No Touching

by Ketty Rouf

  8

  The next evening Fleur and I visit Marc’s club. Near the catwalk are two little round stages, like carousels for dolls. Downstairs, there are elegant alcoves which, draped with curtains of transparent pearl beads, serve as private rooms. Fleur goes to get ready, and I follow her into a small room that’s been transformed into a dressing room. The other girls are already there. It’s only now that I notice Mélisse has a different haircut, that Poppy’s wearing extensions, that Rebecca’s got a new pair of tits. Adorned with her own nudity, she stands still in front of the mirror, gazing at herself appraisingly, and Fleur tells her distractedly that they look great. I stare at their muscled legs, excited fingers fluffing their hair and unhooking their bras and slipping off their panties and adjusting their G-strings. Their red lips and smoky dark eyelids. I try to imagine their first time on stage. Awkward young women, almost too nervous to move, sometimes tripping over their own feet, wondering, What do I do? What does it mean for a woman to be sexy? Now they know.

  Leaving them to finish getting ready, I go upstairs and find a seat near the bar. Bit by bit, the place fills up, men leaning contentedly on the counter. Poppy is the first to dance. Her smile is dazzling, her face like a pretty doll’s, her grace and elegance otherworldly. It’s as if time stands still when she’s on stage. Something inside me wants to call out, “Encore!” It worries me because I’m done with all that, and I have to remind myself of it.

  Now Fleur makes her entrance into the main room, enveloped in a long, flowing, transparent dress. I feel just as male as the men around me, my eyes just as hungry, my desire to see her naked just as strong. She comes in my direction, but before she reaches the bar a customer stands and asks her to join him at his table. I don’t like that hand grasping her forearm, that head bent toward her shoulder, that mouth already trying to kiss her neck. It makes her laugh. She pushes the man away delicately, moves the chair so she can sit across from him, legs crossed, one hand resting on her bosom. It’s enough; he understands. She’s thirsty. He takes a bottle of Dom Perignon from the ice bucket.

  Her turn on the stage finished, Poppy comes to lean on the bar with me, turning occasionally to look at a man drinking whisky. I watch her negotiate a dance with him.

  “You’ll have a good time with me, you’ll see.”

  “Yeah, but what are you gonna do that’s better than the others? Tell me. Explain it to me.”

  “I’m an experienced woman. Trust me.”

  “No, that’s not enough. I want details.”

  “Okay, look, this isn’t some Marrakesh souk. I’m not selling carpets, get it? Take it or leave it. I don’t give a fuck, okay? I’ve already bought my house with your money, all of you. Now get the hell away from me, asshole!”

  Poppy turns back to me. “Come on,” she says, “let’s go down to the dressing room, I want to change. I don’t like this dress.”

  Fleur’s already in the middle of a private dance with her customer. I catch a glimpse of her as Poppy and I pass the alcoves, her body swaying and arching, pieces of her appearing and disappearing through the curtain of pearls.

  She’s still there when I emerge from the dressing room with Poppy. Her body fragmented, Fleur is light and shadow, naked, always naked, Fleur. I know this is going to last a while, that she’s going to get a good night out of it.

  I’m dead on my feet with exhaustion, but I wait until, more than two hours later, she comes to find me at the bar, where I’ve practically taken root in my chair. She wakes me up, her giggle childlike, tipsy on happiness and champagne bubbles. She shows me the night’s earnings, proud, on the verge of crying, laughing at her own tears.

  “Stripped him bare, did you?”

  “Down to the skin, honey. He walked out of here like a plucked chicken. Tomorrow, you and I are going to have ourselves the biggest seafood feast ever; how does that sound?”

  9

  Tonight is my last night.

  “You know I really do have to go, right? I have work to finish before school starts up again.”

  Fleur gets angry, then pleading, then threatening. Feigns incomprehension, because she knows that what I truly want more than anything is never to leave her again. “Stay,” she insists. But I can’t, I must not, even though the separation is wrenching. The days Fleur and the others have left here take on the aspect of a whole series of experiences I’m about to miss out on. What a waste, to catch my train, to deprive myself of them.

