The Truth about Marie Read online

  Jean-Philippe Toussaint

  The Truth about Marie

  SPRING — SUMMER

  I

  Later on, thinking back on the last few hours of that sweltering night, I realized we had made love at the same time, Marie and I, but not with each other. At a certain moment in the night — during a sudden heat wave in Paris, for three straight days the temperature reached thirty-eight centigrade and fell no lower than thirty — Marie and I were making love in Paris in two apartments a mere half mile apart, as the crow flies. We couldn’t have imagined at the night’s start, or later, or at any time for that matter, it was simply inconceivable, that we’d see each other that night, that before sunrise we’d be together, even for a brief moment in each other’s arms in the dark, staggering hallway of our apartment. Seeing that Marie made it back home (to our place, or to her place rather, since it had been more than four months since I’d moved out) at almost exactly the same hour I made it back to my small one-bedroom apartment where I’d been living since our separation, not alone, I wasn’t alone — but who cares who I was with at the time, that’s not what matters — we can almost pinpoint the moment, at one twenty, one thirty at the latest, Marie and I were making love at the same time in Paris that night, both of us slightly tipsy, our bodies sweating in the half-light, the air heavy and stagnant in the room in spite of the open window. Thick, stormy, almost feverish, the heat weighed down our bodies, made our movements sluggish. It was a little before two in the morning — this I’m sure of, I looked at the time when the phone rang. But I prefer to be cautious as to the exact chronology of the night’s events, as we’re dealing with one man’s fate, or rather his death, though it would be a while before we would know if he’d survived or not.

  I never really learned his name, an aristocratic name, complete with particule, Jean-Christophe de G. Marie had returned to her apartment on rue de la Vrillière with him after dinner, it was the first time they were spending the night together in Paris, they had met in Tokyo in January at the opening of Marie’s show at the Contemporary Art Space of Shinagawa.

  It was just after midnight when they got back to the apartment on rue de la Vrillière. Marie had gone to get a bottle of grappa from the kitchen, and they sat down in the room at the foot of the bed, amid a riot of pillows and cushions, stretching their legs casually on the hardwood floor. The heat was thick in the dark apartment on rue de la Vrillière, where Marie had kept the shutters closed throughout the day in a futile attempt to keep the place cool. Marie opened the window and poured the grappa while seated in the half-light, she watched the liquid fall slowly out of the skinny silver measuring spout as it filled the glasses, and the sweet fragrance of the grappa went straight to her head, the taste filled her mind before it reached her tongue, this taste ingrained in her after many summers, this fragrant, almost syrupy taste of the grappa that could only remind her of Elba, the memory of which abruptly and spontaneously came to her mind. She closed her eyes and took a sip, leaned toward Jean-Christophe de G. and kissed him, her lips moist, the sweet taste of grappa on her tongue.

  A few months earlier, Marie had copied a program onto her laptop that allowed her to download music illegally. Marie, who would have been the first to be surprised if told that what she was doing was illegal, Marie, my pirate, who paid an enormous sum to have a whole staff of lawyers and international legal experts fight against any infringement of her fashion line in Asia, Marie now stood up in the half-light and crossed the room to download a sweet and catchy song on her computer. She found an old, slow song, the kitschiest and most sentimental imaginable (I hate to admit that we have, her and I, the same tastes), and she started dancing by herself in the room, unbuttoning her shirt, gliding back toward the bed, barefoot, her arms like sinuous snakes describing fantastic arabesques in the air. She sat back down next to Jean-Christophe de G., who slipped his hand gently under her shirt, but Marie arched abruptly and pushed him away in ambiguous exasperation, perhaps as a way of saying “get your paws off me” as she felt his warm hand on her bare skin. She was extremely hot, Marie was extremely hot, she was dying from the heat, she felt sticky, sweaty, itchy, she had trouble breathing in the stale, stifling air of the room. She ran out of the room and came back from the living room with a fan that she placed at the foot of the bed, plugging it in and setting it immediately on high. It started up slowly, its blades quickly and loudly gaining speed until they blew a steady current of air. Facing the fan, their faces were whipped by the blowing air and their hair fluttered in front of their eyes, with Jean-Christophe de G., the closest, struggling to catch a loose bang, and Marie, docile, head lowered, welcoming the blast of cool air, her hair flying about, a wild-eyed Medusa. Marie and her exasperating love of open windows, of open drawers, of open suitcases, her love of disorder, of chaos, of bazaars and fabulous messes, of whirlwinds and storms.

