The Fata Morgana Books

A Summer Sunday

Down below rise the two towers. They are outlined against a grey sky, mournful from suppressed light. Some trees partly obscure the second one, the one burnt from bottom to top. They stand silent as sentinels, indifferent to everything happening at their feet. The wind rustles the leaves in the trees. Trails of clouds flow lazily across the sky. It’s a summer Sunday. After a while, the sun reaches the balcony and warms face and legs. Then for a few hours you take refuge in the dark, cool interior of the apartment.

Opposite, to the left, slanting up the hill, lie the little white patches of the gravestones, a streak scattered between the houses. Above the cemetery stands a handsome dwelling, a large nineteenth century house with imposing wings and columns flanking the main door. Perhaps it was the access to the cemetery. It’s difficult to know, as no one can go up there. At night, near that house, there is a light like a fiery gap in the darkness. Again, no one knows who put it there. There are people who must know, but I don’t know those people.

Once, I visited a house not too far from that cemetery. It was also on a Sunday, around midday. B. had brought me there, to deliver a package to the residents. We had lingered on the terrace for half an hour, drinking beer with the father, while the daughter cut roses in the garden for B. We were sitting back a little, because the edge of the terrace was exposed. The town stretched out under our feet, with the two towers facing us for once, beneath a blue summer sky veering to white. A few shells were falling somewhere near the General’s Residence. We were, the father told me, a mere hundred and fifty meters from the cemetery; I found this information astonishing. Yesterday, he continued, a woman had been killed just below his house, by a shell. The day before had in fact been a very bad day, many people had been killed. But that Sunday I didn’t yet know how bad the previous day had been. It was such a beautiful weekend. On Saturday, I was having lunch in a café when the General’s Residence had been attacked a first time. A piece of shrapnel had bounced in front of my table, with a little clink, and I had run over to pick it up; I came back into the café laughing, tossing the still burning shard from hand to hand, like a roast potato fresh from the oven. Later on, toward the end of the afternoon, I went to some friends’ house for cocktails. We were drinking in the garden when rockets came screaming overhead. Several of my friends dove for cover and huddled in a ball at the foot of the rosebushes. It was very funny and we had laughed a lot. The next morning another shell exploded in the garden next door, some fifty meters away from where we had been drinking.

That Sunday, then, after the beer near the cemetery, I accompanied B. to meet our friend A. and we went out to lunch at a beautiful, somewhat isolated restaurant with a terrace only half enclosed, which allowed one to stay out in the open air without breaking police regulations too much. We had eaten slowly, all afternoon, lamb chops with an onion salad, and drank a bottle of red wine. Afterwards, B. and I shared a cigar, too dry but a great pleasure nonetheless. Then we had bought some cakes and gone over for drinks on my balcony, opposite the cemetery with the two towers at our feet. It wasn’t till the next day, reading the papers, that we realized just how bad the weekend had been. But the summer had been like that for six weeks already, and it seemed likely it would continue.

The city had been completely closed since the end of May. In fact there was one road to leave and enter, but it was dangerous. This locked-up feeling made some people nervous, but I enjoyed it. I loved the idea of being stuck here all summer, with the heat and the light, being hunted all over the city by the shrill whistle of the mortar shells and the obscene noise of their detonations. It made me enormously fragile and nailed me to that other thing I shouldn’t talk about.

That other thing, it’s impossible for me to talk about it but it’s also impossible for me not to talk about it. It ravaged my heart and ate away at my nights: in the morning, when I woke up, it filled my body and twisted it with happiness. Then I would get up, get dressed, go to my office and get on with my work with a fevered attention that would set it aside for a while. But sometimes the shelling was too heavy, impossible to work, and then between the fear and this thing a vast laziness would overwhelm me, making any effort useless. All that remained then was the balcony, the sun, books, alcohol and the little cigars I went to so much trouble to get, and sometimes also the telephone, for hours on end, a detestable, false solution, but which in the absence of her face and her body fed my anguish and sense of futility. There, I’m talking about it, when I shouldn’t. I should talk about something else. Describe things, as in the beginning of this story, describe the pale little cigar I’m smoking right now, the burnished pewter lighter set in front of me, slightly scratched by some coins I had in my pocket, the sky veering to grey. The windows in my office, in order to protect us from possible glass shards, are covered with translucent, self-adhesive plastic sheets; through these sheets, made blotchy by bubbles of air, everything is blurred. It’s unfortunate, but on the other hand there is nothing to see opposite my office, just another grey building, dirty, with very few windows intact, and shrapnel streaks across its façade. Ah, the sun has come back, graciously shedding light on that awful façade. There’s no denying it, the sun is full of kindness for the poor things of this world.

Earlier in the same notebook in which I’m writing this, I wrote a few weeks ago one or two sentences about the sunlight on B.’s neck. That was also, what a coincidence, on a Sunday (but it’s not entirely a coincidence, since I work to justify my presence here, and only the Sundays are left free for such stories). It was one of the most frighteningly painful moments I’ve known these past few years. What prevented me from kissing her, at that moment? My entire body and all my thought, so weak, were straining toward one thing only: to lay my lips on that neck, dazzling with light and whiteness. What horror. I didn’t move, I remained leaning on the rail, then we left. I could blame my natural timidity, but something tells me that would be wrong, a pathetic way out. I think it was more a matter of fear, which isn’t the same thing. Beneath that alarming light, so close to her skin, I crumbled, crucified by desire and fear, and I didn’t even call out Eli, Eli, we chatted, then we left, I picked her a flower, yet another one for the grave of my desire, and I escorted her home.

