Herve Le Tellier - Enough About Love

They cut across the tree-lined courtyard of a renovated apartment building, climb the stairs, and he opens the door to a spacious apartment with high ceilings and a warm masculine atmosphere. The huge, bright living room is littered with a jumble of things, movie lighting equipment, an écorché model in an opera hat, a driftwood sculpture. Anna walks over to the large bay window, looks at Paris gradually picked out by sunlight, the basilica of Sacré Coeur, Beaubourg to the south, the apex of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Yves rummages through a cardboard box, takes out a book, and hands it to Anna.

“I’ve found it. There you are. Sorry about the mess, Anna. I’ve only just moved in.”

“It’s huge.”

“Yes. Too big for me and my daughter.”

“Do you rent it?”

“No, I have too many different employers to keep a landlord happy. I’ve always had to buy. I live off my capital.”

So it is possible then, Anna thinks, quashed. She had pictured a dirty, dilapidated building, a small cluttered apartment, modest means, even slight embarrassment. She wanted him to be poor, wanted his poverty to make him unthinkable, she would have preferred having some excuse at hand, wanted to be able to say reproachfully: “Whatever sort of life could you offer my children?”

“I promised you a coffee. Over here.”

Anna cannot help smiling at the American-style kitchen: she and Stan have the same design, from the same Swedish supplier.

She walks ahead of him, he breathes in her perfume. She moves very slowly. Yves will learn later that when she cannot cope with tension, she slows her pace as if the moment itself were taking all her energy. Now she stops altogether, suffocating. Yves’s arms are around her, she does not push him away, his arms turn her, she pivots, Yves draws her to him, she half opens her lips, he takes them. Without a word, he leads her to the bedroom, she lets herself be led.

• •

T HE DAY AFTER, an earthquake comes on an evening like any other. The children are in their bedroom, Lea drawing, Karl practicing his scales on the piano. Anna is preparing dinner and Stan is setting the table. Anna talks about her day: a young autistic patient said the word “chocolate” for the first time.

Stan does not ask many questions, listens to his wife, watches her affectionately. Talking is never an effort for Anna. The more tired she is the more she seems to ramble.

While she cooks, Anna has put her rings on the counter. They are all presents from Stan. Her narrow wedding band punctuated by thirty-three diamonds. A chunkier ring, an ancient-looking disk of yellow gold set with uncut rubies and sapphires and mounted on a band of white gold; she has never known what it cost, it was an unreasonable amount. Finally, a simple red-and-black agate pearl, mounted on a circle of silver, she chose it at a market in Avignon, when she and Stan still used to go to the theater festival, before the children were born.

Anna cuts up fennel, turnips, and zucchini, tosses them into a frying pan, sprinkles mild spices, and covers them with a glass lid that immediately steams up. The rice is boiling in a saucepan. A sad expression, tinted with irritation, hovers over her face. She feels as if, rather than wanting to be somewhere else, she already is somewhere else. Looking at her own life through a window.

She drains the rice and puts her rings back onto her wet fingers. She suddenly grasps the fact that if she leaves Stan, if he becomes involved with another woman, she would feel no jealousy at all. She knows everything about the life the woman would lead, Stan’s thoughtfulness, his least little consideration, she even knows what presents he would give her, would have no trouble recognizing them on the new girlfriend’s fingers, around her neck.

She puts the steaming rice into a bowl, also thinking of all the women Yves has known, women about whom she knows nothing. She pictures them happy, walking arm in arm, cleaving to him. These are fleeting images, but so violently sensual that they disturb her.

“What are you thinking about?” asks Stan.

“I’m so sorry,” Anna replies, spontaneously.

It is not an answer, it is an admission. If Stan realizes this, he does not show it, goes on pouring water into the children’s glasses.

“Are you thinking about your brother’s Fuch’s spot?”

Anna does not reply.

“It’s a really rare condition, you know. It could easily not happen to the other eye. He’ll just have to be vigilant, that’s all.”

“Karl, Lea, it’s ready.”

She has pulled herself together, her voice is cheerful.

• •

T HOMAS HAS HAD A NIGHTMARE and is describing it to Louise in a quiet café on the Place de la Contrescarpe:

“I’m in my kitchen with Maud—”

“What, my Maud? My daughter?” Louise interjects.

“Yes. You’ve shown me a picture of her, but I wouldn’t recognize her in the street. In my dream, she looks a bit like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz , in other words nothing like herself. I’m teaching her to make pancakes. There’s a bulky old TV in the kitchen with a film on. It’s a spy film, a black-and-white B movie. A woman’s been tied up in a kitchen exactly like mine. A man comes in from time to time and slaps her. She wants to scream but she’s gagged. I know that the woman is you, even though she doesn’t look at all like you, and I also know that although the scene is innocuous, Maud finds it terrifying. But it doesn’t occur to me to switch the TV off, I just try to get between her and the screen, and I talk very loudly to drown out the woman’s moans. A man in a suit, who could be Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca , comes in and yells at the woman, ‘Go home, now.’ She’s immediately released and limps away, turning around to throw him a pack of Q-tips.”

“A pack of what?”

“I know, it’s ridiculous, it was a dream, I can’t think what the Q-tips are meant to be. The TV stops all by itself, I hope Maud didn’t see any of it, and I yammer on about yeast making the pancake batter rise. Your little girl looks at me angrily, she wanted to watch the film.”

“Is that it?” Louise says.

“That’s it. I’m telling you because I think it has to do with my guilt.”

“Is Humphrey Bogart my husband? Wasn’t Bogart really short?” she laughs, shaking her head.

“I don’t know if it’s him. Dreams are always complex.”

“I don’t have nightmares, I just have an impossible client. A rapist. He’s chosen a completely untenable line of defense. I said: ‘Look, stop this, don’t be so stupid, she has bruises where she was hit, and the fluid found on her clothes is your sperm.’ ”

Hearing the word “sperm” pronounced too loudly, the whole café turns toward them and falls silent, but Louise does not notice. She continues: “Just admit that you raped this girl. The jury’s never going to believe you. If you carry on denying it, you won’t be getting four or five years, but ten.”

“Louise …”

“Yes?”

“Don’t talk so loud. Everyone’s looking at us. Well, it’s me they’re all looking at.”

Louise turns around. All eyes are on Thomas, brimming with anger and contempt. She stands up immediately and addresses them all.

“Let’s stop right there. I’m a lawyer. This is the love of my life and I’m telling him about my day at work, I love him, we’re getting married on Sunday.”

She sits down beside Thomas and kisses him full on the mouth. The kiss lasts some time, there is whistling, some laughter, clapping even. When she breaks away from him, Thomas roars with laughter.