He was an extremely thoughtful comrade throughout the months I was working with the peasant women of my maternal tribe. Julien wanted to be the photographer in order to accompany us, myself and the ten or so technicians, in our research and my wanderings. So, often I liked to go off with him at dawn. He was always silent as he drove, and we liked “looking at things together.” I would tell the others we were “looking for locations”!
Julien and I worked with the same rhythm and our searches for settings were extremely fruitful. We would return like conspirators with bundles of images between us.
On days of rest, in the inn where just a few of us were lodged, far from the tourist hotels, Julien got up a little before dawn to go with the cook and her children to the nearby sanctuary: It was Friday.
So there was Julien — such affectionate company, so unassuming with me and two or three others around me! … One day when I was in despair — this time it was in Paris — over some rough patch or misunderstanding with others (a male blunder, a proposition whose vulgar haste had struck me dumb at first), one day when finally alone in his car I burst into tears — sitting in the backseat and hiccuping: “Julien, just drive straight ahead! I’ll calm down!” he drove the whole length of the shining black river. Then, dropping me off at the hotel and opening the car door for me, he silently kissed both my hands. I was no longer crying; I went in.
The next day he came back early and said in no uncertain terms that he was going to take me out to eat. It was sunny.
On the Place des Vosges we talked for a long time about the sanctuary where he used to take the cook every Friday. Back home!
Julien who, shortly afterward, fell painfully in love with my closest friend … Julien who, six months later, set out on his third trip to Tibet. A new trail had been opened on the peaks of the Himalayas. He went with two mountain-climbing friends.
“Take care of yourself!” I told him suddenly, finally using the intimate form of address.
Although I was used to seeing him as vigorous and invulnerable, I let myself be gripped by some vague apprehension.
“I’m entrusting you with all the photos I took when we were looking for locations last summer,” he replied.
I kissed him.
That was not yet goodbye.
Two or three weeks later I had a card from him: a photograph he had taken of a young woman seated on the slope of a hill in front of her tumble-down house and playing with her baby, in light that was iridescent … On the other side Julien had written a few lines: In this village where he had studied scenes like this all day long, he thought about me, about the spring before when we had worked, “had looked,” he wrote, so well. And at the end he said: Tomorrow it’s the Himalayas and the new trail. I’m happy. See you later, boss!
That was goodbye. For the first time in our friendship, he used this ironically polite tone with me: “boss.”
It would be a while before I knew that, as I read his card, as I admired the young Tibetan mother he had watched one sunny afternoon, Julien already lay inside an infinity of snow where, three days after writing me, he and his companions were brought by a sudden avalanche. His goodbye? My friend is not dead. He is sleeping beneath the depths of eternal snow. One day I know someone will go to look for his body and will bring it back. Then they can call me finally to contemplate his unchanged beauty, the expatriate Viking, and then, only then will I weep for him.
I remarried.
Feeling young again and free of worry, I rediscovered the streets of Paris.
Each day I would dream, wandering two or three hours daily: alone or paired. The austerity of my material life expressed the relief I felt. Suddenly I went back to writing: what was the shade I sought? Back and forth in what in-between place?
Three or perhaps four years living the carefree life of a couple. At almost forty I was once again twenty years old: sometimes the days stretched out in a kind of purifying vacation and sometimes they were overburdened with work … then this joint rhythm unraveled. Conflicts and unhappiness — or rather, anger. One evening just as night descended, emerging from depression, I rediscovered what might have been the equilibrium of my age: my face hard, I stated unequivocally, “I will not have you in my room anymore!”
But to myself — only to myself — I spoke vehemently: You love to share things, you want to discover things and laugh and die in a couple, so are you not carrying your own prison along with you?
A few months went by. Paris was a desert, but happily I still had my wanderings and all they reaped. And there was also work, making one deaf, deaf and dumb, in the richness of absence.
Once in the middle of the night my husband opened my door, letting the light from the hallway filter in. He quietly slipped in to look for a book on the shelves opposite my bed.
I kept my eyes closed. I was not pretending to be asleep: I felt asleep and conscious at the same time. I heard him come in, take a book, some guidebook or dictionary, then go to leave and shut the door again. He stopped. He came back, close to my low bed placed on a rug from the Aurès Mountains. I felt him right next to me.
Leaning down, he brushed a light kiss across my forehead. Stepped away. Closed the door carefully.
In the total darkness I opened my eyes. The obvious became clear: His last kiss. That is really goodbye!
I fell asleep again rather quickly. A bit later he left the house. He had left it almost lovingly when he imparted what he thought was a secret kiss that night.
The Beloved — really, “the formerly beloved”—and I had yet another encounter. On a vast stage, as if our coming face-to-face were something arranged secretly in advance by a magician.
It was the middle of summer, I think, after the vacationers had all left the city en masse. I can see the esplanade of the new Montparnasse station at the beginning of a rather hot afternoon. Few strollers; the rare tourist; one or two groups of young people sitting on benches or on the ground.
Myself emerging into that space. I was in no rush. I was on my way to my sister’s, not far from there; in short I moved like someone used to being there, at ease. Probably because I was hurrying off to celebrate my nephew’s birthday, I was feeling at home, despite the fact that I was in Paris.
At the far end of the station, leaving it: the silhouette of a traveler, bag in hand or on his shoulder. I myself was heading diagonally toward this isolated shadow clearly outlined against the sunlight.
Almost blinding light this afternoon. Not a sound: none from any bus behind me, none from any crowd — the people were sparsely scattered.
So that summer day I was walking along, strolling unhurriedly, and my heart, I remember, was filled with peace, or, as it so frequently is, gently submerged in the mere joy of existing. Halfway to where I was going I recognized him: It was he, the passionately Beloved, the Beloved, I thought, not “the formerly beloved.” While the man who loved me, to whom I blithely returned every evening, was waiting for me somewhere else in the city.
So I recognized him; and he, changing pace, came quickly to meet me. No visible surprise, either on his part or on mine.
I shook his hand; hesitated before kissing him in a friendly way. He kept hold of my hand for a moment. We looked at each other.
Full of a new affection, I looked at him calmly: his face was heavier; his cheeks were tanned. He had gotten larger; his shoulders seemed wider.