I forgot to mention the book. It’s because of the book that I’m going abroad. I want to translate it, distance myself from everything. But I didn’t forget. I simply didn’t want to think about it. Not right now.
An insipid meal arrives on a tray. Stringy strips of pollock attempt to enliven anaemic-looking lettuce leaves next to an orange-coloured dressing in a plastic container: this is all meant to be, if I am to believe the menu, a crab salad. In a rectangular plate, a mediocre chicken in tomatoey hunter sauce, buttered carrots, and fragrant rice stagnate beneath a strip of tin foil. I am also entitled to a hard roll, stone-cold, and a triangle of La Vache qui rit cheese. Dessert is too pink to be real. I eat the cheese, drink the water and the wine. I wait.
A haughty-looking flight attendant circulates, teapot in hand. I hold out my cup, ask for lemon. Later, she removes my barely touched tray. My neighbour has devoured everything on hers.
In six hours, Madrid. The film is about to start. What is it? I look at the program: a comedy, it seems. Light. We will laugh. I feel heavy. I weigh at least three tons.
My neighbour is skimming through a glossy Iberia brochure. Images of a blue Mediterranean with sunny beaches, languid bodies. Yellow and red spots dot the blue: wind-surfers on the ocean. My neighbour is about to speak, I can sense it. The silence between us has gone on too long.
“Do you know Spain well?” she asks. I answer yes.
“I’m going to Marbella,” she continues.
She informs me that she won a week-long trip by filling out an entry form in a branch of the liquor commission. She will stay in a five-star hotel frequented by movie stars and millionaires. Have use of the tennis courts, pools, sauna, workout facilities. A guided tour of the region is included, and a wine tasting.
“A trip for one? That’s unusual.” “Two,” she corrects.
Her friend was supposed to go with her, both of them were looking forward to it. But then, at the last minute, the day before yesterday, as it happened, he had a stupid accident, a fall on the ice in front of his house. He tore a ligament. She couldn’t find anyone to take his place.
“Sometimes life plays rotten tricks,” I say.
“What about you, are you also going on vacation?” she wants to know.
No, I’m going away for my work, a translation. I need peace. I’ll find an apartment somewhere, in a small city in Andalusia near the sea. Off-season, it will be easy.
“A translation?”
“A book.”
“A novel?”
I explain that I am a translator of what’s called “the Love Collection.” “Oh…”
She knows it, has read a few titles. Not many, of course, but sometimes they’re good to relax with after a hard day at work. She is a lab technician for a pharmaceutical company.
“On the beach, too, it’s good,” I remark.
She smiles. That’s true, she brought a romance novel, The Prisoner of Baghdad.I tell her I translated that too. It was before the Gulf war, when Baghdad still conjured up images of The Thousand and One Nights.Her face lights up. She asks the title of what I’m translating now, so she can read it when it comes out. I tell her that I always come up with the title last.
“And you need peace to do the work?”
“I always need peace.”
“A profession made in heaven. You’re so lucky!” “Always with love. Always on the wings of dreams.”
“On the wings of dreams. It could be a title. If I saw it in a bookstore, I’d buy it without hesitating. On the wings of dreams.”
“I’d buy it too,” I tell her.
“My name is Claudine.”
“I’m Éléonore.”
“A name out of a novel.”
“Claudine too.”
The comedy has begun. But no one in the plane is laughing.
“Let’s have a drink,” she suggests. “After all, I won a trip to Spain. A reason to celebrate. I bought a bottle of gin at the duty-free.”
We get up to fetch glasses, soda water, and ice at the flight attendant’s station.
“To Spain!” I say, raising my glass.
“I’ll drink, but my heart’s not really in it… My friend and I had planned to rent a car and tour Portugal. In fact, we decided to stay three weeks. The flight and first week were paid for. Afterwards, we’d have stayed in pensions. We wanted to see everything. And now I’m here alone…”
“There are other fish in the sea.”
“What?”
“I mean, you won’t have trouble finding other men.”
She protests, she’s a faithful woman. She assures me that flings are a part of the past. With AIDS running rampant, mass murderers on the loose, all the psychopaths on the roads… Now love has become too dangerous. She doesn’t want to end up disfigured, mutilated, hacked up. Or catch a terrible disease.
“The Spanish – how are they with women?” she asks.
“Spanish.”
She laughs.
“But really?”
“You’ll see.”
We burst out laughing together, knowingly. We fill the glasses. We drink to Spain and the Spanish.
She brings up the name of Florent, whom she left in the hospital.
“It broke my heart to see him like that,” she continues. “You know what cowards men are. And then, leaving him to go gallivanting around Spain while he… I felt… I don’t know… I felt cruel. It ruins all my pleasure before I even get there. Perhaps I should have stayed. To provide moral support.”
To get her mind off the subject, I tell her that my magazine features a survey on the sex lives of forty-year-old women. It might be fun to answer the questions.
“Question number one: is your sex life satisfactory?”
She hesitates.
“Well…”
“I’ll answer first. My answer is no.” She gives a little laugh.
“Well, mine isn’t either, not really. I mean, that’s not all there is.”
“Fortunately.”
“As you say.”
“But that is the subject of the survey.”
“Come to think of it, yes.”
“Yes what?”
“More or less satisfactory. Considering the circumstances.”
“What do you mean by circumstances?”
“Being a forty-year-old woman.”
“Extenuating.”
“Yes?”
“The circumstances,” I say.
“What do you think is extenuated?”
“Satisfaction, obviously.”
“At forty, you expect less.”
“Or