by Tony Duvert
This scrubbing got Serge excited. He seemed hungry. At first he’d avoided getting wet again, but had then stopped caring, getting soap over himself where he pressed against Jonathan. On his skin there were round or oval patches fringed about with soap-suds, showing where their bodies had touched.
The pushing and shoving ended with water splashed all over the floor. They had to abandon the kitchen. Serge and Jonathan went up the stairs, and they wrapped themselves up in the one bath towel, the little one lying on top of the big one. The boy started his games again on the young painter’s stomach, or on his back. As Serge twisted about, their skin, moist and slippery with soap, would make contact then break apart again, making farting and sucking noises.
Calm returned after what quenches boyish passion. Now Serge would decide he was dry enough, and get down to essentials — sitting on Jonathan, head toward his feet, as if he were an armchair made for the purpose. Jonathan’s legs, pulled up a little, made up the back of the chair, his belly, sex now quiescent, made the seat. Depending on the day, Serge would lie there on his back, or curled up, or even on his stomach; the angle of the chair-back would be arranged to suit. In every case, the object was to offer Jonathan a part to be caressed as long as Serge thought fit. Invariably, the caress was a stroke of the index finger, or rather of its tip, which followed a fixed course, without pressure, and without any modification of its rhythm. The finger touched the divide of the buttocks, an inch or two above the hole, slipped along, brushed along one side of the ring, or passed teasingly over the middle, continued onward, faster, circled about the sac and then faded away. Three seconds later it began again at the top, and started on its way again. By the hundredth stroke the fine grain of the childish skin seemed to Jonathan to be raised, almost rasping, while the flesh of his finger felt flayed to the quick.
Other caresses interested Serge less, or led him on towards other things. But this stroke was sufficient to itself. Soon the boy’s erection would decline: he’d put his thumb in his mouth and shut his eyes, more still and more relaxed than if he’d been asleep. Busied with this monotonous duty, Jonathan too felt dozy, but if his finger left off for a moment, Serge’s voice would call out straight away:
‘Go on, go on.’
They had inaugurated this ritual the year before, one morning they were alone and had been sleeping naked. Serge, allowed access to the resources of a grown-up boy, had discovered the position where Jonathan could be used as a chaise-longue, and pleased that an anatomy should be so habitable, had appropriated it, graciously, but without right of appeal. Jonathan embraced the nakedness open before his face. The little caress was born among others, and Serge had picked it out, explaining, with the lewdest laugh of which he was capable:
‘It makes electricity in my bottom!’
‘We could put a bulb there,’ Jonathan suggested.
‘A bulb, eh! Go on, do it again!’
The same time had seen the beginning of the thumb-sucking and the doziness. Otherwise, in going to sleep at six years old, Serge chewed an old napkin he held gripped in his fist.
His first morning in the country, before they’d really woken up, they’d again taken up this position, with the strange perfection one sees in the movement of birds, the sleep of foxes. Jonathan experienced it as a rite of rebirth, vegetal, slow and secret in its monotony, in its forgetting of time, of acts, of images. Their other sensual intimacies were commonplace; this one owed its singularity to the repetition and hypnosis it engendered.
It wasn’t a pleasure for the evening, nor for the garden. Serge looked for it only in bed, on waking up, or after his bath.
His all-over wash, two or three times a week, was an occasion which concentrated all the ideas and extravagances inspired in him by Jonathan’s nakedness and his own. He amused himself in urinating from afar into the tin bath, and he knew how to pull back and pinch so as to obtain a jet as long and straight as from a fire hose. He wanted Jonathan to do the same; naturally modest, Jonathan pretended he hadn’t the necessary liquid.
‘You’ve only got to drink,’ the boy insisted.
‘It won’t come through straight away,’ said Jonathan. Serge aimed at the tub from the door of the kitchen, or pretended to be looking for a mouse to pee on. But they were frightened by the tumult, and there wasn’t one to be found.
They usually appeared after dinner, and their favourite stage was the top of the stove. There they nibbled whatever had been spilt from the saucepans; these half-burnt residues, which Jonathan would clean up in the morning, they found more pleasing than the little meals put on the ground, which they often left untouched. The milk curdled, the jam skinned over, the bacon sweated. Then the saucers would be found empty, as clean as if an army of rats had invaded this kitchen in Cockaigne.
