“The Absent,” by Marie Sizun: forty years of being the illegitimate wife
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Marie Sizun, at her home in Paris in 2022. PHILIPPE MATSAS / © PHILIPPE MATSAS / ARLEA
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Review The moving tale of a forbidden affair. A rather ordinary adventure transcended by the beauty of the language. ★★★★☆
Their story was scandalous and innocent. A forbidden affair because the narrator's lover wasn't free. Now that he's dead, she sends him a long declaration of love in which she retraces the steps of an adulterous passion that lasted forty years. She relives, in a daze, their meeting when they were young teachers in Germany. How can one not become attached to this brilliant and unsophisticated fantasist? She follows him when he is transferred to Brussels.
The author accepts her status as an illegal immigrant, illegitimate, because the man, married to a sick woman, is the father of two disabled children. Until the day she decides to take control of her life. She abandons him and leaves for Paris. But their relationship continues between two cities. Her beloved's health deteriorates. After the fateful announcement that strikes her with misfortune, she decides to resurrect him through words. To retrace the chronology of small facts that…
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