Reader for Hire Page 9

  I suggest that we throw off the covers because it’s better to be on show than hidden when making love, not too wrapped up anyway. And this can help with better preliminaries. Even though he looks a bit surprised by this suggestion, possibly wondering whether it’s disguising some trap, he says he agrees but that it might be a good idea to turn the heating up so that I’m not cold. He gets up right away and turns the control knob on the radiator. He even offers to plug in another heater if I’d like it. But I wouldn’t like it, the room’s already warm. If he really wants heat, I can offer him my body heat. He seems to grasp this because, once back by the bed, he throws himself on me again. But this is a reverse attempt. Perhaps to avoid the previous disappointment. What I mean is he launches his head at my stomach, kissing it and licking it, literally, with unusual violence, all around my navel (whose asymmetry he doesn’t seem to have noticed – it hasn’t put him off his stride anyway), then he lunges frantically, dizzyingly, towards my pussy, burying his head between my thighs as I spread them as wide as I can. A giddy feeling gradually seeps over me, reaching the small of my back, soon to rise higher still, pounding, breaking like a wave over my throat, the nape of my neck, my brain. There he is then, going down on me, taking me into his mouth with demented enthusiasm. But I forgot to say, when introducing myself earlier, that I have extraordinarily curly and densely packed pubic hair. Unfortunately, one of these hairs must have got in the wrong place on his tongue or even in his throat, because all of a sudden, at the very height of passion, he’s afflicted with a terrible paroxysm of coughing, as if something’s ‘gone down the wrong way’, and that is sadly what has most likely happened. He lifts his head, keeps on and on coughing, suffocating, unable to catch his breath and going so red that I start to panic. I really have to gather my wits and return to a more decent position. I ask whether there’s anything I can do for him, suggest helping him to the bathroom. So here we are at the basin. I’ve just turned on the light and he’s still coughing. I look inside his mouth and down his throat to see whether I can find the foreign body that’s causing so much trouble. I need a torch, and probably some tweezers, some sort of tool, to extricate it. I do my best with my fingers, burrowing in deep, delving down, and I must achieve something because he suddenly seems to be relieved, stops coughing and can breathe properly again. I advise him to drink some water straight away. He fills his toothbrush glass from the tap and drinks. Things have obviously improved.

  He doesn’t look as if he really knows where he is. His eyes are red, his hair all awry. But the trauma of this incident seems to have released him from the fantasies, the obsessions of his imagination, and it is an entirely relaxed and docile man that I lead back to bed, holding him by the hand. He lets me take the lead, abandons himself, and that’s a very good thing. I gently take possession of his body, stroking him from head to foot, while he lies, eyes closed, allowing a soft murmur of pleasure to filter through his lips and, after a few moments, I have no trouble crouching over him and straddling him as only a lover can.

  I sit up to my full height so that I can see him, and I feel resplendent, regal, mistress of the situation. He’s breathing more and more deeply, almost panting, and the murmur has turned into a sort of muted drone. I tell him that where lovemaking is concerned you mustn’t rush anything, must make it last, and I suggest we go back to our interrupted reading, seeing as the book’s right here, somewhere among the covers. I look for it, find it, open it and read (even though I have a lot of trouble controlling, holding, my voice):

  W is no more like my Olympian fantasy than my Olympian fantasy is like my childhood. But, in the network woven up between them, as in my reading of them, I know that what has been written down and described is the path I have trodden, the development of my story and the story of my development…

  This clearly isn’t a very propitious initiative. I can feel, deep inside me and most unequivocally, its negative effects. Besides, he’s found the strength to open his eyes and give them an imploring glint as he says: No, no! Anything, but not reading, not now! I’m sure he’s right. The book disappears. Everything else comes back. And goodness knows what sort of chasms and insanities are taking shape in him and me alike. I ask him to keep his eyes open, for as long as possible. He tells me it’s very difficult, like trying to look at the sun. I insist all the same. I want him to see my face as I can see his. He looks at me. I can’t tell whether his expression is tender or pained. I engage him in gentle conversation, trying to get him to understand that the merits of reading are not as dissimilar to those of lovemaking as he might think. He says that may be so, but right now he loves me and that’s it. He knows he does, is sure of it. I try not to let my features melt, go beyond my control, or let my voice drown. I want to keep my eyesight and the power of speech. He’s stopped talking now, has put his hands on my hips and is pressing with all the strength of the despair that he so wants to call love. I put my own hands on his shoulders and, with my face hovering above his, tell him calmly he shouldn’t have any illusions about me, I came to read books to him, just as he requested, and that I’ll probably only ever come back to do just that. OK, fine, he says in a now barely audible voice. I can feel the enormity of a great tree of emptiness, pleasure and delirium growing within me. A rocking motion steals over my whole body: my hips, which he’s now clinging to as if to a buoy, my buttocks and thighs, the small of my back and everything inside. It’s like a boat, a journey. He opens his lips once more to beg for the journey not to end. I just have time to tell him it will end, like all journeys, before throwing back my head, into the deep water.

