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Christine passed the step of the front door. Antoine’s secretary, who as always remained at her post, was sitting at her desk.
Christine greeted her. With regard to her, she was feeling a slight hostility breaking inside herself, and she couldn’t refrain or silence it. Her always slightly ironic smile when she talked to the young woman and each time they met, had finally achieved to exasperate her.
After the usual courtesies, Christine got to her study.
On a pile of folders that occupied one of the corners of her desk, she discovered a note from Antoine who was inviting her for lunch.
It seemed that Antoine had really resolved to seal a relationship that, at the beginning, had the appearances of an affair with no future, uncertain and fleeting , just as so many of them build between men and women of all time.
Christine daydreamed for a short while before she opened up the folder that contained an ongoing file, and dived in the reading of a complicated document.
When Antoine finally walked into Christine’s study, by 11 a.m. he was ending up a lively conversation with his secretary. Before he even entered the room, Christine had understood he was in a bad mood. She had heard spitters, exceeded remarks. Some irritation was torturing him, some unpleasant unforeseen event had surely occurred.
Antoine closed the door behind himself after he had finished what he was telling to his secretary and he had entered the room.
He took Christine to task, explaining that one of his suppliers had one more time postponed his delivery time because the production that he was supposed to handle was keeping behind. It wasn’t the first setback of the type he had had with him. Antoine was thinking about purely and simply put an end to a collaboration that had been lasting on the same note for two or three years, and that was ending up giving him cold sweats.
Christine tried to pacify Antoine whose anger was obviously not faked. As she knew the supplier’s products well, she also knew that they were high-quality ones. She had had to do with him directly some times. It seemed to her that the interest of the firm wasn’t to break off connections that would finally end up being fruitful in the near future. At least, that was the feeling she had about this specific supplier.
At last, Antoine had cooled down. After having spent some more minutes fulminating against the indelicacy of a partner who was so rarely on time, obviously unaware of the commitments Antoine had with his own clients who suffered the repercussions of those delays and reproached him for them, he sat down on Christine’s desk corner and radically changed the subject.
One of the defining features of Antoine’s personality was his aptitude to go from a mood to another, just as to change the subject, in a very short period of time.
When you didn’t know him, it was somehow disconcerting. But, eventually, you would get used to it. That was the way it had taken for Christine.
At first, she found it hard to get used to this other way of behaving: she liked to treat the whole matter before taking in charge another one, just as to deal with an issue till she reached a satisfactory solution before she would released her concentration and her energy. Finally, she just simply admitted that one could be different from her.
Of course, this distinctive characteristic of Antoine had incontestable repercussions on his firm life.
Antoine was difficult to follow to people who worked with him, and, above all, for those who had to implement his instructions. He could change his mind on what he wanted to do in ten minutes time. He could ask his secretary to mail such type of letter to such person then, point blank, even though everything was ready, the contents of the letter had to be totally modified, or it wasn’t anymore question of a letter, but a phone call was to be given in its place.
If his secretary, fortunately endowed with a patience of steel, hadn’t succeeded to get used to his behavior, she would have probably quickly come to tear her hair out: she worked in an unbroken fickleness.
Neither was Antoine sparing Christine: she also had to cope with his sudden changes and unexpected turnarounds. Because she was clever, Christine invented a work method to help her get by the circumstances. First of all, she waited that Antoine be decided for good on what he wanted to do, or else, she would go until suggesting him such or such idea that seemed to her suitable to solve the current problem or to fulfill the step in question. Antoine often listened to her, although he wouldn’t have borne that someone else that himself take on the paternity of an idea that had to do with the management of his firm.
Therefore, Christine remained very modest. She regarded the influence she had upon Antoine, that by the by was real, in a very distant way, as a perfectly insignificant amount. She simply gave her ideas that she wouldn’t have claimed anymore to be hers, even deep inside herself, as soon as Antoine had appropriated them. She was sparing his amour propre that she had come to know, and that was, she had to admit it in spite of the feelings she had for Antoine, quite immoderate.
Posted in Literature
Christine and Antoine were lying down side by side on the double bed of one of the rooms of a hotel of the Opéra Garnier area.
