Simple Passion

by Annie Ernaux

FROM SEPTEMBER last year, I did nothing else but wait for a man: for him to call me and come round to my place.

I had no future other than the telephone call fixing our next appointment. I would try to leave the house as little as possible except for professional reasons (naturally, he knew my working hours), forever fearing that he might call during my absence. I would also avoid using the vacuum cleaner or the hairdryer as they would have prevented me from hearing the sound of the telephone.

When he left me more time between his phone call and his visit, three or four days, I imagined with disgust all the work I would have to do and the social engagements I would have to attend before seeing him again. I would have liked to have done nothing else but wait for him.

when I knew that nothing in my life (having children, passing exams, traveling to faraway countries) had ever meant as much to me as lying in bed with that man in the middle of the afternoon.

Naturally I would never wash until the next day, to keep his sperm inside me.

I promised to send two hundred francs to UNICEF if he came to see me before a particular date I had chosen.

One afternoon when he was there, I burned the living-room carpet down to the weft by placing a boiling coffee pot on top of it. I didn’t care. Quite the contrary. I was happy every time I caught sight of the mark as I remembered that afternoon with him.

I do not wish to explain my passion—that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify—I just want to describe it.

From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.

I longed to end the affair, so as not to be at the mercy of a phone call, so as not to suffer, realizing at once what this would entail, seconds after the separation: a series of days with nothing to wait for.

I shall probably never see him again. At first, when I woke up at two o’clock in the morning, I didn’t care whether I lived or died.

When I was feeling really bad, I had a strong urge to consult a fortune-teller; it seemed the only decisive thing I could do.

One night the thought of getting myself screened for AIDS occurred to me: “At least he would have left me that.”

If I went to the same place I had been to last year, when he was here, I would wear the same suit as before, trying to convince myself that identical circumstances produce identical effects and that he would call me that evening. When I went to bed around midnight, thoroughly demoralized, I realized that I had really believed in that phone call all day.

(Am I the only woman to return to the scene of an abortion? Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to f ind out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal.

I had decided to learn his language. I kept, without washing it, a glass from which he had drunk.

He had said, “You won’t write a book about me.” But I haven’t written a book about him, neither have I written a book about myself. All I have done is translate into words—words he will probably never read; they are not intended for him—the way in which his existence has affected my life.