Really, I shouldn’t be talking about these things. The summer goes on, it’s far from over. One shouldn’t talk about it until afterward, long afterward. The best thing would be never to talk about it, to croak in silence and let all that disappear at the same time, all that tearing apart and that light that in the end you will see life was made of, if you don’t see it already, and if it can ever be said of a life that it was made, but if you can’t manage to be silent, at least let it come later, and let it be properly digested before you regurgitate it. The summer isn’t even over, the sirens have just started wailing, you should learn to grow yourself a skin before you play at scraping it with razors of such poor quality. So much impatience fills me with despair.

— SUMMER 1995

The Wait

So I went back to Paris and waited. It wasn’t that I enjoyed waiting, far from it. But there were certain constraints. Normally, I would have left again right away, or after a few days. I’d been offered a post in another country, a harsh and cold country, and that hadn’t displeased me, I had readily accepted. But there was a problem with the paperwork, and it wasn’t settled yet. My employers already had a man in the capital of that country and it was up to him to solve the problem; I didn’t know what he was up to. I telephoned him often, him or his assistant, and there was always an excuse, usually vague, often contradictory; as for the paperwork, nothing. This didn’t bother him, he let things follow their course. As for me, I was quietly going crazy.

It had been over a month now that I had been waiting. A month, what is that? Nothing, in some cases; the crossing of an icy marshland, in others. Had they said to me right off the bat, Look, you have to wait a month, or three, there wouldn’t have been any problem, I could have taken measures, I would have known what to do. But now the waiting was losing all form, for every day that incompetent administrator would promise me: Tomorrow, perhaps, or surely the day after tomorrow. Only the weekends gave rhythm to this infernal idleness, for on weekends offices are closed. And so I was fading away; the longer the wait, the more my substance slowly dissolved. I was having more and more trouble sleeping; at night, impossible to fall asleep; I was reduced to taking pills, something I’d never done before. And in the morning, impossible to get up, a black, crushing fatigue nailed me to the bed, sometimes till afternoon; often, I finally got up for just a few hours, before falling back asleep, exhausted, until dinner. Then insomnia would reclaim its rights.

Irritation overwhelmed my thinking and my senses; irregularity ruled over me. I drank, but even that had no consistency. When I had a bottle, I would empty it with frightening swiftness; but once it was empty, I wouldn’t buy another for days and days. I still wanted to drink, I desired it terribly, but to go out to buy another bottle was beyond me. As an excuse I dreamed up money problems, but that was just a vain pretext, good enough, though, for my paralysis. And during this time, other desires, even more ambiguous, hollowed out my body through and through. I didn’t try to satisfy them directly; but alone in my room, I toyed with them, sometimes until I drew blood.

Once, already, I had found myself in a similar state. It was certainly during another wait. But back then I was even more lost, at least I think I can say that now. In any case, either because I had more strength then, or, on the contrary, because my weakness stripped away all my defenses, I had taken things much further. This is how I had found myself one night along the city’s embankments, roaming the area where you can always run into a few suffering souls, greedy for some other whose inner emptiness could fulfill their own for a few hours, fill them with emptiness (it’s one way to see things; there are others). It was certainly a disreputable place, which after a certain time of night fell under the jurisdiction of the vice squad. Playing hard to get, in my despair, I let a few walk by; my choice, almost at random, finally fell on a young black man. I think I can say he was a nice boy; he was in any case very shy. We walked for a long time, we didn’t even touch until we reached his place. He didn’t really know what to do, I had to guide him. But he gave in readily enough to my demands. Thus I submitted my body to his, for hours. Shame, pain, nothing was enough, I was nothing more than my emptiness, and the more I thrust that young man into it, the more I let myself be invaded by his frame, his musculature, his thick but strangely pointy cock, the more this emptiness opened up, deepened, and revealed to me the gloomy reaches of its immensity. In the end, it was the flesh that weakened, stumbled. The boy, sinking into an ordinary confusion, already thought he was in love. The cold took over me, his gushing disgusted me, I disgusted myself even more. I got dressed and went out, cutting short his declarations. On the landing of his wretched room stood the toilet, but I was in too much of a hurry, too crushed with shame, I didn’t stop. This was a mistake, for an irresistible need seized me a few moments later, in the street. It wasn’t yet dawn, all the cafés on my way were closed. Somehow I reached the building where I lived. I had to use the service entrance; by a miracle, I found a toilet on the ground floor — I couldn’t take it any longer. Red, breathless with anguish, I rushed into it without even closing the door, almost too late, I let everything go. It was very unpleasant, believe me. My guts tied into knots, I stayed for a long time glued to this can, jumping at the slightest sound, terrified someone would discover me. I was sweating, there was shit everywhere. I managed to clean my pants and the edge of the toilet seat; as for my underpants, I didn’t even try, I extricated myself from them and threw them in one of the garbage cans in the courtyard, burying them beneath the trash. Trembling, emptied out, I went up to my room. So much filth suffocated me, but at the same time I desired more, I desired madly to sink into it, I lost all notion of myself, my body was overcome with madness; contorted, I was illuminated by so much horror, I wanted to start again and never stop. Sleep calmed me down a little. Some time later. . but let’s drop this silliness, that’s enough. At the time, then, that I started out talking about, I certainly hadn’t gone this far, except perhaps in dreams. The way, though, seemed very much the same. But my situation featured a few differences, probably they played their part as well. First of all, I had an aim, a specific destination, which hadn’t always been the case. What’s more, I had someone to write to. Of course, her absence, her distance didn’t improve my low spirits any. But the role of this distance in the ravings of my mind would be far more complex to define. Perhaps it contributed as well; but on the other hand, it seems to me that it might have been an attenuating factor, inasmuch as it offered my unhealthy avidity an outlet — fictive perhaps, but undeniably effective— an outlet, then, that took the form of exorbitantly expensive phone calls and especially a series of endless letters, written sometimes over the space of several days. Curiously, these letters and these calls, if they weren’t entirely devoid of a certain eroticism, remained on the whole quite chaste, and sometimes even took on a quasi-idealistic turn. Given the state I was in, this may seem strange, all the more so since, as I have said, it worked out well, in a way, for my desires. Not that there was any sort of sublimation involved, far from it. In fact, the most tender words could bring a rush of lewd images into my head, some indeed concerning my correspondent, but others, rather, figures such as the boy I had once picked up by the river. Similarly, after days that were almost calm and serene, I might end up writing horribly tormented, violent, despairing letters. In truth, all that made me and still makes me dizzy. Still, the fact remains that in this way time went by. It’s true, it went by, somehow. But it was very trying. It must be said: one day, the wait came to an end. But you can be sure it will start again.