  Fleur doesn’t speak much. She spends the night drinking, taking on a string of customers, making cocks hard. She comes over to check in with me after each dance: “Guess how many private dances I’ve done tonight!” She forgets everything when she drinks. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to Cassis,” she says. No, Fleur, my train is tomorrow. You can go to Cassis with the others, maybe, but I’ve got to get back to Paris. She goes away annoyed, comes back fifteen minutes, half an hour later, asks me again, “Guess how many private dances I’ve done tonight! Tomorrow I’ll take you to Cassis.”

  At closing time, I leave with Mélisse. Fleur has disappeared, gone off with a customer, maybe. I go to bed but can’t sleep, which is just as well, because I hear Fleur when she gets home, finally. I don’t ask her any questions. I know she never wants to stop, never wants to sleep, because “to sleep is to die,” she says. She presses herself against me, kissing my hair, my eyes, my mouth, my hands.

  The next morning, she comes with me to the station.

  10

  After Marseille my nights are peaceful. I sleep deeply, without nightmares. No tears when the alarm clock goes off, no diarrhea. The horizon is wide open. If the body is well, so is the mind. My sense of well-being is so palpable that I feel like I’m flying. I walk as if I were dancing.

  This is the last back-to-school before the long summer vacation, the only time of the year when I don’t want to barf up my whole life.

  Not only do I not try to miss the bus, but I even leave early so I’ll have time to savor this moment of happiness for more than eight thousand teachers in France. On our agendas, after the pages where we put an X for each day worked, after the months crossed out with a red pen, we only have to hang on for a few more weeks before the end of another school year. Every day is a last day, now.

  A few stops before the school, Wallen, Lény, and some other students get on the bus. Usually when this happens I hide behind a novel or a notebook or a magazine, a hat pulled low on my head and a forbidding look on my face, telegraphing the message, No one speak to me. But today I look up at them, and receive a shower of “Hi, Madame!”s. A few passengers turn to look at these students, who always delight in being noticed, in making a point of their presence in the world. We’re here, and we exist, and we need you to know it.

  Wallen approaches me. “What’re we doing today, Madame? Can we study? I mean, we’re done with the syllabus, so . . .”

  “No, we’re not quite done with it yet. It’s your responsibility to study on your own time, young lady.”

  Wallen looks crestfallen, but we’ve already reached our stop. I watch them jostling and tumbling off the bus, coming perilously close to knocking a frail old lady off her wobbly feet and almost taking one of the bus doors with them. Lény was holding one of the sliding doors when Wallen grabbed the sleeve of his faded jacket. The doors finally close after two or three clacking tries. But I haven’t budged. Still firmly planted in my seat, I give them a little smile out the window, watching their shocked little faces, suddenly very childlike in their astonishment. I can almost hear the confused words swirling around in their minds: What’s she doing? Where is she going? The bus pulls away, and they follow it with their eyes, standing motionless beneath the little shelter, suddenly lost. I want to wave to them, Au revoir les enfants. I just want to walk a bit, that’s all. I get off the bus after two more stops. Coming back, I spot Wallen, still sitting in the shelter. She gets up when she sees me and runs toward th
e school entrance.

  In class a few hours later, I’m handing out fact sheets to help the students study for their exams. Wallen almost literally jumps for joy.

  “I knew you wouldn’t just abandon us, Madame! I knew it!”

  Hadrien has carefully organized all his class notes, the papers neatly stacked. I spot certain words underlined in green. He closes his binder as I approach. My heart leaps. I know he doesn’t usually spend a lot of time on his notebooks. Hadrien drops his gaze and elbows Lény, who is wrapping adhesive tape around his fingers. It crinkles, and the class snickers. A paper plane lands on Lény’s seat. It’s one of the sheets I just handed out. It’s started again, the exasperation, the inevitable migraine. I remember my teacher-training instructor’s advice: You can also pretend not to see or hear. Deafness, muteness, blindness—all strong points for becoming a good teacher. Well, my teaching authority may be all but nonexistent, but I’m not deaf, or mute, or blind. The words come out involuntarily. I don’t want to pretend anymore.

