Excerpt from “The Kiss,” a Story by Guy de Maupassant

Do you know the real source of our strength? The kiss, the kiss alone! … The kiss is only a preface, however … One Hundred Six

Markus got off the train. He, too, had left without telling anyone. They were going to find each other again, like two fugitives. He saw her, standing stock-still, at the other side of the station concourse. He began to walk toward her, slowly, sort of like in a movie. You’d have no trouble imagining the music that accompanied this moment. Or else silence. Yes, silence would be good. You’d only hear their breathing. You’d almost be able to forget the sadness of the décor. Salvador Dalí would never have been able to be inspired by the Lisieux train station. It was empty and cold. Markus spotted a poster advertising the museum devoted to Thérèse de Lisieux. As he walked toward Natalie, he thought, “Hmm, strange, I always though that Lisieux was her last name …” Yes, that’s really what he was thinking. And there was Natalie, so close to him. With those lips of the kiss. But her face was shut down. Her face was the Lisieux train station.They went to the car. Natalie climbed into the driver’s seat, and Markus rode shotgun. She started off. They hadn’t said a word to each other yet. They looked like those teenagers who don’t know what to say to each other on the first date. Markus had no idea where they were, no idea where they were going. He was following Natalie, and that was enough. After a moment, unable to stand the emptiness, he decided to turn on the radio. It was tuned to the oldies station. Alain Souchon’s “L’amour en fuite” (“Love on the Run”) reverberated through the car.“Oh, it’s incredible!” said Natalie.“What?”“This song. It’s crazy. It’s my song. And there … just like that.”Markus looked fondly at the radio. This contraption had let him renew his dialogue with Natalie. She was still saying how strange and crazy it was. That it was a sign. What kind of sign? That, Markus couldn’t know. He was surprised at the effect this song had on his companion. But he was familiar with the strange facts of life, with strokes of luck, coincidences. The evidence that made you doubt rationality. At the end of that piece of music, she asked Markus to turn off the radio. She wanted to stay suspended in that song she’d always loved so much. Which she’d discovered in the last installment of the film series The Adventures of Antoine Doinel. She’d been born during that period, and maybe it was a complex feeling to define, but she felt she’d come from that moment. As if she were a product of that melody. Her sweet, sometimes melancholy personality, its lightness, all of it was absolutely 1978. It was her song, it was her life. And she couldn’t get over such a stroke of luck.She pulled over at the edge of the road. The darkness prevented Markus from seeing where they were. They got out. Then he made out some big metal bars, those at the entrance to a cemetery. Next he discovered that they weren’t big—they were immense. The same kind you’d find in front of a prison. Certainly the dead are condemned to perpetuity, but it’s hard to imagine them trying to escape. Finally Natalie started to speak.“François is buried there. He spent his childhood in this region.”“… ““Of course, he never said anything to me. He didn’t think he was going to die … but I know he wanted to be here … near the place where he’d grown up.”“I understand,” murmured Markus.“You know, it’s funny, but I spent my childhood here, too. When François and I met, we thought it was a crazy coincidence. We could have run into each other hundreds of times during our adolescence, but we never saw each other. And it was in Paris that we met. Which just goes to show you … when you’re supposed to meet somebody …”Natalie stopped with that phrase. But the phrase kept going on inside Markus’s mind. Whom was she talking about? About François, of course. About him, too, maybe? The double reading of the remark brought the symbolic nature of the situation into focus. It had a rare intensity. There they were, the two of them, side by side, just a few feet away from François’s grave. Just a few feet away from a past that never finished finishing. So much rain fell on Natalie’s face that you couldn’t tell where the tears began. Markus saw them. He knew how to interpret the tears. Natalie’s tears. He went to her and held her tight in his arms, as if he were encircling her suffering. One Hundred Seven

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