The Kindly Ones

I never spoke of these things with Helene. When I saw her, in the evenings or on Sundays, we chatted about current events, the hardships of life, the bombings, or else about art, literature, cinema. At times I spoke to her about my childhood, my life; but I didn’t talk about everything—I avoided the distressing, difficult things. Sometimes I was tempted to talk to her more openly: but something stopped me. Why? I don’t know. You might say I was afraid of shocking her, of offending her. But it wasn’t that. I still didn’t know very much about this woman, at bottom, just enough to understand that she must have known how to listen, to listen without judging (writing that now, I am thinking of the personal failings of my life; what her reaction might have been in learning the whole extent and implications of my work, I had no way at the time of telling, but in any case, talking about that was out of question, because of the rule of secrecy first of all, but also by a tacit agreement between us, I think, a kind of “tact” also). So what blocked the words in my throat when, at night after dinner, in a fit of fatigue and sadness, they began to rise up? Fear, not of her reaction but simply of laying myself bare? Or else simply fear of letting her come even closer to me than she already had and than I had let her, without even wanting to? For it was becoming clear that if our relationship remained that of good but new friends, in her, slowly, something was happening, the thought of the bed and maybe something else besides. Sometimes that made me sad; I felt overwhelmed by my powerlessness to offer her anything, or even to accept what she had to offer me: she looked at me with that long, patient gaze that so impressed me, and I said to myself, with a violence that increased with each thought, At night, when you go to bed, you think of me, maybe you touch your body, your breasts, thinking about me, you place your hand between your legs thinking about me, maybe you sink into the thought of me, and I, I love only one person, the very one I cannot have, the thought of whom never releases me and leaves my head only to seep into my bones, the one who will always be there between the world and me and thus between you and me, the one whose kisses will always mock yours, the one whose very marriage makes it so that I can never marry you except to try to feel what she feels in marriage, the one whose simple existence makes it so that you will never completely exist for me, and for the rest—for the rest exists too—I still prefer having my ass drilled by unknown boys, paid if necessary, it brings me closer to her, in my own way, and I still prefer fear and emptiness and the sterility of my thinking, than to give way to weakness.