Incest

No Man’s Land

I was homosexual for three months. More precisely, for three months I thought I was condemned to be homosexual. I really had caught it, I wasn’t imagining things. The test results were positive. I’d become attached. Not the first few times. It was the looks she gave. I started on a process, one of collapse. In which I couldn’t recognize myself. It wasn’t my story anymore. It wasn’t me. Still, as soon as I saw her, the test results were the same. I was homosexual the moment I saw her. Things turned back into me afterward. Whenever she was gone. Other times, even in her presence, I was myself again. I missed my daughter so much on trips, when I was away for longer stretches, three or four days. The feeling of betraying the only one I truly love. To whom I’d dedicated all my books. Writing is impossible. When you’re not yourself. My sexuality suffered. In the beginning I was dissatisfied. Then. I wasn’t anymore. I was less and less. Except for one thing (I’ll get to it later), that I never enjoyed doing. Something specific, that involves all the rest. Except for once, I remember. I never did it, so to speak. I had become one hundred percent homosexual apart from that. Apparently. The moment I saw her. But for this detail. Remaining fundamentally and profoundly heterosexual all the while. (But, without theory.) One detail that spared me. Otherwise I was completely homosexual. For a short time, but still, three months. There were no men at all in my fantasies, on the contrary, there were women rivals. I was on the sidelines, they were rivals with each other. I was fascinated by homosexuality. No one is fascinated by themselves, I wasn’t homosexual. And yet. I ended up feeling an enormous desire. As soon as I saw her arriving, I was caught. Even now, I still have to. Even at this very moment. Have to stop myself from calling her. Calling her at work, that’s my specialty. It amused her at first. All the “quick calls.” The secretary knew my voice. Of course. Right away. The secretaries recognize my voice. Right away, they know it’s Christine. I keep at it, I’m relentless. I make it clear, I’m not embarrassed. The weapon turns against me sooner or later. I use it. My former editor used to say “she’s a serial killer.” I want to call him too sometimes. My father has Alzheimer’s, typical, I call others. I telephone. Her, I can’t count the number of times. I call again. I hang up. I call back to say, “above all, don’t call me again.” “I don’t want to hear from you anymore.” I don’t get a call. I telephone again. I say “you could have called me back. So you weren’t going to call, hunh? You don’t have the guts! To do the opposite of what I tell you for once. When you know perfectly well… it’s not what I wanted. You know it’s not true, what I say. Not what I want. But the opposite. After three months, you still haven’t figured it out. You know that’s how it is. And if you don’t, well then…” Behaving like a baby. I’m perfectly aware. Not at first, though it was normal to call her at work ten times in an hour. She claims she loves me. For a blown light bulb, an empty ink cartridge, a fax that won’t go through, to read her what I’ve just written over the phone, for some anxiety attack coming on. Etc. Dinner, do you love me, and I forgot to tell you, I thought to myself, I’ll call her or I’ll have forgotten again by this evening. At first, it comes off well, she likes it, it’s spontaneous, it’s a change. Serial killer, it’s part of my charm. I tell her she’s a coward. She tells me I’m crazy. A lack of balance doesn’t scare me, there are others who can’t cope. Like her. People like her. Who have limits. I have none. Her, she has them. Me, I don’t. She can’t stand it. When things get so… neurotic. I get called insane. Several times. Don’t take it as an indictment, you’ve got reasons, it’s just an observation. Some people have limits, you have none. But still, I’m suffering. She can’t take it anymore. She has her limits. Who could? I hang up. I pass the mirror. Despite my face being all flushed, I think I look pretty good. I say to myself, “I’m worth more than this.” I don’t call her back. I say to myself “I’m not going to call her.” I say to myself “how dare she… ten years older than I am… and not all that attractive.” I lie down. Time to move on to something else. There are other things in life than calling Mademoiselle. I decide to read. I like reading. This doesn’t interest me. Coeur furieux, my heart is even more furious. I close the book and try to watch The Last Temptation of Christ. After five minutes I stretch out on the sofa and weep. I don’t just shed a few tears. Pretty soon it’s unbearable. I wonder who to call. Who to talk to about this. What number to dial to start sobbing right after “hello” and then “what’s the matter?” How many phone numbers before coming to my senses again? There are always offers. “If things aren’t going well, call me.” No, her. To see if she loves me to exhaustion, as she claims. If not, then really! “I’d do anything for you,” but not take two hundred phone calls. Right now, this minute! At her place, at work, at the hospital, with a patient in front of her. And then. I don’t call her again. I’m relieved, I’m finally free. Phew, I even say it out loud. I say phew. I pick up the phone and put it on my stomach. I tell myself that it doesn’t mean anything, there’s no reason I can’t have it on my stomach. The remote control is on the ground and still I’m not watching television. So there! Just because the telephone is on my stomach, doesn’t mean I’m going to call. It’s absurd! I’m so much better off without her. I’m not going to go and call her now, just when I’m starting to calm down. Besides, I have nothing to say. Not a thing. Phew. Really, phew. I didn’t want to. I was never homosexual. I was never interested in breasts. Mine included. We finally undressed one day. She said “touch me.” “Never.” I’ll never be able to. I told her, I remember, even though it was a long time ago, “your breasts bother me.” She said “well just your luck, they’re very small.” That’s just it! as long as I’m at it, I’d have preferred they were bigger. When she said “touch me,” that’s not what she was talking about. When someone says touch me… Fine, I put my finger in. You never get a chance to touch something like that otherwise. Léonore has a book about touching called Feely Bugs in the ‘Touch and Feel’ series. There’s nothing like this in it. Not the plush bug, the one with feathers, with lace, or, of course, the leather one, or the lamé one, or the very soft bug, the carpet bug, the sticky bug, the padded bug, the velvet bug or the bug with pleats, or the scratchy one, or the candy wrapper butterflies she collects. When I felt how slimy it was! I pulled back my hand. It’s peculiar. Too peculiar. It was the look she gave me. Even now, I have to keep from thinking of her eyes. I’m still vulnerable. Her look is terrible. For me. No one had told her that before. It seems. Sous-au-cun-pré-tex-te.Je-ne-veux. Devant-toi-surex. Poser-mes-yeux. (Under-no-circumstances. Do-I-want. To-over-expose. My-eyes-in-front-of-you.) She sings that sometimes. The phone is in the other room. I’m calm. Right here, right now. It’s more dangerous when it’s on my stomach. Within reach. I must have really bothered her at work, the number of times I called. Up to a hundred times in a day. I can’t count any more. Sobbing or cold as ice, “you’re hopeless, you poor thing, you poor, poor thing, but poor thing, your medical license should be revoked for failure to provide assistance to someone at risk. What a sham, not a shred of humanity. For someone who’s suffering”… “OK, you want to be friends, I’m calling as a friend, come over.” She didn’t come. “In any case, we can never be friends, we’re not going to see each other any more, it’s perfectly clear, besides sex, did anything ever work between us, more or less – and even then? Take care of yourself, sweetheart, keep an eye on your little savings. When you can’t, you can’t, isn’t that right? We can’t. Take care, take good care, get some rest, yes, you’re tired, my love, get some rest and keep watch over what little capital you have, so it stays untouched. For your legacy when you die. When you’re dead. For your family.” An allusion to the will she wrote when she was eight. Pitou to my godmother. My rabbits to Mama as long as they won’t be killed. My desk to Papa. My books to my cousins. My toys to poor children. My clothes to Françoise. I want to calm down. Take this damn phone off my stomach. I eject the tape of The Last Temptation of Christ and put in Deleuze’s ABC Primer, at least I won’t waste my time. Not my time, there’s that. Letter B, boisson, drink. I don’t call. Deleuze immediately raises the bar. Oh yes, I drank a lot. I stopped. Drinking is a question of quantity. You don’t drink just anything, everyone has their favorite drink, the quantity is set. Alcoholics and drug addicts are often ridiculed. Because ‘Oh, me, I can stop when I want.’ This is the last. The last phone call, the last, the very last. Before becoming completely disgusted with it. With calling. Given the answers. When I want to stop, I do. Next Saturday when I’m back in Paris, this afternoon, I already stopped a long time ago in my head. With her. The only woman I love is Léonore, not her. But I can’t dedicate this one to you, sweetheart. Sweetheart, I used to call you. Even if I’ve stopped now. Calling. I knew I could stop when I wanted to. I stopped a long time ago in my head. And Friday, too bad, I’ll go to Nîmes by myself. We were supposed to go together. I’ll take the train, I reserved a hotel room. I’ve stopped. Today, in a half hour, right away, already done, I’m done calling. If she called me, she’d regret it. She won’t do it, she wouldn’t dare. And if she does, she’ll regret it. I know how to destroy people. I’ll write her, it’s more certain. So that she won’t call me anymore. Finally. Phew. Besides, I’ll take her the letter myself, right now. In person and put it into her own hands. Unless I send a courier. To show her I didn’t come up with this pretext just to see her. Something that might seem like a pretext in her eyes, her beautiful eyes. I’m not going to shell out 200 francs for that girl. I’ll take it myself. The letter. Written on stationery from the Gramercy Park Hotel. Where we were so happy, barely three weeks ago. Happy, well, as for me, not always. I missed Léonore so much by the third day, I became myself again. I cried in secret. When she was in the shower I called Claude to get news. For two days I stopped being homosexual. I kicked her out of my bed. I never talked about it because I knew it was temporary. So now I take the stationery, the envelope and a page. I cross out the letterhead. And I sign it ironically “your little angel!” But she couldn’t care less that I’m upset. All she wanted: for me to calm down. I took the letter to her office. I ran. I left Léonore playing, watched by her friend’s mother. I’d taken her out of school, I was anxious, I left. I left her with one of her friends’ mothers, I don’t remember which. One of the ones always sitting on the benches. It was hot out, I arrived covered in sweat, I was dripping. For forty-eight hours, it was only by running that I could keep it more or less together. She laughed and said “see you Saturday,” to calm me down. I’d found her in the X-ray room, developing some images. At her practice. But in person. In the little darkroom. Yes, I know, I know I’m all sweaty. And I’d like, if possible, if it’s not asking too much, I know there are patients waiting in the next room, for her to read it in front of me. I don’t want to give it to the receptionist. I want to see her. Her. I want to be certain she receives it, in her own hands, right away. That she realize this time, it’s over, I’m done, finished. I ask her, in addition, to please not try to call me again, there’s no point. I don’t want her to. I left at a run, I arrived bathed in sweat, I ran everywhere for two days. The phone calls were rushed, the letters urgent. To get to the final letter, the final phone call, as quickly as possible. And to the last kiss, still, you can kiss me. As quickly as possible. The last water lily, the last look. I turn on the answering machine, I filter the calls, I won’t answer if it’s her, so there! People make fun of alcoholics because they don’t understand. They want to get to the last glass, to do whatever it takes, an alcoholic never stops stopping. Getting to the last glass. A little like Péguy’s phrase, which is so lovely. I’m giving a source because there should be only one author for each phrase. Péguy, Guibert, a woman. Even if I’m at my last glass, long since drunk. Even if I’m going to Nîmes alone on Friday. I reserved a room near the Jardins de la Fontaine, I’ll take the train back the next day. The little writer recounts his little life. Thibaudet. It’s true that her look is terrible. A little like Péguy’s phrase, which is so lovely. It’s not the last water lily that repeats the first, it’s the first that repeats all the rest and the last. The first glance, the first water lily, the first phone call, and the first glass, it’s the last one that counts. The alcoholic who gets up is intent on the last glass. The first eyes, the very last. The last one: he assesses. What he can hold without collapsing until the last one. Sweetheart, Three fifteen I’ve taken Pitou my heart for a walk honey I love you MCA. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll call her X, anonymous, MCA, or her full name. Sweetheart, three fifteen. Not the last glass, but the next to last, the penultimate one before starting again the next day, “alright, this one’s the last,” groups of alcoholics in cafés are amusing. The last water lily repeats the first, it never gets boring. You quit if it’s dangerous, if it becomes dangerous. But if it doesn’t keep you from working, if it’s a stimulant, then sacrificing your body is normal. For something that helps. Helps you bear something else. Something you couldn’t endure without alcohol. To touch, to stick your finger in, turn it, take it out again, put it in your mouth, make the vagina’s wetness go into the anus, what you can’t bear isn’t that, but what you saw one Sunday, in broad daylight, the light was streaming in through the wide-open bay window, I was looking at her sex, the day before I’d read excerpts from Desert Flower, by an infibulated African woman, you could cut it off, I said to myself, with a razor, with scissors, sew it back up, cut the threads, etc. Not randomly. You could remove the little nub of flesh, slick with a thick rain. What you saw of life in the middle of the afternoon one Sunday or in the desert, remove her flesh where it flows that MCA loves CA. I decided not to think about it anymore. Not to ask her “you know what I was just thinking?” But to calm the wound by licking it gently as long as there was still time. The open water lily also repeats itself on my daughter, I can’t calm anyone. Don’t think about it anymore. I said “loving someone is horrible.” She said “no, what’s horrible is when someone is torn away from you.” And I answered “exactly.” Your own self is torn away. I almost never did it. Covered with this greasy rain, I just felt too strange. I said to myself “if anyone saw me…” no one saw me. Drinking, to get control, I had to call her two hundred times in those anxious days. It’s normal. And at night. You stop, that’s it. It happened yesterday. I stopped it all. I don’t call anymore, I don’t love her anymore. If, at least, it had helped me work, even if there was a physical cost. But the last forty-eight hours, I spent them crying, telephoning, running around, delivering letters, running to get a taxi, the taxi wasn’t going fast enough. I stopped, but not on my own: she said stop. She couldn’t take it anymore either. I begged her for one last weekend. To do the thing I never do, to lick, I can say it, I hoped to be revolted by it for good. She didn’t want to make love at all. She’s here, she just got up. We’ll be friends. Friends. Platonic love. In the beginning I was the one who wanted this. You get caught up in contradictory things. In my own interest. I pretended. The first time I saw her, I thought she was ugly, a skinny little brunette.

