Who You Think I Am Read online

  And you can go ahead and do what the others did, deducing that I had God knows what sort of fusional relationship with my mother, an inability to break away, a castration complex and everything else. But then don’t go saying in the same breath that I had the means—that I have the means—to move on to something else: my work, my friends, my children. I was the child. Okay? I am the child. There’s no specific age for being a kid. You must have that written somewhere in the file, that I’m the child?

  What is a child? How can I put this…It’s someone who needs looking after.

  It’s someone who wants to be cradled.

  Even if it’s an illusion, yes, why not? It’s still just as soothing. Ha, now you’re pleased with yourself! Nice line: even if it’s an illusion? In a smooth voice. Are you a doctor or just a psychologist? Mind you, what’s the difference? What I don’t like about your discipline, your so-called science, is that it doesn’t change anything. However much we understand what’s going on, what’s gone on, we’re still not saved. When we understand what’s causing our pain, it still hurts. No benefit. We can’t be cured of our failures. You can’t darn ripped sheets.

  Are you on Facebook, Marc? You’re not answering. You’re not proud of it. You don’t stalk people, do you. You get enough from your job.

  So anyway, because I couldn’t follow Joe directly, I sent Chris, KissChris, a friend request. He was the perfect contact because he’d recently moved into Joe’s apartment, although only intermittently. They’d met about ten years earlier in the editorial department of Le Parisien, where they both worked, Chris as a photographer, Joe as an intern, they were about twenty-five at the time. I got the impression they did a lot of partying together for two or three years before having a bust-up over work, a girl, some weed, or money. And then, at the time I’m talking about, they’d just reconnected through some other guy who patched things up between them. Chris was struggling, every now and then he’d get some minor reportage, a photo for a scummy magazine, but he mostly lived on benefits. Meanwhile Joe was happily unemployed and about to move into his family’s holiday house in Lacanau, near Arcachon—a dreamy place where I had, where I still have, wonderful memories: time passes, the memories remain, as cemeteries say. Because there were good times with Joe. A few. Maybe there are good times with everyone. There can be. His parents inherited a fortune from a childless cousin, money wasn’t a problem for him anymore. He vaguely made music—nothing serious—but his mother was keen for him, aged forty, to maintain some semblance of work: so he was the caretaker and the gardener and the plumber and the electrician. Or so to speak, because he couldn’t do any of those things. He couldn’t bear being on his own and, because I lived in Paris, I couldn’t go see him very often (I sometimes think that was the main reason he finally moved out to the country: to make it difficult for me to see him), so he offered to put Chris up. Marguerite Duras wrote something about that, about the fact that men really like being among men, do you see what I mean, there’s a sort of laziness, a lack of interest in women—too different, too tiring. Women require an effort that they don’t feel like making, not long term anyway. Except for fucking, I guess. They bolster each other with their mutual virility, they don’t want a woman inside their heads or right in front of their faces. I imagine Joe was also thinking he could resuscitate his younger days, start over. He could never deal with the idea of growing old. In his own mind he was still eighteen, he fantasized about very young girls, minors, virgins—did you know that the combination of “teen” and “sex” is the most common Google search in the world?—well, basically, he thought you could keep playing the same film over and over. That’s what they did, anyway. Chris moved in with Joe, like in the good old days.

  I’d never met Chris in the flesh. Joe had told me a few things about him, that was all. I think he didn’t want me to meet him: he hid it well but Joe was extremely jealous, he was always frightened of losing what he had, including what he didn’t want. If he’d lost something everyone had to lose it, if something was dead as far as he was concerned, it couldn’t keep going someplace else. One of the last times I saw Joe in Paris before the meltdown, he just showed me the photos Chris was taking and posting on Facebook to drum up some interest, make a bit of buzz, as he called it. He wasn’t very kind about his “best buddy”; according to him, Chris wasn’t really looking for a job. He was fed and housed in Lacanau, so why move? Then his ambition was to become famous without lifting a finger—maybe just his index finger to press the start button. “He’s hoping someone will notice him one day and turn him into the next Depardon,” Joe scoffed. His photos were good, I looked at them in detail, but only because it was a way to spend time with Joe.

