Herve Le Tellier - The Intervention of a Good Man

He slumps into an uncomfortable chair. Then immediately berates himself for his resignation, which is far removed from the strong cheerful him. He keeps telling himself that he is young, that he will continue to be young as long as he refuses to give up hope of a future. He is alive enough today to move mountains, still attractive enough to register as a man. The same will still be true tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. But a terrible sentence pops into his head. He read it in The Life Before Us , and it marked him for life. He was eighteen, Ajar’s book had just come out, and no one knew he was in fact Romain Gary. Little Momo is talking about Madame Rosa, saying, “She used to be a woman and she’s still got a bit of it.” Our hero stands, paces up and down the waiting area by the departure gate, and draws some renewed strength from his energetic striding. Then sits back down and lowers his eyes.

He stares at the gray carpeting, and — as the saying goes — the scales seem to fall from his eyes. His age and that of our heroine have no part in their affair’s failure. She knows nothing of his concerns, she cannot begin to imagine what it is to be fifty. He could be twenty years younger and it would change nothing. Our heroine may not allow herself to indulge her desire for him or grant him her tenderness, and this is because what she most wants to avoid is pain, what she refuses is heartache, and what she dreads is drama. It is so easy breaking away from him now. This is what our hero finally grasps. High time too. He now needs to become a promise of happiness for her, the very image of happiness. That, he thinks, is right up his street.

And now he is afraid that if she ever did give in to him, he would owe that to his perseverance, his doggedness. If she started loving him for the energy he put into conquering her, could she then learn to love him of her own free will? How can he now rekindle the carefree atmosphere of the early days? These are the new questions gnawing at our hero, quite pointlessly, when the flight attendant calls out his row.

The plane takes off on time. Through the porthole, our hero watches the runway scud past, then shrink in the distance. The sheep, them again, grow smaller. Seeing them finally disappearing, drowned out by the altitude and his myopia, is both a relief and a torment. There is, should he want one, panini on the menu. A group of young French kids on a language trip bawl throughout the flight. He tries to remember whether, at their age, he was such an asshole. He could well have been. He is in seat 16A. The young woman in 16B tries to start a conversation. Blond, pug-nosed, an eyebrow piercing that does not succeed in making her ugly. She is from Paris, a researcher, she works for a company that specializes in transgenic products. She offers him her name. He gives her his in return.

She reminds him that they both traveled on the same outbound flight, and so were held up for hours. She thought he looked very stressed, really. She asks him whether he had a pleasant stay in Scotland.

Our hero does not lie to her. He replies:

“The weather was nice.”

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