————: A phrase I censored myself, which would have hurt her too deeply. Her hands ———— with knuckles a little too big for her thin fingers. Clean hands, the hands of a doctor, a woman, clean, graceful, soft, hands that can palpate an abdomen for half an hour. I felt good. In the beginning, in November, I didn’t confide in anyone, except to friends I could count on one hand, that I was condemned. I wouldn’t admit to anyone, except to these few friends, that I was going to leave her, that it was over. Still, for three months, the test results were all one hundred percent positive. If I get out, then it’s out of a fatal illness. I could have died with her. I wrote her such letters. “Do you love me? Do you love me completely?” The answer is no, I’ve got it now. Not completely. Not my telephonic raving. “I’m sure we love each other. Why is it we don’t know how to be together? Peacefully, happily.” We’ve been trying to leave each other since we met. Three months, one hundred and fifty times. Annie, on the phone, downplays it all, “there’s no difference, well, fine, a difference in morphology.” I gave life to my daughter, I could have died with her, this is where it has to stop. There are arguments. Diversity comes from one’s sex, it’s life, a geneticist friend would tell me. But I couldn’t stop. The test was positive. It’s life, but mine responded when she licked me. Positive. I didn’t think of my daughter at those times. After, when we cuddled, then often. Sometimes we dreamed. The apartment, the civil solidarity pact, I would inherit everything she owned. “I love seeing you, I love seeing you walk in the door. I love who you are. I love your hair, your eyes, your glasses, your clothes, your nose, your mouth, your waist. I dream: We have a house. We share it. We both love it. We choose things we love. Léonore is there. No one can find anything to criticize. You love what I write. You love it a lot. You come to Paris with me. We love each other. We feel strong together. With Léonore, too. Pitou my heart watches over her.” Pitou my heart was her dog’s nickname. She was very homosexual, she had everything, a female cat, a female dog. Homosexuality fascinated me. Léonore has a friend, Clara, who is authoritarian and always wants to be the mother. She’s always quick to say it, she says it fast. All that’s left for Léonore, she tells me between sobs, is to be the second mother. And she’s not allowed to have children, a little cat, or a little dog, that’s it. It made me sick. For three months I was truly beside myself. I thought I liked it. I wanted to keep on. A little bit longer. Leave her to me. I felt strong enough to drink the dregs. I could have licked her more often. I could do it again. Reluctantly, but what difference does that make? Everyone was worried, I’m saved, they will all be reassured. Except for my enemies, they liked it when I kept a low profile. It’s hard for me to believe now that it happened to me. I have the feeling I’m talking about someone else. That lifestyle didn’t suit me, the surroundings weren’t for me. There are some people it suits. With me, it’s like evidence of a virus. It gets my back up. On the day I start this book, in my apartment in Montpellier where I live alone with my daughter, I leave the answering machine on, filtering the calls. (I never do this, but I intend to. This time. She’ll get a recording.) I avoid all those who will find it reassuring, my health, my body, my stability, or those who, on the contrary, think it’s “fabulous.” I don’t know who to talk to anymore or about what. People were thinking, she’s working on her next book, that’s disgusting. Guibert, who intentionally infected his blood. I, myself, at fourteen. I wanted to be a writer, I wanted a powerful start, I seduced my father. Still, for me, at first, licking a woman was unknown territory. Stretched out on the ground, it’s suffocating. Straight women aren’t used to this. You can’t breathe in that forest. A healthy man’s T4 count ranges between 500 and 2,000, I was out of breath. Getting close to someone is always hard. But still, the last time, I loved her. Which helped me keep going for another, let’s say, thirty seconds. Usually I quit after three licks. Even then, I’d take a breath in between. Fortunately literature is a universal vocation. I’ll have myself cut, infibulated, maybe, bits of my flesh, of my sex will be put out to dry in the sun for my next book. I also might have a project on goldmines because of Léonore, or. Because of l’or, in Léonore.

The day the bay window was open, I made her come, though before I’d always quit after three licks. I suddenly felt my blood exposed, long before any tests. That’s it. My blood was stripped bare, exposed, it had always been clothed or covered until then without my being aware of it. It exposes your blood in three months. You’re undressed and then dressed again. Your blood has no more veins. The standard sexuality that was yours until then, you suddenly wonder how you manage. I had to live for three months with this blood stripped bare, exposed, in town, going shopping, I didn’t do my errands anymore the way “an unclothed body must make its way through a nightmare,” I had things delivered. My blood, unmasked, everywhere and all the time (in Europe, the United States, at the market or the seashore, in town, with friends), forever, except in the unlikely event of miraculous transfusions, an infatuation of two weeks, a miraculous disgust, a guy, I dreamed, my blood laid bare around the clock, on public transportation, the way I dressed to please him, when I’m walking in the street, always the target of an arrow constantly aimed at me. My shoes, I’d always chosen bulkier ones, and the jacket I wore everyday. Does it show in my eyes? That you can’t penetrate yourself. You find some expedient. There are always solutions. Living by your wits. You resort to alternatives. Yes. Wanting. For me, it was a question of expedients. And that has its appeal. Instead of wealth, longer lasting. Finding an alternative. I wanted to. Female homosexuality involves a lot of strains. I was lucky, she was a doctor, she prescribed me massages, respiratory rehabilitation, spinal physical therapy. My spine took a hit. During the forty-eight hours of anxiety (running around, telephone calls, letters, taxi) I skirted an asthma attack. Living on expedients is nice too, trying to catch your breath elsewhere, it’s over. I still could, that’s why I’m sad. “You’ve got to be two” – not her. There’s something about me she can’t stand, she says. “I want to live,” she finds me intolerable. People want to be tolerant. To be satisfied. One morning she tells me a dream she had, someone shot a little fallow deer in the ear. I was telling her: I want to write a book with you about all the different ways of dying. In her family they’re doctors from generation to generation. I need to write a book with you, please. “An aneurysm, it’s a kind of pocket, an abnormality, of course, on an artery wall, a cerebral artery, it’s a weak spot and it forms a kind of sack, weaker than the artery wall, that can rupture or tear at any moment. This anomaly occurs relatively frequently. The aneurysm can rupture. When this little sack tears or bursts. There’s a hemorrhage, in other words, the brain is flooded with blood because it’s an artery and the pressure is high, with each heartbeat, the blood floods in. The blood destroys the entire brain. When the rupture is complete, death is extremely sudden. People drop, just like that, right in front of you, boom, they’re dead. Sometimes it’s preceded by fierce headaches, that happens. Other times there are no indicators, it’s immediate. —And eczema, what’s eczema? —Eczema is a skin disease, caused by an allergy, often with bubble-like lesions covering different parts of the body that form crusts, which may start to ooze and are pruritic. —Are what? They itch.” But we never started, we were never able to do anything together, we never had time. We never seriously started. On one of the days we were breaking up, I told her, weeping, “I didn’t know how to enjoy you.” Even though she had offered herself. She gave me her father’s personal journal. I gave it back to her that weekend. Doctors from one generation to the next. All the ways of dying. I take praxinor. My blood pressure is so low, when I was getting on my bicycle yesterday, Léonore asked me, “Mama, are you going to die?” I could have dedicated this book to her, but I was afraid to. She uses her tongue like a cock. When she kissed me, I opened up. I wanted her. Living on expedients, that’s exciting. You lose half the world and there are lots of strains. But I still wanted her. Once she said to me: you’re a real little macho. I had trouble hiding my smile, of satisfaction. Like you see sometimes with actors who think they’re exceptionally good. What are you missing with me? Half the world, my dear, quite simply. With you I’m missing half the world, that’s all. I can’t get turned on by someone who hasn’t got anything. If there’s no dick, well, for me, it’s not enough. It was not important. And not true. You shouldn’t let yourself get worn down. By all the obstacles you meet. Stuck on the pubes, that works too. Without counting the satisfaction of solving the problem with only what you have at hand. When you think of all the ways there are of dying and you don’t die, it’s amazing. I was missing half the world, that was my big argument. A person is a whole world, that was hers. An entire world unto herself… incredible. Locked-in syndrome, what’s that? Literally ‘locked within.’ A rare form of brain damage. A drastic impairment of blood flow to one part of the brain because of a blocked artery that kills the nerve cells. Once or twice she called me a “little slut.” Homosexuality is when you can’t do otherwise, it’s that simple, Claude told me. No, the strains, the exhaustion, the disappointment. The exposed blood. But the freedom of not having to search anymore, I recognized that. That, yes. “I don’t care, I’m glad I’m done with her,” as we said when we were children. Good, good, good vibrations. Last night Claude dreamed good-bye, good vibrations, and he was crying. Good-bye, good vibrations, that got him sobbing. Everything gone, good-bye. Just as well. I met her on September 9th. I immediately fell in love with her mouth, her eyes, the way she walks. Her smell, her sex, the way she moves, her voice. More than anything, the way she looks at me. The way she walks. The way she runs after her dog, Baya. The way she throws a pebble into the sea for her dog when we’re on a walk. Her throat and the back of her neck. Her gold necklace, which she never takes off. Her slightly protruding shoulder blades. Her slightly hollow chest. I didn’t admit it for three months. I didn’t see anyone all winter long. Claude saw us through the window when he was watering the bonsais of neighbors across the street who had left for a weekend, friends of his. Valérie had her fit of jealousy. My mother said to me “love takes different forms.” Léonore told everyone at school “X and Mama are homosexuals.” Everyone understood. It was perfectly clear. I slunk along the walls in my jacket and my big shoes. Slunk along the walls, the barriers, like slicing them, with a razor, slicing veins and my luck. A razor in the rock wall, rock, pierre, my father’s name is Pierre, and on this rock I will build my church, that’s literature, I will carve it out, a wall of books, a wailing wall, incest, insanity, homosexuality, holocaust, start strong, my jacket, my big shoes, and my razor.