  Chris? No, I never actually spoke to him, before. Well, yes I did, it came back to me the other night, I had a nightmare and the words came back to me, should I tell you this? You’re interested in nightmares? Okay. It was morning, I had a lecture, I went into the amphitheater, all dressed up, nice makeup, I headed for the podium and just then all the seats emptied in a flash, all the people were wearing blue, they got to their feet as a block, clumped noisily down the stairs, and walked out without even glancing in my direction, a thumbs-down, and I was left alone on my platform, an empty platform and not a train in sight. I was frightened, I turned around and there was something written on the board in capitals, in capital punishment, I woke with a start, my heart pounding at a hundred miles an hour, and there were those words, now here you could make a note, get your pen, this won’t be in the file. No? Don’t you have to write everything down, even tiny details? Aha, listening! Big Brother’s listening! Well, the dream reminded me of something in real life. One evening I called Joe in Lacanau, I often did to keep things going—keep our love going, what was left of it. He mostly didn’t answer but that evening he did. He’d been drinking or smoking, both probably, either way he was hazy and aggressive, he complained I was checking up on him, calling him only to be sure he was there, to monitor him. And then—and this is something he did if he was bored with a conversation, sometimes in the middle of the street with a random passerby—he handed me to someone else without any warning. Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence I heard a different voice, an unfamiliar voice saying hi, then calm down. It was Chris, I realized afterward. I complained, got angry, this habit of Joe’s irritated me, even if sometimes it really made me laugh when he stopped complete strangers in the street…But not this time, the guy on the other end wasn’t funny, talking to me like we knew each other, his voice slurred and patronizing, Don’t you think you’re a bit old to be jealous? he said. I got real mad, I asked to speak to Joe again, She’s so not cool this chick of yours, he muttered and then said pompously: So you think you can do whatever you like, you think whoever can call at whatever time of day. I’m not just anybody, I retorted. And at least I’m not squatting, I’m not sponging off him. At that point I heard him take a toke, then he blew out the smoke and before hanging up—without handing me back to Joe—he said: Go die!

  Go die.

  The killer words.

  People throw themselves out of windows for less than that, don’t they? Plenty here would. They’ve been bashed around by so many words they start to wobble.

  Go die. GO DIE. Other people’s words follow them around like hostile ghosts. People’s voices issue instructions they can’t escape. Textual harassment, you could say, ha ha! I like word games too, you see. We should get along.

  Anyway, all that to explain that there was absolutely no way I could have predicted what happened next. When I set up my fake Facebook page, Chris was just a parasite as far as I was concerned, a rude misogynistic freeloader, an enemy in my shaky relationship with Joe. I wasn’t even considering communicating with him, I just wanted this indirect access to news of Joe.

  Go die.

  That’s what I ended up doing when it comes down to it, didn’t I?

  In the end I did as I was told. I’m not alive here. Is that what you all think? When you’re crazy
the imperative sounds like an incontrovertible command, doesn’t it? Tell me, is that what you all think? A command that can be turned around too. Oh, go on. That can be sent back to the sender. Go die yourself. When you’re crazy. When a woman’s crazy.

  And is that what’s written there, that I’m crazy?

  Are all women crazy?

