She is alone. It's in a train station hall, at Gare de Lyon. She is among all these people as if in the withdrawal of a room. She is alone in the midst of the world, like the Virgin in Fra Angelico's paintings: collected within a sphere of light. Dazzled by the brilliance of the gardens. Solitary individuals attract attention. One cannot help but see them. They carry the greatest seduction upon themselves. They call for the clearest attention, the one that goes to the one who is absent in front of you. She is alone, sitting on a plastic seat. She is alone with a four-year-old child in the embrace of her arms, a child who does not deny her solitude, who does not oppose it, a child reigning in the cradle of solitude. That's how she is seen from the start. She is alone with a child who does not prevent her from being alone, who takes her solitude to its utmost, to a pinnacle of beauty and grace. She is a young mother. When seeing her, one thinks that all mothers are like this, very young girls enveloped in silence, like the robe of light between the painter's fingers. Little sisters, little girls. A child has come. He came into the room of blood, like a sentence carried by the evening. He grew in their dreams. He grew in their flesh. He brought fatigue, sweetness, and despair.
With the child came the end of the couple. The petty quarrels, the worries. Forbidden sleep, the fine, gray rain in the couple's room. The opposite of what is said is true. It is always what is left unspoken that is true. The couple ends with the first-born child. The couple of lovers, the legend of the singular heart. With the child begins the solitude of young women. Only they know his needs. Only they know how to hold him in the secrecy of their arms. The eternal thought inclines toward the child, relentlessly. They attend to the needs of the body and those of speech. They care for the body as nature cares for God, as silence surrounds the snow. There is food, there is school. There are parks, errands to run, and vegetables to cook. And from all this, may no one ever express gratitude to you. Young mothers deal with the invisible. It is because they deal with the invisible that young mothers become invisible.Man ignores what is happening. It is even the function of man to see nothing of the invisible. Those among men who still see, they become somewhat strange. Mystics, poets, or perhaps nothing. Strange. Fallen from their condition. They dedicate themselves to infinite love. Solitary in the festivities they preside over. Tormented in joy more than in sorrow. What for a man is an accident, a marvelous failure, for a woman is the ordinariness of very ordinary days. They continue the education of the prince. They offer themselves as prey to the child, to his white milk teeth, sharp and shining. When the child leaves, he leaves nothing of them. They know it so well that bad mothers try to postpone the loss, to lengthen the hours, but it's stronger than they are. Animals allow themselves to be eaten by their young. Mothers allow themselves to be left by their children, and absence comes, devouring them. It seems like a law, a fatality, a storm that no one can prevent.
Ingratitude is the sign of an education brought to its end, completed, perfect in its madness. All of this is thought about, sitting next to this young mother and her son, in this train station hall. One also thinks a lot about Fra Angelico, about the sweetness of perfumed gardens, about the sandstorm in the throats of prophets. One would take the face of a young mother to depict the suffering part of all love, the missing part, torn away. I look at this young woman. I see in her the barefoot women of the Bible, like those who hurry through the streets. Those of the past and those of the present. They have companions. It seems like it's for life, that it's an insignificant thing they didn't want to escape. They have lovers. It seems the same, that it's for eternity, a choice. As he leaves, he takes with him the expectation they have of him. It is a vast expectation. It is an expectation to which no one knows how to respond. That's when we touch madness. In the amorous anticipation of young women, in this passion purified by absence, we touch something akin to madness. Few men venture into these desolate lands of love. Few men know how to respond to silent words. Men always retain something close to them. Even in ruins, they maintain certainty. When they wait, they wait for something specific. When they lose, they lose only one thing.
Women hope for everything, and since everything is not possible, they lose it all at once - as a way to enjoy love in its absence. They continue to wait for what they no longer believe in. It's stronger than them. It's much stronger than any thought. It is in this night that children appear. It is in this height of despair that the sources of childhood are born. Children are a house of flesh. It is raised at the highest point of oneself. One watches what happens. One witnesses the growth of this house of the child's soul, and it is unbelievable. It is the enigma of living a life that is no longer truly yours, that is hardly anyone else's. The companion is now far away. He is further than at the moment of the encounter. He is further than the first one to come along. There are all these lives to lead at the same time, and none of them are yours. It's like in the Bible, the young women of Palestine, yesterday, today: they raise God from the dust of time, from the old gold of days. They wash his head, cradle him with songs, wrap him in white linen. They revive him with rye and wine. They wait. We don't know what they are waiting for. The love that has fled from the house, they rediscover it in the clarity of a tear or a burst of laughter. If necessary, they invent it. Sometimes they go outside to find it. They take lovers. But no love in light comes close to the love that bends them over the child. No one else can take the place emptied by the weary god. No one else will be loved by them like the child of the disappointed promise, of the perjured word.
The young woman sitting next to me has placed the child on her lap. She talks to him about everything and nothing. She carries on an infinite, uninterrupted conversation amidst the noise of passersby. You see, I bought this sweater, well, it's too expensive, in another store, I saw it was half price, too bad, I'm happy, do you want some chocolate, listen, we're right below the trains, do you hear the noise it makes, it's a passing train, we have an hour to wait, aren't you cold, I'll put your hood on and I'll eat you, my treasure, my love. She juggles, in the same breath, the dialogue of lovers, that of the living and the dead, the dialogue in the abyss of solitudes. We look at this young woman as if painted by Fra Angelico. We look at her with lightness. To fall in love with a woman, there must be a desert in her, an absence, something that calls for turmoil, for pleasure. A zone of life untouched within her life, an unburned land, unknown to herself as well as to me. Perceptible nonetheless, immediately perceptible. This young woman is completely occupied by her child, overwhelmed by abundant, unreserved love. So utterly consumed by love that she is luminous, and her face is enough to brighten the rest of the day, all this time waiting for the train to take, until the end of the world, until the next love.