FROM SEPTEMBER last year, I did nothing else but wait for a man: for him to call me and come round to my place. I would go to the supermarket, the cinema, take my clothes to the dry cleaner’s, read books, and mark essays. I behaved exactly the same way as before but without the long-standing familiarity of these actions I would have found it impossible to do so, except at the cost of a tremendous effort. It was when I spoke that I realized I was acting instinctively. Words, sentences, and even my laugh, formed on my lips without my actually thinking about it or wanting it. In fact I have only vague memories of the things I did, the films I saw, the people I met. I behaved in an artificial manner. The only actions involving willpower, desire, and what I take to be human intelligence (planning, weighing the pros and cons, assessing the consequences) were all related to this man:
reading newspaper articles about his country (he was a foreigner)
choosing clothes and make-up
writing letters to him
changing the sheets on the bed and
arranging flowers in the bedroom
jotting down something that might interest him, to tell him next time we met
buying whisky, fruit, and various delicacies for our evening together
imagining in which room we would make love when he arrived.
In the course of conversation, the only subjects that escaped my indifference were those related to this man, his work, the country he came from, and the places he’d been to. The person speaking to me had no idea that my sudden interest in their conversation had nothing to do with their description or even the subject itself, but with the fact that one day, ten years before I met him, A had been sent to Havana on an assignment and may have set foot in that very night club, the “Fiorendito,” which they were describing in minute detail, encouraged by my attentive listening. In the same way, when I was reading, the sentences that made me pause were those concerning a relationship between a man and a woman. I felt that they could teach me something about A and that they lent credibility to the things I wished to believe. For instance, reading in Vassili Grossman’s Life and Fate that “people in love kiss with their eyes closed” led me to believe that A loved me since that was the way he kissed me. After that passage, the rest of the book returned to being what everything else had been to me for a whole year—a means of filling in time between two meetings.
I had no future other than the telephone call fixing our next appointment. I would try to leave the house as little as possible except for professional reasons (naturally, he knew my working hours), forever fearing that he might call during my absence. I would also avoid using the vacuum cleaner or the hairdryer as they would have prevented me from hearing the sound of the telephone. Every time it rang, I was consumed with hope, which usually only lasted the time it took me slowly to pick up the receiver and say hello. When I realized it wasn’t him, I felt so utterly dejected that I began to loathe the person who was on the line. As soon as I heard A’s voice, my long, painful wait, invariably tinged with jealousy, dissipated so quickly that I felt I had been mad and had suddenly become sane again. I was struck by the insignificance of that voice and the exaggerated importance it had taken in my life.
