I n v i s i b l e s

One day, it was really quite cold, I was on my bench as usual, all alone. Suddenly, a young woman approaches, she sits next to me, I didn’t look at her. She smells good. She does not say a word and I hear her crying. And then, she puts her head on my shoulder. I thought my heart had stopped beating. I stayed still, I don’t know how long for, the sun had gone down, the fishmonger had closed his shop a long time ago and she was sleeping on my shoulder. I felt like a tree. I wanted to never move again. I wanted it never to stop. So I closed my eyes. But she woke up and she left.

Sometimes we see another one in a cafe. He is alone. He has a drink in front of him but he doesn’t take a sip. His body, his appearance, the way he holds himself very straight, dressed up, all tell a story that we would like to hear. But he does not speak. He clearly isn’t waiting for anyone. No woman joins him, no friend to play dominoes, cards, or drink with him. Who are they? Immigrant workers, torn between the two shores of the Mediterranean, who have grown old here in France. They remained alone, for various reasons. They did not return home. France became their country, they brought their dreams here, but they became ghosts. In mythology, in the kingdom of Hades (epithet meaning “the invisible”), the one who managed to enter the kingdom of the dead, could observe, question the ancestors, and return to the world of the living armed with this wisdom, on one condition: that of not sitting in the “chair of oblivion”.