Without Anita being aware of it, the minor memories of her homeland are slowly fading—those intimate details that linger not in the head, but on the skin and in the pit of the stomach: the exact color of the sugarcane flowers in June, the sensation of perfectly cooked rice in one’s mouth, the taste of a water ice or a syrup ice, the sound of rain on a corrugated tin roof.
Anita is twenty-nine and she has agreed to leave Paris to go and settle in the region where Adam lived as a child. She will not finish her internship in the editorial department of a women’s magazine, she will no longer hear the metal shutters grinding open at the grocery at 7:00 in the morning, she will no longer attend monthly lectures on philosophy in the bookstore on the rue des Écoles (near the Sorbonne), she will never be that nervous, aspiring writer arriving on foot to deliver her manuscript, no longer will she go to eat an Indian thali up near the Gare du Nord, nor join the queue for free entry to a museum on the first Sunday of the month, along with the students, penniless dreamers, impoverished intellectuals, and lonely old teachers. But isn’t it a kind of immaturity, to be thinking about such things, such minutiae, when you are being given the opportunity to make a fresh start in life? A wooden house designed by the man you love, marriage, a child! Anita bridles at this unwelcome notion, shot through as it is with guilt at submitting to tradition, to Adam, to motherhood, to the law of nature. She bridles at the prospect of becoming a woman like so many others.
Anita turns toward Adam and is touched once more by his way of sleeping, his body straight, his knees slightly bent, both hands folded beneath his ear, his back toward her. Soon this great body she cherishes will spring into action but every night there he is, as if laid gently upon the bed, and in the morning, for several minutes, there is this perfect imprint upon the sheets. Why does she believe she does not completely deserve this man who is so tall, so responsible, so reassuring, so appealing? She thinks back to that New Year’s Eve five years ago (their frantic dash out of the house in Montreuil, wearing clothes that were not their own, a black fake fur overcoat, a woolen jacket the color of tobacco, a green scarf, a gray hat, a houndstooth-checked cap; that marvelous moment beneath the Arc de Triomphe), and reflects that it will make a good story to tell this little kidney bean. Nothing else really matters, does it? She will be able to return to work with some local publishing company. She will have a real study and time, at last, to write a novel, she will be able to go strolling through the forest or at the water’s edge. A soft warmth envelopes her. Reassured, Anita goes back to sleep.
A few minutes later Adam opens his eyes in his turn and looks around abruptly. Why is he so afraid that Anita may disappear from his life as suddenly as she appeared in it? All at once he thinks of their trip to Mauritius three months before and of that incredible night when Anita had finally gone to be with him in his room. He had woken up with the feeling of a body stretching out alongside his own, of a slim warm arm slipping over his stomach. Anita had loved him differently that night. Before that there had always been something she held back, a physical shyness he had learned to accept, but that night she had not closed her eyes, her gaze was open and frank. She was at home, she was within herself, as he was in her, too. She spoke to him in a new way, very softly, in his ear. And that caused a little explosion within him, one that set off colored fountains and brilliant lights for a long, long time.
Adam studies Anita as she sleeps, her hands folded over her stomach, and a marvelous feeling of well-being steals over him. That’s it! They are leaving Paris! They are expecting a child! No longer will Adam wake up in the middle of the night feverish and uneasy. He has had enough of the badly paid work in that architectural office. All the time tidying up sketches, limply taking part in the rearranging of a middle-class living room, estimating costs, finding solutions that provided what were called “good spatial connections.” Every day Adam devoted a disproportionate and perfectly useless amount of energy to fitting into the complex mechanism that is the office, there among the men, women, things, ambitions, desires, and backbiting. He knows he will never quite manage it. He is not outgoing, flamboyant, ambitious enough. His stature is an illusion. He is much too old-fashioned, too shy. Now that they have made the decision to move, Adam is happy. He can visualize perfectly the house he is going to build at the edge of the forest on the Atlantic shore. A wooden structure located in a clearing, a simple cube, with a veranda at the front, broad bay windows set in dark iron frames that will offer views of the forest in rectangular segments like a series of natural pictures. A red floor with broad planks for the veranda, a big farm table in the kitchen, a study for Anita on the western side, a vegetable garden, fruit trees, a studio for himself, apart from the house. Yes, he will finally be that Adam, the one he has always wanted to be, a man who designs his own house, who chooses
