The Margot Affair

by Sanaë Lemoine

How quickly those defenses could be stripped away, the skin removed, blood streaming along the muscles. This is how Anouk appeared to me sometimes, a tangle of organs, bright red and glaring at me.

A marriage is a closed world. Anyone who thinks they can explain it to an outsider is a fool.

Perhaps we weren’t popular, and no one described us as beautiful at school, but we had life, our youth, and not a single thought of mortality.

I was there and I wasn’t, like a silence between two beats.

We always imagine a talented person should only pursue their one talent, as if they can’t have others.

We are like snakes, she said. Throughout our lives we shed our previous selves like old skins. We’re always changing, never the same individual. Nothing, not even a terrible thing, can fully consume us.

In a way, I think he knew what he had was temporary, and one should always be prepared to return to a simpler life.

He didn’t even need to watch the ads. He had already absorbed the idea that buying real brands is a marker of quality, and therefore reveals what you can and cannot afford.

You’ll see it better one day. Maybe one day you’ll be able to see what it means to love someone. I’m talking about sacrifice, about doing things for another person that make you deeply uncomfortable.