To all those who have lived, are living and will live in this universe. Except one.

            Where to begin? This is the story of an act of plagiarism. It might be better to tell it in chronological order, but according to the chronology of life rather than of time, since the two do not always coincide.

            I had liked Kundera for some time and had finally managed to find a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“What are you reading?,” asked Lise.

“Kundera,” I answered, getting out of bed and walking towards the bathroom from where she had just emerged.

            When I got out of the shower Lise was lying on the bed wearing my pyjamas, leafing through the book.

“Is it any good?”

“Yes, I think so. I’ve only just started it,” I said.

            This symmetrical composition — the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end — may seem quite “novelistic” to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as “fictive”, “fabricated”, and “untrue to life” into the word “novelistic”. Because human lives are composed in such a fashion.

            It was a Sunday in October and we went out for a walk. Trying to live the past rather than relive it, because it had never happened as it should have. Lise and I had been going out for more than a year, but in one way or another we had both been avoiding making too strong a commitment to the relationship. Perhaps it was a fear of living, of feeling, of deciding. With the weakest of excuses, and sometimes with no excuse at all, we were both faithful to the relationship, which was an oddly paradoxical way of being unfaithful to ourselves and of being unfaithful to one another.

            In spite of their love, they had made each other’s life a hell. The fact that they loved each other was merely proof that the fault lay not in themselves, in their behavior or inconstancy of feeling, but rather in their incompatibility: he was strong and she was weak.

            In the summer, the situation had come to an impasse. We separated. Lise went out with another man. I became aware of my loneliness, and she, of the fact that nobody is perfect.

            What is love? A decision? To accept the other person forever, regardless of what he or she does? Or is it a feeling, an emotion? Both? Lise is very sweet, intelligent, pretty. Yet something in her put me on the defensive. Even speaking about this, raking over the past when we got back together –for there was a reconciliation– proved to be futile. I had discovered that speaking, opening up, becoming totally vulnerable, was the only way of getting close to her, and even of getting close to myself; but all that speaking and feeling didn’t seem to improve the situation.

            It seems to me that the resentment caused by the fact of having toyed with each other prevented us from really becoming close. Or maybe we did manage to, but with that tremendous vengeance that ignored love wreaks:  making it possible for only one person to love the other from within, really deeply. The other person doubts. And the roles change constantly, implacably.

            Towards the end of the summer Lise got a job in L’Annonciation, two hours from Montreal. I have to admit that I wasn’t too upset at the prospect of having the week to myself, for my work, and of just spending the weekends with her.

            Lise Lecuyer. Twenty-four years of age. Social worker. She preferred to chain her bicycle to a tree rather than a metal railing since she supposed that the bicycle would be happier. Tall, brown eyes and hair. She had one very special characteristic: she took a long time, sometimes several minutes, to reply when you spoke to her, even when the questions directed at her seemed, to me at least, to be trivial. Her sweetness was perhaps her greatest asset. Slightly –excessively– granola, as they say in French when referring to someone who goes back to the roots. She hadn’t actually become a vegetarian, but she wasn’t far from it. Her bathroom was full of creams and lotions concocted from natural ingredients.

            Me. Daniel Braunstein. Twenty-eight years of age. Graduate student in psychology. Immigrant. Carefree, inquisitive, patient. It took me many years to realise that I like to take life slowly, as it comes. I like nature. I read a lot. I find it hard to read unknown writers and have to make a special effort. But when I do, I discover entire new worlds. Kundera was one of them.

            That weekend it was my turn to go to L’Annonciation. As soon as I left Montreal it began to get dark. It had just turned five in the evening when I set out on the two hundred kilometre drive which would take me along mountainous roads through small picturesque towns, all of which looked alike. It was difficult to concentrate. The temperature dropped quickly, and although I would be seeing Lise shortly, she seemed an eternity away. I couldn’t pick up any of the Montreal stations on the radio. The heater in the car was making me drowsy. But in an hour, two at the most, I would be wrapped in the warmth of Lise. Sixty kilometres from L’Annonciation I could hardly keep my eyes open. I stopped at the only restaurant I came across in one of those look-alike towns and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter. The last part of the journey was easier. I could feel everything getting closer: L’Annonciation itself, Lise’s house, Oedipuss rubbing her black body against my legs, the hot soup. I even managed to tune into a local radio station. It was only the news in French, but despite that, the announcer’s voice was very soothing. There would be a beer waiting with the meal. Our hallowed tradition.

