Not a Clue

by Chloé Delaume

  Miss Scarlet

  Initially, she was supposed to die. Initially, from the initial. Last name first name, first-letter acrostic, Aline Maupin, an ordinary yet certainly incurable illness crouching in the hollow of the A, an ordinary disease, why not an ornamentation-encrusted orphan. An A inlaid with acute pain, its horizontal bar set with glitzy asthma, an unsteady A from the moment it was typed on the birth certificate. A staggering A even before anyone brushed against it, its outline bearing cerebral aneurism or anything else for that matter, anything deadly, pernicious, irreversible. Last name first name, let’s get things in the right order, Maupin Aline, yes, the right order, getting things in the right order because order is important. A toxic capital-letter last name, M hiding in its crotch an irreversible accident, an accident a fall, a skid. M moment, breaking point, deviant upstroke path, violence of a frontal or stony impact in the back of the skull, it doesn’t matter. Globule evasion recorded, intimately, originally marked wrought iron soul intestinal tubing.

  Aline Maupin was supposed to die, one way or another. A swift demise, surprise mourning, leaving all who outlived her to survive the five liters of blood with a grueling butterfly stroke. Or else. An agony extending nonchalantly across leap years condemning close friends and white coat–wearing personnel to let slip an incomprehensible sigh when the encephalogram finally showed how flat she really was.

  On the brink of twenty-seven springs in other words nine thousand eight hundred twenty-eight unbirthdays, Aline Maupin was meant to rot. Rot with the determination of little bodies swollen with mischievous abandon, deliciously rot. In a satin-lined coffin, guaranteed 100 percent solid oak, with four handles, waterproof decorations, one thousand three hundred four euros. She was supposed to decay very slowly following a moving ceremony in which family, friends, relations, would have competed with tears and warmth.

  Aline Maupin was supposed to die. Die and that’s all period. How wasn’t wouldn’t won’t be the problem, the question. The only thing that matters is that in the end no. Aline Maupin was supposed to die but she woke up one day in a perfectly maintained, polished room since the facility was in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

  The first thing Aline saw was the whiteness. A trumpeting, opalescent whiteness, superimposed bleach dizziness. Then it was a sharp, thin, unknown hand, a set of tiny bones gloved in flesh so pale that the sheet seemed dirty by comparison. Imperceptible tendon shiver, the pallid spider moved one leg, then a second. At the third Aline coughed. Originally she’d wanted to shout, but you can’t always do what you want to. Her breath was rising up from too far away, her lungs had forgotten the virulent autonomy that can harpify vocal cords. Her throat had seized up in the six months that had passed, clogged with aphasic phlegm, mononucleosis silence. Ripping the veil, the hanging, tearing, raising the starched velour curtain, gutting the folds, the masterful contralto furrows, the whistling blade-sharpened la, the Valkyrie spinning propeller.

  The complex machinery she was connected to informed the medical staff that the girl in 43 must have let someone kiss her. Deep brambles, slain dragon, life surged back in puffs, wild rose flash fires setting the whole floor ablaze. Over her door the light turned red, rhythmic insistent blinking, silent hypnotic siren. It was dawn at a few dead minutes past 5:00 p.m. They were busy at her bedside, they smiled at her, probed gauged vital signs, observed that everything was fine, administered a few remedies and fluffed the pillows. The patient seemed dazed. The chief physician leaned in, murmured the usual words. The usual words, the used-up threadbare words, too worn to make a rope, a tightrope, so tight, acrobat’s lament to go back to the circus, a Barnum brouhaha of white coats in the room, the red shoes repeated Aline’s brain the red shoes hammered Aline’s brain, flaming cortex and synapses all along the launch ramp, the ringmaster announces, Aline the human cannonball sudden immediate takeoff, the red shoes whined Aline’s neuronal peat bog, I’ll contact your family concluded the white rabbit in a satiny hiccup.

  The first impression. The first impression, the very first one that Aline had of her wait-tenderized cockpit upon awaking, was excruciatingly painful. I hurt Aline said to herself. I’m suffering, and I’m saying I, yes but in fact what am I? The words trotted tiny in the little pink skull, knocking as they passed into the scalp’s oozing fat. The words bounced back, bumping into each other all the more in the chaotic lard, creamy, rancid margarine, the brain a churn with so many shards that each sentence became a thorn of incoherence.

