Free Delicacy by David Foenkinos

morning. The young woman’s suffering wounded him in a remarkably intense way. Perhaps more than his own suffering. He couldn’t resist weeping, but he knew it was the right decision. He preferred being alone to digging a larger pit between their hearts.
This was the second time he cried in front of a woman.
For almost two years nothing happened in his life. He’d begun to miss Alice. Especially during subsequent speed-dating sessions, which were especially disappointing—not to say humiliating—when some girls didn’t even make the effort to talk to him. As a result, he decided not to go to any more. Had he perhaps given up all thought of living with someone? He was beginning to see nothing interesting about it at this point. After all, there were millions of single people. He could do without a woman. But he was telling himself this as a rationalization, to keep from thinking about how unhappy his situation made him. He dreamed so much about a female body, and sometimes he wore himself out thinking that he’d always be denied it from now on. That he’d lost his passport to beauty.
And suddenly, Natalie had kissed him. His supervisor and an obvious source of fantasy. Then she’d explained to him that it hadn’t existed. So he’d just have to get used to it. It wasn’t sucha big deal, really. Yet he’d wept. Yes, tears had flowed from his eyes, and that had deeply surprised him. Unexpected tears. Was he that fragile? No, that wasn’t it. He’d taken a worse clobbering many times before. It was just that he’d been especially moved by this kiss; not just for the obvious reason that Natalie was beautiful, but also because of the madness of her action. No one had ever kissed him like that without making an appointment with his lips. That was the magic that had moved him to tears. And now, to the bitter tears of disappointment.

Forty-eight

That Friday evening, as he left, he was really glad to be able to take refuge in the weekend. He was going to use Saturday and Sunday as two thick blankets. He didn’t want to do anything, didn’t even feel like reading. So he put himself in front of the television. That was how he ended up witnessing the speech of the American candidate for president, Barack Obama, on election night in the United States. As Obama himself admitted, he hadn’t been the likeliest candidate. Compared to the other front-runners, he hadn’t much money behind him or that many corporate endorsements. It was the people, rather than the political machines, who were going to lead him to victory. And he had galvanized all of them with a simple statement: “Yes, we can.” What a fabulous statement, thought Markus. Obama went on to talk about the challenges, setbacks, and false starts he and his supporters would inevitably face. And then he began describing a 106-year-old black woman, born just a generation past slavery, who’d stood in line in Atlanta on election night and cast her ballot. Obama said that, like all of us, she’d seen heartache and hope. And then he repeated the same simple statement, “Yes, we can.” After that, he went on to mention all the trials andchallenges that his country had faced in the twentieth century, from the First World War to the Great Depression to putting a man on the moon, and he summed it all up once again with the simple sentence, “Yes, we can.”
Markus was captivated by the determination of Obama, who was willing to fight with extraordinary—if not to say supernatural—will. In the drive of this political animal he saw everything that he was not. And it was indeed on that Saturday night, absorbed in reports about the American presidential election, that he decided to fight. That he decided not to leave things as they were with Natalie. Even if she had told him that all was lost, that nothing could be considered, he continued to believe in it. Whatever it cost, he would be the president and commander in chief of his life.
His first decision was easy: