“You’ve followed me on three mornings. Can you tell me why?”
He walks away without a word.
The next day, pursuing his plan, he goes on the offensive. He writes her a long letter in which he expresses how dazzled he was when he spotted her by chance coming out of her school. Since then, he hasn’t stopped thinking about her. He apologizes for having followed her. He even dares to tell her that one night he’d spied on the shadow her body cast on the curtains in her bedroom. He promised not to do it again. Anyway, why bother, since she has discovered his little game. He asks for one thing: that she answer his letters. He will wait for her like the light of dawn after a night filled with bad dreams.
A week goes by. Nothing. He writes her a second letter, longer and more hopeless. Now, he writes, he is nothing but a heart that sighs, a pair of anxious eyes watching for the mailman’s arrival. Laure answers him in a few lines. She begs him to leave her in peace. Begs so hard and so effectively that Vincent knows now that he has won. Laure no longer resists his urgent letters. He takes malicious pleasure in writing them, using a slushy vocabulary, syrupy turns of phrase, taking his inspiration from Laure’s letters to Philippe.
The young woman agrees to meet him and turns up at the rendezvous knowing what’s going to happen, fearing and desiring it equally. She is intimidated, sitting across from him on the restaurant banquette. She examines the face of the man she has been confiding in for weeks, revealing the lurches of her soul. She had not really looked at him the time she’d approached him on the street. Laure likes his meticulously blue eyes and his blond hair, long like that of the rock musicians she’s seen on TV. She is surprised by the energy he gives off. The style of his letters made her think him a gentle guy. But Vincent is angular, sharp. She is hungry and thirsty for his body as if everything she’d eaten and drunk before meeting him had let her down.
Before long, Alice and Antoine are inseparable, except when they go to class – then they get together in the school cafeteria. They finish the evening in Antoine’s apartment, where they make love for hours. One night she suggests they go to see Love Story at the Capitol. The cinema on rue Racine hasn’t had such a success for years. Lines stretch along the sidewalk despite the February cold. The film, adapted from a global bestseller by Erich Segal, has drawn tears from millions of spectators. It stars Ryan O’Neil and Ali MacGraw. You have to be heartless or cold not to be touched by the very simple story: two young and attractive people fall passionately in love. Oliver comes from a rich and respectable family, Jenny from a modest one. They marry despite the disapproval of the young man’s father, who disinherits him. They live happily together until Jennifer discovers that she has leukemia.
“Admit that you cried when Jenny dies at the end of the film.”
“I nearly fell asleep. Work on your critical sense, Alice.”
“Where you’re concerned, you’re absolutely right.”
“Follow the example of Simone de Beauvoir.”
“She cried when she saw that film, I’m sure she did.”
“She’d never go to see a film like that.”
“Bigot.”
“I’ll tell you again, you ought to follow her example.”
“You mean write?”
“Not that. Think about the notion of love. Beauvoir and Sartre both had multiple affairs. But that took nothing away from their love. They created new loving relationships based on transparency and their critical sense.”
“You believe everything you read.”
“Love Story just reinforces the myth of unhappy romantic love: to love is to suffer. Also, there has to be a victim. And it’s often the woman who pays. Who dies in the film? Not Oliver. Love Story would have been a flop if the man had been the one with leukemia.”
“I, on the other hand, would have been even more deeply moved.”
“Seriously, Alice, do you believe in the kind of love that movies sell us?”
“It’s not a question of believing or not believing.”
“Really? Hollywood-style love is part of a vast campaign of collective stupidity. Our society is based on lies. Open your eyes. They want us to believe that there’s just one way to love: you love me, I love you, a woman, a man, and it’s all settled once and for all.”
“I love you, you love me, what’s the problem?”
“In spite of your posturing, you’re still naive. You know who you remind me of? Félix. A guy who’s brilliant, but totally insane.”
“So I’m brilliant but totally insane.”
“In a way, yes.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“You aren’t finishing your chicken?”
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
Alice goes to the ladies’ room. Antoine takes advantage of her absence to check that he has sufficient money to pay the bill. Just enough. He’d invited Alice out to eat after the movie. When she comes back and sits down, he is certain that she has been crying.
“Are you angry?”
“Antoine, if I had an affair with someone else your subtle notions about love would be gone in a flash.”
“Sleep with Félix.”
“What?”
“Sleep with him, and you’ll see if my subtle notions about love would be gone in a flash.”
“Why Félix? Because he’s as crazy as me?”
“He’s in love with a dead woman.”
“His cousin, I know, you told me.”
“He’s sworn eternal love to her. It’s appalling, it’s childish.”
“It’s his business.”
“He’s ruining his life.”
“It’s his life, not yours.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What? What don’t I understand?”
“He lives in a world of dusty lies.”
“You don’t think he’s actually still mourning?”
“Absolutely not. He needs to face reality, shake off his illusions.”
“Like me, right?”
Antoine asks for the bill, pays. They get up, put on their coats, and head
