Emmanuel Bove: Henri Duchemin and His Shadows

“I saw you in a taxi.”

“Well, that takes the cake! In a taxi, now! I swear I wasn’t. If I had taken a taxi, I wouldn’t hide it. And why would I have taken a taxi?”

“To kiss a man.”

My girlfriend, who was stirring a cup of tea, stopped. She looked at me with large, surprised eyes in which there was that hint of calm that precedes indignation.

“To kiss a man?”

“Yes.”

“My poor Jean, what is the matter with you? You are going mad, mad, mad. How can you think such a thing of me? Me, kiss another man? So you take me for a streetwalker? You are mad, completely mad.”

“I saw you.”

“Listen, Jean. You don’t know what you’re saying. You have a fever. You are so jealous that you’re losing your mind.”

“I saw you. Do you understand what that means? I saw you, you who are in front of me. I saw you kissing a man.”

“You’re lying. I swear on my life that I didn’t take a taxi, and that I have never kissed a man besides you.”

“But I saw you.”

“That’s impossible. What would keep me here if not love? We are not married. If I loved someone else, I would not be able to put on such a loathsome act, I would be incapable of concealing it. You know how frank I am. If I loved someone else, I would tell you. Even if it would make you suffer, I would tell you. You could not have seen me. It’s impossible. I belong to you alone.”

“I saw you.”

“Perhaps you saw someone who looks like me.”

I had been waiting for these words for several minutes and yet I did not know how to answer them immediately. I was afraid of them. I knew that they alone were capable of making me doubt my eyes without providing proof of my girlfriend’s innocence.

You, dear sir, will perhaps think what my friends thought, that I fell victim to a resemblance. When one is trying to console someone, one always manages to make statements that one would not believe oneself. To claim I fell victim to a resemblance is such a statement.

Let me tell you, sir, that I recognized my girlfriend, not just her clothing, but her neck, the color of her hair.

“You are the one I saw in the taxi.”

“It was not me. I told you exactly what I did and when. You can ask Anne if I spent the afternoon with her. You can come with me to the milliner’s, and to the café where we went when she felt ill. You can ask the waiter, if it’s the same one, what we had to drink. I cannot do any more, my Jean, to prove to you that I am faithful.”

I listened to these words without believing them. I know I would have got lost trying to figure out my girlfriend’s schedule. Yes, I could have seen a waiter who would have told me “It seems to me that I waited on those two women,” or who would not have remembered. My girlfriend would have shown me the table where she sat. But what would that have proved? The fact remained that I had seen her, in this taxi, kissing a man.

Or if she had said to me, “Yes, I took a taxi with Anne and I kissed her,” I would have believed that. I did not have enough time to see the person who was with my girlfriend and to be sure it was a man. But the fact that she denied so obstinately that she had taken a taxi proves to me she was unfaithful.

“I saw you.”

“Listen to me, Jean. I swear to you on our love, on your life, on my parents’ life, that I did not take a taxi, that I was not unfaithful to you, that I love you more than anything in the world, more than my family, and I am ready to do anything you tell me, I am your slave and your wife. I swear to you, my love, that if you were to die tomorrow, I could not survive. You are my sole joy in this world. I only live for you and through you. Look me in the eyes. You see, I don’t lower my lids. Do you believe if I had done what you say I would not die of shame beneath your gaze?”

Dear sir, I wound up believing my girlfriend. I wound up believing her but, in spite of everything, some doubt has remained in me. It is this doubt I am asking you to drive out. I repeated word for word what the woman whom I still love said. I also told you that, while I wound up believing my girlfriend, I am still sure I saw her in the taxi. It seems that nothing can shake this certainty. And yet, Henriette loves me so, she is so honest! Let me tell you as well that, if you had been in my shoes, you certainly would have recognized my girlfriend. You would have recognized her as I did. So it is useless to tell me that perhaps I did not see clearly.

Before you can reach your decision, you probably think you will need to know my girlfriend better. It is not worth the trouble. You know her. She is unable to do anything behind my back. She loves me. You were able to see that. Do not think I am blinded by love. She is exactly as I have presented her to you. And as sure as I am of having seen her kiss someone else, I am just as sure of her total love.

I am waiting, dear sir, for a letter from you that will allow me to know the truth. If you are not sensitive to my pain, perhaps you will respond with indifference. Know that I shall read your words with the same attention, for I am hoping nonetheless to find in what you say the word that will bring me peace.

To put the reader at ease, I need to state from the start that I am not crazy. And if anything could be proven by words, the fact I am affirming my lucidity should be enough to show I am in full possession of my faculties.

I know I may seem crazy at times. It’s true, it doesn’t take much for that to happen. But let’s be clear. To be sure, I may often seem crazy, but not so much so that two people would bother mentioning it to each other. I seem just crazy enough for one person to think so without his neighbor thinking so as well. And if I always provoke this feeling by some ridiculous action or question, I must say that I manage to stop myself when I sense that this inner misgiving might be externalized. If I do this it’s not to amuse myself, nor is it to make fun of the people for whom I am putting on an act; nor is it to ennoble myself in my own eyes by inflicting some kind of humiliation on someone. I do it simply, perhaps precisely because I am crazy.

No, I am not crazy. I just wrote what I did because I was driven by the need to explain illogical acts. And when one has such a need for clarity, I guarantee you, one is not crazy.

Still. None of that is important. It has no relation to the story you are about to read.

But what is oddest of all is that I have no willpower. I have always done just as I please. Fortunately, I am a good person at heart. I have no inclination to do harm. Otherwise I would surely have come to a bad end. I would have gone to prison. I would have killed people who had not done anything to me.

It’s quite funny. It’s funny because you will see with what willpower I have acted. They cried, they begged me, and I did not bend. It’s funnier and funnier. Honestly, I am both an odd and a likable guy. I am a man who will no doubt succeed in life, who will do great things.

But wait. Let us proceed in an orderly fashion. A person who does not put his mind in order is lost. Without order, nothing is possible. I who, according to what some people claim, am half mad, will show you how reasonable I am.

Above all, you need to understand who I am. I never knew my mother. I was raised by my father, which made me precociously mature. You cannot imagine how good I am. My goodness is so immense that everyone has always made fun of me, and the most incredible things have happened to me. I would not say I am incapable of killing a fly, for does any man exist who has no fits of bad temper? What makes me sad is that I have never been able to provide examples of my goodness. It seems to me that goodness held up as an example is not goodness anymore. But that’s something else entirely. Don’t be afraid, I am not losing my train of thought. I will recount the story you are about to read without going off track. The only thing I can tell you is that I am truly good. I assure you. I swear it. And what I swear is true. I am not like some other people who swear to anything on their parents’ lives.