Invisible Love (3 page)

Once again it was chance that moved things along.

Jean had hired a cleaning woman for his shop, an Italian named Angela, a big, honest, forthright woman who lived in the working class neighborhood of the Marolles. Angela was a real chatterbox. When, feather duster in hand, she mentioned during one of her daily monologues that her neighbors were called Grenier—which she pronounced with four “r”s instead of two—Jean gave a start.

Claiming an interest in her stories, he shrewdly questioned her.

What he found out upset him.

Eddy Grenier had been fired from the garage where he had worked—his boss had finally tired of his laziness and poor timekeeping—and Geneviève had had to find a job. Being good with her hands, she had established herself as a dressmaker, working from home, which allowed her to keep an eye on her children. Not that Eddy was grateful in any way. Complaining endlessly, he would grab a few banknotes from her then leave to roam the streets.

That evening, claiming that he had a delivery to make, Jean offered to give Angela a lift home.

When they got to Rue Haute, he saw a man in a polo shirt swaggering along the sidewalk and stroking the buttocks of the redhead by his side.

“
Che miseria!
” Angela muttered. “
Ecco il mio vicino
.”

Jean found it hard to connect this strutting figure with the image of the slim, nervous, awkward bridegroom in front of the altar in the cathedral, an image that had remained engraved in his brain. Eddy had filled out a lot, his features had grown broader, he shifted more air when he moved. His gestures, his facial expressions—everything about him exuded vulgarity. His weight seemed the expression of his true nature, which had been dormant in his youth: his extra pounds were a physical symbol of his moral collapse.

Jean closed his eyes.

“Is something wrong, Monsieur Daemens?”

“No. I was just feeling sorry for that man's wife.”

“Poor thing. He cheats on her
senza vergogna
.”

By the time Jean dropped Angela outside her squat building on Rue des Renards, he had learned that the neighborhood had disowned Eddy but thought highly of Geneviève. In a way, she had been ennobled by her resigned attitude, and her dignified sadness earned her the compassion of the customers who brought her their clothes to mend.

That night, in the kitchen of their apartment on Avenue Lepoutre, Jean reported these events to Laurent.

“He has girlfriends and doesn't even hide it?” Laurent said with a frown. “What a pig! You should always be discreet, shouldn't you?”

“Always.”

The two lovers looked deep into each other's eyes, each understanding the other's meaning. Then they resumed their activities, one peeling the vegetables, the other laying the table.

Through this exchange, they had confirmed their pact.

Jean and Laurent had no illusions. They knew how hard it is for a man to resist temptation, but they also knew what women often refuse to believe: that yielding to an impulse has no consequences. A male won't love his partner any less if he has slept with someone else. Heart and body are unconnected. Where a man commits his penis, he does not necessarily commit his feelings.

There was a tacit agreement between Jean and Laurent: they were faithful in spirit, however unfaithful in the flesh. The forbidden thing was to flaunt it or to become infatuated. To the extent that any flings went unnoticed and never led to anything, they were tolerated. As neither of them did anything to castrate the other, Jean and Laurent still loved each other.

That was why they reproached Eddy for his boorishness and despised him for humiliating his wife—having a bit on the side didn't need to be advertised and didn't have to cause any suffering.

In the months that followed, they thought a great deal about this other couple whose decline bothered them so much. They would have liked to intervene, to slow the process of decay, but what could they do? And what right did they have anyway?

Whenever they talked about it, they realized the extent of the gulf that existed between them and the other couple. They might have lamented the fact that they had no children, but at least they weren't living together just for the sake of the children! They might be a male couple, but this abnormality paradoxically made their lives easier, since two people of the same sex can understand each other better than two people of opposite sexes. Was there an advantage perhaps in being outsiders?

 

*

 

Christmas came, and Angela informed Jean in her morning chatter that her neighbor, Madame Grenier, had just had another baby.

