Voice Over (12 page)

He climbs laboriously down from his high stool and walks towards her. She feels embarrassed, hasn't the least idea what his intentions are. She stirs what remains of the cold chocolate at the bottom of her cup. He looks like a tramp, bushy beard, dishevelled oily grey hair, multiple layers of clothing, and yet is carrying Chanel, Longchamp and Armani shopping bags, lots
of them. She signals to the waiter, who has just discovered a cache of hidden treasure under his thumbnail. The legs of the chair in front of her scrape over the tiled floor. May I, asks a deep voice. Without waiting for a reply, the man sits down and arranges his fancy stuff on a second chair. I did some shopping, they're having sales this week. The man studies her face. He doesn't strike her as aggressive; he awakens her curiosity, and so she lets him talk. I'm not what you think. Odd introduction. Neither is she what he thinks, but in her case it is far less obvious. He explains to her that he is not what he seems. You know, a tramp, a homeless person. But he prefers people to assume that he is; it helps him with his investigations. As he talks he holds her gaze; his eyes serious to dispel her doubts. The object of his investigations? Human nature; he's been studying it for several years. Compiling data about people's behavior in the face of poverty. His appearance suggests one thing, his bags another; his words attempt to make it all coherent. She can't decide whether he is lying or telling the truth. A bit of both. He is lying, but thinks he is telling the truth; or else telling the truth to justify his deception. You don't come here often, I've never seen you before. True, but for once she felt like dropping by after work. She is not about to start telling him her life story; after all, she has to remain on her guard, she promised herself. He's found a lovely little scarf, pure wool; he'll show it to her. He thrusts his hands into the Armani bag and brings out a hirsute piece of cloth, which he displays proudly without unfolding it. Not bad, eh? I haven't tried it on, but the color should be fine. Tell him that he's off his rocker . . . She prefers to answer that yes, the color goes well with his skin tone. Visibly the man wasn't expecting that; he seems pleased. She wouldn't work at
the station by any chance? Surprise. Yes, she works at the station; as she says the words she blushes, without knowing why, as if she had been caught doing something red-handed. She wonders how he could have guessed that she . . . Her voice? That would be a first. No one has ever recognized her like that before. A person would need to have spent a hell of a long time listening to announcements over the loudspeakers to be able to make the connection. But if he spends the night asleep in some corner of the station, then perhaps it is her voice that wakes him every morning. And she thought she was talking into thin air. There might be someone without a train to catch who listens to her reciting times and destinations. She doesn't dare ask him if he lives in the station; that would cast doubt on the truthfulness of what he has said. He has started talking again. Do you like theater? She doesn't know; it depends. The timing of the question couldn't be better. Funny you should ask. That's where I'm going tonight, though usually . . . He smiles as if to reassure her. She'll like it, he's sure she will. However much she tries to tell herself he is raving, the impression persists that he already knows her. He is following her every reaction. She succumbs to the fascination of small details: the strip of red skin fringing his lower eyelids; the way the hairs of his beard poke through his skin; the sudden, slight dilations of his nostrils as though, from time to time, they had to make way for more voluminous particles of air. It's better to go to the theater alone. He says it while continuing to stare at her. No way can the man know. He could just as easily have remarked that it's better to carry an umbrella when it rains. But no, he had to mention the theater, precisely on the day when. He found her sitting in a café on her own; he drew his conclusions from that. The wonders of logic, psychological
decryption, a gift for observation. Absolute knowledge allows the future to be foretold. You don't agree it's better to go alone. Oh it is. It is.

Whatever the extent of the oddball's divinatory powers, she is no longer in the mood for guessing games. A small gesture to the waiter, who is now studying them closely, not missing a crumb of their weird tête-à-tête, a perfect distraction for a rather dull late afternoon. She pays, gets up. The man's voice for the last time. You're right to go alone, trust me. She shrugs her shoulders but is happy to hear those words. No one has ever proved that guardian angels don't exist. Not angels who have wings, like the ones she saw the other night on Ange's back, but angels who protect you, the real guardians.

 

 

The rooflines of the apartment buildings appear perfectly distinct, their symmetrical placement down the length of the avenue far more striking than usual. The declining light bathes the façades in its orange hues. She has passed this way dozens of times, but this evening the sight of these stationary buildings does her good. Lit as they are, the walls are no longer barriers but mirrors, filtering moods so that only the best ones remain. One day she was given a pair of tinted orange sunglasses. They made the world more beautiful. She wore them at every opportunity, dreading the moment when she would have to take them off. After several delicious weeks, she lost them. Where or how, she had no idea. She has had other pairs since then, of course, but has never found the desired effect again. Which has led her to conclude that for every pair of eyes there exists a specific tint. Color is absorption, what remains of light deprived of certain wavelengths. Orange equals light minus blue, simple arithmetic.
All the colors mixed together gives white. Maximum superposition, absolute density. What she needs is to filter out a certain blue wavelength which makes the world a little too cold for her. Yet she also knows that losing those glasses was not a bad thing. If they had stayed with her, she would have grown accustomed to them. Repetition would have diminished the effect.

