The Erotic Potential of my Wife (7 page)

I am happy, thought Hector.

And this thought was not about to leave him.

After cleaning, Brigitte went with a friend to take advantage of the July sales; she would definitely return with two dresses, a lilac cardigan, and four pairs of knickers. Hector had a rendezvous with nothing, so he stayed seated in front of the clean window. Then, suddenly, he stood up and wondered about the moment of absence he had just had. It had been half an hour since his wife had gone out. He had vegetated, his throat dry, in a dead world. Not one thought had crossed his mind.

In the middle of the following night, Hector thought back to the great moment during which his wife had cleaned the windows. This moment of pure joy, an instant in his wife’s life, he thought, an adored instant. He faced the night with a smile frozen on his face. It humiliated all the smiles of his past by its surprising development. All those who experience such an intense joy know fear is not able to relive such a moment. The strangeness of the chosen moment nevertheless troubled him. We sometimes love something in an extravagant manner in the cosiness of the everyday; maybe it was as simple as that. He shouldn’t try to understand; too often joys are spoiled by too much analysis. So Hector gently stroked Brigitte’s buttocks, her panties were new. She turned around in her tireless femininity, and left her dreams for the man in her bed. Hector slid along Brigitte’s body and spread her thighs; she lost fingers in his hair. Stability came quickly; their two bodies were face to face, white and useful. She held on tight to his back, he grabbed on to the nape of her neck. It was impossible to know who was feeling the most pleasure, omniscience ended at the point of the possible orgasms. We only knew that Hector, at the moment of coming, when his head was an empty shell, at the moment of climax, was still haunted by this image, Brigitte cleaning the windows.

The following days went by without incident. Hector thought back to what he had felt, without yet being able to make the link with his past. Believing himself completely cured from compulsive hoarding, he sometimes mocked the crazy way that he had led his life on the periphery of the important. Since he had met Brigitte, any concept of relapse seemed unlikely to him. The evident sensuality, the Brigittian savour, all these new sensations had one point in common: uniqueness. There only existed one Brigitte like his, and in falling in admiration for this unique object, the object of his love, he was abstaining from his obsession. You can collect women, but you cannot collect women you love. His passion for Brigitte was impossible to duplicate.

And the more he loved her, the more she was unique.

Every one of her gestures unique.

Every one of her smiles as unique as a person.

But these proofs did not by any means prevent the possible fascination for any one of gesture. Was that not what was hatching in Hector’s mind? A bit too self-assured, he was forgetting his past and the relentlessness with which compulsive hoarding had always returned to impose itself on him. The thought of the window washing bordered on perfidious relapse. Hector had to be very careful, tyranny was watching him, and, faithful to its legendary rudeness, tyranny never knocked before entering.

What some of us feared, happened. Clarisse had not been cutting her nails for almost two months when she agreed to do a sexual act, basically quite wild, with Ernest. It cost him several scratches on his back, indisputable traces of a tigress mistress. Big brother of Hector and big dummy above all, Ernest could not undress during almost a good two weeks, and had to make Justine believe that his back was suddenly very cold. The fear of being discovered did not make him regret all the moments when he had kissed Clarisse’s shoulders, the tigress hiding in a vast mane of hair. If physical love is a dead end, Justine forced herself into an impasse in the middle of the night to lift her husband’s T-shirt, who, it must be said, had slept bare-chested for twelve years. There was something suspicious, and women always spot the suspicious. He had to pack his bags without even finishing his night, and even less this dream that seemed promising (a Chinese woman).

So before dawn, he rang his brother’s doorbell to tell him that he was sleeping with a brunette from the firm, Clarisse, and that his wife, bloody scratches, had just caught him out, ‘Can I come sleep at yours?’ Well, sleep – he doubted he’d be able to, but sleeping in a hotel, with what just happened to him, did not appeal. Hector found the necessary energy to simultaneously deploy compassion, fraternal tenderness, and the offer of a sofa bed as soft as it was modern. Ernest felt good in this new bed (and if the Chinese woman came back …) before dignity pulled his mind back to his misfortune.

