“Why do you doubt?”
Not a sound comes from his mouth. He looks at me, distraught.
“You can speak, Father. There are two confessionals in Brancion, the one in your church, and this room. I’m told many things here.”
He smiles, sadly.
“I feel more and more the desire to be a father . . . It wakes me in the night . . . At first, I took this desire for fatherhood as pride, vanity. But . . . ”
He approaches the table, mindlessly opens and closes the sugar bowl. My Way comes to rub up against his legs. He bends to pet him.
“Have you thought about adoption?”
“I have absolutely no right to do so, Violette. All laws prohibit me from doing so. Terrestrial ones as much as divine ones.”
He turns around and automatically looks toward the window. A shadow passes.
“Forgive me, Father, but have you ever fallen in love?”
“I love only God.”
14.
The day someone loves you, the weather’s marvelous.
During the first months of our life together in Charleville-Mézières, I wrote, in red felt-tip, on each day: MADLY IN LOVE. And that was right up to December 31st, 1985. My shadow was still wrapped in Philippe Toussaint’s. Apart from when I was working. He inhaled me. Drank me. Enveloped me. He was wildly sensual. He made me melt in his mouth like a caramel, like icing sugar. I was on a perpetual high. When I think of that period of my life, I’m at a fun fair.
He always knew where to place his hands, his mouth, his kisses. He never got lost. He had a roadmap of my body, routes that he knew by heart and I didn’t even know existed.
When we’d finished making love, our legs and our lips trembled in unison. We inhabited each other’s burning desire. Philippe Toussaint always said, “Violette, bloody hell, bloody fucking hell, Violette, I’ve never known anything like it! You’re a sorceress, I’m sure you’re a sorceress!”
I think he was already cheating on me that first year. I think he always cheated on me. Lied. That he drove off to others as soon as my back was turned.
Philippe Toussaint was like one of those swans that are so handsome on water and yet hobble on land. He turned our bed into a paradise, was considerate and sensual when making love, but as soon as he got up, was vertical, left our horizontal love behind, he lost a good deal of color. He had nothing to say, and was interested only in his motorbike and video games.
He didn’t want me to be a bartender at the Tibourin anymore because he was too jealous of the men who approached me. I’d had to hand in my notice straight after we met. From then on, I worked as a waitress in a brasserie. I started at 10 A.M., to prepare for the lunch service, and finished at 6 P.M.
When I left our studio in the morning, Philippe Toussaint was still asleep. I found it a wrench to leave our cozy nest for the cold streets. He told me that during the day, he went for rides on his motorbike. When I got back in the evening, he was stretched out in front of the television. I pushed the door shut and stretched out on top of him. Just as if, after work, I dived into a vast, warm swimming pool, bathed in sunlight. I’d wanted to inject some blue into my life, so this hit the spot.
I would have done absolutely anything for him to touch me. Just that. Touch me. I felt like I belonged to him, body and soul, and I adored it, belonging to him body and soul. I was seventeen and, in my head, had a lot of overdue happiness to catch up on. If he’d left me, my body surely couldn’t have withstood the shock of a second separation, after that from my mother.
Philippe Toussaint only worked occasionally. When his parents got mad. His father always found a friend to take him on. And he did it all. House painter, mechanic, deliveryman, night watchman, maintenance man. Philippe Toussaint would show up on time the first day, but usually didn’t finish out the week. He always had some excuse for not going back. We lived on my salary, which I had transferred into his account—since I was underage, it was easier. I just kept the tips for myself.
Sometimes, his parents would turn up during the day, without warning. They had copies of the keys to the studio. They came to lecture their unemployed, twenty-seven-year-old only son, and fill up his fridge.
I never saw them because I was working. But on one day off, they suddenly appeared. We’d just been making love. I was naked, lying on the sofa. Philippe Toussaint was taking a shower. I didn’t hear them come in. I was singing a Lio song at the top of my lungs, “And you, tell me you love me! Even if it’s a lie! Since I know you lie! Life is so sad! Tell me you love me! Every day’s the same! I need romaaaance!” When I did see them, I thought: Philippe Toussaint doesn’t look at all like his parents.
I’ll never forget the look Mother Toussaint gave me, her grimace. I’ll never forget the disdain in her eyes. Even I, who could barely read, who stumbled on words, could interpret it. As if a malicious mirror were reflecting back at me the image of a degraded, diminished, valueless young woman. A piece of trash, a slut, a bad seed, a girl from the gutter.
Her hair was auburn. It was pulled and gripped so tightly in her chignon, you could see the veins of her temples under her thin skin. Her mouth was a line of disapproval. Her eyelids, always covered in green shadow over her blue eyes, were a lapse of taste she took everywhere with her. Like an evil spell. She had a nose like the
