Eleven o’clock at night. I’m listening to the radio when I’m startled by a loud knock at the French window. It must be Franca. Last time she stayed here I swore I’d never let her in again. My left hand still hurts. One evening during her stay, Franca complained of a stomach ache and asked for a hot-water bottle. She wanted it very hot and kept a close eye on the whole process: boiling the water, filling the bottle—was the stopper closed properly? She’d been here for a week, talking away, following me around the house from room to room. In my tiredness, my annoyance, I scalded my hand. Franca recommended bandaging it with onion soaked in urine. She was sitting before me, pressing to her stomach the pink hot-water bottle wrapped in a shawl, watching me with curiosity, curious that I wasn’t complaining. She wanted me to talk to her about family, about children, ex-husbands, money, about my mother, who had died the previous May. She spent a lot of time talking about her mother, whom she lived with, who had used her as a whipping boy as a child. I was struck by the slightly dated expression whipping boy—or should that be whipping girl? My visitor went on and on about how we needed to work on our mother problem. I’d wrapped my swollen hand in a towel soaked in cold water and was hiding it under the table. We were in the kitchen, late at night, just like I am now. I recalled the legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, which brought a tear to my eye; I thought of the old grey cat. She’d run away as soon as Franca arrived. It was freezing outside. If Franca stayed, the cat would die. She had money and a car. Later, in the dead of night, I went down to the kitchen and left a polite but firm note on the table. My hand was really hurting. Franca left the next day.
Another knock. The curtain is drawn but the light and the radio betray my presence. I don’t open the door. Time passes. I turn off the radio and light, listening carefully. I can’t hear any footsteps walking away across the gravel. The night is silent. I sense there’s still someone there. Then there’s another knock at the door. It’s the same old story all over again—a story of lying low, of hiding out, of resistance. I wait in the darkness a while longer. Then I suddenly fling open the French window and shout: “Hey, sweetheart, you need to leave! Now!”
The word “sweetheart” is a grave insult in my family. It isn’t Franca; it’s Helmut, curled up on the mat by the front door, his head resting on an overnight bag. Feeling foolish, my nerves frayed, I stammer that he’s gone about this all wrong: “You should have said something! You should have told me it was you!”
He mumbles something about missing his train. Helmut is the inspiration for the character I dubbed “Big U” in my book As It Was Before Galileo. Tall, thin, fifty-odd years old, distrustful, the silent type, occasionally prone to launching into long, incomprehensible monologues. After squatting here and there in cities and suburbs, he has now returned to his mother’s place in German-speaking Switzerland. Even diehard, lifelong vagabonds sometimes go home to their mums. I view Big U as a kind of holy man. I offer him something to eat—rather half-heartedly—but he isn’t hungry. We head upstairs to the small bedroom and I make the bed. Helmut just stands there, watching me. In the autumn, he comes to collect apples and grapes, but he never offers to help me in the garden. I can’t help resenting him for it tonight, in spite of my firm belief that his aloofness, his unwillingness to get mixed up in things, is the source of Big U’s purity. I grumble away as I tug at the bedclothes—after all these years, he could at least say something beyond small talk! His relationship with women is a mystery. I like to think he’s a virgin. In any case, he doesn’t seem to be pining after anyone. After he leaves the next day, a faint aroma of wood and cut hay lingers in the room.
Doctor Ursus
Big U’s reappearance shouldn’t come as a surprise. It just so happens that I was struck by a resemblance to him about ten days ago—on 9 June—the first time I saw Doctor Ursus. Same tall stature; same piercing, dark brown eyes. The Doctor’s friendly, talkative manner runs counter to Helmut’s taciturn one: both have the trace of a foreign accent, and both—the nomad and the man of the establishment—possess a certain elegance. Both remind me of a secretary bird, a wader whose crest is reminiscent of the feather quills clerks used to tuck behind their ears. But Helmut has a shaggy mop of hair, while Doctor Ursus shaves his head.
A fascinating, hairless pate, with the merest hint of a shadow at the crown—like a lingam. It hints at a radical, lofty mind, at originality, solitude, a blank slate. Will I be required, upon entering the Doctor’s office, to strip away all thought and regard all words as pointless vanity? I’m reassured to see that the Doctor’s desk is sagging beneath the weight of several huge, tottering piles of documents, papers and books.
