Delicacy Read online

  Delicacy

  David Foenkinos

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

  by Bruce Benderson

  I don’t know how to make peace with things,

  were each moment to tear itself away from

  time to give me a kiss.

  CIORAN

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Fifty-six

  Fifty-seven

  Fifty-eight

  Fifty-nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-one

  Sixty-two

  Sixty-three

  Sixty-four

  Sixty-five

  Sixty-six

  Sixty-seven

  Sixty-eight

  Sixty-nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-one

  Seventy-two

  Seventy-four

  Seventy-five

  Seventy-six

  Seventy-seven

  Seventy-eight

  Seventy-nine

  Eighty

  Eighty-one

  Eighty-two

  Eighty-three

  Eighty-four

  Eighty-five

  Eighty-six

  Eighty-seven

  Eighty-eight

  Eighty-nine

  Ninety

  Ninety-one

  Ninety-two

  Ninety-three

  Ninety-four

  Ninety-five

  Ninety-six

  Ninety-seven

  Ninety-eight

  Ninety-nine

  One Hundred

  One Hundred One

  One Hundred Two

  One Hundred Three

  One Hundred Four

  One Hundred Five

  One Hundred Six

  One Hundred Seven

  One Hundred Eight

  One Hundred Nine

  One Hundred Ten

  One Hundred Eleven

  One Hundred Twelve

  One Hundred Thirteen

  One Hundred Fourteen

  One Hundred Fifteen

  Footnotes

  A Note on the Author

  One

  Natalie was rather private (a kind of Swiss femininity). She’d gone through adolescence without trauma, and she respected crosswalks. At twenty, she saw the future as a promise. She liked to laugh, read: two pastimes that weren’t often simultaneous because she preferred sad stories. Since a literary bent wasn’t concrete enough for her taste, she’d decided to study economics. Under her dreamer’s demeanor, there wasn’t much room for “kind-of’s.” With a strange smile on her face, she spent hours studying curves that showed fluctuations in Estonia’s gross domestic product. When adulthood approached, she occasionally happened to go back in her mind to her childhood. Instants of happiness condensed into a few episodes—always the same ones. Running on the beach, boarding an airplane, sleeping in her father’s arms. But she never ever felt nostalgia. That was something that was quite rare for Natalie.a

  Two

  Most couples love to tell each other their stories and assume their meeting had something exceptional about it; countless pairings formed under the most banal conditions are, all the same, spiced up with details that produce a minor thrill. In the end, they try to analyze everything.

  Natalie and François met on the street. It’s always a tricky thing when a man comes up to a woman. She’s bound to wonder, Is that what he spends his time doing? Quite often the men are going to claim that it’s the first time. To listen to them, they are suddenly struck by a unique charm that gives them permission to brave their customary shyness. The women automatically answer that they don’t have the time. Natalie wasn’t breaking that rule. It was idiotic: she didn’t have much to do and liked the idea of being approached like that. No one had ever dared. Several times she’d asked herself, Do I seem too sullen, too lethargic? One of her friends had told her: nobody ever stops you because you have the look of a woman hounded by passing time.

  When a man comes up to a woman he doesn’t know, he’s supposed to say lovely things. Could there ever be a male kamikaze who’d stop a woman and fling at her, “How can you be wearing those shoes? Your toes look like they’re in a gulag. It’s shameful, you’re Stalin when it comes to your feet!” Who would say such a thing? Certainly not François, who’d wisely settled on the complimentary approach. He tried to define the least definable thing that exists: confusion. Why had he stopped her? It had mostly to do with the way she walked. He’d sensed something new, almost childlike, like a rhapsody of kneecaps. She emanated a kind of touchingly natural manner, a grace of movement, and he thought, She’s exactly the kind of woman I’d like to go with me to Geneva for the weekend. So he took himself firmly in hand (both hands, though at that moment he wished he had four). Especially because this really was the first time for him. Right then and right there on this sidewalk, they were meeting. An absolutely classical beginning, which is often how things that end up less so start.

  He stammered the first few words, when suddenly all of it came pouring out, crystal clear. A somewhat pathetic and desperate, yet terribly touching, energy took control. Therein lies the magic of our paradoxes: the situation was so uncomfortable that he pulled through with elegance. By the end of thirty seconds he’d even managed to make her smile. This created a breach in the anonymity. She agreed to have coffee, and he understood that she wasn’t in the slightest hurry. He found it amazing to be able to spend a moment like this with a woman who’d just entered his field of vision. He’d always liked to watch women in the street. He even remembered having been kind of a romantic teenager who was capable of following girls from good families right up to the door of their apartments. He’d even changed cars in the subway to get near a passenger he’d spotted from a distance. Although prey to the dictates of physical desire, he remained no less a romantic man, believing that the realm of women could be shrunk to one woman.

