Suddenly by Isabelle Autissier

Author:Isabelle Autissier [Autissier, Isabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

It’s impossible to know what time it is—maybe the middle of the night. The silence is palpable. Louise isn’t sleeping; she’s tense, listening for the slightest creak or rustle to prove that she still belongs to the land of the living. The silence is a nonsound, like the nonexistence that they are living. It’s like a nightmare in which everything has disappeared.

She’s waking up like this more and more often, alerted by a silence that is anything but peaceful. Normally she wraps herself around Ludovic, who sleeps on his side; she spoons him, putting her hand on his chest and feeling the slow beating of his heart, and concentrates on listening to his breath—finally, a sound. In these moments she feels at peace with him, his large, abandoned body reawakening some emotion in her. It’s more of a maternal feeling than a romantic one, but she wants to see his disarming smile spread across his face again. So she makes a whole bunch of resolutions for the next day: she’ll be less curt, more tolerant. She knows that she won’t stick to them.

Tonight, however, as she puts her arm around him, she is struck by a sudden feeling: she should flee! The idea comes to her as though it is self-evident, or worse, as though it has slowly been ripening in a part of her brain and is now imposing itself on her, taking advantage of her weakness. Thoughts unfold logically in her mind, without sentiment. They are just thoughts, each one leading to the next. They are going to die. Both of them. Winter has barely begun and already they have almost nothing left to eat. Ludovic is physically ill, but above all, his morale is completely gone. Its decline had started with the cruise ship episode, and then the collapse of the whaling ship finished it off. He has no more drive. Louise doesn’t dare admit to herself that he is useless, but this general idea has already invaded her brain. The only solution left is for her to leave and to find the research station on her own. They had been cowardly not to have gone before. Now Ludovic is too weak for the trip. It’s likely that he wouldn’t survive it, either way. She can sense it, she knows it. She has to live. So she’ll leave. That’s it.

The next minute she is overcome with a feeling of infinite shame. She’s going to leave without him? Wouldn’t this mean abandoning him to his death? He is so weak. Is there nothing left of their love, or at the very least, a shred of compassion in her? Has she turned into an egoistic monster?

She thinks again of her childhood fantasies. When she was playing the heroine, she would never have abandoned the widow or the orphan. Quite the opposite: she would have dashed to someone else’s aid, even if it endangered her own life. And yet here she is today, almost guilty of abandoning someone in danger. Not even a random person—the love of her life.

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