Celine Curiol - Voice Over

Rue de Buci. Large signs up on all the shop fronts: Everything Must Go, Clearance Sale, Up to 50 % Off. Enticing phrases to coax you inside. She pauses outside Vanilla Girls. Chocolate, strawberry and raspberry are also available. All the flavors you could wish for, gentlemen. To be consumed without moderation, but must be kept refrigerated. She goes inside. Five young women work their way along the hangers like automatic sorting machines, taking out an occasional garment to check for defects in the manufacture. Each displays remarkable powers of concentration: the fruit of years of practice begun in early adolescence. A female voice is singing in English. She catches the word love and the word. . love. The sales assistant is wheeling packs of clothes from one side of the store to the other, taking them around for some fresh air. She spots a dress for 49 euros. Not really her style, but it could cheer her up to see herself looking different, not to recognize herself in the mirror. Can she try it on? she asks the assistant, who brushes by her at top speed and, without stopping, points to the rear of the shop. The garments in critical shape have to be moved urgently for fear they will suffer irreversible decay. In a corner of the shop, a curtain hangs from a semi-circular rail. The curtain is narrow. Through the space between the fabric and the wall, she can see large sections of the shop. People can see her. She ought not to give a damn, since everyone here is of the same sex. No need to be shy, you’re all built the same, her gym mistress would shout in the changing rooms at school. Except that she had breasts, whereas the others still had only the insignificant volcanic burgeonings of nipple. She undresses, keeping her movements to a minimum in order to stay hidden. She gets her head and arms in, but once the dress is on, she can’t do up the zip at the back. The makeshift fitting room doesn’t have a mirror. She steps out, with her back exposed and the dress gaping at the front, to get at least some idea of how she looks. A split second later the salesgirl is upon her, ramming up the zip with an iron hand. She barely has time to draw a breath: her chest will never be the same shape again, that’s certain. She senses that the other women in the shop are peering at her. The salesgirl is recuperating by the till. It’s very nice, don’t tell me you don’t like it. She doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t say so. She already knew that pink doesn’t suit her. Besides, it’s a color she detests. And the length is wrong. As for her breasts, squashed at the front, plumped up at the top, they resemble nothing so much as a fine pair of soufflés still in their baking tin. The ruse hasn’t paid off. Even dressed like that, she still looks the same, only worse. Forty-nine euros, it’s a bargain, the shop-girl calls out, before flying to the rescue of other endangered garments. Get back behind the curtain now that she’s gone. She flaps her elbows, trying to catch hold of the zip. No way is she going out there again. After twisting herself into four or five different positions, release. She hurriedly gets back into her clothes and abandons the dress. She throws a quick glance outside. The shop-girl is standing guard a few yards from the shop entrance. She makes a run for it, ducking at the first display stand she comes to and finds her way, hidden by a mound of heaped-up clothing, to the exit.

She crosses the carrefour de l’Odéon, then walks up one of the three streets leading to the Théâtre de l’Europe. She is surprised to find in this part of the city an erotic bookshop with no sign. In the window, books of photography featuring pictures of women in bras and G-strings on the front covers; novels and reference works. The thought of going in is tempting but makes her feel uneasy. In between the piles of books, she tries to catch a glimpse of what is happening inside. Two young men are leafing through magazines. Enthroned behind the cash register is a fairly stout woman in her fifties. The presence of the woman strengthens her resolve. She makes her silent entrance; neither of the two men turns round; the woman, on the other hand, greets her arrival with an amused stare. She must look like a self-conscious child walking into a place it has been forbidden to enter. Not daring to touch a thing, she goes over to the shelves, tilts her head to start reading the titles and authors’ names, which she immediately forgets. Except for one: Marie Nimier. The name rings a bell, as if it were the name of an old friend, or the pseudonym she could have chosen for herself if she had been a writer. She takes down the novel and reads the first page. The story begins with the overwhelming attraction one woman feels for a man. A passionate love which makes one want to worship everything about him, even the worst parts. What is the worst about him? For her, best or worst has no meaning. She doesn’t think of him in those terms, apportioning him into two columns and adding up the sum of his good and bad qualities. In the novel the man wears a silver ring, which the woman sees as an integral part of his body. Whatever the object of her obsession owns is turned into a fetish. In fairy tales, a magician’s power comes from a ring. Rings are exchanged at weddings; a ring is affixed to the leg of a carrier pigeon. For the first time she wonders what his penis might look like. But she has no way of telling; each is unique, a signature whose overlapping lines are hard to decipher even when the person is known. All she can do is to refer back to the ones she has seen and remembers. That game of adolescent girls: trying to find out whether the length and thickness of the male organ corresponds to the size or thickness of any visible part of the anatomy. The feet. . the nose. . the ears. . the hips. . the big toe. . the wrists. It turned out there was always an exception to every rule.

Place de l’Odéon is deserted, except for a man filming the façade of the theater. With one eye pressed to the viewfinder and the other closed, he doesn’t notice her. On she goes.

The Jardin du Luxembourg and its hodge-podge of tourists. Rings of chairs arranged as if for the conversations of invisible characters. It’s up to anyone out for a walk to imagine, according to the layout of these metal remains, what went on here before his arrival. Grey-haired men and women sit alone, gazing into space, or hunched over a newspaper, the articles and photographs depicting the world’s latest carnages. And then, suddenly, heads look up. The sun’s rays pierce through the dome of clouds; the contrast in the landscape sharpens. A paradoxical light that lessens the threat of a storm and yet still makes it seem likely, a light which has the coldness of metal and the sharpness of a blade, a light on which nothing feasts but which everything reflects, which strikes only at strategic points. Apocalypse. From a distance, the trees look like a long row of stone blocks miraculously suspended in midair. She enters the shaded path; the complex filigree of the branches appears overhead, the sky starts rustling, the mineral turns vegetal. She emerges on the other side of the park. Two thick lines of spindle trees frame a strip of sky.

Place Saint-Sulpice. Projectors are being set up for a photo shoot. Kids on rollerblades orbit the fountain like multicolored electrons around a nucleus of glistening water. Up the steps to the church, push through the heavy door that leads into the sanctuary. A young woman with blonde hair enters at the same time she does. Hurried steps, dip of the thin fingers into the holy water, sign of the cross. A man with torn trousers has fallen asleep at a prayer stool; his head lolls back at an angle. Walls, floor, roof, columns, statues, everywhere the same granite hue. She tries to keep her shoes from clattering over the flagstones: excessive noise could bring down the entire building. She doesn’t believe in God, has never felt the need to, has never read a religious book. But churches are something else. Their tranquillity, their dark cool air, their solemnity are a respite for her.