On my way home, my legs still numb from exertion, I stopped by the Nicolas de Staël building. The deserted halls made the place seem like a ghost ship. I knocked long and loud, but neither Fanny nor Vinca was in. Although Fanny’s door was closed, Vinca’s was ajar, which made me think that she had popped out for only a minute. I went in and stayed for a long time in the warm, downy cocoon. Everything in the room radiated Vinca’s presence, an atmosphere that was melancholy, intimate, almost timeless. The bed was rumpled; the sheets still exhaled a smell of perfume and fresh grass.

Vinca’s whole world was contained within these fifteen square meters. Pinned to the wall were posters for Hiroshima mon amour and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Black-and-white photos of writers—Colette, Virginia Woolf, Rimbaud, Tennessee Williams. A page clipped from a magazine with an erotic Man Ray photograph of Lee Miller. A quote from Françoise Sagan, copied out on a postcard, that talked of speed, sea, and dazzling blackness. On the windowsill there was a Vanda orchid and the reproduction of Brancusi’s Mademoiselle Pogany that I’d given her for her birthday. On a shelf above her desk was a pile of CDs, classical (Satie, Chopin, Schubert), classic rock (Roxy Music, Kate Bush, Procol Harum), and more impenetrable recordings that she’d played for me and I’d found hard to understand (Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Olivier Messiaen).

On the nightstand, I spotted the book I had seen the day before, a collection of poems by Marina Tsvetaeva. On the flyleaf, the elegantly phrased dedication by Alexis Clément once again plunged me into despair.

For Vinca,

I wish I were an incorporeal soul

that I might never leave you.

To love you is to live.

Alexis

I waited for a few minutes longer. I felt fear gnawing at my gut. To calm myself, I turned on the CD player. “Sunday Morning,” the first track on the legendary Velvet Underground and Nico. A song that seemed appropriate for this particular moment—diaphanous, ethereal, toxic. I waited and I waited some more until I finally realized that Vinca was not coming back. Ever. Like a junkie, I lingered in the room, breathing in the last wisps of her presence.

In the long years that followed, I have often wondered about the nature of the hold Vinca had over me, the fascinating yet painful fever she triggered in me. And every time, I’m reminded of a drug. Even when we spent time together, even when I had Vinca all to myself, I was already feeling the eventual withdrawal. There were magical moments, lyrical, harmonious sequences that had the perfection of certain pop songs. But that weightlessness never lasted. Even as I was living them, I knew that these perfect moments were like bubbles. Always about to burst.

And Vinca slipped away from me.

3.