It wasn’t an illness, I’m simplifying. It was a state of weakness and abandonment that opened my cage, at least in the early days. The locked-in syndrome on the contrary, trapped inside. The afflicted person can’t move, or eat, or speak, only blink his eyelids, move his eyeballs vertically. He doesn’t feel physical pain. My ribcage is another matter. Strains, exhausting pressure. My back ached. She gave me orange oval-shaped pills, fenoprofen. I hardly have any more, just one left. I can call her right away, if it hurts, we’re going to remain friends, she’ll give me more. And prescriptions, physical therapy, with massages, for the lumbosacral region, and for my left leg because of lumbosciatica, an urgent case. To rise from the ranks of murderers, to write and heal, I tried to find. A state weakness and abandonment that opened my cage, it’s over. My blood was recovering. The pain is gone. Apropos Claude, thank you for the flowers. I got your flowers. Happy birthday, Christine, love of my life, Claude, Léonore, and three little hearts. He had called me, added “whatever you do, have a good day.” I was still with her. We had argued all week but that weekend we had dinner together at L’Escale.

“I wanted to write you, to send you a note to let you know I’m thinking of you – and love you. I read Calamity Jane in the plane, it was very beautiful and poignant. ‘Oh, how I wish I could live my life again.’ I hope you’re well, that your writing is going well. See you soon, Claude.” My phone was busy all evening yesterday, she was crying. I was listening to her. We now communicate only with our voices, she refuses to see me. She was crying, I had prepared some lines to read to her: Everything in this world is suffering, only love is a reason to live, Racine tells us it’s forbidden. And to explain my recent behavior, Dario Fo: the love of paradox, as is well known, often leads to inconsistency. I myself am a victim of it, it happens to me one day, then the next as well. I sat there with my books open on my lap. That morning she was at home, working quietly. Baya arrived with Yassou, the little cat, who looked strange. She seemed to be trying to show X something. She doesn’t want me to call her X. Neither her real name, nor her initials. The little cat’s paws were wobbling. She had been bitten on her soft underbelly, probably by a dog from the neighborhood. Yassou is not afraid of dogs, she’s used to Baya and Djinn who are “nice to her.” It’s the first time anything has happened to her, there was never anything wrong with this cat. X is fed up with pet issues. She was exhausted, but she still had to take the cat to the vet, you could see her insides. They had to give the cat anesthesia to sew her up. X went to work, suffering people all day long. Neither X, nor MCA, nor Marie-Christine Adrey, nor Aime CA, or Love CA. My love? My dear? My dear little sweetheart, my little darling, my dear, sweetheart, my love, beloved. Beloved, beloved. (In Savannah Bay, when she puts the necklaces on the older woman.) These patients could live for years in this state. They die of complications. Secondary pulmonary infections, sepsis, bedsores… Eczema, aneurysm, I’d have liked to do it all. We didn’t have time. To start something together, not even a photo album. She’s fed up with pet problems, Baya, who almost got run over. Then had to be spayed. And now Yassou, attacked by a dog. She left the answering machine on, didn’t pick up, she was putting on a new bandage. Yassou is in a terrible state… I didn’t tell Léonore, I’m worried about traumatizing her with suffering animals. Neighborhood dogs that bite… She’s preparing a course about stinging insect allergy, it’s tedious. Then the conversation deteriorated. She doesn’t want to make love anymore. She doesn’t want to love. There’s no point. No point, no point, no point, as I always put it so well. She’s not rejecting me personally. All women, no women, not one more woman. I asked a question I thought was innocent. A man? She swore at me and started crying. “I don’t give a shit about guys.” I let her talk. I sensed she wasn’t doing well, not at all. “You, you’ve got your life ahead of you, you’re straight, you, you don’t give a shit. But me, now I understand. Having sex with a woman, you’re right, it’s incest.” So then, I did it, I’d convinced her, I was right, I was alone. In three months. She started crying, nothing could stop her, no matter how many times I told her I loved her. I was torn between satisfaction that she finally understood and sadness at seeing it was over, that’s certain. Just when I was about to accept it, fully aware of its wounding aspect, oh well, too bad, it’s not serious. Once you’ve understood. Come on. Let’s dream. I’m dreaming. We have a house. We share it. We love it, both of us. We choose things we love. We love each other. Léonore is there. In our love. (Léonore in our love!!!…) I’m delirious. I’m dreaming. No one can find anything to criticize(!). You order a sofa from Domus in Nîmes, she knew I like to read lying down. You told me on the phone “you’re the first and only one.” You like what I write. You like it a lot. You often go to Paris with me. You brought your mother’s diamonds in a waist pack to sell so we could buy a big house together. We love each other. We feel strong together. And with Léonore. Pitou my heart watches over her. But her, it’s over. One day, I remember, we were at my place. I picture myself explaining the hierarchy. A man is better than a woman. (As a lover.) A doctor is better than a blue-collar worker, a White man is better than a Black man. She was outraged. Even though I specified “in the eyes of society.” Lots of things, little by little, and another mistake on my part: I shouldn’t have had her read my drafts. I wrote about her pussy, about her hair that would turn salt-and-pepper, about the beginning when I found her ugly. My disgust, and that’s all she saw. Not the positive things. I would tell her, “I’m heterosexual,” she would answer, “I’m not going to get operated on.” I’m leaving for Paris in twenty minutes. Claude and Léonore will take me to the airport. I called the hospital, I want her to call me back before I leave. This morning, the anxiety came back. Me, I don’t care. Goodbye calf, cow, pig, men, women. “We love each other. I’m sure we love each other. Why is it we don’t know how to be together? The two of us? Peacefully, happily. What I’m certain of: I love you. I love seeing you. I love seeing you walk in the door. I love your hair, your eyes, your clothes, your nose, your mouth, your waist.” My blood continued to deteriorate, putting me on a par with those who live in ghettos. I’m not wanted anymore in any case it’s too late. They defend themselves. Last night she didn’t want to talk to me on the phone. “I don’t have time, I don’t have time to call, I’m the one who saw all the patients today, I can’t go out, kisses.” It’s over. What’s impossible fascinated me. “I miss you.” In The Mother and the Whore, she says to him: You can’t even put up with drunkenness in people you love. My poor, poor, poor shitty Alexander. I said to her.

I was at her place yesterday. In the morning. While I was in Paris, she felt free, to do her usual things. One of the patients, a woman, said to her secretary “what beautiful eyes the doctor has,” in front of her. On Avenue Saint-Lazare last week, Sylvie was attracted by an androgynous young woman; she realized it was me when she saw my profile. At the hotel, I needed a taxi, I was asked “are you ready, sir… oh, I beg your pardon, miss?” My face and allure are ambiguous, always have been. The mark has only deepened given the test results. Even if it’s over. I call two hundred times, but after two days of emptiness, I don’t call on the third, and I don’t call anymore. I never call again. And I don’t care. Me, I wouldn’t have called her again. She called me and said “it would have taken locking me up to keep me from coming to pick you up.” Since you’re at the airport… And yet, I’d already taken out money for the cab fare. At night, I mentally filmed the weekend. I was going home. There was no one at the airport, I’d hoped. Phew. I was calm. I would need some time, some peace and quiet, and then… I’ll meet a guy. Unless I stop everything. We’ll see. For now, I take a cab, I head home. I don’t like taking taxis, they bore me. She had called me in Paris, I was at Frédéric’s, I told him, “tell her I’m gone.” He handed me the phone anyway. “I’ll come pick you up as we agreed? —No, not necessarily.” I’d filmed my arrival. It was fine. I took a taxi. I checked if she was there, she wasn’t. It didn’t make me angry, on the contrary, phew. Finally. Three months. Phew. Next week, I’ll call Mathilde, she’s getting back on Thursday, and we’ll go to a nightclub. I take a cab. It drops me off. I go in. Maybe there’s some mail for me. I look. I unpack. Calm. It’s nice to be home. After four days. I dream. I unpack, I separate out the dirty clothes. That was my movie, it’s not the way things happened. In my movie, I took my trousers to the dry cleaners. I washed a few things by hand. My sweaters smelled of sweat. You can’t even put up with drunkenness in people you love, I thought of that line again. Your little calculations. Your little savings. Your legacy. Your family. Your cousin. NC, Nadine Casta, haine c’est, hate is, this drama, this movie, this money. Since we’d separated, she had made all her little plans, filled all her little weekends in May. And me, naïvely, because she had come to pick me up: For the Ascension Day holiday, I’d like to go to Paris with you, we could stay at Frédéric’s, he’ll be in Italy. We’ll go to the theater, and especially we’ll go see The Mother and the Whore together. And all the other Eustache films. She had planned her weekends in conjunction with her sole heirs, we are separated. For the Ascension Day holiday, Île de Ré with NC.

(I don’t have the right to use real names, the lawyer has forbidden it, not even real initials. “This manuscript repeatedly presents problems with regard to violating the privacy of individuals close to the author, notably her daughter Léonore, a minor, her former partner, Claude, her father [who was engaged in an incestuous relationship with her – see the extended description at the end of this work]. Other individuals also see intimate details of their private lives broadly exposed, notably Marie-Christine Adrey, the author’s lover and the ‘protagonist’ of this work, the actress Nadine Casta, etc. Beyond this general problem, which runs through the entire manuscript, the following passages, which contain particularly imprudent statements, must be removed. She doesn’t want me to call her X. Neither her real name, nor her initials. […] Neither X, nor MCA, nor Marie-Christine Adrey, nor Aime CA. This invasion of privacy is all the more intolerable as Marie-Christine Adrey’s refusal to be identified is emphasized by the author herself and because the revelation of her identity allows her to be connected to the work as a whole. Your cousin. NC, Nadine Casta, haine c’est, hate is, this drama, this movie, this money […] For the Ascension Day holiday, Île de Ré with NC. Invasion of privacy in addition to defamation. Then page 23, Eustache, I’m sorry, but it’s better than Nadine Casta, a defamation, which may not seem objectionable per se, but becomes so through repetition throughout the work of similar phrases that reveal a profound animosity, page 30, Your cousin. NC, Nadine Casta, haine c’est…, calumny, page 61, defamation, page 61, invasion of privacy, page 67, invasion of privacy and defamation, page 74, invasion of privacy and defamation, page 84, invasion of privacy and defamation, page 87, new defamation, page 106, invasion of privacy and defamation, page 110, invasion of privacy, page 111, libel with regard to an obvious attack on the reputation of Doctor Jean-Claude Brot, page 119 to page 123, serious invasion of the privacy of the author’s father, as she recounts their incestuous relations in precise detail. In conclusion: these passages are listed as examples, however the entire manuscript presents a comprehensive problematic of the invasion of privacy of persons mentioned, described, etc., whether they are explicitly identified, as is often the case, or identifiable. The risk of legal action is all the more evident given the pointedness and relentlessness of the attacks and the fact that they constitute attacks on the private lives of private individuals. The damages resulting from judicial action would be significant as no precautions were taken. The lack of moderation or compromise in the author’s statements is a determining element of the work to the extent that it allows the reader access – in so far as is possible – to the author’s passionate insanity.” Well, there you have it.)