A Narrow Valley
Doctor Ursus has given me some leaflets about depression, two of which are illustrated with comic strips. I have no desire to identify with the depressed hero of these comics, who comes across as pathetic and ridiculous. I reread Carus by Pascal Quignard. It’s a diary, a philosophical treatise and the story of a man, referred to as A., who is suffering from depression. Over time, A. gets better—thanks to friendship and music, intelligence, luck—and ends up writing the book. The author doesn’t suggest any cause or remedy for the ailment, but I note a coincidence that may be significant. Midway through the book, a young woman commits suicide. One week and two pages later, A. starts to recover: “A. said that enough was enough, that he had embarked upon a rejection of death.” Is sacrifice necessary for rebirth?
If my illness were an image, it would be hollow: a narrow valley, its slopes covered with fir trees and larches. In the background, a small stream and a few houses that only see the sun for a few days a year. A harsh place, but a sheltered one. I live in an old mazot made of blackened wood, with tiny windows. There are books, and a lighted lamp that can be seen from the mountains at night. During the day, a kite soars over the deep V, high up in the blue.
Naturally, the great bird makes me think of my mother. For as long as she could lift her head, she loved the slow, powerful way the kites would fly, and she loved the stars too. When she could no longer straighten her neck, she would gaze lovingly at the constellations of daisies in the meadow around the nursing home. She took care not to step on a single one, and each daisy was a morsel of myself.
*
Third session with Doctor Ursus. I tell him that the depressed man in his leaflets is suffering because he is a victim of duty. Not much talent, no ambition—all he can do is obey. I tell him that illness is a sign you’ve done something wrong. It’s more acceptable that way. He smiles a somewhat malicious smile. At the end of the consultation, as we stand up, I blurt out the question: “What did you take me for?” He opens the door, with the simple explanation that he took me because he had space for me. On the street outside, the past shifts to present: “What do you take me for?” I feel strangely light.
Last week, I felt the urge to get up, take the three strides that separate the two armchairs and clasp the Doctor in my arms. A brief, fraternal embrace, standing up, with the words: “How’s that for transference?”
In my armchair, waves of dizziness wash over me, as if I were spinning on my own axis. My ears are ringing, and for several seconds I’m unable to hear what the Doctor is saying, as if he is speaking from behind glass. Perhaps he really is speaking very quickly and quietly. Is he doing it to throw me off? To teach me how to listen? The medicines he prescribes me, I tell him, are completely incidental—it doesn’t matter what the treatment is, as long as he is the one who administers it. I’ve told him I’m writing again.
The route from the office to the exit is a maze of beige corridors, twisting and turning and crisscrossed by more beige corridors. The closed doors all look the same. I get it wrong every time, annoyed that the Doctor, who accompanies me, sees my mistake. Labyrinth and vestibule are names for parts of the ear: I’m losing my hearing, and losing myself in the corridors of the free clinic in Rue Blanche, a small, gloomy building, made gloomier still by scaffolding outside. Doctor Ursus is going on holiday.
Ariane
It’s very hot, but the evening brings a coolness to the air. Ariane is visiting me. I congratulate her on getting married. She asks for some wine. I have a bottle left over from a party a while back. We sit in the garden. After making their vows official at the mairie, Ariane and Juliette had taken a trip to Tuscany.
When I received their wedding announcement, I didn’t understand what it was right away. A folded card sporting a photograph of two women by the sea and, inside, some poems. At first, I thought it was the album cover for a CD—Juliette singing, Ariane on the accordion. There were two lines of small print announcing that the signatories had formalized their twelve-year union, but I didn’t notice this. Might my misunderstanding reveal certain misgivings about same-sex marriage? Yet I understand very well the need to legally enshrine one’s relationship in the social contract. Perhaps I thought that what makes so-called special loves so special is a passion so true that legitimacy would add nothing to it.
Ariane talks about how brave her partner is—a mother of two children, with an important job in the civil service. After she made her relationship with Ariane public, some of her colleagues turned against her. “You with your writing, me with my music,” says Ariane with a smile. “What do we know about the yoke of the establishment?” There is still a hint of blue in the sky behind the dark foliage. “I’ve always wanted to be loved like a man,” she tells me, explaining that the women she has loved have been very feminine in their appearances and mindsets. In her view, two strict lesbians could never be compatible. She has never spoken to me so matter-of-factly before. She smiles: “Because loving someone means giving what you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it . . . ” Mosquitoes keep landing on her, and each time she gives herself a little slap to get rid of it. “Don’t you have any of those candles that repel mosquitoes?”
