HOW I MISSED HER 2008-12-21

1,2,3,4,
Can I have a little more..;

Indeed I remember, my dear child, how I met her, but of course you would want to know about the other ones, the “also-ran”, like in one of you favourite series. I promise it won’t take 10 seasons. I made a selection. I had to.

A few faces fade away. We used to compare that to images losing colour contrast in the old family albums. Today, you delete, erase, and wipe out. What will be left for your old age? Storytelling?

Yes, you have the romantic places we love to hate: railway stations, the platforms of the “Gare de Lyon”, grand central station in Hitchcock’s “North by northwest”, gangways on the piers, boarding gates, all this leading to “the” moment… when you, mostly, say good bye.

To say hello and to meet someone, the clock has to stop. You have to wonder. Get lost in these sparkling eyes for endless seconds. You’ll miss the train, plane, whatever. Then, it starts ticking again. But there is nobody in the next seat.
I was doing an internship in this small town in the south of the United States and I had not seen your mother for a few months. At the time planes flew burning a lot expensive kerosene, teleportation did not exist, and we were poor, which means to begin with she didn’t have money for a transatlantic flight. But she had saved on the heating bill during the winter, eaten “noodles au gruyere” all year, sold her grandmother’s fake silver ear-rings, and the miracle of love happened: she was coming for Christmas.

They had only one baggage claim in this small airport, so I knew where to go and wait for her, she was on a small plane from Washington. I had managed to convince my friends that it would better to be on my own. The girls were rather understanding. As a rule I hate waiting, but In that case I must admit the expectation brought pleasant feelings. I was seeing her face, her smile, her hair, straight, long and almost blond… she was almost there. The passengers trickled through. She was going to be the last one… and then time stopped. She was in front of me. New make-up, new hair-do, different colour, curly, short and auburn. I had not recognized her for a split second. I felt so stupid I didn’t know what to say, which we easily put down to the emotional charge of the long awaited moment. Still, how could my heart have been so easily fooled? I hope it never happens to you: trapped with no escape, lost for words, neither here nor there.

Of course I got over it and we had a nice time, Christmas tree, presents and all. I don’t even remember if we talked about my “moment” later. I guess we did, because it was funny, in a way, sort of.

But that’s not how I met her. It’s just storytelling. Here’s the second episode. In the Alps. Ski resort. White snow slopes. Chairlifts.

She does not ski as fast I would like her to, but I am happy to slow down and pause. I like her figure and her face. I like round lines better than rocks and peaks. There was smouldering fire and rosy cheeks. A volcano under the ice cap.

Her one-piece ski outfit had some padding. Glasses, some sun tan lotion, like war paint to my eyes.

She had just arrived at the hotel: her cousin I had skied with had said she would join us. Of course I did not mind. I must have said something stupid like “when one can, two can”. Anyway I ended up spending the afternoon whizzing past two nice girls (I never said it was a male cousin); also thinking may be I should make up my mind and make a move for the evening; it was like “two many cooks spoil the broth”, you know; find a way to play it safe. Two is company.

Back to the hotel, shower, change, and to the bar.

I have this thing about stairs. I think you have to be careful. Things happen. You get trapped in your mind like in the drawings of Piranese, or sucked into the crowd like in Chambord, or chased up some church spire, where you end up knowing for whom the bell tolls, with regret. Things get messed up in stairs.

It was nothing like that though. Regular hotel stairs. Two abreast without any problem. It’s not as if I bumped into her. Exquisite breasts, necklace, some mountainous Xanadu in between two floors: that is how she materialized. Light blue velvety shiny trousers and cashmere sweater (of pretty much the same colour, for all I cared). In terms of being trendy, I guess it is fair to say she would look ridiculous today to a fashion victim, just out of “Les bronzes on the slopes”. Light headed sixties.

But for me it was serious I had spent the afternoon with her, sports and speed, and here she was “cocktails and class”: my own metamorphosis was not so perfect. Would I jump the fence into her world? I bet her best friend was probably a Swiss banker. And there must have been a private jet waiting for her somewhere.

When I landed, in front of her orange juice, it turned out a few of my tales were not too far from the truth, she was also a nurse in the southern suburbs of Paris.

I do remember I told her how I thought she was like a princess from the East, and blah blah blah. I am not sure she believed me. But it did not matter because in the end it was true that she was a bit like a hologram, like an ephemeral fairy, wafting out of the water pipe to charm the snake, leisurely drifting away. I was under the spell for a while, but it was the wrong scenery, the wrong scenario, and she was not your mother.

I am not going into the details of every story. We don’t have time for that. Not enough space either. And there is always the need to get to the end and be done with. You try to put things together, to gather momentum and snowball ahead. It is never as if you know or see exactly where you are going. But there are doors that you don’t want to open.

And for the ones you do open, right time or wrong time. “Come on in. Door’s unlocked” you hear the voice. Great expectations. Of course, it does not always work the way you expect. You may have forgotten the room number or the colour of the door.

The front door was white. It was the door to the old customs house near the lighthouse, a pine tree next to it.

Sailing boats from all other the world were resting from their transatlantic passage, mahogany and polished brass fittings, halyards occasionally clanging in a turbulent revolving wind. I may have been dreaming of the South Seas or of the West Indies, looking for an Ishmael of a crew mate, for Conrad’s shadow line, or for the stuff dreams are made of.

I pushed the door after turning the knob. The clerk was waiting for me behind the desk, ready for me to register, opening the ledger, asking for my number, plus other uninteresting things. I looked into her eyes behind her big pair of glasses. I found a cheeky tone to the look they had. You can’t really call that love at first sight. Thunderclap, the French say. It was not that fast, not lightening, not that intense, not that clear. Slowly sinking rather. A gold digger watching a map where there might be a promising seam. Unknown territory.

I had to explain, be polite, take her to the bar; there were ups and downs, but it turned out all right. We established communication even with language problems. I am less afraid of airports and stairs today. I am still careful about fairies anywhere I go, particularly on those stairways to heavens. I buy postcards and paintings to store the magic moments, the special light. I am still trying to structure the present, “potentialize” the future, reveal eternity, define infinity… bullshit a little bit when I can. But if I say that, then you are no longer going to believe my stories. And you will never know for sure how I met your mother, my dear child.

Sometimes I even wonder if you are for real…and then what about me?


Pascal Legrand

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