She didn’t actually say this, but reading between the lines I gathered she’d attempted suicide at this point. Apparently, nobody knew about this; she’d never been able to talk about it. As a stranger, detached and objective, I was the first to hear Madeleine’s dark secret. She survived, of course, but I think a part of her died during that period. The years passed, but the pain remained. The pain and the incomprehension. Not knowing something can drive you mad. She began to think the man she’d loved was a shadow (just as he had first appeared to her), the kind of creature that slips away if you get too close to it. Once she started thinking more clearly, she understood that he had not been fleeing her, but himself. Going to live on the other side of the world is never a casual decision. It is a way of abandoning the geographical part of who we are. Yves probably had no choice but to leave everything behind; no choice but to burn all his bridges. To put an end to the uncertainty that was causing them both immense pain. But he never explained why he’d gone. Our trip would finally allow Madeleine to write the last chapter in this unfinished novel.

79

A few years later, she had met René. Instead of passion, this was a choice based on reason. We won’t go over that again. Suffice to say that René was a sort of human bandage. And Madeleine wanted children. She told me: ‘I had the flu when René asked me to marry him. I was exhausted, bedridden. I wanted to throw up all the time, and that was when he got down on one knee and proposed.²⁰ I thought it was the most romantic thing he’d ever done.’ I shared Madeleine’s opinion on this. It is always charming to swim against the tide. René kept surprising me, and I was happy every time he reappeared in my book.

1. 20. This was exactly what Alfred Hitchcock did. Perhaps René was inspired by the famous film director. On a ship, during a stormy Atlantic crossing, Alma – his future wife – was groaning in bed with seasickness. Hitchcock took advantage of this situation to ask: ‘Will you marry me?’ Later, he admitted to her: ‘I thought I’d catch you when you were too weak to say no.’

80

At that precise moment, the flight attendant came over to ask us if we needed anything. Before leaving, she added: ‘I love your stories about two Polish characters. It really makes me laugh, the fun you have with them!’ Intrigued, Madeleine wanted to know more; the flight attendant’s words had reminded her that I was not one of her friends, but a famous writer working on a new book. She admitted that she’d never read any of my work, and now she felt bad that she hadn’t tried to find out more about me. But it suited me perfectly: I believed it was preferable that she knew nothing about me. She asked me about the two Poles, and I told her how the story began.