  Shock, horror. I’ve been summoned to the police station. I wonder what on earth can be behind this. Could it be to do with regularizing my ‘profession’? Or has my interlude with Michel Dautrand already caused a few waves, a few smears? You have to be careful with small towns: public life quickly gets confused with private life.

  It’s actually to do with the Clorinde business. I should have thought of that. But a month later I’ve good reason to believe the subject is closed, given that nothing has happened. Which is what I explain to the man who’s just introduced himself as Superintendent Beloy and who’s wearing his fifty-odd years well: soft leather jacket, sporty appearance, a bit of a force of nature from what I can see. I tell him this story is based on pure fiction, on the feverish imagination of a rather hot-headed woman, whose concern was probably justified, and on the fantasies of a precocious child. Is he at least aware that everything was settled the same day, that all the jewels were returned safely? He’s perfectly aware, he reassures me, making the point that no complaint of any sort was lodged and that he has sufficient experience to have swiftly put the whole thing in proportion. Nevertheless, he says with a nod of his head, there was a telephone call from this lady, who, at least in the heat of the moment, seemed very alarmed, even though she called back later to say there were no longer grounds to follow up her call and, well, you know what routine procedures are like, particularly within the police force, which is working with hopelessly insufficient funds and in outdated – not to say archaic – conditions. We immediately launched a quick investigation, not all that quick if truth be told, because it’s only getting anywhere now, and we found that you’d run an advertisement in the papers. We’re not criticizing you in any way, I must make that clear, but this sort of advertisement is always interesting, or to be precise, it’s the role of the police to take an interest, particularly when incidents like this occur. It was perfectly harmless, granted, and inconsequential… but, well, that’s why I asked you to come by… to ask whether you could shed some light…

  He’s finished at last. I thought he’d never extricate himself from the convolutions of his sentence. He’s looking at me with that wily-fat-cat-ready-to-pounce look that policeman are so good at adopting when they want to look understanding as well as showing they can’t be fooled. Rather fine features. Bushy greying eyebrows but with a softness in his expression. But, Superintendent, I say, what do
you actually mean? What’s happened to freedom? Is my profession subject to specific regulations? He doesn’t look best pleased with my reaction. Madame, he says, I’d first like to point out that it isn’t a profession, and that’s precisely why it’s not subject to regulations; secondly, there has never been so much freedom in France as there is now. Just compare it to other countries with which you may sympathize, who am I to say. I am just saying it, but I could have said anything, it’s mere conjecture on my part, but surely you know that a feeling of insecurity in our society has increased considerably, and that our dear fellow citizens are alarmed, and rightly so…

  I stand there looking at him, speechless, so he adds: I say ‘alarmed’ because this lady, as I reminded you just now, was extremely alarmed. You believe that was down to her imagination or her daughter’s mischievous exuberance, fine, all well and good, but it was also partly because of your negligence, wasn’t it, would you accept that?… So, all I’d like to suggest is that you behave more cautiously in future… when exercising your profession… that’s all I wanted to say…

  Silence. The room is bare, the walls dirty. A typewriter is clacking away behind me. I turn round to discover that it’s not a skirted typist at the machine but a grim-faced policeman. He’s typing one-fingered while sucking on a cigarette butt and trying to see what’s going on with me. But nothing’s going on. What sort of answer can I give Superintendent Beloy? He wants the last word? He’s got it. His telephone rings opportunely, giving him a splendid exit. He picks up, listens to what the person has to say with a knitting of his (bushy) eyebrows, and replies with bored indifference. It seems to be to do with a stolen car, a typical case as they always are and bound to be mundane, but the superintendent does everything he can to pose in front of me, to come across as detached, at his ease. At one point he draws the handset away from his ear and holds it there, suspended, flipping it slightly from side to side, while some poor pernickety voice shouts itself hoarse giving explanations to which he’s not listening. Meanwhile he eyes me steadily, at length, exaggeratedly. This is threatening to go on for some time. But he puts his hand over the mouthpiece, gets up, leans towards me and, gallantly, thanks me and says I’m free to go. Even adding that he’s very glad to have made my acquaintance.

  Still, it does have to be said that I now have a profession and it’s beginning to take shape. Not masses of customers, of course, but if I don’t lose those I have (yes, if I don’t lose them!), it could work out. So let’s nurture them, one by one.

  This afternoon I’m going to see La Générale, having not been there for a few weeks because she was knocked sideways by a bout of flu, but is, apparently, impatient to see me again. That’s what the maid told me over the telephone. Well, I mean: the housekeeper. A strange character, as you well know. When I get there, she reiterates that La Générale’s been impatient and adds that she’s been impatient herself, because I bring the pair of them a light and warmth she can’t quite pin down. It must be something about me, my presence, but more particularly my voice. She’d so love to sit in on the reading sessions. She’d been enthralled, enraptured. These compliments are addressed to me without any coyness, far more openly than on previous occasions. She looks peculiarly constricted in a severe shirt and a pleated skirt held tightly at her waist by a military-style belt. Her hair is more raked back than usual. And real sparks are flashing in her eyes. She turns abruptly to check her watch and tells me her mistress was all the more impatient because I’m late. I explain that the streets are very busy, there are all sorts of traffic jams, and I’ve had to leave my car quite far away and come on foot.