— WINTER 1996

Between Planes

My misfortune is that there had been this contact, that a part of me had remained caught by her and had gotten me tangled up in the workings of this machine. Without that, nothing would have happened, I could have admired her, desired her calmly, and her indifference would never have touched me. It had begun during a brief visit to K —. I had met an old friend there, A., who had put me up at her place, on her sofa. C., who shared the apartment with A., had come back at four in the morning (the train, apparently, had gotten stuck), making a huge racket because she thought the door was locked, and had left again at six. During the day, I had come across her at A.’s office, overexcited, always in motion, a manic whirlwind that left no room for getting acquainted. She seemed unable to stop even for an instant. Her features were hard, but mobile, and not without beauty; and especially she had a furious energy, concentrated on work to the exclusion of all else, but capable too at times of generating bursts of lively cheerfulness that lit up those who otherwise just kept bouncing off of her or bumping against her. A. had already left, leaving me in the apartment. I would probably not have seen much of C., since I myself was supposed to leave the next day; that morning, there were riots in the city, all flights were suspended, and we stayed stuck in the apartment. In the afternoon, unable to bear it any more, C. decided to go out, and I offered to go with her; the authorities, because of the situation, had forbidden the use of vehicles; adhering to the letter if not the spirit of their instructions, we went out on foot. At the time I had a slight injury on my big toe, an injury that due to the climate and the irregularity of my way of life had degenerated into a nasty infection. So I was limping, and our journey across the city was a comic spectacle — she straight, proud, hurried, and I hobbling along, more than a little amused by the situation. Our shopping done with, as all work was out of the question for that day, we sat on the terrace of a bar on the main street for a beer. This was the first time since she had arrived in K —, she told me, that she had taken such a break. We chatted, she told me about her many trips, her stays in countries where I myself had long dreamed of going. An old comrade, whom I hadn’t seen in a year, joined us, just as surprised as us by this unexpected day off, and we traded a few memories of the country where we had met, an atrocious region, but one that had seduced us both. The beer was cold, the terrace sunny, the rioters passed by in commandeered trucks, waving green branches and chanting slogans against the new authorities. It was pleasant, I think I can say that even C. had relaxed a little, and we were both in a cheerful mood when we returned to the apartment. The state of my foot had grown worse, and it had become very painful to walk. C. offered to cut open the abscess a little in order to relieve it. I had had a few drinks, and I agreed. I settled into an armchair and lit a cigar as she set to work, my foot wedged between her thighs. Her colleague D., exhausted, had fallen asleep sitting on the sofa, and the wild laughter that the pain of the operation strangely caused me didn’t awaken her. Between fits of laughter I dragged furiously on my cigar, C. kept making me drink and scraping away at the infection; I took such a keen pleasure in this charming operation that I hardly noticed the discomfort. I put an end to it when I reached the end of my cigar. C. held my foot very tenderly, she cleaned it and bandaged it properly; D., waking, went to bed. C. and I, I think, stayed talking for a long time. Our hands sought each other, touched, played with each other, intertwined. We were still drinking, nothing else happened, the damage had already been done.

The next morning I found C. in her usual frenzy. She was leaving on a mission to the other side of the country; having already lost twenty-four hours, her natural impatience had been exacerbated, and the office resounded with her orders and her movements. I found her sitting down for a minute, thinking, and I took her hand; she was smiling, and mechanically stroked my palm. I had to leave, she was running down a hallway, also in a hurry: she kissed me quickly on the mouth and disappeared.

The airport was a complete mess. Six huge military cargo planes had landed one after the other, no one could point mine out to me; I limped furiously from one to the other, grinding my teeth in pain as the sun beat down on me, winding my way between the sacks of food and the crates of supplies being unloaded, the pickup trucks weaving across the tarmac, the furious soldiers, the lines of haggard people waited to be evacuated, I called out in Russian to the Ukrainian or Lithuanian pilots to ask their destination, they themselves often weren’t sure. I actually came close to getting on the wrong plane and landing in the wrong country. I found C. under the wing of an Endover, crouching down with two colleagues, making plans and issuing last-minute instructions. She greeted me distractedly, everything was so confused that I didn’t pay much attention to it. I climbed into the Endover; she was taking one of the big cargo planes heading west.