  Chris’s Facebook status publicly proclaimed he was a photographer, so I set up my avatar, cooking up an identity as a girl passionate about photography. For my profile picture I used a shot of a dark-haired girl I found on Google, her face completely hidden by the lens of a Pentax, all you could see of her was her hair, by flitting through photos of the girls he was friends with I’d worked out he prefers brunettes. I said I was twenty-four (twelve years younger than him rather than twelve years older), that I lived in Paris but traveled a lot, I stacked all the odds in my favor. Before sending him a friend request—I wanted to dangle the bait without arousing his suspicion—I scooped up a few dozen of his friends, people I didn’t know but who were in photography or fashion, people like him, cool, swanky, hip or losers, pleased with themselves and friends of the human race, in love with life, as they say. He accepted me right away. He was even the one to initiate a conversation because I “liked” one of his photos. It must have been at the start of the year, January time; we’d broken up around Christmas, Joe and I had—the holiday season’s a vulnerable time, you feel more lonely when you’re alone, Joe would never miss an opportunity like that, he must have dumped me just before New Year’s Eve. So Chris’s message made me happy, it was stupid because it didn’t really say anything, “Glad you like my photos, thanks, happy new year. I’m Christophe, Chris to my friends,” he wasn’t coming on to me either, just being polite basically.

  But the connection was there. I replied saying I thought his photos were fantastic, that I’d gone to his exhibition the year before on the rue Lepic (I’d seen the flyer on his wall—a few large prints on sale in a bar-gallery place). He asked me whether we’d met at the time, I said no, he wasn’t there when I went. Meanwhile I trawled his wall for information about Joe—a picture of him dressed as a garden gnome, a jokey status about “tending his carrot tops on the balcony,” stuff like that. I didn’t have any direct contact with him at all.

  The conversation with Chris developed very naturally. He asked me what I did, whether I lived in the heart of Paris. I invented a job in events management: I organized fashion-related performances, was badly paid, a perennial intern, but I traveled quite a lot and was shaping up my résumé—I was only twenty-four, after all. I lived in Pantin.

  The fashion thing was to keep him interested; the traveling to justify the problems (I anticipated) of meeting him in person if he suggested it—I often went away at very short notice, my boss could need me at any time, lucky I was single. How about him? He lived in Lacanau, in a friend’s house a couple of minutes from the ocean, real nice (you bet! Oh, the jolt of jealousy when I read that! He’d taken my place, I should have been there, with Joe). The pair of them were planning a trip of several months to India, Goa, they were going to film everyday life there, denounce the poverty and injustice. His friend was also hoping to meet some musicians. He himself was planning to write a book. Did he already have a publisher? No, not really. But several were interested.

  Obviously I was sneering on the inside: Joe “denouncing” poverty? That would take a bit of empathy and he didn’t have any. Other people don’t exist in Joe’s world, with the odd exception, he only knows emotionless walk-on extras, animals reduced to their basic urges, or things that can be brushed aside with a flick of the hand. But maybe Chris was different? I thought that straightaway, or hoped it: the simple, friendly way he wrote, he was polite, reserved, his messages were gentle, the exact opposite of Joe, to the extent that I completely forgot his “Go die,” you see. Still, the thought of Joe being so far away terrified me: Lacanau was close enough to calm my fears, I could picture going there, imagine the distance as the crow flies, but not Goa.

  It wasn’t long before I was caught up in the game—it wasn’t long before it stopped being a game. In the early days I hurried home from college after classes and couldn’t wait to get on my computer. “There goes mom the geek!” my eldest son used to say—he was thirteen at the time. I hardly looked at my real Facebook account where I wasn’t likely to have much activity, but went straight to my fake profile.

  I chose my pseudonym carefully: Claire because I wanted to use my own first name, ironic as that may seem; Antunes because it’s foreign and it’s the name of a writer. Do you know António Lobo Antunes? Major Portuguese novelist. You should. He trained as a psychiatrist. But he just writes now, I think. I mean, is there anything else?

  A foreign name so I could “go away” if need be. And seeing as I speak a little Portuguese…and anyway, all that fado and saudade, I don’t know, it suited me. So: Claire Antunes. There’s always something inexplicable about a chosen identity, wouldn’t you say? Like in a novel. I’m writing a novel, you know. In the writing workshop, here. I don’t show it. No one’s read it. Except Camille, who runs the workshop, have you met her? I’ve nearly finished it.