X had magical moments. On the phone, comments I would have liked to transcribe. I love you. It’s good when we’re together. It’s good when we… and she was off, Nîmes, Domus, a sofa, we’ll go for a walk, I’ll call you… she laid out our daily life. She would have kept going but vampirism, feeding on, sucking me dry, taking everything, keeping me from living, from breathing, I’m sick of always being reproached for the same thing when the opposite is true. I made an appointment with a children’s shrink. Léonore needs help too. Locked-in syndrome, ways of dying. I pressed my palm against the back of her neck, gently, so she would keep the same rhythm. Bill told me about the disease. Equilibrium will return. No, everything was fine. I dreamed, I thought things over. One half of my life, men, the second, women. PS to Claude: I’ll be thirty-nine on Saturday, that’s probably why this week is so difficult. You’ve probably thought up an entire plan for my birthday, me, I don’t know what I’m going to do. A kiss. “Locked-in syndrome” is a rare form of brain injury. The test results were positive. Always. “Do you want to relax at your place? Do you want me to drop you off, so you can go through your mail in peace?” Yes. She drops me off, a quick kiss, I get out of the car. Ok, everything’s fine. It’s all going the way I filmed it. For my arrival in Montpellier. My departure and my arrival up to then. It’s fine. She came to get me but, apart from the drive, in her car, the Saab, nothing is different. From what I imagined in Paris last night before leaving, at Frédéric’s. The mail, the phone, the dirty laundry, the dry cleaning, the cinema listings, some reading, some rest, and tomorrow, writing. Phew. Three months. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t work. At that point it was getting dangerous. I open the front door. She leaves. I hear the Saab’s motor. The Saab, Île de Ré, NC, they’re supposed to be part of the charm. Yesterday, I said to X, Eustache, I’m sorry, but it’s better than Nadine Casta. She, that it was different, I answered “yes, like homosexuality, always the same argument.” And she, you really just say anything at all. But I insisted: Modiano is better than Rouaud, Eustache better than Nadine Casta, heterosexuality better than homosexuality, doctors better than blue-collar workers. She uses her tongue like a cock. The test results were positive, I loved her tongue. Like no other. My father spoke twenty-five tongues. The doctor and the writer rise from the ranks of murderers, that’s something we had in common. How’s Léonore? She sees Doctor Dhersigny on Thursday the 14th. She was fine when you got back on Saturday? I’m going to have my blood pressure checked this afternoon. If some dramatic event occurred, everything would be more bearable. In Beethoven, the concertos where the orchestra abandons its role of accompanist and comes into direct conflict with the soloist. With X, the change of scenery, transgress, transcribe, transfer, alas, this won’t last. I slept at her place after the airport. I cried. I was so moved. Calf, cow, pig, before falling asleep, I called her “my little girl.” I didn’t know what I was saying, I was falling asleep, I had come. Otherwise, too bad, I’d opened the gate. Carrying my bag, I was halfway upstairs. I dropped my bag. Flew down the stairs four at a time. I opened the door, the street, the car was blocked on the street, she hadn’t taken off yet. I got there. In front of her. I told her “you go and park.” And she “come here.” I let her kiss me in the middle of the street, I don’t give a shit now. Calf, cow. eczema, scaly hands, calf, cow. Her black hair and eyes like the last water lily. Genetically identical animals are rare. Among cows, several dozen for fundamental research. Why MCA? Léonore said to me “you’re crazy about babies,” we were watching television, and then “you’re a mad cow.” I wasn’t able to work before I quit. I did a little on Sunday, Sunday night phew again it’s over. Next to last. Water lily. Before starting again the next day and quitting. I quit, finally. I developed some ideas, scenarios, faxed them to Jean-Marc, they all fell down laughing. I was inspired by Tahar Ben Jelloun, explaining racism to his daughter, to do the same with homosexuality. Calf, cow, pig. What do you think? My sweet little five-and-a-half-year old. You are my love. I know you know this, that you’re my love. My great love. The greatest love of my life. You know it. You know that X slept at our house. You asked me last night, you said “where’s she sleeping?” She slept at our house. It’s quarter to ten, she’s still asleep. She’s tired. I was just making love to her, there it is, that’s what I wanted to explain to you. My love. You know, sweetheart? When she comes back up towards my face, the name on my lips is yours, my beauty. Lé-o-nore. You know what she said this morning when I woke her around six? I woke her up because I was writing down ideas. In my little notebook, you know, on the mantel? I turned on the light, I couldn’t see what I was writing. She said to me, “you’re a little devil with the face of an angel, and I love you.” A little devil because I’d woken her up. The face of an angel because she thinks I have an angelic face. And I love you, because she’s in love with me. You think that’s funny, hunh? A girl who’s in love with another girl. Well, yes, that’s the way it is. She’s homosexual. Frédéric is too, you see. He’s in love with a boy at the moment. They write each other letters but never see each other. That makes Frédéric sad. Some are happy, others are unhappy. I know a writer – unhappy – who masturbates dogs. You don’t know what that means, I’m sure. I’m heterosexual. My sweet. Of course. Straight. Or else how could I have had such a pretty little girl? Never, you understand, not once have I ever felt desire for a woman. A man’s sex penetrates radically. I like what’s radical. Other kinds of penetration are possible, borders, journeys. Crossing borders, go get your globe, I’ll explain. The idea didn’t work, I kept going, I could have stopped. There was an interview with a singer right after the babies. “What effect did learning your father was homosexual have on you? —None, well yes, actually, laughter.” Léonore said “she shouldn’t laugh, it means that he doesn’t love her mama anymore.”

I talked to her about her eyes. Her answer was “my eyes are captivating and yours piercing.” My cousin Marie-Hélène always wanted to have red eyes. Genetically similar rabbits are a good tool for understanding… I was sinking. Into things that… I faxed Jean-Marc more than one hundred pages once. I was following threads without end. It was bad. I wept. I was falling apart, I waited. It was becoming dangerous, I couldn’t work anymore. The last water lily was rotting. I started again. I feel sick to my stomach, like in a car on hairpin turns, and I get dizzy spells. In front of a mirror, facing the audience, Bulle Ogier drapes necklaces around Madeleine Renaud’s neck, they lose themselves in a chant, the girl, the mother, the one, the other, my little sweetheart, little, little love, my little sweetheart, my love, etc. Marguerite Duras always addresses homosexuality and incest through the lens of the past and death, always aslant, which is hard to understand. I told her “you go and park.” I unpacked my things, it didn’t take long. I heard the bell. I had time to read the mail. She came upstairs. Marie-Hélène wanted red eyes. She got them. She was always asked “like rabbits?” It was her favorite color. Diversity, red eyes, that’s life, we had them more than once, Claude and I. I helped Marie hold Yassou still for the shot yesterday. The little creature’s fur has been shaved. The mark of the dog’s canine teeth still visible. The little creature was afraid. Her stomach was completely shredded, her insides exposed. It was a black dog, I saw it. Who did it. For the first night in a year, since Claude left, yesterday, last night, Léonore slept in her room, I slept in mine, you know what I did? For the first time? In a year? Since I’ve been living alone? I left the shutters open. I wasn’t afraid.

Marie and I were arguing, I shoved her dog, on purpose, she hugged it tight. I screamed “no, no, no, no, not that.” I don’t like that dog, Cartier jewelry is always numbered, the trinity ring she gave me was engraved 666, the number of the beast. She has very little direct contact with Léonore, we reject each other through Léonore and Baya, born the same day, July 9, not the same year. I was already infected when I was pregnant with Léonore, the incubation period was several years. I wouldn’t otherwise have experienced such joy, delivering a girl, it’s obvious, already incubating. I was already surrounded by clusters of homosexuals, I cried in her arms on Saturday. And Sunday, the scenario I’d filmed the previous day, during the night at Frédéric’s, I finally produced it. A day late. On Sunday night, the bag, but the blue one, I go up and this time I don’t stop in the middle of the staircase, I go up, and I get Léonore, at Claude’s. I think of Yassou, her stomach pierced by canines. “In a certain way, it works out well for me,” she claimed, “I’m always worried others won’t like my smell” when I didn’t want to lick her. For every impulse, there was repulsion. Repulsion also means disgust. Disgust means ghetto. Ghetto, prison. This group of female homosexuals, this “milieu,” which Claude, with reason, thinks doesn’t suit me. What use are animal clones? Exactly. Finally. Phew. Fortunately it’s over. I went home yesterday with my blue bag. I dreamed of a perfume called Hogana, which made me think of dogana, of a customhouse. She likes me in pants. If necessary, in a dress, not in a skirt. On the contrary, Mayen, last year. Wearing pants, a sweater, T-shirt, no bra. Loved me. I became sober once again, feminine, myself. I have an appointment on Thursday the 14th with a children’s shrink for my daughter. AIDS isn’t really an illness, it’s a state of weakness and surrender, my dear, that uncages the beast we had within. I give it free rein to devour me, I let it inflict on my life what it would have done to my corpse after. Claude: You let her give you a ring, after all. And this ring, after all, is a kind of engagement. And I know how you are, you, with symbols… A ring, on top of it all, is an engagement. I’m sorry, but the triple Cartier ring, it’s an engagement. I hesitated. I didn’t know if I should accept. (I didn’t hesitate at all, that’s not true, I was happy.) The next ring I wanted to give you. We talked about it just this summer. I’d put money aside. It’s crazy how you can be in someone’s life and it all evaporates. Sunday night it was over. Léonore was asleep. But I still called, no one home, left a message, not at all upset. It’s Christine. She called me back. She cried. When she sees the bed… I was calm, I calmed her down. “Yassou is doing better.” In her gay ghetto, conversations about animals. Baya, Yassou, Minou, Djinn, Misty, Victoire, Muzil. Last night on the phone it didn’t go well. Because of one detail that derailed everything. The first meeting at the Esplanade, it was no, homosexuals, heterosexuals, there are two camps. ‘Camps’ is not appropriate: gloves. To turn inside out like a glove, it’s sticky, you need gloves. And you see, I just made love with her, sweetheart. I was going crazy, you know. All autumn long. October, November, December, January. I wanted to hide it. I couldn’t bear the thought that anyone in our neighborhood might imagine me with a woman. That my little girl was the daughter of a woman who lets herself be licked by a lesbian. Your papa, I called him my love and my pet. Yassou is doing better. The civil solidarity pact set off a debate about all possible misuses. How are children made? The man puts his sex into the lady’s sex. Léonore sings with Clara “doing the thing with your lover is dis-gust-ing,” she laughs and starts again. The idea that Marie and I… doesn’t register. Her breasts, her feminine eyes, with make up, getting wet. On my thigh, who got wet on my thigh, how could it register, sweetheart? She left a letter lying around from Annie who was traveling in Africa, “I don’t give a shit about giraffes, with their big eyes, when there are children dying of starvation right next to them.” It might as well be Greece for me, I went back to my native land. She doesn’t want a graft, we’re not going to get a godemiche. I talked to Léonore about the Holocaust, the Jews, homosexuals, communists. Dr. Mazollier said to Léonore “your mom likes words.” Dr. Galy told me “a little early.” Dr. Zériahen said “no one can judge.” Dr. Dhersigny told me I was irresponsible. As a child Marie often had dizzy spells, without doing anything physical. In her head there was a kind of sound, she floated, completely. Claude: you’ll always be the only one, because you’re the first, because you’re the last one I loved, to whom I wanted to make love, to have a child, to go on vacation, to go to a restaurant, to discover the world with and see people live, the one with whom I’d have fought, against her and against myself, to live alone and together. You were my future. You will be my past. My only past. As for the rest, what good is it. In four days, you’ll be thirty-nine. I met you when you were barely sixteen. I want you to be happy. Claude. Thank you for the flowers. Yassou is doing better. Baya got hit by a car. The veterinarian treated her. Misty, Victoire, Muzil. She has a profession, as a doctor, in which you can’t make too many mistakes. I, of course, can afford to leave myself open all the time, to listen only to myself, it’s my stock in trade.