  They had ended up taking off their clothes and holding each other in the half-light. Marie, at the foot of the bed, became still, she had fallen asleep in Jean-Christophe de G.’s arms. The fan had been switched to low and its cool air mixed with the heat of the stormy night. The room was quiet, lit only by the blue glow of the laptop screen on sleep mode. Jean-Christophe de G. slipped gently out of Marie’s embrace and got up, naked, in two stages, feeling weighted down, first helping himself up with one hand, then slowly standing up straight, he shuffled silently over the creaking floorboards to the window and he stood there gazing out at the street. Paris was numb with heat, the temperature no lower than thirty centigrade even at almost one o’clock in the morning. In the distance, an out-of-sight bar was still open and shouts and laughter broke the night’s silence. A few cars passed under the halos of the streetlamps, a pedestrian crossed the street heading toward the Place des Victoires. On the opposite sidewalk, directly across from the apartment, stood the Banque de France silent and imposing. Its heavy bronze security gate was closed, the surrounding street still and quiet, and suddenly Jean-Christophe de G. had a dark foreboding, convinced that something tragic would interrupt the calm of this humid night, that, at any moment, some scene of violence would erupt before his eyes, spreading shock and death, and alarms would go off behind the security gate of the Banque de France, and the street below would be the site of car chases and shouts, of utter confusion, of doors slamming and gunshots, the sidewalk immediately invaded by a swarm of police cars whose flashing lights would shine on the surrounding façades in the night.

  Jean-Christophe de G. stood naked at the window of rue de la Vrillière apartment, and he was staring out at the night with a diffuse feeling of anxiety in his chest, when he spotted a flash of lightning in the distance. A sudden gust of wind struck his face and bare chest, and he noticed that the sky was completely black at the horizon, not a summer-night black, transparent and tinted blue, but a dense black, menacing and opaque. Large storm clouds were gathering in the neighborhood, drifting inexorably over the Banque de France and covering the last vestiges of blue in the night’s sky. Lightning flashed again in the distance, this time by the Seine, near the Louvre, mute, rippling, prophetic, with no proper bolt, no thunderclap to follow, just a long horizontal discharge of electricity that ripped through the sky and lit up the horizon with an uneven and silent blaze.

  A cooler air entered the room in violent gusts. The wind sent a shiver up Marie’s back and she took refuge in bed, wrapping herself up in the covers. She took off her socks and threw them at the foot of the bed, while Jean-Christophe de G. began getting dressed in the half-light — he was getting dressed while she was undressing, both going through the same motions but to different ends. He put his pants and jacket back on. Before leaving he went and sat on the edge of the bed next to Marie. He kissed
her on the forehead in the half-light, then gave her a peck on the lips, but these kisses lasted longer than those of simple good-byes, becoming prolonged, intense, they fell into each other’s arms again and he slid into the bed, fully dressed, pulling her close to him under the covers, in his black jacket and cotton pants, still holding his briefcase in one hand, which he soon dropped the better to hold Marie. He had her naked body against him and he was caressing her breasts, she moaned quietly as he slid her tiny panties down her thighs, Marie helped him with this by lifting her pelvis, and Marie, panting, her eyes closed, unzipped Jean-Christophe de G.’s pants and took out his cock, hurriedly, determined, with a certain urgency and a gesture at once firm and delicate, composed, as if she knew exactly where she wanted to go, but, once there, she no longer knew what to do. She opened her eyes, startled, sleepy, feeling tipsy and tired, and she realized that, above all, she was tired, the only thing she really wanted to do at the moment was sleep, in Jean-Christophe de G.’s arms, maybe, but not necessarily with his cock in her hand. She stopped suddenly, and, since she had to do something with the cock she still held in her hand, she squeezed it, gingerly, two or three times, out of curiosity, gently, she held it firmly in her hand and stroked it, watching the result with no little interest and wonder. What was she expecting, for it to fly off suddenly? Marie had Jean-Christophe de G.’s cock in her hand and she didn’t know what to do with it.

