The Erotic Potential of my Wife (8 page)

Laurence lifted the dish to get a nose-full of the aroma from the veal paupiettes. She felt good in her comfortable kitchen, and took advantage of this evening among friends to decompress; she would soon be in the finals of a competition critical for her international career. Her coach had given her ten days off, but she had not been able to stop herself hitting the ball, working on her mythic wrist stroke; well, we know. It was Marcel’s brilliant idea to invite Hector and Brigitte for dinner. She was happy to see her husband’s friend again. She did not really know why, but for almost two years now he had studiously avoided her. Well, she did have some doubts, actually. Hector was scared stiff of her since the testicle fondling incident. However, from her point of view, this had only been an expression of affection. So it was also to straighten things up that she called him to the kitchen.

Socially, he could not refuse.

He entered the kitchen and witnessed the paupiettes’ preparation, his face white and blood cold. Or the opposite.

‘Can I help you with something?’

‘Yes, I would like for us to have a chat, one second … well, you see … I don’t understand why you’ve been fleeing me all this time … When you left for the United States, I thought that it was because of me …’

In saying what she had just said, Laurence advanced slowly but surely towards Hector, she’d wanted to pacify their relationship, excuse herself for her sexual aggression; however, upon seeing him, this best friend of Marcel’s, a low impulse itched at her, an irrepressible impulse like in the time of Racine tragedies. She then rushed towards him, Phedre of paupiettes, and in wanting to catch Hector’s testicles once again, her hand collided against a hard surface. In anticipation of that evening, and due to an all-in-all justified apprehension, Hector had protected his crotch with a footballer’s shell. Laurence screamed, and immediately, everyone crashed into the kitchen. They rushed to the emergency room, and the diagnosis was unambiguous: Laurence had sprained her little finger. The next morning, this was largely related in sports newspapers:
Laurence Leroy forfeits final
. The two fans she had in Evry cried.

Hector felt guilty. All professional athletes should have the right to fondle the testicles of those they find attractive – with no aggravation. Gérard, before Ouarzazate-Casablanca, must have had a field day. He felt so guilt-ridden, and this burden was too heavy to carry (let’s not forget that he already had to bear his abnormal attraction to the Brigittian window washing). The morals of the French would be lowered because of him. With horse riding and fencing, ping-pong is one of our biggest sources of pride. We are a physical people! Yet now we were nothing more than a bunch of sprained little fingers.

What has just been related is not quite exact, and this
hors-piste
of reality must be attributed to Hector. His imagination has travelled towards the worst. Laurence had indeed injured herself, but thanks to her friend the physiotherapist, she had been able to heal, and would take part in the final. Phew!

She was nevertheless mentally weakened, and for the first time in twelve years, she asked Marcel to accompany her. Far too emotional to follow the matches of his darling, he had never wanted to come. In the context of the sprained little finger, he would have to overcome his anxiety. To confront this situation, he had no solution other than beg his friend Hector to go with him. Even though ping-pong was by far the sport that interested him the least in the world, his ongoing guilt pushed him to accept. They would leave this Saturday for the whole day. Hector asked Brigitte if this absence, the first in since six months, at least bothered her. Not at all, she quickly reassured him; she was a woman perfectly able of improvising a whole Saturday, just like that. And then, on the sly, with the most innocuous voice there is, she added: ‘I will take the opportunity to do some cleaning.’

The sentence immediately lingered in the air and became the only air in Hector’s head. How could he think of anything else? She would do some cleaning, she would do some cleaning. Big flushes of anxiety attacked him. He did not dare ask the question haunting him; he did not dare ask the details of this cleaning. But she stopped any interrogation in its tracks because she added that she would clean the windows. At that moment, and in a totally brutal way, he thought about his suicide attempt. And then, he tried to pull himself together, he was a man after all! The first idea that came to his mind was to clean the windows himself on Saturday morning; at least he would be sure that she would not do it in his absence. Or he could announce to Brigitte that it would rain heavily on Sunday, the announcement would render an enterprise to clean the windows null and void, rain water loved to humiliate clean windows. Dozens of parades were invading his mind, nothing could cause him more anguish than not assisting to a potential wash, it was just not conceivable. He found himself in front of a mirror, and thanks to this vision, he cut short the zigzagging parade of his mind. He was shaking, and in this movement, he was dropping beads of sweat. He felt as though his fate was escaping him again, and that he was becoming a heap of flesh prey to obscure demons. An eternal return was wriggling in him.