  So he asked her what she’d like to drink. Her choice would be crucial. If she orders a decaf, he thought, I’m getting up and leaving. No one was entitled to drink a decaf when it came to this type of encounter. It’s the least gregarious drink there is. Tea isn’t much better. Just met, and already settling into some kind of dull cocoon. You feel like you’re going to end up spending Sunday afternoons watching TV. Or worse: at the in-laws’. Yes, tea is indisputably in-law territory. Then what? Alcohol? No good for this time of day. You could have qualms ab
out a woman who starts drinking right away like that. Even a glass of red wine isn’t going to cut it. François kept waiting for her to choose what she’d like to drink, and this was how he kept up his liquid analysis of first impressions of women. What was left now? Coke, or any type of soda … no, not possible, that didn’t say woman at all. Might as well ask for a straw, too, while she was at it. Finally he decided that juice was good. Yes, juice, that was nice. It’s friendly and not too aggressive. You can sense the kind of sweet, well-balanced woman who would make such a choice. But which juice? Better to avoid the great classics: apple, orange, too popular. It would have to be only slightly original without being completely eccentric. Papaya or guava—frightening. No, the best is choosing something in between, like apricot. That’s it. Apricot juice: perfect. If she chooses it, I’ll marry her, thought François. At that precise instant, Natalie raised her head from the menu, as if emerging from a long reflection. It was the same reflection in which the stranger opposite her had just been absorbed.

  “I’ll have a juice …”

  “… ?”

  “Apricot juice, I guess.”

  He looked at her as if she were a violation of reality.

  Her reason for agreeing to sit down with a stranger was that she’d fallen under his charm. She’d immediately liked his mixture of awkwardness and obviousness, an attitude floundering between Pierre Richard and Marlon Brando. Physically, he had something she appreciated in men: he was a little cross-eyed. Just a little, but still enough to notice. Yes, finding this detail about him was incredible. What’s more, he was called François. She’d always liked that name. Elegant and calm—like her idea of the fifties. He spoke more and more effortlessly now. No more lapses in the conversation, no more embarrassment, tension. Ten minutes later, that first incursion in the street had been forgotten. They felt like they’d already met, were seeing each other because they had a date. The simplicity of it was disconcerting: a simplicity that made all the other dates they’d had before baffling, those times they’d had to talk or try to be amusing, make an effort to seem like a worthwhile person. The obviousness of it became almost laughable. Natalie gazed at this no-longer-strange boy while each particle of anonymity progressively dissolved right before her eyes. She tried to remember where she’d been going when she met him. It was a blur. She wasn’t the type to go walking for no reason. Hadn’t she wanted to walk in the traces of that Cortázar novel she’d just read? Now, between them, there was literature. Yes, that was it, she’d read Hopscotch and had particularly liked those scenes where hero and heroine try to run into each other in the street, although they’re following routes born of a clochard phrase.b In the evening, they reconstructed their itineraries on a map, to see at what moment they could have met, at what moments they were bound to have brushed by each other. So that’s where she was headed: into a novel.

  Three

  Natalie’s Three Favorite Novels

  Her Lover by Albert Cohen

  *

  The Lover by Marguerite Duras

  *

  Separation by Dan Franck

  Four

  François worked in finance. Five minutes with him was enough to reveal this to be as incongruous as Natalie’s career in marketing. Maybe there’s a tyranny of the concrete that permanently frustrates careers. That said, it’s difficult to imagine what else he could have done. We may have experienced him as almost timid when he was meeting Natalie, but this was a man who was full of vitality, bursting with ideas and energy. He was enthusiastic enough to tackle any profession—even sales rep with tie. He was a man you’d have no trouble imagining with a briefcase, squeezing hands while hoping to squeeze necks. He had that annoying charm of somebody who can sell you anything at all. You’d go skiing with him in the summer and swimming with him in a lake in Iceland. He was the kind of man who’d approach a woman in the street just once and end up with the right one. For him, everything seemed to work. So, finance—why not? He belonged to that group of novice traders who gambled with millions and remembered not so long ago Monopoly games. But as soon as he was away from his bank, he became another man. He left the Standard & Poor’s where it belonged. His profession hadn’t kept him from his enthusiasms. Most of all, he liked puzzles. That may seem strange, but nothing channeled his intensity more than spending certain Saturdays putting together thousands of pieces. Natalie enjoyed watching her fiancé crouched in the living room. A silent spectacle. Suddenly, he’d stand up and shout, “Come on, we’re going out!” That’s the last thing that should be pointed out about him. He was no fan of transitions. He liked disruptions, passing from silence to bursts of activity.

  With François, time flew—at a frenzied pace. You’d have believed he could skip days, create strange weeks that had no Thursday. They’d barely met and were already celebrating two years together. Two years without the slightest blemish, enough to baffle any plate-smasher. You watched them the way you’d admire a champion. They were gold medalists of love. Natalie brilliantly pursued her studies, all the while adding ease to François’s daily life. Choosing a man who was just a little bit older than she and who already had a professional position had allowed her to leave her family. But not wanting to depend upon him for financial survival, she’d decided to work a few evenings a week in the theater as an usherette. She enjoyed a job that offset the rather austere atmosphere of the university. Once the audience had been seated, she went to her place at the back. She’d sit down and watch a show she knew by heart. She moved her lips in sync with the actresses and smiled with gracious appreciation while the audience was applauding. Then she sold them the program.

