The Intervention of a Good Man

4

In which our hero rereads and corrects his notes.

In which he prepares for the worst and also the best.

Daylight peeps through the skimpy curtains. His cell phone blinkingly indicates it is three minutes past six in the morning. Our hero wakes, exhausted, after too short a night. Quite unable to get back to sleep, he sits on the bed, switches on his laptop, and reworks the few notes he made. A reader (a woman reader comes to mind more readily but it could just as well be a man) would be wrong to think that this new text was less sincere than the first draft, from which it differs only in small details. In fact the opposite is true: there, on his keyboard, our hero hones his thoughts, adjusting words to try to capture his feelings as accurately as possible. His sentences also expel the tragic element, and he is not displeased by the redeeming role he makes them play. If our hero had any recollection of things he read long ago, he would know that, in his Poetics, Aristotle ascribed the word “catharsis” to this purging of passions through practicing an art form.

True.

In more prosaic terms, writing also eats away the minutes, which is no mean feat.

It is now two and a half hours until he can call her. They are going to see each other, definitely. Yes but, yes but, our hero suddenly worries, could it be she has already made her decision, that nothing can make her change her mind? Has she let him come to the farthest reaches of the Highlands to tell him that she will no longer give herself to him? And if this is the case, could he hold it against her? She owes him nothing, of course, and he did so insist on coming.

Come on, he thinks, if I seem lighthearted, carefree, smiley, I’ll persuade her to accept my kisses, my affection, and, softly softly, when the feeling is right, to make love. I will put far more energy into that than any introspection and soul-searching.

This lightheartedness is essential. For, if our hero would only admit it to himself, it was the very moment the heroine sensed the beginnings of true feelings in him that she kept her distance, as if afraid. Our heroine does not want any complications. It suddenly occurs to him that he needs to affect indifference, that she will surrender herself more readily to a man who does not love her than to one who does.

Granted, this detachment is not a character trait he appreciates in her, but if it is thanks to this that they end up making love, should he complain? Yes, cries some part of him, yes, I should complain. If all she’s looking for is my lust, if she doesn’t want to be loved, then she doesn’t love me.

This is his implacable deduction. And, anyway, if he no longer feels any love, what will happen? Our hero knows the workings of his own body by heart, and realizes that, with age, the path adopted by his desire has become more cerebral, more vulnerable. All his life, desire alone has never been completely sufficient for him to desire completely. But now, everything about the other person needs to convince him, the attentiveness of every gesture, the tension in her entire body. He wants her skin to long for his, and to prove it to him every moment. This demanding requirement, he fears, will become increasingly difficult to satisfy with the passing years.

Our hero closes his eyes. He tries to reconstruct her face, to rekindle, beneath his eyelids, cheerful images of times they spent together. Only anecdotal images emerge, that bottle of muscat drunk from coffee cups, a stolen kiss in the harsh light of the Métro, a ray of sunlight skimming the golden hairs on an arm, loving words sidelined in favor of pleasure. Too few definite images to strengthen his resolve.

He tosses and turns between the sheets.

Our hero yawns. Sighs.

We’ll see.

And this closes Chapter 4.