Chapter 15 Section Fourteen

When she was sixteen or seventeen years old, she used to mourn some kind of fantasy.Did she come up with it herself, or did she hear about it, or read it in a book?Nobody knows.She wanted to be a fragrance of roses, three pervasive, overwhelming fragrances.She wants to move her graceful body, shuttle between men.This diffuse rose fragrance: a fantasy of experience.When she first became one of the grown-ups, that fantasy was fully realized in her as a romantic promise of sweet contact between man and woman, just as she extended an invitation to men.But she is not a woman who naturally loves to shuttle between lovers.After her wedding, that hazy, wild dream fell dormant, peaceful and cheerful.

A few years after she left her husband and lived with Jean-Marc, she was at the seaside one day.They were dining on the wooden deck of a ship.She has a strong white memory of the time: the deck, the dining table, the dining chairs, the tablecloth, everything was white, the lampposts were painted white, the bulbs glowed white against the summer sky Light.It was not quite dark yet.The moon is also white.It also whitens everything around it.Under the white foam bath, she had an irrepressible feeling of missing Jean-Marc. miss?How could she feel missing, when he was right in front of her? (Jean-Marc knows how to answer this question: If you think that one day, the person you love will not be there, or die, and will never see you again, even if he is in front of you now, you will Suffering from the pain of longing.)

Feeling the inexplicable miss at the seaside, she suddenly thought of her dead child.But a feeling of happiness rushed to her like a tide.She was immediately intimidated by the feeling.But no one can explain the feeling, not even your own.They just exist, there is no way to analyze them.We can blame some actions, some things said, but we cannot blame a feeling.The reason is simple, because it is impossible for us to control it.The memory of her dead son filled her with joy, and she asked herself, what did it mean?The answer is very clear, because her son's death is absolute, so she is also absolute with Jean-Marc now.Sitting in front of Jean-Marc, she wanted to cry out, but she dared not.She was not confident in his reaction, she was afraid he would think of herself as a monster.

She enjoys this strange feeling, which is also an adventure.Adventures are a way to gain access to the world.But she no longer wanted the whole world, for she had enjoyed the pleasure of having no adventures, nor longing for them, and she recalled her fantasy: she saw a rose, as in a time-lapse movie , Withered quickly and unpredictably, and finally there was only a dry flower school, which gradually disappeared in their white night, and disappeared forever. That very night, before falling asleep (Jean-Marc was already asleep), she thought again of her dead child, and that memory was still accompanied by that horrifying pleasure.She realizes that her love for Jean-Marc is a heresy, a betrayal of the unwritten laws of human society that has separated her.