Читать книгу Fresh Water for Flowers - Valérie Perrin - Страница 15

I met Philippe Toussaint on July 28th, 1985, the day that Michel Audiard, the great screenwriter, died. Perhaps that’s why Philippe Toussaint and I never had much to say to each other. Why our dialogues were as flat as Tutankhamun’s brain scan. When he said to me, “That drink, shall we have it at my place?” I immediately said, “Yes.”

Before leaving the Tibourin club, I felt the looks of the other girls. The ones kicking their heels in the endless line behind him, since he had turned his back on them to look at me. I felt their eyes, covered in shadow and mascara, killing me, cursing me, condemning me to death when the music stopped.

No sooner had I said yes than we were on his motorbike, a too-big helmet on my head and his hand on my left knee. I closed my eyes. It began to rain on us. I felt raindrops on my face.

His parents rented a studio for him in the center of Charleville-Mézières. As we went up in the lift, I was still hiding my bitten nails under my sleeves.

As soon as we were inside his place, he threw himself on me without saying a word. I also stayed silent. Philippe Toussaint was so handsome that he took my breath away. Like when my primary-school teacher had done a lesson on Picasso and his Blue Period. The paintings she’d shown us, using her ruler on a book, had taken my breath away, and I’d decided that the rest of my life would be blue.

I slept at his place, dazed with the pleasure he’d given my body. For the first time, I’d enjoyed making love; I hadn’t done it in exchange for something. I began to hope that it would start again. And we did start again. I didn’t leave, I continued to sleep at his place. One day, two days, then three. After that, everything merged together. Days became fused, one to the next. Like a train whose carriages my memory can’t distinguish anymore. All that’s left is the memory of the journey.

Philippe Toussaint turned me into a dreamy sort. An entranced little girl who, looking at the photo of a blond, blue-eyed boy in a magazine, thinks: This picture belongs to me, I can put it in my pocket. I spent hours caressing him, one of my hands forever lingering on some part of him. There’s a saying that beauty can’t be eaten as a salad, but me, well, I dined on his beauty like a three-course meal. And if there were any leftovers, I helped myself again. He went along with it. I seemed to appeal to him, as did my caresses. He possessed me, and that’s all that mattered.

I fell in love. Thank goodness I’d never had a family, I would’ve abandoned it myself. Philippe Toussaint became my sole focus. I directed all that I was and all that I had at him. My entire being for just one person. If I could have lived in him, inside of him, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

One morning, he said to me, “Come and live here.” He said nothing more. Just that, “Come and live here.” I left the hostel over the top of a wall—I was still underage. I turned up at Philippe Toussaint’s with a suitcase containing all that I owned. Meaning, not much. Some clothes and my first doll, Caroline. She spoke when she was given to me (“Hello, Mommy, my name is Caroline, come and play with me,” and then she laughed), but the batteries, the damp circuits, the moves, the foster families, the social workers, the caseworkers, it had all taken her breath away, too. School photos; four LPs, two of Etienne Daho (Mythomane and La Notte, la Notte), one of Indochine (3), one of Charles Trenet (La Mer); five Tintin books (Le Lotus bleu, Les Bijoux de la Castefiore, Le Sceptre d’Ottokar, Tintin et les Picaros, Le Temple du soleil); the pencil case I’d used during my scant education, with the signatures of all the other dunces (Lolo, Sika, So, Stéph, Manon, Isa, Angelo) scrawled on it in ballpoint pen.

Philippe Toussaint moved a few things to make space for mine. Then he said:

“You really are a strange girl.”

And I replied: “Shall we make love?”

I didn’t feel like getting into that conversation. I never felt like getting into a conversation with him.