The Erotic Potential of my Wife by David Foenkinos Page B

with taking in their mother. Hector spent the night with them. There was also Justine who had returned to the marital home, after having attempted to lead a single life. They had played out their crisis, and then, lo and behold, everything was forgotten. Hector thought straight away about his story of changing luck. In his mind, Justine’s return announced the pending end of his pseudo-happiness. No doubt about it: a karmic threat was hanging over the two brothers: they could not be happy at the same time. (At least the Karamazovs were all three united in the sinister.) Between brothers, you have to help each other. Yeah right, he was not even able to endure a trivial year of misery. He had to re-Justinify himself. To relax, he went out to buy some instant soup and prepared it for his mother. It would lift her spirits, her daily soup. Ultimately, that was far from the case. After the two brothers motivated Mireille to eat a little, at least enough to survive until the funeral, she acquiesced and found herself face to face with a painful revelation: instant soup was good. All these years, she had bought, washed, peeled twelve million vegetables to, at the moment her husband died, realise that our modern society provides delicious ready-made soups. She entered a depression that would only end with her last breath. Hector blamed himself for the blow, and added this new guilt to the sum of guilt-feelings that he had to bear for the rest of his life.
    The few days preceding the funeral, Hector had turned around in circles a lot, an attitude that was beginning to characterise him. He was subsiding in his age, and was considering, for the first time, that he did not have children. When he died, who would come to wander around his tomb? Who would come to throw some flowers? No one; without offspring, tombs remain tombs, and never know the cosiness of petals. It seemed to Hector that he had always sought a good reason to have a child, and he had just found it here, in the evidence of his future solitude. He was becoming narrow-minded, obsessed with his vital benefits; we did not really like him in those moments. After reading an article dedicated to the best positions in view of procreating (the hard-working aspect of Hector, a taste for efficient things) he caught Brigitte like an animal in heat. She thought that he needed to reassure himself of his father’s death by copulating non-stop. On that point, she was not entirely wrong. But falling pregnant was not part of her plans. So, when she understood her husband’s desires for expansion, she admitted not being ready. She suggested a dog, just to get used to it gently.
    It was raining that day, it was such a cliché! Death was always a cliché. You do not innovate or show off on the day of your death. Anyway, you are always lying down the same. The women were dressed in black; and the stiletto heels reminded the deceased of the tick-tock of the grandfather clock that he would never hear again. The mother’s tears ran slowly. Her past life, and the short life that was left for her to live, could be read on her face. A small plaque was left in front of the tomb:
    He had so loved his moustache.
    Hector stopped on that word, moustache. His father was in that word, the death of his father was in that word. He suddenly felt the moustache as a weight that was lifting, the hairs were rising towards the sky. He had always lived in anxiety and need, always squashed in the smallness of a living room with a large grandfather clock. The death of his father, he was thinking about that expression: and all his worries were disappearing, all the collections, all the needs to always protect himself; nothing can be expected any longer from a dead father. We become responsible for our shell. He raised his eyes to the sky, always the moustache, and, ahead of the sky, a large window ingrained itself. A large window that Brigitte washed immediately.

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    Like a woman you only undress partially, Hector