“
Quale cretino
, it wasn't enough for him to chase after anything that moves, he had to try it on again with his old lady!
Povera
Geneviève! Now she has four mouths to feed,
un marito incapace
and three kids!”

Returning home, Jean announced the birth to Laurent.

Once again, they attended the christening. Hidden at the back of the church, they saw the members of the original wedding party after fifteen years, some easily identifiable even though they were more wrinkled and stooped, and others not, the babies having become teenagers and the teenagers mature adults. But the main focus of their curiosity was Eddy and Geneviève.

Geneviève had not changed much. Slim, fine-featured, she had lost just a little of her glow—probably along with her illusions . . . At the same time, the nervous way in which she held the baby betrayed something of her discomfort: she was clinging to him, as if this was her last chance to proclaim silently to the gathering, “You see, I'm still his wife! You see, Eddy still loves me!” The poor woman could not accept that her life was a disaster.

As for Eddy, he strutted about in a conceited manner, like a rooster that has demonstrated it can satisfy several females. He never so much as glanced at Geneviève, nor did he pay any attention to the older children, Johnny and Minnie. No, he only had eyes for the pretty women in the congregation, and took baby Claudia in his arms simply to offer them the image of a caring male, knowing this was an image that gave them all a thrill.

Jean and Laurent were dismayed by what they saw. It was clear to them that this couple was continuing its descent into hell. The only question was: When would they touch rock bottom?

Returning home, Jean and Laurent made love with unusual ardor, eager to be reassured, as if entwined arms or legs were a refuge from the violence of the world.

 

*

 

Two years flew by.

At the shop, listening to Angela's chatter, Jean would, from time to time, glean a few details about the Greniers, who continued to self-destruct while remaining together.

Then one day Angela informed him that Geneviève was pregnant again, even though she was pushing forty.

“
Non capisco niente
! When you live with a brute like that, you take the pill, don't you, Monsieur Daemens?”

“Well . . . ”

“I'm sorry! I'm talking to you about a world you don't know. You're a gentleman,
non
farebbe mai soffrire una signora
.”

Because Jean was so virile and so tender and charming to women, they rarely suspected that he might not desire them. Angela assumed that he had clandestine affairs with some of his distinguished customers. As for his friend Laurent, from the moment she had met him, she had supposed he led the same kind of life. As an Italian woman, she was used to men spending a lot of time together, and had never suspected a thing.

“The worst of it, Monsieur Daemens, is that Geneviève seems to be happy to be carrying this child! Oh, yes!
Esibisce
her big belly like a queen at the window of her coach.
A quarant'anni!
”

This time, there was no ad in
Le Soir
: the well-to-do uncle who always paid for the ads and who had once arranged it so that they could marry in Sainte-Gudule Cathedral had just passed away.

Nevertheless, informed by Angela as to which church the ceremony was being held in, Jean and Laurent attended the christening of the new baby, David.

The daily flea market on Place du Jeu-de-Balle was just coming to an end, leaving the area in front of the church looking like a garbage dump. Scraps of newspaper, foam from torn armchairs, broken coat hangers, crushed cartons, and chipped bowls lay on the wet paving stones. As the last vendors loaded their remaining stock onto graffiti-covered vans, two black women stuffed the garbage that interested them into plastic bags while an old man in a pea jacket and fishermen's boots, pretending to be there by chance, was also sifting through leftovers.

Pausing outside the red brick church, Jean and Laurent wondered what they were doing here. It was routine that had brought them. They hadn't really wanted to come. The game had stopped being fun. Having blamed Eddy for years, they now trained their criticism on Geneviève. Why didn't she react? Why, instead of throwing the son of a bitch out, was she still giving herself to him? Either she was pathologically weak, or she still loved him, which made her just as much of a pathological case. Not knowing which was the correct answer—cowardice or masochism—they decided to flee that hellish relationship. What connection did they have with it any longer? None at all. On the threshold of the church, they vowed that this was the last time they would take any interest in Eddy and Geneviève, and that was final!

