Incest

Valda candy

What is a substratum? It comes from substernere, underlay. That which serves as a foundation for another existence, without which a reality (conceived of as accidental) could not subsist. Without which the trigger would not have had all these consequences. It’s the substance, the essence, the base. On which an action is carried out. Queneau, “a solid substratum for the development of the actions which he might conceive,” Renan, “the earth provides the substratum, the field of battle and of work, but man provides the soul.” The earth, that element upon which lies a geological layer. Linguistically, the Gallic substratum in France. The substratum. What are the zones? What is the terrain? Upon what does it grow?

Heredity

A grandmother who committed suicide, my father’s mother. She threw herself out the window at the moment her husband and his son, my father’s brother, were entering the courtyard on their way to take a walk. My father suffers from Alzheimer’s, as did his father before him. I suffer from the opposite disease, for almost fifteen days now, fifteen days on Wednesday, I can’t get Christmas out of my mind, I have cried every day because of Christmas. I can’t forget Christmas. I cry, I can’t forget, I want to, but I can’t. I cried, I broke up with her, I got myself strangled, I even slapped myself. Christmas Christmas Christmas. Memory loss is not what I suffer from. I don’t have amnesia, rather I suffer from hypermnesia, too strong a memory, if there is such a thing. Christmas Christmas Christmas. I have a six-and-a-half year old daughter, “you always have to bring in Léonore.” Nadine is just an intermediary, Christmas a trigger. I don’t want the legitimate family to take precedence over the unstable one. Paranoids cannot tolerate certain things, I can’t tolerate Marie-Christine not loving me enough to want my child to have a nice Christmas with her and going to celebrate Christmas with her godchildren. My child in other words my flesh in other words my body, what I am, my life, what I’ve lived through that makes Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.

Now: to organize the mistakes I’ve made not by how I’ve made them but by why, things I’ll never recover from, “move on to other things” I’ll never move on to other things, the causes, suffering at its most ineradicable, I will be polite, because in the end it makes you very, very polite. It takes away all your aggression, all true hatred, the hatred we show, sometimes, it’s fake, it’s not real, it’s false hatred. It’s a pretense. I’ll try to talk to you. Just as I’m now trying to talk to Marie-Christine, to see if it can be any use. I’ll try to talk to you, here we go, there won’t be any plays on words, there won’t be any hatred, there won’t be anything, there won’t be any literary formulations, maybe this won’t be literature, there will be nothing; nothing, nothing, nothing, there will be nothing. There will be nothing but memories, each memory will be a wrenching that must be written down. Memory, a book of memories. I remember. I remember Ricola, Kréma candies, but something else too. I remember Vittel Délice soda, but something else too. A swing set, stitches in my head, near my eyebrow, my mother in a state, but something else too. I remember Marie-Hélène, the soft sand, my pleated tweed skirt with leather piping, the Nuts and Mars candy bars and Americanos when we got out of the swimming pool in Reims, but something else too. I remember my green skirt with suspenders, my wheelbarrow, my little friend Jean-Pierre, my neighbor Chantal, my grandmother, the rabbits and chicks at the Ligot’s house, Kréma candies, raspberry first, strawberry second, lemon third and orange to finish. I remember cookies with hazelnuts and all sorts of delicious things, I remember two-person swings, etc., etc., but something else too.

What?

Go on, spit it out, your Valda candy.

I was so happy to know him. Meeting him the first time was so much more than I’d hoped. And then, eight days later, not more than that, I swear, not more, I was so disillusioned, I couldn’t have imagined. Way beyond my expectations and eight days later, a disappointment I could never have dreamed of, never. I met him in Strasbourg with my mother at the Buffet de la Gare, he seemed so extraordinary to me. I, who had never had a father to introduce to my friends, all of a sudden I’d be able to tell them how extraordinary he was. I was charmed. I felt no desire for him, it wasn’t that at all. Charmed. Like you can be by someone you love. I found him intelligent, interesting, so much more cultured than your average person, so exceptional. My friends’ fathers could pack it in (this isn’t a quip, it’s not mischievous and impertinent, as I’ve said). Him, he spoke thirty languages, he was elegant. I don’t want to go into details, in short, he exceeded my expectations. By far. I told my mother, who was happy, she said to me “you see, I didn’t choose just anyone to be your father.” I agreed and then some, I said “no, you didn’t, you certainly didn’t.” And then eight days later, my mother and I were spending eight days at Gérardmer in a hotel, he came to see us. Dinner, a walk around the lake, bedtime. He came to say goodnight in my room, and there, he kissed me on the mouth. Already just the discovery of a kiss on the mouth, and that he kissed me like that. I didn’t understand, I understood very well, I didn’t believe it. I really did ask myself. He loved me, he said he loved me. I’m very sorry to tell you about this, I’d so much rather be able to talk about something else. But how I became insane, that’s it. I’m sure of it, it’s because of this that I became insane. This was the cause. In eight days I went from the ideal father, even more than ideal, unhoped for, a father I could never have imagined possible, and he was my father, and he loved me, and we looked like each other, and he was happy, and he found me extraordinary, me too, he was dazzled. There were so many promises. No, I repeat, I never felt any desire for him, no, I say it again. Never. I do know what desire is, after all. Pleasure, there may have been some, I don’t deny it. But never desire. I wanted to please him, of course. I am very sorry this has to be discussed. Very sorry. Why am I talking about it? Well, because I talked about it with Marie-Christine and she thinks it’s a good idea. I hope it’s not because it excites her, she says it doesn’t, that instead it makes her feel bad. It tears me up to talk about it. When I talk to her about it, it tears me up, fortunately I’m in her arms, otherwise I probably couldn’t. I shouldn’t write this. And I shouldn’t talk to her about it. What it will evoke, in her, and in you, will be the same thing, pity, you won’t be able to love me anymore, neither she nor you. She won’t love me anymore. We will no longer be able to make love. You won’t want to read me anymore. I think, well too bad, it’s a risk I have to take. We don’t like people who have suffered, we feel sorry for them, we don’t like the insane, we feel sorry for them. No one wants to live next door to an insane asylum. It’s normal, I understand. I’m the same. I’m a poor girl, no one falls in love with a poor girl. No one wants to make love to a poor girl, unless you’re a pervert. What else?

I didn’t talk about it to anyone. Not anyone. No one knew. Do you understand? From fourteen to sixteen. I talked about my father at school. All the things about him I could be proud about, the intellectual things, his knowledge, his culture, I was appropriating it, sometimes I shared it with others. I mostly talked about it to my friend Véronique. I would tell her what I’d learned over the weekend. She was interested, fascinated. All the things about him I was proud of. All the more since I hadn’t talked about my father at all for fourteen years, not to anyone. There were things I hid, things I was ashamed of, but there was plenty I could talk about.

