CHAPTER VII

Damien was playing sentinel in the nourished hope of glimpsing his muse. Constantly coddling his patience, he scripted, second after second, love stories of which Nielle and he were the sole heroes. He recapitulated all those synopses from his childhood, in order to save his beauty from the dragon’s claws.

Late in the evening, calmed and satisfied after swallowing his only meal of the day, he resumed his watch, his desires…

His heart was pounding; he had just spotted the object of his obsession returning near him. — A slight disappointment. — Lou was accompanying her.

— I would like to speak softly to you, Nielle, to imitate the voice of an angel and reveal all these dreams to you… But seeing Lou once in my day is enough for me! Besides, you seem taciturn. To what trouble are you sacrificing your joy of living? "

With the intention of clearly hearing his beauty’s steps, of interpreting them, Damien froze, avoiding any loss of concentration that might interfere with the hearing of this unapparent communication, this clandestine communion, to which he was accustomed.

The abnormally rapid cadence on the outside staircase indicated a certain worry. The nervous trampling, while she searched for and found her keys at the bottom of her handbag, translated embarrassment. The impact of Nielle’s shoe tips on the risers of the inner staircase was distinctly more significant. She was exasperated.

Verbalising her frustration after a few extra degrees of irritation, discharging her adrenaline with a violent kick against the party wall of the staircase, she exclaimed: "Him! … Him! … I’ve had enough!" Then, still accompanied by Lou, grumbling remarks she believed unintelligible to the dreamer, she carried her rage into her home.

This verbal aggression, this blow delivered to the wall, was indeed addressed to him. As if, for a fraction of a second, just long enough to be wounded, the partition separating them had vanished.

The rise of that sudden anger still resonates on the dreamopath’s eardrums. As if he had never ceased vibrating all these years to the same shock. His ego fragmented, his consciousness misshapen and stretched like an elastic band from one decade to another, he holds his skull in both hands to smother the persistent echo. And time flows more and more precious as the analysis proceeds…

— What motive had driven Nielle to become angry with impunity? — Had the cook told her my dream while altering its substance, like an adapted recipe? — Had she extrapolated a false opinion of my person? — Did she consider that dream nothing but a mean-spirited lie? … A planned provocation, an obscure calculation that would even have anticipated Lou’s reaction? … Or had she felt smothered, invaded by my waves all day long. These tales, these stories, these reveries, the only caresses I can offer her. "

His neurons overexcited, he poorly endures the feverishness, fatigue and aggressiveness of his fellow citizens bogged down at rush hour. This ordered rough-and-tumble expressing itself through all those mechanical vocalisations of small engines and powerful machines. Hoarse horns and shrill sirens irritating the masses, including the victims to be rescued. From the cacophony of radio stations of every frequency, from this underground war of egos unfolding from one vehicle to another through lowered windows. Yet thanks to this hubbub, which will finally subside for lack of volunteers, he knows that his subconscious has never tormented Nielle. Otherwise, he would use it on the spot to calm society. — (Temporary resurgence of a Kristos angered by the jostling traffic?)

Unable to do anything about it, despite the oppressive heat, the dreamopath closes the shutters. Recovery is indispensable. To allow his subconscious optimal negotiation between the curative dream and his self, he joins the silence of a night which, like the days, marks out his memories. He even touches upon that happiness of having slept beneath his beauty’s feet. An unsuspected but tangible advantage of this journey backwards: each rest in the past grants him a respite in the present.

The shortening of the benefits of this illusory treatment is necessary, even if other memories will apostrophise him. Thus he accepts his split ego.

Nielle was knocking at his door.

— Hi, Damien! Mia has convinced me of your qualities as an illustrator. However, before making my decision about a possible collaboration, I would like to discuss it with a friend I am receiving this evening… Can you lend me those originals my sister had the pleasure of looking at?

