Ernaux - Simple Passion

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Nous deuxle magazineest plus obscne que Sade.

ROLAND BARTHES

THIS SUMMER, for the first time, I watched an X-rated film on Canal Plus. My television set doesnt have a decoder; the images on the screen were blurred, the words replaced by strange sound effects, hissing and babbling, a different sort of language, soft and continuous. One could make out the figure of a woman in a corset and stockings, and a man. The story was incomprehensible; it was impossible to predict any of their actions or movements. The man walked up to the woman. There was a close-up of the womans genitals, clearly visible among the shimmerings of the screen, then of the mans penis, fully erect, sliding into the womans vagina. For a long time this coming and going of the two sex organs was shown from several angles. The cock reappeared, in the mans hand, and the sperm spilled on to the womans belly. No doubt one gets used to such a sight; the first time is shattering. Centuries and centuries, hundreds of generations have gone by, and it is only now that one can see thisa mans penis and a womans vagina coming together, the spermsomething one could barely take in without dying has become as easy to watch as a handshake.

It occurred to me that writing should also aim for thatthe impression conveyed by sexual intercourse, a feeling of anxiety and stupefaction, a suspension of moral judgment.

FROM SEPTEMBER last year, I did nothing else but wait for a man: for him to call me and come round to my place. I would go to the supermarket, the cinema, take my clothes to the dry cleaners, read books, and mark essays. I behaved exactly the same way as before but without the long-standing familiarity of these actions I would have found it impossible to do so, except at the cost of a tremendous effort. It was when I spoke that I realized I was acting instinctively. Words, sentences, and even my laugh, formed on my lips without my actually thinking about it or wanting it. In fact I have only vague memories of the things I did, the films I saw, the people I met. I behaved in an artificial manner. The only actions involving willpower, desire, and what I take to be human intelligence (planning, weighing the pros and cons, assessing the consequences) were all related to this man:

In the course of conversation, the only subjects that escaped my indifference were those related to this man, his work, the country he came from, and the places hed been to. The person speaking to me had no idea that my sudden interest in their conversation had nothing to do with their description or even the subject itself, but with the fact that one day, ten years before I met him, A had been sent to Havana on an assignment and may have set foot in that very night club, the Fiorendito, which they were describing in minute detail, encouraged by my attentive listening. In the same way, when I was reading, the sentences that made me pause were those concerning a relationship between a man and a woman. I felt that they could teach me something about A and that they lent credibility to the things I wished to believe. For instance, reading in Vassili Grossmans Life and Fate that people in love kiss with their eyes closed led me to believe that A loved me since that was the way he kissed me. After that passage, the rest of the book returned to being what everything else had been to me for a whole yeara means of filling in time between two meetings.

I had no future other than the telephone call fixing our next appointment. I would try to leave the house as little as possible except for professional reasons (naturally, he knew my working hours), forever fearing that he might call during my absence. I would also avoid using the vacuum cleaner or the hairdryer as they would have prevented me from hearing the sound of the telephone. Every time it rang, I was consumed with hope, which usually only lasted the time it took me slowly to pick up the receiver and say hello. When I realized it wasnt him, I felt so utterly dejected that I began to loathe the person who was on the line. As soon as I heard As voice, my long, painful wait, invariably tinged with jealousy, dissipated so quickly that I felt I had been mad and had suddenly become sane again. I was struck by the insignificance of that voice and the exaggerated importance it had taken in my life.

If he told me he was arriving in an houran opportunity, in other words an excuse to be late without arousing his wifes suspicionsI would enter a different phase of waiting, devoid of thought or even desire (to the extent of wondering whether I would be able to achieve an orgasm), bursting with frenzied energy, unable to organize the simplest tasks: having a shower, getting out the glasses, painting my nails, mopping the floor. I no longer even knew who I was waiting for. I was entirely at the mercy of that crucial moment when I would hear the car brake, the door slam, and his foot-steps on the concrete porcha moment which I always anticipated with unspeakable terror.

When he left me more time between his phone call and his visit, three or four days, I imagined with disgust all the work I would have to do and the social engagements I would have to attend before seeing him again. I would have liked to have done nothing else but wait for him. I lived with the growing obsession that something might happen to stop us from meeting. One afternoon, when I was driving home and expecting him half an hour later, it occurred to me fleetingly that I could have an accident. Immediately: Im not sure that I would stop.

Once I had dressed, made up, done my hair, and tidied the house, if I still had some time left, I would be incapable of reading or marking essays. In a way, too, I didnt want my mind to concentrate on anything else but the wait itself, in order not to spoil it. Quite often I would write down on a sheet of paper the date, the time, and hes going to come, along with other sentences, fearsthat he might not come, that he might not feel the same desire for me. In the evening I would go back to the sheet of paper, he came, jotting down the details of that meeting at random. Then, dazed, I would stare at the scrawls on the paper and the two paragraphs written before and after, which one read in succession without a break. In between there had been words and gestures that made everything else seem trivial, including the very writing destined to capture them. An interval of time squeezed in between two car noiseshis Renault 25 braking, then driving off againwhen I knew that nothing in my life (having children, passing exams, traveling to faraway countries) had ever meant as much to me as lying in bed with that man in the middle of the afternoon.

It would only last for a few hours. I never wore my watch, removing it just before he arrived. He would keep his on and I dreaded the moment when he would glance at it discreetly. When I went into the kitchen to get some ice, I would look up at the clock hanging above the door: only two more hours, only one more hour, or in one hour Ill be here and hell be gone. Astonished, I asked myself: Where is the present?