  Knowing the plays perfectly, she enjoyed embellishing her daily portion of dialogues, striding up and down the living room while yowling that the cat was dead. These last few evenings, she was playing Musset’s Lorenzaccio, tossing out a random series of lines now and then with perfect incoherence. “Come here, the Hungarian is right.” Or else: “Who is that in the mud? Who grovels before the walls of my palace with such horrible screams?” This is what François was being treated to that day, while he tried to concentrate. “Can you make a little less noise?” he asked.

  “Yes, sure.”

  “I’m doing a really major puzzle.”

  So Natalie quieted down, out of respect for her boyfriend’s dedication. This puzzle seemed different from the others. You couldn’t see any patterns, any castles or characters. It was composed of red loops on a white background. Loops that were turning into letters. It was a message in the form of a puzzle. Natalie let go of the book she’d just opened to watch the puzzle taking shape. Occasionally François turned around to look at her. The process of discovery continued toward its conclusion. There were only a few pieces left; Natalie could already guess the message, a painstakingly created one, made of hundreds of pieces. Yes, now she could read what it said: “Do you want to become my wife?”

  Five

  Top Scorers of the World of Puzzles Championship

  in Minsk, October 27 to November 1, 2008

  1. Ulrich Voigt (Germany): 1,464 points

  2. Mehmet Murat Sevim (Turkey): 1,266 points

  3. Roger Barkan (United States): 1,241 points

  Six

  To keep such an impeccable routine from being thwarted, the wedding was wonderfully executed. A celebration that was simple and sweet, neither gaudy nor too serious. There was a bottle of champagne for every guest; that was practical. The good humor was genuine. You have to be merry for a wedding. Much more so than for a birthday. There’s a hierarchy of responsibilities for joyousness, and marriage sits at the top of the pyramid. You should smile and dance and, later, pressure the old people to go to bed. Let us not forget the beauty of Natalie, who’d worked on her appearance with mounting application, tending to her weight and her looks for weeks. A perfectly mastered work of preparation: she was at the height of her beauty. Such a singular moment had to be fixed in time, just as Armstrong had planted the American flag on the moon
. François studied her with emotion and fixed the moment in his memory better than anyone else. Before him stood his wife, and he knew this image was the one that would pass before his eyes at his moment of death. It came down to perfect happiness. Then she stood up, took hold of the microphone, and sang a Beatles song.c François was crazy for John Lennon. He was, in fact, wearing white to pay homage to him. And so, when the newlyweds danced, the whiteness of one was lost in the whiteness of the other.

  Unfortunately, it began raining. This prevented the guests from taking a little air outside, under the heavens, and contemplating the stars that had been rented for the occasion. In such cases, people love to come up with ridiculous sayings, such as, “Rainy wedding, happy marriage.” Why are we constantly subjected to such absurd utterances? Of course, they weren’t being serious. It was raining and just a bit sad, that’s all. The party was less lavish cut off from these breathing sessions in the open air. You’d get stifled fast watching the rain fall harder and harder. Some would leave sooner than planned. Others would keep dancing in the same way they would have if it had snowed. Still others would think twice. Was this really important for the wedding couple?

  Comes that hour of happiness when you’re alone in the crowd. Yes, they were alone in the whirl of melodies and waltzes. We have to twirl as long as possible, he was saying, twirl to the point of no longer knowing where to go. She stopped thinking of everything. For the first time, life was lived in its unique, all-embracing density: the present.

  François took Natalie by the waist and led her outside. They ran through the garden. She said to him, “You’re crazy,” but it was a craziness that made her mad with joy. Now they were drenched, hidden by the trees. In the night, under the rain, they lay on bare ground, which was becoming muddy. The whiteness of their clothing was only a memory. François took off his wife’s dress, accepting that it was what he’d wanted to do since the start of the evening. He could even have done it at church. An instant way of honoring the two “I do’s.” But he’d held back his desire until this moment. Natalie was surprised by his intensity. She’d already stopped thinking a moment ago. She took cues from her husband, trying to breathe correctly, trying not to get carried away by all this ravaging. Her desire obeyed François’s. She had such longing to be taken by him now, on their first night as husband and wife. She was waiting, waiting, and François was talking his head off, François was in the throes of an insane energy, an outrageous appetite for pleasure. Except that, just as he penetrated her, he felt paralyzed. An anxiety that may have been related to fear of joy too intense; but no, it was something else, another thing holding him back at that instant. And keeping him from going on. “What’s happening?” she asked him. And he answered, “Nothing … nothing … it’s just the first time I’ve made love with a married woman.”