The first sound was like a chair being dragged through wet sand. Marcel was sitting opposite me, reading instructions for a new thermostat neither of us could persuade to work. I asked him to stop moving his foot.
"I'm not moving it."
The sound came again. He swallowed, and a long soft tearing followed it down inside his chest.
I put my fork on the plate.
We had been married for forty years. I knew his small noises, the click in one knee, the careful breath before he rose from a low chair. They had become part of the house. This was different. Something enormous was shifting behind his ribs, with the slow weight of machinery lowered into water.
He saw my face and asked whether I felt ill.
His voice remained ordinary. Under it, the wet movement continued.
That night I slept in the spare room. I told him I had a headache, which was true by then. Through the closed door I could hear his body working. Distance removed the familiar sounds of the bed and his breathing, but everything beneath them grew clearer. I heard fluid moving through passages too narrow to imagine. I heard the small friction of one living surface against another.
By morning I was frightened of breakfast.
He boiled eggs because he thought something plain would help. They were fully cooked; I watched him cut one open. From inside the unbroken egg on my plate came the sound of something turning slowly against a shell that contained no such thing. When he cut that one open too, the movement continued from both halves.
I went into the bathroom and shut the door.
Marcel called our doctor. We went through the ordinary attempts to understand a new difficulty. I could describe what I heard, and the people asking questions could believe that I was frightened, but no explanation made the sound of a sliced boiled egg reasonable. I stopped discussing the egg after the first appointment. Marcel did not stop believing me.
He bought ear defenders. They removed his voice almost completely. Beneath them, his heart continued its thick, impatient movement, closer than before. I could feel the sound in my teeth. I took them off and apologized for the money.
He said the money did not matter.
For a while we tried the different rooms, but none of the distances available in our flat made a difference. He ate in the kitchen while I sat in the bedroom. He slept at his brother's for three nights. The flat was quiet. On the first night I slept for twelve hours, then woke reaching for the person whose absence had made the sleep possible. When he came back, he stood on the landing and asked whether I wanted him to stay outside a little longer.
I wanted to run to him.
The sound of the blood moving through his neck made me grip the doorframe. He saw my hand tighten and took a step backward. Under the noise, his ordinary face was trying not to show what my reaction had done to him.
I told him I loved him. He said he knew.
That evening he sat across the room, as still as he could manage. He had always been restless, touching objects while thinking, folding corners of papers he intended to keep. Now he held his hands flat against his knees. The effort was pointless. Everything I could not bear happened beneath his stillness.
When I asked him to leave, he did not pretend I meant for one more night.
He asked whether I wanted him to find somewhere permanent. I said I did not know what permanent meant anymore. He waited, and I had to answer the actual question. Yes. Somewhere he could put his things without wondering whether I would be able to tolerate him returning for them.
He packed while I stayed on the balcony. I could hear his body through the glass, but I could also hear traffic and a man arguing about parking. I kept my attention on the argument until it ended.
Marcel took the larger suitcase and left me the smaller one. We had bought them together before a holiday on which it rained every day. He kissed the top of my head at the door. I managed to stay still until he moved away.
A week later he returned for the wooden chessboard from the top cupboard. He had not played in years. I knew he could have bought another more easily than coming back, and I let the visit be about the board because neither of us could bear a different reason.
I put it on the table between us.
"Do you miss me?" he asked.
I said yes. The answer had no power to change the way my body tightened while his worked inside its clothes. He looked at my hands, then at the space I had kept between our chairs.
He took the board without opening it. The pieces knocked together as he lifted the box, a small dry sound I could bear. I listened to that until the door closed. Then I heard him going down the stairs, the old knee pausing on each landing, and knew exactly where he stopped to rest without being able to go and stand beside him.