            I arrived just before nine at night after a long day’s work and classes at the university. The soup was ready, simmering on the stove. I felt secure, protected, snug. The old car hadn’t given out on me half-way there. Lise’s house was lit up with soft light and candles. A wonderful feeling spread through my body. Although it was ten degrees below zero by the time I arrived, the cold was locked outside. I notice that Lise had not bought the beer. Strange.

“And the beer?,” I asked her.

“I didn’t have time,” she answered. “Do you want to go and get some now?”

“Yes, let’s go.”

“Do I have to go with you?”

“No, I’ll go alone if you want.”

“No, it’s alright. I’ll go with you,” she said, without a great deal of conviction in her voice.

            Tomas and Tereza were there. More precisely, L’insoutenable légèreté de l’être. Lise had come across it by chance (a word, or fact, or coincidence that played a very important role in our lives) in the small municipal library of L’Annonciation.

“You know what?,” she asked me as she sat smoking a cigarette after dinner, another of the changes I noticed.

“What?”

“I like this Kundera book, but I have the feeling it’s very well known.”

“Well, Kundera is very well known.”

“No, not Kundera, the book. I don’t know. It’s as if I’ve read it already. I read a book by a French Canadian woman writer a little while ago and the story was very similar.”

“What book was that?”

“I can’t remember. Maybe it’ll come back to me, or maybe I’ll find it.”

            (I tried to reread Kundera’s book to check up on this act of plagiarism, but I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. I’d only kept the quotations I’d noted at the time, before all this happened. The fact that the quotations from that time, from before, fitted so well what happened later is another coincidence. Needless to say, the sex of the people that appear in the quotations is interchangeable.

            It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences… but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.)

            Lise had finished her degree three months earlier. The changes were quick to show. She began to smoke again. She began to be interested in clothes, having dressed very simply for a number of years. She began to pamper herself. Makeup, which she had rarely worn previously, became an absolute must. A new, attractive, expensive car. Ending therapy. Changes, a lot of changes. Getting a job in a small town.

            What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

            There are people, women as well as men, who think about sex every time they see a prospective partner. They size up, suppose, estimate, reject, attempt. If you go out with a person like that, you know it’s no use expecting them to be faithful since they are capable of having an affair at the drop of a hat. Of course, you get to keep your own freedom too. On the other hand, if the person you’re going out with exchanges their innocence for sexuality, the transformation is especially difficult to accept, even more so if you happen to have influenced it yourself.

            It wasn’t just Lise who had changed. I had decided to live life, set about finding what it was I wanted. I don’t know. Everything was confusing. I felt happy with her, but something bothered me. Sometimes I thought my feelings weren’t being reciprocated, yet at the same time Lise was very affectionate towards me. Oh love, will you ever forgive the cowardice of the past? Is it, as Kundera says, that the first interactions between a couple are like wrought iron and set down unbreakable tracks? When Lise left that first time I believed it was because I hadn’t given myself whole-heartedly. Her absence also made me realise just how much she meant to me. And just how much I needed her.

“Yes, I’m sure of it now. I’ve read a book just like it. So many of the details are the same that it can’t be a coincidence,” Lise said, stretched out across the bed with Oedipuss on her belly. I went to lie beside her and do some studying.

“Well, I hope you find it.”

“Yes, so do I.”

            When we were apart there wasn’t much I could do. Except be sincere. And I was sincere. It helped. It’s painful to talk to your partner, your ex-partner, when she’s looking for someone else to go out with. And I loved her, and wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to come back to me. She called me one day. I had almost given up hope. It was a fine autumn day, the yellow, orange and red leaves piling up on the paths. We went to a tiny French restaurant to have dinner together. Her relationship with Alain had ended. I already knew it, sensed it.

            After dinner we walked through the park, by the river. I had a very strong, clear feeling. I wanted Lise to put her arms around me. Not for me to do it to her. Not to ask her to put her arms around me, but for her to want to do it, and to do it. We walked for a while on the fallen leaves and suddenly she turned and put her arms around me. I held back the tears. We sat down by the river. Lise nestled on my lap.