  Something happened to me, Aline expressed to herself, petrified at the idea that the real stranger was residing more in the m and the e than in the radiating ideas in her database. Beyond its iv bandage mitten, Aline’s hand went out, quaking cartilage, on tepid reconnaissance. The skin on her face whispered its sharp, paltry secrets in braille. The circles under her eyes were painful, saturated with ancient salts and syrupy toxins. On the bridge of her nose blackhead granules. Her nostrils quivered with fear, to the touch of her phalanges her muzzle, appropriately, seemed proportionate. Perhaps even charming. She found this reassuring. She continued to investigate toward her chin pressing lightly. Her index finger lingered on her dry lips, rubbing, carrying away dead skin relics. My mouth must have stayed shut for a long time, Aline thought. Her mouth, a cloister with doors covered by prolific ivy-like chapping, hoisting up a tongue tip arduous opening. A rubbery little tongue, said Aline to herself, pinching it. A thirsty little sponge, hardened with silence, much more like carton than elastic. I pronounced words with this bitter canker-covered slab of meat, said she to herself feeling it. Although. Maybe not. It’s possible, completely possible, that her sentence was quite different.

  I certify that Aline did examine herself in this way, and, and in doing so, she remarked on a number of things to herself. I record the content. But leave the form to me. It would be harmful to the narrative to reproduce her words. Aline’s tongue is damp, soft-boiled egg slimy. Because you see Aline is a real woman. Not a fictional character. Aline always expresses herself in the cowardly vernacular, smooth phrasing, sometimes a little rough, punctuated with healthy slang and trendy terms. As the omniscient narratrix, I’m duty bound to raise the level. I do my job: I recount the external and internal facts. Please, however, do allow trustworthy me to attend to the keys and picks scattered across the sheet music. I’ll let you hear Aline’s voice soon enough. You will, Miss Maupin, be allowed to speak to your heart’s content. Time will be provided, no one needs to worry. But I’m holding off until our dear patient makes even the tiniest bit of progress in the acidic art of upstrokes as well as in her quest. Because to my mind there’s nothing more vulgar, you see, than a strict inscription of orality. Except for the use of exclamation marks, but that goes without saying.

  I pronounced words with this bitter canker-covered slab of meat, Aline therefore said to herself. It’s just that I don’t know which ones, or which eardrums they managed to slip into. Aline’s blood pressure increased. Something between a waltz and a fearful minuet crippled with riddles. Often the warmth of a summer day intoned Aline inside will make a young girl dream her heart away chanted Aline’s whole interior. Something like a fragile fluttering followed by mothball hammering pulses took hold of her being, leaving her panting, so many questions unknotting in ribbons, one two three one two three the bluish silk of the years one two three one two three lace reminiscences with the twirl of the hoop. I don’t know if I like to dance, thought Aline, her eyes dry with resignation.

  The word butter started marathon mixing again in Aline’s cerebellum. A greasier, more opaque butter in which Aline’s reason drew craters, little amber craters with wide fork stabs of mental oxidation. Slabs of word butter in which she dug a little hole a little repository in the peaks, feverishly waiting for the memories to curl up inside, eventually overflowing, melting the butter with the intense heat of the finally familiar. She would have liked, Aline would have liked, it if the word butter volcano heated up at least a bit inside her brain, making way for a sudden sound, smell, i
mage. Her tallow Pompeii existed somewhere, there will be digging to be done, Aline reassured herself, sensing that the lava wouldn’t have preserved anything. Because her own personal lava was a word coulis, a syntactical ossuary, in which the whole dictionary was piled up head to tail. Not remembering her own words, her own uttered words, was being at a loss for words after the fact.

  Nothing was left of her past. Neither the memory of far-frombeautiful things, nor the smallest fragment of her identity. She guessed her sex by shyly approaching her dark crotch, felt her grainy skin above the bony mass. Certainly female feminine, I’m sure yes, Aline said to herself. I’m sure, I’m confident. I observe I deduce I understand. I’m not a knowledge virgin. I’m too old to be a virgin anyway, thought Aline as her hand lingered over the bushy pubis.

  In her head, Aline was talking loud. In your head it’s always very easy to talk so loud you bother yourself. I’m a girl in the hospital, increased Aline’s internal volume. Alone all alone in a white hospital room, I’m a girl who doesn’t know which someone it is Aline’s internal decibels threatened to explode. A body without any title deed, that’s what had been given to Aline, a body without the blueprints, without the keys, how could she, right there and then, hand and wrist veins iv exhausted, avoid the sensation of having broken into herself illegally. She eagerly rummaged around each room, but nothing, always nothing, not a clue, not a trace, not even the tiniest bit of debris seemed familiar. Wearing out her pupils, she scrutinized the floors, corners, chipped baseboards, always nothing. Her brain remained clean, scrubbed to excess. Fresh-plastered paint-smelling insides. I used to live here, though, Aline heard echo through her vast emptiness. I lived in this body and thought in this head, but it’s like yesterday never existed.