And now, I tell myself the same thing, keep silent. If I talk it will be worse than before: it helps to talk, they’ll tell me. I hate having to write this. I hate you. I despise you. I don’t want to know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re thinking. Always the same thing and you’re all the same. Calf, cow, pig and I hate you. It’s that or the clinic. I have to. It’s the clinic or talking to you. To you. Writing is a kind of rampart against insanity, I’m already very lucky that I’m a writer, that at least I have this possibility. That’s already something. This book will be seen as a shit piece of testimony. What else could I do? What else? Orange Kréma candy, but also:

The Codec grocery store, Le Touquet, being sodomized, the car, giving him blow jobs in the car, eating clementines off his dick, stiff, seeing him on the toilet, hearing him groan, the pharaohs of Egypt, Champollion, the day we didn’t go to Carcassonne. I’ll give it a try in this order. Nancy.

The Codec

There was nothing left. I met him at fourteen, from fourteen to sixteen, it happened. Even though I asked him to stop, every time. On the phone, before we met, every time. Each time he told me yes. Each time it wasn’t possible. Like Marie-Christine, each time I break up over the phone, when I see her, it’s not possible. But, as she told me, between the two of us, nothing’s forbidden. Luckily. It was Thursday night (December 10th) I replied “luckily, luckily.” It stopped when I was sixteen, I told Marc, who told my mother. It could finally stop. From sixteen to eighteen we wrote each other. In his letters, he reproached me for stabbing him in the back. When I turned eighteen, he stopped writing and sending money to my mother because he could no longer be forced to pay support if my mother decided to take legal action. In any case, she wouldn’t have done it. Then there was Pierre, then Claude, then analysis, then I wrote. I wanted to see him again. To finally start to have a normal father-daughter relationship. I met him in Nancy. He had promised, he had absolutely guaranteed that nothing would happen. I remember his look in the café, he had just met me at the station, later that weekend we went to see Jacques Doillon’s Family Life, which I’d already seen, which I’d adored, I wanted to see it again with him, I thought he would like it as much as I did. But no, he didn’t understand what I meant. In any case, I picture the café again, there were a few steps leading down into the room, I see myself sitting at the table, facing him. Especially, at a certain moment, I see his look again. Which was a look of desire and I said to myself “it’s starting again.” “He’s not going to keep his promise,” or else I knew it would be hell, that he would show me his desire, that he kept hold of this desire to please me. The hotel, two rooms, time to say goodnight, and there it was. It started again. That’s the moment I decided to turn over, to turn my body over, to turn myself over. Why? To finally be considered a woman, not a piece of ass, an asshole, butter on the flipped crêpe, Vaseline, I wasn’t just a piece of ass, I started to take control from that moment. Control of this story and now I have it (let’s say). At first he had the upper hand, I was under his thumb. Suggesting, flipping myself over onto the good side, I wrote already, I had started. Taking control, having the upper hand. And now, I have it. He’s lost his mind, Alzheimer’s. Me, I’ve got an edge over the incest. The power, the sadistic penis, that’s it, thanks to the pen in my hand, confidently, fundamentally. The weaker hand, the upper hand, very well. Now I talk to Marie-Christine, I write and I’ll talk to Moufid Zériahen too. I don’t write the way I used to. I’m not out to attack, not anyone. If I say “the hell with those who’ll read it” it’s because I’d rather have had something else to write about. That’s all. Writing is not choosing your narrative. But taking it, into your arms, and putting it calmly down on the page, as calmly as possible, as accurately as possible. So that he will turn over in his grave yet again, if my body is his grave. If he turns over again, it’s because I’m not dead. I’m insane, but not dead. I’m not completely insane either. To take it in my arms as it is, I’d rather have taken another subject in my arms, no one asked me. It can take an entire lifetime for a writer to take in his arms something that doesn’t concern anyone. Hence this admonition not to be resentful, a regret, a last one, not to have been able to write other books than those, knowing how you’d react and that your reaction would hurt me. I’m getting sidetracked, I had left the Codec, to explain that there was “nothing left” at the Codec moment, I had to back up a bit. It wasn’t a lapse in logic, on the contrary. I’ll get there. You’ll see, I’m very, very polite, I don’t have a choice, I no longer have any choice, none at all. I said that I’d write certain things, and I’ll do it. You’ll see, I’ll go to the very end. How I went insane, you will understand, I hope. And if it’s not enough I’ll write more books. A lot more. And in the end, all the readers will have understood. Maybe it will take until I die, but in the end you will all have understood how I became crazy. All. I promise, it’s a promise. It will be kept. This is not a digression I’ve been on since the beginning of the Codec chapter. Otherwise I’d have put it in parentheses. It’s not a digression, I’m getting there. So. Nancy. I’ll get back to it, perhaps. It’s not pleasant to talk about, me, for whom speaking has been such a pleasure. Such a profound joy. I can hear it already, I can already read it: Christine Angot, the pain, the pain of writing, not the pleasure. That’s why: the hell with them. So, Nancy, it starts up again for a time, a short time. Luckily. Grand finale, swansong, the energy of despair, the drop that made the bucket overflow. As they say. One or two visits to Nice and it stops. I’ll explain how. I’ll explain it all in any case. All. How I went crazy after NC, a trigger, I hope no one else will tell me about it being out of proportion, exaggerated, ridiculous, the final drop that made the bucket overflow a long time ago, the whole bucket. The smallest extra drop, that falls, overflows with those that have already fallen from the bucket, forming a puddle at the base, there really is no room left, no room left at all, to understand that “no, Christmas, I’m going to spend it with my godchildren, my family, it’s normal, everyone understands that, everyone understands me, it’s not that all of a sudden anything will change just because you’re here now, just because you’re here I’m supposed to drop everyone?” No, don’t drop anyone. Go spend Christmas with your Nadine, and your Nadine, go ahead and fuck her. I said I was going to be polite. I will be. Thinking about it again does that to me. I’m going to calm down. Crazy people can calm down. They get worked up, there are crises, critical moments, and then things calm down again. It starts up again regularly, and then things calm back down. There are crises. It’s not serious. But when the bucket can’t even overflow. It’s not full to the brim, it’s already swamped, the bucket itself. The bucket itself is already swamped. It itself is already drowned, the bucket. If you add a ladle-full of Christmas, of grandchildren, of time immemorial, of family and ghosts, of Chambord, of slut cinema, OK, I take that back, whatever is done or not done in those cases, Catou and of that’s the way it’s always been, and of it’s a ritual, and of it’s not that anything will change just because you’re here now, that makes a crisis inevitable. I’m going to calm down. Give me a few seconds, I’m going to calm down. You can trust me, I know, all it takes is a little patience. I’m going to calm down. I am a polite person. Like my mother was telling me yesterday “at fourteen you were very nice,” “trusting,” “you were vulnerable,” “you were trusting because you’d never been hurt,” “and so it was easy to hurt you.” I was a nice person thanks to her, who had never hurt me, her, obviously. I don’t like it when anyone tells me that. What does it mean? That afterward I wasn’t nice anymore? That I’d become a sadistic penis, is that it? Is that what’s implied? Is that it? Or is it something else? Hunh? Kréma candy? Kréma candy and something else. Something else, but what? Yesterday she said to me “do you think it would have been better if you’d never met him?” Do I have time to answer questions like that? Do I have the time? And on top of that I’d have to pacify her, to reassure her. We’d have to talk about whether or not she did the right thing to introduce me to him. That question doesn’t interest me. The hell with those who’ll read the answer. Why not ask me straight out: Do think it would have been better not to be the person you’ve become? Why not? Why don’t you flat out ask me that question? Do you, Christine Angot, think that it would have been better not to be who you are? And another thing. Do you, Christine Angot, think it would have been better for you (and for us, too, is the implication, of course) if you could write other books, perhaps less negative? Perhaps with a bit more light? Do you think it would have been better for you if you were a piece of Kréma candy? With strawberry, raspberry, lemon, orange or clementine flavors? Because in general you always, you the public, you the critics, can never keep yourselves from describing the world as plus-minus, positive-negative, good-evil, candy-bile, intelligent-moron, man-woman, white-black. To which I answer, I’ll tell you to your face, I will give you an answer: Be polite. Fine, I’ll start again. It stopped in Nice, after one or two visits, I was an adult, I was twenty-six years old. It stopped for good, I don’t have time to talk about the circumstances right now. But I will. The Codec came after it stopped. It was about establishing a normal relationship. My half-brother and half-sister had finally learned about my existence, they’d gotten their diplomas, that is, their education was no longer at risk, so they could be told of my existence. I was twenty-eight years old. Claude and I had decided to go to Strasbourg for a few days. Elisabeth was there in the beginning, after which there was only my father and my half-brother Philippe. My half-sister, who had visited me in Nice two weeks earlier was on holiday in Tunisia visiting a friend. Visiting the daughter of a friend of her mother, Elisabeth. Claude’s and I slept in her room. I’ll spare you the tour of the apartment. The welcome. I’ll spare you the quiche too. Elisabeth also leaves on holiday somewhere. No more quiche, nothing left. The refrigerator is empty. Claude and I offer to do some errands. My father tells us he has an account at the Codec. He gives us the information, explains which Codec, tells us how to get there, where it is. (He knows Claude knows, not that Claude knows where the Codec is, but that he knows, I should have said it earlier, it would have been more logical.) He says put it on the Angot account. I double-check how to do it. So all we need to do when we get to the register is to tell them to put it on the Angot account? Yes, that’s it. That’s all we need to do. (My name is Angot, has been since I was fourteen, when he acknowledged me under the 1972 law of filiation, before that my name was Christine Schwartz, but you know that already, I’ve written about it in almost all my books; or you haven’t been paying attention.) So, we’re getting the groceries, I can picture us again, Claude and me, in that Codec. Mouchi had told me in July that when she was little she dreamed of being a grocery bagger at Codec, she loved bagging groceries. Humor, kids are so cute. So very cute, given her social class, really too cute. Are there Codecs in Tunisia where she spends her vacations? Joking aside, as they say. I can see the two of us getting the groceries, filling a cart, coming up to the register. We put our things on the conveyor belt, and I say “put it on the Angot account please.” At that moment, some kind of neighbor, some lady behind us, a friend of Elisabeth’s, bourgeois just like her, a tennis player, surely, just like her, a woman in one of the liberal or intellectual professions working in an international organization, like her, intrudes (like her), and says (like her): “but you’re not part of the family, who are you?” Like the idiot I still was at the time, I answer “I’m his daughter.” She replies that she knows Elisabeth very well and the children very well too, that she’s very sorry, but I’m not Philippe or Mouchi, she knows them, it turns out she knows them, it turns out that I’m out of luck that she’s in line behind me, and that I’m not going to be able to take the Angots for a ride like that, me and my little boyfriend. It turns out she’s there. So no. I won’t be able to. While we bag up the things. Very quickly, we put everything in bags very quickly. I can’t stand listening to that lady. The godchildren, she knows them, the godchildren, and has for a long time, Léonore, no one’s seen her face, or maybe it was not quite a year ago, what’s that, a year, it was exactly a year. We run to the car with our bags, I don’t want to cry in front of them, the people in the store. So we run to the car, yes, like thieves. We run just like thieves. We close the doors and I cry. But the owner, who had been informed, came out of the store and ran after us to the car, and he knocks on the window, on Claude’s side. I tell him: quick, take off. He takes off very, very fast. Fortunately. We arrive at my father’s house, he’s on the phone with the owner. He defuses the situation. He says he knows that woman, but that she doesn’t know the entire family, no, everything’s fine, he reassures the owner. He tells me it’s not serious, that everything’s fine.