  Marie ended up falling asleep. She dozed for a few minutes, or maybe he was the first to fall asleep, they stirred quietly in the darkness, continuing to kiss each other from time to time, in a mutual state of half-sleep, drifting off in each other’s arms, caressing each other languidly in their slumber (so this is what we call making love all night). Marie had undone the top few buttons of Jean-Christophe de G.’s shirt and was stroking his chest listlessly, and he welcomed this, he was hot, he was sweating fully dressed under the covers, his cock hanging out, abandoned, stiffening briefly and twitching with intermittent spasms, all while Marie ran her hand over his chest, under his damp and shapeless shirt, its sides sagging and slack around him. She kissed him sweetly, softly, she was also sweating, her head hot, and, without realizing it, she started to search his pockets, she slid her hand into his coat pocket, curious to know what that hard object with sharp angles was at his waist when he took her in his arms. A weapon? Could he have a weapon in his pocket?

  The room’s window then closed slowly on its own, before swinging open and slamming back violently, the glass pane reverberating with the shock, while the rain began abruptly pouring down in giant drops on the street. Marie watched the rain fall in the night through the window, a curtain of black rain moving laterally through the beams of the streetlamps, carried by strong winds. Thunder sounded, several times in a row, accompanied by a whole network of lightning, great electric shocks branching out in every direction. The rain doubled in force and began entering the room, dripping from the windowpane onto the floor under the windowsill. Naked under the covers and sheltered from the storm, Marie felt cozy, her senses alert in the darkness, her eyes lit up by the lightning, savoring the sensual pleasure one feels nestled in a warm bed during a storm, the window open in the night, the sky slashed by lightning and nature seemingly coming undone. The lightning startled her at times, and, with this stab of terror, intensified the erotic pleasure she felt lying in the warmth of the covers while the storm raged outside. But unlike the violent storms on Elba at the end of summer, which purified the air and immediately cooled the whole island, this night’s storm had something tropical and pernicious about it, as though the rain was unable to lower the temperature, and the air, charged with a residual humidity and an excess of atmospheric electricity, remained heavy and thick, stifling, harmful. Jean-Christophe de G., lying motionless in bed, fully dressed, sweat beading up on his forehead, hadn’t even opened his eyes. He continued to sleep deeply on his back, unperturbed by the rumbling of the thunder, its dying echo fading into the uninterrupted patter of the pouring rain. Marie hardly paid him any attention when he threw back the covers and got out of bed in his suit, all dressed and ready to leave. She watched him walk out of the room with a sleepwalker’s step, stiff and slow-moving, in his socks, carrying his briefcase, perhaps with the intention of going home, Marie wasn’t sure where he was going, she heard him walk down the hallway, then the slam of a door, maybe the front door, and Marie glanced over at Jean-Christophe de G.’s shoes lying at the foot of the bed — it must have been the bathroom door that slammed. Jean-Christophe de G. stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes before returning the same way he’d left, with the same awkward step, stiff, mechanical, his face pale, livid, bloodless, in socks and sweating profusely, he took one step into the room and collapsed.

  Marie didn’t understand what had happened right away, she thought his fall was due to the alcohol, she waited in bed for a moment before getting up to help him. But what soon scared her was that he hadn’t lost consciousness, she saw him wriggling around on his back in the half-light, writhing helpless on the hardwood floor, holding his chest with both hands as if it were locked in a grip he couldn’t break out of, and she saw him grimace in pain in the darkness, his teeth clenched, his lips heavy, stiff, as if numb, his breathing no longer regular, and struggling to speak, his garbled words a stream of unintelligible sounds, trying to explain to her that he had no feeling in his left hand, that it was paralyzed. Marie, who’d knelt down beside him, leaning over him, took his hand in hers. He said he didn’t feel well, she needed to call a doctor.