They went inside Notre-Dame-Immaculée, known as the Spanish church because it was attended by so many Spanish-speaking immigrants, a curious building that looked more like a dining hall with its yellow walls and ceiling lights than a place of worship. They stepped over bouquets of artificial flowers to get to their place and observed the activity around the dark wooden altar.

Geneviève was transformed. She looked ten years younger and eight inches taller. A vision of loveliness, elegant even though simply dressed, she clasped the child to her, making no attempt to hide her emotion. A sullen, unshaven Eddy trailed after her like a dog on a leash and stared at the guests in a hostile manner. He had lost all the swagger he had shown at previous christenings.

When the door creaked behind them and a shadowy figure slipped into the church on the right-hand side, opposite from where they were, Jean and Laurent had their first inkling of what was going on. The dark-haired, Spanish-looking man sunk into a pew, clearly terrified of being seen.

The service began.

A vague smile on her lips, Geneviève would glance from time to time at the far corners, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, which suggested that she sensed a presence but couldn't actually see anything. For a brief moment, she lifted up baby David and displayed him to the horizon.

The Spaniard followed the service in every detail, dutifully kneeling or standing, mumbling the prayers, humming the hymns and punctuating the ceremony with judiciously placed amens.

Jean and Laurent winked at each other: the man was behaving just as they had done during the wedding in Sainte-Gudule. There was no doubt that he regarded this celebration as his.

“That's the father,” Laurent whispered.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad at all,” said Laurent. “He looks like you.”

Jean was so flattered, he could think of nothing to say in reply.

“In addition,” Laurent went on, “if my eyes aren't deceiving me, that baby there is definitely going to be dark.”

“Hmm . . . Anyway, I'm delighted to learn that Geneviève has taken a lover. I like her more than ever.”

“Me too,” replied Laurent. “Especially as she has the same tastes as me.”

Jean felt a lump in his throat. After fifteen years of living together, a compliment like that moved him even more than it had in the early days of their relationship.

Laurent turned his attention to the sullen-looking Eddy. “The husband probably doesn't know, but he smells a rat. Look at his face. Now he knows what it feels like to be cheated on.”

“Yes, at last!”

They both laughed.

Across the nave from them, the Spaniard bristled at this and shot them an angry look.

Instead of silencing them, his indignation provoked giggles in the two men, and they had to leave the church in order not to disturb the service.

Once outside, on Place du Jeu-de-Balle, they got back in the car and wiped their eyes.

“We got out in time. If Eddy Grenier had seen you up close, I'm sure he'd have assumed you were the father.”

“Stop saying we look alike!”

“Come on, it's obvious . . . Look, there he is right now.”

The Spaniard was just leaving the church, running out between the road menders and the hoboes, afraid of being seen before the service was over.

“He has your hair, your figure,” Laurent said. “Okay, the face is different, and probably a few other details I can't check, however much I'd like to.”

“So you still love me, do you?”

“Seems like it,” Laurent muttered with a shrug. “How about you?”

“Let's go home and I'll show you . . .”

Jean started the engine and drove impatiently to Avenue Lepoutre.

Every time they got back from the churches where they had been spying on the Greniers, Jean and Laurent made love. Every time, their lovemaking was fueled by a different feeling. This time, there was a kind of violence in it, a controlled violence of course, which meant “I really want you” and revived the magic of their first embrace.

 

*

 

The birth of David brought about a rebirth in their relationship. Jean and Laurent forgot the vow they had made on the threshold of the church—never to see Eddy or Geneviève again—and followed events in the Marolles with great interest.

Angela's items of gossip being somewhat fragmentary, Laurent decided to investigate for himself. He had discovered that some of his fellow electricians and stagehands at the Théâtre Royal du Parc lived in the Marolles, and so he got into the habit of going with them to the local bars, and even took up bowling.