Ernest had always been sturdy. Adept in the complexities of life, there he was transforming into a Sunday wreck. And it was the worst possible Sunday, the one when they take an hour away. He was catching up on all the years when he had not mourned himself. The poor man was digging himself into a tunnel … And his daughter! Little Lucie, my God, he would never see her again! He would not even be there when she would come home early in the morning with the red eyes of an inert and depraved teenager. There it was, everything was finished. You should always look at the nails of the woman that you sleep with. What an imbecile! He would only have his work left. He would dive in tomorrow to drown under the files. With regard to his divorce, the saying was already known: cobblers often have the worst shoes. It was the same in this case; lawyers plead their own cases terribly. They often marry among themselves to cancel out this effect. Ernest would ask Berthier to take care of him. He was a fine man this Berthier. Moreover, as a hardened bachelor (Berthier had reached the degree of celibacy where the existence of women is forgotten), he would do everything to speed things up. Between men who were going to be bored stiff in their lives, you needed to help each other. No really, this Berthier would be perfect. He even would have deserved a mention earlier in the story.

Hector was very disturbed by his brother’s rough patch, and even more so because of a peculiarity. Ernest, until now the quasi-Olympic champion of happiness, was sinking at the precise moment when Hector was finally seeing life through rose-tinted spectacles. His parents had not wanted two sons at the same time; in other words, they could not both be simultaneously at the same place in their lives. It was almost as though the wheel had turned and that Ernest was going to live, to Hector’s great pleasure, a life of depression. Their life as brothers was schizophrenic.

This suggestion of the wheel that turns between the brothers did seem rather absurd, because Hector was not on his best form. Ungrateful periods always lurk behind the joys. This could well seem ridiculous, especially in this context (such a beautiful Brigitte, a company in full expansion, a child on the cards for later), but Hector did in fact seem feverish. He was going around in circles since that morning, and felt incapable of escaping these circles. Brigitte, in a light dress that every summer deserves, had just left the apartment. Hector did not really look like much. He did not even harbour the beard of the tired man; his hairs, hardly masterful, resembled employees on a Monday morning. Even an oyster would have been bored in his company.

A little later, we find him sitting in his armchair again. Atrocious thoughts are circling his mind. Facing the window washed the previous Saturday, or was it a more distant Saturday (the memory occurred so often he’d forgotten when it originally happened and how long it’d been since he’d ‘never felt so happy’), he remained silent. Evanescence captured, sensuality caught, he could have died that day. As Thomas Mann wrote: ‘He who has contemplated Beauty is already predestined to die.’ Brigitte’s window washing was a bit like Hector’s very own
Death in Venice
. But Hector did not know who Thomas Mann was, so he could survive. Lack of culture saves many lives. Oh, that Saturday afternoon! Mythic moment where time, with respect for such beauty, should have stopped! Hector, facing the window, always and again facing the window, shed tears of joy. Was it possible to love a woman so much? A woman in all the strength of her fragility. It was this moment that he recalled in memory. This moment of washing that he’d not chosen just as love at first sight is not chosen. If all couples return endlessly to the place where they met, Hector was of course allowed to relive the moment where Brigitte had washed the windows. This moment would be the pilgrimage of his love.

So, he spent the day dirtying the window.

Dirtying a clean window, while trying to give the impression that it became dirty naturally, is not an easy feat. And Hector, before reaching the true perfection of natural illusion, had tried several formulas in vain. Through successive trial and error, he had just reached perfection for what must really be considered a new art form. His victorious composition was the following: a few fingerprints cleverly disposed, a fly caught in full flight then squashed right away (speed is of the essence, because an antagonised fly, with its final jolts, creates a more authentic mess than a fly that is already quite dead), a bit of dust from the street and, to crown the lot, an indispensable and light trickle of spit …

Hector was speaking on the phone with his brother: ‘Someone’s lent me a studio for the time it takes to get back on my feet. So that’s already done.’ Hector made a play on words, and Ernest laughed to make believe that he had understood – when Brigitte came home from work. As soon as he hung up he justified his absence from work with a headache. Brigitte gave a hint of a smile:

‘You’re as much a boss as I am, you don’t need to give me any excuses!’

