Celine Curiol - Voice Over

She has sat down on the ground. Her heart is threatening to pop through her chest. Everything is turmoil inside her. From emotion, exhaustion, anger, disgust. It feels as if her hair is standing on end, her body is a solid mass, racked by shudderings that keep changing its shape. She wishes she had the power to turn back the clock, to start again. Barely half an hour, a mere half-hour and she would have been all right. Where is he now? If he had stayed here, he would have waited in front of customs to tell her they weren’t leaving any more. The fact that he’s not here means he took the train. And on that train he is brooding over his resentment, while she has no way of explaining to him what really happened. He must think she changed her mind and missed the train on purpose, out of cowardice. That thought is more than she can bear; because he’s gone, she has to leave and find him. She struggles to her feet. She heads over to the Eurostar counters. She’ll take the next train. With a bit of luck, he’ll still have enough confidence in her to guess what happened and wait at the other end. She manages to get a seat on the 10:00 am Eurostar. At a fast food stand, she has a coffee and in quick succession wolfs down two warm pains au chocolat shining with grease. She is so exhausted she can hardly think ahead. Now and then a recurrent, fleeting image, always the same one, flashes through her mind, her mad dash, her feet pounding on the concrete, step after step. Most of the time, though, all the while keeping an eye on the clock, she distractedly observes two pigeons circling around each other, small automatons oscillating under the weight of their heads and tails.

After the French customs officer there is a British customs officer, a stiff and expressionless woman who compares her identity card photo against the living duplicate it represents. He came through this gate earlier, and the official probably looked at him in the same way, with that air of professional detachment. She could describe him to her and be assured that he was here before. Excuse me, I’m looking for someone, I was wondering if you saw him pass through, he took the nine o’clock train. The customs woman slowly lifts her eyes to meet hers and frowns, visibly surprised that the subject under examination possesses the power of speech. He’s tall, or at least taller than she is, a bit taller, well that’s not to say that she’s very tall, she’s average, he’s got brown hair too, not very dark but not very light either, the kind of brown that people with brownish brown hair have, his eyes match his hair, a little greener, not that he has any green in his hair but there’s something luminous about his eyes, which she associates with a hazelnut brownish sort of green, a good-looking guy basically, though perhaps not in the strictest sense of the word, it’s more that he’s to her liking, it’s hard to explain what she likes, anyway he can’t be too bad-looking, on account of Ange, who wouldn’t like a man whose looks didn’t go well with hers, he often wears a suit, but probably not today, since he’s not on a business trip, although yes, he’s meant to be on a business trip so he’s bound to be wearing one to look the part or perhaps he slipped it into his bag to feel more comfortable, but on that point she can’t say for certain. Several syllables come out of the customs officer’s mouth, coagulate into a mass of sounds that approximates a real but incomprehensible sentence. Eventually the official raises her eyes in exasperation. English. English, oh yes she’d forgotten, the English speak English, that’s only logical. She knows a few basic words of English. Let’s see, some polite phrases, the numbers up to ten, how to say her name, how to say I don’t understand. He must speak the language, that’s what matters, he’ll translate. The customs official motions for her to step aside and make way for the people behind. She joins a group of passengers moving forwards with determination then waits with them in front of a glass wall through which railway tracks and empty platforms can be seen.

Where is he? Right now, still on the train, if he has taken the train, he has taken the train. Where else would he be if not? He would never have gone home without letting her know first, he wouldn’t be nasty enough to punish her like that for being late. Of course, he could have waited for her so they could have taken the next train together. But he must have thought they might have trouble getting two new seats or that changing the tickets would cost too much. He must have hesitated then decided not to change the plan, thinking she would have the presence of mind to do the same.

The doors open, the travellers surge forward, the platform fills with a chaotic flow of humanity, the train is taken by storm. She is shoved along right up to the steps of her carriage. Pushed by a bulging stomach, she narrowly misses getting smacked in the forehead by the bony elbow of the grandmother in front of her. She has looked at them often, on café terraces, surrounded by their suitcases and their laughter, under the departure boards, heads tilted back, standing in line, their mouths half-open, by the platform entrances, being met, embraced, surprised, kissed, tears streaming down their cheeks, by the ticket machines, puzzled, conscientious, examining the front and back of their tickets again and again, and she had thought them so happy, so serene, so charming. And now to her great disappointment they are behaving like vulgar métro passengers instead of appreciating how lucky they are to be setting off in a straight line and not travelling round in circles. And even if he’s not by her side, even if she’s starting to get worried, a wave of joyous excitement washes over her as she steps into the carriage. She wants to talk to them, to shower them with smiles, but they’re all busy attending to their suitcases and their tickets. Everyone is blithely bumping into everyone else.

Modern is the word that comes to her as she surveys the interior of the carriage. The floor and windows are clean, the seats comfortable, the lighting low, the colors match. It feels as if she has shrunk and stepped into a model. Her seat is next to the window. Perfect for watching the landscape rush by. She stows the sports bag on the overhead luggage rack, imitating a young woman she has seen doing the same at the far end of the carriage. She decides to keep her handbag on her lap. A man has put a briefcase under the seat next to hers, has sat down, and without giving her a glance or exchanging a word has opened a thick book. The Best Marketing and Communication Techniques. Several people hurry by on the other side of the window. She wonders why there are no seatbelts on trains. A sensuous voice she doesn’t recognize announces that they are leaving. The platform glides slowly backwards.

Grey houses, shut windows covered by whitish curtains, long electric wires, the bare, black trunks of trees that seem to have been planted haphazardly to make it look as if they were spared when the city was built. A female voice announces the existence of a bar at the center of the train and lists a whole range of sandwiches and refreshments. She is hungry but doesn’t want to disturb her neighbour, who is engrossed in his reading. If he leaves his seat to go to the toilet, she’ll take the opportunity then. Outside, the woods and the walls in the foreground are flowing by too fast for her to see them. Stretched between barely perceived poles, supple and sinewy telephone wires attract and repel one another. She has to look into the depths of the landscape to see the things she wants to see, for them not to disappear at each moment. She likes the gentle, barely perceptible motion of the carriage. He too is on a train, miles ahead of her, but on the same track, bound in the same direction. Her eyes close, she presses her handbag against her body. She is on a train, she is going away somewhere, he is at the end of the line, waiting for her.