I call her Marie, her name is Marie-Christine. Yesterday, my psychoanalyst: Who chose your name? In Christine there’s an allusion to Christ. I talked about my mission, my drive to save others, to puncture their usual life preservers so that they’ll save themselves with me or on their own. Who chose your name, “my God!” I said. I’d just understood. Your father or your mother? My God. My mother wanted to call me Marie-Christine. My father said: No Marie. I got married and then separated. A husband, a mari, calf, cow, pig, or a Marie. No husband, no father, no man, no life preserver, the whole kit and caboodle, cousin Nadine, NC, haine c’est, hate is, the girlfriend, all that’s dragging behind her. I went to see her yesterday and called her “my treasure.” When she was little, the safe was kept in her room. Her mother’s diamonds, their cash. In a little waist pack to buy an apartment. A diamond merchant in Paris, make an appointment, appraise the rocks. A large house for the two of us thanks to them. “You should sell them,” NC would tell her. Her cousin had met a diamond merchant. She gave me her father’s notebooks again. I was supposed to be named Marie-Christine too, in one of those families that throws money out the windows for the maid to pick up at the foot of the grapevine. The fruits of labor. Paintings on the walls. Léonore, my love, my gold. I’m in her room today, seated at the green table, a card table, where I’m writing. Through the window I see the garden, the oleander, the palm trees, the magnolia. At the back of the garden, my father watches the road to Clermont that borders my garden. Mon trésor, mon amour, mon or, Léonore. My treasure, my love, my gold, Léonore. My Léonore, my treasure. My treasure, my gold. No Marie, no marriage, no gold. The safe was in her room. Doctors were paid in cash at the time. Her father gave her mother money, which she put in the safe with the jewelry and other valuables every night. This house is crushing me, it was built by my grandfather, a doctor in Canet, himself a doctor’s son, who was also a doctor’s son, and so on for generations. Books and medical courses piled up, going back centuries. I had a fit of rage in Miaurey (Niger). We had gone to see the last herd of giraffes. Children came running from all directions. Since the first day at the Esplanade, I had told her it was all Greek to me. Knowing just one word – “gift” – and repeating it constantly, with their skinniness and swollen bellies. Maybe she’ll give me a bike so I can be more independent. She was born in Oran, the fellaghas, the bombs, an Arab killed right on her doorstep, and the beach house, hours with her mother, walking at least two hours on the beach every day. We’ll need a big house, a very big one, at least two hundred and fifty square meters. To shelter my tongue when it’s licking, I like the taste of blood, I even use it as an unguent at the same time. Everything gets turned inside out like a glove. Why is the devil’s tongue pictured as a flame that splits like two fused metal fingers that are separating? I hold on to the banister to climb the stairs to the lawyer’s office (my blood pressure is 80, 90 at the most), so that he can effectively complete the separation of bodies between Claude and me. The gold is separating. I feel nauseous. I’m dizzy. A herd of humans looking at giraffes. Suddenly I asked myself what the hell I was doing there. She gave me all that, the letter from Africa, her father’s notebooks, to help me get over my writer’s block, because I couldn’t work. I gave them back to her, it’s over. I was going crazy: the gap between outside and my room. And yet, I could have drunk the dregs. Even if, when you’re not fully developed it’s hard to get excited about something wet. Like a glove, it’s true, it can always be reversed. It’s true. That’s good. The term gloves fits better than camps. I see the stitches. I turn it inside out. I move the cock, I see the spot. I penetrate. My fingers become a cock. Cock, coda, tip, tail, that’s how you tell a dog’s breed. There’s no breed, just an odor. The mucous membranes, the caress, I’m not the one caressing, it’s the liquid moving under my fingers. Misty, Muzil. There it is, sadness, but also laughter. Ultimately, I don’t give a shit about the giraffes, their big eyes. I end up feeling like an unwanted spectator, feeling rejected, superfluous, Bénédicte writes me, I feel I’m in the way, I’m not a part of it, I’m there almost against my will and against yours, I resented you for the discomfort I felt. You build a wall, a wall of glass, transparent but impassable, exposing yourself the entire time. You put yourself callously on display, you don’t invite others to look, you don’t make the slightest gesture of welcome. The circle of solitude closes. We’re frozen, we can neither escape nor come into contact with you. Reading you, my stomach began to hurt, my limbs, my whole body and I asked myself “is this really living? So much darkness, no way out, so little light? It seems to me that you forget the light.” And my treasure, my love, my gold?

As Claude would say with contempt “I suppose her friends…” A poor woman with no cock. Yet she cried all night that November day. Telling me “there’s no such thing as love.” I answered “of course there is.” She said “sure, for others, maybe, that could be, but not for me. I wanted to believe in it. I believed in it with you. I was wrong. Wrong again. There’s such a thing for others, not for me. You, you’ve felt it, maybe, with Claude.” Return, I went back. When I’m in Italy, I miss France. When I’m in France, it’s Italy I miss. The face of a woman you’re trying to force to leave you is beautiful. Her mouth all small, her eyes that won’t let go of yours, her arms open wide. I might never have known this. If I’d held on to my disgust for other women. There was a couple, two men, on the café terrace in January. It was one of the rare days when Marie and I were getting along well. She had just said to me “I know him, I see him on Avenue Saint-Lazare, he looks sad.” I said “well, sure, he’s homosexual,” but as a joke, of course! She didn’t like it. After that it was my rants on the telephone. Which she didn’t like. Claude arrived at the same café with Léonore and a girl, about twenty, who seemed to be his mistress. The brunette from Rue Saint-Guilhem, she’d seen her one day and then told me “she’s not worth your little finger.” One night I had a dream. A record of Mireille Darc was playing. She was singing the Francis Lemarque song, À Paris, in her insufferable voice. Marie wasn’t paying attention. Even though this song, this song… I woke up and she called me “sweetheart.” I wrote down the dream in a little notebook, on the mantelpiece. “Did you sleep well, my love?” Yes, my love. “What time is it?” Seven thirty. “Do you like waking up next to me?” Yes, my love. “I’m going to buy you a miner’s hat with a little light on the front so you can write things down at night.” I had gotten up and opened the shutters, I wanted to see her face. One day, just like that, I was ready to buy a house with her. With a large terrace and a garden would be ideal. To go out, to come and go, inside and outside. I’d do this, I’d do that. I didn’t want to stop. The test was responding! I love seeing you, I love seeing you walk in the door. I love who you are. I love your hair, your eyes, your sunglasses, your clothes, your nose, your mouth, your waist. I dream: We have a house. We share it. We both love it. We choose things we love. Léonore is there. No one can find anything to criticize. You love what I write. You love it a lot. You go to Paris with me. We love each other. We feel strong together. With Léonore, too. Pitou my heart watches over her. Pitou my heart was her dog’s nickname. She would laugh, she’d laugh briefly, “in eight days, you might say the opposite.” I believed everything I said. I would have been ready to move into a house with her on a day like the one with the miner’s hat. With the little light, to write things down at night, ideas and dreams I had. A two-story house, her with a garden below. Me with Léonore above. There was also: “You just left, it’s nine twenty. It’s ridiculous to love your eyes the way I love them, to love your hands, your palms and the backs of your hands, your body, its softness, its slenderness, your hair and your neck with your golden necklace. You have to burn this letter. It’s silly. I love you. Christine.” In the beginning, there was the thrill, but it was always followed by disgust, we got dressed again. Then one night she said to me, “this is the first time I’m not afraid of being deceived.” And Claude, the next day, “it’s crazy how you can be so completely in someone else’s life and then it all disappears.” I couldn’t work. I called Marie to say, I called her again to say “give me an idea…” There were patients in the waiting room, she was in a hurry. “Give me an idea, I’m not going to hang up until you give me one. Give me one, please, I’m blocked. —Talk about the fact that I have no cock, which drives me to despair everyday. —Everyday? —Everyday a bit more.” Thank you for the flowers, they wilted, I threw them away. Irises don’t last long. I called Marie to say “do you remember that in November I was a hair’s breadth away from buying a two-story house with you?” It was late, I had to hang up. Before, when I called her, she would say before going to sleep, “I kiss you very very very,” “I kiss you very very very and all over.” Muzil coughed like crazy. In the beginning I’d say to myself “the incisions for cloning will be unpleasant.” Muzil, Misty, Yassou, she has turtles as well, and fish, but Baya eats their food, Pitou, my heart. She’s such a glutton. “I love women,” how many times did we hear that? Saying “I love women” when you’re a man is easy. “I love animals” is easy for a human. Muzil told me how completely the body, once it’s delivered into the web of medical treatment, loses all identity, is bled dry of all history and dignity. Bénédicte writes me “maybe you don’t show the reader the door, maybe you don’t leave him on the doorstep, and maybe I simply haven’t known how to recognize the light in your books.” I liked the position with me lying on top of her. It worked well, it was like with a man. We both liked it. I remember once, I’d barely recovered, barely caught my breath, hadn’t had a chance to rest, she wanted to make me come again. My body was drained. It needed time to recharge, like a hand-held phone. It has to sit in the base for a while without being removed. Drained, no feeling in my breasts. She was licking me, even though that position… She was rushing, I’d barely rested, barely caught my breath, I ran through a few possible fantasies, none of them worked, like the faxes to Jean-Marc, I burned through them. One after the other. Exhausted. Not a single one worked. None fit. Not one, there are days when. I finally said “stop.” For the first time, we were confronted with failure. I couldn’t go to sleep on that note. I placed her fingers on me. “You don’t like settling for failure, do you?” I looked at the curtain covering the window. Claude and I chose the fabric together. We chose everything together, we were “the lovebirds.”

Her father’s notebook: My balls: My parts. Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, America: the five parts of the world. 1937, my youth. I was born December 18, 1906 in Carcassonne. That’s where I spent the first six years of my life. I only have a few memories of that time. Léonore will remember everything. Her dog, Baya. Yassou, the turtles, the fish in the aquarium after school. Clara. Doing the thing with your lover. Mama and Marie. Maybe the house on Île de Ré. When we walked along the beach, we had a dog with us, like many homosexuals, our child had become a monster due to degenerate unions. Fortunately Léonore was with us, throwing pebbles into the sea. Her small presence alone cutting it short. I licked her, this mother, whose child is a dog. I’m crazy, really, I’m crazy. I’ll only reach a small readership of lunatics like myself if I keep this up. As Janine predicted. I stopped, I’m getting to work, my little audience of lunatics is my life preserver. When I stand up from my chair and start to stagger. Overcome with nausea again. Walking down the Rue de la Loge, supporting myself on the walls, climbing the stairs to the lawyer’s office, leaning on the banister. At first, I hugged the walls, now I lean against them. “I love women,” “I love animals.” I’m still in shock. I didn’t have any intention of calling last night, none at all. I was exhausted, I wanted to go to bed early. Very early. I had a good day. I’d spent hours with Claude. Léonore came home in a good mood. She had spent the day with Clara at her grandmother’s. I had plans for May 8th with Claude. Things were going well, everything was more relaxed. I called. But I had muscle spasms from the bottom of my abdomen to just below my chest, it hurt a lot. I pick up the phone. I ask if I’m interrupting. She says “I’ll call you back in five minutes.” Fine. Are you OK? My stomach hurts, I’ve got muscle spasms. I’m so tired. Then all happy she says “I went to the opening of the Arpac show, I decided to host an evening on the 16th with Agnès and Annie.” It went downhill from there. I was invited, I could bring anyone I wanted. Whom should I bring? She thought it would make me happy. Well, you’re wrong. We’re not seeing each other anymore, not at all, not even as friends. Always, always, always, trying to break up, to break it off, to stop. I believe, right now I’m describing without thinking. Repack my things, my bag, adios, I’m sorry we ever met. I regret going to that dinner on September 9th. Where I met you. Always, always. I saw Alain, I’m going to work with him. That’s good. You must be happy? Stop pretending you care. I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted. Yes, that’s better, you’re right, go to bed. Get some rest. Kisses. Yes, that’s it. Goodbye. See you one of these days. But still we keep going. We talk. But it’s not working. And there are problems with the connection. She says “I’ll call you back.” I call Frédéric so the line will be busy. I stay on for a good half hour. Then I call her back. I say “sorry, Frédéric called me, you must have gotten a busy signal.” The project with Alain sounds good. Stop it, please. Little by little, it becomes unbearable. I hang up, I say I’m sick of it. I call back, I say I’m sick of it. We have to stop completely and not see each other anymore at all. I can’t stand it any longer. I go to bed, I brushed my teeth and am ready to go to sleep. I even unplugged the phone. I go to bed, but I call her again, I plug the telephone back in and call again. To tell her: I’m fed up, fed up, fed up. We spend hours like this every night. She says to me that we could spend the time reading instead, or watching movies, or with friends, or resting, instead of this, hours wasted, for nothing. Unplugging the telephone, then calling back. I go to bed, I call her again. I went to bed, telling myself, now it’s finally over. I couldn’t take it anymore. The only good thing about it is that tomorrow I can write this scene down. Rita told Claude “in Les Autres, Christine went too far,” and then, “is she still together with that woman?” And Herman “we’ll find out everything in her next book.” I wasn’t seeing my father anymore, I’d met Claude, I’d married him. I decided to see my father again. With him, I’d only had inconclusive sexual relations. Like an ephebe, as if by chance… I needed a complete overview, for my writing to strike hard. Yes, strike hard. Like blows and blood. Anal penetration wasn’t so bad at the start, but after. I’d read in the media “press coverage has to be earned.” Shaming the journalists, little jabs, the way you shoot small arrows at the carnival, it’s ethical and it’s relaxing. Using the muscles of the sphincter and perineum to write certain pages. Marie. What are you doing right now, Marie? Are you seeing patients? You’re at the hospital this morning. This afternoon, you’ll play tennis. Tomorrow is your day off. You won’t do anything, you don’t want to do anything. Saturday you’re driving Léonore and me to the theater. You don’t give us much choice as to dates. But it’s nice of you. Over the phone I read her the passage “this mother, whose child is a dog.” She didn’t react, it didn’t get her worked up, their dogs are children, often Labradors, everyone must know.