They had reached that hotel where Antoine had booked a room just after they finished to have dinner.
The time was already far advanced in the night.
It was the first time they found themselves together in a bed. So far they had only known clandestine and uncomfortable couplings, played on the edge of an armchair, or even squarely standing, Christine with her back stuck on the wall behind, their attention in alert for fear of being caught by a secretary who was often there.
That new situation had inspired them. Two hours had pass without them being aware of it.
They were chatting now, pacified somehow.
Antoine was telling Christine how surprised he had been by the experience she had shown. He wanted her to tell him where she had learnt all that she knew and above all how she came to know that well men in general. Christine blushed and stammered she had read a lot and also had a few boyfriends.
Antoine laughed to the shyness she apparently never lost whatever the circumstances were. He switched the lamp that was on the night table off, which made the room plunged into the darkness. It was time to sleep, so he said, turning himself toward her and taking her in his arms. She laid her head on the shoulder of Antoine, who finally lay himself on his back, kissed his chest and closed her eyes without adding anything more.
Christine and Antoine were sound asleep. That’s the telephone ringing that woke them up.
Antoine picked up the phone then, after having muttered a still sleepy thank, hanged up. He turned himself toward Christine, told her that it was the receptionist who just called to wake him up at the time he gave to him the evening before, at their arrival. Isabelle remembered it well.
Antoine stood up in one go, just as if he were afraid to let himself convince by the cozy comfort and sweet heat of the bed, or by the temptation of strocking again Christine who was lying, naked, by his side.
He got into the bathroom. Christine heard the noise of the water of a shower before seing him back in the room, with his hair gone wet, a towel tied around his waist.
On her turn, she stood up and reached the bathroom where she let flow the water of the shower: she dosed it, tested its temperature on her hand, before getting into the cubicle and letting the water run onto her body.
When she got back into the room, Antoine was dressed yet.
Her wet body wrapped in a towel, Christine came closer to Antoine who escaped, laughing, while she threatened to dampen his suit of which, the night before, he carefully folded the trousers on an armchair to keep its pleats intact and hung the jacket on a hanger found in the empty closet.
Christine chased him through the room but didn’t succeed in catching him, then finally, out of breath, she let herself fall onto the bed.
She definitely was giving up a pursuit that obviously wasn’t likely to come good.
Antoine, who was standing in the middle of the room, was watching her and kindly laughing at what he called her lack of perseverance. This incitation had absolutely no effect on Christine: she remained unshakably stretched out on the bed. She was laughing while catching her breath.
Antoine finally sat down on the bed by her side, observing a reasonable distance from her though, in case the idea of damping his suit went back to her mind out of the blue.
Christine was keeping lying on her back, looking at the ceiling while laughing and, from time to time, casting at Antoine a glance into which he could read that she was surrounding without restrictions, that she was giving up a fight she already had lost: Antoine, indubitably, ran faster that she.
After having agreed with Christine that she would come and work at his office one more day the following week, Antoine kissed her on her cheek, then stood up and headed for the door. He had an appointment that obliged him to go. As Christine wasn’t ready yet and wasn’t either in a hurry, she would finish her wash, get dressed and quietly savor a breakfast before going and take the train that would lead her to Rouen where her parents lived and where, for Benjamin, she was yet. She still had a room in her parents’ house and part of her things there. That exempted her from hoarding luggages when she was visiting them.
Once Antoine was gone, after they had exchanged some more smiles, Christine remained on the bed, daydreaming and thinking back about her night with him. Finally she got up and got into the bathroom again.
Posted in Literature
Christine got into the restaurant where Antoine and she had agreed they would meet for dinner that evening.
He had booked for two but didn’t arrive yet.
The maître d’hôtel led her to the table. She sat down on the seat he presented her.
The restaurant wasn’t really crowded at that early time of the evening. Apart from a couple of retired persons who were placing their order, all the tables were empty.