I’m twenty-eight years old, no one in the village knows he has a child, in addition to the other two, an additional child, an older girl, that it’s me, and that I ended up going by Angot like him. With regard to acknowledgment, there’s something I wanted to say:

Tough luck

Yesterday, in a conversation with my mother, I’m talking about what happened. She asks her question, “would it have been better…?” Because of something his sister said on the phone that shocked her “one more headache, as if there haven’t been enough headaches already, now he’s going to have another child.” My mother thinks of the poor baby about to be born, none of this is the baby’s fault. My aunt had to put up with a lot, she repeats, I tell my mother that it’s classic, just like my father who must have had to put up with some difficulty or other, to get the upper hand and, in the end, to lose his mind. My mother goes: well, I’ll tell you something: tough luck. No, not tough luck. I explain. I feel neither hatred nor love. She thinks she understands and says “yes, that’s it (her implication ‘like me’) indifference.” No, not hatred, not love, not indifference, it’s my father, not forgiveness, not indifference, nor love of course: acknowledgment. There, that’s it, acknowledgment. He didn’t acknowledge me, but me, I acknowledge him. He’s my father, I acknowledge him. I acknowledge him as my father. He is my incestuous father, I acknowledge that. I am his incestuous daughter, he is my incestuous father, I acknowledge him, he would not acknowledge me, but I acknowledge him. Léonore is his granddaughter, she could have been his daughter, that’s enough.