I had counted on seeing her the following week; but it would be over a month. The day before my return to K —, a doctor friend examined my foot and formally forbade me to travel. I was dismayed, but there was nothing to be done: the infection was far advanced, it was threatening the bone, I needed surgery right away. The country where we were didn’t have adequate infrastructure; he advised me to go to the capital of a nearby country, where there was an excellent hospital. Appalled by the idea of not being able to join C. again, I had to resign myself to it. In K —, C.’s favorite perfume had disappeared; a friend had quickly shipped me a bottle; unable to go offer it to her in person, I packed it up and, before my departure, asked her office to forward it to where she was. I added a magnificent card, a Vermeer showing a girl sitting at a table in front of a window, her face in full light, holding a glass and smiling at a proud soldier shown from behind. I found this girl’s face luminous, and I wrote a brief message on the back of the card: I tried for a charming, ironic tone, I don’t know, maybe I succeeded. I was too unsure of what was happening really to express what was overwhelming me, but I also didn’t want to seem cold, indifferent, as my letters so often are, incapable of expressing true emotions. Still in doubt, I sealed the card and handed it and the perfume over to a colleague of C.’s, who promised me they’d be forwarded.

He would not keep his promise; but then nothing would happen as planned. C. in fact still hadn’t returned to K —: this news, which had wrenched my heart when I learned it, consoled me a little now for my forced departure, and I hoped that my return from convalescence would coincide with hers. Such was not to be the case, of course. The Fates, those teases, reveled in scrambling up our movements. The operation went very well, my surgeon turned out to be an old and admirably eccentric German, who livened up the procedure by holding forth, as he cut away at me, on the history of the medical use of cocaine from 1875 to the present. I thus learned that the invention of cocaine derivatives, preserving the anesthetic properties of the product while suppressing its euphoric aspects, had been stimulated by the excessive love the greatest doctors and surgeons of the time had for this drug, a love that motivated them to empty their shelves of it in order to consume it through the nose, the veins, and even, at that time, through the eyes. This problem, quite embarrassing for the reputation of the medical profession, came to an end in 1919 with the appearance of Novocain, a distant and coarse ancestor of the miraculous molecule that now made it possible that only the unpleasant scraping sound of the scalpel carving through my flesh distracted me from the surgeon’s eloquence. I had to keep to my bed for a few days; once I was, precariously and painfully, on my feet again, I inquired about departing flights. I was booked on a Friday light for G —, the city where most of the flights leaving for K — originated. I had a lot of work to catch up on elsewhere, but I wasn’t worried about taking the not very professional liberty of adjusting my travel plans this way. I called K —: C. was neither there, nor even in the city in the West where she had stayed to work (the city of M —), but had returned to G — to report on her activities. I was delighted: I could, without any qualms, spend the weekend in her company in G —, then see to my affairs elsewhere and join her again later on. Then the people who controlled the airplanes canceled my booking: there was freight, they explained, that was more important. There were no planes before Monday, I was in despair, I knew that C. would have gone back to M — by then. For some time now, I realized, this woman had completely occupied my life, and at bottom I even delighted at the suffering that the impossibility of seeing her again caused me, so strong was the emotion. I decided to call her in G — (I was very anxious about how she would welcome such an importunate step): she seemed delighted to hear from me; her voice pierced my soul. She was leaving Saturday for K —, then from there for M —. I asked her to wait for me before going to K —, she couldn’t, but promised to meet me again a little later. “See you soon, dear child,” she said as she hung up; torn between the pleasure these words gave me and the frustration of not being able to see her again, I spent the afternoon trying every way possible to find a plane. Another organization had chartered one, I contacted a friend there, he promised to find me a seat on it; two hours later, he called me back to explain that his boss had vetoed it (I learned later on that another woman, whom I only barely knew, but who for a reason I never found out heartily detested me, had struck my name from the list). I thus spent several hours oscillating between the most violent hope and the blackest rage. I stormed, limping from one office to the other, I drove the secretaries mad with my obstinacy, I forced them to chase down leads whose uselessness was obvious, but which made them lose their time and their patience. At six in the evening, a miracle occurred: the first carrier, whom I had called back as a last resort, calmly informed me that he not only had room for me, but also for some two hundred kilos of freight that I was supposed to bring back. This was a call to action, since of course the freight wasn’t ready, the customs papers were missing, the freight forwarder was closed for the day: by eight o’clock, though, everything was in order. I had to be at the airport at six in the morning, I was there at 5:30, it didn’t open till 6:30, and at 7:00 they came to tell me that the plane had broken down and wouldn’t fly that day. My despondency was so profound that I was only barely aware of the appalling comedy of the situation. In the afternoon I called C. again: she was still leaving the next day and couldn’t delay her trip, but hearing her comforted me a little. I did indeed leave the next day. The plane was flying on to the city where I was supposed to work,there was no point for me to get out at G —, now that C. was no longer there. On the flight, I devised the mad hope of meeting her for a few minutes on the tarmac in G —, of being able to speak to her even if only for a moment, see her eyes and her smile, kiss her. Her plane, of course, had left hours earlier.