Serge was not as fond of animals as one might have thought from the attention he paid to them. He was curious above all about Jonathan, about Jonathan’s space and everything in it, alive or dead.
The bedroom, for example, was a place where, if they stayed reading and watching, naked under the warm bedclothes, neither moving nor talking, they would see the mice, no, one mouse, her or her brother, making an audacious appearance, risking even the bedspread at their feet, as if it followed a necessary path, unavoidable whatever dangers it brought.
They eyed the two boys with such intelligence, with such a mixture of hesitations, twists and turns and bold advances, that instead of vermin they seemed dwarves, faery creatures, related to gnomes, elves and sprites, the whole miniature riffraff which once peopled the world, laughing behind people’s backs before playing their tricks on them. But Serge would have preferred the mouse to have appeared while he was playing with Jonathan, and he would have put the mouse just there.
It was what he’d tried to do with the rabbit, as they slept together that night. After having fun running with it on the ground, Serge took it onto the bed and put it down in the nest of his thighs; the animal didn’t even take a sniff at his sex. To tell the truth, it didn’t really want to be there, and Serge had difficulty in keeping it. But this quivering ball of fur inspired the boy to further impudence; he spread his legs and showed the little rabbit his hole, huddled the little ball against it, talking dirty as he did so. Between two shrill laughs, he felt the tickling of the furry little animal, whose skin and ears were shivering as it tried to get away.
Jonathan was troubled by Serge’s cynicism; he held back an urge to do the same thing (in a scene where Serge would be the rabbit). He would have preferred to be mistreated himself, when the child changed his toy.
For Serge, gentle and delicate in love, became pugnacious as soon as his pretty little sex was involved. He wrangled with Jonathan’s own as if it were an unbreakable rod. Serge also liked to bite. In his first year at school, several children were scared of him because of it. Sometimes he dared test Jonathan’s endurance to the blood, taking a bite at a cheek, a forearm, a nipple or a hip, where he chewed away at a fold of flesh grasped near the liver. His eyes watering with pain, Jonathan submitted to this mystery and saw in it no cruelty but that of primitive initiations, of tribal bonds and childish pacts — the more tender, should it resemble the emotion it left behind it.
Jonathan’s other source of happiness, on bathing days, was to smell in the boy’s hair the extraordinary scent of cheap shampoo, after their pleasure had been taken, and they had pulled the bedclothes round their necks, put the lamp out and drawn their heads close together for sleep.
Jonathan was watching the calendar, but the boy didn’t seem to be thinking of Barbara’s return. On the last evening, though, Jonathan said to him:
‘It’s tomorrow.’
‘What’s tomorrow?’
‘It’s tomorrow she’s coming back.’
‘Who? My mother?’
Despite himself, Jonathan was watching Serge’s face closely. But there was no sign of disappointment, of sadness, or of rebellion. The small head was shaking, doubtful and a little amused.
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br /> ‘She won’t come,’ Serge said simply, ‘she’s always late!… I bet she won’t come.’
‘Well then, the day after tomorrow.’
‘No, she won’t come. I know. She’s always changing her mind. You know that!’
‘Yes, it’s true.’
‘Well then!’
Jonathan worried about this unrealistic attitude, Serge’s naive refusal of his mother’s return. Did the child so much fear their being separated, or did he think his mother neglected him? He lived in her shadow, he was naturally attached to her. But Serge and Barbara, Serge and Jonathan were two incompatible couples — two worlds of unequal force. The child knew it: he had already lived this conflict, he knew how it would end, the only possible end. At best, he would just be abandoned a little by the one, then snatched away from the other: beaten, then comforted, to be burnt alive. Jonathan didn’t think he wanted to choose.
‘…What would be nice,’ the child went on, ‘is some frogs, because my pond is finished, we could put them in, do you know where there are any?’
‘I think I do,’ said Jonathan, ‘otherwise I know a shop that sells them, nice green ones.’
‘Oh, where’s that?’
