David Foenkinos: "The erotic potential of my wife"
The book
Hector has no success. He struggles with a manic compulsion to collect, he has no girlfriend, and even his suicide attempt in the Paris Metro succeed. But then he meets ChroniquesDuVasteMonde, and everything changes. In order to indulge as often as possible in the wonderful sight of his beloved when cleaning the windows, he secretly sets up a camera one day. But his desire passes suddenly, as on the video next to ChroniquesDuVasteMonde another man shows up. Hector is upset with jealousy. But how can he bring the fraud to light without admitting his own eroticism?
Feather-light, charming and funny? a chamber game about obsessions, lies and secrets of relationships, as only French writers can do.
The author
David Foenkinos was born in 1974 in Paris. He studied literature at the Sorbonne and is a trained jazz musician. Today he works as a writer and screenwriter. For his novels he received several literary prizes. "The erotic potential of my wife" was awarded in 2004 with the Prix Roger Nimier. David Foenkinos lives in France.
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Leseprobe "The erotic potential of my wife"
Hector had the head of a hero. You could feel that he was ready to go to action, to defy all the dangers of our monstrous humanity, to kindle the fires of countless women, to plan a vacation with the family, to discuss with his neighbors in the elevator and, if he was really big in shape was to understand a movie by David Lynch. He would be a kind of hero of our time, with tight, well-formed calves. It just stupid that he had just decided to take his own life.
You've seen better heroes. A certain sense of theatricality had made him decide on the Metro. All the world would learn of his death, it would be something like the press screening of a movie that would quickly turn out to be a flop. Hector, out of sheer politeness, wisely weighed the sonorous recommendations around him, saying he should not buy his ticket prematurely. In case he changed his mind. One did not know anything about him, so one hoped for a failure, to make sure one could rely on the physiognomy of a human being. Especially for a hero. Already he looked blurry. He had dropped the tablets with the impacting effect before the expiration date. It dies better in sleep.
In the end, this was a blessing, because Hector worried us very much. Outwardly his eyes betrayed nothing. Lying in the corridors of the metro, he was finally discovered closer to Châtelet-Les Halles than to his own death.
His sunken body reflected his failure. Two ambulance wizards with bloated, anabolic faces (but we want to mistrust faces from now on) came and freed him from all those glances from the passing employees, who were intrigued to have a situation worse than their own. Hector only thought of one thing: now that his suicide had failed, he was doomed to life.
He was taken to a hospital that had just been painted. Logically, everything was freshly painted everywhere. He would be bored for a few months in this recovery facility. Very soon his only pleasure was a cliché: watching the nurse and dreaming vaguely of caressing her breasts. About this cliché, he fell asleep regularly, always just before he had admitted the ugliness of the nurse.
He was in a twilight state in which disgrace seemed to touch the mythical. This judgment seemed very strict: Between two morphine administrations the nurse could be quite sensuous. And then there was this doctor who occasionally stopped by to watch a dinner party go by. The encounters rarely lasted more than a minute; after all, you had to act as if you were in a hurry to maintain your reputation (and that was pretty much the only thing he used to care). This deeply tanned man asked Hector to stick his tongue out to conclude that he had a nice tongue. It was not wrong to have a nice tongue, it felt good with a nice tongue. But Hector could not buy anything for that.
He did not know exactly what to expect, he was severely depressed, someone whining at the bottom of the funnel. He was suggested to inform his family or friends if the gentleman was lucky enough to have them (discreetly hinting at the possibility of renting). These options were accompanied by a not very polite silence, but we do not stop it. Hector did not want to see anyone. More precisely? and no one wants that? he did not want anyone to see him in that condition. He was ashamed to be a little man between nothing and less than nothing. There were times when he called a friend and told him he was traveling, madness, this Grand Canyon, what a ravine. And then he hung up. He was the Grand Canyon.
The nurse found him sympathetic, she had even told him he was a special specimen. Can you sleep with a woman who thinks you are a special specimen? That was really the question. A priori, no: women never want to sleep with one anyway. She was interested in his story. After all, what was in the medical file was the only thing she knew about him. That there are more glorious methods of approximation does not mean anything. Is there a woman who gives herself to one because she likes the way one never misses the day of the vaccination against polio?
Oh, you're driving me crazy, you vaccine-conscious man. Often the nurse scratched his chin. In such cases she considered herself the doctor. But one must also say that there was room for this role. Then she stepped close to Hector's bed. She had a thoroughly erotic way of brushing her hand over the white sheet, her well-groomed fingers like legs in a staircase that took white steps.
Hector was released in early March. Actually, the month had no meaning, nothing at all had any meaning. The concierge, a woman whose age no one was able to judge, pretended to be worried by the tenant's absence. That way of worrying, this way of thinking back to 1942, with a voice so garish that it would derail a train near a railroad track, if you know what I mean.
"Monsieur Balanchiiine, what a pleasure to see you again, I was really worried ..."
But Hector did not remember that. Because he had been away for over six months, she tried to demand the lost Christmas bonus. Fearful of meeting a neighbor and having to spread his life before him, he avoided the elevator and hauled himself up the stairs.
His heavy breathing did not go unnoticed, and so one stuck with the eyes to the spies. As he passed, doors opened. It was not even Sunday. This building was just a nerve-wracking inaction.
