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My name is Gavarine, and there's something I'd like to say.
Coming home one evening, I stopped at my door. Not my own door, actually. It was a glazed door, and beyond it lay only my building's front hall.
I had five pockets at my disposal that day, not one more, whose contents I needn't catalogue here. I searched through them, inflating some, deflating others, creating an ugly lump in this one, causing that one to protrude, convex, perpendicular to my thigh. Nothing. Everything, if you prefer, except keys.
This was all quite normal. I rarely put my keys in a pocket. I kept them in my briefcase. But somehow I'd lost my briefcase. And I'd never lost my briefcase before. That was what stopped me at my door.
For while I was distressed at the loss of my keys, I was dismayed, deeply dismayed, in fact, to find that the loss had occurred inside my briefcase. Or more precisely, with my briefcase. Because I was very fond of my briefcase. I wasn't all that fond of my keys, of course. I needed them, as everyone does, but I wasn't fond of them, no, I felt no love for them, unornamented as they were, moreover, by any sort of decorative key chain, for which I might perhaps have felt some attachment. On the other hand, yes, I was fond of my briefcase. I needed it, what's more. Imperiously so, in fact.
Let me be clear about this. Without my briefcase, I was nothing. I felt naked. I couldn't leave home without it. For instance, even just going out for bread, nothing more than bread, it was inevitably with me. I slipped the loaf inside, diagonally, the rounded heel protruding prowlike between the forward edge and the short leather strap that held the latch on that particular model.
For I owned a briefcase with a latch. That was my choice the day I bought it, and I wouldn't have wanted another. I soon grew accustomed to that latch, and now I could no longer imagine a briefcase, in a general sense, without such a latch. I'd made that briefcase my own. For want of a more complete definition of me, it would in fact be no exaggeration to say that, conversely, my briefcase had made me its own. Or, to cut this short, that in my own eyes, I was wholly contained within my briefcase.
And maybe, I sometimes told myself, that's why it's empty. Because it's true; there is nothing, apart from my keys, in my briefcase. So that, probably, I supposed, I might view myself as wholly held within it, in the company of my keys. In short, this - this way I, Gavarine, had of inhabiting my briefcase - was the opposite of an attempt to stand out from the crowd. As God is my witness, I never set out to be seen with my briefcase. On the contrary, seen was just what I set out not to be, and the idea that the gaze of my fellows might fall upon my briefcase and not upon myself was a reassuring one; it kept me from falling. Because, and this is another aspect of the thing, I was afraid of falling. I was expecting a fall. I was falling already, in fact. Expecting the worst, something worse than a fall, and falling all the while, that was more or less my idea of life.
When I realized that what I'd lost was my briefcase, with my keys inside, I concluded that my most basic right, given the circumstances, was to hesitate. I was aware of my rights. Nevertheless, I didn't intend to hesitate for long. I felt naked, of course, without my briefcase; I even wondered how I could have made it this far without it, and I didn't intend to let myself be caught standing here in this entryway. I hesitated briefly, therefore, between the two obvious solutions: either leave the building, in search of my briefcase and my keys, or else have the glazed door opened for me by pressing the intercom button.
Now it was no easy thing, leaving the building in search of my briefcase. As is often the case, I wasn't quite sure where I'd left it. I could certainly ponder that question outside, in some quiet spot, not too heavily traveled, without my briefcase, assuming, that is, that Anne Lebedel didn't open the door for me when I pressed the intercom button. And that I would know for sure once I had pressed the button.
I pressed it. Anne Lebedel didn't answer. Even though she lived in my apartment. She loved me. Or at least I, Gavarine, loved her. That's why she lived in my apartment. Because I loved her. Maybe also because she loved me. Or because I had a nice apartment. A big apartment, anyway. Maybe Anne Lebedel loved my big apartment. I'd done everything in my power to ensure that. I'd tried to make my big apartment a pleasant place. I'd decorated it myself, before Anne Lebedel came along. In preparation for her arrival. Even before I met her, I was already waiting for Anne Lebedel.
Her arrival followed soon after our first meeting. It all happened rather fast, I suppose. But that was hardly my fault. I never pressured Anne Lebedel. She'd moved in two weeks before.
