The Happy Marriage

The painter shut his eyelids, listened to the music, and waited for the parade of the women he’d loved to start flashing past his eyes again just as though he were sitting in a cinema and the film could miraculously start exactly where it had been paused. All of a sudden, the journalist whom he’d used to make giggle all the time because he used to poke fun at her buttocks and bosom — which he used to say were as hard as a wax mannequin’s — appeared just a few feet in front of him. Another oddball who at the time had been torn between her best friend and her boyfriend. She’d readily admitted to him that she loved experimenting with pleasure and that she was ambitious. As it happens, she went on to have a very successful career. The painter remembered having spotted her sitting cross-legged in one of the lounges of the Élysée Palace one evening while interviewing the French president along with another journalist. He’d amused himself by imaging her naked while striking all those risqué poses that she loved to make. At which point everything the president said became very funny.

She was walking elegantly in front of him, but didn’t seem to notice him. He wondered why she’d accepted his invitation. Perhaps she was concealing a camera so she could get a scoop on the funeral of a painter whose canvases were growing pricier by the day.

Then came the turn of the woman whom he thought resembled Faye Dunaway in Elia Kazan’s The Arrangement. She was a friend with whom love had come easily and with whom life had passed without any arguments. She’d come to see him because she’d been writing a thesis on contemporary Moroccan painting and its influences. She was hardworking and tall; she had a sense of humor and a penchant for lightness, which pleased him a great deal. The product of a mixed marriage — her father was Tunisian, her mother French — she was grounded in both cultures and loved to speak Arabic, albeit in a heavily accented way. They’d laughed a lot and often made love wherever they happened to be. She would drag him to a place he didn’t know and passionately give herself to him. Whenever she came to his place wearing a skirt he knew she wasn’t wearing any underwear. He would slip his hand between her thighs and she would let out a cry of joy. He adored her skirts, even the ones she wore in the winter. Whenever she arrived wearing trousers, he knew that she’d either had her period or wasn’t in the mood.

Their relationship came to an end the day she went back to her country to get married. She too belonged to the time before he’d been married. He occasionally regretted not having gotten in touch with her again to resume their sexual encounters. She had a great character, a kind disposition, and plenty of charm.

Around the same time, the painter had been seeing a Moroccan student with exceptional skin. She had left to continue her studies in Canada and had met a brutal death at the age of twenty-four. Memories of her had haunted the painter and her death had wounded him enormously even though he hadn’t known her that well. She’d given herself to him enthusiastically and had hoped for something more than quick get-togethers between classes. He looked for her silhouette in vain.

That same year, the painter had had another affair with a Moroccan woman, someone who’d borne her beauty as though it were a burden, or a tragedy waiting to happen. She had big gray eyes but it was as though something were gnawing away at her. She had a hard time being happy, cried often, and her body tensed up each time he touched her. It was the first time he’d been with a frigid woman. She would weep, cling to him, beg for long, sweet cuddles that helped her to calm down and fall asleep on his shoulder. He knew that she’d suffered some kind of trauma, but it wasn’t his role to psychoanalyze her. Her father must have abused her, and she carried the secret of that wound as though she’d murdered someone. She’d allowed him to understand without spelling it out, then buried her face in a pillow and cried for a long time. She’d gotten married and her parents had thrown her a huge party, but her husband, a kind, charmless man, hadn’t known how to deal with her. He would only return home late at night and neglect her. One evening, she’d called a friend of hers for help, but that friend had been unable to come over because he’d been suffering from angina. He’d spoken to her and had promised he would come see her as soon as he was better. He didn’t want to infect her, he’d said. He’d tried to make her laugh, but the distant voice on the other end of the line had been that of a woman adrift on a vast ocean. “Wait for me, I’m coming!” he’d said. By the time he arrived, there was nobody there. She’d driven to a beach house, swallowed a huge quantity of pills, and gone to sleep. Her suicide had shocked everyone because all the boys of her generation had been driven crazy by her beauty and all the girl were jealous of her charm and elegance.