— Why not! Wait here, I’ll go get them. "

Damien was not walking toward his workplace to fetch his drawings; he was floating toward his passport. He even feared she might have noticed it. And so, while grumbling about the gloomy autumn weather, he took a few moments apart to return to earth.

— Here they are! I am convinced you will find them very pleasant to scrutinise… Besides, if you own a magnifying glass, use it. You will notice far more details than with the naked eye.

— All right, I’ll telephone you. "

Almost cruelly, the day unfolded too slowly. When evening came, the visitor’s arrival, this friend of Nielle’s, triggered the mechanism of anxiety.

The usual clues allowed Damien to follow the unfolding of an intimacy he appropriated, thereby mastering his worries. The clinking dishes, the moving chairs, Nielle’s steps and uselessly those of the others, finally the scraps of conversation from which only his muse’s voice would shine.

Once the meal was over, surprisingly the action shifted across the building’s three floors into the three adjoining living rooms. Nielle’s, where she was speaking amicably with her adviser; the dreamer’s, where he desperately tried to follow their comments, muffled by the high volume of the Brouillettes’ television, they too being in their listening period, just below.

Joining the analytical muddle from above and the media gibberish from the first floor came the telephone ring.

— Hello, Damien! It’s Nielle. Can you come up for a few moments? Don’t ring; just come in. The door is unlocked.

— All right! Right away! "

Without taking care to trim his beard, nor to change clothes, intention or mood, Damien presented himself at once, reassured by Nielle’s invitation and the proximity of the work.

In his beauty’s kitchen, two other people were sipping coffee. Mia, who was making herself discreet, and Nielle’s guest.

— Hello, Damien! You know my sister. But this is Marc, he is my…! "

She did not finish her sentence, adding no further explanation. As if she wished to create questioning, even worry, in the dreamer’s mind. No doubt she succeeded; the artist remained muzzled, endlessly repeating to himself, endlessly rethinking this introduction: "He is my…! He is my…! My what? …"

Suddenly, everything disappeared. He found himself in that dream unfolding in Los Angeles, surrounded by those columns and diaphanous veils. And that man with whom his muse was dancing was also named Marc. A horrible premonition!

This fraction-of-a-second vision had taken place amid words Nielle continued to reel off.

— …and then, following this discussion with Marc, I weighed the pros and cons. I therefore choose to collaborate, but under certain conditions! … "Sine qua non!" You must give free rein to my imagination. I want no creative constraints. As for the other terms…, I shall inform you later.

— What should I answer you? I trust you completely. You will be able to handle the existing scenario as you please. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I was so convinced of your association that I brought a photocopied document so you can work more comfortably. When do you expect to begin?

— I do not know, but give me time.

— Very well! I will leave you. Have a good rest of the evening! "

After closing the door behind him, he checked whether he had truly done so. For nothing seemed to separate him from his muse any longer. Not even this newcomer whose type of relationship she left unspoken. All that mattered at that instant was this retouching that Nielle would bring to the text, while he would screen in his imagination another kind of scenario…

The dreamopath, marked among other things by the history of his waiting, questions himself in silence. Those sequences of his memory in which his beauty is neither seen nor heard, he calls black holes. From one void to another, he consults the reminiscence of his own memories from then to distract himself. Closing his eyes without needing to concentrate, he sees Nielle again walking, speaking or climbing the staircase. He admires her as one strips a magazine.

Nevertheless, those black holes, he must relive them. They are important links in this trouble that chains him.

— Nielle! Give me a sign of life, I am beginning to worry myself sick! … — No news, no information about her ideas, not the iota of a word! It is not so much the uncertainty about the text’s evolution that unhinges me as this lack of hope of perceiving her warmth. Is it a lure to feel myself silently vibrating in her presence, she who gives breath back to my life! And those troubling steps acting like winks warning me of a possible visit are only a long series of false alarms. "

Lost in his silences, everything withered. Awakened by Nielle’s steps, everything shimmered. Briskly, he had tidied the apartment’s jumble. In vain, each time, for she still continued straight on.