I spent a week working with my colleagues, and I planned then on returning to K —: I had in fact to settle some debts there, which justified a trip that my sense of duty would not otherwise have permitted. I had to go back through G —, the planes for K — were canceled several days in a row; but C. was still in M —, so I was patient. C.’s superior then told me that she was supposed to return to K — on Wednesday, the day of my own departure. I was happy, but terrified at the idea of another unforeseen occurrence. The plane I was supposed to take would fly on from K — to M — and then return to K —; before I learned she would be on the return trip, I had decided to make this additional journey and bring her a flower, even if only to see her for half an hour. So I modified this plan somewhat: I would get off at K —, but would still send her the flower, without telling her from whom it came, to greet her in the plane. The spitefulness of an office manager, who also seemed to hate me, nearly made me miss this plane: whereas I had booked my seat days before, my name didn’t appear on the list, and the employee in charge of boarding refused to let me get on. I must have looked quite a sight in my wretchedness, standing on the tarmac holding a big yellow flower, so incongruous in this context that I hesitated for a long time before daring to take it with me. But a friend showed up at the right moment, one who supervised the flights directly, and he put me on the plane. On board there was a Swede who was continuing on to M —: I gave him the flower, with precise instructions. The flight was horrible, we were caught for half an hour in a violent storm; I reassured myself by telling myself that such bumps must be normal for such a small plane, but when we arrived in K —, I saw that the pilots were livid. I soon came across C.’s superior, with whom I was developing a strong camaraderie; C. was supposed to arrive a few hours later.

I found her that afternoon in the offices, amazed that there hadn’t been any additional mishaps, that she hadn’t, for instance, returned to G — without stopping in K —. “So, you didn’t want to make the round trip to accompany me,” she scolded. “Ah, but I sent you a flower in my place.” She hadn’t received it, the Swede had forgotten it on the plane. She had seen it when boarding and wondered who it could be for, where it could have come from. Even for that, I was happy of the gesture. As for the perfume, she told me later, it had never been sent on to M —, but she had picked it up during her trip to G —, and it had made her very happy, these last few weeks, to be able thus to fight the abominable stench of the people she had to take care of.

She had kissed me in a friendly way when I arrived; everything, from that moment on, would become more difficult. I said so earlier, I had gone too far forward, I had too hurriedly opened a door that my instincts, in general quite good, usually kept firmly closed.