Digression, I recount a dream

Léonore is his granddaughter, she could have been his daughter, that’s enough. Phew. That’s what I just wrote. And this is the dream I had last week. A quick look backward. Claude and Judith, the daughter of my psychoanalyst in Reims, Jean-Claude Brot, from a long time ago, more than fifteen years, Claude and Judith, she’s blond, about twenty-five years old, they’re attracted to each other, they’ve talked about it, it’s a matter of time. I was sure as soon as I heard that she was going to medical school in Montpellier, she wants to be a psychoanalyst like daddy, she met Claude, she reads my books, she knows who I am, I shaped her father as an analyst, I was his most important patient. Things are taking shape. It’s New Year’s Eve, they’re attracted to each other, apparently she told him some “powerful things.” But when she feels a strong emotion, she represses it. That’s one of her problems. But it’s on my back that they profit. They get a frisson of incest over my body. I shudder. I shiver. It’s a mise en abyme like the vache-qui-rit label that sends you running to the toilet with the urge to vomit. A few days ago I dreamed that Claude and Judith had a child, the child of incest will soon exist in a debased form. Yes, yes, comparisons are always tough. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes… Not tough luck. No, not tough luck. It’s not enough for me to describe rejecting the monster, I live it. I live it, and often at night. I spent an awful day. I take advantage of this to tell Jean-Claude Brot, if he reads this book, that he shouldn’t have talked about me to his children, that was a huge mistake. Even if he said “the young woman,” they were able to recognize me, the proof. He should have talked about me only in work groups, he should have been able to manage. He should refund the cost of my analysis because he ruined everything, blabbermouth. I’m not a topic of discussion. Or for a thrill. I thought about telephoning you, Mr. Brot, but honestly, do I want to spend my life calling out everyone who pulls some shit or other? I’d end up in an ocean of slime. I’ll write and that’s it. My ambition: the extent to which I’m limited, merely to write about that. I can hear you: as for that, Christine Angot, no one is making you say this. Exactly.

Tough luck

Kréma candy, public garden, chocolate cookies with hazelnuts, whole ones, Rue Grande, my childhood friend Jean-Pierre, Chantal Ligot, my wheelbarrow, our store, which we made in the cellar, not the cellar, some abandoned house next door, with broken windows, the turret, the big wooden door we didn’t open. But something else too. Later. From the time I took the name Angot. Do you think it would have been better in the end if you’d never taken the name Angot. Philippe Sollers: Angot, in the eighteenth century, a woman who was prepared to do anything to succeed was called an Angot. The Codec is done. I’m going to get to Le Touquet, I don’t enjoy it. Or sodomization either. I don’t enjoy any of it. The car, giving him blow jobs in the car, eating clementines off his cock, stiff, the pharaohs of Egypt, the day we didn’t go to Carcassonne. Nancy. I’ve already said a lot about it. What else is there? I’m thinking. There’s the adret and the ubac. With Mozart playing in the car, in Isère, where we’d rented a house in a small village for a week or two. He showed me the adret and the ubac on either side of the road, with a cassette tape of Mozart, or Albinoni. It was hell. The clementines, that was there. To hear him push, that was in London in a hotel, around Easter, near Marble Arch. The restaurants, too many restaurants. Too many restaurants and hotels, an enormous number of churches visited, points of interest, including physical, geological, geographical, precisely in Isère a resurgence. Do you know what a resurgence is? And we went to see the resurgence. The guide to Isère is something his father concocted when he worked for Michelin. Not hatred, nor love, nor indifference, acknowledgment. It’s not in my shitty Châteauroux that I ever would have seen a resurgence, not in my mother’s milieu, at least the milieu into which my mother was born. I wouldn’t have learned to speak German sitting at a café table there or gotten 19 out of 20 in Latin on my bac after studying in depth the first two sentences of variant translations.

Le Touquet

Easter vacation. Often at Easter. It was in Le Touquet that he ventured to my genitals. Until then we were restricted to mouths, arms, thighs no doubt, I imagine, to kisses, lots of kisses. Caresses in the largest sense. In Le Touquet he has severe migraines. We’re staying in a hotel in the center of the village, which he had no doubt found in the Guide Rouge. Which I still use myself, by the way, it’s great. Acknowledgment. I don’t know what’s up with him but he insists we go see My Name is Nobody. With that blue-eyed actor, whose name escapes me, Terence Hill? Terence Hill. Of course he was always the one who chose the movies. That’s how I ended up seeing Aguirre, the Wrath of God even though it wasn’t at all appropriate for my age. Or a film with Alain Delon and Senta Berger, she was shown naked, you could always see her breasts, I remember how awkward it was for me. And that he found her pretty. And I was jealous, I was a real idiot. I deserved what happened, I was an idiot. An idiot, a fuckwit, from the cunt, all to explain that I shouldn’t use those words, out of respect for women, that it’s necessary to be polite. Aguirre, the Wrath of God, I can’t think of Klaus Kinski without thinking of my father, I can’t. We go for walks, we go out to dinner, out to lunch, one Sunday midday he points out some homosexuals and explains how they do it, anal sex. I was learning all this at once. I didn’t like My Name is Nobody, I didn’t understand why he had taken me to see it. He read the news. Every day we had to find Le Monde. Every day. He read it every day. He counseled me to do the same. Sometimes he read it in restaurants sitting across from me. He’d offer me a page. Surely I wasn’t always as interesting. He had seen me up close an hour before that was enough, and he would see me again. When I wasn’t bored, it was exhausting. The interesting conversations were exhausting. At home, it was a completely different world, in Reims, Champagne. In Le Touquet he had a lot of headaches. He’d wanted to go back to the hotel so he could rest, in the dark. (When Marie-Christine told me that she wanted to go home after the movie on Sunday, it must have been that, I had another breakdown. Because she was tired and wanted to go home and I would rather have gone for a walk. She cannot understand and today, Tuesday the 22nd, she’s leaving for Paris to stay with Nadine, we separated last night on the phone, it wasn’t definitive, the definitive break happened a little later.) He asked me to come with him, told me it would be nice of me. I wanted desperately to be nice, I really wanted to please him, I wanted him to approve of me. He didn’t protect me at all, I can’t remember him being gentle, not once, for example. For example, if I hurt myself somewhere, would he take my arm and kiss the spot? No. Or would he pull the covers up over me so I wouldn’t be cold? Never. My mother was the exact opposite. She never told me I was extraordinary, I never was extraordinary (Sujet Angot, the narcissism I’ve been accused of, it’s not my fault), but she did pull the covers up over my shoulders, yes. Often. She took wonderful care of me, as a mother. He had headaches, and he wanted to rest in the dark, in his room, shutters closed, as little light as possible, and if possible my hands, my hand on his forehead. I was very, very nice. I was really very nice. He appreciated it very much, it did him so much good, I had no idea how much good it did him. I did him an enormous amount of good. Thank you. Thank you. It did him so much good, so much good, how nice it was of me. There was nothing unusual, nothing complicated, I was lying next to him on the bed, the shutters were closed, I didn’t like it. It was nice outside, I thought it was awful to stay shut up indoors on Easter vacation with my father. And then, I guess, I had to get under the sheets, at some point he must have suggested it. Things went further, he touched my sex at Le Touquet. He said: you know why it’s wet? Because you love. I regret having discovered wetness in circumstances like those.

