Monsieur (32 page)

I think about it a lot, on my way back from those evenings. Head against the glass window of the bus, cold to the bone: I'm drowning. This never-ending search for Monsieur, which once made sense and felt far from unreasonable, has become a total nightmare. My mother often suggests this is so – even my friends drop heavy hints, but it's only at moments like this that I understand it. For the past few weeks, I've convinced myself I've reached my limit, but a part of me insists on ignoring this as I travel down the same path again and again, to avoid having to face all those early mornings on the Métro home, tired from lack of sleep and self-disgust. I suppose it could have been worse. Surely the RER line won't take a whole
twenty-one
minutes to get me home. I'm falling asleep, my limbs are rigid, I'm too cold and too hot, sitting on the hard, narrow seat is torture, but I'd scream if I were to lie down, and there's just nowhere I'd feel comfortable, but please please please let all these people around me just disappear so I can find the right position for hours on end, and settle down. I'm itching with the impossible desire to be
elsewhere
, wherever that might happen to be. Music and reading are my only escape, but I have nothing to read and Pulp, in my earphones, is of no more use than a sublime Beethoven symphony. Six songs speed by, which I'm unable to follow or enjoy; all I know is that ‘
Bar Italia
' will always remind me of Olivier Destelles, his parties and all the hours when the brutal explosion of my life looms closer on the horizon.

The song has everything. The hysterical overlapping waves of the synthesizer and, at its core, Jarvis Cocker's voice emerging just slightly behind the beat; the high-pitched whining and then the unfurling, madly joyful chorus. Listening to it now makes me feel just a little better. But later the music will only recall my general unease, as if I was experiencing it all over again. Not sure if I'll ever be capable of listening to the whole three minutes and forty-four seconds again, even though it's the sort of song whose lyrics I adore. It's incredible that something has the power to make you want to be sick and dance. Fuck. The shattering influence of the song, the inspired insight of the lyrics, it's almost making me cry. And who is galloping back towards me on his black mount as I come to this shattering realization? Who emerges again from the fog of forgetfulness where months of absence have exiled him? The only person in the world I could bear to see, who'd help me forget that today, right now, I feel so bad. Monsieur would take me in his arms and, for once, his know-it-all attitude, the certainty of everything he'd achieved before I came along, would no longer be a source of irritation but would reassure me. I could say to him time and again, ‘I'm hurting, I'm hurting,' until I felt better or collapsed out of sheer weariness, and I know that he would understand, would not make unkind comments at seeing me so sad. Monsieur knows the cost of curiosity. I would tell him about ‘
Bar Italia'
at breakneck speed, not allowing him to interrupt me, and he would stroke my hair to calm me, and we would experience again the thrill of pleasure we'd shared with
Irene's Cunt.

I'm sick to the bone of writing about all these hypothetical situations.

I thought of him a number of times yesterday. It was snowing heavily as I left the Baron on the arm of Olivier Destelles, literally so, as he just dragged me along. It was four o'clock and Paris was empty and dirty, but looking up at the sky you would have thought you were in the Chanel advert featuring Estelle Warren. I had never felt like that before, swinging in turn between euphoria and depression. I was gasping for breath, feeling like death, slurring every word. I had a sudden urge to pee and stopped in the street behind a parked car covered with snow; but once I was squatting with my knickers down, I stared at Olivier with despair in my heart, asking him why I couldn't piss – why,
why
? His eyes, which I wished, in view of the situation, could have been Monsieur's, looked down at me and he explained that there was nothing unusual about it. I'd manage to pee later. He said it so lewdly that I found him utterly disgusting, my blood boiling, and realized how little I was attracted to him, the prospect of fucking him. Instead I yearned for something more transcendental, more solemn, like a scene from Bataille's
Madame Edwarda
. I was almost sitting with my bare arse in the snow, the rest of me concealed by my black cape, my face peering out from under the hood, like something out of the book, actually.