  “I wouldn’t crack up like that if I were you. Sitting there on those benches you’ve ruined with your filthy little carvings. You’re shooting yourselves in the foot.”

  Wallen looks up and puts away her nail file. Lény, who’s gotten to the end of the roll of adhesive tape, stops fidgeting in his chair. The hum of background noise grows softer. Hadrien takes a deep breath and lets out a long, forceful “Shhhhh!” His face darkening, he leans his elbows on his desk, fixing me with an uneasy, penetrating gaze.

  “Everyone thinks you’re idiots. The Board of Education, this institution, my colleagues. And everything’s set up so you’ll stay idiots. Haven’t you wondered why they keep streamlining the curriculum? Doesn’t that make you think? I’ll tell you why it’s happening. Because they want to give you less, and less and less, to make your parents, and the public out there, and the whole world think that you can adapt well and quickly. That you’re all very intelligent. But in reality you’re being dragged down, because they need you to be ignorant and unable to think in any deep or complex way. That’s why you should be weeping and wailing and begging us on your knees every single day to teach you history, and literature, and grammar and syntax—begging us to give you whole books to read, to treat you like real students whom we require to be silent, take notes, have some discipline, and make an effort!”

  For once, my voice is the only sound in this room, which is never silent except at night or during vacations, when the whole school is deserted. Maybe it’s my emotion, the sudden uncontrollable impulse that has seized me, the overwhelming sense of powerlessness and frustration, all my pain as a teacher concentrated into this single outburst, but I think I see tears in Hadrien’s eyes, like something in him is breaking, or being reborn. I hear the silence of the others, their presence, their straining ears, their guilty faces. I see their dismay. Some of them look contemplative, eyes fixed on the notebooks they’ve taken out. Others sit up ramrod straight.

  “Okay. You’re going to read the study sheets I’ve put together for you. We’ll go into more depth with them next time, so think of some questions. Take the time to reflect.”

  I end the class in silence. For the first time, the students put away their things quietly when the bell rings, and file out calmly. Thirty-three kids say, “Bye, Madame, thank you.”

  I’m drained. I head for the computer room. It’s been weeks, if not months, since I checked my professional e-mail account. I hate doing it, too. Whenever I connect to I-Prof, I feel like I’ve suddenly lost the ability to read. I click on my inbox. I log out. I put the computer in sleep mode. My brain, too. The news of my transfer is so unfathomable that I don’t believe it at all. There must be some mistake, that’s the only explanation, a glitch in the computer system; they happen so much. I look in my pigeonhole, sure I’m going to have a letter from the ministry notifying me of the error.

  11

  He’s waiting for me at the far end of the square, under the weeping willow, facing the Pont-Neuf. I slow my pace in my stilettos; I want to put my elegance on show for him. He’s never seen me in high heels. Dressed in black, he’s smoking a cigarette, his other hand clutching a copy of Descartes’ Metaphysical Meditations to him. I smile, thinking of the first time Martin made me laugh, with an outrageous story about King Henri IV—nicknamed the Green Gallant for his womanizing—and male weakness. “I don’t understand men who cheat,” he often says. I find it funny.

  He tosses away the cigarette and hands me the book.

  “Fascinating stuff. Mind-boggling. But I prefer literature. I don’t think I would have made a good philosopher. I find the pure concept aggressive. Powerful, certainly, but, at bottom, terrifying.”

  “I like the way you attribute souls to things that don’t have them. You’re right, though; the concept is terrifying.”

  I come closer, and arm in arm, we walk toward the outlet of the square. I offload the usual complaints.

  “I’m just totally worn out; I can’t even enjoy the end of the year anymore, because I know it’s only going to start all over again. I feel like the world is crashing down, like my life’s at a dead end. Another school year, coming for me like the Grim Reaper, and all I want is to get the hell out. I hardly slept last night. The thought of next September makes me feel sick, like I’m a lamb being led to the slaughter.”