Christine looked all around herself while waiting for Antoine. She observed the simple and elegant decor of the place, liked the setting of understated elegance that emanated from the spot. Everything contributed to create an atmosphere of discretion and coziness: the spacing of the tables, the walls with their old rose paper, the thickness of the carpet that covered the ground up and the skillfully softened lightening.
When Christine looked at her watch, it was already a quarter to eight.
Christine, although she never had any appointment with Antoine elsewhere than at his firm premises before, knowing him very well yet in his professional life, was aware that he often finished his day of work at an advanced time and that he also was late some times. More or less, she had expected he would be late that day.
After she had seen various patrons, who began to converge as minutes passed by, got in the restaurant and when she finally saw Antoine arrive at eight, she esteemed that the time he imposed on her to wait was acceptable and smiled at him.
Antoine was walking toward the table, smiling back at Christine.
He cut a fine figure in his charcoal-gray three-piece suit.
Christine felt proud of his style. Meeting Antoine that way, in a public place, far from the usual secrecy of their meetings in Antoine’s study, suddenly drove her mindful of his physical beauty, of his elegance and of the appeal that emanated from his simple presence.
She felt proud of him under the eyes and in the presence of the other persons there in the restaurant.
No other couple was as beautiful as they were: Christine in her delicate fairness, her freshness of newly opened flower; Antoine in the maturity of his thirties, the skin olive and the eye sharp.
Christine noticed the insistent look on Antoine of a middle-aged woman escorted by a man about who one could reasonably deduce, being around about sure not to make a mistake, he was her husband. She looked enthralled by Antoine. Without any coyness nor any embarrassment, she had put on him an openly admiring eye. That didn’t escape Antoine’s attention. He arched his back, raised his voice, just as he sat down at the table, in front of Christine. As she got aware of his slight change of attitude that betrayed his sensibility to another woman’s attention than hers, Christine couldn’t repress an expression of sadness. That made Antoine instantly go back to the privacy of their conversation.
During the whole meal, delicious courses came one after another. Antoine perfectly chose his restaurant.
He was peaceful and relaxed that evening. He kindly chatted with Christine who had found again her usual good mood and was enjoying the sweetness of that light conversation, very far from the office tensions.
Little by little, their exchange became more serious though. Antoine talked about his wife to Christine. He alluded to the difficulties of a relation already bygone, their arguments and her continual reproaches. He was sort of setting the scene, sketching the surroundings in which he was developing. Christine was carefully listening to him who was disclosing a whole part, she didn’t know so far, of his privacy. She felt that, in spite of the discord and the difficulties, Antoine and his wife’s relationship had taken root in a communal past, some good memories and his strong sense of family.
Antoine also talked about his son. From under his affectionate tone leaked the muffled and untold regret of not being able to give him more time, share his games and talk to him about life in general.
Antoine was drawing that way, under Christine’s eyes, in simple and accurate sentences, a married life as there are so many, a seemingly neat and irrevocable life.
Christine came to talk about Benjamin.
She didn’t know anymore where she was in her relation with him. Antoine’s new attitude, that was giving her hope in something different, more serious and more intimate with him, was baffling her existence. So if her relationship with Antoine was to become sustainable, she didn’t know anymore how to maintain her liaison with Benjamin whom to she didn’t talk about Antoine differently than about the head of the firm she was doing an internship in.
She didn’t say anything to Antoine about all this, but her hesitations and her scruples were so tangible that he detected them. Christine, who wasn’t very good at concealing, knowing that in spite of the detached tone she had adopted, her trouble was palpable, felt Antoine’s satisfaction, or more precisely, the hope that crept in him at that very moment that he might be one day the only man in her life.
By the by, it didn’t displease her.
Posted in Literature
Christine had got upon the wrong side of the bed that morning. She had felt assailed by an unexplainable bad mood since she woke up.
That day was the day of her first real date with Antoine though.
She didn’t understand what was happening to her: everything annoyed her. Things resisted her: it had a knack for exasperating her and it wrested little cries of irritation and exceeded sighs from her.
The objects fall from her hands, just as if an unusual heaviness had stoke them. It seemed that all the things that had to break one day had decided that that day was the day: the handle of the door of the closet of the bathroom got stuck to her hand, the bathtub siphon, obviously blocked, refused to let the soapy water of her shower pass, and the zipper of her dress kept obstinately jammed. Every new incident Christine got more exasperated and it didn’t really settle anything.
