The Beginners by Anne Serre

Author:Anne Serre
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811230322
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:01+00:00

At the same time, there’s Thomas. And regardless of whether Guillaume is present or not, regardless of whether Guillaume returns for a moment to their home in Sorge, where — it’s most peculiar — he almost has the air of an outsider, a figure from the past, Thomas, for all that he remains silent, seems slightly more flesh and blood. Oh, he’s still nine parts fiction, Anna barely knows him, and when she does touch him, it’s still only Guillaume she’s touching through him. But when he tells her about the best friend of his youth, Luc, who at thirty killed himself, and about their joyful and infinitely precious friendship, he laughs like a child, though not much given to laughter in other circumstances. Is it because of Luc, or because of that laughter perhaps: for the first time, she no longer sees Thomas as an image. And what did Luc say? What did Luc do? she asks. He tells the story again, adding details, turning back to that fullness of joy as if it were a perpetual summer in a white house with the windows open to the sun and the warm air, and Luc running wild and Thomas following behind, released. When he talks about Luc, it’s Thomas she has standing before her, not Guillaume. She feels herself loving this friend together with him, this friend who did him so much good. Luc’s death had cast a pall over Thomas. Never again had he felt so much joy.

The inroads Thomas is making are so discreet you would think he was whispering. He barely brushes against her, barely risks an advance: he’s well schooled in the art of tragedy. Her own eyes in the meantime have multiplied tenfold, like the eyes on a peacock’s tail. One gesture too many, a single word out of place, and she’ll send him flying over the parapet of that terrifying dam he had taken her to see near Bordeaux, which they had traversed on foot without batting an eyelid. The spectacle? A huge bulwark of stone, all of a piece, in one great block, a bulwark to put the fear of God into you; and far below, right at the very bottom, a still, small, turquoise lake. They walk along the top of the dam, Thomas pats a dog they meet, he doesn’t say a word about the wall, not a word about the lake, he barely sets eyes on them in fact, he’s silent and he’s present. He’s waiting.

During all the weeks that follow, moreover, should he be so unfortunate as to take a great step forward and risk an advance, she immediately jumps back. “You’d think we were playing chess,” she says. “Oh really?” he asks. His gestures are the conventional ones of the old-fashioned lover: little gifts, albeit ever so discreet, little kindnesses, little pamperings so impalpable that it was like being grazed by a feather. “Thomas Lenz,” she tells him, “you’re quite some ladies’ man, I must say.” He’s nothing of the sort, of course.

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