Delicacy (10 page)

Markus was a punctual man and loved to get home at exactly seven fifteen. He knew the schedules of the suburban trains like other people know their wife’s favorite perfumes. He wasn’t unhappy with his well-oiled daily schedule. Sometimes he would get the impression that he was friends with the unknown people he ran into each day. That evening, he wanted to shout and tell everybody about his life. His life with Natalie’s lips on his lips. He wanted to get up and get off at the first station that came, just like that, to give himself the feeling of deviating from the usual. He wanted to be crazy, which was excellent proof that he was not.

As he walked home, images of his Swedish childhood came back to him. It certainly had happened fast. Childhood in Sweden is like old age in Switzerland. All the same, he remembered those moments when he’d sit at the very rear of the class, just to look at girls’ backs. During those years, he’d admired the napes of Kristina’s, Pernilla’s, and Joana’s necks, and those of so many other girls in row A, without ever being able to come anywhere near all the other letters. He didn’t remember their faces. He dreamed of finding them, just to tell them that Natalie had
kissed him. To tell them that they hadn’t been able to see his charm. Ah, how sweet.

When he reached his building, he hesitated. We’re forced to memorize so many numbers. Cell phones, Internet access codes, bank cards … so, inevitably, there comes a moment when everything gets mixed up. You try to get into your building by punching in your telephone number. Markus, whose brain was perfectly organized, felt as if he were at the threshold of this kind of derailment, and that’s exactly what happened to him that night. It was impossible to remember the door code. In vain he tried several combinations. How can you forget by evening something you knew perfectly that morning? Will the welter of data unavoidably push us into amnesia? Finally, a neighbor arrived and stood in front of the door. He could have opened it immediately but preferred to savor this moment of obvious one-upmanship. From the look in his eyes, you’d almost have thought that
remembering your door code
was a sign of virility. Finally the neighbor got moving, pompously declaring, “Please, after you.” Markus thought, You stupid ass, if you only knew what was going on in my head; I’ve got something so beautiful it obliterates useless data … He took the stairs, immediately forgetting about this hapless setback. He still felt just as lightheaded, and a loop of the scene of the kiss kept playing in his head. It was already a cult film in his memory. Finally he opened the door to his apartment and found his living room much too small in comparison with his appetite for living.

Thirty-eight

Code for the Door to Markus’s Building

A9624

Thirty-nine

The next morning, he got up early. So early that he wasn’t even certain he’d slept. He waited impatiently for the sun, as if it were an important date. What was going to happen today? What kind of mood would Natalie be in? And what should he do? Who knew what to do when a beautiful woman kisses you without giving the slightest reason for it? Questions bombarded his mind, and that was never a good sign. He needed to take some calm in-and-out breaths (…) and (…), whew, like that (…), very good (…). And tell himself that it was just a day like any other.

Markus loved to read. It was a nice point in common with Natalie. He used his trips on the suburban railway to satisfy that passion. He’d recently bought a number of books and had to choose the one that was going with him on this great day. There was that Russian author he liked a lot, an author who was read markedly less than Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, for no real reason, but it was too bulky a book. He wanted a text he could peck away at when he felt like it, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. That’s why he chose Cioran’s
Syllogisms of Bitterness
.

Once he arrived, he tried to spend as much time as possible near the coffee machine. To make it seem normal, he drank several cups. After an hour of this, he began to feel a little too worked up. Black coffee and white nights with no sleep were never a good combination. He went to the men’s room, felt peaked. Went back to his office. No meeting with Natalie was planned for today. Maybe he should just go and see her? Use file 114 as an excuse. But there was nothing to say about file 114. It would be stupid. He was fed up with letting himself be eaten away by indecision. After all, she was the one who should come! She was the one who’d kissed him. You had no right to act like that without giving an explanation. It was like stealing something and then running away. It was exactly that: she’d run away from his lips. However, he knew she wouldn’t come to see him. Maybe she’d even forgotten that moment; for her was it just a gratuitous act? He had good intuition. He sensed a terrible injustice in that possibility: how could the act of kissing be gratuitous for her while it was inestimable for him? Yes, priceless. That kiss was everywhere in him, storming his body.

Forty

Excerpt from an Interpretation of the Painting
The Kiss
by Gustav Klimt

Most of Klimt’s work gives rise to a host of interpretations, but his earlier use of the theme of the embracing couple in the Beethoven frieze and the Stoclet frieze allows us to see in
The Kiss
the ultimate accomplishment of the human quest for happiness.

Forty-one

Markus couldn’t concentrate. He wanted his explanation. There was only one way to get it: create a fake coincidence. Keep going back and forth in front of Natalie’s office—all day, if he had to. There’d have to be a moment when she came out and … bam … he’d be there, by pure coincidence, walking in front of her office. By the end of the morning, he was drenched in sweat. Suddenly he thought, This isn’t my best day! If she walked out now, she’d come across a man dripping sweat who was frittering away his time walking through the hallway without doing anything. He was going to seem like somebody who walks around aimlessly.

After lunch, his thoughts from the morning returned with a vengeance. His strategy was good, and he had to keep up his back-and-forths. It was the only solution. It’s really hard to keep walking and pretend you’re going somewhere. You’ve got to look focused, as though you have a clear aim in mind; the hardest part’s faking a brisk manner. At the end of the afternoon, when he was worn out, he ran into Chloé. She asked him, “Are you okay? You’re acting really weird …”

“Yes, yes, I’m okay. I’m getting back the circulation in my legs. Helps me think.”

“Still on 114?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s going okay?”

“Yes, it’s okay. More or less.”

“Say, I’ve got nothing but problems with 108. I wanted to talk to Natalie about it, but she isn’t here today.”

“Oh, really? She … isn’t here?” asked Markus.

“No … I think she’s out of town. All right, gotta go; I’m going to try to take care of it.”

Markus stood there without reacting.

He’d walked so much that he could have ended up out of town, too.

Forty-two

Three Aphorisms by Cioran
Read by Markus on the Suburban Train

The art of love?
It’s knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire
with the discretion of an anemone.

*

A monk and a butcher are wrangling inside
every desire.

*

Sperm is the purest form of bandit.

Forty-three

The next day, Markus arrived at the office in a completely different state of mind. He couldn’t understand why he’d acted like such a crackpot. What an idea, going back and forth like that. The kiss certainly was disturbing, and he had to admit that lately his love life had been especially uneventful, but that was no reason for acting so childish. He should have kept his cool. He still wanted an explanation from Natalie, but he would no longer try to run into her by faking a coincidence. He’d merely go and see her.