A missed joy, a blow from a club to his illusions. But his spirits returned quickly; the cleaning was done.

— Inevitable, those mind-numbing calls! In the end, nothing more than this lukewarm solution to reassure myself.

— …Hello, Mia, it’s Damien! Is your sister there?

— No! She has gone out!

— Can you tell her I am worried? … I am stopped in the progress of my work because I still have not received her text.

— All right, Damien! I promise I will pass on the message. I will even suggest that she come see you tomorrow. Are you reassured? …

— Yes, thank you very much, have a good day, Mia! "

Gently placing the receiver back on the apparatus, this time by telepathy, he gratified Mia for her generosity, her delicacy and above all her listening, through fanciful thoughts.

***

The dreamopath examines the cracks running along the joists, the only answer to his numerous mental messages. Cynically, for the sick dreamer who remembers, those fissures evoke that other crack he tried to plaster over as best he could: his broken marriage. Often, during Nielle’s absences, to change his ideas and restore himself, as he put it, he visited the reconstituted family. Mylène, François and Lysianne.

He dragged his ailment along, but duty dragged him too. For the good of all, but above all for his daughter’s, he wished to maintain and improve the experience by establishing the best possible relational conditions. He felt torn in this context, the ambivalence of emotions situated between regret for the divorce and his love for Nielle.

Often, moreover, he would speak with Mylène, the fair counsellor of his unprecedented relations, of these disconcerting developments with his upstairs neighbour. Just as much a siren but more concrete, that one, than that other adjoining woman even higher up… Marilyn.

Each of his returns to the studio was punctuated by a smothered declaration of love…

— Damien is back, my love! "

Then according to the source of the noises, he settled where hearing would engender the best spiritual lucubrations.

— I have the intuition that you are up there, Nielle. I hear your precious steps.

But what is Lou Jobim doing in a tuxedo on my rear balcony? Could he already have become your lover and, out of delicacy, be waiting for you as I would, tearful, wondering about the absence of a red carpet on the staircase? Damn! … Curiosity stings me in what is most sensitive: logic. The best ointment to relieve intrigue is the gathering of information. "

Without waiting, Damien went out to join the cook, who was cogitating aloud on a simple method for scouring his utensils.

The door leading to the third floor was open and revealed that steep staircase. This narrow passage activating a trauma in the dreamer. A latent symbol of despair.

Avoiding giving the impression of snooping, Damien addressed the culinary phenomenon by sharing his existential doubts with him, disregarding any mention of their true source: their shared neighbour.

Pretentiously inspired by his formal attire, in a flash of genius, the cook immediately solved Damien’s anxiety.

— You know, when you are on the edge of the abyss, it is better to throw yourself in! … If you get out, you reach the cliff’s edges again and feel as though you have escaped it once and for all. If you don’t make it, you try again in another life. "

Stunned by Lou’s assertion but still lucid, Damien skilfully inquired about the reason justifying such official elegance.

— We are getting ready to go to a tasting of Sichuan dishes…

— We?!

— …Yes, Nielle and I. We are going to meet people from the jet set. I have even invested in business cards, as chic, as “in” as can be, to impress those members of high society. Nielle’s presence will not harm me…

… Besides, here she is! … Nielle, are you coming? …

The conversation having stopped, the strategy resided in the silence of Damien’s internalised observations.

— But why is she not coming down? From where I am, I cannot glimpse her. — What is she doing, motionless at the top of the stairs? Lou’s gaze and the slight creaks on the last step clearly indicate that she is indeed there! — What motive does he have, he, to hide her from me at every movement likely to reveal her? Jealous, he keeps her for himself. "

Strictly nothing to do with it? No! Undoubtedly admirably beautiful and seductive, she was haloed. Damien no longer understood anything. Normally, this illusion arose only in his most sublime fantasies.

