Moving In (Le Déménagement)

MOVING IN

There's no soul.

There's just me.

With soul, things always turn out badly.

There's an echo.

It's the lack of soul that resonates.

It's...

perfectly asymmetrical.

Fourteen by six.

What silence.

One, two, three, four, five,

six, seven eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

One side.

One, two, three, four, five.

I must have got it wrong.

One, two, three, four, five, six,

seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.

One, two, three, four, five...

and a half.

Too bad. I'll say it's perfectly...

asymmetrical: thirteen by five and a half.

What silence.

Where is the radio? The one belonging to...

Beatrice?

I don't like hearing silence.

You can hear the silence here: that's all you can hear.

I should never have...

never have moved. What got into me?

I was fine in the other one.

Almost.

No, most of the time I felt bad. Not well.

I had to move.

Except once.

One summer.

The summer of '82, I was fine.

All the windows open.

A slight... cross-current.

The three girls laughing next door.

They'd just moved in. Students.

In the morning,

the air was still fresh.

Nothing.

No languor. The desire to get up

To be there. A man standing up.

Their laughter... lifted me up.

A cold shower. A light pair of pants, slightly baggy.

An unbuttoned shirt. Barefoot. I was alive.

One gesture, another.

A record.

The sound of footsteps in the street, Very few.

A voice that says:

"I'm leaving for the sea, tomorrow."

I have a lump in my throat.

It's so beautiful.

A letter from a friend.

"Come see me.

"In Italy.

"We'll talk"

I wouldn't go to Italy

because of the laughter that lifted me up.

The three girls. There was a Juliette,

a Beatrice,

an Elisabeth.

Juliette.

Elisabeth.

Beatrice.

I loved them all

with an immense love.

Juliette told me one morning...

...in the morning, I picked up my mail on the landing...

She told me one morning, concerning soul:

"This house really has soul," she said.

"Yes", I replied. I was impressionable.

Because of my immense love.

And Juliette's red cotton dress.

The soul of dark, dirty hallways.

With peeling paint and a broken elevator.

"Soul".

She said it with a kind of jubilation. A sigh of pleasure.

Up to then, I'd thought the opposite.

That "soul" disturbed me. I'd have preferred a little less soul.

Not that day. That day, I agreed.

I had to admit there was some soul that lingered,

and that this soul made me

breathe easily, like her.

I was still imbued with it when I got back to my apartment.

It too had that something extra.

Simply, a surplus of soul.

every window open,

that summer of '82, when three students in Social Science

had moved in next door.

One in a red dress.

Juliette.

I was right not to have spoken to Juliette of her red dress.

Talking about a dress to someone with a soul in mind

is just not done.

Nor of the letter she was waiting for.

Definitely.

Speaking of a letter

is more in keeping with soul.

But I didn't want to...

because of the wait. I too had soul.

"I'm going tomorrow to the sea,"

said the middle-aged man.

I don't know whether it was the tone,

his rhythm, neither slow nor fast,

or his voice that moved me so much.

Or the two words placed one after the other,

to the sea tomorrow,

tomorrow to the sea.

I had my back to the window when it happened.

I was looking elsewhere.

Taking in the apartment with my eyes.

The sentence took me by surprise.

"I'm going to the sea tomorrow."

I truly hoped so for him.

I hoped he was going to leave.

And that hope too was a matter of soul.

I was deeply...

grateful

to Juliette, for raising this question.

Grateful and madly in love.

They went hand in hand.

If he'd said: "Tomorrow I'm going to the country to visit my family,"

...'country' always implies 'family'... I'd have hated it.

I hate people who have family in the country.

Just like that.

Less, I hate less people

with family at the sea, or in the mountains.

For once, I would have liked

someone to say:

"Tomorrow I'm going to my family in the desert" or "on an ice floe".

It's perfectly asymmetrical,

thirteen by five and a half.

One, two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.

One, two, three, four, five...

six.

I'm happy.

"I'm going tomorrow to the sea."

That was really...

perfect.

Elisabeth was from Toulouse.

Juliette was from Toulouse.

Beatrice was from Toulouse.

Not one of them had a dog.

Each one had her own room.

Elisabeth had her own room.

Juliette had her own room.

Beatrice had her own room.

Not one had a dog.

That made a strong concentration

of girls from Toulouse in a Parisian apartment building.

Each one had family in Toulouse.

Elisabeth had brothers.

Juliette had sisters.

Beatrice, brothers.

The three families,

combined,

made for 18 people from Toulouse.

The three families used to come see the three girls in Paris.

I met Juliette's father on the landing.

He too tackled me on the question of soul.

I told him

right off the bat

that I was both atheist and Parisian,

but I was willing to be convinced.

And that I liked nothing more than theological discussions.

And that in Paris, especially in the summer,

they were quite common.

He didn't jump on the occasion. He was hungry.

For him, "soul" spread out over all of Paris,

and even the suburbs.

A different soul, there.

There,

soul came from the laundry hung in the windows,

and from the kids with big dark eyes cycling on the sidewalks.

I found him very sensitive.

He was hungry.

I said,

"Yes...

poverty is photogenic",

because he was a photographer.

He was of the same opinion.

Very photogenic.

Of the same opinion. And lost in his thoughts about photogenicity.

So was I.

We were both lost in our thoughts.

As for me, I wasn't hungry.

He no longer took pictures.

He'd got over it.

He sold film to those who still took pictures.

Everyone wasn't like him. Others still took pictures. In Toulouse.

Fortunately...

all that photogenicity couldn't remain unphotographed.

He asked me to photograph him and Juliette

in front of the building. As a souvenir.

With an instamatic.

It was easy.

He put his hand on his big girl's shoulder.