Celine Curiol - Voice Over

A feeling that something has touched her. While opening his briefcase, the man next to her has jogged her with his elbow. She is awake now. He has stood up and, swaying back and forth, has walked down the aisle to the far end of the carriage. To her relief, she discovers that her handbag is still on her lap. On the other side of the windows, huddled rows of brick houses are slipping along, accompanied by murmurs and sighs, the zipping of zips, the rustling of pages and plastic bags. The people outside are as invisible here as they were on the outskirts of Paris. London would therefore be nothing but a single long row of identical houses, all of them deserted. Her mouth is dry, her body is as stiff as the seat she has slept in. The voice from the loudspeaker announces their arrival at Waterloo station. She remembers now that the same voice spoke while she was asleep. She hadn’t managed to open her eyes then, to regain consciousness and understand what it was saying. Without her noticing, the train went under the sea, travelling through a dark tube to avoid the water by plunging below it. An under-channel crossing. She thought it was going to be a unique experience but, to her great disappointment, she hasn’t felt a thing. Back when the tunnel was being built, she had wondered if it would be possible to see anything through the walls, algae, fish, one of those marine creatures that live deep below the surface. Later, she’d been sorry to find out that the tunnel didn’t pass through the sea but under it, through dense, blinding, solid, reassuring earth, the same earth in which it is customary to put the dead.

He is waiting for her now, somewhere inside the station. He probably walked around for a while to stretch his legs, then sat down somewhere in a café where he can watch the fresh arrivals. Very soon, they’ll be together again. She can’t imagine anything else.

The jolt of the brake has sent the passengers tipping forwards. She retrieves the sports bag, inserts herself into the Indian file shuffling its way off the train and falls in step with the passengers trotting along at different speeds in the same direction. After the platform come level corridors, followed by an inclined walkway leading to the customs booths. Her country is a member of the European Union; she is in London, hundreds of miles from home, to meet someone who is her only reason for being here. She doesn’t know what she’ll be doing in the hours ahead, any more than what she’ll be doing in the days ahead. She gives no thought to what she has done before this, to the chain of events that has led her to this place. Her two feet are on the ground, at a precise point on the globe, but until she crosses the London border, she will still be in a parallel dimension, in the timeless space of the journey. She walks past the booths, attracting no attention, free. She is on the other side now. The other side of the sea, the other side of a symbolic border, the other side of herself perhaps. She walks down a wide corridor, passes through doors. Dozens of anonymous people are gathered there, necks craning, arms crossed. Their eyes see her, then turn, looking for someone else, until they raise their arms and rush forward, lips ready, to the elected being they’ve been waiting for. She feels a slight contraction in her chest, which increases the further she walks. She can’t see him. Not to the right, not to the left, not on the chairs, not by the pillars. The palpitations are constant now. An escalator takes her up to the main concourse. So many people, never him. It feels as if her head has swollen, her bags have shrunk. She wanders around, retraces her steps, peers over railings, gets up on tiptoe, walks in and out of cafés, shops, hidden corners, scans, searches, turns places upside-down with her eyes. And then suddenly she stops, overwhelmed, for she knows only one thing for certain now: he is not there, he is no longer in a place where she can reach him, except inside herself, inside her body which is here, although she is alone.

She has sat down on the floor, against a wall. At the gare du Nord, she had seen them sprawled out like that in some out-of-the-way corner. They would settle down on the filthy floor amid streams of spilt liquids and pieces of crushed chewing gum, exposed to the freezing, dusty draughts, in the middle of the frenetic bustle of a crowd intoxicated by the thought of departure. They’d stretch out under the reproving stares of the busy people to show they had no strength left, not even to go a few yards further along to find a bench or the cushioned seat of a drinks stand. She’d assumed they were homeless or broke, waiting to sneak onto a train without a ticket. Now she is in the same position, no higher than a man’s knee, like a dog. An ethereal female voice starts talking above their heads. She can’t follow the words but knows that the voice is announcing the next train, the time, the number, the departure or arrival platform. An English woman is sitting behind a microphone and performing the same task she does in Paris. Later on, she will leave her office and might walk past her, she with her ass glued to the floor, and glance at her briefly, wondering what that woman with a sports bag can possibly be doing there by herself. And then, all of sudden, a silhouette, a familiar gait, the fleeting certainty that. But no, her hope collapses like a botched cake and she sinks back into her hole at the sight of the atrociously unfamiliar face. And so it continues, as she lets herself fall into the trap, tortured by the thought of his presence trying to incarnate itself in one of the bodies around her, a body that is never the right one. In the end, she becomes hypnotized by the parade of passing shoes. She would like a hand to touch her on the shoulder, for it to be his, and for that to be the end of the matter. The episode would become a little story they could spend the rest of their stay looking back on with laughter. But nothing of the sort happens. No one recognizes her, and she recognizes no one. She is in an unfamiliar city, and there is no place in it for her except with him.

Trains are leaving in the other direction, their noses pointed straight at Paris. There is nothing to stop her from taking one. Her bank account would go into the red, but in three hours she’d be back at the starting gate, where her old habits would be waiting for her. She would push open the door of her apartment and use up the last of her strength pretending nothing had happened. But going back is worse than staying put. She lacks the courage to make the trip, and when she returns, to confront the deluge of too many questions, the necessity of acting on what she discovers, whether he is in Paris or not. By staying, she will be able to pretend that their trip was not a total failure, she can give herself a small breather before being forced to swallow the truth in one gulp.

Every thirty minutes she has stood up, patrolled the station on her stiff legs, searching for the slightest clue, then returned to sit down in the same spot again, this corner of wall and floor. After seven hours of surveillance rounds, she leaves the station, slightly dazed, hunger in her belly. The night is pierced by the glow of headlights and streetlamps, not very different from the ones in Paris. In front of her is a stretch of pavement, a succession of roads and a staircase leading down to a grim-looking underpass that she feels incapable of going into. A black vehicle in the shape of an estate car with the word Taxi lit up on its roof. She signals to the driver, who pulls over on the other side of the street. The traffic doesn’t slow down. After several attempts, she manages to cross at a run. She climbs into the taxi, which strikes her as over-spacious, more suited to bearing coffins than upright living people. Far in front of her, the driver has said something. She can only see the back of his head. Hotel. She articulates the word clearly, hoping to compensate for her lack of a British accent. An incomprehensible question from the driver, who turns round with a not very friendly look on his face. She wants to tell him that she’s had a hard day, that he could at least be polite, but all she has at her disposal is the word hotel and whatever patience she has left. Eventually, the driver takes off with a comment that ends in a sigh.