But Adèle is precisely what is right for him at this moment. Anita would have asked hundreds of questions, she would have been shocked that Imran has bone cancer, she would have wanted to know why such things happen to good people, she would have wanted to do something, telephone Imran, make him come over this evening, as arranged, go and see him, get him to talk, write an article on the subject, she would have clenched her fists as if it were happening to herself and she would have ended up making this “cause” her own, for with Anita, by that stage in the conversation, it would have become a “cause.”
At what moment did the things about Anita that had pleased him the most begin to weary him?
“Hi, Adèle. Where are the girls?”
“Hi, Adam. Anita’s gone to the paper. Laura’s at her judo class. Then she’s going to have lunch with her friend Sophie in the city and Anita’s going to pick her up. Are you home for lunch?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you have something planned for this afternoon?”
“Oh yes. Anita’s taking us to the lake to see the wild swans. Laura never stops talking about it. I think you saw a whole family there last year. Will you come with us?”
“No. This afternoon I have a meeting.”
“Are you okay, Adam?”
The sound of the peas against the sides of the bowl, the rattle of their bedroom shutter upstairs, the kitchen door shuddering at each gust of wind, the water bubbling in the saucepan, this calm conversation about the swans, about the lake. He sits down at the table, his own wooden table, made by his father, sanded by himself, polished every week by Anita or Adèle. He feels very small, very frail, on the brink of tears.
“I’ve just learned that Imran is ill.”
“Imran, your friend who runs like you? What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s got bone cancer.”
Adèle stops shelling peas.
“Have you known him long?”
“Yes, since we were kids. We run together. We enter all the competitions together. When we were kids he was the only foreigner I knew. He’s from Afghanistan, you know. He’s very good looking, don’t you think? With his very black hair that’s all curly, and his eyes are as green as those peas there.”
Just now Imran’s eyes had seemed to him washed out, evasive. And Adam himself had been evasive, commonplace, coming out with flat, empty phrases (cheer up, old fellow!), not daring to put his arms around his friend, giving him only a pat on the back, the kind you give to losers.
Suddenly Adam begins weeping. For Imran, for himself, for this day, which should have been without any hitch, memorable, even exceptional!
Then he senses a cool hand on the back of his neck that makes him feel marvelous (had he been hot?). And he turns around to bury his tear-stained face in Adèle’s lap. What happens next is automatic, biological, human, swift.
A hand moving up the back of his neck to plunge into his hair, a face pressed against a belly, then moving up and nuzzling against breasts, neck, chin, and lips. This is a woman no one has touched for a very long time and whose body, in a sudden impulse, cries out for a little male tenderness: it is a man kissing a thirsty mouth, tightly hugging a living body that is not that of his sick friend, but one that utters its secret without speaking. Adam marvels at the way his own body is awakened, becomes both more supple and harder. He now discovers another version of himself, younger, more alive, stronger, an Adam he has not been in touch with for a long time. Adèle marvels at thinking of nothing but this, at hearing herself sigh when he thrusts his head between her breasts, at being able to unzip his pants without interrupting a kiss, at rediscovering the movements you need, at not losing her way on this road. Is this being alive? Is this being cured?
The glass bowl falls to the ground, and shatters with an abrupt noise. The peas roll silently in all directions. It does not last long but it is enough to change lives.
At that moment in the city in the editorial office Anita shivers. How odd, she thinks, this sudden touch of bitter cold in the middle of the day. She has completed two pieces to appear in the local news pages and is lingering in the hope of being able to talk to the editor. It is several days now since she submitted to him pen portraits illustrating her theme of the precariousness of life in the mountains. A postal worker, a grocer, a traveling cheese salesman. People who earn just enough to keep a roof over their heads, who buy cheap meat on the last day before, or actually on, the “use by” date, who rarely go to the doctor, occasionally to the village bonesetter, but never to the dentist. Winter is now an ordeal for them since they no longer have the means to keep properly warm, their cars date from the 1980s, as do their pullovers. On New Year’s