Her withdrawal, from that moment on, slowly tore me apart. In the days that followed, she remained immersed in her frantic activities; from time to time, she granted me a moment of conversation, but right away some work-related thought would distract her and she would set off again. She was at the end of her contract and was about to leave the country; she had received several offers, one, from her present employer, involving the city where I was usually posted (but that didn’t interest her at all), another to return to M — for a different organization, and still others for different countries. She couldn’t make up her mind, she discussed it with everyone, and also carried on endlessly about all the problems she had encountered in M —. At the time, wounded by her indifference, I thought I had been terribly mistaken, that I had radically misinterpreted signs that for her must have been only those of friendship; later on, I came to think that her time in M —, which had visibly exhausted her, must have touched a certain point in such a way that she, who always seemed so sure of what she was doing and of where she was going, had in fact completely lost her bearings, and now could only focus on her concrete problems, an ultimate refuge. She remained friendly; but whatever the reason, she had shifted away from the brief contact that had formed between us, and this disengagement quickly broke me apart. The hardest thing was the nights: she invited me to stay with her, she refused to let me sleep on the couch, she insisted on putting me in her room, in a separate bed. Thus, she slept a meter away from me, almost naked, and it was impossible for me to touch her. I myself was exhausted by my work of the last few months, by my disgust with the country in which I was working, by my nagging uncertainty about the usefulness of the actions I was organizing; the indifference of C., or simply her absence, finished plunging me into misery. I always drink a lot, I drank even more. I almost didn’t sleep, and every night, as I went to bed with this separation between our bodies, I felt as if I were skewering myself on a knife. I would wake up with a start, sometimes went back to sleep; in the morning, I was emptied out, exhausted, and the extremely unpleasant matters I had come to settle in K — only added to my disarray. Once my eyes were used to the darkness, at night, I could clearly see her shape; sometimes her sheet slid off, and I would gaze for a long time at her white back, her sharp little breasts. Rarely have I felt a more violent yet less physical desire: what my body sought wasn’t so much to make love with her as simply to press itself against her. I was distraught, in an extreme state, I was losing my grip; when we spoke, my conversation was often flat, tense, and it was impossible for me to express what was gnawing away at me. She too was a little ill and wasn’t sleeping well. Thus strange moments would occur that I still don’t understand. Once, I remember, caught in our respective insomnias, our eyes met, and we looked at each other for a long time, without smiling, without speaking. Another time, in a similar moment, where the loss of sleep seemed to make her suffer almost as much as me, I held my hand out from one bed to the other, and she took it until she fell back asleep. The last night of our stay in K —, she had gone to bed before me, I sat on the edge of my bed, facing her, and took her hand; overwhelmed with fatigue and sadness, I kissed that hand, I caressed it, and finally placed my head on it for a long while. I don’t know if we spoke, or if I simply surrendered to that hand. She finally took it back. Mad with suffering, almost in tears, I leaned over her and kissed her on the lips, gently. Then I went to bed. That night was as bad as the others. I can’t manage to grasp the significance of these moments when, if she wasn’t encouraging me at all, she certainly wasn’t pushing me away either. But something very strong prevented me from pushing, from provoking her to a rejection that would at least have had the merit of being clear. Perhaps she herself was in a form of despair that floated along next to mine without being able to meet it. In our conversations, she certainly didn’t imply this: she spoke only about the positive aspects of her life, or else about her concrete problems, which corresponded to her aggressive, determined character. She had a child, I haven’t mentioned that, she wanted to see him again and spoke to me passionately about him. As for her husband, he had vanished from the picture some time ago. I suspect something must have been eating away at her, something fundamental that pushed her among other things to live such an unstable life, but she must have been incapable, by her very nature, of recognizing it. That must be the great difference between us. On the last day, as I was watching her pack, she asked me some questions about me. I could only answer superficially: it seemed impossible, from her questions and her tone, for her to understand or accept true answers, even if I had been capable of formulating them. “Are you suffering?” she asked me point-blank; once again, I evaded the question. The conversation didn’t go much further and left me confused. I didn’t know if I had said too much or too little. Her reaction was illegible, once again she was elsewhere, caught up in her departure. We were all taking, along with her colleague D., a commercial flight for G —. She didn’t want to stop in G — but was forced to for administrative reasons. The boarding, at the airport, was extremely chaotic, but the flight was quick. I had hoped to take a room in the same hotel as she: one last chance, I said to myself, to resolve this story one way or another. Then, on the plane, as she was chatting away with D., despair overwhelmed me completely, I felt soiled, and I was overcome with the desire to just drop the whole thing, to leave her at the airport in G — and never to see her again, never to expose myself again to this indifference whose profound ambiguity was tearing me apart. My weakness got the upper hand, I went to that hotel: there were no more rooms. Good, I said to myself, at least that’s settled for me. We agreed to meet at eight that evening; I came, but she wasn’t there anymore. She had left a note at the reception for another man, whom she had to see for professional reasons: for me, nothing. Later that evening, I found her in a restaurant with all her colleagues. She was immersed in conversation with her boss, she barely looked at me. Taking advantage of a pause, I made a date with her for the next afternoon, for lunch. She offhandedly agreed and told me to come find her at the office. They all left soon afterwards and she barely said goodbye to me. She was far, very far away. The next day, around noon, I found her at the office with D., settling their administrative problems. She was exasperated and paid almost no attention to my presence. I waited for an hour, asking her two or three times if she planned on lunching with me: “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she replied, “I have to go back to the hotel.” I was sitting in the lobby of the office where she was with the administrator when a little black and white bird flew in. It began walking around with disjointed but calm steps, surprised at the closed door. Then it turned on a little moth that was sleeping there and attacked it with its beak. The moth struggled, but in vain, and the bird swallowed it in a cloud of scales, a fine white dust of torn off wings forming a luminous halo around its head. C. was chatting with D., they were waiting for the administrator to pay them, they were talking animatedly about incidents of their work, laughing. I sat down near them, useless. Then the administrator returned. Once again, I asked C. if she wanted to come have lunch: her answer remained vague, it was obvious that her problems had completely absorbed her, I was only disturbing her. I left with barely a word, she did nothing to hold me back. The next day, the flight that was supposed to carry me away from there was canceled because of a holiday.

