Night with my wife – Samuel Benchetrit
Plon – €16.90
In spite of themselves, Marie Trintignant, Bertrand Cantat and Samuel Benchetrit set the stage for a veritable modern tragedy on July 26, 2003, in Vilnius, Lithuania. It was the receipt of one of those famous text messages that – presumably – says too much (it’s all a question of looks), sent by Samuel to his “little Janis…”, that was to awaken a desperate and unreal rage in Bertrand and take – through blows – Marie to paradise. An outburst of unprecedented violence. Because in the game of love, we sometimes come face to face with the worst of the human race: envy and the demand for absolute exclusivity, obsessive and sickly jealousy, rampant paranoia, confusion of feelings…
13 years later, Samuel takes us on his “passionate and poetic inner journey” to the scorched lands of a great absentee: Marie. Not only the mother of his son Jules. But also the figure of eternal love. It’s a delicate, scrappy tale of a Samuel who now “deals” with his emotions, anxieties and this constant, unflappable lack. How do you survive when you lose your bearings? Not just when it disappears, but when it disappears for eternity. “I’ve spent more time on this Earth than you have. And the difference between us is that I’ve lost you. It’s because I’ve kept on living that I know. I wanted to be alone so I could be with you. Invisible loves have to be given time. Take care of them a little. Even now I wonder how you are. What you’re doing. I look for your news. I invoke anger so you’ll calm me down. A few laughs where you’d join me. And the sun has changed, since a shadow is missing.”
In just 170 pages, Samuel brilliantly and uncompromisingly expresses all the difficulty and ambiguity of how to fill the void, remember and continue to live… in the ordeal of mourning the loss of a loved one, a kind of landmark figure. “How do you get to hell so quickly? I didn’t even look at the way back. Besides, nobody warned me that you die before you die… It’s invisible. Can you smell it? Fire doesn’t extinguish tears… Everything bears witness to the worst… I settled our son on the bench. I told him he’d never see you again. Ever again. He asked me when he would see you again. Never again. He asked me again when he’d see you. Never again. And again. Never again.”
Elisa Palmer
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