When she finally could reach the kitchen to have her breakfast, she thought she had got the string of calamities over with. It was an absolute illusion: she broke a glass, let the spoon fall on the ground and closed that new set by spraying the floor with milk when her unique intention had been to pour some of it in her coffee.
Finally, in spite of the obstacle race she had had to run at the very beginning, Christine was ready to face her day. On the other hand, she surprisingly lacked of spirit and had been unable to shake a muted and odd bad mood she had felt since she got up that morning.
She wondered, not without some anxiety, what would be her state of mind when she arrived at her rendez-vous with Antoine. They were to meet at 7.30 p.m. in a Parisian restaurant he gave her the name and address , and that was located in the Opera Garnier area.
Christine din’t know yet what she was going to do of her day. Benjamin was taking an oral in the afternoon and was going to spend the mornin reviewing. She didn’t plan to go to and spend the day working at Antoine’s company. By the by, she preferred not to see him before the evening because she wanted to put in kind of a break between the usual setting of their meetings and the new place where they would meet that was the symbol , in her view, of the so much desired turning point their relation seemed then to go toward.
After having thought to take a walk in the department stores of the Boulevard Haussmann, she decided to spend the day reading and lazing at her home. She was to have lunch quietly and spend a quiet afternoon, then, just as quietly, she would head to Paris.
She felt like enjoying the sweetness of the waiting time that arrives ahead of a first love date. Just one cloud was still spoiling the horizon of her pleasure: a current state of exasperation that she didn’t succeed yet to take control of, and she wished would soon be dispersed.
She had lunch while watching television. Everything was as usual: there was nothing new under the sun, the same scandals, the same dramas were coming onto the screen. The same debates, the same subterfuges, the same noisy silences and the same collective hysterias were spread. Some times, a faint feeling of being misled assailed Christine.
When she switched the television off, after she had had lunch, her bad mood had vanished. Did she owe that to the comfort that food gives, or to the feeling she had while listening to the testimony of a terrorism victim that she obviously was not the most unhappy or unlucky person in the world? She didn’t really know but she could note that the feeling of discomfort and the state of exasperation that hadn’t let her alone since the beginning of the day had purely and solely died out.
She spent the afternoon reading, laid down on the couch of her tiny lounge.
Posted in Literature
Antoine, as for him, didn’t really know where he was in his sentimental life. At first, he had been seduced by Christine’s freshness and youth.
That wasn’t his first adulterous affair, and Christine, for him, at the very beginning, wasn’t more than a new affair among good fortunes he didn’t even have to look for.
Day after day, Christine yet became more important to him. She had spent a full-time internship month in his company and he had got used to her presence and to their intimate tête-à-têtes.
He appreciated her constant good mood, her gentleness. Her shyness finally seduced him. He liked to see her cheeks blush when she just left his arms and had to pass his study door and face his secretary’s kindly clear-headed look.
At the very beginning, Christine’s reserves and modesties entertained him. Now they touched him.
Ever since she came only one day each week, he indubitably missed her.
Sometimes, he caught himself about to get into her study, thinking he would find her, or about to request from his secretary to ask Christine to come into his study, while, almost at the same time, he realized she wasn’t there.
The contentious nature of the relations he maintained with his wife had become significantly worse ever since Christine arrived in Antoine’s company. It was just like if she confusedly felt something was changing in her husband’s life. He himself didn’t see it that way though. He had the feeling he was sustaining his momentum. In his life, nothing was changing. His meeting with Christine was just one more meeting amongst others.
However his wife was becoming more agressive, more tyrannical each day. He had to explain his briefest absence, the shortest of his delays. When, exasperated, he ended up asking her if she was jealous, she laughed in his face without adding anything very coherent. Let’s see now what she could be, or rather, who she could be jealous of?
The conversation try was then finishing and the reproaches, the remarks and the assaults started again. Antoine was ending up wondering why he got back home every evening.