  She took a long walk through herself, striding across her emptiness with big steps, roaming through her limbs and globules vainly searching for a fragment of the past. The body’s memory, Aline said to herself, they talk so much about the body’s memory. Looking for a scar I’m so tired but with no physical assessment just memory pain or pleasure. Aline imagined a number of lives for herself, possible combinations. She made herself the heroine of temporarily abandoned manuscripts, had some fun inventing a thousand and one nocturnal reconnecting futures. The blank page, the precarious space impregnating her for a few hours with soon-to-be discarded plots and profiles was comforting to her.

  I still don’t know if I’m pretty, Aline suddenly worried. The seconds went by as slowly as mercury dripping onto a wood floor. I must be, or I will be. What name would I like. It’s important to have a name for yourself, a name that can keep you warm. My parents chose it while they were watching a movie, or by poking a pin into a list of baby names. Maybe it was the name my mother gave her favorite doll when she was five years old. Maybe my father thought it was rather unbecoming and imposed his own choice, a family name, an adored grandmother who’d passed away too early amid crustacean tears.

  The word butter was followed by a sparkling syllable-and-capitalletter garland on which every name blossomed in Aline’s brain with renewed dew-entangled joy. I know a lot of names, Aline gushed forgetting the wait as well as the truth. She worked at holding on, arranging the leaves and petals as if when she completed her classification she’d be able to choose her favorite corolla. Julie, Charlotte, Emma, Lydie. Véra, Laura, Angélique, Aurélia, Béatrice, Sylvie. Albertine, Odile, Amélie. Or maybe even Marie. In the end Marie’s not so bad. A name for nuns and wayward hookers. Ten feet from the bed, in the wooden closet, a black mink coat patiently waited for its owner to slip it on again. And as the hanger sagged beneath the fur, Aline sighed with satisfaction, in a carriage her Marie was hurtling down the sterile hills of the great internal emptiness, leaving a few blue flowers to blossom in her wake.

  Aline wouldn’t be anyone as long as she was alone. She wasn’t anybody the whole next night. In her sleep, Aline dreamed she was blonde because of the long light strands she’d noticed lying motionless on her shoulders. She came back empty-handed for the rest: her subconscious had walled itself in, in vain she ground her nails against the cemented memories, her Pandora remained locked rough with hostility. Aline dreamed she was blonde, but she was too far away to get a glimpse. The forest was deep, the roses needed urgent painting, the dormouse stuck in the teapot and the hare furious. Thus she shortened her periods of rem sleep as quickly as possible.

  The door opened and closed three times, but she didn’t hear a thing all night long. At seven o’clock they had her drink some water. She hated the name they gave her then so much that her esophagus refused to cooperate. Aline Maupin the liquid transformed into angular rocky ground your name is Aline Maupin each swallow thistles scratching Aline Maupin mucous membrane oxygen stones hydrogen agates my name is Aline Maupin vomiting little marbles bouncing off the chin.

  At seven thirty, two aides ran a wet soapy towel along the ninety-five haggard kilos. I want to see myself it’s not time my ribs stick out so much my skin too fine a peel a linen film stretched to breaking. I want to see myself it’s not time I insist my legs solid knots branches I hear their dry wood splitting. I want to see myself I said I want I see my arms olive branches slowness decomposed movements jerking at the elbows chopping joints and my stomach how it. Mirror. The face owes it to itself to be a Polaroid, the past in sepia running off fashioning even the tiniest little wrinkles Aline whistled quietly, some tribes fear the capture of their souls in glossy photos the negatives little soul cages little freak show cages little country fair cages the bearded lady the soul cage come in come in whistled Aline way down inside, how old am I and yet I don’t see anything. An amnesiac in front of a mirror has the same reflection as a vampire. My body isn’t teaching me anything, raged Aline in d minor, I’m nothing but absence a ball of veining viscera knit together behind all this tissue. My features are regular, my deep-blue eyes would brazenly slice milky skin if they weren’t as inexpressive as a cow’s. Freckle constellation, natural without sun, easy, not a single dimple but a path, comatose stuffy-smelling under-eye circles, if tears carve out canyons my heart was a flat land. Immaculate, intact, lack of hydration on its upper layers, my skin has nothing to say nothing to confide in me. I slept for such a long time my eyelashes grew. Unless. I saw the death of the swan and my eyelids wear its agony as a decoration. Nothing’s escaping from me, airtight is the soul cage, my soul was returned to me washed, spun, pilled. Does a young child howl in pain when he sees what he is. I am worried, worse, terrified. And yet my two eyeballs remain mollusk stares, I’m looking at myself in clammy silence, my iris precious, my pupil shooting daggers. I am absence walled canine a gambling den without mystery behind all this tissue. Aline stuck in a fingernail to see. To see herself stick in a fingernail, in the fringed heart of her upper lip. A reflex or a tic or maybe the first time. The first time I’ve done it the first time I’ve watched myself do it the first time what does it mean mean to me the first time. A minuscule trench a micro swelling a pinch of redness. I’m in pain, Aline says to herself. Not a lot but a little. A little bit anyway. I’m in a bit of pain, Aline says to herself, but maybe not enough to. For ducts blocked to tears, the stimulus insufficient. My eyes never shine, there’s no way to cheat, they say the window of what is in my case a child of nothingness. I am emptiness, concludes Aline. I can precisely deduce what I inspire in anyone who meets me. And in anyone who has met me, too. There’s no way to cheat, I’m not in mourning, my eyelids would be black. I am nothingness, Aline knew. Alone you open the soul cage before you push the latch. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Aline let her face liven up to check its finery. Resting, expressive, resting. I have the whole range, squeezed out Aline’s little inner voice, you’d have to be a chalice overflowing with such vacuity to master the solfège of the positions. The day it is the name I have the body is silent but betrays itself, I learn. I am emptiness in a thin body that will soon manage to reestablish the balance of its curves. Breasts, hips: the weight of weapons. I can make out that my low
er back will be plump as it sags, emptiness always chooses its foot soldiers from behind. I also know that being woman—she hates me, being an intelligent woman—she ignores me, being a superior woman—she holds me in contempt. Men must really like me a lot, Aline exiled herself within. Her little voice couldn’t sing.

