Jean-Philippe Toussaint: The Truth about Marie

A cooler air entered the room in violent gusts. The wind sent a shiver up Marie’s back and she took refuge in bed, wrapping herself up in the covers. She took off her socks and threw them at the foot of the bed, while Jean-Christophe de G. began getting dressed in the half-light — he was getting dressed while she was undressing, both going through the same motions but to different ends. He put his pants and jacket back on. Before leaving he went and sat on the edge of the bed next to Marie. He kissed her on the forehead in the half-light, then gave her a peck on the lips, but these kisses lasted longer than those of simple good-byes, becoming prolonged, intense, they fell into each other’s arms again and he slid into the bed, fully dressed, pulling her close to him under the covers, in his black jacket and cotton pants, still holding his briefcase in one hand, which he soon dropped the better to hold Marie. He had her naked body against him and he was caressing her breasts, she moaned quietly as he slid her tiny panties down her thighs, Marie helped him with this by lifting her pelvis, and Marie, panting, her eyes closed, unzipped Jean-Christophe de G.’s pants and took out his cock, hurriedly, determined, with a certain urgency and a gesture at once firm and delicate, composed, as if she knew exactly where she wanted to go, but, once there, she no longer knew what to do. She opened her eyes, startled, sleepy, feeling tipsy and tired, and she realized that, above all, she was tired, the only thing she really wanted to do at the moment was sleep, in Jean-Christophe de G.’s arms, maybe, but not necessarily with his cock in her hand. She stopped suddenly, and, since she had to do something with the cock she still held in her hand, she squeezed it, gingerly, two or three times, out of curiosity, gently, she held it firmly in her hand and stroked it, watching the result with no little interest and wonder. What was she expecting, for it to fly off suddenly? Marie had Jean-Christophe de G.’s cock in her hand and she didn’t know what to do with it.

Marie ended up falling asleep. She dozed for a few minutes, or maybe he was the first to fall asleep, they stirred quietly in the darkness, continuing to kiss each other from time to time, in a mutual state of half-sleep, drifting off in each other’s arms, caressing each other languidly in their slumber (so this is what we call making love all night). Marie had undone the top few buttons of Jean-Christophe de G.’s shirt and was stroking his chest listlessly, and he welcomed this, he was hot, he was sweating fully dressed under the covers, his cock hanging out, abandoned, stiffening briefly and twitching with intermittent spasms, all while Marie ran her hand over his chest, under his damp and shapeless shirt, its sides sagging and slack around him. She kissed him sweetly, softly, she was also sweating, her head hot, and, without realizing it, she started to search his pockets, she slid her hand into his coat pocket, curious to know what that hard object with sharp angles was at his waist when he took her in his arms. A weapon? Could he have a weapon in his pocket?

The room’s window then closed slowly on its own, before swinging open and slamming back violently, the glass pane reverberating with the shock, while the rain began abruptly pouring down in giant drops on the street. Marie watched the rain fall in the night through the window, a curtain of black rain moving laterally through the beams of the streetlamps, carried by strong winds. Thunder sounded, several times in a row, accompanied by a whole network of lightning, great electric shocks branching out in every direction. The rain doubled in force and began entering the room, dripping from the windowpane onto the floor under the windowsill. Naked under the covers and sheltered from the storm, Marie felt cozy, her senses alert in the darkness, her eyes lit up by the lightning, savoring the sensual pleasure one feels nestled in a warm bed during a storm, the window open in the night, the sky slashed by lightning and nature seemingly coming undone. The lightning startled her at times, and, with this stab of terror, intensified the erotic pleasure she felt lying in the warmth of the covers while the storm raged outside. But unlike the violent storms on Elba at the end of summer, which purified the air and immediately cooled the whole island, this night’s storm had something tropical and pernicious about it, as though the rain was unable to lower the temperature, and the air, charged with a residual humidity and an excess of atmospheric electricity, remained heavy and thick, stifling, harmful. Jean-Christophe de G., lying motionless in bed, fully dressed, sweat beading up on his forehead, hadn’t even opened his eyes. He continued to sleep deeply on his back, unperturbed by the rumbling of the thunder, its dying echo fading into the uninterrupted patter of the pouring rain. Marie hardly paid him any attention when he threw back the covers and got out of bed in his suit, all dressed and ready to leave. She watched him walk out of the room with a sleepwalker’s step, stiff and slow-moving, in his socks, carrying his briefcase, perhaps with the intention of going home, Marie wasn’t sure where he was going, she heard him walk down the hallway, then the slam of a door, maybe the front door, and Marie glanced over at Jean-Christophe de G.’s shoes lying at the foot of the bed — it must have been the bathroom door that slammed. Jean-Christophe de G. stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes before returning the same way he’d left, with the same awkward step, stiff, mechanical, his face pale, livid, bloodless, in socks and sweating profusely, he took one step into the room and collapsed.