— SPRING 1997

Fait Accompli

So there she had said that and already it was irreparable. For him as well as for her not being the kind of man to take that lightly. But making a decision right away was not something he was capable of, nor she. So first think, then talk. But even before thinking first not thinking, waiting, letting a little time pass, foul time, in any case there would be enough left, even if in this precise case it was objectively limited, for concrete physiological reasons making it so that a certain amount of time of no reflection and of no discussion and hence of no decision would in itself be a decision, a decision made. So not to think right away, so as not to think in the heat of the moment, but still to think, and fairly quickly, when the moment is lukewarm rather than cold. So she then on her side first not thinking and then rather quickly thinking, and he on his side as well. The other just growing. He then thinking but without knowing how she was thinking, telling himself that in any case for him it was of no importance how she thought since she is the one who did the thing, so she has only to wait, and if no decision then in fact decision, thus it’s up to him to think now. First error of reasoning perhaps but nonetheless that is how he proceeds. For him, then, two questions, that is question 1 the other or not the other, and question 2 her or not her. To these two questions four solutions, that is solution 1 him without her without the other, solution 2 him with her without the other, solution 3 him without her with the other, solution 4 him with her with the other. Now for him at this stage with the other out of the question and hence out of the question solutions 3 and 4, remain thus numbers 1 or 2, without the other with or without her, hence why not with, it wasn’t so bad, and it would be almost like before, except that in the meantime there would have been that. But here precisely there is a problem, since if for him with the other out of the question, for her without the other out of the question, of this he is certain, even without asking, her I mean. So if for her without the other out of the question, then out of the question solutions 1 and 2, remain thus numbers 3 and 4, already out of the question. So let’s start again. For him solution 4 absolutely out of the question since the chains the locked door the key thrown in the river. Solution 1 out of the question as well since for him no advantage and for her absolutely out of the question. Solution 2 given the facts and with things as they are almost ideal for him but for her the opposite. And what’s more devilishly problematic since even if he could cajole her into it through a skillful combination of feelings and blackmail there would always be that and the weight and the fault of that, a fault which given that it would be he who would have cajoled her into this solution would fall automatically on him, whether she wanted it or not, whether she said so or not, and thus it would not at all be like before, since even if there were no more other which after all would be a great relief there would be that over him and thus also in another manner the cage the locked window the key thrown in the pond, and fault and suffering as well. Thus remains solution 3, ideal neither for him since no more her nor for her since no more him, but conceivable all the same since for her the other so not that, and for him since no more her not really the other either, since the other remains with her, that goes without saying, so even if in a certain manner the other in any case not the bars the iron door the key hanging on its nail and not that either so neither fault nor suffering, except the suffering of no more her nonetheless in the long run bearable especially given the other options, likewise for her in the long run also if not right away. A solution, then, if not perfect, in any case the least worst, given the situation, hence almost elegant in its own way, given the dilemma, more in any case than solution 2, solution less worse for him as has been said, but certainly more worse for her, and no doubt more more worse for her than it would be more less worse for him, if one could measure this sort of gradation of worstness with any precision that is certainly what one would judge, hence the conclusion that solution 3 the least worst absolutely, solutions 1 and 4 being regarded as out of the question, solution 1 for her as well as for him, solution 4 for him absolutely even if for her the ideal solution henceforth known as the eating one’s cake and having it too solution. This being settled time to talk since by dint of not thinking and then thinking time is passing, foul time, and the other is growing, the foul other, isn’t he, and by the way why not the foul other, isn’t she, after all there’s no way to know, yet precisely in this case the French language with the full weight of its history settles the matter, without asking anyone’s opinion, when in doubt as in the case of mixed plurals, thus the other he and not she, a little arbitrary perhaps, but that’s the way it is, blame the French language, in English one would just write it. Talking, then, a conversation in short, like many others. Yet a conversation means a scene, no escaping convention. The conversation thus takes place in a small park, by the side of a grey pond, in the clatter of buses and trolleys passing close by, between two rows of trees among which are chestnut trees, recognizable by their eggplant-shaped leaves and especially by the chestnuts strewing the ground. It’s fall and the yellowing leaves on the trees including on the chestnut trees are falling and strewing the ground and floating on the grey water of the pond and are sent whirling by the buses and the trolleys passing close by, and as for them their sad footsteps tread on the yellow and brown leaves and a few rare chestnuts and many husks, the green ones freshly fallen and the brown ones yesterday’s or the day before yesterday’s, shaken from the chestnut branches by filthy brats who collect the chestnuts for their slingshots, hence rare, but leave the husks, hence many. No that won’t do. Let’s say then instead a subway station, for instance, at random, the Mayakovskaya station in the Moscow subway, with all along its vaulted ceiling pretty oval mosaics, planes, blimps, parachutists, young athletes bursting with Soviet health and joy, all the way down the long hall with at the very end the bust of the poet, the foul bust, the foul poet. They are walking, she with her ashamed and suffering eyes fixed on the concrete of the platform, he with his face raised to the mosaics, the fragments of colors planted between the arches, all this imaginary innocence. No that won’t do either. In fact they are sitting since thinking about this has tired them too much to walk. In a park at night on a bench with all around them bawling drunkards, or else in a restaurant next to a bluish-green aquarium, or both at once, that is from the park to the restaurant to flee the drunkards then after the meal from the restaurant to the park, what in fact do these scenic details matter, the main thing is that they are seated and talking, or else they are seated and silent, or else they are walking and talking, or else they are walking and silent, or else he is walking back and forth and is silent and she is seated and with her ashamed and suffering eyes fixed on the table is also silent, or else he is the one seated and who with his face raised to the ceiling is silent, and she who is pacing back and forth and is also silent, the same when talking, he walking she seated, or she walking and he seated. Or else another variant they write letters that they hand each other or else that they leave on a table saying There, I’ve written, read. The main thing is that they are communicating, having done with not thinking and then thinking, except when they are not communicating, but given the situation even this non-communication is one, communication I mean. The other it should be said in passing as they are discussing it or not discussing it is living its other life, five millimeters and the heart systole diastole, probably six millimeters by the time they’re done discussing it, they should hurry. So he explains to her the questions 1 and 2 and the solutions 1 2 3 and 4, number 1 presenting no interest either for her nor for him and number 4 out of the question for the reasons already stated, thus remain number 2 and number 3, yet