Chapter 2 Tell Me Whom You Like Best1

One day, he finally met the woman of his life. He was going on 40 and had always been a bachelor. He fell madly in love with Laura. Quite soon they decided to marry – a traditional, classic marriage – and they had a child, a little girl. He had never imagined such bliss. Right after the baby was born, the young mother, Laura, became seriously ill, and she died within a few weeks.

There are no words to describe Romain’s distress: his falling apart, his whole self going to pieces, losing all he cared for – all except one exclusive care, the love for his baby girl. He gives her all his time. She cries quite a lot like inconsolable babies do, but the cause of her distress is obvious. One day, as he is in despair of calming her wailing, he comes upon a forgotten piece of underwear that belonged to his wife: he wraps the bottle in it, the baby sucks and falls asleep.

From there on things go very fast: Romain is tempted to wrap himself in Laura’s clothes, then to wear them, he has them tailored to his size, buys a wig, blond as she was, and from then on dresses thus to look after the child.

The procedure seems natural to him: since then, not only does the baby seem consoled, but he also is coming out of the deep despair that had been over him – as though with this ruse death and absence could be cancelled. “A child absolutely needs its mother!” says he, “but it also needs its father …” “Well, I can be both!”

He remembers that at the death of his mother he had kept her fur coat and sometimes wore it at home, examining himself in a mirror: he could smell her feminine perfume, he walked as she did,

she was there! Then, one day, he stopped, even though the coat was still there, at hand, hanging amid men’s clothes.

The core of this story cannot simply be summed up as a particular modality of grief: what is at stake with troubling intensity goes beyond the curiosity that the other sex excites: it reveals how Romain holds an unwavering belief that the only way to bridge the gap of t