The Lady with the Blankets

(A story found, they say, in a spiral notebook whose pages smell of rubbing alcohol and sunscreen. I cannot vouch for everything. I can vouch only for this: there are people who, in order not to die, stop living — and others who, one day, accept a small burn to return to the world.)

I

On the art of not touching

It is impossible to date the precise beginning of her caution. Those who like clear causes will say, “It was after the pandemic.” Others, more inclined to romance, will invent a trauma: a sting, an allergy, an exotic insect bite, a frightening article read by chance between floors.

The truth is simpler, and therefore harder to tell: her caution arrived without thunder. It arrived as dust. It settled the way habits settle, with that sly patience that means one day you no longer know whether you are living or merely carrying out instructions.

Her name was Léonie.

She lived on the sixth floor of an unremarkable building, in a city where winter teaches you early the value of a woollen hat and the pain of being caught by the wind. Her apartment was clean, tidy, almost too much so. In the kitchen, the oil bottles stood in line like soldiers. In the bathroom, the bottles were arranged by size, by use, by potential danger. On the fridge, a little sun-shaped magnet held a list: Wash / Disinfect / Moisturise / Protect.

She rose early, not out of virtue, but because the world, as it moves on, multiplies its opportunities to catch you by surprise.

As soon as she opened her eyes, she assessed the light. She did not draw the curtains with a confident sweep: she parted them just enough to admit a strip of daylight, the way one opens a door into a room where one suspects a smell.

For her, the sun was not a joy. It was an agent.

Near the window stood a tube of sunscreen, like a totem. Léonie did not say “cream”. She said “protection”. The word seemed more serious to her, more technical, more dignified.

She applied the protection in thin, methodical layers. Forehead, cheekbones, nose, chin, ears — especially the ears, because people forget them, and what is forgotten becomes fatal. Then the neck. Then the hands. Then that ridiculous triangle between thumb and forefinger which, she believed, betrayed age faster than a confession.

Then she waited.

She waited for the layer to dry, for skin to become surface, for the world to slide off. While she waited, she looked at the wall as though reading some ancient instruction there. In that silence was something of a religious rite. But it was a religion without a god: only a universe of accidents and a body too aware of being exposed.

After that, she went to the books.

She loved books, but in her own way: she loved the idea of a book more than its touch. Paper, she knew, carried dust, inks, stories, and every story was a possible stain.

On a small table, beside a novel she had been rereading for months without getting any further, sat a tin of ointment. This ointment was not a whim: it was a strategy.

She placed a trace on the tip of each finger, then gently massaged the pads, as one prepares tools. Only then did she open the volume.

That way, the pages did not rub. They did not resist. They slid like a well-mannered world. She turned the leaves with the cautious gentleness of a surgeon and the gravity of a judge.

You might have thought she read to understand. In truth, she read to keep her distance. Between her and the sentence lay the ointment. Between her and the world lay all her discipline.

Léonie also worked in a place that, in other people’s eyes, justified some of her peculiar habits: she was employed at the returns desk of a municipal library. She touched books that unknown hands had touched, covers that had known subways, bags, beds, sticky tables. She received humanity in paper form.

At first, she wore gloves only at work. Then she wore them for grocery shopping too. Then to open her mailbox. Then to take out the rubbish. Then to hold her own cup, as if even her most familiar objects might turn against her.

She also took to wearing a mask.

Masks had not been mandatory for a long time, but Léonie carried on. She said, “It’s simpler.” And she was right, if by “simple” you mean a world where air is allowed in only after it has been judged.

For her, the mask had finally become a face.

In the building, people found it amusing at first. Then it became part of the scenery. Neighbours have this wisdom: they very quickly accept what they do not understand, as long as it makes no noise. And Léonie made no noise. Only a faint rustle of plastic, a soft squeak of a wipe, a filtered sigh.