The good thing is she’s a doctor. She prescribed respiratory rehabilitation and spinal physical therapy. After three months of homosexual torsion, it was necessary. (I’m not kidding.) The physiotherapist asked me what kind of work I did to put my back in such bad shape. Writer. He didn’t ask any more questions. He understood. Breasts, I didn’t dare touch them. The clitoris, I had no idea where it was. I didn’t like going out with her and having people think I was trying to get my bearings. She came to make up Léonore’s eyes to look Japanese for the carnival. My little daughter, Midi Libre wrote about her. Slanted eyes fill with tears when they burn, Mister Carnival. For the little Japanese girl, the parade took a different turn. The school children didn’t stop singing or doing their folk dance. Except for the little Japanese girl, whose kohl was running. Giraffes when I’ve got starving children right next to me. A lesbian, when I’ve got my daughter crying next to me, burns Mister Carnival. But, Mister Carnival, forty years ago it could have been her in a camp of deported homosexuals. I dream! I dream: I loved seeing her, seeing her walk in the door. And with Léonore. Pitou my heart watched over her. That was her dog Baya’s nickname. She was very homosexual, she had everything, a female cat, a female dog. I was fascinated. Clara always wanted to be the mother. She’s always quick to say it, she says it fast. All that’s left for her, Léonore tells me between sobs, is to be the second mother. But she’s not allowed to have children, a little cat, or a little dog, that’s it. It has made me sick. I’d caught it. For three months I was truly beside myself. I wanted to keep on. I felt strong enough. But that’s it, I drank the dregs. Léonore cares less and less for playing the boy in their games, since Clara absolutely insists on being the girl. With a wave of his hand he cut short any discussion: How much time? Muzil told me “the doctor doesn’t give the truth straight out, but gives the patient the means to figure it for himself, by talking in a roundabout way.” The lack of a cock, I was conscious of it and regretted it. A game of mirrors, I fell victim to it and regretted it. After a certain time I had no pretensions to perfection. I tried. I rebelled now and again. I wore skirts. The head doctor prescribed Muzil massive doses of antibiotics. I love women, I love animals, I love men, I love Italy, I love the color red, I love Léonore, I love life, and dogs too.

