Voice Over (13 page)

In the middle of the play, she turned around. Dozens of faces, illuminated by the diffuse light of the projectors, had their immense eyes trained on the same spot; not moving, intent. She found it fascinating.

 

 

The lights come back up. Eyes blink. To her left, the hands are apart, each one now resting on its respective thigh. The young couple have resumed their discussion with the same intransigent
passion as before—the plot's a bit hard to swallow; the main actress, a bit weak—and get up from their seats as soon as the applause has died down. The elderly couple to her right, by contrast, are quite motionless, their fingers entwined. The play has abruptly propelled them into a place to which only they have access. Their immobility is no longer a sign of their age; they are still in their seats because they have yet to return to themselves. She feels intrigued and gives in to her curiosity. Are you all right? A kindly, apologetic smile from the old lady, who shows no surprise at the question and is quick to reply that the play has brought back memories for her and her husband. From the war, you know. She doesn't, but would like to know, only the husband then says, let's go, thereby bringing to an end the conversation which has barely begun. No point insisting. Which of the two of them disappeared, which of the two of them thought the other one was dead, which of the two of them found the other years later, the mystery remains intact. And because of their sense of discretion, the hunched, grey-haired couple take their story away with them.

Someone told her it was the third door at the end of the corridor. Hanging from the walls are posters of past productions at the theater, testimony to the short-lived glory of the actors who appeared in them. She reads some of the now-forgotten names as she passes. Fame has never tempted her. She has never sought to do anything at all that could earn her the recognition of others. Nothing in her life strikes her as worthy of either praise or exposure. Her job consists of talking into a microphone and enunciating pieces of information as succinctly as she can. She produces sounds. Practically anyone could do it. In any case, she has never wanted to be indispensable. Seeing her name
printed in a newspaper, being recognized and fawned over by people who have an idealized, distorted picture of who she is would embarrass her. She would believe she was a fraud. The last poster in the corridor is the one for the evening's play. She sees her name, the actress's, their name in fact. Like everyone else, yes, she would feel flattered to be admired. She would know lots of people, who would know her in return. Her telephone would ring, she would be invited to dinners in imposing mansions, where she would be served not smoked salmon but caviar. Her eccentricities would be indulged, might even add to her reputation. Lots of men would want to sleep and stay with her. As for him, he would like her more; Ange would no longer make the grade. But at the height of her glory, some meddling journalist would discover the switch. It would be too much for her to bear: suicide, and the end of the promising career of the SNCF train announcer-turned-celebrity. Her ex-colleagues would be interviewed: she was a wonderful person, we were all so close.

Draught of fresh air. A man has come out of the dressing room and strides straight past her without a glance, even though there are just the two of them in the corridor. She can't believe her eyes, she knows him. But by the time she finally decides to say, we've met, Maxime is already too far away. The door has remained ajar. Someone is humming; a woman's voice. She knows the piece, which consists of only a few notes, one tone up, one tone down, again and again. She used to play it on the piano; she remembers the tune but not the name. She gently pushes the door and steps into the room. In the mirror covering one of the walls, she sees the actress examining herself in a piece of another mirror laid flat on a table. Noémie is the first word
that comes to mind. Before she has time to say anything, the actress wheels around quickly, and the two of them are looking at each other. The actress belongs to the second category, the ones who immediately sense the presence of someone's eyes upon them. As tense as an archer's bow, sophisticated, a milky way of tiny freckles on her upper chest. What are you doing here? The actress expects an explanation. Find the words before the surprise turns to annoyance. I've come on account of our name, we have the same one. The actress raises her eyebrows in displeasure. What ridiculous undertaking has she launched into? She is no longer sure what she wants.

We have the same name. She has nothing further to say; it's what she came for. The reaction of the person in front of her must now give her presence meaning. Caught off-guard, the actress replies that yes, that does happen, more often than one might think; a lot of people share the same surname. She is trying hard to come across as accommodating, despite having only one wish: to get rid of this odd intruder. Yet another star-struck fan, who will have seen in the similarity of their names a pretext to meet her. She is aware of the unease she is causing but is still convinced that she can't just leave; that beyond the small talk and the apparent incongruity of her visit, something else needs to happen. The actress has stopped spouting platitudes. There could now be the slam of a door, the hum of ventilation, the meow of a cat, even perhaps an explosion, but instead there is a kind of grey silence made up of the remnants of distant sounds, which neither one of them bothers to identify. Eventually, the actress invites her to sit down in an armchair whose back touches the mirror. Listen, I don't understand what you want. She doesn't know what she wants either. She saw her
name on the poster in the métro just before she found the dead man and thought there might be a reason. A reason? The actress knows that public figures receive attention from every kind of maniac, that she shouldn't complain, but there has to be a limit to how much time she can give them. And then Maxime had been in the corridor. She knows Maxime? Touché. Curiosity is aroused. She has gone up a notch; the actress has started to wonder, to have doubts, to worry. And what are you doing here?

Maxime doesn't give the actress money; he tells her that he's in love. More noble, no trace, no responsibility in the eyes of the law. He makes love to her in the dressing room after her performances. She doesn't even have the time to get out of character; she's still immersed in Noémie's denial, still has her voice, her mannerisms. She is tracking her phantom husband, and that phantom takes the form of Maxime. And as she passes from one body to the other, an imperceptible transition, the beating heart that slows after the race, she could not be more vulnerable. Their love-making prolongs the experience on stage. When pleasure finally brings her back to herself, he is already putting on his trousers. The time to ask questions has passed.