We went on a walk. We’d arrived by airplane. We didn’t have a car there. He had just gotten his pilot’s license. He had rented a plane and we flew there from Reims, he from Strasbourg. I was going to be able to tell Véronique at school. He asked me what Véronique’s family name was, how it was spelled, and explained the etymology, where she lived, her father’s profession, viticulturist, Foureur champagne. We’re taking a walk in the forest surrounding Le Touquet, the pine forest, the area is filled with beautiful houses. He writes articles in his field, linguistics, he has a book in progress. He’s an admirer of Champollion, he’s very interested in the Iberian language, it will be his major work. He wrote an article on the pronunciation of w in French. People think it’s v, because of they way wagon is said with a v sound, but it’s oueu according to French rules of pronunciation. Wagon is an exception, from German, Wagen, der Wagen. We pass the houses, each more beautiful than the last, he makes jokes, he’s in a joking mood: that one is fifty thousand copies. That one there, oh, that one, it’s at least one hundred thousand. I’d have to write a detective novel to get that one, he jokes. I, who have never seen anything, I laugh, fascinated. My book might not sell many copies, it’s a difficult subject, linguistics, which doesn’t reflect on its quality. That one, oh two hundred thousand. A million. One and a half million. That one, fifty thousand. One million. Two million. One hundred and fifty thousand. We laugh. We had just been to see the airplanes.

The lock

Easter holidays one year later. In Strasbourg, in the family apartment. They’re all away on vacation. My vacation is their empty apartment. I sleep in the parents’ bedroom with my father, in the marriage bed. I see the children’s room, their little universe. They’re much younger than I am, eight and ten years difference or six and nine. They don’t know me, they don’t even know I exist. Yes, I know, I’ve already said it, let me repeat myself if I want. I’m there for a week. It’s a long week. We’re used to weekends, sometimes long ones. He works. I don’t know how to take care of a house. I don’t know how it’s done. I know how to do two or three things, I have two or three routines, I see what my mother does, but I don’t have the reflexes. He works. I’m on vacation, not him, he comes home for lunch and in the evening. I’m bored, I look at the house, the décor, Elisabeth’s taste, in all it’s cute. When I get home my mother will say “I don’t like cute things.” In the bathroom there’s a rather large glass jar filled with costume jewelry and another filled with cotton balls. There are printers type set drawers with tiny trinkets. It’s not the apartment I’d visit later with Claude (at the time of the Codec when there was nothing left), a large duplex, very large, with terraces, just a few steps from the Orangerie, the public garden he adores, which he tells me about. He explicates everything. Iberian, Latin, the Orangerie, etymology, German, the pronunciation of w in French, politics, racism, animals, plant names, everything, the Egyptian pharaohs, the origin of languages, language families, Noah, Shem and company, Indo-European, Hindi. It’s all clear. In the morning, we eat breakfast in the kitchen. At noon he comes home. He sees the milk left out, the bottle of milk, I’d forgotten to put it away, don’t I know that milk spoils? That it’s undrinkable if it’s not kept cold? He throws a tantrum. His arguments are endless. And above all the lock:

We go out, it’s lunchtime. The door closes behind us, we’re on the landing, the keys were left inside. I get yelled at. I’m not in charge of the keys, am I? That’s not the question. Why should it be me, just me, who’s responsible? I’m not the one in particular who was supposed to lock up. I can’t take it anymore. What is going on? Why am I being yelled at? I don’t get it. That’s not the point. Of course it’s you who are responsible. Don’t you know that when you are at someone’s house, when you’re not at home, you always enter second, after the owner, who opens the door and at the same time offers entry to the visitor who only enters then. Always. It’s a basic rule of politeness. I’m surprised you don’t know it. And conversely, when you leave the house, you go out first so the owner can bring up the rear and lock up his house behind everyone. The laws of hospitality, he’s an expert. He’s an expert on customs, how to open, how to close? How to pass in front of an older person? The owner is the first to have contact with door when you enter, and the last to have contact with the door when you go out. Now we need to find a locksmith. You think I’m enjoying this. It will cost a fortune. I won’t be able to find one before two o’clock. There’s only one thing to do, go out, go for a walk, we’re forced to, the keys inside, money, wallet, everything. Me: But why did you go out if you still needed to get things? I thought you were done. I thought I could leave because you were outside? Even if I didn’t know that rule of politeness, that basic, fundamental rule. Now the locksmith, the lock, it will cost a fortune. (He would never have said a shitload.) A fortune. He is very very very very very very very very very very very very, very angry. I’d like to run away. I wish I could escape. I want to see my mother. When I got home I almost told her. I can see myself again at the station. I told her “it was horrible.” What, how? His character. His character was my answer. She told me she understood, that she knew him, that she wasn’t at all surprised. That a whole week was surely too long. It’s the first time I let my disappointment show but not about the real keyhole, let’s say. Wandering around the streets with him for two hours, it was horrible, waiting until we could call a locksmith, in neighborhoods where everything was closed for the lunch hour, in residential neighborhoods, where there’s nothing anyway, he didn’t have his car keys, nothing, we couldn’t even go to another part of town, he had to go back to work, he would be late, that wasn’t the worst, but being locked out because of your stupid mistake, and having all these worries that I could do without, and the fortune it’s going to cost to get the locksmith to come.

Gare de l’Est

I give this example, but the same thing happened in other places. I can picture it very clearly. I was intolerable because of X, my character was bad, I irritated him, because of X I was intolerable, I exaggerated, I said something unpleasant, I don’t know, I don’t remember, he had enough reasons. He’d been counting on spending a few days with me, well, no. Enough. We were supposed to be together until Sunday, well, no, enough is enough. Maybe I think that he’ll enjoy driving all the way to Strasbourg, so then, I shouldn’t complain. No point insisting, now he can’t stay. He is in such a state, that it’s enough. That’s it. I’m fourteen or fifteen years old. I’m young, I’m still little even. To wait for the next train to Reims in some station and it’s cold. To return to my mother, hoping she hasn’t made other plans. It was my father, my father who wanted to see me, but he’s tired of me, he wants to go home, he’s going home, he got his car, he left, he didn’t look at the train schedule, he left me at the Gare de l’Est, with my bag, he gave me money to buy a ticket. He didn’t offer to wait with me, the two hours or three hours or four hours before the next train, it’s cold in the station, there are plastic seats on the left side where people are sitting, no one waits as long as I do. He couldn’t wait with me, he had to get back, right away, Strasbourg isn’t next door. Stuck there, alone because of my bad character or having said the wrong thing. Anxiety, tears, I hide, I have my bag. Luckily I have my bag. My bag is the only friendly thing in this enormous station.

