It had taken me only twenty minutes or so.

  Next week, we had a dinner date planned with some close friends.

  This time, the person who was going to be late was me. Because, while my husband waited at Caroline and Véronique’s, I was going to be at rue Dancourt.

  7

  BLONDE

  And I feel I shan’t recover this time.

  VIRGINIA WOOLF, March 28, 1941

  D. Day.

  ROMAIN GARY, December 2, 1980

  ADELKA’S APARTMENT, WHICH was not an attic flat, was smaller than Clarissa’s, but with much higher ceilings. She worked in the main room, which was also where her models posed. Clarissa took in the paintings hanging here and there: nude bodies, both male and female, sketched during inhibited moments, with sensitivity and no voyeurism. She found them pleasing and harmonious, and told the young painter, who thanked her.

  Clarissa noticed how Adelka had managed to create her own ambience, choosing sunny colors and cozy, stylish furniture. A candle cast its perfumed scent through the air. She felt welcomed, and thought of her own studio up on the eighth floor. She’d been living there for the past two months, and it still had the impersonal aspect of a hotel room. She, the writer obsessed with houses, had failed to craft her own home, one that could bring her well-being and inventiveness.

  Adelka spoke to her virtual assistant in Italian, and it answered back with a male voice sounding like the actor Marcello Mastroianni’s. Her mother was Italian, and her father French. She had grown up with both languages.

  “That’s funny,” Clarissa remarked. “I’m bilingual, as well, French and English!”

  “Are you torn between the two, as I am?”

  “Precisely!”

  “How amusing! Is there one you prefer over the other?”

  “Nope. I can’t choose. I’m attached to both.”

  Adelka’s athletic figure was highlighted by a fetching blue dress.

  “What would you like, red wine or white?”

  “White, please.”

  While she prepared their drinks, Adelka asked if she’d seen their charming neighbor, Jim Perrier.

  “No,” said Clarissa carefully.

  She had picked out the cameras. She was not going to reveal what Jim had told her. She still had not heard back from him. He must be busy. This had been going on for too long, she thought. But how could she contact him? She’d been back to Café Iris several times, at eight. He’d never turned up. She’d asked the waiters, and they hadn’t seen him, either. But one of them had laughed, saying it wasn’t surprising, as Jim regularly got plastered. Perhaps he’d gone off to a rehab? Clarissa had found it all puzzling.

  Adelka handed her a wineglass.

  “I rather fancy Jim.… Okay, he’s a trifle young for me, but he’s so hot in his underwear!”

  Clarissa laughed with her, and they raised their glasses.

  “After that alarm business, I bumped into him one evening, coming home. We went to a bar and chatted. He’s a hard drinker! We had a great time. But he’s dead set against C.A.S.A.”

  “Really?” asked Clarissa innocently. “Why?”

  “Do you remember our talk, the night the alarm went off, when we were all outside?”

  “More or less.”

  “You were convinced C.A.S.A. was spying on artists living in the residence, for God knows what reason. I said you both had too much imagination!”

  “That’s right! We write stories, he and I. Occupational hazard!”

  “Jim is up in arms against Dewinter and her methods. He bombarded me with questions: Was I comfortable here? Did I sleep well? Did I ever hear a strange clicking sound? I told him I never had, that I slept like a log. What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Are you getting used to it here? You told me even the cat was acting strange in your flat.”

  She had to be cautious. Pick the right words. Avoid triggering suspicion. She said, casually, that in the beginning, she’d found it hard to settle down in this new space. She’d only just left her husband, and felt miserable and overwrought. She slept better now. So did the cat. And as for the clicking sound, she never heard it again. All was well. It had just been a matter of time.

  The fibs flowed, effortlessly.

  “I’m so relieved!” exclaimed Adelka. “I was worried. I’m thrilled you’ve settled in at last. I love my life here. Living in the residence is like a dream come true. I feel safe here, and I work well. I really appreciate the C.A.S.A. team, their thoughtfulness, their expertise.”