There was no time to lose. Brigitte needed to spot the dirt on the windows. He was immediately faced with one of the greatest challenges of our humanity: trying to make somebody discover something she has no intention of seeing. Hector, in such a rush, thought of saying, in the least conspicuous way possible: ‘Oh look, the windows are dirty.’ But he rejected this idea, it was not possible. She would definitely have asked him why he, who had stayed home all day, had not given them a wipe … This could easily deteriorate into a domestic argument and should therefore be avoided. He had to lure her into the living room, and make her discover the pot of roses. After, he was more or less sure that she would clean right away: she would never allow such a window to survive. But it was interminable, the longest day ever. Brigitte had billions of things to do in the kitchen, or in the bedrooms, and when, finally, miracle of the night, he succeeded in luring her to the trap of the living room, she did not once look in the direction of the windows. As though she was doing it on purpose, the bitch. Hector pranced in front of the window, bobbing his head. She laughed at his silliness. ‘My husband, the comedian,’ she thought. He bitterly regretted not having forced his hand, not having spat out a kind of incredibly visible phlegm. There might still be time, she would only have to turn her back and he would pounce to dirty the window some more! Far too perturbed by the situation, far too exhausted by his yearning, he felt incapable of waiting any longer. He therefore opted for the most mediocre solution, and grabbed Brigitte by the waist. He suggested they gaze at one of the most romantic views there is from the bay window.

‘Darling, if you raise your eyes, you’ll be able to see something rather peculiar …’

‘Oh really, what?’

‘Well, you know that we can see the building opposite …’

‘Yes, and?’

‘And, and, it’s crazy … And look, you can see what is happening in the apartments.’

‘Well yeah … That’s what you call having two buildings face to face. Say, your headache, it’s not improving …
(After a time.)
But this window is absolutely disgusting!’

(Climax: when the hunter captures his prey; the ecstasy of the warrior in his conquest, life is as gentle as sentinels on your skin.) Without surprising anyone, he adopted a small, pitiful tone to wonder:

‘Oh really, you think it’s dirty? Me, I hadn’t really noticed …’

‘I don’t know what you need … I have never seen such a disgusting window!’

Brigitte busied herself with the gentle ease of women who are never caught unawares. Hector, unable to restrain a small erection, walked backwards three metres to slump into his armchair. He looked like an ice cube sliding to the bottom of a gin and tonic, just before floating. Brigitte, not being endowed with eyes in the back her head, did not notice. She did not see her husband, or the trail of saliva that escaped, drool spreading on an otherwise innocent tie.

It was then.

It was then that the telephone rang.

Hector did not allow himself to be disturbed, nothing else existed anymore. Brigitte, after three rings, turned around and asked whether he planned to answer before the death of the caller (so Brigitte was a funny woman). She did not spot the drool – the size of which was impossible to miss – because they were still in blind love.

‘Yes, I’ll get it,’ he quickly said. He could not irritate her; it was as though she were pregnant. The person calling at the worst possible moment deserved at the very least to have his hands ripped off, and his vocal cords, and his hair. Hector was walking backwards, his eyes transfixed by the performance. He lifted the handset, let it agonise in the air for a few seconds, and hung up, humiliating its very purpose.

‘It’s a mistake!’ he shouted mechanically.

He went back to sit down. Suddenly, without really knowing from where it came, emotion submerged him. Sobs swept across his face, just as Magritte’s men fall from the sky. Hector did not regret anything. The beauty of that moment had just repeated itself. Without the surprise from the first time, there was, however, more magic this second time, an incredible dose of apprehension, an anxiety of the deception, and, in apotheosis, it was the ravaging of relief and recovered adrenalin. The clean window, the red curtain. Brigitte came down again from the stepladder, but could not move because Hector had thrown himself at her feet and was whispering ‘thank yous’. It inevitably concerned a manifestation of her husband’s formidable sense of humour, so she too began to smile. She began to smile like a woman who finds the one she loves an idiot.