  So that was how it started, softly softly. Chris and I messaged each other every two or three days, getting to know each other. Well, I was getting to know him. He was getting to know Claire Antunes, a twenty-four-year-old on a temporary contract, quite shy, not very into Facebook (I had only about thirty friends), who really loved photography, French songs, and travel. He thought I was cool—that was his word, cool, he used it all the time, about anything; and I’d go online late in the evening when he was almost always online—the pleasure of that little green light!—and we started instant messaging. I always wanted to know what Joe was doing so I tried to get Chris to tell me about his life in Lacanau: wasn’t he bored in a village that was deserted in winter? What did he do all day? He said that no, he liked the solitude, that the light over the ocean was beautiful, it was cool. And me? Me, I was the opposite, I saw people, was out a lot. Wow, that’s cool. It has to be said, it was kind of limited, and pretty boring for me sometimes, without the sexy or cranky or funny edginess of Joe’s exchanges. A bit Boy Scout, if you know what I mean. And I’m sure you do. I was careful about what I wrote, I made some spelling mistakes (and it was painful for me, genuinely, it cost me: I don’t like to see the language abused. Language is a reflection of my life. When I really want to die I’ll be silent). He made a few mistakes, but not too many—the classic ones my students make: loose instead of lose, trouble with there and their, that sort of thing. I learned to use abbreviations, to drop in smileys, English words, a bit of slang. I didn’t have to do much research, my kids supplied the material. I had them every other week at the time, my husband and I were doing joint custody, alternate weeks.

  Of course I miss them. What a question. But I don’t want to see them. I prefer not to.

  I flattered him quite a lot, too, because I knew about men, but well. Yes…you haven’t noticed? Aha, that’s because you’re a man! And an analyst too. To think Freud associated narcissism with women! “Women love only themselves” and all that. Okay, maybe he doesn’t say it of all women, that’s possible, you know your Freud better than I do. Still, he doesn’t say it of men. Narcissistic men weren’t what Freud was most interested in, were they? Anyway, I meant it when I paid Chris compliments: he was talented, I was just an amateur, I was impressed by his technical mastery as well as his “eye,” his ability to capture the moment. He told me he’d teach me, it wasn’t very hard, framing was the most important thing. He’d teach me: that was his way of suggesting a future together, a someday when our bodies would be side by side IRL—in real life. And the thought made me anxious, tormented me, like anything that’s impossible but that you can’t quite dismiss. Accepting you can’t do something; now that must be what happiness is.

  Getting out of shot when the framing’s not right. Getting out of the frame.

  On the other hand, I�
�m in the frame here. There are edges here. I’m always in the picture.

  You’re here to keep me in the picture, is that it, Marc? Or rather to put me back in the picture? And what if I can’t handle you in the shot, what do we do then? Really?! And what about rights to the image? That’s reciprocal, isn’t it? It’s like love. You have a right to it but you can retract from it.

  So, Chris then. Pretty soon, but very sensitively, he asked for a photo of me because, he said, he needed to see me. Because the face was obscured in my profile picture, he suggested I send him one in a private message because he perfectly understood I might not want to show myself to just anyone. I think he even liked my shyness, the secrecy thrilled him, or moved him perhaps. He wanted a woman all to himself, a privileged connection. Who can blame him? Before asking for a photo of me he’d commented on my profile picture, the one in which you could see only “my” hair. He could imagine the inevitably pretty girl hiding behind the lens, under those raven locks. But he’d rather have proof…

  The photo? You mean the second one? No, nothing special, why?

  I chose it at random, yes, like the first one. I Googled “pretty brunette” and dozens of cute girls came up in various stages of undress. I chose a respectable one, obviously. That’s all. In fact, come to think of it, Chris must actually have waited quite a long time before asking for a picture of me—several months—even though we messaged on Facebook at least three times a week. He must have quite liked imagining me, dreaming about a hidden face. Some guys are like that, there are more and more of them now, aren’t there? who prefer imagining than having someone in their arms, but you can’t always tell whether they’re afraid of being disappointed or disappointing.