  At seven forty-five a nurse took her blood pressure, changed her ivs, and talked to her a very little bit. Her voice was trying to be gentle, but Aline could sense it was heavy with worry, mired in hierarchical recommendations, and didn’t ask a single question so as not to bother her. I’m not an orphan, the distant little voice in Aline’s very depths hesitated to rejoice, my genitors will come soon. A mother a father old keys for my damn locks lead keys a mother a crowbar a father a hatchet break apart the door that hide-and-seeks the emptiness, break down holy battering ram the door the closet Blue Beard but a headless body multiplied by seven or by the Trinity still remains shut down even after resuscitation. Does a head rolling away from the guillotine lose its blood or rather its memory first. The last memory the convict keeps, how does he keep it. I’m thinking in gulps of air, opened up Aline to swallow the pill.

  At eight o’clock they brought her two crispbreads that she dunked in some weak tea. In the morning I swallow how many sugars in single hot beverage tea coffee milk chocolate how many nothings or sweeteners in mixed hot beverage tea with milk tea with lemon coffee with milk kind and type of preparation to be determined recurring or fluctuating presence of an occasional or daily ritual with or only cold beverage fresh or concentrated juice preferred temperature single or combined citrus orange grapefruit lemon fruit and vegetable cocktail soy or nothing. Nothing at all. In the morning nothing at all or bread and butter or crispbread or pastry or cereal yogurt or Greek yogurt or bacon and eggs or everything. In the morning is that seven o’clock or eight forty-five or ten thirty or whenever I want. In the morning don’t even bother talking to me. In the morning I’m in such a delicious mood they nicknamed me the lark my pretty little lark my dear little lark it’s so nice to see you to hear you to touch you as soon as I open my eyes. Aline was chewing very slowly, letting each minuscule bite be cuddled incisors palate molars taste buds. She chewed till everything turned to liquid, vainly waiting for her madeleine moment. If seers once read the future in entrails, where is the past if it’s not in these saliva-bundled crumbs, pondered hoarse Aline. Dissecting my ex-self in bland tongue rolling, what do my memories taste like, I hope they’re compact, a little less flavorless and not so heavy. While the tea was lukewarm, she thought it was more polar than an arctic squadron, cementing her conduits just where she was expecting lubrication. An iceberg in my throat, titanicked Aline and her mistreated nerves, a crumb of memory for how many below the surface. Resuscitated, did Lazarus always have the taste of ash in his mouth, every day did he rediscover the taste of apple, or had his icicle nap anesthetized his jaw’s jubilation. Aline swallowed diligently. She swallowed each dose molasses as if her body were being fed for the first time. Do I have children. Emptiness often has children. It’s natural, it’s emptiness’s destiny do I have a husband to have children for. Emptiness reproduces in order to have something to feed on. No spontaneous generation. I’m a newborn in a vast adult body, shivered Aline, lacking assurance, a newborn with a dead memory and potentially blown circuits. Aline distinctly visualized a toaster, but was entirely unable to determine if it had belonged in her own kitchen or to an acquaintance, an advertisement or the family shelf. Maybe it was just a mental image, concluded Aline in a whisper. The head doctor had just come in.