Thanks to the faculty of stripping himself of his body through imagination, from spirit to spirit, he described her, he glorified her.

— Is this the meaning of shining by one’s absence? … I distinguish a seraphic light coming from the place where you are hiding, serene and calm as a gentle morning. Stylish and slender, you proudly display yourself in an elegant black satin evening gown with a long plunging neckline and open back ventilating you down to the kidney. Noble, you wear around your neck a priceless necklace like a privilege, a family jewel you might have recovered. The most bewitching courtesan at this trendy party will be you!

Thank you, Nielle! Thank you for making me live so strangely unforgettable a moment. This fairy-like light will be impregnable in my soul, even if you withdrew from my eyes for eternity. "

The disappointment of not admiring the muse flee toward her social conquests did not shake him, for he had just gone beyond appearances.

— Have a good evening, Lou, I’m going in. Oh! Give Nielle my regards, … all right? "

That night, he slept very little. Enthused by what he had perceived the day before, but above all by Nielle, who would approach him in the morning. A real vision and a very living reality. Nielle, sparkling, would illuminate his day.

Yet, on rising, doubts emerged. Was this due to his Cancer ascendant? To a hyperactive black moon? Or idiotically, to a shortage of Chinese cookies! … Senseless questions.

Focusing his creativity on the search for a presentable face, moderately fresh, Damien became more and more nervous. The perceptible cause: coffee; the effective one: perplexity about the outcome of the interview. Then…! At last, Nielle appeared at his threshold with three delicate knocks on the door.

— Good morning! Come in, please. Sit down! "

Bingo? … Ice floe! — Never had he felt her so cold, so distant, so haughty. Consequences of the bourgeois meeting? … With obvious disdain, she inspected the chair Damien had indicated to her. She used only the edge of the seat, as if fewer contacts would establish fewer links, and she would get through it better. Was she aiming to destroy a diabolical power of seduction worthy of a Rasputin, with which the artist was clearly not endowed?

Then she addressed him, a glacial thread in her voice.

— Good! " (Like a warning)

— I am here to settle those other details about my collaboration. " Her eyes were without gleam. She did not blink. "First! … And I want this to be clear and clean between us…, identical to a business relationship and nothing else! " she insisted. "Understood? … If I realise you are developing any feelings whatsoever toward me, I will shorten my cooperation on the spot. Do you grasp that? …"

Imperturbably, motivated by the necessity of the moment, he resorted to the maximum of the weak percentage of pragmatism his personality granted him. With a naïve air, even though he knew nothing of Nielle’s possible talents as a writer while nevertheless estimating her to have great erudition, he tried to disconcert her by attacking the heart of the matter.

— Have you begun to work? … To write? …

— No! … Not really… But I believe I have an idea more original than yours. Rather than envisaging a witch becoming a fairy, let us choose the opposite avenue. A fairy raising herself into a witch over the course of the scenario. — Good! … Is that all right? … I’m going. Bye! "

Without another word, she left the illustrator’s digs, omitting to enumerate the other articles of the agreement. — Beatific! — Damien, perplexed, remained seated, sadly watching her leave, then continued this questioning begun before his beauty’s arrival.

— Why were you so distant, Nielle? Why? … I am repulsive! But am I leprous?

Deep down, it is normal to present oneself with this resolutely professional intention. — Was it necessary to stun me with that innuendo, that “and nothing else!”?

I would not have assaulted you or, worse, raped you! Moreover, you offended me by extracting, wringing from this exchange every human feeling; you, suddenly stoic and immutable.

In your brief speech, you underestimated this love I could already bear you! The objectives of your behaviour, clearly planned and deliberately adopted to cool my future ardours, annihilate themselves. I saw you again. I again smelled that perfume which, like a gentle June breeze, crowned your body. I will see you again and you will cover my reveries, through tender impressions, with that fragrance which in my soul becomes disloyal to you. "

This memory consumed "on the rocks", with too much ice, augurs nothing good for those to come. Mute, the present disappears in favour of a voluble past. This coldness of Nielle’s had struck him to an unsuspected degree.