We had (sorry) underestimated Hector’s propensity to be twisted. It has to be said that the decision he had just taken was somewhat shocking; in any case, for all those who had been unable to reach the initial levels of his neurosis. When he saw himself shaking and sweating a few minutes ago, he had just had a revelation: he should never prevent Brigitte from washing the windows. His problem was not that she was cleaning, but rather that he was not there. Therefore, he considered that he had no other choice than to leave a camera in a nook in the apartment. A secret camera of course, and he would take delight in the images upon his return. There, he had his solution. On Saturday, he could go with a clear mind and support Marcel who was supporting Laurence. Until then, he did not go to work, and bought sufficiently adequate equipment. He did not regret all these moments spent reading magazines about the most up-to-date technology and modern furniture; he was even satisfied that this time was finally paying off. During all these steps, he did not once think back to the old Hector, the one who obsessed on acquiring a specific object. How did he manage not to understand the point to which he had relapsed? His illness, in catching up with him, had blindfolded him.

Thankfully we still had a friend who, again and always, was going to explain our life to us. However, Marcel was not having an easy time of things. Selfishly, he knew that if Laurence had the misfortune of losing the match, the atmosphere at home would be unbearable, and he could always dream of seeing a real shepherd’s pie again. It was obviously not Marcel’s principal thought, and his whole heart united itself in cosmic waves with the sub-God delegated to the affairs of ping-pong. He was not being haughty: small stomach pains were harassing him. And it is finally because of this discomfort that the two friends ended speaking about the cleaning of windows. Wishing to distract, and thus hoping to diminish the gastric slippages of his friend, trying by all means possible to concentrate on this man who was almost asphyxiating him, Hector thought he was doing well in recounting his latest exploits. So he started to explain how he had hidden a camera on the top of a cabinet, a camera that would be set off at every movement in the axis of a dirty window. His attempt was crowned with a great success as Marcel, shocked by what he had just heard, stopped all his farts short. Aggrieved, he asked for some additional information: how did all of this start, how did such a crazy idea come to him, and so on. The explanations barely over, he uncovered the atrocity of his diagnostic.

‘Hector, you have plunged back!’

In a first instance, Hector thought swimming pool. Then, he took his head out of the water to understand the figurative meaning of the words ‘plunged back’. He required silence to digest the terrible announcement. Everything tallied, every morsel of his new passion stuck, moment by moment, to his earlier life. This devastating fascination for a moment of his wife, and this irrepressible urge to relive it. He then enunciated this sentence, disconnecting every syllable: ‘I collect the moments when my wife washes the windows.’ Hector repeated this sentence 112 times. The sweat, the frenzy, he was collecting a moment of his wife. Again and again, the shock of the evidence. And the more he thought about it, the more he wanted a small hit of cleaning of windows; he was already addicted. He tried not to cry, and yet how to not think of this terrible question: was it possible to be another man? In meeting Brigitte, he had believed reaching the wonder of uniqueness, the woman of all unique women in each of her gestures, unique in her unique way of biting her lips, of passing her hands through her hair in the morning, with her grace and elegance, woman of women, unique in opening her thighs. And yet, nothing could be done, always the same mess, gnawing and absurd, always to lead this life of a worm in reduced earth.

