Luc calls in the middle of the evening. The twins’ birth went very well, a boy and a girl. Rémi congratulates him. In a hurry, Luc quickly ends the conversation. Rémi noticed the neutrality in Luc’s voice, as though the man had already arrived at the lie that separates nights from days and consigns dark but sincere episodes to the masculine pit of oblivion.
He would have liked to tell him that, in his world, freedom is accepted only when accompanied by camaraderie and mutual recognition; that a tacit code exists, though no one knows its clauses or the many forms its subparagraphs may take, and yet it comes into being spontaneously. But Luc does not belong to that world and is moving away from it. Love as friendship, loveship, love slain—strange concepts that Rémi himself would not know how to use wisely.
With the salt of Stéphane’s skin still on his lips, he cannot take himself entirely seriously. Living beyond the lie is no guarantee of happiness.
Midnight. Lucienne returns. Rémi tells her the good news. She is pleased; he is angry. She notices nothing. She tells him about her evening. Irène insisted they go to the cinema! According to Lucienne, the film was good, a love story of the kind they no longer make, with languorous music stuffed with violins. They continued the evening in a small restaurant, too expensive for Lucienne’s taste considering what was on the plates, but since Irène was paying… That Irène is such good people, Lucienne repeats. They laughed a great deal, and drank. Lucienne is not accustomed to it. She no longer remembers which of them, she or Irène, talked the most. They discovered they had things in common, she concludes, yawning and dragging herself to bed.
Rémi goes upstairs to his office and starts the computer, which, once its many startup functions are complete, moors itself to the planet’s anxious pulse. Conversation requests quickly cluster on his screen. His usual contacts—Rozio, Phylos, Fun, Fritz, Cobra—and a bouquet of other, unfamiliar names. His irritation borders on intolerance, even though he knows it is not their fault, that they are not wrong to persist and have no reason to take offence at his silence. They will understand; they will think him captivated by some young cyber beast, a body in heat, and sigh because they are not the object of his desire. He therefore ignores them all, for Rui is online.
Night] Good evening, Brazilian.
A few seconds later, the answer arrives.
Rui] Good evening, man of the North.
He describes the scene at the pool with Victor.
Rui] It was bound to happen. It is not so serious.
Night] It matters.
Rui] I know, my friend. I should pity you, but you have been betraying each other for five years. It was foretold long ago. What matters is not so much the betrayals as the meaning you give them.
Night] You would have made a good psychologist.
Rui] I am a teacher. Sometimes it is the same thing. Here, the problems are less… how shall I put it…
Night] Bourgeois?
Rui] Perhaps.
Night] It was not like that in the beginning.
Rui] Really? Tell me.
Night] You do not believe me.
Rui] Oh, but I do, my friend. Forgive me. I carry my own weight of anguish. I opened the box my father left for me. Heaps of insignificant odds and ends. He kept everything, obsessively. There are even the beginnings of manuscripts, literary projects. Many undeveloped rolls of film. I will have to discover all of it. There is also a journal—or rather, a jumble of notes, confidences he made to himself. The deeper I delve into that box, the more my father disgusts me. I am discovering his dreams when all he ever showed us were his vices. So do not attach too much importance to what I say. I have a heavy burden to carry. I am not much help. Forgive me.
Night] I understand very well. The book on Victor and me has not yet closed. You are right: what matters is not so much the betrayals as what we make of them.
Several minutes pass before another message appears.
Rui] Rémi, I am withdrawing from this world, from this Internet, for a while. I need to find my footing again.
Night] You are abandoning me?
Rui] Do not be stupid. I could never leave you. My mother needs help untangling the threads of the estate. Too many thieves are preparing to seize her meagre assets, not to mention my father’s photographs, which have lain in boxes for so long. Why are we so preoccupied with reconstructing the past when our lives are so short and seem so absurd… Going back there is suicide; Helio made a scene. He, too, thinks I am leaving him. He will come with me, of course. His company has offices in the region. Helio and I are bound for life and death. Admittedly, that life sometimes resembles the silence of death, but he berated me only to gather me more tightly into his arms, where it has felt good to take refuge for so long. Of the two of us, I am the unstable one and he the conservative. Yet twenty-five years ago, it was he who lured me into his bed, twelve years older than I was. Now I am the one pulling away the covers to get him out of bed. I owe him everything, but he owes me that much.
Night] I envy you both.
Rui] Above all, do not say that. You possess all the riches in the world.
Night] You are not going to start that again?
Rui] Why not? Above all, do not envy us. Our reading of Paradise is simply different. Do not worry about me. I will contact you again very soon, for I thirst too much to know you are close to me. But at the same time…
That mysterious silence again.
Night] At the same time, Rui? Are you there?
Rui] At the same time, since everything is impossible…
Night] I can feel your sadness.
Rui] I am sad, but it is a good sadness. Would you like me to tell you one last story?
Night] Will it comfort me?
Rui] You will see. It is about a Scotsman who fell madly in love with a fairy. She amused herself with him for a time, and they had a beautiful child with a Scotsman’s curly hair, like clouds. Fairies, as everyone knows, are tender beings, but they belong to no one. One day, she decided to leave the mortal and return to her own world and the nightclubs. Regretfully, the mortal let her go. The child was inconsolable. He even lost his beautiful curls. People mistook him for a Briton! One evening, the fairy, who had almost forgotten he existed—fairies, you know… The fairy, then, heard him and was seized by fairy remorse, meaning she pursed her lips and told herself it was a great pity. So as not to be outdone by humanity, she decided to create the stars so that, when children fall asleep, they might hear the voice of their vanished mother. Ever since, men have never ceased trying to reach the stars and have invented rockets, NASA and the Supreme Soviet. They lie to their children, promising them that no matter what happens, they will see one another again, someday, up there.
Rémi smiles.
Night] Something seems wrong with your story…
Rui] You are not angry with me?
Night] About what?
Rui] Leaving.
Night] It is only goodbye for now.
Rui] Who knows…
Night] Who knows, indeed? Inshallah. Do not forget, I made you promises.
Rui] You are a fairy, Rémi. As God wills. I kiss you.
Rui’s icon goes dark and returns to the offline section of his contacts. The dance of encounters continues online nonetheless. Rémi feels terribly alone, a stranger to the many orgasms being plotted, unaware of those in progress or those that have just occurred, banished from secret gardens, forgotten by Rui. Of course, his friend will return.
He shuts down the computer, rises and looks through the window towards Cobra’s bedroom. For once, the curtains are closed. Émile is not outside either. Victor is abandoning him, and that is for the best; Stéphane is only a possibility. Lucienne is asleep, and he knows nothing of Irène. His circle of friends resembles a club decimated by fate.
He grasps the full measure of his existence, when his skin is the only possible boundary and his breathing the only direction that makes sense. His thoughts, for their part, remain faithful to him, in life and in death; they wait until he falls asleep to release the ghosts. Tomorrow will be another prison.