“Lise?”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to spend the night with me?,” I paused. “Before you answer, I want to tell you how I feel.”

            Lise fell silent, listening. I felt afraid. Two weeks previously I had called her to say I wanted to sleep with her, following a night when my body had missed her so much it had almost driven me to despair. She had rejected the idea at first, half-heartedly, and then, turning it over in her mind, she had ended up by saying yes. We arranged to meet in the park, on neutral ground. A few minutes later she had phoned me to say she had changed her mind.

“I want to be with you. To have you and hold you in my arms. Of course the idea of making love to you, in some way, had crossed my mind. But what I want, what I want above all, is to have you for all time, to spend a night with you. To go to sleep holding you in my arms. To lose myself. And when I wake up in the middle of the night to know that I’m not dreaming and that you’re really there. I want to be close to you, touch you, talk to you. I don’t know. I just want to be with you.”

            Tomas came to this conclusion: Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

            Lise began to nod in agreement and two or three minutes later she said:

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?,” I asked her, as I drew back my face from hers and looked into her eyes. “Think about if a bit, and if you change your mind, say it.”

“No, I’m sure,” she said. “I want to.”

            How do you know when a relationship has run its course? Where is the finishing point? Is it a question of adding up small signs? And of taking away a few residual hopes?

            I think Lise began to feel afraid of the risk involved, of getting in over her head. Or maybe she was annoyed that I hadn’t felt this close to her before.

            The following month, October, was the most harrowing of my life. Lise moved to L’Annonciation. Our weekly meetings became very emotional. But something, something bothered me. It was like an obstruction of some kind. Are two sweet people who know each other and share the same desire doomed to fall in love with each other?

            But was it love?… Was it simply the hysteria of a man who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?

            Lise continued to change. Hurriedly and ceaselessly. Becoming, in a word, a woman. Showing interest in men, or, to be more precise, enjoying making men interested in her.

            That last weekend I began to feel hounded by the coincidences. On the Saturday, while Lise was talking to her sister on the phone, I picked up the French translation of Kundera’s book. Lise had reached precisely the page that I had got to in the English version.

            As if a net was closing in around us, Lise and I went for constant walks that weekend. We passed by the club where she had gone dancing that week with some people she worked with. For some reason it put me in a bad mood. I knew she would find an opportunity to show me the place. I believe that people who know and care about each other, especially couples, have no secrets. It’s a relief to be able to say things that have been bottled up for years and years — sins, anger, fears, follies, fantasies. But it’s an even greater relief to see that the other person knew them all along. Even more so, that our most outlandish ideas about our partners are merely the reflection of what they actually kept hidden from us for years.

            It wasn’t just the club that bothered me. We passed the main store in the town and Lise pointed out to me the costume she planned to wear for the party the following Thursday. It was a convict’s uniform. But who was her gaoler? Me? Someone else? Destiny? Every time I walked past the store that weekend I avoided looking at the window displaying the costumes.

            What he did not know was that Sabina was charmed more by betrayal than by fidelity.

“You know, Daniel, I’m almost certain that that book I read plagiarises this one. It sounds crazy, but so many details are the same. Maybe I can get hold of it if I write to the library in Montreal.”

“It would be worth a try, wouldn’t it?”

            That Sunday evening we went out for dinner. A small town, a different kind of place, full of people that have known each other for ages. We were the outsiders. Even more so because we spoke English. We went to a cramped and not particularly clean pizzeria. It would have given me an oppressive feeling of unease and loneliness, but there was a television in the back and it was switched on. The World of Walt Disney was showing, in French. I looked at my watch. It was six fifteen. An inner warmth crept over my body. That was the programme I used to watch when I was a child, in my parents’ room. On Sundays during the winter, if it was very cold, I used to climb into their bed, pulling the blankets up around me, and watch the television with rapt attention. When we had eaten and while I was walking with Lise through the town, I decided to spend that night there even if I had to get up at five in the morning on Monday to get to Montreal by nine, when I had my first appointment.

            We slept well, very well. Lise couldn’t get the business of the book out of her mind. It gnawed away at her. I had stopped reading on the Saturday, for no special reason, and even though I had brought no other books, I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up again.