Her first letter: It’s from René Char. It’s for you: Push your luck, seize your happiness, and take risks. After seeing you, they will get used to you. The second: The air I always feel almost lacking in most human beings, if it blows through you, has a profusion and a sparkling ease. I live marvelously with you. That is our extraordinary luck. Twenty after twelve. I have before me the letter from Africa, Guibert’s book, the magazine Eurêka, Libération on Viagra, her father’s notebooks, the animal clones, the telephone. She didn’t call me this morning. I’m exhausted. I was asleep. Léonore woke me. At the door, knock knock. No Marie. I’m alone. A photographer just called me, he wants me to write something, to accompany photographs of goals in football matches. And also: Of course I’m moved when I think of you when I see you, of course the idea of not seeing you not holding you in my arms not making love with you anymore is unbearable. Your absence, this solitude in which you’re with me despite it all is a strange kind of test I’d like so much to be able just to be near you to have you in my life For the first time I truly feel the absence Suffering is hard it’s necessary Maybe I’ll lose everything I’ll lose you I don’t know I think about you way too much I think about you almost all the time Kisses. I don’t want to call her. That feeling has evaporated. Yesterday, before he left, Claude said, it’s only with you that I feel energized like this. What do you mean? I can’t explain, energized. I want to do things with you, feel these surges with you. Not just to pass the time, energized, exhilarated, I really want to. I didn’t feel energized at all. I didn’t feel like going to the cinema, to a restaurant, on a trip, or on vacation. No particular desire to do anything together, no particular exhilaration with her. And yet the test results were positive. Her breasts were small, but still they were hers. It fascinated me. I pictured her with other women. I wasn’t jealous, women touching each other fascinated me. She was standing in a field that was mown very short. She’d had the dream in New York. Her father was with her. The field was very flat, the grass cut very short. Maximum visibility. And yet, you could hear hunters, shots. Unbelievable, that hunters would dare shoot in a space that was so open, with such visibility, leaving the animal no chance. Yes, they would. A little deer arrives. Its eyes are both calm and terrified. She sees it, she says to her father: It’s not possible. The hunters won’t shoot. But they do, not only that, but they shoot it in the ear, such a fragile spot. The little deer, calm and terrified. I was the calm and terrified little deer, of course, or else she was. Writing that, I recapture our love. I love her. I’m going to call her. I dream. A house, the two of us. Two storeys. Léonore is there. It’s all fine. I write. She leaves for work. She comes home, I’m there. I go to pick Léonore up from school. Except for Thursdays, Thursdays she goes, she takes her to shore with Baya. The two of them throw pebbles into the sea. Baya looks for them in the water. Oh! no, she’s not cold. Look at all her fur. I’m not homosexual. I was for three months. I thought I was condemned to be homosexual. I really was caught. But I refused to sleep at her place. In that house full of animals. With a pool. When you think of all the ways to live, it’s also amazing you don’t die. Swimming in the pool. Taking a bath. Nine o’clock, taking a shower. Deciding on May 8th “I’m not going to wash today.” Or telephoning, crying, waiting, making the restaurant reservation for tonight, feeling a bit bored, waiting for friends to go on a picnic (not me), it’s a gray day, it will clear. Feeling energized, listening to music. Coughing, feeling low. Doing errands in the morning, all the stores will be closed in the afternoon. Getting a hard-on, making love. Masturbating, pissing, feeling deflated, thinking about something, crying, returning from Africa. Reading. Not loving. Feeling bored. Seeing your daughter again. Waiting for me. Waiting for my call. Not calling. Knowing I’ll end up doing it. Maybe not. This time. Maybe not right away. Letting me take my time. Turning me over. Maybe I’m writing. Maybe I’m with someone. Seeing us from the window across the street while watering the bonsai plants. Leaving for London, asking a friend, Claude, for example, to water the bonsais while I live across the street. Unlocking the house. Yelling in the street. Like last night. Someone did, for at least two hours. Saying to yourself, it’s noon, she said we’d eat together. Waiting for me to call. Knowing I will. She’ll call. I called. There were women in the camps for deported homosexuals. Classical music was playing over the speakers. The SS stripped Jo. They shove a pail onto her head. Brunette, breasts bared, her slender hips, her torso, her neck with her thin gold necklace. The cosmetics of her gaze. The kohl is running. A tinplate bucket. They sic the guard dogs on her. She thinks of Baya, the dog she adored. Pitou my heart. The dogs barking around her. My darling What I’d like most is to be able to live close to you With you, you for me and me for you, with other close friends, intimate friends sometimes, to live and create a space for us. I dream. We choose things we love. Pitou my heart watches over her. More and more often, I find myself saying us for you and me, thinking of you when I picture the time to come, life, the future I love you you know don’t forget it Let’s be together. I just called her. It was busy, there was the click of call waiting. She didn’t take the call. I called back. She still didn’t answer. I called again, it rang, then the answering machine. I left the following message: What’s going on? I call you, it’s busy, you don’t take call waiting. I call back, I get the answering machine. What are you doing? Maybe she took Baya out for a walk right after hanging up. I doubt it, I called back right away. Maybe she decided she didn’t ever want to hear my voice again after such a night. Last night on the phone “I’m suffering” and “I’m so unhappy, leave me alone.” Then I reversed, we ended the call saying we’d see each other tomorrow, in other words, today. Maybe she changed her mind again over night. Yesterday I’d decided to break up, definitively this time. No, I wasn’t sure I really wanted her to go to Avignon with me. Much less to Paris next month. In fact, we may never see each other again. Ever. I sensed sobs in her voice and backtracked. When she said “you had me convinced of things, I believed in…” I was touched, “in love…,” “a few days ago you told me you would always love me and that you’d never forget how I am with you, all I do for you, but no, you have to take off.” We’d already broken up in February. I told her “I need to be alone.” She replied “me too.” At night, Léonore was in bed. I called her, I shouldn’t have. The conversation derailed, things went south again. Then I watched Muriel, the two girls drive off in a taxi at the end of the movie. I called her, spontaneously, she was happy, she said I wrote you, I went for a walk, I thought about you all day. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Tell me. No, I’ll tell you tomorrow. I don’t know if we’ll see each other tomorrow. We agreed we’d take Léonore to the theater. After that we’ll split up. We’ll see. Well, we’ll see. Tell me what you were thinking. I was thinking that I loved you and of all the things about you that I can’t stand. Well, we aren’t seeing each other. I can easily go to the theater with Alexandra, don’t put yourself out. I spent an excellent day without you. She slammed down the receiver. Five minutes later, it rang. I said some things again. Again she slammed the phone down. I went to brush my teeth and take my medicine. I called her back, she had unplugged her phone. I called her again four times. She didn’t answer, she had unplugged her phone and fallen asleep. Later, she admitted to me that she’d heard the first ring. She didn’t want to answer, hearing the ring was enough for her. And the others, the other rings? She’d put in earplugs. I know when I’m a pain in the ass too. I won’t admit it, the day I admit it will be a masterpiece, no one wants to say it. No one can say it. When they’re a pain in the ass. No one. I live by making do, I won’t say more. I have a hard time putting up with being nailed, for much too long now, I won’t say more. Three months. Not all the time. Men who don’t nail you or women who would be inclined to but only with fingers. Marie told me “you know there are women who take Viagra to improve their performance.” Claude, “you know that in the United States, they wanted to make the goals larger? So there’d be more of them. To make it more appealing to the spectators.” On Saturday morning, after the telephone train wreck, I called her yet again. To ask her, OK, then, so what do we do? I’ll spare you the details, but there was a lot of yelling. She finally came over around two. As soon as I see her it heats up. Then cools down, she can feel it, there’s a little nib, a little nub, a little old stub that’s missing. I made her read what I wrote about football and while she did I read her letter. With her doctor’s handwriting, very large. A day like all the others without you. A colorless day, bland. (She doesn’t use punctuation.) A day like all the others without you A colorless day bland A sharp feeling of missing you and yet I don’t move I don’t take a single step towards you (There’s no punctuation at all. No limits, the metals are mixed, fusion, mixture, no commas, no periods.) A day like all the others without you A colorless day bland A sharp feeling of missing you and yet I don’t move I don’t take a single step towards you I listen and know that you are in me I can feel you move in my stomach It’s my stomach that speaks to me most clearly about you I let myself be carried away I want the risk of loving of this particular love with you so unique and sometimes so intimate along with the terrible lucidity that comes with it I am proud of you proud of myself with you, of the love you bring me but is it meant for me this love The words your words are they meant for me If just once I felt I was born of real love This absence of love turns all my own attempts barren Aborted love aborted fate maybe that’s what it is and maybe that’s my true fate Maybe I’ll never get beyond it Maybe I’ll go from one pair of arms to the next in search of a gesture a face that really speaks to me of love that would address something truly unique to me Single destination of a word that was lost of a love not built of a life that is self-destructing yes I want to belong and I want to love to love you to be loved by you But I’m left with nothing I think of love and I feel invaded I’m afraid of never being able to and if I’m never able to Then what’s the point of continuing Yes I’m afraid and the more I’m afraid the more I keep at a distance from you the more I flee from your face your arms You understand but you can’t stand it and I can’t either I love you. I call Léonore Marie-Christine and I call Marie-Christine Léonore I didn’t know when they put her on my chest that that’s what having a little girl was like the Holy Virgin separated from the Child I was crying don’t laugh at Marie my husband watched over us, Joseph, I was the mother of Christ and the Christ, Marie-Christine’s fingers were six years younger, I was giving birth to Léonore Marie-Christine Marie-Christine Léonore Léonore Marie-Christine Marie-Christine Léonore Léonore Léonore Léonore Marie-Christine Léonore Léonore Léonore. Léonore Marie-Christine Marie-Christine Léonore. Léonore Marie-Christine. Marie-Christine Léonore. My little love my little sweetheart my gold my treasure my love my little love Marie-Christine Léonore Léonore Marie-Christine Marie-Christine Léonore Giving birth I became homosexual giving birth to Léonore Marie-Christine Léonore Léonore Léonore Léonore-Christine we should go to that restaurant In Copenhagen The Léonore-Christine Léonore Marie-Christine Léonore Léonore My treasure Okay the goal the goal in the football match. Léonore knows it’s the World Cup. They hear enough about it at school. I called Pierre Blanc, the photographer, he was pleased I’d started. Very pleased, they will pay me what I asked. He seemed happy, very happy. On Saturday night, at her place, I put on Alain Chamfort. L’éternité c’est quand je prends ta bouche Pas le nombre d’années que purgent les condamnés. I find eternity on your lips not in the number of years prisoners spend behind bars. She talked to me about Yassou, the scars from the black dog’s teeth are still visible. I talked to her about Léonore right after that. What made you think of Léonore all of a sudden? Yassou, the little cat. I put on the last Alain Chamfort recording Saturday night, she was in the other room putting a new bandage on the cat. I saw her cross the entire length of the large room. When she approaches from a distance. When I see her entire body coming towards me. Especially if she’s smiling. And especially if her eyes are shining. Or if she’s speaking with other people. I see her through the window. Like yesterday. Or three little knocks on the wall. From the other room. They’re far away, beautiful, they’re going to sleep. Sleep, yes, I’ll knock on the wall. Of course. And also, when I’m going to bed, kisses and a caress, yes, of course. We went on a bike ride yesterday. I lost my science magazine. What are animal clones good for? All the questions the French are asking. What is locked-in syndrome? You’re not addressing another cause of dysfunction: aging. And yet we know that vaginal dryness and discomfort during intercourse exist. Marie is allergic to cypress, of course, the tree of cemeteries, but of Italy as well. A sting, as if by chance, a sting from its stinger gave her a headache for twenty-four hours. My love It’s Saturday you just left and I feel so deeply that I’m with you I have your strength and your desire in me and my desire and all this makes me want to live to move forward to wait for you to follow you sometimes to show you the way or to take your path it’s often one that’s difficult even for mules we don’t have hoofs only our hearts our hands our mouths Our words and they’re so often full of doubt But also filled with a certainty of evidence of a Love we share for a long time I hope maybe forever. She rarely talks about it but now and again she tells me it hurts her feelings that I don’t ever lick her. I lick her arms, her stomach, her chest, often. Lower, I can’t stand it, it’s what I didn’t like. She doesn’t care for the term to lick. (Didn’t care for it.) For her, it’s licking the plate clean. A greasy plate. She says fingers of course, but what you touch with your mouth… I’m the first woman who won’t do it to her, four or five times maybe, or six, not at all after that. It gave her the feeling there was a part of her body I didn’t like. I let a little time pass, I knew I would go downstairs. I didn’t want to go home right away. She was in a hurry to accompany me home, she started work at the hospital very early the next morning. I felt so good in her arms, I wanted to stay there for a while. And I knew that if I licked her, she’d be in less of a hurry. She was no longer in a hurry. I cried, tears on my cheeks with the vaginal secretions of Marie-Christine Léonore-Christine, at that restaurant, we let the champagne flow. Léonore. Léonore. Marie. Marie. Christine. I was crying, it was fusion, I was her, in complete homosexual delirium. Totally delirious. I dove back in. The last glass, once you’ve drunk it, you’re usually not supposed to drink even another drop of alcohol. Licking, crying, she was covered with vernix, she was all black and purple when she was just born, when they laid her on my chest. I would have licked her like mother cats, mother dogs do, if the doctors hadn’t been there watching. Yesterday she was crying. The last water lily. I am raw from missing you But it feels necessary the whole trip back the temptation to get near you was so strong But impossible to move towards you to bring on and suffer the violence of impossibility. Léonore was in La Grande-Motte at my mother’s. Marie told me about the cat, Yassou, I started crying Léonore my own little kitten. She offered to go, to go on a bike ride with her, to take her to lunch, to go for a walk because she was sad. Afterward, in any case, she went to the beach with her grandmother, we’d go back. Tomorrow Sunday with you a Sunday for the two of us a life for us a book for us I love you. I called, she was so happy. We went for a walk. Marie rode André’s bike, I rode my mother’s, Léonore rode her little pink bike, we went for a walk along the lakeshore. It was hot, we went into the pine forest. It was hard to ride, the sand, the pine needles. We decided to leave the bikes. To walk along the golf course with Baya. Baya, of course. The three of us and Pitou my heart. A man in a Jaguar explained the possible paths. Léonore objected, she knows them, she could have told us. We’re allowed to walk there, there are cars, but only once in a while. We felt good together. I carried Léonore on my shoulders for a while, she’s big, too heavy now. We went into the forest a ways. We stretched out on the ground. It was nice. We got up. We started for home. Léonore asked me if we could go to Île de Ré this summer with Baya to celebrate both birthdays because Baya was born, like her, on July 9th. Then she whispered in my ear “Marie-Christine is homosexual, isn’t she.” It was my mistake, I said some things that were not appropriate for her age, from one generation to the next, words are less serious, I told myself, perversity shifts. We went to a restaurant. Then we had to part. She was staying with my mother, I was going back with Marie-Christine and Baya in the Saab. She cried, it took us an hour to leave, we parted, we went back, we reasoned with each other, we went back until my mother came and got her. She cried the entire afternoon apparently. Marie-Christine said: I’m exhausted, I’d like to sleep, for me this is not an ideal Sunday. For me, it is, with my little girl in a pine forest it was an ideal Sunday. We argued. For me it’s an ideal Sunday. Well not for me. Well it is for me. I was homosexual for three months, I’ve recovered somewhat. I’m going to stop, it’s a matter of weeks, of months, not years. Baya, Yassou, Muzil, I can’t go on. I was in a good mood. I went to the watchdog committee against Front National, it got me out for once after three months. I went to pick up Léonore from school. We ate. I put her to bed. Things were fine. One o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t sleep. I took some pills. I fell asleep. She had an earache, she woke me up, I yelled at her. My psychoanalyst told me it wasn’t serious if I took myself for Christ. My readers are my saviors. Readers, choosers, the chosen one. Gold, l’or, Léonore, Marie. There it is, it’s simple. Let go of everything, no man’s land, not even a scrap of heaven, Don’t keep even the slightest thing that might distract you, let go of every obstacle. Tear up all the little notes. Quarter past three Sweetheart I love you. I would have liked to be near her always. Léonore cried when I left her at school. Marie and I argued on the phone yesterday. She said “calm down, I’ll call you back,” I hung up. I went to bed, Léonore was having nightmares, she whimpered in her sleep. I got up several times to caress her. Her whimpering didn’t stop, it started again, I had to get up several times. And finally miraculously I murmured softly into her ear “mama loves you, mama’s here,” the nightmares stopped. Before our argument, Marie-Christine said she was aware of the no man’s land. It went downhill after that. Authorities in Bavaria were recommending that a sign be tattooed in blue ink on the buttocks of those infected. I’d always taken precautions with the poet, even when he begged me to treat him like a bitch and I used him like a dildo for Jules. I’d smelled a very strange sweat emanating from our three bodies. I kept myself from coming in the poet’s mouth because cocksucking was what most excited this little hetero who whined that girls wouldn’t blow him, and as substitution or some reverse projection he wanted to be taken like a whore. He finally wrote me, as if with regret “According to the blood tests, I don’t have AIDS.” All this young man thought about was suicide or glory. My love I don’t want to let you read this letter written in a moment of sadness of complete loss of self-confidence. Don’t ever look at me again. That’s how the letter began. We talked some more about homosexuality, things went downhill. Bringing friends to the evening she’s hosting on Saturday is out of the question. She swore she would kiss me on the mouth in front of everyone. Telling me the whole time that we had no future, dragging me into the dirt even though I’m untouchable, relegating me to a caste. I was and I would have liked to remain that way, I think. I would be so again. One day, in an interview, “are you an untouchable?” I answered yes right away. In India they have no rights, no possessions, no one can mix with them. I just telephoned her. Last night I unplugged the phone, this morning I wasn’t home. I unplug it more and more often, I leave the answering machine on, I’m not there when she calls, I’m outside, I’m with other people. I listen to the messages. She’s destroyed, I think. Still, I called her back at the hospital. She wants to buy me a bicycle, she wants us to go get it this afternoon. To all her suggestions, no. You don’t have to. Yes, since I suggested it. It wouldn’t be the first time you reneged. I’ll pick you up at three. You don’t have to. I’ll call, you can leave the answering machine on. You don’t want the bike. Saturday, I’m having a gathering for you, you’re telling me you might not come. I told her I was falling apart, my feelings weren’t the same, “you know, I don’t love you as much as before.” We agree to meet at three. For two hours. Is it true that you don’t love me as much as you used to? I say that because I love you more than before. Oh! of course, it’s the Angot logic, oh! yes, you’re right.