She knows all that; there is no need for the actress to tell her. The bearers of secrets are condemned to wander on the periphery, plunging into the world around them to create an illusion, regularly excluding themselves so as to let nothing show. They are tempted to confess but are gagged by their own guilt at having kept silent for so long. A single judge has handed down their sentence, a judge all the crueller for being none other than themselves. And the only ones who can recognize them are those going through the same penance, those able to signal them without
giving themselves away. The actress, on the defensive, refuses to let her in. And so she finally plucks up the courage to say it to her. If you're so upset when he leaves, maybe you don't trust him, maybe you sense that he's lying to you about his feelings. A tightening, a closing down, why is this woman mixing herself up in all this? Quick, stop her from disrupting what the actress spends her evenings putting in order. But because the other woman has the same name, because her tone of voice attests to her honesty, because what she says makes sense, the actress doesn't reply and sits down in the armchair opposite her. And suddenly it strikes her that the mirror no longer divides the space but multiplies it. They are not two any more but four, they and their reflections, the perfect image of their lives split in two. Four sides of a single person who doesn't exist. They are no longer moving. No one can tell how long this lasts, not even they. And for a few seconds or several minutes, nothing happens in the dressing room. Until the realisation comes that she is ready to talk. Ready as she has never been before; without apparent reason or motive. For the first time since she was thirteen, she begins to tell the story of the rite of passage. She talks about the pink room, about the piano, the bed with the spring mattress, about the pink bedspread, the piano in the room. She is not emotional but focused on making her account as precise as possible, as if this were her only chance to consign what happened to the invisible pages of another's memory. She doesn't say I, but she.

 

 

She's done. The actress has covered her mouth with her hand. She doesn't feel anything in particular, only the satisfaction of having said exactly what she wanted to say at the moment when
she wanted to say it. She stands up. There is nothing to add. To continue would be superfluous. Their two hands shake. They won't see each other again.

 

 

She has never considered the rite of passage as something traumatic because no one has ever been shocked by it. Lonely people have no misfortunes, only stories that are never told. But this time she has told something that she had kept to herself for over fifteen years, since the days when she and Marion would sit together every afternoon on a bench at the lycée, not doing anything in particular. While speaking, she had had no sense of removing a weight from her shoulders. The rite of passage is not a memory that could be hidden away in some distant corner of her brain because of neuronal deterioration. It is a physical imprint, practically a substance that has leaked into her bones, muscles, and blood. Like DNA, whose coded helixes determine our individual characteristics, it is part of every cell in her body. She can talk about it, but she will never be able to get rid of it.

 

 

When she returns home, she has the impression that the apartment has grown larger. The objects have not moved, but their arrangement appears to have been altered, as if each one had been turned several degrees to the left or the right. The smell seems different too. Perhaps something happened here while she was gone; an event that left olfactory traces too diffuse to detect where they came from. Stretched out on her bed, she closes her eyes and imagines that the city has ceased to function. The city is still on the other side of her windows, but nothing is happening, not a breath of wind, not the slightest movement. True silence. The sort that can only be tasted in the deepest countryside
in the dead of night. What to long for now? It has taken one day for the thing to happen that only twenty-four hours ago had seemed impossible. What she accomplished—confiding in the actress—took place without the least premeditation. Years spent in the same mental groove, and then, all of a sudden, a chance to move on, a chance that perhaps had always been there or that had been created by a particular set of circumstances. She has already adjusted to her new dimensions and so naturally that even she is surprised.

Final thought before falling asleep. Above and beyond all else, the good fortune she has at last been given.

 

 

He'll call her soon; she no longer has any doubts about that. This certainty should dispel her concerns, she ought to be reassured. They have come to a turning point, the most delicate and hazardous moment of all: he has proved that he is not indifferent to her. Before this, everything could have broken apart without deeply altering their lives. Now waiting has been transformed into an idea of what might blossom between them. It feels exactly as if someone were permanently trying to scare her, except no one is ever around. She is entirely consumed by the thought of what is to come; she sifts through facts, imagines possibilities. She wants to explore all avenues in order to guard against making a wrong move when the time comes. Her feelings at this point are so absolute that they can only lead to perfection. By sheer faith, she thinks she can defy the unpredictable. What she overlooks in all her forecasts is that the intersection of their respective desires will never produce the expected result.

Towards the end of the morning, she returns to the street
market. She walks the whole length of it, without paying attention to the goods on display and blindly charts her course to the accompaniment of the merchants' arias. Two euros, two euros a pound, last peaches of the season, beans, beans, ladies, the best beans in town. Buying nothing, present in this atmosphere of harangue and transaction, engulfed, borne along by two opposing currents. She allows herself to be pushed along by the movement of the crowd, the sudden eddies, the halts, the momentary gaps. To be there like everyone else, but without a reason, without resisting. She is expelled at the other end of the long tunnel of tarpaulins and trestles, opposite a flower stall. As those around her walk off, she stops in front of the buckets and the bouquets. The florist in a long dark-blue apron is cutting the tips off the stems with a pair of garden shears. To make them wilt more slowly, now that they've been torn away from the plant they grew from. Amputation to prolong life, she's never quite understood it. Something is tugging at the bottom of her trousers. A small fist at the end of a small arm, the crown of a child's head, a child who hasn't realized yet that he's clinging to the wrong leg. He thinks he's safe, even as he holds on to a stranger. At her mercy, boundless trust. She doesn't dare move, in case he panics. The child is captivated by the flower seller's gestures. If she gently slipped her hand into his, would he notice that it was an unfamiliar hand that was holding him? She feels tempted to find out. To see how far she could get before he looked up and, in terror, caught sight of her face. He would start to cry; she reconsiders and drops the experiment. A woman with her back to her is buying a bunch of roses. The mother. She'll stand there without moving until the woman sees him and smiles at her son's mistake, so the terror will pass
quickly. But when the woman turns around, it is not her son that her eyes fix on but her, incredulous.