Celine Curiol - Voice Over

There’s a sharp cracking sound above her head. The noise is coming from the loft. She has no idea what to expect. On top of everything else, she may also have to share the premises with a mouse. There’s no limit to how low a person can sink. Heart pounding, she climbs the few rungs of the ladder leading up to the bed. And there before her appears Momo’s puffy face. You been crying? He mutters in a sleepy voice, but she is unable to speak.

She asks Momo for the keys. After locking up the night before, he fell asleep with them in his hand. He didn’t want to wake her. She doesn’t listen to his explanations. Insults or kisses, either would do to celebrate her release. But she doesn’t have time: she wants to go. Momo watches in disbelief as she rushes out, not even bothering to close the door behind her. At least give me your number. She smiles, pictures Momo adding the words, it’s my birthday. Without replying, she charges down the stairs.

She is now walking in the street which she had so yearned for all night. What she saw from high above she now sees up close. Everything seems immense, but at last within reach. With every step, she exults at the sensation of the firm ground beneath her feet. Before turning the corner, she looks up, tries to spot her night-time perch. She never would have thought that the sight of a balcony could be so moving. She feels like someone released from prison after being wrongfully convicted. After a few bad turns, she finds the Châtelet métro station. Twenty minutes later, she will be at home. She will eat an entire packet of LU biscuits, take a shower, get changed, leave again, get to the station slightly out of breath, relieved, read 7:53 on a clock. Crossing the station concourse, she will, as she often does, imagine herself boarding a train. But at eight o’clock she’ll be sitting at her desk, ready to announce the 8:15 am TGV to Lille, as she does every Monday morning.

I’ll call you. I’ll call you soon. A subtle nuance. How should she interpret it? The shift from a vague future to an immediate future — is it just a way of talking or does it suggest the start of something serious? A need to get closer to the anticipated action? A code to be deciphered?

For four days, the telephone has been silent. She has hardly spoken a word. The usual questions and comments to colleagues, reduced to an absolute minimum — How are you? Good weekend? Awful weather! Not a peep about her misadventures. She has no intention of stoking rumors with an account of the past twenty-four hours. She knows full well that whether she boasted about it or complained, it would do her no good. More than a year ago, she overheard a conversation in the women’s toilet at her office. The voices of two women, each in her respective cubicle, who thought they were alone. She had come in; the women had carried on, no more able to see her than she was able to see them, each from behind her closed door, skirts pulled up, ass exposed, chatting away as calmly as though they were sitting over a cup of tea. They had tried out several adjectives on her — quiet, cold, withdrawn — until they finally settled on the vaguest and broadest of them all: strange.

She wonders if he is going to call. The question punctuates her days, crops up at any moment, at work, during meals, while she’s asleep, and as soon as it starts to slip her mind, returns with even greater urgency. Each time, the question seems to overpower yet another portion of her brain. No longer is it just one question, but ten, a hundred, a thousand identical questions, which wind up occupying nearly all the space available. Leaving her with just enough for what is strictly necessary. In the meantime, she functions. And so it goes, until Thursday evening.

On the news, she is watching images of an enormous blackout in New York. People are sleeping outdoors on pavements and in parks, unable to get home, the correspondent explains. She’s not sure that one should feel sorry for them. Sleeping outdoors is a hundred times better than being locked in! Have millions been affected by the absence of electricity? asks the presenter, who already knows the answer. She has never been to New York; it’s a city she views with some suspicion. Every accident, incident, attack seems to happen on a scale not comparable to events in Paris. As she is nevertheless trying to take an interest in the displaced New Yorkers, who have been plunged into darkness, the telephone rings. One hand pounces on the remote control as the other swoops down on the handset. No doubt about it, the call is from him. She doesn’t feel ready for the verdict. Waiting at least had the benefit of prolonging the yes or the no. She picks up. He begins with his usual “how’s it going?” as if they had seen each other the day before; as if, for the two of them, time passed at a different rate. She makes herself repeat OK with the same apparent detachment. Then, for several seconds, all that stirs on the line is the sound of their breathing. He says, about tomorrow, she feels her heart tighten, it won’t be possible; she stops listening. The rest, the reason, the excuse, the pretext, whatever can be called what he is now setting forth to her in detail, no longer matters. Once again, it has to do with Ange. She is relieved and disappointed; something between the two, shuttling from one to the other, so rapidly that the two merge. She attempts to console herself, at least she tried. Except now she is certain she would have preferred him to say yes; she won’t dare ask him for anything again. Leaving aside the invitation to the theater, being alone with her is what he has wanted to avoid. She realizes that he is still speaking. She holds the receiver away from her ear, then hangs up.

She doesn’t want him to reassure her about what he no doubt intended to refer to as their bonds of friendship. She detests these empty words, which people apply like so many sticking plasters wherever they detect emotional leakage. She doesn’t want to witness the perverse transformation in him brought on by guilt. Had she stayed on the other end of the line, he would have levelled the highpoints of their story armed with his premeditated good intentions, would have opened up an area of common ground between them through which he could circulate without suffering any emotional shocks. He would have taken the opportunity to put his own house in order as well; he would have confidently declared what he doesn’t really believe but would hope, by trying to convince her, he would hope to convince himself. And she would have been forced to take this pummelling without flinching. If he had given her a blunt no, the message would have been unambiguous, clear, precise, clinical. Bye, thanks, we’ll forget it ever happened. The opportunity was there, we didn’t take it, too bad. The story would come to an end; she would have battened down the hatches and would at last have been able to act as if this man didn’t exist. But he spoke at length, more talkative than ever before, justifying his decision with all sorts of clauses and sub-clauses. He’s thought about it, hesitated, and refused. She understands that his words had only one aim: to make sure that he wasn’t losing her despite his refusal.

She lets the phone ring. Five rings, and the answering machine picks up the call. Listen, I don’t know why you’re taking it like this. Then he stops talking. The miniature cassette records his silence. Her eyes are riveted on the phone. She is not taking it like this. It’s not easy to explain, but he ought to be able to understand. A long beep marks the end of the call. He has hung up.

Sometimes in the métro she has the impression that she is disintegrating. She’s sitting in the company of other silent passengers, not thinking about anything in particular, swayed by the motion of the carriage progressing through the tunnels. She isn’t asleep, but it is only at the final brake that she realizes the train has entered a station. It then takes her several long seconds before she knows if she has to get out at that stop or not. She has to review the preceding hours in her mind, follow the trail of cause and effect to work out why she is there at that precise moment, sitting in that métro, and decide to stay. The métro sets off again. And in the course of the journey to the next station, she again loses all notion of time and space. As the train comes to a halt once more, she has to perform the same mental calculation so that this time she can struggle to her feet and slip through the doors, which are about to close.