But he had got into the groove.
Antoine met Judith, his wife, around ten years before. After four years of cohabitation, they got married to the great pleasure of both families, and finally they’ve had a son they named Arthur.
In ten years, after cloudless beginnings, their relationship, in spite of ups and downs common to all couples, so they say, had put down its roots. Antoine got used to have somebody at home, as Judith didn’t work. She saw to her interior, by the way, very well. No stain, no ruck could resist her long. The cleanliness of her house was beyond reproach, its tidiness was perfect. The most complete order reigned in each and every of its rooms. Besides, Judith was a peerless cook.
Let’s just say that, if Antoine was sure to find with other women satisfactions that Judith didn’t give him anymore, he was not sure to find amongst them so accomplished a housekeeper.
Since she gave birth to their son, Judith had refused too frequent sexual relations. At the beginning of that rejection that was new to him, she would find all kinds of excuses to avoid to get close to him. Those were situations that she obviously wished to avoid. Then, as time went by, as the pressures that Antoine would apply were becoming more frequent, his demands growing more insistant, she ended up refusing categorically any sexual relation. Antoine couldn’t understand the why of that new current state of affairs.
As he was continuously re-entering the fray, Judith was perpetually on her toes. She was straightaway agressive, preventing that way Antoine’s claims, prayers or angers because they had ended up exceeding her while she didn’t want to give in to them anymore.
What was the most difficult to understand for him was that jealousy that was new in Judith’s behavior, were those questions she asked about his absences, her angers at the shortest of his latenesses. How dared she be jealous when she refused him what the other women he met gave him with pleasure?
Antoine, of course, didn’t publish his liaisons. He never told his wife about his affairs, even if sometimes, he had thought he would do it, imagining for a moment that it would take her back on the track of a right marital life. He confined himself to telling her from time to time, irritated by a new refusal or an ultimate agression, that he wouldn’t need to kneel down to have his wicked way with women and to bring them where she now herself refused to come.
He was concealing to his wife a whole aspect of his life. He thought that Judith, as suddenly as she began to refuse him, would one day come back to him.
Deep down, on thinking about it, this jealousy that she seemed to feel then would probably do the work.
Posted in Literature
At last, Antoine hung up. Christine had waited patiently, sunk into the armchair that she hadn’t left. Antoine’s phone conversation had seemed to her to last forever. She had waited though, simply, reassured by the authority Antoine put in asking her to stay. She had thought he had something important to tell her, and the circumstances reasonably allow her to think that it was more about a further commitment into their relation than anything else. By the by she wasn’t wrong.
Antoine came and sat himself down again into the armchair he had occupied before he took his place behind his desk, to read carefully the mail the secretary had brought to him.
He had never asked Christine any question about her life outside of their relation. However that day, he asked her if she had a boyfriend. As she didn’t want to lie to him, Christine answered positively. Antoine received her reply stoically. Christine was gazing at his face and she couldn’t determine if that news pleased him, or on the contrary, upset him.
Antoine went on and underlined they hadn’t yet been alone in a place where they surely wouldn’t be disturbed.
Christine dived into the gap he had just opened. Antoine’s words seemed to allow projects that she secretly, although timidly, dreamed to become reality.
Antoine finally asked Christine if she would accept one evening to have supper with him in a restaurant and to spend the night at a hotel.
Christine, who didn’t want Antoine to become aware of the deep joy his proposal made her feel, even answered a bit coldly.
She indisputably accepted his offer. She was wondering what he was going to profess to his wife.
Just as if Antoine had perceived her inner questioning, he added that he would tell at home that a business travel was taking him away for two days, and thus they would have at their disposal a whole night together.
They just agreed they would meet in a Parisian restaurant, the following Thursday evening.
Antoine let Christine get back to her study where she spent the rest of the day, without taking into account the short break she made to have lunch, working on the complicated case of a new product Antoine was planning to launch. She was feeling more light-hearted than ever that day.
As Christine was living alone, this short trip would be easy to organize for her. She would tell her friend Benjamin that she was going to stay, in Rouen, at her parents’ for a few days, just before taking the last oral that was scheduled the Monday of the following week.