‘No, no, in town. Listen Serge… would you like to stay here?’
Jonathan hated himself for putting this useless question. Serge would stay if his mother decided he could stay, he would go if his mother decided he would go, he would see Jonathan again if his mother said he should, he wouldn’t see Jonathan and wouldn’t love him any more if his mother decided that he wouldn’t see him and shouldn’t love him any more. It was her affair, and hers alone, and certainly a kid had nothing to do with it. But Jonathan was tormented by the child’s serenity.
‘First of all, I’m not going,’ the little one explained, ‘so I’m staying then.’
He caught Jonathan by the shirt, smiled at him and looked him in the eyes, as if to reproach him:
‘Don’t worry! I’m telling you she won’t come! Everything’s alright! If you ask me it’s nothing at all, you’ll see.’
And Serge was right. The day came, and Barbara didn’t appear. That evening, Jonathan, who’d packed the child’s suitcase quietly and ashamedly, now had to unpack it as he watched. Serge thought nothing of it.
The next day, neither mother nor any news of her. No frogs either: Jonathan was waiting, he didn’t dare leave the house.
One more day without anything, Sunday. Jonathan had asked the grocer if his son couldn’t perhaps catch two or three frogs, but the lad had no success. In any case, there weren’t any more in the lake; it had been exhausted.
Monday, at last, there was a letter from Barbara. Air-mail envelope, United States stamp. Serge’s mother was in San Francisco.
‘Perhaps for the whole summer,’ said Jonathan, summaris-ing the contents of the letter for the boy. He also read him a few motherly lines written especially for him. Serge listened care-fully, then:
‘Forget it, I don’t know how to write,’ he remarked, shrug-ging his shoulders.
…a great adventure, perhaps unforgettable… love — it’s true… — what can you say, how do you explain it?… Barbara wrote to Jonathan. There were details about the man she’d met. (That’s what she did, on the train or in the hotel.) Her trip had gone very well; after Aix, where she’d discovered this admirer, she’d found herself in Sicily and then in Greece. And then a wonderful woman had joined the wonderful couple: she ad-mired Barbara’s talent as a painter and had decided to launch her all over the world, and especially far from Europe, and she thought, on top of all this, that Barbara had an incredible gift for healing by the laying on of hands, an authentic whatever.
…the fluid… you can see how crazy it is.. I can’t explain it myself… — but it’s true… I can do anything with her… her awful migraines… a profound psychic dimension… And the invitation to California. Jonathan was struck by the absence of exclamation marks, and didn’t know what to make of it.
Vagueness about Serge. Apologies about the cost. And then some advice, unexpected and not very diplomatic. Jonathan had known her to be more clever, and this carelessness made him hope that Barbara really had fallen in love with the USA, and would stay there for a long time. Anyway, she didn’t suggest that Serge should join her, nor even that Jonathan should put the child on a plane.
…I wasn’t sure — whether you and Serge would get on — not just at the level of appearances… — I mean real communication… total understanding… it’s absolutely fundamental for a child… they have an instinct, they know when they’re really loved — I’m like that myself I can feel it about them… I get into the soul, it’s an osmosis… I was very doubtful… Perhaps I was wrong last year, I didn’t really understand, but I felt that there was too much egotism — that you were too egotistic, essentially,… when you were with him… I wondered — that’s what shocked me I think… I was wrong, I suppose, I’m sorry about that — but I’m taking a risk now — I’m putting my complete trust in you, really… But I must ask you — Respect his personality, he’s only a child… — you could stifle him, destroy him without even noticing — it’s so important — a boy… if you love him, do think about that… — let him develop as he wants to himself not the way you want… it’s him I want to rediscover in the autumn — that wonderful boy… my son… I really know who Serge is, I could tell straight away.. — but no I’m not threatening anything!… — put yourself in my place — a wonderful — terrible — situation — it’s not easy!… think… you’ll realise… you listen to him — get out of yourself indeed — but whether a man really can… difficult… — but you ought to make him… for his sake… otherwise it’s too easy… well there you are, I’m his mother, it’s ridiculous, but never mind… you can understand it but… I know your
‘Yes, until the beginning of term,’ Jonathan confirmed. ‘And she says I’ve got to make you do what you want.’