Everyday for two weeks I said “we’re through,” she always found a way to disarm me, I started crying again and we didn’t break up. One night, I started in again over the phone, but then “fine, I think you’re right, we’ll never make this work.” And she wouldn’t change her mind this time. I didn’t know what to do with my days, much less with my life. I didn’t know where to take Léonore on walks. I wrote: We didn’t dare, we weren’t able to strip bare one before the other. There. That’s what I believe. We were in a hurry to get dressed again. Now that’s that. We’re happy. I’m afraid you won’t like the reason I love you. I love you because you’re gentle, gentle, gentle. Because you throw pebbles for your dog on the beach. I never loved having anyone take care of me the way I loved having you take care of me. I love you in a way that no one has ever loved you. That’s right, no one. I’m sorry, I don’t have the right to say this. It’s probably not true. But I admit that I often think things like this. You’re going to tell me you know all this. Well then, fine, you at your place, me at mine. Each in her own home and the hell with it. I wasn’t worthy of you or you of me. We didn’t give each other the means, we keep them for others or for ourselves. Sweetheart, help me allow myself to get near you. Guide me, take my hand. Let’s stop. Tell me you love me, catch me. I should never have let you walk on the beach alone. That’s all. You’re aware, my love, that it’s difficult to be with you. You take back everything you give. Oh my goodness, what babbling. And all of it for a story that’s coming to an end. Don’t you think we should have managed better than others? What an admission of weakness and how I blame myself. And how I blame you, too. I love you. Everything I could never say to you, and still can’t, it’s all lost. Maybe I’ll be able to tell you them some day, a long time from now. That evening, I read the letter to her over the phone. She told me she’d think about it. She came to get me at the train station, we went off, it was wonderful. The letter upset her. She just called me back, everything is going well, she loves me, she’s glad she’ll see me this afternoon, no, no, I was wrong to worry, there’s nothing wrong, the line was busy, the call waiting signal sounded, it must have been someone leaving a message on the machine, she was playing tennis, she’d just walked in, no, no, there’s no problem, she’s looking forward to seeing me, she’s in a hurry, she’s got to meet someone, she’ll come right after. Aside from a few minor worries from time to time, it all went like that, she would look at the real estate ads and call me. We even went to look at a house. We took the freeway to get there. I saw a dead dog on the shoulder. I couldn’t get rid of the image. I tried to block it out, I didn’t dare mention it. After the house tour, we had a dinner invitation, I had to talk about it, I was forced to say “there’s an image I can’t get out of my head. —What is it? What, what, what? —There was a dead dog on the side of the road when we arrived. —The freeways, especially that one.” We changed topics. She said to me “the day you don’t love me anymore, tell me, it’s not worth it.” But she still went off to Île de Ré alone, without me, to see her cousin. When she called I heard her cousin’s voice “Marie-Christine,” in the tone you use when calling from the next room for something that belongs to you and that you need. Jean, with whom I had dinner yesterday, said to me “it’s crazy how pretty the name Christine is and how ugly Marie-Christine is.” She left, she wanted to be far away from me, to get some distance, she needed some rest, far away from me. I wrote her. “Marie-Christine, let’s be clear. You said you’d write, well, here’s my answer. I’m bored with you, it’s no fun, I never laugh, but worst of all, we don’t share. The conversations we have don’t interest me. When you came back from tennis the other day (your tournament), your skin was ———— and ————. And yet, I let myself be seduced by you, you weren’t like that, you’re never vivacious for long, you need easy targets to shine.” And me with my dreams. We’d have a house. We’d share it. Léonore would have been with us. Pitou my heart would have watched over her. “Most of all, there’s a cruelty in you. You fan suffering when you see it, you’re incapable of real friendship, of real consolation, in short, of real love. I know now, after this letter, that you won’t call me again. I’ll be rid of your lack of love.” At the same time, I took notes, for myself, in my notebook: She is: not attractive, ————, ————, hollow chested, I don’t like talking to her, her friends, etc., the animals, she’s her cousin’s lap-dog, etc., when you forbid human cloning, you’re obliged to reproduce, which is good. The telephone rang. I didn’t pick up. The answering machine turned on. It was her, calling from Île de Ré. I wanted to talk to you, to chat with you on the phone, before you leave for Turin. Well, fine. Okay, listen… I don’t even know what time you’re leaving. If you get my message, try to call. If not, I’ll call you Sunday night when you’re back. I wanted to tell you that I hope everything goes well in Turin and to send you a big kiss. “These last two weeks, to tell you the whole truth, even sex with you seemed dull. Desire responding only out of habit.” She even said so herself “last week-end you seemed on auto-pilot.” I dialed her number in Île de Ré. I let it ring three times and hung up. The phone rang immediately after. It was her, “you got my message? —Yes, I just walked in this second. I called you back, but when I heard the end of your message, that because there are men in the house, ‘the two of us are out,’ you and Nadine as a couple, I hung up, and besides if all you have to say to me is ‘I hope everything goes well in Turin,’ then I’m not interested in talking to you. —I wanted to tell you I was thinking of you, that I keep seeing things here that remind me of you. —And what are you thinking about me? —I want to let some time pass, I don’t want to answer right now, I’ll tell you when I’m back.” Just then, I hear her cousin Nadine, the actress, with her voice that carries, calling from the kitchen “Marie-Christine…” Having a lesbian in the family is very practical. Handy, available, clever, not prissy. “Someone’s calling you, go ahead.” If there were five of me, I could make even more, says a woman from Austin, Texas, when asked about cloning. All these remarks annoyed her when she read the manuscript. It’s too easy, I know. Always leaning on tangential things, drawing connections, since I began writing there have always been other voices, other texts, other things, another angle from which I try to show myself. Me and something else, always. Now I have to rely on myself, what is closest, most real, nothing much, what with the incest I can’t manage to feel like I’m anything much, my body, my life, the place I live, the scene I’m acting in for myself, with my anxieties, my crying fits, my telephone calls, my intelligence, etc., all my limits, to be at the very edge of my limits, to lean on it the way I lean on the banister of the stairs to the lawyer’s office. Let everyone see my insignificance, my nothingness, me as a minimal human being, the tiny little writer that I am. Trying, with shrewd remarks, like the one about cloning, to seem a tiny bit more clever than she is. Me: “I didn’t care for you at the party at your place. I didn’t like dancing with you as much as I used to. This all developed over the past few weeks. Before my desire was sincere, urgent, directed at you. My love too. I discovered beauty in you and then it became hidden, around the end of February, and didn’t resurface. In the United States we felt pleasure and had some good moments but no happiness. There should be some happiness after a few months. For a while I truly hoped to live with you, it’s not possible with you. There really is too little love. There’s too little of everything.” Yesterday I asked her “would you rather you’d never met me?” – she said that it depended. Would it be better for a child to be born cloned or not be born at all, soon there won’t be this kind of thing at all in my books. I hope. No letters either, I hope. Just my inanity, nothing else. It’s a little utopian. “It was no passion, it wasn’t love, it was an encounter and we used up all its charm. A little passion, a little love, a little encounter, a need to seduce, you did it, it’s over. I no longer exist for you. We dreamed, you talked about the civil solidarity pact, you remember, you’d say ‘you’ll inherit everything I have, my aunt will say “you’re disinheriting your godchildren.” ’ I met someone in Turin. I made love to him. I don’t think we’ll see each other again but it got me away from you. Phew!” When I was writing the letter, I hadn’t yet gone to Turin, I was leaving the next day. After writing it, I wrote in my notebook: Not a word. Don’t write her a word. Don’t call her. Don’t leave a message. Hold firm. Early on she sent me two quotes from Char. The first: The air I always feel almost lacking in most human beings (she was a pulmonologist), if it blows through you, has a profusion and a sparkling ease. I live marvelously with you. That is our extraordinary luck. The second: Push your luck, seize your happiness, and take risks. After seeing you, they will get used to you. That was a long time ago. L’Escale was a long time ago. New York was a long time ago. It was a long time ago that we used to get up at night to dance together. Not a word. Don’t write her a word. Don’t call her. Don’t leave a message. Hold firm. The moments of happiness with her are moments of unhappiness. She said to me “the day you don’t love me anymore, tell me, it’s not worth it.” I promised I’d tell her, implying that it wouldn’t be long. I was that fed up. “Dinner is ready,” her mother would say, “hang on, I’m coming, I’m getting ready,” her diabetic father would answer, giving himself an injection. “Your father, your mother, your cousin, none of it’s interesting, my poor dear.” With Claude, the moments of unhappiness were moments of happiness. The last time at her place. I was thinking of Léonore. I couldn’t separate, I had promised Léonore I’d take her to see Zorro, Marie-Christine wanted to see it too. Marie-Christine Léonore Marie-Christine Léonore Marie-Christine Léonore. And I can’t get loose. Even though the goal of life is simple. I met Claude at a demonstration one day. He lived in Reims, so did I, we knew each other already, through our parents who worked together. I grabbed his shoulder, I told him it was me. He turned around, we fell in love. Love. Yesterday I was telling someone “I’m not in love with her anymore.” We agreed to meet at the movies. He got there late because of work. I was saving two seats, I made a sign when I heard noise in the dark. Afterward we went to eat crêpes in a café, everything else was closed. He wore a blue anorak. He took me home. Sometimes he came upstairs. He didn’t know what to do. One day when he was about to leave, he came up to me and said “I love you.” I told him “you shouldn’t say that.” He stayed. He slept over, he couldn’t get a hard-on, then the opposite. And then he didn’t leave. Little by little he brought all his things. A year later we moved into a bigger apartment together. Which belonged to his parents, first mistake. Maybe not the first. His mother would see me when I opened the shutters. It was the same co-op, they lived across the way. The argument began (the argument with them). I started my psychoanalysis, I started to write, we got married. My mother would cook us dinner to cheer us up. We were young, about twenty-five. I finished my psychoanalysis, I left to study for a year in Bruges, we were separated. We were planning on getting a divorce. A shame. I left Bruges, I was writing, I wanted to move to Nice. We would be separated, but I wanted to be nearby. We would be separated, but I loved him. There was the thing with my father. That was sorted out, we began to be happy. To be really happy. Everyone called us the lovebirds. He would ask me “how much longer do you think they’ll call us the lovebirds?” Until what age? Rue Bosio, Rue Blacas, the lovebirds. No longer in Montpellier. I don’t remember when they called us the lovebirds. We moved to Montpellier. First we got a place in the Citadines, then we found a permanent apartment. Where I am now. We spent six months in Italy, paradise, utterly Edenic. Léonore from one year to eighteen months. We came back early January’94. Something was no longer working, I didn’t realize it. Time passed. Léonore got bigger. Day care, nursery school, kindergarten. She’s starting elementary school next year with her parents separated. Claude left a year ago. In April. I met Marie-Christine in September. Léonore Marie-Christine Marie-Christine Léonore. I’m trying to get Léonore some help, I saw a psychologist yesterday. Who treated me like I’d been beating her for a year, I’d only just noticed the bruises, it had to stop. “She’s your daughter, she loves you”… implying “no matter what you do. Say.” Those of us who have endured incest, AIDS, etc., that’s how we’re treated, like hardship cases! Or we’re given support, that’s how they treat us. I called Marie-Christine to come and see me. She didn’t want to get her car out again this late. I called Claude who came to sleep here, I took a lot of pills, I’m groggy. I asked Claude what he thought of the title No Man’s Land. In his opinion, it’s a title for English professors. That afternoon a friend says about Marie-Christine, “she seems a bit gloomy. —No, on the contrary, she’s very cheerful, very amusing, very funny.” I was homosexual for three months and change, fifteen days, we had gotten together again more or less. But I’ll stop there. I’m going to retire. One day I’ll be a grandmother, it will be wonderful.

Marie-Christine won’t read this book, like Claude, she doesn’t want to. “It kills things,” apparently. Claude didn’t read Sujet Angot either. No one around me reads anymore. In fact, I’m Indian, one of the untouchables. I touch garbage and normally the dead. In India, the untouchables touch the dead. I only touch garbage. No one wants to touch it with me. My manuscript, I’m alone with it for months, months and months and months. Even after it’s published, people who care for me don’t want to read it, “it kills things,” apparently. After the article “Christine Angot Tells it Straight” appeared in Le Monde, 9/24/98), the Minister of Culture proposed me for the Order of Arts and Letters, the medal. Arts and letters, the letters are splitting, I tried to keep the letters straight, and I felt dizzy all day when I was writing this No Man’s Land. Well yes, of course, I know what you’re thinking: you say to write is to touch garbage, that you’re an untouchable, an Indian, but still, it has something sensational about it, but still, it’s finery. Being a writer is a kind of regalia. When I was little, I would wrap my arms around my mother’s neck and she would say “my most beautiful necklace.” Yeah, sure, a necklace of garbage. There was a game when I was little, when you had a golden bracelet “c’est de l’or?” – is it gold? If it was gold-plate, you said “non, c’est de l’ordure,” no, it’s shit, I don’t know if you know it. Which goes to show you what my father made of me and my mother, of our relationship, which was beautiful before we knew each other. Not dross at all, on the contrary. When Léonore was born, I had a premonition of all this. That two women were garbage showing itself. That’s why I called her Léonore, to be sure. Mon or, mon amour, mon or. My gold, my love, my gold. Lé-o-nore. Nonor, my golden love. To be sure. To be sure; sure, sure, sure. So that it would be a gold-plated bracelet and all you’d have to do is scratch it a little, with your fingernail, and it would give like butter when you stick your finger in it, it wouldn’t be gold at all. you’d have to answer “no, it’s garbage.” Stick your fingers in as if it were a lump of butter. “Penetrate the piano like a lump of butter,” Duchâble’s piano teacher used to say to him. In his adolescence, he found the image revolting. Léonore and I would be pure gold. I’d take her on walks in her stroller to the Peyrou park in Montpellier. Madame Gasiglia, the pediatrician asked, with an e or without the e. What do you think? With an e, because it’s a girl. For Christmas this year, Marie-Christine is going to Peru, to visit friends who have a mine, but copper. Last Christmas she bought me the Cartier trinity ring. One day, during an argument, I threw it on the ground and almost threw it in the Lez, a river. I still don’t know what I’m going to do for Christmas. Her, she’s going to Lima, then to the Andes with 4X4s and horses and chauffeurs and friends. She’ll cross the copper mines and mountain passes at five thousand meters. There will be endless hairpin turns. Among her friends will be Nadine Casta, NC, or Gisela Orjeda, GO, like I wanted to be instead of having to retire too young. But I’ll be a grandmother one day and it will be wonderful. And my granddaughter, if it’s a girl, Léonore can name her whatever she’d like, everything she touches is gold. By then maybe I’ll be a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.