Free Marie by Madeleine Bourdouxhe

calm and strong. They know that whatever dangers might rise up to confront them, they would be courageous and powerful.
    Do they also know that this same strength that sometimes permeates everything is also a sign of fate? And if they do not know this, do they know that we all carry fate inside us, like a grace, and that it is our responsibility to fulfil it?
     
    SIDE BY SIDE , keeping in step, they walk along the streets until the place de l’Opéra sparkles in front of them. Here, without really knowing why, they come to a stop, in a brightlycoloured place serving fruit juice that suddenly appeals to them. Once again they find themselves sitting opposite each other, in the same strange torpor.
    Looking at Marie he smiles and says: ‘How are you?’
    Her voice heavy, she replies: ‘I’m all right …’
    A little later, as if attempting to explain the ineffable, she says: ‘It’s like adjusting to a new landscape …’
    He answers in the same simple tones that she has used: ‘A landscape where memories must die.’
    Words that initiated and clarified nothing. All around them things are changing shape – the anticipation, the suspense of this strange land, so full of silent things. Where would it lead them – to future offers? to richness? to setbacks? to joy, surely? This new land contained an unknown power which held them both in its sway. It also held all the sweetness of a promise.
     
    THE RUE LAFAYETTE IS LONG , and they walk its entire length, at speed. After a while they begin to pant, and because they are not speaking they can hear the sound of each other’s breath. The church which shone so brightly this morning is now merely a dark shape; they pass along one side of it, then turn into a street that they follow together for the second time.
    The door that opened on to a brightly lit corridor one night in September is today closed.
    They do not slacken their pace, and nothing in their movements betrays the astonishment they feel when confrontedby this little mystery. It could have been awkward – but Marie notices only that he now turns his head from time to time: she feels that he is looking for something. They have passed the door and are, quite simply, continuing their fast walk. When, a few moments later, he’ll place his hand on her shoulder, its soft pressure will tell her he has made his choice and they can again call a halt.
     
    THEY SAT ON A VERY LOW BED , at some distance from each other, but their hands were joined. They stayed like that, overwhelmed by this thing inside them, this thing they could not give a name to. They were overwhelmed by themselves.
    Marie turned her head towards him, took this new face in her hands. ‘Have you changed?’ she asked, in an anguished voice. ‘I can’t seem to find you again …’
    ‘No, I haven’t changed,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps I’ve developed.’
    It was the reply of a very young man. She couldn’t stop herself smiling, but she felt a profound tenderness arising in her. She pulled his big smooth face closer to her, and kissed him, quite chastely, on the forehead.
    They suddenly embraced violently, and immediately recaptured all their passion. But the sea which carried them off this evening was different from the profound depths of joy they had felt on the first night. Tonight, tumultuous waves envelop them, making them pitch, throwing them on to their sides, their backs. They utter no cries or moans, but their silent lips render ever more poignant the prolonged moan of their struggling bodies. They sink in water pockets;groundswells bring them brusquely to the surface only to roll them back again, throwing their heads to the right and then to the left. Hands clutching shoulders, ankles joined, limbs that would never ever disentangle; they want to die together or to let the sea abandon them, rescued, on the same shore.
    When, finally, the storm subsides, they still don’t know where they are. They know only that they have opened their eyes