That was Tuesday, she had that appointment with Antoine on Thursday evening. It was a real romantic appointment this time, not one of those furtive coitus practiced on your feet in a doorway, one of those clandestine “get closer together” taken in the excitation provoked by the fear of being discovered.
Actually Christine was far more ill at ease because of the situation than Antoine. She was fervently wishing that the situation would move on to a real steady relationship, going through, as it was necessary, a more acceptable modus vivendi.
She was aware that a man like Antoine, who needed a personal balance, was not going to change point blank his lifestyle and leave his wife and their son for her.
She thought she would be able to gently take him to that point though and Antoine’s invitation was his first real step in that direction.
Posted in Literature
By the time Christine passed the doorstep of Antoine’s company studies, she felt her face turn pink under the eyes of the secretary. She was a young woman of about thirty years old and, having experimented life for at least ten more years than Christine, who was only twenty, she seemed to guess all Christine was going through. It looked like she could read in her thoughts and desires, and that she was seeing the funny side of it, quite gently though.
Christine found it hard to look at her right in the eyes, and normally just couldn’t find much to tell her. So when she came and that Antoine wasn’t in, she wouldn’t spend much time with her. She usually kept herself to herself in one of the studies: actually in the one that was hers.
On that day, after having exchanged short courtesies with the secretary who let her know that Antoine would arrive about one hour later,Christine got to her study where was waiting for her a folder that Antoine had intentionally put there with a small note for her attention.
It’s with a sort of tenderness that Christine deciphered the note that yet didn’t contain more, in its lines, than very professional considerations.
For Christine, every demonstration of Antoine, even if it was purely formal and insignificant, was kind of a miracle. The faintest word, the shortest note that Antoine addressed her was of the utmost importance. She neatly kept all his notes in a drawer.
She indubitably was in love.
Of course, it was disturbing her every-day life. She found it more difficult to keep concentrated on her studies, and very often then she felt invaded by sort of a languor that drove her dreamy and that isolated her from the rest of the world.
When Antoine finally got into the study without knocking, Christine was talking on the phone with a client.
Antoine just sat on the corner of the table and waited, not without expressing some impatience, that Christine would end the friendly conversation she had started with her interlocutor.
Antoine was always in a hurry, going from an appointment to another, ending a phone conversation to begin a new one.
He was patting his fingertips on the wood of the table.
When Christine finally hang up, he smiled at her and asked her how she was. Christine smiled back at him and stood up to beg a kiss that he was never very prompt in giving her. He kissed her on the cheek, reluctantly, while surveilling out of the corner of his eye, the door that had remained half-opened.
He started to pace back and forth while telling Christine about all the last commercial projects he had imagined since they last met. Christine, who had sat back, was listening to him with a smile on her face, attentive, kindly, almost maternal.
Antoine was like a child when he was talking about his projects for his company.
Antoine, after he finished his report, invited Christine to follow him in his study. On the way, he smiled at the secretary, professing about the urgency of a work to finish to explain the presence of Christine who was following him closely.
Christine, who had understood what it was actually about, had put under her arm the folder with which she was working to put up a front.
Her cheeks gone pink because of the confusion that the young woman eyes on her didn’t miss to cause to her, Christine timidly smiled at her while falling into step behind Antoine who had just entered in his study with long strides.
Christine gently closed the door behind herself.
Christine had a boyfriend. She had met Benjamin at the beginning of the year at the University. Their relationship was more a friendship than a real love affair. Though she didn’t tell him about her affair with Antoine. She wanted to spare Benjamin’s self-esteem and yet she didn’t really know where she was going to with Antoine. Also, in few words, she was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.
Antoine, as for him, was married. He had had with his wife a son who was then four years old.
His discord with his wife was well-known in their entourage, but he still lived with her and their son.
The couple life often met storms. Though it was going its way, somehow, in the chaos of exhausting quarrels.
Antoine’s wife reproached him for his frequent and long absences, for his lacks in their son’s education, and above all, for an overrunning sexual hunger that didn’t suit her natural that had revealed itself, somewhat late, modest and discreet.
