“I can talk about it now, a little, but for many years, I simply couldn’t.”
“Did you see a therapist?”
“I did,” said Clarissa, “but something else helped me. I didn’t believe in it at first, but it changed my life.”
“What was it?” asked Adelka, intrigued.
“Hypnosis.”
“I don’t know much about hypnosis, and have never tried it. Would you mind telling me some more?”
“Of course.”
Clarissa told her how she’d gone to the first consultation dragging her feet, persuaded it was not going to work out. At that point, it had been twenty years or so since the baby’s death, twenty years of not getting over it. Psychoanalysts, antidepressants, nothing had helped. Her first husband had ended up leaving her, powerless in the face of her enduring unhappiness. Her second husband, François, the one who was persona non grata, as Adelka recalled, had been convinced it could be the solution for her. She had to give it a go. Little by little, he’d managed to sway her. Clarissa said she’d try it out. She could no longer bear her situation. Things had to change, not only for her but for her entourage, especially her daughter. She presumed her daughter still bore the stigma of spending her childhood and adolescence with a melancholy mother burdened by sorrow. Jordan had never brought this up, but Clarissa thought it was the case. And it was probably why Jordan was still concerned about her mother, even today. She knew her daughter loved her, and how lucky she was. And then there was her granddaughter, the sunshine of her life.
“I think I caught a glimpse of you two together. A cute teen all dressed in black?”
“That’s her! At the ripe old age of fourteen, Adriana is, I feel, the one person who understands me and knows me the best.”
She went on with her story. Adelka had to picture her arriving at this Mrs. Delaporte’s place. Clarissa had had no idea of what to expect. She’d found herself facing a brunette of her own age, slim and elegant, with large dark eyes. Elise Delaporte had asked her to take her place in an armchair positioned in the middle of a tastefully decorated living room. She asked her to close her eyes. Clarissa obeyed. In the beginning, the pleasant voice relaxed her, asking her to let go, to get rid of all the tensions in her body. Her neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, thighs, shins, and feet all mellowed; her rigidity melted. Clarissa allowed herself to be carried away—an agreeable sensation. If that was all there was to it … She could already see herself telling François it had been a sort of winding-down exercise. The voice acted upon her like a sedative. She felt her body yield, on the threshold of a peculiar torpor.
Even if Clarissa still heard her perfectly, Elise Delaporte seemed farther and farther away. It was as if Clarissa had departed elsewhere. She remained wholly conscious; she perceived the tang of Elise’s lemony fragrance; she could hear the murmur of the traffic floating up to them, the footsteps of a neighbor overhead, but she felt as if she had stepped into a dark nook that seemed to deepen. At the far end of the niche, which had nothing alarming about it, and which she instinctively identified as a shelter, appeared a pale glow, a quivering stroke summoning her like a beacon, and she felt compelled to follow it. How long did this last? She hardly knew. She was hovering within a reassuring Milky Way created by Elise alone. She was on familiar territory. She had nothing to fear.
Clarissa stopped.
“Oh, please go on!” begged Adelka. “May I offer you more wine?”
“Why not?”
The wine slowed her down, giving her a languid pleasure she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She took up her story. Elise Delaporte had asked her to describe a secret place that did her good, gave her peace. A real or an imaginary place. To answer her, it had been difficult for Clarissa to locate her own vocal cords. She felt she had forgotten how to speak, while being weightless, and when she finally managed to utter a few words, it seemed like her body and her voice were no longer one. The shrill, almost childlike tone sounded like a stranger’s. After a moment’s hesitation, she succeeded in describing a lake, and how its deepness pacified her. During that first session, they had concentrated on the lake’s image.
Could she tell Adelka what had happened next, with all those cameras now filming and taping? The wine quelled her hesitancy. Adelka possessed the same upbeat vitality as Jordan. Why not open up to her? She discreetly pointed to the surveillance cameras, and the young woman understood, moving closer. Clarissa went on in a low whisper, while her head spun around and around. A couple of weeks later, during the second or the third session, something happened, something she had never been able to forget. Elise had asked her to describe what she saw at the bottom of that lake. Clarissa had seen herself diving into the greenish abyss, holding her breath, slowly going down deeper and deeper while the water became blurred and icy. She was freezing, shivering. She was afraid of no longer being able to breathe, not being able to get back up in time, and there, right at the bottom, buried in the mud lining the base of the lake, she had spotted a square object, a kind of box. A hideous fear had grabbed at her; she wanted to rise up to the surface, to open her mouth wide in order to breathe in oxygen, to escape from that box and whatever it contained.
But while the fluctuating white lace twirled on the inside of her eyelids, Elise’s tranquil tone had soothed her. Elise said she must not be afraid of what that box enclosed; she must open it, take stock of it. She had to face it. Clarissa saw herself seizing the box, wrangling to unbolt
