Slowness (12 page)

He strides the room and repeats the last phrase several times aloud. Plural cock, what a great find! Then (the disagreeable arousal has already totally vanished) he picks up his bag and leaves.

some ten hours later, the Chevalier emerges, alone now, with no one for company.

When the door of Madame de T.‘s apartment had closed behind him, he heard the Marquis’s laughter, soon joined by another laugh, a woman’s. For a moment his steps slowed: why are they laughing? are they making fun of him? Then he does not want to hear another thing, and without delay he heads for the exit; yet in his soul he still hears that laughter; he cannot rid himself of it. He remembers the Marquis’s remark: “So you don’t see how very comical your role is?” When, early that morning, the Marquis asked him that malicious question, he did not blink. He knew the Marquis was cuckolded, and he cheerfully told himself that either Madame de T. was about to leave the Marquis, and so he himself was sure to see her again, or else that she was taking revenge, and so he was likely to see her again (because a person who takes revenge today will take it tomorrow too). That is what he could think just an hour earlier. But now, after Madame de T.‘s final words, everything has become clear: the night would have no sequel. No tomorrow.

He leaves the chateau in the chill morning

47

Vera has gone to pay at the desk, and I carry a little valise down to our car in the courtyard. Regretting that the vulgar Ninth Symphony should have kept my wife from sleeping and precipitated our departure from this place where I was so content, I take a wistful look around me. The chateau’s front steps. It was there that the husband, courteous and icy, came to greet his wife, accompanied by the young Chevalier, when the carriage pulled up as the night began. There,

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emptiness; he tells himself that nothing is left to him of the night he has just lived through, nothing but that laughter: the anecdote will get around, and he will become a joke figure. It is a well-known fact that no woman desires a man who is a joke. Without asking his leave, they have put a jester’s cap on his head, and he does not feel up to wearing it. In his soul he hears the voice of revolt urging him to tell his story, to tell it the way it happened, tell it openly and to everyone.

But he knows he will not be able to do that. Becoming a boor is even worse than being ludicrous. He cannot betray Madame de T., and he will not betray her.

ably heartbreaking memory of Julie. He knows that only the invented story can make him forget what really happened. He wants to tell that new story openly and soon, transform it into a ceremonial trumpet fanfare that will render null and void the wretched counterfeit coition that caused him to lose Julie.

“I was a plural cock,” he repeats to himself, and in answer he hears Pontevin’s conspiratorial laughter, he sees that appealing grin on Machu, who will say: “You’re a plural cock, and we’ll never call you anything else but Plural Cock.” He likes that idea, and he smiles.

As he walks toward his motorcycle, where it is parked at the far end of the courtyard, he sees a man a little younger than he, dressed up in an outfit from long ago and coming toward him. Vincent stares at him, stupefied. Oh, he must be really knocked out after that insane night: he can’t come up with any sensible explanation for this apparition. Is it an actor wearing a historical costume? Maybe connected to that television woman? Maybe somebody was shooting some commercial here at the chateau yesterday? But when their eyes meet he sees in the young man’s

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By another door, a more discreet one near the reception desk, Vincent goes out into the courtyard. He keeps making himself retell the story of the orgy beside the swimming pool, no longer for its anti-arousal effect (he is already very far from any arousal) but in order to blot out the unbear-148

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look an astonishment so authentic that no actor would ever have been capable of it.

court without knowing France. It is that intonation, that unbelievable pronunciation, which made the Chevalier think this man really might belong to some other period.

“Yes, and you?” he asks.

“Me? The twentieth.” Then he adds: “The end of the twentieth.” And he adds further: “I’ve just spent a marvelous night.”

The remark strikes the Chevalier. “So have I,” he says.

He pictures Madame de T. and is suddenly overcome by a wave of gratitude. My God, how could he pay such mind to the Marquis’s laughter? As if the most important thing were not the beauty of the night he had just spent, the beauty that still grips him in such intoxication that he is seeing phantoms, confusing dreams with reality, feeling himself flung out of time.

And the man in the helmet, with his strange intonation, repeats: “I’ve just spent a completely marvelous night.”

The Chevalier nods as if to say, Yes, I know what you mean, friend, who could understand you better than I? And then he thinks about it: he has promised discretion, so he can never tell

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The young Chevalier looks at the stranger. It is the headgear in particular that catches his attention. Two or three centuries before, chevaliers were supposed to go into battle in helmets like that. But no less surprising than the helmet is the man’s inelegance. Long, full, utterly shapeless trousers, the sort only poor peasants might wear. Or monks, maybe.