  Marie dialed one of the emergency numbers, 15 or 18, and she paced the room while waiting for someone to pick up, walking over to the window to stare out absently at the rain falling in the dark street, before going back over to Jean-Christophe’s writhing body and kneeling down next to him again. Marie, naked, on her knees, immobile in the half-light, her hands trembling, holding the phone to her ear as it continued to ring, the silhouette of her naked body suddenly and repeatedly defined by the lightning illuminating the entire room, Marie, who let loose her panic once someone finally answered, unleashing a rush of imprecise and unfinished explanations, Marie, baffled, lost, aghast, left the operator equally confused as he tried to calm her, repeating the same two or three succinct questions, the responses to which couldn’t be simpler — her name, address, the nature of the problem — but Marie couldn’t handle being asked questions at this time, Marie had always hated being asked questions, Marie wasn’t listening, she wasn’t responding, she was babbling frantically, incomprehensibly, without giving her name or address, she was explaining that even at the restaurant he’d felt something, a pain in his shoulder, but it only lasted a moment and then passed, how could she have known — and the operator had to interrupt her to ask once again, firmer this time, her address, “Your address, Miss, give me your address, we can’t do anything without your address”—and it was Jean-Christophe de G. who, lying on his back, pale and sweating profusely, a blank stare in his eyes, his bottom lip quivering, looked at Marie with concern and without strength, trying desperately to figure out what was going on, he was the one who, reading Marie’s face for signs of what was being asked and finally understanding the situation, snatched the phone from her hands and gave the address to the operator, “2, rue de la Vrillière,” he blurted it all out at once as if ordering a cab, then, spent by the effort, he passed the phone back to Marie and fell back into a daze on his side. The operator then explained to Marie that he was sending an ambulance right away and told her in a calm and steady voice that, if he goes into cardiac arrest or loses consciousness, she should try to resuscitate him by pressing down firmly and with both hands below his sternum and by performing mouth-to-mouth. The storm had hardly abated and intermittent flashes of lightning — interrupting total darkness with blinding light — would fleetingly fix every detail of the room in a phantasmagoric white brightness. Marie was straddling Jean-Christophe de G.’s fully dressed body, and, one hand over the other, her arms extended, her hair dishe
veled, clumsily, in a panic, she pressed down with all her strength on his sternum to give a jolt to his thoracic cage, then, as he remained unresponsive to these efforts, she leaned over him and shook him roughly, hugged him, kissed him, and then rested her palms on his cheeks, transmitting her warmth, planted her lips against his and stuck her tongue in his mouth to breath some air into him, as though she wanted to make up for the pathetic display of her clumsy efforts with a mad act of passion, which, though unlikely to give sufficient oxygen to the helpless man, could perhaps give him a surge of energy and vitality. For Marie was trying to transmit life itself to Jean-Christophe de G.’s unconscious body by blowing frantically into his mouth every which way while holding him tightly in her arms, yet, remaining locked in this embrace on the hardwood floor of the room, Marie began to feel the touch of death come into contact with her naked skin — death grasping at the striking nudity of Marie’s body.

  Marie heard an ambulance’s siren far off in the distance, she ran to the window, her bare feet splashing through a tiny pool of rain that had formed on the floor. Marie, naked, leaning out the window, braving the wind and rain, tried to spot the ambulance coming up rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, then discerned in the distance the first flashes of the ambulance’s lights accompanied by the growing sound of its siren, and then there wasn’t one but two emergency vehicles bolting through the night and surging onto rue de la Vrillière with their blue and white lights spinning and flashing in the falling rain, a large white ambulance and another medical vehicle that drove onto the sidewalk and parked at the building’s entrance. Two figures got out of the latter, while the paramedics from the former slammed their doors and ran out into the rain, ducking their heads in the downpour, carrying all sorts of medical bags and backpacks. The whole group ran on the sidewalk, hustling to get into the apartment, but they remained stuck down below, their rush brought to an abrupt halt, the front door remained jammed in spite of their repeated attempts to jar it open and force their way in. One of the crewmembers turned back around, backed all the way to the street, and looked up at the building. His face whipped by the rain, he finally spotted Marie at the window and yelled to her that the door was locked. Marie gave him the entry code immediately, but got confused, gave him the old one, she didn’t remember, gave the new one, shouted it several times between her cupped hands, and ran down the hall to open the apartment door. She stepped out onto the landing and heard the door buzz and open below, hurried footsteps already resounded in the entryway, and she heard the long strides of the paramedics bounding up the stairs and almost instantly they appeared before her in the darkness. Without so much as uttering a word they entered the apartment. The blue glow of her laptop in sleep mode provided the only light. There were five crewmembers, four men and one woman. They charged down the hallway determinedly and, wasting no time, headed into the bedroom without asking their way, as though they knew exactly where it was, as though they’d always known where the room was located, and, before anything else, before even glancing at the body asprawl on the ground, before examining it or even paying it the least attention, they went to adjust the light in the room, in which there was no ceiling light but rather a multitude of small lamps Marie had collected over the course of many years, the Tizio from Richard Sapper, the chrome-headed Artemide Tolomeo, the Titania from Alberto Meda and Paolo Rizzatto, the Itty Bitty from Outlook Zelco, all of which the paramedics turned on at once, the five paramedics heading to the four corners of the room to turn on all the lamps at once — and it wasn’t until then that, standing among the paramedics in the middle of the room, Marie realized that, with the room’s light at its full brightness, she was completely naked.