  I want to tell him everything, confess my escape and the relief of it. The night, and all the rest. Sometimes I feel like he’s always known.

  “Yeah, me too. And the fact that in a few months we’ll be back, hardly able to hold our heads up, with a whole new bag full of nightmares, a smiling hive of worker-bees of the mind. The worst part of it, Jo, is that, for way too long now, I haven’t felt like we’re on vacation even when we are. Work isn’t work anymore, time off isn’t time off; it’s all blurred together. There’s no more intellectual tension, and so it’s not even a relief anymore when it ends. It’s like the apocalypse; nobody wants to do this job anymore, it makes you ill. Depressed. And next year, our dear old principal—I’ve heard this from a reliable source—is going to find new hires by posting classified ads online. You must be really pleased, though, with your new gig . . .”

  “You found out? I was going to tell you today!”

  “News like that travels fast.”

  The e-mail I didn’t dare to believe had turned out to be true. I called the Board of Education, and they confirmed it. I’m being transferred. The thing is, I don’t have enough points for this particular transfer; that’s why I was so skeptical. I’m being transferred to the Lycée Jean-de-la-Fontaine in the 16th arrondissement, Paris. What luxury. It’s better than winning the lottery. Sometimes it’s when you stop hoping for something that it happens.

  Martin has reserved a table on the terrace at a place on the rue de Buci. Hopefully the red wine we order will pull me out of the state of inertia I’ve been in since the transfer news. I’d stopped believing it would ever happen, and now it’s fallen into my lap. What am I going to do? I have to go, in any case. The State requires me to; I’m a civil servant. I’ve just been promoted. I’m going to be teaching khâgne and hypokhâgne, the advanced placement and university-level classes. I’ll be among the elite, one of the grunt teachers transformed at last (because of the higher pay grade) into a respected civil servant, picked out through the process of so-called natural selection to teach the Holy Grail of educational programs, one in which the kids, those privileged kids, listen, take notes, do the work, and respect the teachers who are their transitional guides to certain success. Another glass, please. I’m such an ingrate, getting plastered, unworthy of so much good fortune. I should be over the moon, and I can’t even bring myself to care. My thoughts swirl in a muddy haze of alcohol and new emotion. I imagine telling Fleur. Who knows what she’s doing at this moment? She didn’t answer my last text.

  Martin’s eyes are very bright, like mine. This is the first time I’v
e ever seen him knocking back one glass of wine after another, drinking hurriedly, anxious to be carried away somewhere: doesn’t matter where, just somewhere far away. At the same time, I can feel Rose Lee creeping in, into the hand I run through my hair, the legs I cross and squeeze together hard, as if to prevent the possible explosion. I have to hold her back, to stop this woman whose gaze can turn any man into a king. Martin thinks he hears the summons, strokes my hand, leans closer. I let him do it, but I don’t react. He starts speaking then, as if the words might complement his actions, or maybe downplay them.

  “When I think of what I heard about you—it’s stupid. So stupid that I’ve never even wanted to mention it to you.”

  “About me? What do you mean?”

  “It was months ago now. Time to move on, right? And anyway, it was just a flash in the pan, some student’s idiocy that never went anywhere. Just pointless gossip.”

  I withdraw my hand from beneath his.

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s ridiculous, Jo!”

  “Make me laugh, then.”

  “Okay, but I warned you, it’s stupid. Kevin, who was in my class last year—he’s friends with one of your students, and I more or less surprised them in the middle of a conversation, you know sometimes I like to play basketball with them—anyway, this Kevin thought he’d seen you in a strip club. You, a stripper! Can you imagine?”

  “That’s pretty crazy, yeah. What did the other one say? The other kid?”

  “Oh, your student just laughed. I think I remember him saying you couldn’t dance because of some big problem with your knee, or your back, I can’t remember. Is that true, Jo? What’s the matter?”