Delicacy (5 page)

No one understands people who say they want to be alone. Desiring solitude is bound to be a morbid impulse. No matter how much Natalie tried to put everyone’s mind at rest, they wanted to come and see her. Which amounted to obliging her to speak. Although she didn’t know what to say. She was under the impression that she was going to have to go back and start again at zero, even relearn language. Maybe in the end all of them had been right to force her to socialize a bit, to force her to wash, dress, entertain. Her entourage took turns, which was horribly clear. It made her think of a sort of emergency-crisis committee, managing tragedy with the help of a secretary—her mother, obviously—who kept track of everything on a giant calendar in a way that adeptly varied family visits with visits from friends. She heard the members of the support group talking to each other, commenting on her slightest actions. “So, how’s she doing?” “What’s she doing?” “What’s she eating?” She had the impression of suddenly having become the center of the world, whereas her world no longer existed.

Charles was the most frequent of the visitors. He stopped over
every two or three days. According to him this was also a way of
keeping her in contact with the professional milieu
. He talked to her about the developmental reports in progress, and she looked at him like a lunatic. What in hell’s name could it matter to her whether Chinese foreign trade was undergoing a crisis at the moment? Were the Chinese going to bring back her husband? No. Fine. Then it was useless. Charles was perfectly aware that she wasn’t listening to him, but he knew that it would gradually have an effect. That he was filtering in elements of reality drop by drop, like an infusion. That China, and even Sweden, were reconstituting Natalie’s horizon. Charles would sit down very close to her.

“You can start again when you feel like it. You should know that the entire company’s behind you.”

“Thank you, how nice.”

“And you know that you can count on me.”

“Thanks.”

“
Really
count on me.”

She didn’t understand why he’d begun using the informal form of the French word for
you
with her since her husband’s death. What was the real meaning of it? But why look for meaning in this abrupt change? She didn’t have the strength to. Maybe he felt some responsibility to show her that an entire side of her life was stable. But even so, his addressing her in this familiar way felt strange. But then, it didn’t really; there are certain things you can’t say using the formal word for
you
. Comforting things. You had to eliminate the distance to say them, had to get personal. He was stopping by a little too often, it occurred to her. She tried to make him understand that. But people who
are crying aren’t listened to. He kept being there, and he was becoming insistent. One evening, while talking to her, he put his hand on her knee. She said nothing, but she thought he had a woeful lack of sensitivity. Did he want to take advantage of her grief and try to take François’s place? Was he the type to play second fiddle in this requiem? Maybe he had simply wanted her to understand that if she needed affection, he was there. Should she have a need to make love. It isn’t unusual for nearness to death to push you into the sexual realm. But in this case, not really. It was impossible for her to imagine another man. So she pushed away Charles’s hand, and he must have felt he’d gone too far.

“I’ll come back to work soon,” she said.

Without really knowing what this “soon” meant.

Seventeen

Why Roman Polanski Adapted
Thomas Hardy’s Novel
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
for the Screen

This isn’t exactly like having your reading of a book interrupted by death. But Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, before being savagely murdered by followers of Charles Manson, had pointed out this book to her husband and told him it was ideal for an adaptation. The film, made around ten years later and starring Natassja Kinski, was therefore dedicated to her.

Eighteen

Natalie and François hadn’t wanted a child right away. It was a plan for the future, a future that didn’t exist anymore. Their child would remain a virtual one. Sometimes you think about all those artists who died and wonder what their creations would have been like if they’d survived. What would John Lennon have composed in 1992 if he hadn’t died in 1980? Likewise: what would the life of that child who would never exist have been like? You’d have to think about all those fates that foundered on the banks of their potential.

For weeks, her point of view had come close to insanity: denying death. Imagining everyday life as if her husband were still there. She was capable of leaving notes for him on the living room table before going out for a walk in the morning. She’d walk for hours, with only one desire: to lose herself in the crowd. Sometimes she also went into churches, despite the fact that she wasn’t a believer. And was convinced she never would be. She had trouble understanding people taking refuge in religion, trouble understanding that you could have faith after having lived through tragedy. However, sitting there in the middle of
the afternoon, surrounded by empty pews, she was comforted by the place. It was just a shred of relief, but for a split second, yes, she felt the warmth of Christ. Then she got onto her knees, and she was like a saint with the devil in her heart.

