Jean-Philippe Toussaint - The Truth about Marie

We went back in the water to swim, the sun’s reflection broke and dispersed into silver glints each time we moved our arms in the water. Marie swam out to the open sea in her magnificent crawl, slow, steady, each movement precise, her arms lifting toward the sky and plunging back down into the sea with a slight delay, then she swam back to me and floated by my side, as though weightless in the water. Marie, elusive, swam toward me then away again, she was laughing, disappearing under the water. At times our legs brushed together, our bodies touched fleetingly in the sea, I caressed her shoulder as I tenderly removed some seaweed from her hair. Nothing was said, nothing stated explicitly, but more than once our fingers grazed and our hands lingered close together, our eyes met and remained locked for an instant. There was a sense of a familiar complicity between us, and I felt a strange mix of emotion and timidity. I wanted to take her in my arms, give myself to her in the sea, hold her body close to mine in the warm water. She swam back to me, her mask on her forehead, her cheeks glistening, she looked happy, and she smiled at me, beaming, mischievous, as though she’d just played a trick on me, and I saw then that she held her bathing suit balled up in her right hand.

Marie had taken off her bathing suit, she was naked in the sea by my side, and I followed with my eyes the fluctuating neckline of her liquid dress, which moved in synch with the water, at times conservative and reserved, a sort of crewneck sweater reaching her chin, and at other times more revealing, bold, daring, dropping all the way to her belly button when she floated on her back, lying weightless in the sea, her stomach and pubic hair glistening, her breasts emerging slightly through the tiny waves washing over her flat body. I didn’t take my eyes off her, following her bathing suit with my gaze, her emblem, the pirate flag of her nudity in the sea. We stopped face to face, and we smiled at each other, I considered Marie naked and masked before me. I approached her and gently squeezed her shoulder, she didn’t back away, her face became serious, she seemed ready to fall into my arms, when suddenly she saw a nacreous glint underwater — a Venus’s ear! — and, slipping out of my arms like an eel, she broke away from me and dove straight down toward the glimpsed glimmer, presenting me with — before vanishing all together — the most graceful noli me tangere conceivable: the curve of her ass plunging into the sea.

Marie was basking in the sun next to me on the rocks. Tiny beads of water covered her naked body, and the sun, drying her little by little, left almost invisible specks of salt on her skin, whose taste I imagined vividly on the tip of my tongue. After a moment, pensive, her eyes closed, she moved her hand gently in my direction and uttered in a soft voice these enigmatic words: “I wasn’t his mistress, you know,” and these words resounded briefly in the silence of the cove. She didn’t say whose mistress, but I’d understood, and I was grateful for her not having named him (as for myself, I pretended to have forgotten his name). Marie lay motionless on her back, her eyes closed, one knee bent, her hand flat against the rocks. The silence grew in the cove, broken only by the soft murmur of the waves lapping below. What was the point in telling me she wasn’t his mistress? That she hadn’t slept with him? This was highly unlikely, if not impossible, even if we could easily imagine that theirs hadn’t been a sexual relationship in a strict sense, or in juridical terms, according to which sexual relations are dependent upon penetration, by whose definition fellatio and cunnilingus are excluded (in short, the activities two people can enjoy without necessarily becoming lovers), but I doubt that was what she was trying to tell me, no, not that. Marie seemed serious, she looked bothered, and the tone she’d used had had the sad solemnity of a confession or admission. I continued to look at her, and I wondered why she’d felt the need to tell me on this day that she wasn’t his mistress (which, by the way, isn’t the same as saying that she hadn’t been his mistress, the past perfect tense she’d used — rather than the pluperfect — allows in its ambiguity this lie by omission). Perhaps she’d simply wanted to let me know she’d never felt attached to him, that she’d always felt free and couldn’t in any case be considered the mistress of a married man, that it was in a way the word mistress , with its social connotations more than its actual reality, that she objected to, denying the word could be applied to her given its incongruity with her situation. I don’t know. Or perhaps she’d simply wanted to let me know that, in the end, she didn’t love him, she hadn’t ever loved him, that, certainly she’d liked him, he’d come into her life at the right moment, she’d loved his kindness, his consideration, his gallantry, his easygoing personality, with him, life was simple, comfortable, reassuring — but ultimately it was someone else that she loved.

