would be like to live with Sonia in the Cité Radieuse. We would have two kids, a girl and a boy. We would eat breakfast as a family, and then take the children downstairs to the day care, and go to our studio, where we both worked on social housing projects. It was an open, brightly lit space in the city center, with large tables with blueprints on them, and white cardboard models of machines for living scattered about. Then we went on site. Sonia looked lovely in beige pants and a white linen shirt and white plastic helmet. Huge red cranes stood around, but no one seemed to be working. The sky was blue, and you could see the sea in the distance and sense the nearness of Africa just across the water. It was a scene from a French movie of the fifties or sixties, our whole life was a film put together from distance shots, wide angles under white light, with little people moving through it, all very aesthetic and intellectual and cool.
I got up and went out into the hallway. I knocked gently on the door of Antje’s room and said quietly, Sonia? No reply. The door was half-open, and I went inside. Sonia was lying on the bed asleep, one arm curled over her head on the pillow. There was a small dark sweat stain in her armpit, the one flaw in an otherwise perfect picture. I stroked it with my finger, I didn’t dare any other touch. The Rolleiflex was on the desk. I picked it up and started to take pictures of Sonia. The image in the frame was reversed, and it took me a while to get used to the fact that every move I made had the reverse effect. Slowly I circled the bed, looking for the perfect setup, moving in and then back again. I took a couple of shots, once, when I was really near, Sonia’s brow creased at the sound of the shutter, and I was afraid she’d wake up, but her face relaxed again, and I went on taking pictures. Then the film was full, and I took it out, sealed it, and laid it with the other rolls that Sonia had shot that morning. As I was about to leave the room, I heard Sonia’s drowsy voice call my name. I turned around and went back to her. I must have gone to sleep, she said. I said I’d dozed off as well.
Sonia said she was going to take the films to be developed, would I like to go with her. We went to the photo shop down the street and then we had a drink in a bistro in the old harbor.
The next day Sonia wanted to take a look at the Château d’If. Antje had told us that boats went from there to a couple of small islands where you could bathe in the sea. We packed our swimming things, bought a few sandwiches, and picked up the prints in the photo shop.
The boat left from the old harbor. Even though it was early in the morning, bathers thronged the jetty. When the ship left port, it crossed various little fishing boats and farther out an enormous ferry that was probably coming from Corsica or from North Africa. The light and the salt smell and the ships reminded me of family holidays, and I felt a bit like I used to then, at once lost and full of expectation.
Not many passengers got off at the Château d’If, most of them were staying on till the bathing islands. The fortress fascinated me right away with its monumentality and its deployment of simple forms. It consisted of a quadratic central structure, with three massive towers at the corners. It had been built five hundred years ago, and had been used, almost from the start, as a prison. The central keep had a small inner courtyard with a well and galleries, from which you gained access to the cells. The cells were dark, with very little light reaching them through the narrow, low-set archery slits. Sonia said the walls were ten or twelve feet thick in places, and she began copying some of the details into her sketchbook. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be imprisoned here. Oddly, I had a sensation of shelter and protection rather than confinement.
On the castle roof, the light was dazzlingly bright and threw sharp black shadows onto