“Exactly. Marcel, the lighting engineer. The one who turns the lights on and off and ends his sentences with ‘believe you me.’”
“What does Marcel have to do with anything?”
“Marcel is your conscience. He’s your ego and your superego, which are in constant conflict. The fact that this nightmare seemed so real and just happened to fall on the anniversary of your father’s death signals that it’s a reminder from your conscience. It’s telling you, ‘My dear Thomas, you haven’t finished grieving for your father.’ Even if Marcel says ‘believe you me,’ super-Marcel tells you not to believe him, because you still have a long way to go.”
“Marcel is telling me all that?”
“Yes,” the psychiatrist answered calmly.
“If that’s what you really think, then I believe you.”
“You see, you’ve come full circle. You believe me, you believe Marcel, you believe everyone, but now what you have to do is believe in yourself and accept that your father isn’t here anymore to protect you. You also have to accept your own mortality, and above all, you have to stop being afraid to commit to the next Sophie. And now, as much as I’d like to spend the whole day with you, I have patients with much more complicated situations than yours. Have fun tonight. You won’t make any mistakes, your mother will be delighted, and neither Sophie nor your father’s ghost will haunt you.”
“What do I owe you?” asked Thomas as he stood up.
“Lunch sometime. But if you could get me tickets to the Verdi concert at Garnier at the end of the month, you’d have my eternal gratitude.”
Sylvain walked Thomas to the door of his office and patted his shoulder, repeating that everything would be back to normal soon, if it wasn’t already.
Back on the street, Thomas felt lighter on his feet. To banish the last hint of doubt, he took out his phone and called his ex-girlfriend.
“Thomas?” she asked, surprised.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to bother you, especially if you’re with someone, but I have an important question to ask and it won’t take long. Did you come to see me in my dressing room after the concert last night? I can’t figure out if it was part of a nightmare or if it was real. I’m leaning toward nightmare, even though you seemed real—I mean, I thought you did. You looked stunning, but what you said was so surreal that I haven’t been sure since I woke up this morning. Especially since your visit wasn’t even the strangest thing that happened in my surreal day. But it was part of it, and I just wanted to make sure. You understand?”
There was a long silence, and Thomas wondered if she had hung up on him.
“Sophie?”
“I’m here.” She sighed. “You know what, Thomas? Maybe I made a huge mistake in letting you go. I should have been more patient, because guys as twisted and wonderful as you don’t come along every day. Honestly, I’m still not sure if I should feel relief, or regret.”
Then she hung up.
Thomas realized she hadn’t answered his question. Maybe he hadn’t asked it clearly enough?
As he kept walking, he decided it would be best not to think about any of it anymore. Better to forget his hypnotic day, as Sylvain had called it, and focus on tonight’s concerto.
He took advantage of a few rays of sunshine on the terrace of Les Deux Magots, where he ordered a salad. When the waiter returned tothe kitchen, Thomas went to buy a paper from the newsstand next door. He then returned to his place and thanked the couple next to him for watching his jacket and bag. He was enjoying his beer when he heard a sigh behind him.
“Psychiatrists are so full of shit! If your conscience is as weighty as good old Marcel, your thoughts must be heavy indeed. Ego and superego. Absolute nonsense.”
Thomas refused to answer his father. He paid for his lunch and put on his jacket, then picked up his newspaper and casually crossed Boulevard Saint-Germain to get to the taxi stand. He climbed into a Škoda and asked the driver to take him to the Salle Pleyel.
The car was driving down Rue Bonaparte when Raymond appeared in the passenger seat and turned around to talk to Thomas.
“First of all, you and I were never in competition with one another. And second, you never had trouble with authority in school. I should know since I attended all the parent-teacher meetings.”
“No, you didn’t. Mom did,” corrected Thomas under his breath.
“Fair enough, but still—the ‘wounds of childhood’? Let’s just summon the lesions of adolescence while we’re at it! And the scars of old age too—I know all about that one, from tangible life experience. My profession was pretty tangible too. When you’re operating on someone, there’s nothing subjective about it. Either you cut or you don’t, and then you sew them back up, that’s it.”
Thomas started to hum while he looked out the window, like a child refusing to listen.
“Would you like me to turn on the radio?” The driver looked a bit unnerved.
“No, it’s fine,” Thomas answered. “I prefer silence, thanks.”
“Was that directed at me?” asked his father.