Marie didn’t understand what had happened right away, she thought his fall was due to the alcohol, she waited in bed for a moment before getting up to help him. But what soon scared her was that he hadn’t lost consciousness, she saw him wriggling around on his back in the half-light, writhing helpless on the hardwood floor, holding his chest with both hands as if it were locked in a grip he couldn’t break out of, and she saw him grimace in pain in the darkness, his teeth clenched, his lips heavy, stiff, as if numb, his breathing no longer regular, and struggling to speak, his garbled words a stream of unintelligible sounds, trying to explain to her that he had no feeling in his left hand, that it was paralyzed. Marie, who’d knelt down beside him, leaning over him, took his hand in hers. He said he didn’t feel well, she needed to call a doctor.

Marie dialed one of the emergency numbers, 15 or 18, and she paced the room while waiting for someone to pick up, walking over to the window to stare out absently at the rain falling in the dark street, before going back over to Jean-Christophe’s writhing body and kneeling down next to him again. Marie, naked, on her knees, immobile in the half-light, her hands trembling, holding the phone to her ear as it continued to ring, the silhouette of her naked body suddenly and repeatedly defined by the lightning illuminating the entire room, Marie, who let loose her panic once someone finally answered, unleashing a rush of imprecise and unfinished explanations, Marie, baffled, lost, aghast, left the operator equally confused as he tried to calm her, repeating the same two or three succinct questions, the responses to which couldn’t be simpler — her name, address, the nature of the problem — but Marie couldn’t handle being asked questions at this time, Marie had always hated being asked questions, Marie wasn’t listening, she wasn’t responding, she was babbling frantically, incomprehensibly, without giving her name or address, she was explaining that even at the restaurant he’d felt something, a pain in his shoulder, but it only lasted a moment and then passed, how could she have known — and the operator had to interrupt her to ask once again, firmer this time, her address, “Your address, Miss, give me your address, we can’t do anything without your address”—and it was Jean-Christophe de G. who, lying on his back, pale and sweating profusely, a blank stare in his eyes, his bottom lip quivering, looked at Marie with concern and without strength, trying desperately to figure out what was going on, he was the one who, reading Marie’s face for signs of what was being asked and finally understanding the situation, snatched the phone from her hands and gave the address to the operator, “2, rue de la Vrillière,” he blurted it all out at once as if ordering a cab, then, spent by the effort, he passed the phone back to Marie and fell back into a daze on his side. The operator then explained to Marie that he was sending an ambulance right away and told her in a calm and steady voice that, if he goes into cardiac arrest or loses consciousness, she should try to resuscitate him by pressing down firmly and with both hands below his sternum and by performing mouth-to-mouth. The storm had hardly abated and intermittent flashes of lightning — interrupting total darkness with blinding light — would fleetingly fix every detail of the room in a phantasmagoric white brightness. Marie was straddling Jean-Christophe de G.’s fully dressed body, and, one hand over the other, her arms extended, her hair disheveled, clumsily, in a panic, she pressed down with all her strength on his sternum to give a jolt to his thoracic cage, then, as he remained unresponsive to these efforts, she leaned over him and shook him roughly, hugged him, kissed him, and then rested her palms on his cheeks, transmitting her warmth, planted her lips against his and stuck her tongue in his mouth to breath some air into him, as though she wanted to make up for the pathetic display of her clumsy efforts with a mad act of passion, which, though unlikely to give sufficient oxygen to the helpless man, could perhaps give him a surge of energy and vitality. For Marie was trying to transmit life itself to Jean-Christophe de G.’s unconscious body by blowing frantically into his mouth every which way while holding him tightly in her arms, yet, remaining locked in this embrace on the hardwood floor of the room, Marie began to feel the touch of death come into contact with her naked skin — death grasping at the striking nudity of Marie’s body.