There was also the trip to Carcassonne where we didn’t end up going, there were a lot of promises not kept. The trip to Rome is kind of the same thing. Ruining it, sabotaging it. Sabotaging life, messing it up. “That screws up a woman’s life,” like that person said in Interview, yes. You win, good answer, good conclusion, good look, good allusion, good hook. Yes, that’s it. Yes, it’s true. Yes, it screws up a woman’s life. It screws up a woman, even, we could take it that far. It’s an act of sabotage. Yes, we could put it like that. This book will be seen as testimony about the sabotage of women’s lives. The groups that are fighting incest will be all over it. Even my books are sabotaged. To take this book as a shit piece of testimony will be an act of sabotage, but you’ll do it. It screws up a woman’s life, it screws up a writer’s life, but, as they say, it doesn’t matter.

Rome

Contrary to what you’ll read in the end, we did go there. I mention it now because of the sabotage, it’s more logical. I open the parentheses to insert what happened after the end of the book. I didn’t know we would go to Rome when I wrote the last page. I came back and I ended it. As agreed, Marie-Christine left for Paris on December 22nd. That provoked very serious anxiety attacks again. I was once again in an unbearable state. I don’t want to revisit it. We broke up right before she left on the 22nd, this break seemed credible, there was still some hope, but very faint. I expected Frédéric the morning of the 24th. Marie-Christine was meant to return on the 25th on the twelve-thirty flight. She was hoping we would celebrate Christmas together that day, with Frédéric, my parents and Léonore of course. Even if we were separated, even if the break was confirmed, it didn’t matter, we could still celebrate Christmas together. I was impossible, I overdid it, again, I read the last two pages I’d just finished writing the morning of the 22nd to her over the phone. She got an ear infection, in Paris, and was not allowed to fly, if her fever went down, she might possibly take the train. I went to pick her up at the station with Léonore on the 25th, she had her presents from the day before, a pair of Jil Sander slacks in a bag, there was also a duvet cover, CDs, gifts from twenty-five people. She was deaf in one ear. She wanted me to be gentle and nice to her, I wasn’t, quite the opposite. In the end, Christmas went well. But things started up again the next day. We didn’t want to go to Rome. When she wanted to go, I no longer did. When I wanted to go, she no longer did. The delirium continued, the violence even intensified. We didn’t leave on Sunday as we were meant to, we were still billed for the night in the hotel. In the end, we did leave, but later, on Tuesday. In the airport we had six hundred francs stolen, it was all a waste. I was a fountain during the whole six days in Rome. I cried in the street, at the restaurants, everywhere, on a bicycle we’d rented. Again, she came close to hitting me, I said “no, I’m begging you.” She didn’t do it. It was still horrible. We really did separate on our return. It’s over. And this time, it’s permanent. It was sabotage up and down the line. We were lucky to be in Rome and we looked like we were at a funeral. One day she says to me “come, I’m going to get you a present, I’m going to buy you a Venini vase,” I lost her on the way to the shop on purpose. As soon as I lost her, I ran through the streets in a panic. I couldn’t find her. The streets were filled with people. I went to the shop where we’d seen the vases, I went to Prada, I went back to the hotel I went to another possible boutique, she was nowhere, the streets were packed, I thought she had gone for a bike ride to get rid of me. It was our last day in Rome, and our last day period. I went back the hotel yet again, she still wasn’t there. I left her a message: I’m looking for you, I went here, here, and here, I’m going out again, but I’ll be back. I went to a restaurant we liked, she wasn’t there, the weather was magnificent, we weren’t taking advantage of it, we weren’t taking advantage of anything. Our trip to Rome was screwed up just like my life. The Venini, which I wanted so much, also screwed up. It was supposed to be my Christmas present. The restaurant together, sabotaged. Claude, Judith, and their child were spoiling the landscape for me, I was having nightmares, I ate breakfast feeling nauseous. I returned to the hotel, she still wasn’t there. I lay down on my bed. The sobs came. We had two beds. She came back around three thirty. I was so happy I couldn’t believe it. But it all started up again. Before the Venini, we were supposed to go to Prada, just to see, we spent the last two hours we had left, it was full of people, foreigners, Japanese people, someone addressed me in English, I did my Pierre Angot impression “I’m not English nor American,” I was an idiot, a bitch, a cunt, a beast, Elisabeth, sassy, impertinent, stupid. At the moment I insult myself all the time, ultimately my narcissism took a real hit in this whole incest story. Marie-Christine was sitting on the ground, she’d had enough. I finally bought some shoes that hurt my feet, I’ll never be able to wear them. When what I really wanted was a beautiful Venini vase, a reflection of my life if she had kept her promises from the start. So we’re not together anymore. I’m not with anyone. I don’t think it’s worth it anymore.

She doesn’t want to see me again, she told me she came close to killing herself several times. She told me she now thinks of herself first, that she has to save herself. That there were very serious consequences. It all weighs on my shoulders. At the beginning, after we broke up, I was calm and then on Saturday I had a very bad anxiety attack. With phone calls, slapping myself and screaming, countless calls to Marie-Christine. And finally calling yesterday, after all, you’d have to be completely drunk to call yesterday. I called Philippe yesterday, my half-brother. His tone was impassive, he didn’t know whom to believe, his father had spoken to him about it, he had said I was making things up. OK, fine, doesn’t matter. I’m fed up with talking about it. I’m happy the book is finished, happy. I’ve already got the opening sentence of my next book. It will be: “I’m not going to spend my time calling Philippe Angot, director of a company for spare antique auto parts.” It will be the first sentence of a very long response to an imaginary interview about art. Writing, art, what I was saying about limits, all that. Incest is the book in which I present myself as a real shit, all writers should do it at least once, after that, we’ll see. Or maybe they should do it several times, or maybe do nothing but that. Writing may only be doing that, showing one’s inner shit. Of course it isn’t. You’re ready to believe anything. Writing is not just one thing. Writing is everything. Within limits. Always. Of life, of one’s self, of the pen, of height and of weight.

Since we broke up, I’ve received two letters from Marie-Christine. It’s hard not seeing her anymore. Yesterday I had just a glimpse, she just drove me to my psychoanalyst at nine at night, for the second time that day, it was nighttime, it was cold out, I asked her if she wouldn’t mind accompanying me. I was expecting her to refuse, to save herself, she really doesn’t want to see me again at all. She agreed, came to pick me up at nine and at ten she drove me home. I’d have liked to spend a bit more time with her, but she doesn’t want to anymore, she says I put her too much at risk. I don’t know if that’s true. Everything is always my fault. You’ve got to give and take. Since the break up she wrote me two letters:

January 6, 1999 Christine One day after another; of course I’m sad alone without you it’s very hard loving someone with whom love is impossible I’m worried that this state of misery will last. I think of you so often. Everything brings me back to you to us and I can’t say us anymore MCA

January 7, 1999 Christine One day follows another, hour after hour, not thinking farther ahead than that concentrating on the moment not thinking that your body is far from mine that tonight you won’t be in my arms that I won’t go out to dinner with you, to the movies with you, on vacation with you that I won’t make love to you that I won’t see your neck your eyes I have your eyes in mine Sunday night your sad frightened eyes No idea what to do too much hope too much despair I don’t know what to do to stop thinking of you all the time Still I know that I’m supposed to go on day after day trying to start living again to start hoping again but hoping for what going where I think too much about you MCA

When I got into her car last night at nine, it was nice, there was music, it was Aznavour’s La Bohème la bohème. I was in a cozy little cockpit, but only for the duration of the drive. It was really, really, truly over.