Ruling out the possibility that she'd gone deaf, then waiting a bit on the chance that she was momentarily out of earshot or was on her way down to open the door, then pressing the button again, in vain, I concluded that she was out. I saw nothing unthinkable in that. In which case, either Anne would come home or she wouldn't. Would never come home again. Never. I found nothing extraordinary in that. It was in fact the opposite that would have surprised me: that Anne would come back, that she would come home again, that she would prolong my dream of keeping her there.
One way or another, I felt, faced with this new alternative - Anne coming back or not coming back - that it was best to go and think outside the building. I left, as discreetly as I could. Outside, everything was much as it had been five minutes before, noisy, brightly colored, scarcely breathable. Mine was a bustling neighborhood, not far from asphyxiation. Nonetheless, trees grew in the square where someone handed me a piece of paper. The gist of the message was Stop the Massacre. It was a petition. I demurred. Apart from the fact that I'd been seen without my briefcase, I wasn't convinced that a stroke of the pen could put a stop to a massacre, especially not at this distance. And I was none too convinced of the petitioner's sincerity. I explained that for the dead, off in Africa, it was too late anyway and that, for the task of tending the wounded, feeding the children, and shooing away the flies, I would sooner work through some sort of accredited agency and send money. As soon as I had some money, that is. And even then, I wasn't sure I wouldn't send it to my sister instead. My sister was unemployed - and so was I, as it happened, but I made no mention of myself - and lived with her son in a dank ministudio. She had no telephone, never went to the hairdresser's. Obviously, there's no comparing. But she was my sister.
Now, had the man handed me a tract, rather than a petition, and had I had my briefcase, I would politely have tucked it away inside.
I was planning to avail myself, about an hour hence, after calling home about a half hour hence to see if Anne might be back, of the possibility of accessing my answering machine from afar, in case she still hadn't come back, to see if she might have left a message. Which I did, after venturing far from my neighborhood in search of my briefcase.
I ended up near my workplace, or former workplace, because I'd lost my job, before my briefcase, in the heart of the city, a few days before. Still, losing my job upset me less than losing my briefcase. I felt no attachment to my job. I felt an attachment to the money from my job, of course, which allowed me to pay my rent. But my briefcase was of no particular use to me in my job. I took it to work, of course, as I did everywhere I went. I set it down beside my desk. I had a desk job; I was almost an executive, in fact. On the threshold of an executive position, I'd hesitated, rather as I did at my door. That was what cost me my job. I didn't like telling people what to do and then verifying their compliance. It made me timid. I didn't like being timid. I wasn't naturally timid. Left to my own devices, I was never timid.
Anne didn't answer the phone and had nothing to say on the answering machine. She hadn't come home. I'd called from a phone booth near a small park. With no great optimism, of course, I then made for the bench in the park where I'd sat for a while with my briefcase in the late afternoon. I'd spent the day wandering through the city, and when it came time to be on my way home, when Anne, in theory, would be on her way home as well, I'd sat down on that bench and lingered. A foreboding kept me there. The idea - immediately banished from my mind - that Anne might not be home when I got there. That she would not be coming home. That this would be the end of our love. If that's the word. No one had ever spoken of love within those four walls over the previous two weeks, myself excluded. Anne was pure silence, silence made flesh. Scarcely even a presence. A shadow. Anne drifted through my big apartment, passed from one room to the next. Tried to settle in, unsettled, never finished unpacking. Never really started. Still trying to find her place, as if my place offered her none. I sat in the living room, near the right-hand corner of the sofa, never moving as Anne endlessly drifted. Two weeks went by without Anne finding what she needed to make a place for herself in my apartment, and I began to foresee the day when she would ask if I minded her renting a little studio not too far away, for the sake of her independence. She would come and see me, of course. She would even have a place here, within the confines of my apartment, a place she might now finally find. A nook, some little corner, nothing more. It made me sick at heart to think that after two weeks it had come to this. But it hadn't come to this. Anne had simply left without a word.