  Clarissa forced her lips into a smile.

  “As for Dr. Dewinter,” Adelka went on, “what an extraordinary woman! She’s remarkably intelligent, don’t you find?”

  “Remarkably.” Clarissa nodded. “Tell me, you don’t mind being filmed all the time?”

  “Well, the bedroom camera can be switched to ‘intimate mode.’ Did you know that?”

  “Actually, I didn’t.”

  “I didn’t, either! Ben told me. ‘Intimate mode’ can be turned on if you want to have sex or something.” She giggled. “So the only thing missing for me in this ideal setting is a boyfriend!”

  “Well, what about Jim? Did he remain impervious to your charms?”

  “Utterly!”

  They laughed together again.

  “I even invited him here, would you believe it! I contacted him through the internal server, but he never answered.”

  “Was this recently?”

  “A couple of days ago. I’m mortified! I must have been coming on too strong.”

  Adelka made a face.

  “Perhaps he’s on a business trip?” suggested Clarissa.

  “Probably. Or he went to see his family? He mentioned his mother lived in Brussels.”

  Adelka had not had a serious relationship since she had broken up with her violent husband. She wanted children. More and more women were having them late, and on their own. Her mother had friends who had gotten pregnant at over sixty. It had become common. The modern medical world was astounding. But she didn’t want to wait that long.

  “I understand,” said Clarissa as Adelka filled her glass up again. The white wine was making her deliciously tipsy.

  “At what age did you become a mother?”

  “Quite young. Twenty-seven or so.”

  A small silence. Then Clarissa added, “Two years before my daughter, Jordan, came into the world, I had a son. Stillborn. Forty-six years ago.”

  Adelka put her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh! How terribly sad!”

  “I can talk about it now, a little, but for many years, I simply couldn’t.”

  “Did you see a therapist?”

  “I did,” said Clarissa, “but something else helped me. I didn’t believe in it at first, but it changed my life.”

  “What was it?” asked Adelka, intrigued.

  “Hypnosis.”

  “I don’t know much about hypnosis, and have never tried it. Would you mind telling me some more?”

  “Of course.”

  Clarissa told her how she’d gone to the first consultation dragging her feet, persuaded it was not going to work out. At that point, it had been twenty years or so since the baby’s death, twenty years of not getting over it. Psychoanalysts, antidepressants, nothing had helped. Her first husband had ended up leaving her, powerless in the face of her enduring unhappiness. Her second husband, François, the one who was persona non grata, as Adelka recalled, had been convinced it could be the solution for her. She had to give it a go. Little by little, he’d managed to sway her. Clarissa said she’d try it out. She could no longer bear her situation. Things had to change, not only for her but for her entourage, especially her daughter. She presumed her daughter still bore the stigma of spending her childhood and adolescence with a melancholy mother burdened by sorrow. Jordan had never brought this up, but Clarissa thought it was the case. And it was probably why Jordan was still concerned about her mother, even today. She knew her daughter loved her, and how lucky she was. And then there was her granddaughter, the sunshine of her life.

  “I think I caught a glimpse of you two together. A cute teen all dressed in black?”

  “That’s her! At the ripe old age of fourteen, Adriana is, I feel, the one person who understands me and knows me the best.”

  She went on with her story. Adelka had to picture her arriving at this Mrs. Delaporte’s place. Clarissa had had no idea of what to expect. She’d found herself facing a brunette of her own age, slim and elegant, with large dark eyes. Elise Delaporte had asked her to take her place in an armchair positioned in the middle of a tastefully decorated living room. She asked her to close her eyes. Clarissa obeyed. In the beginning, the pleasant voice relaxed her, asking her to let go, to get rid of all the tensions in her body. Her neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, thighs, shins, and feet all mellowed; her rigidity melted. Clarissa allowed herself to be carried away—an agreeable sensation. If that was all there was to it … She could already see herself telling François it had been a sort of winding-down exercise. The voice acted upon her like a sedative. She felt her body yield, on the threshold of a peculiar torpor.