‘Her?… But what’s she doing in America?’ Serge cried out, pensive. ‘Ah! I know! She’s found a man again!’
‘That’s what she says here.’
‘Has he got lots of money? Her men are always poor.’ ‘She doesn’t mention money.’
‘Then he’s rich,’ concluded Serge.
And he laughed. But he was visibly upset, though used to being abandoned as he was to being periodically abused. (Essentially, Barbara got involved with her son when, in a mood of childish, languid, maternal and cosy femininity, she took to chastity. It would sometimes last for months; then she would start making love again, and leave Serge to his own devices.)
Besides, such freedom was beyond the boy’s imagination, like a figure in billions. He was abstracted and inactive the whole afternoon, and never for one moment did he leave Jonathan’s side.
Though old and small, the house wasn’t dirty. Jonathan respected its atmosphere. He wouldn’t have dreamt of repainting, or putting down carpets, or moving the furniture about. He simply took his place unobtrusively, here where generations had succeeded each other. The silence of these extinguished lives was more or less the only human tenderness he felt certain of. And if it pleased him, in the dim light of evening, to go slowly round one room or the other, brushing past the modest and old-fashioned furniture, listening to the sound of his feet on the floor, on the tiles, looking attentively at the shadows, the stains and the dark corners, he wasn’t moved by dreams of ancient presences, even childish ones (for half a century hunched up in the stiff bodies and ragged mourning of old age), but by the pleasure he took in this infinite absence of human beings. The house was like one of those fine shells, in whose cavity, when held to the ear, you can hear the soundof the sea. As you admire the smooth and nacreous surfaces flowing towards the interior, you don’t think of the probably shapeless mollusc, utterly repulsive when out of its shell, which secreted this mother-of-pearl and polished the plunging corridor.
To secrete, to construct, to attach, to smoothe and to arrange: this is what Jonath
an could no longer do. He had discovered a house empty and dead; he made himself comfortable, though not too much; he had adopted it. But with no desire for those distant lives that had created it; and without living his own, because it wasn’t possible.
He’d had no concrete reason for settling here, of all the places, regions, countries he had known. When time had weighed too heavy and he had looked for somewhere to go, an affectionate and mournful memory of this village had gradually come to dominate the others. With its dispersed habitations (a more concentrated group near the church and the bus-stop), it was only a hamlet, a very loose gathering of poor houses, each one closed in on itself and at a distance from the others. Like a cemetery that hadn’t been fenced in, where the graves, apart from a little nucleus of immemorial tombs, had been constructed one by one according to a law of gradual dispersal, had spilled over the prescribed limits and had gained the surrounding countryside, invading the meadows, the fields, the forests, the islands, butts and lovers’ copses, the paths along which the harvesters made their way.
There hadn’t been another house to rent. The old neighbour didn’t bother him; doubtless her secrets were no more than those of children dead and a past in ruins — Jonathan’s own secrets. He and she avoided each other.
Jonathan’s was not a gloomy character. He had little imagination. He thought little about himself. He hardly analysed himself at all; he knew himself so well he wasn’t interested any longer. The desperate mood, then, that had locked him up in here had nothing to do with him, with an illness of spirit, but with the vast illness of things outside. That’s why, too, this mood was permanent, as the world didn’t change.
As for the hours of more lively pain that Jonathan sometimes suffered, they must have been an effort by the youth in him, a last revolt, a last rejection of the evidence. Nothing worse.
It would be possible to hide away here, to get older by a year or two, without changing, without suffocating, without dying. Jonathan wouldn’t move on again. Every part of the world was as good as any other, there wasn’t anywhere a life to be lived. There remained to him only this body, this solid, affectionate, cheerful thing, pierced through and animated by every beauty of the universe; but a body uninhabited, which had to be sheltered, protected from what could make it suffer — cold, hunger, other people’s gaze. Jonathan cared for himself calmly, with a sort of domestic tenderness, as he would scrupulously have attended to a prisoner of whom he knew nothing, or an idiot, an innocent given by chance into his keeping, whom he could neither possess, nor despise, nor destroy.