There was a time when I would have hurried off the next day to go and buy some, a time when I would have made every effort to anticipate all Ariane’s desires and irritations. I always felt staid and unsophisticated in the face of her staunch unpredictability. I stopped smoking so as not to offend her highly sensitive nose. I wrote The Bridge of Hours without any cigarettes. The most commendable reason for the way I felt about her was her music, which I found extremely beautiful. For years, in winter and summer alike, she had taken to playing her accordion in the street. In my view, one musician on a street corner, with minimal pomp and circumstance, is worth a hundred concerts shut away indoors. Ariane’s music, the courage it took to play outside, astounded me.
She gave me accordion lessons, in a show of remarkable patience. Another motive for my inclinations was that I had just come out of a rather miserable relationship. A woman would be gentler than a man; a woman wouldn’t coerce me to do anything. For a long time, I was content to love her chastely—but I was the one who changed everything between us. We were on a three-day trip to Paris, and in the hotel room on our third night, in a rather drunken state, I spent some moments caressing her face, her shoulders. She didn’t say a word, and I quickly returned to my own bed. On the train the next day, I sulked like a spurned lover in a vaudeville play—but I didn’t regret what I’d done. I’d had enough of our polite civility, which had started to feel hypocritical. We’ve never spoken about that night, and our friendship continued as before, the incident having cured me of my desire. I finished The Bridge of Hours and took up smoking again.
The Paris anecdote isn’t in the book, which is well written, somewhat melancholy and rather flat—yet I remember telling my editor while I was working on it that it was going to be an erotic novel. Being attracted to another woman felt very daring and transgressive, even without the physical side of things. I sowed the act of lovemaking into my descriptions of nature, delegating it to a male character who dies at the end—as if wishing to punish pleasure with death. Writing the book allowed me to keep my desire alive, yet the book lacks tension and urgency. I don’t think a book that touches on homosexuality, even chastely, can refrain from taking sides. What would I have written if Ariane and I had made love? If she had loved me so much that making love to her became as irrepressible as with a man? Homosexuality is as mysterious as the supposedly normal relationships it calls into question. I remember three people I considered my friends who, when I introduced them to Ariane, didn’t even bother to hide their revulsion. “The seduction emanating from a person of uncertain or dissimulated sex is powerful,” writes Colette in The Pure and the Impure. It’s true, and the years I spent under Ariane’s spell are proof of it. She met Juliette; I met N. He would, I hoped, help me be more abrupt, to take the plunge once again. In any case, how deeply I have loved those I have loved! I didn’t show them enough. This is why I’ve started writing again. N. has the same birthday as her—24 April. A promising coincidence. I recall the place where he told me that: a bend in the road overlooking the sea.
The Substitute
Fifth session with Doctor Ursus—the last before he goes on holiday. I’m on my second or third change of outfit and I’ve brought some notes I wrote last night. When I arrive, the secretary tells me that something has come up and the Doctor won’t be able to see me. But she tells me to wait anyway because one of his colleagues will see me instead.
I am dismayed; my stomach hurts. Doctor Ursus must have guessed how I feel about him and decided to put me in my place. At least I’m not being completely stood up. After an hour or so, a portly young man comes in. I explain, with a lump in my throat, that it’s difficult to continue a conversation with X that you started with Y. It’s very hot in the office, where a trace of my Doctor’s cologne lingers in the air. Two flies are buzzing away beneath the overhead light. It’s raining outside. Behind my head is a rust-coloured Hindu sculpture of intertwining animals, plants and humans carrying the god Ganesh.
Perhaps the man isn’t so young after all. His boyishness is mainly due to his sympathetic manner. My notes are no help at all—but isn’t there always something boring to talk about? For instance, I need to call Robert back, as he wants me to go to the opera with him. I don’t feel like going out and have been putting off telling him so. Robert insisted—he’d booked two seats. That man has a real knack for guilt-tripping me.