  Even if Clarissa still heard her perfectly, Elise Delaporte seemed farther and farther away. It was as if Clarissa had departed elsewhere. She remained wholly conscious; she perceived the tang of Elise’s lemony fragrance; she could hear the murmur of the traffic floating up to them, the footsteps of a neighbor overhead, but she felt as if she had stepped into a dark nook that seemed to deepen. At the far end of the niche, which had nothing alarming about it, and which she instinctively identified as a shelter, appeared a pale glow, a quivering stroke summoning her like a beacon, and she felt compelled to follow it. How long did this last? She hardly knew. She was hovering within a reassuring Milky Way created by Elise alone. She was on familiar territory. She had nothing to fear.

  Clarissa stopped.

  “Oh, please go on!” begged Adelka. “May I offer you more wine?”

  “Why not?”

  The wine slowed her down, giving her a languid pleasure she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She took up her story. Elise Delaporte had asked her to describe a secret place that did her good, gave her peace. A real or an imaginary place. To answer her, it had been difficult for Clarissa to locate her own vocal cords. She felt she had forgotten how to speak, while being weightless, and when she finally managed to utter a few words, it seemed like her body and her voice were no longer one. The shrill, almost childlike tone sounded like a stranger’s. After a moment’s hesitation, she succeeded in describing a lake, and how its deepness pacified her. During that first session, they had concentrated on the lake’s image.

  Could she tell Adelka what had happened next, with all those cameras now filming and taping? The wine quelled her hesitancy. Adelka possessed the same upbeat vitality as Jordan. Why not open up to her? She discreetly pointed to the surveillance cameras, and the young woman understood, moving closer. Clarissa went on in a low whisper, while her head spun around and around. A couple of weeks later, during the second or the third session, something happened, something she had never been able to forget. Elise had asked her to describe what she saw at the bottom of that lake. Clarissa had seen herself diving into the greenish abyss, holding her breath, slowly going down deeper and deeper while the water became blurred and icy. She was freezing, shivering. She was afraid of no longer being able to breathe, not being able to get back up in time, and there, right at the bottom, buried in the mud lining the base of the lake, she had spotted a square object, a kind of box. A hideous fear had grabbed at her; she wanted to rise up to the surface, to open her mouth wide in order to breathe in oxygen, to escape from that box and whatever it contained.

  But while the fluctuating white lace twirled on the inside of her eyelids, Elise’s tranquil tone had soothed her. Elise said she must not be afraid of what that box enclosed; she must open it, take stock of it. She had to face it. Clarissa saw herself seizing the box, wrangling to unbolt it in spite of the rusty lock. The top swung open, and inside was a baby. Her son. Her son exactly as she had beheld him after birth, his downy hair, his miniature face, his waxen skin. There, at the bottom of the lake, she clasped her son’s body between her hands. She had nearly screamed, given away to her panic, pain, and anguish; she had nearly drowned in it all, surrendered to the lake’s vortexes, but Elise’s voice had come to guide her, and she had held on with all her might to the strength of that very voice. Clarissa described everything she saw and felt, and Elise was there with her, by her side, under the water, her hair mingling with Clarissa’s own. She was telling her to let the baby go, not to put it back in the box, to hug it one last time, to say good-bye. Clarissa had embraced her son, kissing the little forehead, and she had opened up her hands; her son’s body had been set free, gliding up to the surface, and she had followed it with her eyes until it became a tiny white spot.

  Tears had spurted, fountainlike, trickling along her cheeks, her neck, moistening her chest. The sorrow was slipping away, gradually, teardrop after teardrop, sob after sob, and she felt it departing at last. When Elise had asked her to open her eyes, slowly, after counting to five, Clarissa felt a physical exhaustion she had rarely known, but beyond that tiredness, she found she had to learn how to welcome a novel peace lodged profoundly within her. She knew—she could tell—the pain had gone. She could now get on with her life. The wound was still there, and it would always be, but Clarissa now knew how to live with it, and how to tame it. She had seen Elise Delaporte only a couple of times after that. She hadn’t needed any more sessions.