Olivier was leading us back to his car, but every three steps, I stopped to ask him some ridiculous question, soliciting promises I didn't want him to keep –
did he even understand me
? The dilemma was all mine. I told him about my life, in the most intimate detail, stumbling and holding onto his shoulder, convincing myself that in spite of everything that separated us, everything I disliked about him, he might have a better measure of me than all the other guys. Occasionally, the repugnance he inspired in me froze me to the spot. Turning a corner, I leaned back against a building, legs apart, my skirt pulled up to unveil my thatch, encouraging him to lick me, there, now. I can't describe the look in his eyes as he said no; he just laughed. I liked that. But I would have liked it even more if he could have been overflowing with vice.

Walking past a bus shelter, everything changed. Halfway through a particularly personal monologue, talking to him as if he were my alter ego, I suddenly lost all desire to be with him. I could see passers-by watching us, me with my fifteen-year-old face and my clenched jaw, my absurd high heels, Olivier in his formal suit, his long coat, his father-figure features, his devil-like face. What had made me think I could tell him all those things? Standing on the pavement, I was overcome with boredom. But a powerful surge of adrenaline set off more babbling, and I betrayed all my worthless secrets to him, like a breathless whore on the make. I'd briefly come to my senses by the time we reached and climbed into his car and Olivier whispered: ‘We're made for each other. You know it, Ellie.' (We spoke to each other rather formally, straight out of a Mills & Boon novel.)

I smiled bitterly and thought, Monsieur Monsieur Monsieur, so fervently that perhaps he inexplicably woke up at that moment, wherever he was, right then in the middle of the night. I believe in intuition. I believe in it because, straight after that, it was as if Monsieur could see me on all fours on Olivier's sofa, navigating between yawns and ridiculous ‘Yes, yes, yes' cries, too high to get wet, a run in one of my stockings, the other twisted around my ankle.
Ellie, what the hell are you doing here? Isn't it enough that this guy is a pervert and a millstone around your neck to drag you down even further to the lower depths? It's all so tasteless, and not a pretty sight. You could be advertised on some twisted Internet site, something catchy like ‘young high-as-a-kite slut willing to be fucked by all and sundry' and there would be comments like ‘poor soul' or ‘pathetic'. You really worry me, Ellie. Did I not say to you, in my car, on your birthday, ‘Be careful'? And, nodding, you replied, ‘I don't see why you should worry, you never call me and we never see each other.' You were pig-headed, pretending not to understand, although you knew exactly what I meant; that's why I'm worried for you. I could see all this coming and how much you'd come to regret it, and regrets are the worst thing. The stink of men who don't know how to touch you or that you are unwilling to instruct in all the right ways is all over you. I saw it when you gave a start as I first called you ‘my tiny love', as if it were inconceivable that I could love you forever. Did I not tell you about the way your eyes look when I fuck you up the arse, blurred, and how you cease all movement? Now you're giving him that look, which rightly belongs to me, you allow the fool to squirm all over you, whispering filth in your ears, even calling you ‘darling', although it makes you simper and turn your cheek the other way, and he doesn't even realize, eh, Ellie? How can he not feel how stiff your body is, the tightness in your neck and the reluctance with which you accept his kisses? You hate him so much he should surely be aware of it. You would, wouldn't you, if you were in his skin? Does he think it's because you're high? How can you be such a fool? I have another theory: maybe he does understand the ferocious loathing you have for him but doesn't give a fuck. As long as you don't scream for him to stop, he'll go on playing your game. And you're not the kind to scream, are you? You just wait for it all to pass and then you can write it down, the mediocrity, the humiliation, the banality. You'll try out all sorts of guys before you come to understand, but one thing is obvious, Ellie, you don't belong to this world where a man just fucks a girl to listen to how she sounds in the throes of lovemaking. You should get out of there, even if you have nowhere to go. I'd rather know that you're walking the streets at five in the morning in this polar cold than lying warm beneath this fat pig. Wouldn't it be preferable?

A final insult, something I had not previously been aware of and should have told me I was doing the wrong thing: Olivier Destelle's fragrance is Habit Rouge. That was when I knew I had to put a stop to it or it would kill me. An ultimatum to myself that lasted barely a second, but that I will never forget.