He feels weary, drained, nearly ill. Perhaps he is asleep, perhaps he is dreaming, perhaps he is delirious. Finally, the man is right in front of him; he opens his mouth and utters a question that confirms the Chevalier in his astonishment: “You’re from the eighteenth century?”

The question is peculiar, absurd, but the way the man asks it is even more so, with a strange intonation, as if he were a messenger come from a foreign kingdom and had learned his French at

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anyone what he has experienced. But is an indiscretion still an indiscretion after two hundred years? He has the sense that the god of the libertines has sent him this man just so he can talk to him; so he can be indiscreet while still keeping to his promise of discretion; so he can set down a moment of his life somewhere in the future; project it into eternity; transform it into glory.

“Are you really from the twentieth century?”

“I certainly am, old man. There are amazing things happening in this century. Moral liberation. I tell you, I’ve just spent a terrific night.”

“So have I,” the Chevalier says once more, and he prepares to tell him about his.

“A strange night, very strange, incredible,” repeats the man in the helmet, his stare heavy with insistence.

The Chevalier sees in this stare the stubborn urge to speak. Something in that stubbornness disturbs him. He understands that that impatience to speak is also an implacable uninterest in listening. Having run up against that urge to speak, the Chevalier instantly loses the taste for saying anything at all, and at once he ceases to see any reason to prolong the encounter.

He feels a new wave of weariness. He strokes his face with his hand and catches the scent of love Madame de T. has left on his fingers. That scent stirs him to nostalgia, and he wants to be alone in the chaise to be carried slowly, dreamily to Paris.

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The man in the old-time outfit seems to Vincent very young, and thus almost required to take an interest in the confessions of people older than he. When Vincent told him twice “I’ve just spent a marvelous night” and the other answered “So have I,” he thought he’d glimpsed a certain curiosity in his face, but then, suddenly, inexplicably, it switched off, covered over by an indifference that was almost arrogant. The friendly atmosphere that lends itself to confidences lasted scarcely a minute and then evaporated.

He looks at the young man’s outfit with irritation. Who is this clown, anyway? Those shoes with the silver buckles, the white tights hugging

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the legs and buttocks, and all those impossible jabots, velvets, laces, covering and draping the chest. With two fingers he takes hold of the ribbon knotted around the fellow’s neck and examines it with a smile meant to parody admiration.

The familiarity of the gesture enrages the man in the old-time outfit. His face clenches, full of hatred. He raises his right hand as if to slap the impertinent fellow. Vincent drops the ribbon and retreats a step. After giving him a look of disdain, the man turns away and walks toward the chaise.

The contempt he spat upon him has plunged Vincent right back into his turmoil. Suddenly he feels weak. He knows he will not tell anyone the orgy story. He will not have the strength to lie. He is too sad to lie. He has only one desire: to forget this night speedily, this entire disastrous night, erase it, wipe it out, nullify it—and in this moment he feels an unquenchable thirst for speed.

His step firm, he hastens toward his motorcycle, he desires his motorcycle, he is swept with love for his motorcycle, for his motorcycle on which he will forget everything, on which he will forget himself.

51

Vera climbs into the car beside me.

“Look, there,” I tell her.

“Where?”

“There! It’s Vincent! Don’t you recognize him?”

“Vincent? The one getting on the motorcycle?”

“Yes. I’m afraid he’s going to go too fast. I’m really afraid for him.”

“He likes to go fast? He does that too?”

“Not always. But today he’ll go like a madman.”

“This chateau is haunted. It will bring everyone bad luck. Please, start the car!”

“Wait a second.”

I want to go on contemplating my Chevalier as he walks slowly toward the chaise. I want to relish the rhythm of his steps: the farther he goes, the slower they are. In that slowness, I seem to recognize a sign of happiness.

The coachman greets him; he stops, he brings his fingers to his nose, then he climbs up, takes his seat, huddles into a corner, his legs stretched comfortably before him; the chaise starts, soon he will drowse off, then he will wake, and all that time he will be trying to stay as close as he can to the night as it melts inexorably in the light.

No tomorrow.

No audience.

I beg you, friend, be happy. I have the vague sense that on your capacity to be happy hangs our only hope.

The chaise has vanished in the mist, and I start the car.