  At this precise moment, La Générale opens her door, emerges from her bedroom looking distraught, grandiose and formidable, and, brandishing a newspaper, harangues me for not reading the papers, and to think I put ads in them myself! You would have known, Nouchka, she says, that there’s an important demonstration by employees of the local bus company in our town today. It’s organized by their union, and workers from the Thoms factory, which, as you know, is just down the road from here, and where they actually make buses, are likely to join them this afternoon… All I can hope is that they’ll pass under my windows… In the meantime, if you don’t mind, we’re going to go back to our reading where we left off… I haven’t lost the thread, despite this bout of flu, which had me absolutely floored (a proper Magyar thunder roll!)… I tell her that surely no sort of flu, not even a bad bout, could get the better of a constitution as strong as hers, and express my admiration for her vitality as well as her unfailing vigilance in political and trade-union issues. The creature, yet again, has melted away: and there I was thinking she was dying to listen to the reading.

  Truth be told, it would have afforded her only very moderate pleasure, because I’ve had to return once more to a text by Marx which I started during the last session and which, in my view at least, is no more entertaining than the previous ones, even though it deals with desert island derring-do. It’s a passage from Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in which he talks about Robinson Crusoe and bourgeois society. I read while the countess leans back against her pillows, drinking her tea:

  The isolated individual huntsmen and fishermen, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, are part of the eighteenth century’s bland fictional writings. Desert-island stories or Robinsonades do not in any way, as some civilization historians like to think, express a straightforward reaction to excessive refinement and a return to a misunderstood natural state. No more than Rousseau’s Social Contract relates to a similar naturalism as it establishes inter-relationships and connections, in the form of a pact, between subjects that are naturally independent of each other. This is the outward – and the purely aesthetic – appearance of major and minor Robinsonades. They are rather an anticipation of ‘bourgeois society’, which had been developing since the sixteenth century and was taking giant strides towards maturity in the eighteenth century. In a society such as this, where free competition reigns supreme, the individual appears to have broken away from links to nature, while…

  I look up, surprised by a fairly tumultuous noise billowing up from the street and filling the room. The countess was right. She literally leaps out of bed, thrilled to think there may be demonstrators gathering right beneath her windows. Robinsonades, she exclaims with a sort of malicious glee, far too many Robinsonades! Even though you don’t read the papers, you must have heard about the ecologists and these so-called greens… In Hungary they’re called the blues… They’re the modern Robinsons… They need to be confronted with the solid realities of the people, the street… Before I’ve had time to say anything, she heads over to the window, in her nightdress, draws the curtains and opens the shutters wide with such determination that I feel she’s bound to commit some act of genuine madness or, at the very least, given the time of year, expose herself to a brutal drop in temperature which, at her age, could be fatal. What to do to restrain her? Her vehemence seems stronger than anything else. I briefly consider calling the servant but imagine this would probably be more trouble than help. All the same, I try to get the old lady away from the window. She takes the wind out of my sails with a: Leave me alone, I have it all planned!

  She has in fact put several of the red flags from her collection under her bed. She moves aside the mauve cat, who’s sleeping on one of them, and takes them out individually. And now she stands brandishing them at the window, apparently in a heightened state of excitement. She’s leaning out so far I’m afraid she’ll fall, and I clutch her nightdress to hold her back.

  The demonstrators are indeed filing past in the street. They are carrying all sorts of banners, mostly for the transport union. Men and women walk arm in arm chanting slogans, some are wearing their work clothes, conductor’s uniforms. I’m worried they’ll take La Générale’s untimely initiative as a provocation, and the march does in fact stop briefly under her windows, demonstrators gathering on the pavement, marking time with their tramping feet in a disconcert
ing way, looking up inquisitively towards the façade of the building. They’re coming from every direction, forming a growing crowd. The countess looks thoroughly pleased and sweeps her ageing arms energetically from left to right, waving her historic flags, literally shaking the dust off them into the four winds. I don’t know what to do. The crowd seems to be muttering angrily. But all of a sudden, no, it produces a huge sort of cheer, a swelling roar of approval. No one can ever have seen so many people under these windows. Nor heard such a clamour. La Générale turns to me with a radiant, imperious expression on her face, and asks me to fetch something else from under her bed, a cassette on which, she says, she has recorded the Internationale.

  With the passing months my little business is beginning to acquire a degree of notoriety. Word of mouth must be operating. The fact is I’m quite frequently ‘approached’, even if I don’t always respond. And that’s a very good thing: I can choose. Besides, for now I’m happier keeping my regulars. But I can’t help noticing the emergence of a different sort of request being addressed to me: community groups, retirement homes, arts centres and even hospitals have contacted me. I’m not just a ‘person’, I am becoming someone.