            It was painful the next morning when we parted. Rather resentfully I went to take a shower at ten minutes to five, when the alarm clock went off. I say resentfully, because Lise slept soundly on. But when I got out of the shower, the toast was freshly made, the hot chocolate almost ready, and Lise, her happy sleepy face propped up in her hands, was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for me. The car took about fifteen minutes to warm up. It was cold. We hugged each other, talked, laughed, fooled around.

            She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women, Don’t let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.

            The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was “You don’t know how happy I am to be with you.” That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.

            This is where the whirlwind, an unstoppable and indescribable succession of events, began.

            On Tuesday, when I got home, I decided to go back to Kundera’s book, which for some reason I had been finding so repellent. It wasn’t long before I realised why.

            The place where I’d stopped reading was just before Tereza’s affair with the engineer. It turned my stomach. I felt compelled to call Lise to check that nothing had happened. But I decided not to, believing that I couldn’t let myself be swayed by murky intuitions. When she called me to say goodnight, I felt stupidly jealous, jealous of something which didn’t exist. Perhaps that’s the only kind of jealousy there is.

            Would she have to live her whole life in fear of losing him?

            On Wednesday I went to have coffee with a couple of friends. We had a long, searching, heart to heart talk. They help me see things straight. He had spent seven years of life with Tereza, and now he realised that those years were more attractive in retrospect that they were when he was living them. I came to the conclusion that my relationship with Lise was going nowhere. I had already tried to be sincere, to commit myself, to accept, but it had all been futile. Something bothered me in the relationship. Something I couldn’t put into words, but was there nevertheless.

            On Thursday, during a break from work, I wrote her a letter, painfully ending our relationship. Wanting us to be friends, hoping that we just needed six months or a year to ourselves and then maybe we could get back together again. I also asked her, if we could, not to go out for a while with anyone else, in order not to cause unnecessary distress.

            Throughout that day, I felt that our relationship had come to an end. It was strange, because I planned to give her the letter at the weekend, while she was at my place. I felt overwhelmed. The relationship had fizzled out, but it wasn’t because I had written the letter. No. Not because I had decided that’s how it had to be. I couldn’t say exactly what it was, but there was something, quite tangible, eating away at me.

            It never occurred to him that what he considered unreal (the work he did in the solitude of the office or library) was in fact his real life, whereas the parades he imagined to be reality were nothing but theater, dance, carnival — in other words, a dream.

            I went out with some people I work with. A farewell dinner for Louise who was going back to France. The evening was unexpectedly lively and enjoyable. I heard some interesting stories. I listened to and told some good jokes, or jokes that sounded good after a couple of glasses of wine.

            I got back home at half past ten. That night was the night of Lise’s fancy dress party. We hadn’t spoken to each other since Tuesday. She hadn’t let me know yet if she had been able to take Friday off and come to Montreal earlier than usual. I phoned her, knowing there would be no answer since she would be out. But I phoned anyway.

            I kept on calling every half an hour, until I fell asleep, shortly after midnight.

            In the morning, it wasn’t yet eight o’clock by the time I finished showering. I felt a bit guilty at calling her so early. If she had managed to get the day off, she would certainly want to sleep in, especially if she had got back late the night before.

            I really wanted to see her, to hold her in my arms, to be with her. The letter. Yes, I was no longer so sure that I would give it to her. But I had to, though we would be able to talk it over. Perhaps I had the secret hope that destiny would come to my aid.

            I called.

            There was no reply. I tried again. Still no reply. Maybe she is with someone else, I thought. But I doubt it. She wouldn’t do that. We had discussed it the week before. Maybe she had decided to sleep over at a girlfriend’s house, or had spent the night at the place where the party was held. Or maybe she had gone to work early. Or maybe she was already on her way to Montreal, wanting to surprise me, to be with me, to spend the afternoon at home with me so we could share one of our long Friday siextas.

            I walked to work. When I arrived, I saw the glass door had been smashed. I asked Jeanette what had happened.

“We don’t know. Nothing’s missing. I’ve already talked to security. They don’t know what happened, but if something did happen it was between midnight and eight this morning.”

            I couldn’t go on listening to what Jeanette and Anne were saying. Those words had stung me. “If something did happen, it was between midnight and eight this morning.” Between midnight and eight this morning.