Doctor Morel tells me we’re going to act out the scenario. He’ll play Robert on the phone, and I will be myself. He seizes a glasses case and applies it to his ear. I grow more and more dismayed by the minute. As it happens, it’s not very easy to play a game I think is stupid. I try to concentrate, staring at a spot on the ground as I speak. Then we swap roles: I play Robert and Doctor Morel plays the woman turning down the invitation, improvising his role with great conviction and creativity. The flies buzz and I sweat away in the blouse I put on for Doctor Ursus, whom I have completely forgotten at this point. Then comes a third scene, in which I play myself again, with Morel/Robert on the phone. It’s amazing how the farce of the game reveals the little lies I tell in reality. Afterwards, the young doctor talks about the necessity of knowing how to diccept things sometimes. “Knowing how to what?” “Diccept,” he repeats. “It’s the opposite of accept.”
I’m pretty sure “diccept” isn’t a real word. But Doctor Morel is right all the same. He picks up a large, worn, black briefcase stuffed with documents. As we’re leaving, he quietly informs me that Doctor Ursus hasn’t left yet: “Feel free to call him.”
I’m all worn out from the telephone game. “What do you mean, feel free?” I mutter. I’ve spoken too softly. Morel doesn’t respond. “Feel free . . . Does that mean that I can or that I should?” My voice quavers. Morel gives me a soothing smile and tells me to do what I want.
What I Want
I called and was admitted. Another room, a classroom with a large table, about fifteen chairs, a blackboard. “It’s the building work,” Ursus said briefly. “There’s too much noise in my office—it’s unbearable.” He was wearing a yellow short-sleeved polo shirt, revealing hairy forearms that stood in stark contrast to his smooth pate. The thick carpet of hair looked soft to the touch. Since I’ve been coming to the clinic, I’ve noticed how few clothes I own and how dreary they all are. I put on some old red suede sandals, which I struggle to walk in. They were hidden behind the table in any case.
He was obviously in a hurry, eager to leave the city, the heatwave, his patients. But he still asked how the session with Doctor Morel had gone. “Very good, very good, only . . . Only he wasn’t you!”
“It’s true,” said Doctor Ursus, “he and I have different techniques.” He added that Morel was the best of all his colleagues.
He wasn’t wearing his usual wristwatch; instead, a large golden one shone on his silky wrist. The more I sensed he wanted to hurry me along, the firmer, the more masculine, the more handsome his body appeared to me. “Suppose you’d seen Doctor Morel first,” he continued, “how would things have been then? And if I were to disappear, could you carry on with him?”
No to the second question—and as for the first hypothesis, let’s just say I was lucky, very lucky, once-in-a-lifetime lucky. I told him I considered myself uniquely fortunate.
Doctor Ursus glanced at his watch. The room was bathed in sunlight. There was a diagram on the blackboard, a graph snaking between abscissa and ordinate. I could feel a tiny disaster looming. I sat up straight in my chair. The other day, I told my friend Véra that, in a way, I was escaping from hell—a bit over the top, but I stood by it. Véra had looked at me quietly, and I’d repeated that, yes, you could say I was escaping from hell. I sat up straight and spoke, if not in exactly these words, in this general sense:
“You say I’m doing better and it’s true. What miracle do you think has caused this? I’ve fallen in love with you. I fell in love with you at first sight, on Wednesday, 9 June, and I’ve never stopped. Everything about you delights me: your bald head, your shoes, your accent, the look in your eyes, the elephant Ganesh, the big blue and ochre canvas at the far end of your office. Whenever I take a wrong turn on the way to the exit, it’s because I want to stay with you; when I mishear you, it’s because I’m enthralled by the sound of your voice and the sight of you before me. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how quickly I react to any insights you have about me. You have aroused my mind and touched my heart. You have restored my courage; I say lively and unexpected things when I’m with you. I have often seen you smile at the things I say. The ancient medicine at work here is more powerful than the pills you prescribe me. The thought that you could entrust me to your colleague is too much for me to bear. Don’t abandon me, I beg of you. Not now.
“I’ve never asked this of anyone, as I was all too sure that my distress would be left unanswered. But this isn’t real life, Doctor, as you well know—that’s why I can make this plea of you. You can grant what I ask. Don’t abandon me, Doctor. All this is only as true as a theatre performance. But isn’t that the only truth we as human beings can convey and recognize?”
It was a tale as old as time, but I was amazed to hear myself say it, right on cue. Doctor Ursus had remained distant and aloof throughout, and his handshake lacked warmth. But I had my next appointment in a month.
