The Happy Marriage

All of a sudden, he saw Angelika gracefully break away from the group and come toward him. She was a Greek acrobat, incredibly beautiful, but also terribly fickle. She would affect naïveté, but actually always had her head screwed on right. Angelika had merely been interested in him. She’d never loved the painter, but had let him love her. She’d suggested taking him for a tour of her country’s most remote regions in the depths of winter. Utterly in love, he had spent the little money he’d had to travel to where she was. Her beauty was an enigma, her body graceful, and she was prone to mood swings, but her voice had always been suffused with sensuality. He’d walked out on her the day another man had come knocking on her door, looking for his girlfriend. The painter had felt betrayed, used, and cheated by an actress who’d merely pretended to love. He still felt bitter about it to this day, even though he’d managed to erase all memories of her. He hadn’t invited her, but she’d shown up anyway, looking like someone who’d stumbled onto the scene by accident. Angelika had always had a certain flair.

The only blonde he’d ever loved in his life came forward at this point, looking as radiant as on the day he’d met her. He’d been seduced by her deep-blue eyes, her sense of humor, and her laughter. He’d invited her to come stay with him in Morocco at a time when he’d still been single, and when he hadn’t been looking for the “ideal woman,” but for someone who made him want to be with her. He still remembered the moment when she’d arrived on the boat, beaming amidst the crowds of weary travelers. He loved those rendezvous at train stations or ports. It was the romantic in him. They’d spent the next few days fooling around. Then they’d left for Corsica, and their relationship had come to a brutal end without any explanations or acknowledgements. She’d simply not shown up. He’d waited for her in a Moroccan restaurant whose décor he still remembered. He also remembered the expression on the face of the young waiter who usually served him and who’d understood that the painter had been stood up. To console him, the waiter had said: “I get it, a woman did that to me, and I gave her a good smack!” The painter had lifted his gaze and replied: “No, I don’t have it in me, and that’s not my style. You can only keep women by being sweet to them, not hitting them. The way we do things here in Morocco is behind the times in most other countries!”

While she walked in front of him without noticing him, the beautiful blonde was thronged by memories of the lover she’d had for a few weeks and whom she’d called her “precious friend,” whom she’d left so suddenly so as to have only good memories of him.

A hand abruptly pulled the painter out of the sweet reverie he’d plunged himself into. It was a nurse who’d come to give him his injections. Still stunned by his dreams, he thought she belonged to the group of women he’d loved. But she was a stern, efficient woman who dressed like a man. She worked in silence and barely even asked him where he preferred to have his injections.

When the nurse left, the painter felt overwhelmed by a great anxiety. After nightfall, the light in his studio had taken on a sad air. Against all odds, one of his former loves had made him feel nostalgic, a feeling he’d wanted to avoid at all costs — as he himself had always said: “Memories are boring!” Then his exhaustion made him numb again. He looked around himself and refused to believe that his life had come to an end, that his work would be left unfinished. He wanted to move but realized he could barely do so and with great difficulty at that. He hated himself and wanted to scream. He thought that if he could destroy everything around him it would at least be a means to answer the call of death, which had shamelessly settled within him. “Death is the disease!” he’d repeated.

Suddenly he’d heard a voice say: “Don’t let it get you down, stay strong, it’s just a bad moment and it’ll pass. Come on, life calls out to you, and it’s magnificent, believe me!” The painter tried to figure out where it was coming from, and turned around as best he could. It was his favorite nephew, an architect who was passionate about music and football, and who had come to pay him a visit. He’d brought him an iPod filled with songs from the 1960s. He didn’t stay long, but before leaving he’d placed the iPod’s earphones in his ears and had left him alone with Bob Dylan.