“Are there any flats available?” she asked tentatively.
“That’s complicated,” he said. “Yes, technically, there are, but they’re reserved for artists. There’s a quota we need to keep to.”
She asked what he meant by “artists.” He shrugged, scratched his head. He meant painters, musicians, poets, singers, sculptors. There was a special residence just for them. But no one publicized it; otherwise, they’d be swamped. In order to get in, there were interviews, presentations, in front of a committee. Quite a thing. Serious stuff! Not many people made it.
“What about writers? Haven’t you forgotten them?”
She was right; he had forgotten writers. They were indeed artists, just as much as the others.
“Can you tell me how I can sign up?”
Obviously, he had no idea who she was, what she did. She didn’t mind; after all, her latest success had been published a while ago. She pulled him by the sleeve, all the way to the bookshelf labeled “K,” slid out Topography of Intimacy, and handed it to him under Nathalie’s curious gaze as she chatted a little farther away. He leafed through it, and said he was sorry he did not know more about her and her work. He never read books. He didn’t have time to read. Politely, he asked her what it was about.
“It’s about writers and the link between their work, their homes, their intimacy, and their suicides, particularly Virginia Woolf and Romain Gary. It’s a novel, not an essay.”
He was taken aback, staring down at the cover, where Gary’s blue eyes made an interesting contrast with Woolf’s dark ones.
“Ah, yes” was all he could bring himself to say. He looked at her for the first time, and Clarissa knew what he was thinking, that she must have been good-looking once, and that, curiously, she still was.
He suggested she contact a woman named Clémence Dutilleul, via a specific website, of which he gave her the address. She was the person who dealt with admissions concerning the artists’ residence. Clarissa had to hurry. There were very few vacancies. When she returned to the studio she rented weekly in order not to endure her husband’s presence, she went online to the website. She was certain she didn’t stand a chance, but why not register? That same night, she filled out a detailed questionnaire and sent it through a link to Clémence Dutilleul. She was most surprised to get an answer the next morning, and a proposal for a meeting scheduled the day after.
“Do you really want to live where all those people were killed?” Jordan’s voice was ironic. “Especially you, obsessed with places? You’ve written about that over and over again. Won’t you be getting into trouble? You’ll never be able to sleep!”
Clarissa tried to defend herself by stating that living in a city like Paris meant she walked over bloody tragedy every day, in every step she took. The new buildings attracted her because they had no past.
Clarissa went into the kitchen; the lights turned on as she glided by. Light switches had disappeared years ago, and she rather liked it. She had been told, when she moved in last month, that she could name the apartment’s virtual assistant with a term of her own choosing.
“Mrs. Dalloway, turn on the kettle.”
Mrs. Dalloway complied. Clarissa left most household matters to her. The heating, air conditioner, alarm, shutters, lighting scheme, automatic cleaning system, and all sorts of other tasks were under Mrs. Dalloway’s expert supervision. Clarissa was still getting used to it. She had hesitated between “Mrs. Danvers” and “Mrs. Dalloway” at first, before her unconditional veneration for Virginia Woolf had prevailed. And there was something rather frightening about Mrs. Danvers in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Clarissa was alone now, in this flat, without her husband of many years. The tall, gaunt black figure of the devoted housekeeper, Manderley’s disquieting sentinel, was not a reassuring one. She was still trying to find her marks in this brand-new dwelling. Clarissa Dalloway seemed a far more comforting character, and she had inspired half of her pen name, after all.
She prepared herbal tea, added a dollop of honey. It was artificial, of course, and tasted sugary and creamy. The real stuff was impossible to find. She had obtained a tiny treasured amount last year, through a clandestine connection, but at what price! Honey was now more expensive than caviar. So were flowers. Sometimes she pined for the smell of real roses, like the ones that had grown in her mother’s garden long ago. Fake roses were rather cleverly manufactured; they even boasted drops of false dew, twinkling like diamonds in their crimson hearts. The petals felt velvety at first, but soon a rubbery consistence took over. After a while, their pungent perfume revealed a nasty chemical whiff she could no longer stand.
As she sipped the herbal tea and looked out to the rooftops across from her, she thought, not for the first time, that perhaps she had chosen this apartment too hastily in the wake of her sudden decision to leave François. Perhaps she should have given the move more thought. Was this the right place for her? The cat was her daughter’s idea. Jordan had told her cats were the perfect pets for writers. For solitary writers? Clarissa had asked. But just how solitary had she really wanted to be? The living room stretched out in front of her, its elegant minimalism still an enigma to her unaccustomed eye. It looked beautiful, but empty.
Once she had decided to leave her husband, it had been a mad rush. She had believed, and how wrong she had been, that a new lodging was going to be easy to find. She wasn’t set on anything big, or fancy; she simply
