The Intervention of a Good Man

11

About a few sartorial details.

A general remark and a cultural reminiscence.

Ze last moment.

She leaves the bike in the trunk. At the pub they order two glasses of beer and go to sit outside, the area is completely deserted.

It is getting dark and growing chilly. All our heroine is wearing over her shoulders are a T-shirt and a black cardigan that she zips up. The shadowing curve of her breasts disappears beneath the wool. She pulls the woolen sleeves down over her hands, shivering, and the stretched stitches afford glimpses of the lightly tanned skin along her arms. Our hero just cannot take his eyes off her. Only three months ago, this young woman did not exist. How, then, has she become such a major part of him, when she herself asked for nothing?

With no trace of irony, she clinks her glass against his. He would rather not know what they are drinking to. To his leaving? To the peacefulness of their breakup? To Scotland’s mild summer? Silently, he drinks to l’Amour, and everything he knows about it. Its 2,700 miles, from its source in the Argun region to its mouth on the Tatar Strait, opposite Sakhalin. He keeps his bad joke about the River Amour to himself. A pity he doesn’t realize that the river’s English name, Armur, is closer to the word “armor” than to “love,” and — worse — that armur means “muddy” in Buriat.

Our hero takes a sip from this dark, bitter beer that he does not like, which is precisely why he chose it. He had to give the whole debacle a degree of harmony.

Once again, what they say to each other is meaningless, every word has been said before. He still occasionally tries to paraphrase, she does so less and less. The smiles they exchange reveal her weariness and his sadness, and no words can measure up to these. They have both stopped pretending. She hasn’t built any sort of wall around herself, our hero acknowledges. No part of her cleaves toward me, and there’s nothing about me she is having to resist. You can suppress desire only when desire is weak enough to be suppressed. Ovid, Blake, and plenty more said it long before he did, but right here, now, our hero really couldn’t give a damn. He thought he was leaving in order to save whatever could be saved from the sinking ship. He now realizes there may never have been a ship.

There are also silences between them. He makes less effort to fill them than she does. He imagines she feels guilty. Because she often feels guilty. Once, after making love, she astonished him by whispering that pleasure like that was a sin. A sin. He could not remember ever having heard the word.

To spare her from feeling awkward, he too starts furnishing the pauses. He decides to make her laugh. And succeeds, it is easy. But it was not a good idea, so painful is the sound of her laughter.

The level of beer is going down too slowly in their glasses. Our hero wishes he could find the courage to get it all over with, to cut the episode short. But he has only the courage to bear its being prolonged.

He briefly contemplates telling her about the young Polish girl. But what could he say about her, and what would he actually want? To study our heroine’s reaction, provoke some feeling in her, elicit her hypothetical jealousy? Just in time, he grasps that he runs the risk, once and for all, of appearing pathetic and ridiculous. He can just imagine her response — searing and well deserved. So he says nothing.

The Other arrives in three days, and, oddly, our hero is not jealous. Yet he knows everything there is to know about jealousy, that blast of cruel images dominated by sex, bodies, and possession. He looks at our heroine’s blue eyes, her mouth, the curve of her shoulder, he tries to understand why he never succeeded in seeing this Other as a rival, nor in picturing them making love, why, in fact, when he doggedly attempts to re-create the scene — the act, to use a shrink’s word for it — he cannot manage to take it altogether seriously. The memory of their past pleasures protects him from that, at least.

He gives an involuntary little laugh, almost a sigh. What’s funny? she asks.

He shakes his head. Nothing.

She asks him if he is angry with her. And even adds, You have every right.

No, really not, our hero replies. And he is not even cheating. Simply overcome.

He does still have one redeeming phrase on his mind, but abstains from using it. Why do we always push harder on the remote control when the batteries are dying?

Acta est fabula, the ancients used to say.

Our heroine smiles at him, she shivers.

Our hero feels a bit cold too.

They do not finish their beers.

She wants to go home on her own. He offers to take her back. She lets him. They drive to the crossroads of the A32 and the S70, near the sign for Inchna — yes, that’s the one.

He is intent on taking her farther in order to spare her at least the long hill. She refuses to let him go beyond this point. She says it categorically, he does not insist. He has maintained an elegant tenacity, what would he gain from stooping to obstinacy?

He stops the car. She consents to stay a little longer. He begs for a kiss on the lips. She gives him his alms. He feels only shame.

They take the bike from the trunk, and it stains his shirt. Just a few more words, and she hops onto the contraption, puts her weight down on the pedal, and rides off. He watches her cycle away without looking back. His heart and his reason manage to agree not to prolong the episode. He sits down in the Nissan and sets off again. The folded-down seats will no longer serve any purpose.

It is not even half past nine in the evening. Our hero goes back to his hotel. He will have to wait, once again. The plane is tomorrow, in precisely fourteen hours. He makes some notes, sketches out the final chapters, tells himself he will get back to this later.

It is dark in the hotel room. From time to time car headlights are projected on the walls. He switches on the TV. Images and sounds fill the room, which is now plunged in complete darkness. He tries to concentrate on the news. Bomb attacks in the Middle East, Hurricane Myriam in Florida, a new prototype for a car. With a quick flick he switches it off.

Suddenly tired, he brings a hand up to his eyes and, in a gesture that has become a habit, he runs it over his face. He inhales its smell. It held our heroine’s hand, so briefly but for too long, it has captured her smell. He has never missed her so much. In an attempt to escape, he rubs his hands together in a stream of water and lathers them for a long time. The lily of the valley resists the almond’s assault. He takes another shower. The lily of the valley yields at last.