With the image one forms of a zombie, the dreamopath seizes a felt-tip pen the current tenant had left lying on one of his nesting tables. The smallest. — Having completely forgotten that the apartment was no longer his, he traces two broad black lines on a cleared wall of the living room. Two vertical lines, two marks representing two days of waiting. Two interminable days without glimpsing Nielle. Prisoner of his love, drowned in the maelstrom of his fantasies; the image of a witch with fairy skin now decorates the prison of his memories, evoking in him the spirit of a cell papered with a single oversized centerfold.

The dreamopath is about to draw another line when he thinks of the third day…!

Extending into the fourth coffee the pleasure of the morning’s first sip, Damien received an unexpected visit. His extraordinary collaborator accompanied by the "master chef", who at once opened the conversation.

— Here is the artist! … I am bringing you back this anthology on humour that you lent me. I enjoyed it very much! … Especially that chapter on black humour, more precisely…"

Lou spoke, described, guffawed while spraying droplets everywhere.

The form of the literary analysis? … Damien did not know. — The subject dear to his heart was there, before him. Nielle was illuminating again.

Around them? … Almost total emptiness. The cook’s voice underwent an illusory extinction. Reality fled, scampering away with the furniture! If reality had fled, the dream had borne fruit. — Not a word. Facing her, Damien deliriously thought.

— I love your eyes, Nielle. My gaze swims in them. No! … It drowns there, struggles there. They exalt, implicitly suggest a passion devout and devoted to tenderness. An oratorio! — I love your curly hair. At ease, my fingers would always dance there, slowly, brushing one another in the same curves, wavering in the grazing of the scalp. — I love your lips, neither thin nor fleshy. They are voluptuously communicative. At rest, they invite the kiss; in motion, they kindle a perilous blaze. Appetising as your life! If destiny had given you existence in the century of the Renaissance, that period of artistic awakening would have been still more grandiose and more striking. Boltafrio would have known how to paint the most intimate reflection of your soul. But what atrocious torment before the inability to reproduce your smile would the master Leonardo da Vinci have lived in rage.

Farther back through the centuries…! Grace and force of inspiration in stone, elegance and manner in volume, balance and fidelity, those are the objectives that the legendary Greek sculptor Pygmalion would have set himself in studying the model you would have known how to be…"

They were there, one before the other…; he saw her smiling, she felt him travelling. Amused by Damien’s adoring attitude, she said nothing, letting herself be admired.

Suddenly, the crystalline wandering shattered into a thousand shards. Noting the isolation in which the dreamer had quite involuntarily placed him, vexed, Lou raised his voice in farewell, then led Nielle outside with him.

He envied the cook in his role as immediate neighbour; that context, that role, that chance allowing him to associate with Nielle daily.

— They exasperate me, all those guys who have the happiness of approaching her. They enrage me, those who, closer still, are authorised to inhale the smell of her body, those chosen ones who have the fortune to pierce, thanks to Nielle, that damned eternal feminine which haunts me, cuts off my wings.

Muse! Muse who muzzles my flourishing as a bastard male! Paradoxical woman, stingy with attention and fertile in manifestation, why endow me with a second lightning strike? … To guarantee yourself my considerations? " concluded Damien, daring to paste his reveries back together.

Fatigue is beginning to stupefy the dreamopath. He can no longer appeal to his journal; the object repels him. He can no longer look at the photo; as an inconsistent judge, it dismisses his case. At the end of his tether with his alter ego, this double under his skin, this "he" he dreads; he realises that in fact he is afraid of himself. He can no longer see the apartment, which blinds him with old scenes worn down to dust by recollection. He closes his eyes.

For several hours now, the music has fallen silent in favour of the din of the street and the vibrations of the apartment’s old refrigerator.