I own a superb and ageless edition of Baudelaire's
Les Fleurs du mal
, which he gave me for my twenty-first birthday. It's so large I can't close my handbag when I carry it around, which is all the time. Not that everyone understands why I used to go out with an older guy, or at least nobody asks. Inside the book, a small piece of paper I clumsily unfold: ‘Offered by C.S., 14/12/2009'. I usually hide Monsieur's presents under a pile of screwed-up old clothing, but my mother recently tried to tidy things up, and I was lucky she didn't come across the note, in which his treacherous name was written in big, bold letters. He and I, however, know that this pretty piece of paper is now the only thing that connects us, which is why it goes everywhere with me. Which is also why now, taking refuge on the bed in a foetal position, in a house that is waking to the day, I keep the note next to me at face height. So, navigating between alcohol fumes and an aching jaw, I am able to recall that December Wednesday in his car. It's easy to screen those ten minutes all over again, the only moment of late that my heart has truly been beating, out of love, naturally.

I have taken the decision not to write any more about the telephone calls and banal assignations that Monsieur reluctantly grants me. In a few months, I will in all likelihood barely remember more than two or three things about these final contacts, and before I fall asleep I make a note of them.

I now have two particularly beautiful books in my library.

Even if I am no longer full of the rage of belonging to him, I still need to speak to him. And speaking to him makes me want to fall in love again.

It might be, after due reflection, that Monsieur also loves me, and our relationship is like a play by Racine in which everything appears to keep the lovers apart. But in this particular instance, it doesn't make the central drama at the heart of the story any more attractive: his black car has come to replace the Tuesday-morning hotels, we see each other for a quarter of an hour in the car park or double-parked, and Monsieur doesn't even bother to take off his sunglasses. I continue to wear suspenders for him. I've introduced a note of sarcasm into our dialogue and he fails to understand my mood; the smallest things annoy him and he turns against me when my answers prove too evasive. Against all logic, he refuses to admit that lovers can bear to be very far from each other for more than a day, and we are therefore of another kind. And whatever we happen to be is no fun but, hey, it's all I've got.

Here, I think I've come up with the right allegory, so forget all the stupid things I've previously conjured up: it's like a cartoon that's lasted too long, with a worn-out grey mouse lazily wiggling its bum in the presence of the fat, overfed cat. Doomed to keep fighting because life would be too bizarre without the endless run and chase.

MARCH

Monsieur slowly slipped his finger inside my arse and I contracted around him, with a spontaneity that makes me ashamed of myself.

‘Yes, darling,' Monsieur soothed me, with a note of tenderness in his voice, as I, with a total lack of discretion, rubbed myself against the roughness of the sheets (the combination was, oh, God, enough to make you scream). ‘Yes, darling.'

The thought of him knowing to what extent I felt heavy, swollen, unable to control the treacherous overflow generating between my arse cheeks, the folds of the sheets spreading me apart, forcing me to convulsively grind my teeth.

‘Your little pussy,' Monsieur articulated, his low voice vibrating with quiet assurance. ‘How pretty it is, darling, your pussy. Just wet the way I like it.'

‘Oh, slide your fingers inside me,' I mewed, sounding like a porno actress about to swoon, shivering with pride (now I sound like a chat-line heroine!).

But the hand making its way down to fulfil my demand couldn't help itself and smacked me hard instead, the sort of smack that resonated all the way across my arse like a bolt of electricity.

‘I'll put in so much more than my fingers. Just be patient.'

I can't recall clearly what happened next. I probably buried my face in the pillow, angered by the perfect configuration of the sheets and his finger inside my arse, where it had been joined by his tongue, which I now found rather elegant.

One thing led to another, and he began to eat me, holding my arse cheeks apart, carefully and teasingly avoiding my cunt, even when I flung myself back in protest towards his face, the edge of his chin the only part of him in contact with my overflowing wetness. All of me just a quantity of expectant, throbbing flesh, immoderately swollen. Months before (it felt like millennia) it would have been inconceivable for me to respond to Monsieur while he was licking out my arse but the need was now so strong that, my arse cheeks quivering like jelly against his nose, I managed to gurgle: ‘Do something, for God's sake!'