Sometimes she went back to the place they’d met. To that sidewalk on which she’d walked, unknown to him, seven years before. She wondered, “And if someone else approached me now, how would I react?” But no one came to interrupt her meditation.

She also went to the place where her husband had been run over. Where, jogging, in his shorts, with music in his ears, he’d blundered across the street. Made the ultimate blunder. She would stand on the curb and watch the cars go by. Why not kill herself at the same spot? Why not blend the traces of their blood in a final, morbid union. She’d stay a long time without knowing what to do, tears trickling down her face. Especially in the days following the funeral, she came back to this place. She didn’t know why she needed to hurt herself so badly. Being there was ridiculous, imagining the brutality of impact was ridiculous, wanting to make the death of her husband concrete in this way was ridiculous. Perhaps, deep down, it was simply the only solution? Does anyone know what to do next after such a tragedy? There aren’t any instructions. All of us read what’s written by our bodies. Natalie was giving in to an urge to be there, to weep at the curb, to drown in her tears.

Nineteen

John Lennon’s Discography If He Hadn’t Died in 1980

Still Yoko
(1982)

*

Yesterday and Tomorrow
(1987)

*

Berlin
(1990)

*

Titanic: The Soundtrack
(1997)

*

The Beatles: A Revival
(1999)

Twenty

The Life of Charlotte Baron
Since the Day She Ran Over François

If it hadn’t been for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Charlotte Baron certainly never would have become a florist. September 11 was her birthday. Her father, who was traveling in China, had sent her flowers. Jean-Michel was climbing the stairs, not yet knowing that the times had just been turned upside down. He rang and discovered Charlotte’s pallid face. She couldn’t pronounce a single word. Taking the flowers, she asked, “You heard?”

“What?”

“Come …”

Jean-Michel and Charlotte spent the day together on the couch, watching replays of the planes crashing into the towers. Living such a moment together created a powerful bond. They became inseparable, even had an affair for several months before concluding they were more friends than lovers.

Somewhat later, Jean-Michel started his own flower delivery company and asked Charlotte to work with him. From then on, their life was about making bouquets. The Sunday the accident happened, Jean-Michel had prepared everything. The customer wanted to ask his girlfriend to marry him. When she received flowers, she’d get the message; it was a kind of coded signal between the two. Having the flowers delivered that Sunday was crucial, because it was the anniversary of their meeting. Just before leaving, Jean-Michel got a call from his mother: his grandfather had just been hospitalized. Charlotte said she’d take care of the delivery. She liked to drive the van a lot. Especially when there was only one stop to make and there was no hurry. She was thinking of the couple and the role she was playing in their story: a secret factor. She was thinking about all of this, as well as other things, when a man crossed the street haphazardly. And she hit the brakes too late.

Charlotte was devastated by the accident. A psychologist tried to make her talk about it, to make sure she recovered from the shock as soon as possible, so the trauma wouldn’t eat away at her unconscious. Quickly enough, she wondered, Should I get in touch with the widow? She finally decided that it wouldn’t do any good. At any rate, what could she have said? “I’m sorry.” Do you apologize in such cases? Maybe she would have added, “It was stupid of your husband to run like that, without caring how; he’s screwing up my life, too, are you aware of that? You think it’s easy to go on living when you’ve killed somebody?” Sometimes she had genuine outbursts of hate for that
man, for his thoughtlessness. But most of the time she kept quiet. She sat around in a state of blankness. The periods of silence linked her to Natalie. Both of them were floating in the anesthesia of a path of least resistance. For weeks during her recovery, without knowing why, she thought constantly of the flowers she was supposed to deliver on the day of the accident. The bouquet that never made it stood for time come to nothing. Incessantly, the event replayed in slow motion right before her eyes, including the sound of the impact, over and over. The flowers were always there in the foreground, blurring her view. They shrouded her day and became her obsession in petal form.