I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. I’m not going to spend my time calling Philippe Angot, director of a company for spare antique auto parts. But I’m not going to wallow in sweetness either. So:

With Marc

I’m sixteen. Marc is thirty. He’s a friend of my mother’s, he becomes my first lover, he’s from India, a chemical engineer with Henkel. He goes to see my father, he tells him he has to stop, the sodomy, he tells me it could be dangerous for me too. He talks to my father about it. The three of us go to the movies one day, I’m staying at the hotel with Marc and my father, but not with him. But in the cinema, a science fiction movie with Charlton Heston, Soylent Green. Soylent Green. I jerk them both off at the same time because I’m sitting between them. It’s my worst memory of all. I do it so as to not reject my father, he already feels so rejected because I’m with Marc and on top of that I told the secret. He hates talking about it. I won’t be able to tell Marie-Christine, it’s too dirty. Not even in her arms. Not even if she tells me she won’t be disgusted. I made a big slip more than once. I was quoting from Les Autres. The phrase the Arab girls say “because people who write disgust almost all of them,” I write instead: because almost all people who are disgusting write.

Sodomy

It was a village in Isère. It must have happened there. He looked for a pharmacy far out of the way to get Vaseline. He found some. He didn’t look before trying, but after. I was complaining. He told me to appreciate my luck, very few men did this, it might be a rare or maybe even the only chance in my life to experience it, this sensation that certain women, that many women adore and they complain that their husbands don’t do it, nor, most of the time, do their lovers.

Stop

I asked him to stop. I told him I didn’t see any advantage and I was scared of becoming disturbed, very scared, he saw the advantages: on the contrary, this way you know it’s a man who loves you. In Isère I wore a Shetland wool turtleneck sweater I liked a lot, red and tan. He loved it too, why? Because it flattered my breasts. This sweater I loved disgusted me, I’d have preferred he just like the sweater. He took pictures.

The watch

Grenoble isn’t far away. My birthday isn’t far off either. My birthday is not a date that matters to him but we’re so close, he’s going to give me a present, we shop for it together, it’s a silver watch, with a rigid wristband also made of silver.

The clementines

He has gotten some groceries. He’s naked. We almost never leave this house in Isère. But we go on walks, he loves nature, he loves the calm, he likes to hike in the mountain and along trails. Whenever he meets anyone, he says hello clearly. It’s polite. That’s what one does. He does. I have to, too. I have to be polite. He puts clementines on his penis for me to eat. It’s disgusting, disgusting disgusting disgusting.

Food

I met him in the Strasbourg train station buffet. He had ordered choucroute. Choucroute for lunch. It’s the specialty, the station buffet’s choucroute was meant to be good. He ate a lot at lunch. People who eat a lot at lunch disgust me. They often smell after. I hate the smell of food on someone’s breath. The smell of medicine or fatigue on someone’s breath, fine, but from something they’ve eaten, revolting. The worst being: garlic, raw onion, shallots, sauces, béarnaise, chives, even meat, especially at noon. I discovered restaurants with him, good restaurants, pleasant restaurants, with stars, I know what the symbols in the Michelin guide mean, stars, forks and spoons. Red, black. I often ordered smoked salmon. I discovered frogs’ legs, with toast, grilled, hot, warm. Sometimes though the conversation dragged. And the prospect of a nap weighed on me. When I was born, he was thin, there was a period when he was fat, at the time, he was average. He looked like Jean-Louis Trintignant, a less handsome version, he had the same smile, the same teeth, not the same voice, the same mouth, the same lips, the same type. He wore same kind of sportswear.

I’m not looking to accuse him. Monsters only exist in fairy tales. I’m not looking to accuse or excuse him. Only one thing counts, the mark. He left a mark on me.

Phrases that accompanied the gestures

The week in Strasbourg when the others were away on vacation. I spend my vacation in their home, it goes badly, everyday I get yelled at. For the milk, for the keys, I remember one phrase. We’re in the marital room, “the marital bedroom,” I had suggested sleeping in Mouchi’s room, “no, the marital bedroom” said with a certain irony, a quip, a game, everything is funny. He is stretched out and I’m seated on the edge of the bed. He looks at me, I’m above him, he says “you are beautiful, very beautiful, you will be able to get yourself very handsome men.” Such a gift, such an opportunity, to have very handsome men, I’d never imagined, I’d never have dared, to go after such very handsome men. This is good news, unexpected news to me, but “you could have gone after” would be more fitting now. Because I realize that even if I could have, it’s finished now. He announces this piece of news, he’s the one who announces it, no one before him had announced it, his news is rotten. The fruit comes from dirt, it would have been a beautiful piece of fruit.

“You have very soft skin, like your mother.”

He compared the size of our breasts, me, my mother, Elisabeth, and Marianne, his mistress at the time. I was jealous of Marianne. She was a student, she was doing political science, she was young, she was free, he was in love with her, he hadn’t seen her for a while. She was an important part of his life, a student, young, free, making love to quite a few guys, including a Black man he saw her with once. Sometimes she just did it if she thought she’d “get pleasure” out of it. She could have been his daughter, I was jealous of her but not of Elisabeth, Elisabeth’s crotch smelled of “rotten fish,” he never licked her. That was something he didn’t like in general, he would tell her, he couldn’t tell her the real reason. But he told me. Another thing, the grimace she made when she came, he didn’t like seeing her face at those times. He had told her, but she started doing it again, maybe she didn’t realize what she was doing with her face, otherwise she would have paid attention. A German, a certain Brigitte, my mother remembered, me, I don’t recall her name. This German woman’s breasts, grapefruit, me, oranges, my mother, lemons, Elisabeth, oranges and not a bad figure besides, a lovely waist. And nice, above all very nice, very attentive. Stupid, but nice. Two problems, her face and her vagina. Marianne, lemons, “that can be touching, too, small breasts or no breasts at all.” I’ve had enough. One morning, with Marie-Christine, I started telling her about it all again. I told her about the clementines, the milk, the lock, she knew about it, the politeness, the complete lack of grammatical mistakes, perfect accent when speaking other languages. The rotten fish, Marianne, of whom I was jealous. The picture I had of Philippe and Mouchi, he gave it to me when I met him at fourteen. I wanted to have at least one photograph of them. Mouchi had a little tweed coat, she was smiling, one day my uncle said that Philippe looked like me. It was a big event. My mother didn’t comment on these resemblances, or didn’t notice them. I also told Marie about “you have very soft skin, like your mother,” I told her about it stroking her back gently. She left to take her dog Baya for a walk after, along the edge of the Lez, she left me alone to write before doing one or two Christmas shopping errands. We were planning on spending the 25th together. She was landing at the airport at twelve thirty. We had all of Christmas day together, Frédéric, who is coming down from Paris by train early in the morning of the 24th, will be there, my mother and André, and of course Léonore. Who, like me, has my father’s hands and feet.