  Adelka’s dark eyes had gone liquid. She took Clarissa’s hand, squeezed it. Speaking in a low tone, she thanked her for sharing such a touching memory. Clarissa said the path to writing had opened up for her shortly after. Freed from her grief, she’d felt the need to explore what she’d experienced in Romain Gary’s and Virginia Woolf’s wake, writers devoted to places, through their writing, their creativeness, but also because they’d chosen to die at home, at the heart of their intimate territories. She’d decided to start with her own emotions, her personal path, but this was set to become a novel, not her story. Adelka said she was engrossed by Topography of Intimacy. It wasn’t at all the type of book she usually read, but she was enjoying it. It was startling, strange, and unexpected. Clarissa approved of her forthrightness. This young woman had nothing of a hypocrite about her. She appreciated that.

  The rest of the evening went smoothly. They talked without worrying about the cameras. Adelka opened another bottle of wine, proffered cheese, bread, and olives. She discussed her work, how she recruited her models, where she chose to show her paintings. Clarissa had too much to drink. She wasn’t used to it. Trying not to lurch, she left late, at midnight, telling Adelka she didn’t need to be seen up to the eighth floor. What an idiot, getting sloshed at her age! It was almost funny. Almost. While she waited for the elevator, lacking the courage to go up by foot, she recalled Jim Perrier lived just below, on the third floor. Holding on to the banister as best as she could, she went down. Initials J.P. on the doorbell. She rang. It was probably too late, she knew. Too bad. No response. She waited. Where the hell was he? She tried once more. No answer. This was becoming both alarming and incomprehensible.

  The residence cloaked her with oppressing silence. She stood within the cushy stairwell, the walls coated in sophisticated hues, and she viewed it all with abhorrence. She was fed up with being spied on. She had fled François and his repugnant secret, to find shelter here. She thought she had succeeded.

  But the C.A.S.A. residence was no haven.

  She could not sleep. She was hoping the wine might help her drop off, but the opposite happened. Her eyes remained wide open. She tried herbal tea, a shower, watching her neighbors; nothing worked. Lying on her bed, Chablis at her side, she asked Mrs. Dalloway to show her soothing videos of oceans and lakes. She sank into a semisomnolent state, one she knew only too well since she’d moved in and that she loathed, with the frustrating impression that she could no longer distinguish reality from her dreams. Was she asleep? Awake? She couldn’t tell. The wine had confused the issue. That word was coming back again and again, the same word, like an unrelenting wave bashing into her ears.

  That word filling up the entire space, seeping into her skull; she must figure out what it was. In the dimness, while the lake’s surface crinkled the ceiling, she forced herself to regain consciousness. Listen. Concentrate. Listen. Night after night, she heard that voice, that word. One final effort. Now.

  That voice. How was it possible? Yet it seemed to be that voice, light as the breeze, as the rustle of leaves, or the murmur of the turning tide. Elise’s voice? Clarissa struggled to remain calm, staring into the dark. No panicking. She had to keep it all in, to reveal nothing. Now, she could only make out silence, but had it really been Elise speaking to her, in the deepest hour, every night? And that word over and over, striking right at her heart?

  Her son’s name. Her baby. The name Toby and she had chosen with such care, such love. The name written on the simple tombstone at Montparnasse Cemetery, where their son was laid to rest, and where she never went, because the pain, as soon as she drew near, became unbearable.

  Had she dreamed it? Had she craved hearing that name so badly, she’d let it bloom within her own ear? No, of course not! She hadn’t dreamed a thing!

  Fury swept over her, a nameless violence scorching the pit of her stomach. She leaped out of bed, howling with rage, brandishing her fist. How dared “they”? How could “they” do this? Manipulate her this way? Was that why she’d had to endure that tedious setting-up process? So that her past would come back to haunt her? What for? Now she could see why her nights were brief, bedecked with tears, preventing her from getting ahead, from writing her book.