number 2 means that and the weight and the fault of that which would not fail no matter what she says to come weigh on his shoulders, hence number 3, the least worst solution, but there surprise, since for her number 3 out of the question, if no him then no other, no other without him, that’s the way it is, thus if number 3 then that and thus number 3 is in fact number 1, no other and her without him, him without her and without the other, shit, that screws everything up, let’s start again. So if number 3 out of the question for her to the point of being the same as number 1, his 3 leading automatically as it were to her 1, and number 4 known as far as she is concerned as eating one’s cake and having it too out of the question for him since the cage the ball and chain the key thrown down the well, there remains number 2 which for the record is him with her without the other so then that, and quickly, it’s growing. But that for her horror the garbage can her on all fours and blood on the floor, no, and what’s more if him with her why not the other, what’s the difference, impertinent woman’s logic. So he explains to her the cell the locked door, she understands but the other in green fields rivers what’s to be done. No fields no rivers for the other for the other the vacuum cleaner and blood on the floor, or else yes the fields the river, but without him, solution 3 for the record, but no since if no him then no other, solution 1, on all fours the matchbox the blood on the floor, and what’s more no him, absolute woe. Remains thus number 4 known as for the record eating one’s cake and having it too. This now called a conversation. Hard under such conditions to make any progress since he having carefully analyzed it all the solutions 1 2 3 and 4 to the questions 1 and 2, elementary logic, would be fully disposed to draw the necessary conclusions, yet when he talks to her about him she talks to him about the other and when he talks to her about the other she talks to him about him, thus transforming solution 3 into solution 1 and solution 2 into solution 4, the one known as eating one’s cake and having it too, for the record even if we are repeating ourselves a bit. So she then asking him to explain once again why number 4 out of the question, why him and the other together impossible, and he explaining to her once again the bars on the window the door triple locked the key thrown in the middle of the Atlantic, and she saying But no the green fields the rivers, and he replying I don’t give a fuck about your fields and your rivers, that’s not the problem, the problem is the horror, and they thus realizing that already at bottom they couldn’t agree, for at bottom she still had hope, foul hope, that’s a quotation you will have noticed, that it would be less bad than it had been before, that toward less worse they would head and the other too, and that as bad as it might be for the other bad would always be less bad than that, the worst would be less worse than nothing, vile optimism since he for one remained firmly convinced that bad it had been and worse it would yet be, and probably even worse beyond the worst imaginable, for imagination has its limits, but the worst does not, and that this other would once again be a story of rats in a cage, shit, another quotation, enough quotations, let us resume. Thus, the horror being a given, no need to shovel more on, no need to send yet another one to the slaughter, to perpetuate thus the horror forever and ever, better to call it a day here and now. But here and now is precisely where the other is, yes, that he had understood quite well, thank you, and thus for the other not to be here and now one had to go through that, yes, that too he had understood quite well, thank you, but for him that was less worse than the cage and the key and also the rats and the slaughter for the poor mindless other with its systoles diastoles, so there you go, solution 2, but not for her, for her number 2 was the garbage can her on all fours and the other in the matchbox and the blood everywhere everywhere everywhere, all right, so let’s take it from the top, solution 3, no garbage can no her on all fours and also no cage and no key, the fields yes, everything, except him far away from all that, solution as one can see if not ideal in any case the least worst since cutting everyone’s losses, for her no blood, for him no bars, for the other rivers, only problem she won’t have it, no him then no other, that’s the way it is, stubborn bitch, goddamn it. Let’s start again. Now what does she want she wants eating one’s cake and having it too that is for the record solution 4, but that is out of the question and there is no way she can force it on him, inasmuch as small reminder the fault is hers, if there is the other when there shouldn’t have been one it’s because there was a fault, and the fault is hers and hers only, on this point everyone is in agreement, she didn’t do it on purpose but still there was a mistake and from the mistake the other, thus a fault, hers and hers only, that’s settled, let’s move on. The fault given there remain four solutions, that is number 1 number 2 number 3 and number 4 already defined above reread if you don’t remember, now number 1 being of no interest to anyone and number 4 known as eating one’s cake and having it too being out of the question for him, there remain in all good logic and we are nothing if not logical number 2 and number 3. Yet she as soon as he talks to her of the other talks to him of him and thus passes from number 3 to number 2 and as soon as he talks to her of her talks to him of the other thus passing from number 2 to number 4, which is cunning but he says no and there they go again. Solution 3 she won’t have if number 3 then number 1 the basin the blood and what’s more no him. Remains number 2 but number 2 is also that, is also the vacuum cleaner the basin the blood on the floor me on all fours my love in the garbage can my love in the matchbox the horror a situation that you will have certainly noted all sentimental questions set aside would also have the effect of transferring the fault from her to him, as indicated above, reread if you’ve forgotten, for the initial fault is hers everyone agrees on that but given the fault there is solution 4 known as eating one’s cake and having it too, and if not number 4 then number 2 with the matchbox on all fours, we’ll come back to that, number 3 out of the question for she won’t have it if number 3 then number 1, yes but he won’t have number 4, ah but that’s not the same thing oh well okay then, back to number 2, the basin the blood and all that she is willing, she says yes to the basin, but there’s nothing to be done, the fault passes to him, since fault there is since for her that means her on all fours and the blood, the horror, yes but the other for him is also the horror, the cage and the walls and the rats, ah but that’s not quite the same thing oh well okay then, it’s in your head and the matchbox that’s not in your head yes you are right I will do it then solution 2 but you must know the horror ah yes the horror and thus the fault displaced the fault mine originally but given will become your fault as a consequence and worse still since not yet given since not mandatory since there is choice since there exists another solution solution 4 as you call it known as eating your cake and having it too but I understand that you rule it out yes I understand the cage and all that yes I understand and the fault is mine thus solution 2 as you call it since not number 3 as you call it since all alone I couldn’t all alone it will also be that so from the moment that you rule out number 4 known as eating your cake and having it too as you call it it will be that the garbage can love in the garbage can blood everywhere but I will do it and I won’t blame you darling there will be no fault on you darling you just have to be sure, sure of the locked room and the key thrown down the sewer, sure of the rats in a cage and I know the quotation, sure also that something will be worse than nothing, sure of all that since if you are sure then it will be that the vacuum cleaner darling and our love in the garbage can darling and me your love on all fours in the blood trying to put back my love darling in a matchbox in me darling in my empty body so you have to be sure, sure of your call, if you aren’t there remains solution 4 known as eating your cake and having it too as you call it.

— FALL 2002