Antoine who was often exasperated by his wife’s never-ending reproaches, and her reiterated refusal when it came to complete a marriage that he was finally actually wondering if it was real, first gave in anger. Then, most of the times, he would calm down and temporize. At bottom, he married her and they had had a child. He perfectly could find elsewhere what she didn’t want to offer him anymore and he was actually doing it, without much qualms, preserving this way, in a way, the family core.
And so, Christine found herself alone with Antoine in his study. She put the folder she was carrying, before getting closer to Antoine who had sat down on one of the armchairs of the private room area he had arranged for the appointments he gave at his office. He was looking at Christine and smiling at her. All this was very clear. She perfectly knew what was to happen for she had experimented it several times before.
Antoine was sitting on the edge of the armchair, his legs apart. Christine got closer to him to the point of dominating him. He put his hands around Christine’s waist, and made her sit down on his left knee. She felt so small and fragile in his hands. The strength emanating from him striked her slender feminity.
Antoine slided his hand under Christine’s sweater and as she was wearing no bra, he began to gently caress her breasts. This time of delight didn’t last long: as somebody suddenly knocked on the door, Christine hastily got to her feet. On the run she seized the folder she had put on a furniture when coming in, and hurriedly sat down on the armchair that was just in front of the one on which Antoine was sitting.
When Antoine finally authorized the entry, the secretary, whom they had completely forgotten, probably more easily because she was usually keeping discreet when they isolated themselves in Antoine’s study, appeared holding the mail of the day.
She behaved as if she hadn’t noticed Christine’s cheeks turned pink, the move she made to pull her skirt back onto her knees and the mess of the folder contents that had just scattered on the carpet. She was smiling while handing to Antoine, who took it and thanked her, the packet of already open letters.
She went after having taken some instructions from Antoine.
The secretary intrusion had broken up Christine’s urge. Antoine, as for him, didn’t seem confused nor frustrated. He made fun of the situation by underlining that the staff had a talent for manifesting themselves at the most inappropriate moments, and, after he sat down behind his desk, he began to read the mail carefully.
Christine sat herself down again in the armchair after she had gathered the sheets of the folder that had inexorably fallen on the ground in the haste that the secretary intrusion had provoked.
She was patiently waiting for Antoine to finish his mail reading.
She was wondering wether the secretary hadn’t bothered them on purpose. She inevitably suspected that Antoine and her had an affair. Maybe she had wanted to be sure of it.
Antoine was finally overcoming his readings, when the telephone rang. He picked it up , after having casted a sorry glance at Christine. She just looked down to hide the disappointment this new setback was causing her.
Really, this morning would desperately be without any respite.
Christine, who was as patient as a heron, just put up with it without complaining or whining.
Antoine seemed to begin a lengthy conversation. Christine got up, ready to go back to her own study where she would be free to give in the kind of melancholy that was suddenly invading her.
Antoine who hadn’t stopped looking at her, nodded to her to sit back. The authority of his gesture left no alternative to Christine who obeyed without a word.
Posted in Literature
Christine was rocking and rolling over in her bed. She couldn’t get to sleep. So many thoughts were ringing the door bell of her brain that night. One thought that had left her mind immediately giving its place to another one, it seemed that this unremitting succession would never stop and that she was to spend a genuine sleepless night.
It was the exams time at the university, and she had to admit to herself that it wasn’t letting her be so quiet. Maybe especially as was beginning the time of the oral examinations that was always closing the end of term exams and that was making her totally nervous.
She had reviewed somehow, while completing an internship in a company of a neighbor city.
She just refused to open up her books and her notes when the exams had already started and had at her whole disposal the time laid between two summons. This could mean one or two days.
She was making the most of it by having walks and by trying to maintain with the young head of the company where she just finished her internship, a love affair that had begun meanwhile.
She was actually wondering if Antoine was taking it seriously or if this affair of them was only a matter of sexual desire for him.
Christine’s nature was mostly shy and reserved. She couldn’t imagine asking directly the question to Antoine just to be in the picture once and for all.