This leaving without a word came as no real surprise. Hard to take, perhaps, but hardly surprising. Otherwise, after all, Anne Lebedel would have had to speak. And she didn't speak. Or spoke so little. She had only just begun to speak, with me, in my apartment. A few words, scarcely that. To tell me, generally, in a roundabout way, that my big apartment wasn't anything much. Not to her liking. So do something about it, I'd said. Why not do something about it? If, I said to her, there are alterations to be undertaken, why don't you point them out? Anne, I said. I called her Anne. She never called me anything at all. She didn't answer, changed the subject, smoothed back a stray lock of hair. I liked, as other men do, with other women, her little gesture as she tried to fix her hair, which never let itself be fixed. The strand fell back over her forehead. That way women have, never static, never definitive. That elusive beauty, their unawareness of that beauty. The best ones. The most beautiful. The most loved.
So Anne Lebedel didn't speak. Or spoke so little. Especially at the beginning. From the beginning, Anne said nothing. Not a word. None of those essential words that people say at the beginning. Nor any other, of course, lest in speaking she might approach one of the essential words, might evoke it in my mind. Anne Lebedel said nothing to bolster my confidence. Absolutely not. In case I might take it to heart. Anne intended to allow me no certainties. And so she said nothing, in the beginning, about that beginning. Although we hadn't really begun together. I'd had a head start. Of a few days. With each passing day, I loved Anne Lebedel more. And still nothing from her. No way to know. Hard to understand her drift.
Unless that was her way of fleeing me, in my big apartment. It's true; some evenings I scarcely saw her at all, except in bed, where she pretended to be sleeping. I pretended to believe it. She fell asleep. Not me.
Since our relationship had never really begun, it was no great surprise that it had now come to an end. Or, rather, that its end had come in the manner of its beginning. That's what it is, I told myself. So far, it hasn't begun. And what's happening now is that it isn't going to begin. It will never be. That's what's in store for you.
And yet I'd believed in it, in a sense. Just a little. Just enough to give Anne and her absence the benefit of the doubt. She was there, after all. So I could be forgiven for doubting her absence. But it was difficult. From a physical standpoint. Because of her physical presence. The more absent Anne's manner, the less I could forget she was there, physically. All that presence became unbearable. Sometimes I got up from the right-hand corner of the couch and went to meet her. I kissed her outright. Once, I'd made love to her. Completely forgetting that she still hadn't said anything. I cried out. Unequivocal words, right to her face. Wasted, I knew. Unequivocally. But that, at least, was one thing I wouldn't have to keep inside any longer. A deliverance, that's what it was, something I was giving up, before Anne's closed eyes, in exchange for nothing. Not that I felt delivered of much, really, in the end.
None of which kept me from talking. Coming home in the evening, with my briefcase, if Anne was there, I asked her what sort of day she'd had. Anne worked as a salesgirl for a big florist. In a tiny shop. One day I'd entered that little shop to buy some flowers. Intending to give them to Anne, whom I'd seen through the shop window. A ridiculous idea, of course, which furthermore never came to fruition. Anne disappeared into the back just as I crossed the threshold. I ended up face to face with the big florist, asking him for six pink roses. Not red, no. I know when enough is enough. I tried to slow down the process as the florist assembled the bouquet, so that Anne could come back into the shop. But it's not easy slowing down a florist. He alone had that power, as he assembled the bouquet, the power to slow me down.
But the big florist was brisk, his motions remarkably precise. No sooner had I taken out my change purse than there was my bouquet, standing upright in my left hand, leaving me only my right hand to open the change purse. I'd set my briefcase on the shelf affixed to the counter. I rooted through my change purse with two fingers, in search of the correct change, holding it open with a third. I extracted the coins in question, and at once the purse snapped shut. It had a spring closure. I'd bought it on the fly. I didn't dither that day. I'd lost my coin purse, a springless model, and needed another. So this was an emergency change purse, located on a display rack at the first opportunity, to hold the change in my pocket, loose in my pocket, jingling against the hand I kept in my pocket. This unmediated contact with my money grated on my nerves, because I always walked with one hand in my pocket and the briefcase in the other. I'd transferred the change from my pocket to the change purse, minus, of course, the price of the change purse.
Continues...
Excerpted from My Big Apartment by Christian Oster Copyright © 2002 by University of Nebraska Press Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
