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[...] For me, autumn has never been a sad season. The dying leaves and the days that grow shorter and shorter have never evoked the end of something for me but instead brought with them anticipation for the future. In Paris, during these October evenings, there is an electricity in the air at dusk. Even when it rains. I don’t feel down at that time of night, nor does it seem that time is passing too swiftly. I have the feeling that anything is possible. The year begins in the month of October. That’s when classes start again and to me it’s the season to take on new projects. So if she came to the Condé in October, it’s because she had broken ties with some entire part of her life and she wanted to do what they refer to in novels as “turning over a new leaf.” Moreover, a clue proves to me that I’m not mistaken. At the Condé, she was given a new name. Zacharias, that day, had even spoken of baptism. It was in some way a second birth.
I was pretty certain that he believed me. That’s the advantage of being twenty years older than someone: They don’t know your past. And even if they ask you a couple of distracted questions about what your life has been up until that point, you can make it up completely. A new life. They’re not going to go and check. As you tell of this imaginary life, great breaths of fresh air rush across a closed room in which you have been unable to breathe for a long time. A window abruptly opens, the shutters bang in the breeze. You have, once again, a future before you.
An art publisher. It came to me without even thinking. If I had been asked what I was going to be when I was older, some twenty years ago, I would have mumbled: an art publisher. And well, today I said it. Nothing has changed. All of those years are done and gone.
I asked him the date and place of birth of this Jacqueline Delanque. The date, also, of their marriage. Did she have a driver’s license? A steady job? No. Did she have any family left? In Paris? In the provinces? A checkbook? As he answered me in a sad voice, I jotted down all of those details that are often the sole things that bear witness to the passage of a human being on Earth. Provided that one day someone finds the spiral-bound notebook in which they were recorded in a tiny, difficult-to-read script such as my own.
He shot me an embarrassed look. Apparently he had wanted to give me a more detailed account of their marriage. I smiled at him. I didn’t need an explanation. Making an effort he took the plunge: “It’s all about trying to create ties, you see.”
Well, sure, I understood. In this life that sometimes seems to be a vast, ill-defined landscape without signposts, amid all of the vanishing lines and the lost horizons, we hope to find reference points, to draw up some sort of land registry so as to shake the impression that we are navigating by chance. So we forge ties, we try to find stability in chance encounters. I kept quiet, my gaze fixed on the stack of magazines. In the middle of the coffee table sat a large yellow ashtray that bore the inscription “Cinzano.” And a paperback book entitled Fare Thee Well, Focolara. Zannetacci. Jean-Pierre Choureau. Cinzano. Jacqueline Delanque. Neuilly City Hall. Focolara. As if we were supposed to find some sense in all of this.
I took the envelope from my pocket and I pored over the pictures for a long while. Where was she now? In a café, like me, sitting alone at a table? Doubtless the phrase he had spoken earlier had given me this idea: “It’s all about trying to create ties.” Encounters in the street, in a Métro station at rush hour. We ought to shackle ourselves to each other at that moment. What connection can resist the tide as it carries you away and diverts your course? An anonymous office where you dictate a letter to a temp typist, a ground-floor apartment in Neuilly whose white, empty walls evoke what some would call a “showroom apartment,” where there would be no trace left of your stay. Two photo-booth snapshots, one facing the camera, one in profile. And that’s what we’re supposed to forge links with? [...]
Other nights, however, the anxiety dissipated, and I impatiently waited for my mother’s departure so I could go out. I went down the stairs with my heart pounding, as if I were going on a date. There was no longer any need to lie to the concierge, to come up with excuses, or to ask permission. To whom? And what for? I wasn’t even certain that I would come back to the apartment. Once outside, I didn’t take the sidewalk that lay hidden in the shadows, but instead the one that led right past the entrance to the Moulin Rouge. The lights seemed even more violent than those in the movies at the Mexico. A feeling of intoxication came over me, so subtle and light. I had experienced a similar sensation the night I drank a glass of champagne at the Sans-Souci. I had my whole life ahead of me. How had I turned into such a wallflower, curled up in a little ball? And what was I afraid of? I would meet people. I just had to go into any café.
I’d just as soon take a walk down the Champs-Élysées some spring evening. They don’t really exist anymore, but, at night, they still maintain the illusion. Perhaps along the Champs-Élysées I might hear your voice call to me by name. The day you sold the fur coat and the cabochon emerald, I still had about two thousand francs left from the money I had received from Béraud-Bedoin. We were rich. The future was ours. That evening, you were kind enough to come and join me up by Étoile. It was summertime, the same summer we met on the quays, you and me and Crossbones, the afternoon I saw the two of you walking towards me. We went to the restaurant on the corner of rue François-1er and rue Marbeuf. They had put tables out on the sidewalk. It was still daytime. The traffic had thinned and we could hear the murmur of voices and the sound of footsteps. Around ten o’clock, as we made our way down the Champs-Élysées, I asked myself if night would ever fall, if we might be experiencing the midnight sun they get in Russia and the northernmost countries. We walked without any specific destination, we had the whole night ahead of us. There were still patches of sunlight under the arches of rue de Rivoli. It was the beginning of summer, we were going to be leaving soon. Where to? We didn’t know yet. Maybe Majorca or Mexico. Maybe London or Rome. The places no longer mattered in the least, they had all blended together into one. The lone goal of our journey was to go to the heart of summer, that place where time stops and the hands of the clock permanently show the same hour: twelve noon.