Chapter 36 Section thirty-fifth

Chantal stopped at the door, where she stood for a minute in amazement, for neither Jean-Marc nor her husband's sister noticed her.She listened to the long, loud and clear voice that has never been seen before or since: "...you are like me. You know, I am not an orderly woman. I like things that are in motion. I like things that change." Things, I love things that sing—I mean, I love life!" Her sister's eyes finally fell on her. "Chantal!" she cried. "Isn't this a surprise for you?" She rushed to embrace her.In the crease of her lips, she felt the wetness of her sister's lips.The embarrassment of Chantal's arrival is quickly interrupted by a small child rushing out of Chantal's bedroom. "This is our little Callie," she introduced Chantal.Then, she turned to Tun and said to the child, "Say hello to Auntie." But the child didn't pay attention and yelled at her to take out the urine.The elder sister seemed to be the owner of the house, and without hesitation led Kao Lini through the hall and into the bathroom.

"My God," Chantal said to himself.Taking advantage of her sister's absence, she hurriedly said, "How did she find us?" Jean-Marc shrugged.The sister left the hall and bathroom doors wide open, so they couldn't talk to each other too much.They heard the sound of urine splattering the toilet bowl, mixed with the sound of her telling them news about their family and her urging the child. Chantal remembered: one time when she was on vacation at the country house, she was in the bathroom.Suddenly, someone yanked the bathroom door handle.She hates talking through the bathroom door, so she doesn't respond.Someone on the other side of the house was yelling to silence the impatient man outside the door: "Chantal's in!" The impatient man yanked the door several times despite his knowledge handle, as if protesting Chantal's silence.

Then came the sound of flushing water.Chantal still remembers the concrete villa where there were noises everywhere and no one knew where those noises were coming from.She was used to hearing her sister's moaning during intercourse (their needless clamor was no doubt conceived as a tease, as if to reveal all the secrets).One day, she heard moans during sex again, but it was only a moment before she realized it was an asthmatic grandmother panting and moaning across the echoing house. The older sister had returned to the living room. "Go ahead and play your game," she said to Callie.The kid immediately ran into the next room and joined the other kids.Then she said to Jean-Marc: "I don't blame Chantal for leaving my brother. Maybe she should have done that. But I blame her for forgetting us." Then she said to Chantal: "After all , Chantal, we represent a page in your life! You can't deny us, erase us, you can't change your past! Your past, what it was, is what it is now. You can't deny it , you are happy when you are with us. I have told your new partner that you are always welcome in our house."

Listening to her words, Chantal thought: She had been with that family for so long, but she never showed another side of herself, so her sister (almost) as a matter of course divorced Chantal. Feeling uneasy about being associated with them.Why had she been so cheerful, so submissive during the years of her marriage?She didn't know what kind of attitude she had during that time, docile?fake?Insensitive?Homemade?While her son was alive, she had fully accepted her lot in that squalid community.That communal squalor, almost all around obligatory nudism and lack of candid concealment.The insignificant, but striking trace of the badge told her who the person was standing outside the bathroom.Will she like these?No!She is full of hatred for this, but it is a gentle, calm, non-combatant, docile, almost peaceful hatred, with a little bit of self-mockery, never resisting, if her child is not dead, she Will live like that until the end of her life.

In Chantal's room the noise grew louder.The older sister yelled, "Quiet!" but her voice was more happy than angry, sounding not like longing for the noise but wanting to join in the frolicking. Chantal was completely impatient.She walks into the room.Children are climbing armchairs.But it wasn't them that Chantal noticed; she stared dumbfounded at the wardrobe: its door was open.On the floor in front of the closet, her underwear and shorts were scattered on the floor, along with the letters.It was only then that she noticed that the oldest child had her bra around her head.The bra topped her head like a Cossack hussar's helmet.

"Look, you have seen it!" The sister said with a big laugh.She also put her arms around Jean-Marc's shoulders intimately. "Look! Look! It's a make-up party!" Chantal looked at the letters scattered on the floor.Anger gradually grew in her heart.She had left Counseling Services less than an hour before.There, she was treated with contempt.Her flushed body betrayed her, and she could hardly stand up on her own.Now, she was tired of feeling guilty: the letters no longer represented a stupid secret she should be ashamed of.From now on, they will represent Jean-Marc's dishonesty, infidelity, betrayal.

The sister seemed to have sensed Chantal's cold reaction.Still talking and laughing, she walked towards the child, took off her bra, and knelt down to pick up the underwear. "No, no, please put them down," Chantal told her in a firm tone. "As long as you like it, as long as you like it, I'll do it," "I know," said Chantal.She looked at her sister who came and leaned on Jean-Marc's shoulder.In Chantal's opinion, they got along very well, they were a very good couple, a pair of watchmen, a pair of spies.No, she had no desire to close the wardrobe door.She was going to leave them open as proof of a robbery.She said to herself: This house belongs to me.I just want to be here alone now, I want to be here alone without any worries.So she declared loudly: "This house belongs to me. No one has the right to open my closet and search for my personal belongings. No one! I repeat: no one!"

The last sentence was not so much addressed to her sister as to Jean-Marc.Fearing to reveal something to the intruders, she said to her sister again: "I ask you to leave at once." "No one is looking for your personal belongings," her sister argued. In reply, Chantal glanced at the open wardrobe and the underwear and letters scattered on the floor. "My God, that's just children's play!" said the sister.Those children seemed to have felt the smell of gunpowder in the air, and they stood there motionless by virtue of their excellent diplomatic instincts.

"I ask you," repeated Chantal, pointing to the door. A child holds in his hand an apple taken from a fruit bowl on the table. "Put the apple back," Chantal ordered him. "I'm not dreaming!" exclaimed her sister. "Put the apple back on the plate. Who gave it to you?" "I must be dreaming that she refused to let the child take an apple!" The kid put the apple back in the fruit bowl.Her husband's sister took his hand, and the other two children followed them and left.