Marie and I spent a week together at La Rivercina, our flirting had become more brazen as we relearned each other’s personality, passing one another on the first floor of the house with our towels flung over our shoulders and a seductive gleam in our eyes, crossing paths intentionally in the garden, separating only to return to each other’s side as soon as possible. As the days passed, the distance between our bodies began to dwindle inexorably, becoming more and more tenuous, diminishing every hour, as if soon bound to dissolve altogether. Our bodies grazed, at night, on the terrace, as we cleared the candle-lit table, and our shadows hardly parted in the night, each secretly seeking the contact of the other in the dark. At times, at night, in the kitchen, while we prepared dinner, as I checked the tomato sauce simmering on the old gas stove, a wooden spoon in my hand, Marie would come up from behind me, and I’d feel the silent wave of her body against mine, her bare arm brushing past me as she added to the sauce a few sage leaves she’d picked from the garden, and sometimes I’d even feel her fingers on my cheek, scratching my stubble and teasing me for not having shaved. I’d grab her hand and pull it away, and I thought about how this same gesture could take on different meanings according to the way in which it was carried out, without ceremony or concern, or else accompanied with a stare and clear intent, a sudden gravity, slowing down the act to give it significance and meaning, as I’d done that night in the kitchen, ceding to this sudden impulse without having given it any thought beforehand, spontaneously, ignoring its consequences, holding her hand in the kitchen and gazing into her eyes, our hands and eyes momentarily suspended in time. She wore a baggy white shirt dampened by the humidity and had her old flip-flops on her feet, one of the daisies was in poor shape, probably damaged on some dirt path, looking as if its petals had been plucked (he loves me, he loves me not) by a stray and wistful hand, on the whole a touching spectacle. Marie suddenly looked serious, she became pensive and stepped toward me, and I wrapped my arms around her, for a moment we stood like that against the stove, holding each other in the kitchen, lulled by the delectable bubbling of the tomato sauce simmering over a low flame. It was only an isolated moment of intimacy, but I understood then that we’d perhaps never been as close as when we were apart.

After dinner I’d return to my room, I’d open the window and a rare breeze would pass through the room, through the hot nights on the Island. I’d lie down on the bed, I’d lie still in the dark, keeping the light off to prevent the mosquitoes from coming in. Since the first night I’d spent in this room at La Rivercina, Marie’s presence on the floor above me had haunted me, I knew she was right there above me, I’d hear her moving around in her room and I’d know what she was doing, I could follow her movements in the room in real time, I’d hear the weight of her steps on the wooden floor, and I’d know she was going from her bed to the oak armoire, I’d hear the quiet creaking of its hinges as she’d open it and I’d imagine her choosing a T-shirt for the night, whose color, smell and texture I could picture clearly. At times, the sound of her steps on the floor faded and gave way to the rush of water in the bathroom, the squeal of a faucet turning on and off in a chorus of aching pipes, then the patter of her feet returned to the room, light and swift. I’d hear Marie crawl into bed, and, after a moment, closing my eyes in the dark to concentrate more attentively, I’d hear her fall asleep. There was nothing physical or material about this, I couldn’t hear the quiet moans and whimpers she made while she slept, no more than the violent storm of sheets she’d set off toward three in the morning, when, pulling with all her might at a stubborn corner of the covers, she’d roll her shoulder furiously trying to turn over on her side, but I could hear the murmur of her dreams playing in her mind. Or could it be in my own mind through which Marie’s dreams now passed, as though, after thinking about her constantly, after evoking her presence, after living vicariously through her, I’d started to imagine, at night, that I dreamed her dreams.