Also, she could find bunches of alibis to come and visit him when he was at his office and she managed to go on working for the company one day from time to time, which actually was one day a week.
Though Antoine when she came wasn’t always there: he often had appointments outdoors. Then Christine had to bear the disappointment of only finding his secretary who was observing her with amused eyes.
Christine finally could get to sleep.
When the alarm clock rang at 7 a.m., she woke up all right, but the strength of getting up was missing. She just hazed in bed for a while before putting one of her feet on the ground.
She had no paper scheduled that day, therefore she had decided that she would spend the day at Antoine’s office where she always was entrusted with some task whenever she came another day than her usual day.
She was hoping she would be able to see Antoine alone, and that he would get closer to her just as he often did when he was there and when they were by themselves.
Posted in Literature
Ta lumière (your light)
J’ai vu de la lumière (I’ve seen some light)
Alors je suis entrée (Then I came in)
J’ai posé mes pas dans la trace des tiens (I put my paces into the prints of yours)
Et sans le savoir (And without being aware of it)
Je t’ai suivi (I followed you)
Au quotidien (Daily)
Et chaque jour était peuplé de ta présence ((And every day was filled with your presence)
Invisible (Invisible)
Invincible (Invincible)
Est habité par le son de ta voix (Is peopled by the sound of your voice)
Par l’éclat de ton âme ((By the brightness of your soul)
Et par ton coeur (And by your heart)
Qui bat (That beats)
Au rythme de mes pas (At the pace of my paces)
J’ai vu de la lumière (I’ve seen some light)
C’est pour cela (That’s why)
Que je suis entrée (I came in)
Je n’ai pas voulu (I didn’t want)
Je n’ai pas osé (I didn’t dare)
T’interpeller (To call out to you)
Il n’y avait pas que toi ((You weren’t the only present one)
Et il n’y avait que toi (And you were the only one)
J’ai vu la lumière (I’ve seen the light)
De ton regard clair (Of your bright eyes)
Et comme un passager clandestin (And like a stowaway)
Je suis restée fondue ((I remained dissolved)
Dans la foule aveuglée (In the blinded crowd)
Dans la foule enfiévrée (In the fervent crowd)
Il fallait que je sois là (I had to be there)
Car il fallait que tu me vois pour la première fois (Because you had to see me for the first time)
Car il fallait (Because)
Que tes yeux caressent (Your eyes had to)
Ma joue (caress my cheek)
Et mon cou (And my neck)
J’ai vu de la lumière (I’ve seen some light)
Alors je suis entrée (Then I came in)
Et pas à pas (And step by step)
J’ai appris à te connaître ((I’ve learned to know you)
J’ai appris qui tu étais ((I’ve learned who you are)
Maintenant (Now)
Tu as un nom (You have a name)
Et il est doux à mon oreille (And it is sweet to my ear)
Maintenant (Now)
Je connais le visage (I know the face)
De celui (Of the one)
Qui me suit pas à pas (Who follows me step by step)
Depuis (Since)
Que Dieu a voulu faire de toi (God wanted to make of you)
Celui qui est à moi ((The one who’s mine)
Et qui peut dompter (And who can tame)
Mon irréductible liberté ((My invincible liberty)
Ecrit le 16 juillet 2018
Copyright 2019
Posted in Literature, My mood
The and
Who can swear
Or even tell
When the world is ending
End is such a sad word
End of the world
End of the love
Of my love
And of it all
I prefer the and
That keeps the future open
That keeps hope
In and inside this world
Hoping
Keeping hoping
And dreaming
It’s just what makes us
Stand
What gives us the will
To go on swimming
To go on struggling
The and
Is not this bright
It is true
because the and
Is just the path that goes on
In the darkness
Of the night that begun
And will last
Till we reach a new day
Till we reach a new harbor
The and
Is just the sad path
That goes on
With all these deads around
with this death that threatens
As it always did
The and is also
Your love and my love
Keeping us close
Together for ever
It is also
The sweet caresses of your words
Of your thoughts
That wrap my days
And keep me busy
Give me your hand
And let’s go the and
Copyright 2019
Posted in Literature, My mood