one of those unlikely sorts of discotheques that you sometimes come across in Anglo-Saxon countries. A church turned into a dance floor. A place of worship, for the body, for appearance. The atmosphere was distinctly different, depending on whether you were in the chapel or the nave. In the nave, the music took up all the space andthe light was dazzling; it was crowded and it was hard to make your way to the bar. The bass was pounding in your ears and you couldn’t think straight. Andrew didn’t want to dance. He sat down on one of the wooden pews the designer had preserved. He guzzled beer after beer, staring into space. At one point, he vanished. I can still see his face, just as he was. I picture him married and divorced withone kid, the manager of a mobile phone outlet in a London suburb.
If I saw him in the street I wouldn’t recognize him.
Any more than I’d recognize Kathleen.
Of course not.
Two days later I had already forgotten her. On the train to Paris I thought about the three days that had just gone by and I could not call up her face. Just her dyed blonde hair: you could see the dark roots. Just the oppositeof Cécile Duffaut. Cécile Duffaut would never have dyed her hair.
I wonder if Kathleen still feels embarrassed. If in a relaxed moment, say, when she’s at a
And then after a while you realize it’s not going to happen.
So either you become resigned, or you make believe. You waltz around like some nineteenth century heroine, sighing, moaning,weeping—and you lie. And all around you, people call it love.
With Christine there was never any of that. No love at first sight. We hung out with the same group of friends. So we saw a lot of each other and eyed each other and circled around each other for months. I invited her to a party. We went home together. Everything flowed, it was all completely natural. Since then I’ve been thinkingof love as something that flows.
Did it flow between Cécile and me?
Yes.
There’s a woman in her thirties a bit farther down the car; she looks tired. A child asleep with its head on her lap.
Yes.
An adolescent nodding his head, listening to some music the other passengers will never hear, but in his ears it’s exploding.
Yes.
An older man muttering to himself while he reads a magazine aboutthe private lives of the rich and famous.
Yes.
And the two of us, sitting next to each other—we could have been a couple. We could have made believe.
But I’m not sure that Cécile Duffaut is the sort of woman who would make believe. She’s recognized me. She doesn’t want to speak to me. She’s right.
I was almost at the hotel. I could see her on the balcony. I didn’t feel like going in, explaining,negotiating, arguing. I thought she would have packed her bags. I went to a pub on the corner of the street. I don’t remember the name, just the color. Red, with gilded letters.
It was starting to fill up with locals. I drank three or four pints. Enough to tear down the language barrier. I fraternized with a group of Brits my age who were planning a trip to France to go girl-hunting, becauseit was a well-known fact, aah, those French girls, etc.
Jerks.
The kind you find in every country.
You find them mainly in bars, after office hours. Herds of guys, with their coarse laughter, spilling booze on their T-shirts, and saying they’ll do anything to get laid. I couldn’t understand half of what these guys were saying but it hardly mattered. I felt good. I was a jerk. I’m not sayingthis out of bitterness. Or out of scorn. It’s just a fact.
One of them was making racist jokes about Pakistanis, and I laughed like an idiot. Laughed, maybe, but I was uncomfortable all the same, because back in France I wouldn’t have put up with intolerance. Laterthat evening I spoke with this guy Andrew, who was quieter. He was getting drunk methodically, to forget that he hadn’t had a girlfriendin over a year. The two of us went on to a nightclub.
It was one of those unlikely sorts of discotheques that you sometimes come across in Anglo-Saxon countries. A church turned into a dance floor. A place of worship, for the body, for appearance. The atmosphere was distinctly different, depending on whether you were in the chapel or the nave. In the nave, the music took up all the space andthe light was dazzling; it was crowded and it was hard to make your way to the bar. The bass was pounding in your ears and you couldn’t think straight. Andrew didn’t want to dance. He sat down on one of the wooden pews the designer had preserved. He guzzled beer after beer, staring into space. At one point, he vanished. I can still see his face, just as he was. I picture him married and divorced withone kid, the manager of a mobile phone outlet in a London suburb.
If I saw him in the street I wouldn’t recognize him.
Any more than I’d recognize Kathleen.
Of course not.
Two days later I had already forgotten her. On the train to Paris I thought about the three days that had just gone by and I could not call up her face. Just her dyed blonde hair: you could see the dark roots. Just the oppositeof Cécile Duffaut. Cécile Duffaut would never have dyed her hair.
I wonder if Kathleen still feels embarrassed. If in a relaxed moment, say, when she’s at a
Similar Books