Marcel lent him his handkerchief. He promised to take him to Deauville to eat mussels. Everything would get better. This idea of mussels could have finished him off but, in a surprising way, Hector regained some composure. The memory of the wash produced a hint of a smile (a gap in his mouth). The paradoxical malaise of the collector is that he finds the biggest source of rejoicing in his vice. Transformed into a mental collection, the moment of the washing of windows has become his possibility of not living a soft life (during a session of psychoanalysis, he would be told that he is seeking to kill his father). When Brigitte cleaned the windows, it was her refrain, it was the song that lovers sing under the rain. The absurdity of his life had the charm of clichés. Thus, he was not unhappy; all he needed was to think about his secret. To feel good, he had found the solution: not to seek to get better! He was like that, full stop. He liked the window washing of his wife like others like to go to prostitutes while walking the dog. He was going to start a subterranean life for the umpteenth time. Of course, there was a non-negligible part of risk. To film the woman of your life behind her back: we had seen better for the peace of the household.

Marcel loved to buy newspapers when he took the train: simple newspapers where current affairs, summer fashions and celebrities were discussed. Under his elbow, there was a weekly whose cover was on
the strange affair of the disappearances
.
¹
Two young women had been abducted in the same Paris neighbourhood. We learned everything about their lives, but there were no elements about the abductor. Hector, still bowled over by his resolution, thought that he would never know the abduction of his personality. They were finally arriving in a city that looked a bit like Saint-Etienne. And Laurence won her match 23 to 21. She was gentle when she won.

______________

1
   If we mention this affair of the disappearances, it is because it will have its importance in our story. Here, nothing is ever superfluous; we do not support the unnecessary.

Brigitte did not notice anything, the camera had been so discreet it was worthy of a wildlife documentary. Hector, upon his return, acted as though nothing was going on, which was incredibly easy since to act as though nothing was going on was the attitude towards which he had the highest disposition. Saturday evening they made love, endeavouring to tire themselves out as much as possible so that Sunday, a day that is sometimes hard to kill, would unfold in the torpor of physical recuperation. Well, they would have done better in abstaining, as a serious (and peculiar for people who consider Sunday as a difficult day to kill) event occurred: it was Mireille, calling in a quavering voice, a soup problem, thought Hector, and in actual fact it was far more serious, since this telephone call announced his father’s death.

‘Oh my God …’ sighed Hector. And three minutes later, he could hardly feel anything. Except, maybe, some gurgles in his stomach, signs that he was hungry.

Death has its faults, it encumbers the lives of those who are alive and kicking by leaving those who do not die in their arms. A mother, for example. We should always die in groups; it would be like a package holiday. Hector did not really know why all these cynical thoughts were going through his mind, it was perhaps the effect of death, it hardened him in one fell swoop. Hector did not cry, but Brigitte, adorably discerning, understood that something peculiar had just taken place. She approached her man who suddenly had a child’s face, and placed a gentle hand on his cheek.

‘Is something wrong?’

Hector thought at that moment – was it an echo of his cynical trip? – that he could obtain anything from that woman. When you lose your father, how many window washes can you win?

Ernest was the older brother, so he was charged with taking in their mother. Hector spent the night with them. There was also Justine who had returned to the marital home, after having attempted to lead a single life. They had played out their crisis, and then, lo and behold, everything was forgotten. Hector thought straight away about his story of changing luck. In his mind, Justine’s return announced the pending end of his pseudo-happiness. No doubt about it: a karmic threat was hanging over the two brothers: they could not be happy at the same time. (At least the Karamazovs were all three united in the sinister.) Between brothers, you have to help each other. Yeah right, he was not even able to endure a trivial year of misery. He had to re-Justinify himself. To relax, he went out to buy some instant soup and prepared it for his mother. It would lift her spirits, her daily soup. Ultimately, that was far from the case. After the two brothers motivated Mireille to eat a little, at least enough to survive until the funeral, she acquiesced and found herself face to face with a painful revelation: instant soup was good. All these years, she had bought, washed, peeled twelve million vegetables to, at the moment her husband died, realise that our modern society provides delicious ready-made soups. She entered a depression that would only end with her last breath. Hector blamed himself for the blow, and added this new guilt to the sum of guilt-feelings that he had to bear for the rest of his life.