Jean-Philippe Blondel - The 6:41 to Paris

Don’t you think we might have missed something then, Philippe?

Because our bodies were a good fit; because there were times you managed to forget your fear, your obsession with performance, because our skin would touch and the tenderness that came from that caress surprised both of us. We didn’t know that life is long, that our alliances would change, and that, anyway, over time we’d lose that urge to boast. We didn’t know we might have been a good match, one of those couples who understand each other intimately, who exchange knowing glances when other people go on and on.

Do you at least remember what it was like afterward?

After lovemaking. My hand on your chest. The sweat on your shoulder. My fingers going down then up again. Neck, belly, cock, still damp. Your chest rising and falling. And your eyes. The thankfulness as you looked at me. Really looked, deep inside me.

And everything was so easy afterward. Conversation flowed. Moving naked around the room — it all seemed natural. I liked your body. That’s why I remember it so well. Before you came along there were other bodies that left me indifferent, but others still that almost made me want to laugh. None that caught my imagination. And afterward, it was the same old story. I admired Luc’s body, of course — he seemed to be made for sex. But never again would I find that sense of the familiar that I had with your body.

I’m talking to you, Philippe. This is a declaration, from twenty-seven years away, this is a declaration even though you don’t look at all the way you used to, even though no one notices you anymore, and you’ve sunken into the anonymity of your fifties where we seem to go all gray and hazy — hardly anyone notices, except for the occasional cruel comment: “He must have been a handsome man,” “I’ll bet she was stunning.”

I’m talking to you and you can’t hear me.

I’m trying to be ironic.

I’m trying to stop this little wave that is building inside and which is threatening to swell and turn into a breaker just as we reach the port — the Gare de l’Est, thirty minutes from now, I’ve just glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes left to dive in, into the flotsam of the years gone by, and hope to find a piece of wood, a roof, a boat adrift — to start everything all over again.

What on earth am I saying?

Anything but that.

Remember the last night in London. Remember the tone of his voice in the room that night. And all the preceding afternoon. How impatient he was. You weren’t interesting anymore. He wasn’t attracted to you anymore. Words hurled like javelins. Hurtful comments, about the way you dressed, your lack of polish, of shine, “an ant in a patch of grass, not even the Queen ant, oh no, anything but, just one ant among all the other ants, the ant par excellence, no critical distance, no ambition, nothing to make you stand out among the others.”

I remember every word.

Which doesn’t surprise me.

I had buried them in my memory. I’d struggled against them, but I knew very well that I hadn’t destroyed them.

Where did it come from, all that scorn? Couldn’t you simply have come out with a few harmless statements, just acted embarrassed, and told me it was over? Remained dignified? I would have rolled with the punches. Sure, I’d become attached, after four months — but I was still realistic. I had always known that sooner or later you would get tired of me.

You wanted to go back to Camden Town. We had been there the night before; I thought it was kind of seedy and not all that interesting. I sighed. I would have preferred to wander around Chelsea or Belgravia. Wander aimlessly, to see how the locals lived, to allow myself to melt — you were right, and that’s what hurt the most — allow myself to melt into the background. I sighed, and you exploded. The famous last straw. Or the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or the ant, forever lost in the haystack.

The ant.

Did you know I still think about that, a lot?

You never imagine that certain phrases can stick, buried in your skin like splinters, and that at certain moments in life they come back and wreck everything.

My grandfather had fought at Verdun. He was very young. A shell exploded a few yards away from him. He had shrapnel in his legs all his life, and from time to time, with the changing seasons, a shell fragment would say, Give him my kind regards.

Those two words were my shell fragments.

Some years ago, maybe eight or nine, Valentine was in primary school, we came home one evening and the kitchen had been invaded by thousands of flying ants. They had built a nest under the sink in a hole in the wall and we hadn’t noticed. Valentine was screaming and there I was, the one who was usually solid as a rock in our family, the one who knew how to lay tiles, mix plaster, change a tire better than Luc, or talk about horsepower and aerodynamics, there I was, the woman who could tell off telemarketers and nosey real estate agents: I went to pieces. Because of some flying ants, treating me like their equal, crawling all over me, welcoming me in their midst, at last you’re back. For a few minutes I lost my mind.

Valentine remembers.

Luc, too.

If he hadn’t come home just in time, I don’t know what would have happened.

And yet I fought it.

I did nothing else, after I got back from London. Everything was very clear in my mind. The things I would no longer put up with. Who I would become. Every decision I made that night I followed to the letter. Those decisions gave structure to my life. Gave meaning to the direction I was headed in. Never again would I be an ant. Never again would I taste that bitterness.

No one, today, would dare to compare me to an ant. Not a single person I know would ever think of such a thing.

The only one who sometimes still feels the shell, the formic acid, the little legs wriggling: that’s me, and me alone — and it’s because of you, Philippe Leduc.

I ought to tell you.

I shift slightly toward you in my seat.

You look so lost. You haven’t even noticed that I’m looking at you. You’re in one of those moments when everything goes slack — muscles, skin, consciousness; your mind wanders and disappointment accumulates, along with feelings of failure. There is only one thing a person feels like doing when they see you like that, you know, and that would be to put their arm around your shoulder and tell you not to worry, everything will turn out all right.

And you must be thinking about the person you never became, that sharp, brilliant man you seemed destined to become. Someone who would leave their mark. Who would pose for magazines. Like Mathieu Coché. Is that what you’re thinking, Philippe? About how you’ve failed — and with a vengeance — and you’ve ended up on the 6:41 train, like me?

Except that thanks to you I am not what I seem. Even if the ant inside me did drive me to travel second class, yet again, when really I could easily have afforded first.

With your face only a few inches from mine, I’m trying to sound you out, but I can’t.

You’re unfathomable, Leduc.

That’s the least of your faults.

We would take the Eurostar.

The Eurostar, which didn’t exist back then, when the two of us went to London.

I had no regrets.

That’s the worst of it, I think. Now I do, of course, but at the time, I didn’t. I thought good riddance, or something like that. Classy. I was very classy, in those days. I was very sure of everything.

She had begun to annoy me, probably even before we left for London. Little things. The way she would stare at the floor while I was talking to her. The fact that she preferred films where nothing happened. This derisive side she had — she would look at me out of the corner of her eye, and I could tell she didn’t believe in flirtation for a minute. Her discreet irony. I needed to be admired. To be set on a pedestal.