I could listen to anything, with me anything was possible, the clementines and above all talking. Marie-Christine was telling me this morning “there is a kind of naïveté, anything is possible, he can do anything, he is above everything.” Perversion, Marie-Christine was saying, Lacan called it père-version, the version of the father. As soon as I met him, there was only his version, the one reference, the only right one, above the others, above all others. And the Latin, German, English, Spanish, Iberian, Czech versions, not counting slang or dialects, the Angot version. Even religion was nonsense. Phrases:

I had soft skin.

I could get myself very handsome men.

I was beautiful.

I was free.

You could talk about anything with me, it’s very rare to meet someone like me (as open).

I was intelligent.

Do you like being a woman? I didn’t care for that question. When I saw it coming, I always felt uncomfortable. Without really understanding why. The question seemed to imply “because I wouldn’t,” but maybe that wasn’t it. In any case, I gave an answer I liked even less than the question. An answer I will be ashamed of all my life. I would answer “at the moment, yes.” Next to Soylent Green it’s my worst memory.

I’ve got a hard-on, I can’t help it.

When I saw you and you were just a little baby in your crib, I wasn’t interested. You didn’t interest me. (It was hard to get his interest. Mine too.)

We looked alike. We recognized each other as in a mirror reflected from a distance. Unbelievable.

I had breasts the size of oranges.

A tight vagina, very tight, and fresh. Marianne too, hers was fresh, but maybe not as tight. She slept with a lot of men. He hoped I’d enjoy the same sexual liberty later.

The idea of a cool fountain. In the morning, at night.

Another phrase from much later:

I’m eighteen, I’m with Pierre, he’s very handsome but we haven’t been making love often for some time. I see my father one day, nothing happens, it’s tense, he interrogates me about my life, I show him a picture of Pierre, in black and white taken in a plane, he’s suntanned. I tell my father that I’m not very sensual. He doesn’t agree: that’s wrong, it’s the man’s fault, or else “one is less sensual at 18 than at 15.”

German

Learning a language was easy. In Reims I went to a school that required German as your first foreign language, I had studied English. The other students had had three years of German, me, none. It was easy. For him, Spanish, etc., grammar, good grammar, vocabulary. But there was a lesson plan, classes. No, if I learned German, if I spoke German, they couldn’t fail me on the exam for the national diploma.

He had an answer for everything. I was scared of becoming disturbed, even if the pharaohs in Egypt… but no, this way you know it’s a man who loves you.

Manners

You should have let that woman go ahead of you.

The correct expression is not par contre but en revanche.

Do not drop the negating particle.

In the country, you say hello to people you encounter.

He was an expert on manners, on grammar, on all languages, on pronunciation, on idiom. He knew a great deal. You had the impression that he knew absolutely everything in certain fields. The adret, the ubac, when to climb to the top of a mountain, when you pass someone you don’t know you greet them.

Nice

He came in through the French doors. He’s going to spend a few days and take me to Carcassonne. Going there has been one of my dreams, he was born in the area, so I have some ancestry there. I have Catalonian ancestry through his mother, a woman (who committed suicide) whom I resemble. I’ve seen her face and her profile when she was seventy, I know what I’ll look like at seventy. I will be like her. He sleeps in my bed. He penetrates me. Claude is sleeping downstairs, we have separated. One morning on awakening, I have a vision of him as a monster. I tell him, he gets angry and decides to go to Carcassonne by himself, and earlier than planned. I cry, I go to see Claude downstairs, I’m twenty-six years old. I prepare to tell him that since Nancy, it had started again. He knows, he heard during the night, the mattress made noise. Claude becomes my master. It’s finished, I won’t touch my father again, and he won’t touch me again.

I was a dog, I was looking for a master. And I’m still a dog and I’m still looking for a master. When he barks in my face, like Marie-Christine did on the phone yesterday. It’s normal, I did everything for it. I’m crazy, they’re not going to lock me up because I write and because it’s got a hold on me. Maybe I’ll try to be a monster, just like him, I’m insane, just like him, I speak my language perfectly, just like him, I’m unbearable, just like him I’m charming, maybe, just like him, I’m a brunette, just like him, I have small hands, just like him. I’m a dog, I’m looking for a master, no one wants to be my master anymore. And he, would he be willing to be my master again? Would I still know how to obey him? Would I know how to suck his old cock again right now, maybe his memory would come back. Would I still know how to give him a blow job in a confessional like I did in that church in Savoie, in the village where the houses were all roofed with flagstone? On Sunday, I was visiting some people with Marie-Christine, Patrick was joking about the prior evening when he said, quoting the movie Pédale douce, “It’s not his brains you suck.” It wasn’t his brains I was sucking. That’s how I became crazy. It’s not a very polite way of talking. I’ll finish this book the way I started it, that is in the middle of a complete breakdown, there was a calm phase in the middle, a very short one. It wasn’t his brains I was sucking. Marie-Christine, do you hear me? She doesn’t want to see me anymore, we had started to talk, she doesn’t even want to see me. We’d agreed that the solution might be for me to tell her. To tell her what I’ve suffered. But tonight, Marie-Christine, you’re leaving to spend Christmas in Paris with Nadine, you’re going to celebrate Christmas Eve, there will be twenty-five people there, me, I’ll be alone, Frédéric will come down, so I won’t be alone. We had agreed we’d celebrate on Christmas day but we broke up before that. We won’t go to Rome. We won’t spend the 25th together. You know why? Because in Savoie there was a church in the village where all the houses had flagstone roofs, in this church the Stations of the Cross were particularly beautiful and the confessional witnessed my open mouth on my father’s penis, I had to finish him off in the car, he didn’t want to ejaculate in the confessional after all. It wasn’t his brains I was sucking, do you realize, I could have had very handsome men, I could have loved Nadine’s movies, I could have spent Christmas Eve with you. Either had very handsome men or been with you. But no, you see, Marie-Christine. You’re leaving tonight, we canceled the tickets to Rome. You’re going to be with your family, I’m weeping like the dog I am, you don’t celebrate Christmas with your dog. Dogs are stupid, you can get them to suck on a plastic bone, and they’re stupid, dogs believe you. They don’t even notice what they’re sucking on. It’s horrible being a dog.