 

 

It's eight o'clock. She is outside the theater, which looks the way she imagined it would. A small, finely crafted building resembling a palace. Unique architecture for a special place. The few times she has been to the theater, it felt as if she were stepping into a sanctuary meant for an initiated few. The solemnity such places exude makes her uneasy. The artifice of the sets and the costumes prevents her from letting go of herself. If it were up to her, all plays would start out on the pavement. No calls for silence, no spotlights, no tiers of raised seats. The actors would mingle with the crowd and suddenly launch into their roles. At the foot of the stairs, people dressed for the occasion have started to gather. She feels rather drab by comparison. They are waiting as well, but not the way she is. They are out for the evening, want to have fun; whereas she is on a mission and has come to find the actress who bears her name. She collects her ticket and stations herself slightly off to the side of the stream of new arrivals. The muffled buzz of conversations, the clusters of lights on the walls and ceiling, the faces, made-up, freshly shaven, cleansed of worry in anticipation of what they are about to see, give her the impression that she is inside a cocoon. The notion of time has been abolished. The people are the same ones who gathered here a hundred years earlier, all they have done is change their clothes to keep up with current fashions. She seems
to be the only one who has doubts about her role. What she lacks is an escort, someone she could imitate. No one is paying attention to her, she reflects, it therefore must mean that she really does stand out. If she were a ghost, she would roam the foyer at every performance in the hope of finally being seen. If he had been there, he would have acted as a buffer between her and them.

An usherette in a black suit is asking her if she is looking for someone. She hesitates. Yes, her husband, he's been delayed. The young woman shows no sign of surprise; swallows the lie as painlessly as a gulp of saliva. The fingers with their manicured nails twist her ticket apart while the eyes take in her shoes. If your husband has his ticket, I'll take you to your seat. One of the usherette's tights has a run behind the ankle. She considers mentioning it but doesn't, for fear of upsetting her. She edges her way between knees and the backs of seats towards the place the usherette indicates with a disproportionately large gesture. Strained smiles, heavy sighs, people shift their legs to one side, rise to their feet, as the entire row takes note of her arrival. She settles into her seat, relieved. A few seconds of required immobility to make them forget about her.

A young couple is sitting to her left. Their joined hands placed on the central armrest, as if they were on a plane about to take off. They're having an energetic conversation, of which she catches only every other sentence . . . In the Solitude of Cotton Fields is much better . . . How can you say that when you haven't read it . . . you have to read it otherwise you'll never be able to understand Bernard-Marie Koltès' other work. She doesn't know who Cortès is. It sounds like the name of an explorer, a conquistador. If she had been an explorer she would have set
out alone for distant places, by land and on foot. Perhaps he would have known about Cortès; it would have given them a topic of conversation. Not that silence between them would be embarrassing, but places of public entertainment oblige you to talk. Another couple have sat down to her right. Two generations older. Siamese lives: the past starts the moment they met. They have ended up looking similar, in the evermore dizzying rush of time their movements have slowed at an equal pace. After undoing their coats, folding them carefully, lowering the seat with trembling hand, sitting down and arranging their things on their laps, they stare at the red velvet curtain. All she can hear is their slow, sonorous breathing. She tries to breathe like the woman, imposing on her lungs the same intakes and exhalations of air. It's always Shakespeare with you, I've had it with Shakespeare. The young man has raised his voice. Startled out of her daze, the elderly lady sits up in her seat and adjusts the dial of her watch. They're late, she remarks to her husband. The man looks at his watch. They're not late, it's eight-thirty. A bell rings. The lights go down.

The set stays the same throughout the play. The offices of a small PR company at the start of the twenty-first century. Six metal-and-plastic desks, six chairs with adjustable height and backs, six computers; some shelves and filing cabinets; a whiteboard on the wall; a coffee machine. Laid out on each desk are pots of pencils, notepads, Post-Its, staplers, along with a few of the occupant's personal effects—a cuddly toy, a postcard, a framed photograph, a packet of sweets. The action takes place in an unnamed town in the United States. The play opens on a Monday morning as the six employees—five women and a man—arrive at their desks and pick up where they left off the
previous Friday evening. There is one final character, who comes on later, the boss, whose adjacent office shares a door with the stage. The first, fairly ordinary, lines of dialogue serve to establish the atmosphere of the office and the role of each employee within it. Weekend activities are discussed, someone complains about a machine that's not working or about a missing file; there's banter to show most of the six employees know each other well. It's mainly the women who reveal themselves in these small brushstrokes; in anecdotes that reveal the key aspects of their lives, the main traits of their personalities, their everyday worries but also their recurrent obsessions. As for the man, he is rather worn-out. Not much of a talker, he nevertheless makes an effort to take part in the women's running jokes. Naturally, the boss is a tyrant; coarse, but not nasty. He likes having all these women under his command. Finally, there is one employee who stands out from the rest, the new one, Noémie. She talks less than the others; not that she ignores the conversations, but she keeps a vigilant eye on her work. She has the absent air of a person absorbed by a single ongoing thought. Noémie resists becoming part of the group, who do everything to draw her in with their questions, their teasing and provocations. Noémie doesn't play the game; she wants to be left alone; she lets no one get close. But the more she holds back, the more the others are intrigued. Her secret is like a splinter, painful but invisible, except when very close. Prodded by her colleagues, who ultimately mean well, she finally opens up: her husband was in one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks. All the women immediately assume that he didn't survive, but Noémie can't bring herself to admit it, for she has received no tangible proof of her husband's
death. To her colleagues, her hopes appear groundless and unhealthy. Yet none of them has the courage to talk about it. According to them, the best remedy is to forget, and the women encourage her to look for a new partner. But Noémie sustains herself on illusions and can do no more than haunt the margins of normal life. For her to fit in, she would have to think as the others did and give up the only thing that allows her to go on: the conviction that her husband is alive, somewhere. In the end, the male employee, normally silent, reveals to her that he was a volunteer in the Ground Zero rescue operations. From what he saw, her husband could only be dead. After hearing these declarations, Noémie does not return to work the next day, nor in the days that follow.

 

 

Right from the start, she feels certain that the actress playing Noémie is the one with the same name as hers. Her performance is so perfect, it seems to her that the actress has become Noémie, who from now on can only have this actress's voice, postures, and expressions. After a certain point, all she sees on stage is another version of herself, who is the actress living the role of Noémie.