Celine Curiol - Voice Over

In front of her is the microphone. To her right, the computer. A new message has just appeared on her screen, with the number of the train, its destination, time of arrival, the platform where it has pulled in. She presses the red button at the base of the microphone. The three notes of the mini arpeggio ring out. Over to her. To talk, she uses her other voice, the one she draws up from the depths of her throat, that gives her the authority of an SNCF announcer. Articulating each syllable, she feeds the impatient travellers the details that will enable them to find their platforms.

At 4:45 pm, she leaves the office, passes through the stage door in the reverse direction. If she had a mask, she would have chosen that moment to put it on. With a sweeping, pathetic gesture, like Renée with his dark glasses. It would be a plastic mask, held on by a piece of elasticated string, in the likeness of Everyman, who would do the same job she did, but who would then get to live another life every evening. Unfortunately, the only masks on sale in the shops are those of celebrities. At the end of the day, the station concourse — a vast structure with a part-glass roof, lit from below by the nimbus of orange-tinted globes — always seems to take longer to cross. The travellers haven’t really changed places: only their identities have changed. The ones rushing head-down for the exits are those long accustomed to lonely arrivals. They are generally travelling on business and never go anywhere without a clear aim. The rest of the crowd wanders about with their noses in the air, looking for signs or a familiar face. The only people who approach strangers are the tramps. One night, she remembers, seeing one of them land a couple of slaps on a guy who’d been waiting at a café terrace with his girlfriend. The couple were enjoying a quiet kiss when the tramp came over to ask for money. He could hardly get his words out, was emitting guttural sounds in a language that no one could grasp except him. The boyfriend had shaken his head without so much as a glance. The tramp went round behind him; then clapped the filthy palms of both hands down hard on the two healthy pink cheeks. Astonishingly, the boyfriend relied only on his voice to ward off his assailant, who hurried away, limping. A beefy security guard set off in pursuit.

It seems that tonight the tramps are not out to cause a stir. They are wandering among the travellers as usual, gauging with practiced eye each one’s willingness to part with a few euros. Outside the brasseries in front of the station, foreign tourists are studying the menus, perplexed. She walks along the Boulevard Denain. At a bakery, she stops to buy a pain au chocolat with almonds. One small piece at a time, she consumes the soft, greasy confection, which she chews with the skill of an expert. Once the pastry is finished, she goes into Promod. The only people inside the store are women, their eyes riveted on the clothes hanging on rails at various heights. Pounding techno music complements the décor, making for a reasonably tolerable whole. By the entrance to the store, a young security guard is shaking his thick thigh in time to the beat. She observes him and wonders where his thoughts are sending him: a bar, a beer; to a football game, a serial on TV. . After Work. She walks over to the displays. With one hand, she slides the hanging clothes along their rails. No one is talking around her. She picks out an item at random, though not without checking its size. She makes her way over to the fitting rooms, where a young woman briefly asks her how many articles she has. The cubicle is cramped; with the curtain drawn, she has her nose pressed up against the mirror. Onto the single coat peg she piles the sweater, price tag still dangling, her jacket, and her tank top. Ten seconds later, the small bundle collapses to the floor, where she leaves it. She slips on the black sweater and surveys the result. Tugs it down, pulls up the sleeves, adjusts the neck, twists round to see the effect from the back, assessing whether any added appeal might be derived from the combination of this sweater and her chest. But everywhere the material is creased, too loose, makes her seem ugly. Needless to say, no 18-euro sweater is going to turn her into a model, and she concludes that it’s her body whose proportions are wrong, not the sweater. She slips back into her clothes — clothes she has worn long enough for them to fit. Outside the changing room, there is no sign of the salesgirl. She rolls the sweater up into a ball and stuffs it into her bag then proceeds through the displays, her eyes fixed on the automatic glass doors. She keeps her pace steady. She knows the alarm will be going off soon. The shoppers pay her no heed, not yet realizing that it is she who has made off with a measly 18-euro sweater from Promod. You earn your own living, don’t you, Miss? The security guard hasn’t spotted her yet either; his thigh is still moving to the beat, his eyes locked onto the beer he is going to drink two hours and forty-six minutes from now. She is coming up to the detector panels. The guard turns his head, sees her; she purses her lips but keeps on walking. The techno music slowly leaves her ears and is replaced by the din of car engines. She can now feel the tickle of fresh air on her face. She is out, the alarm has not gone off, she is safe. It takes her several seconds to grasp what has just happened. She hardly dares smile, for fear that a passer-by will catch her expression and report her on the spot. The métro entrance is in sight, no one is going to point the finger now. An act gone unnoticed, lost amid a thousand others, missed by an infallible electronic device. Defiance in the face of technology and science, the system failed. Pardoned without even having been convicted. Only in her own eyes will she have been, at one time in her life, a black-sweater thief.

Back home, she wolfs down a bowl of pasta garnished with bits of onion and tomato. Dinner over, she takes the sweater out of her bag. The security disc is tightly affixed to the wool. She fails to see how she might get it off. Giving up, she folds the sweater and puts it away with the rest of her things. Later, she dozes off in front of a TV serial in which the heroine, a woman in her forties who looks ten years younger on screen, can’t make up her mind between her taciturn husband on the one hand and her childish lover on the other, because she loves them both equally but not in the same way. Love. There is something about that word that makes her sick to the core. She prefers to go it alone, without someone to make her believe he can raise her above reality. Love bears the mark of whoever gives birth to it. You only truly recognize it once, the first time, whether it’s tender or painful. Hers, her first love — it has taken her years to admit — was hardly very enviable.

One day a man had told her to go see a shrink because when she’d felt his penis inside her, she couldn’t go on. In a calm voice she had simply said, pull out. No shriek of panic, no pleading. Blushing, the man had pulled out. For a while they lay there, side by side. It was then that he told her she ought to go see a shrink. After that he got dressed: would she mind telling him when she changed her mind? And off he went. It didn’t occur to her that he could be upset; she believed him.

He calls on Thursday. She realizes that she has been waiting for him to phone. How are things? He never presents himself as if he were sure he is the only man who calls her. She likes that proof of familiarity. Fine, and Ange? Fine. She confirms that she will be going to the dinner party. Several of his friends will be there, he informs her. One of them is really nice, you’ll see. His voice modulates to that of a travelling salesman: a tacit way to let her know he thinks the man in question ought to be to her liking. Soon he’ll be listing this person’s qualities to her. She feels like asking if he also offers home delivery. But instead she says nothing. As does he. The mood has changed; she senses his embarrassment at the other end of the line. About what happened the other night, I’d had a bit to drink. There, he’s mentioned it. Not to tell her that he enjoyed it, but for her to rid him of his guilt at desiring another woman. A few banal words, and his heart slots back into place. The message seems straight-forward: what happened was just one of those things. By making it clear from the outset that the kiss could only have bothered her, he’s denying her the right to have the least feeling in his regard. For him, the situation is clear; their brief moment of intimacy had simply been a consequence of his drunkenness. She takes a breath. No offence taken; I was the one who kissed you. See you tomorrow. Then she hangs up.