            I saw Marianne at nine. She was confused. I didn’t manage to interpret the results of all her tests. It was unusual for me, but I arranged to see her on Monday at nine, in addition to our usual appointment. Monday. It seemed so far away.

            When Marianne left, I picked up the morning mail, went to the bathroom, and decided not to have another coffee. It occurred to me to call Lise at work. I called Directory Assistance and got her number. They gave me the wrong number. I had to call Directory Assistance again. I finally got the right number and dialed it. I was a bit nervous, but not overly so. I didn’t think there was any real reason to be afraid.

            …she merely wished to find a way out of the maze. She knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love. How she wished she could learn lightness! She yearned for someone to help her out of her anachronistic shell.

            Lise wasn’t busy. Her voice made me suspicious. She asked me to hold on for a moment while she lit a cigarette. She spoke almost in a low voice.

“Hi, I was just about to call you.”

“Oh yes.”

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow or Sunday.”

“Aha. How are you?”

“Fine, very busy. And you?”

“Fine, looking forward to seeing you.”

            I knew it. I tried to stave off the fears that rushed at me from all sides.

            On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

“You sound tired.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Get to bed late?”

“Yes, quite late.”

“Get up early?”

“No.” A brief pause. “At eight thirty.”

            Icy pause. My world came to a shuddering halt.

            And again she felt a longing to betray: betray her own betrayal.

“That’s interesting. I phoned you at eight.” I said, crying inside. She had deceived me. Lied to me.

“Maybe I was in the shower.”

            I didn’t say anything. Partly because I couldn’t, and partly because there was no point. I wanted to see if Lise could at least trust me. She tried to change the subject, two or three times. I didn’t fall for it. She told me she would be coming on Saturday, at noon. I didn’t say anything especially meaningful. She began to say goodbye. Cheating and lying, when it was obvious that I already knew.

“Lise, is something going on?”

            Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.

            There was a pause while she pulled deeply on the cigarette. The silence and the sound of her smoking were indelibly fixed in my memory.

“Yes.”

            I cut her off. I couldn’t even fling the telephone away. My muscles didn’t respond. Very slowly and deliberately I put the receiver down. I began to cry.

            Lise called me that night. Her cat had died, run over by a car.

            She went inside, picked up her clothes from the floor, threw them on, and left… Only then did she notice the black head and large beak of a crow lying on the cold dirt of a barren plot. The bodiless head bobbed slowly up and down, and the beak gave out an occasional hoarse and mournful croak… From time to time the bird would give a hopeless flap of its lame wing and raise its beak as a reproach… Before long, the crow stopped flapping its wings, and gave no more than a twitch of a broken, mangled leg. Tereza refused to be separated from it. She could have been keeping vigil over a dying sister. In the end, however, she did step into the kitchen for a bite to eat. When she returned, the crow was dead.

            I couldn’t go on reading Kundera. Until today I’ve been unable to pick the book up again. I returned it immediately to the library.

            This happened six months ago. I didn’t see her again. I never called her.

            There were many, many other coincidences. Marianne came on Monday. She was going out with another man. Her regular boyfriend was at his wit’s end. He sounded like me. I had to comfort her.

            Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal. But what if the paths came to an end? One could betray one’s parents, husband, country, love, but when parents, country and love were gone — what was left to betray?

            Sabina felt emptiness all around her. What if that emptiness was the goal of all her betrayals?

            Naturally she had not realised it until now. How could she have? The goals we pursue are always veiled.

            — what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

            Yesterday, yes, yesterday, I received a book by mail. Lise had written to the library in Montreal to see if they could figure out on the basis of the books she had borrowed in the last few months which was the one that resembled Kundera’s. They had promised to send it to her if they found it, but it had to be sent to a Montreal address.

            I knew it would be the proof of plagiarism, but I hadn’t expected this. I opened the parcel, almost reluctantly. I thought of throwing it away, but it would have been me that would have had to pay for it. I thought of forwarding it to her, unopened, but why should I do her the service?

            I opened it. A final coincidence. The writer’s name stopped me in my tracks, leaving me rigid, incredulous. The only thing I’ve managed to do since yesterday, apart from drink coffee, has been to write all this down. The writer’s name was Lise Lecuyer.

This story appears in Still…life, Mosaic Press, Canada. Copyright David Mibashan.