The moment the croupier says Rien ne va plus, absolute silence falls in the casino. The game becomes fate. Waiting for the wheel to stop, for the ball to come to rest on one of the numbers, you’re imprisoned, unable to act. You can’t put down any more chips, and you can’t take back any of the ones you’ve bet—whereas just a second before the croupier’s solemn pronouncement, you could still put millions into the game, or take back whatever you’d bet. But now the game is out of your hands. So, Alkis, doesn’t the same thing often happen in real life, too?
As I talked to Alkis, I watched my dog Lyn. She was sleeping, as always, at my feet. She woke, yawned, and licked my left foot.
—You know, Alkis, in my novel I describe the life we lived together, only differently. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been art. I changed our life a lot. I even switched the roles. In my book, you’re the monster and I’m the angel. I’m not the demon you knew and loved.
I made you gay, too. You remember how fascinated I was always by gay men? And it strikes me as so funny, because you’re the only straight man who ever loved me. All my friends were gay. But instead of choosing one of them to be the main character in my book, I chose you. It really excited me—in an artistic way, of course—to transform a straight man into a homosexual.
Just imagine, Alkis, at the end of my novel, Rien ne va plus, you commit suicide. As if you could ever kill yourself! It’s unthinkable, for anyone who knows you in real life. And you do something unspeakable, something you yourself would never do: you come to see me and you make love to me on the very eve of your suicide, just a few hours before you die. It’s as if I’m making love with a corpse.
You were always so good to me, so patient with me! Perhaps more than you should have been. That’s why I made you a monster in my novel, and gay. Perhaps when we were living together I secretly wished you were both.
In my novel you torment me mercilessly. Perhaps I even wished for that while we were married.
Just imagine, at the beginning of the book, it’s our wedding night, and after the ceremony and the reception, you make me go with you to a gay bar. That chapter is superb. I still have rice in my hair from the church. You start hitting on a kid who’s sitting across from you, who isn’t even good-looking. The next day he comes to our house and you make love. I watch. That day, in the book, it’s snowing, it’s February, and we’re sure the boy won’t show. The roads are impassable. We’ve just made love and are reading Proust, naked in bed.
Suddenly the doorbell rings. It’s the boy. He wanted you so badly that he walked for hours in the snow. And you want me there while you make love—otherwise, you say, you’d be bored.
Imagine, Alkis, just imagine, that I could write such things about you, so utterly foreign to who you really are.
—Why are you telling me all of this now, after two years of silence? When for two years I’ve been leaving messages on your answering machine, and you never once called me back? Alkis asked.
—I told you, I just finished my book, and I wanted us to celebrate.
—When we were married, you never told me you went to the casino. That secret life of yours hurts me even now, after two years apart.
—It’s not a big deal, I told him. Back then, I had lots of secrets from you. Big ones, little ones. I lied to you all the time. Every day I would tell you I was going for cigarettes, but I never did. Instead, I would go to a café and drink an espresso, alone.
I had another secret, too, that was much more serious: on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when your practice was open late, we had agreed that I would go by myself to the movies, remember? Well, I never went to the movies. I had three lovers. I saw one on Mondays, another on Wednesdays, and the third on Fridays.
It was sort of like the movies, though: dark rooms. The men would turn on the lights after we made love, just like an intermission. And as with characters in movies, I would forget their faces as soon as I left. Afterward, outside, I would light my first cigarette, alone at last, and with such a sense of relief, like when you step out of the theater and find yourself in the street again. Though they did give me such pleasure, especially the one on Mondays. If I’m remembering correctly, he was blond and well built. Or was it the dark-haired one on Wednesdays? I don’t remember. The only thing I remember with great precision, as if it were happening now, is that first cigarette, alone at last, as soon as I’d left the building. I never took the elevator, that’s how much of a rush I was in. I would tumble down the stairs singing La Traviata, the cigarette and lighter in my hand, and would light up as soon as I stepped into the street. What pleasure, that first drag!
I think I went to those three lovers only so I could light that first cigarette as I was leaving. I’d finished with them, as if a movie had ended.
I heard a sob from the receiver.
—Alkis, don’t cry, it wasn’t anything serious, despite the pleasure they all gave me. I only did it in order to have a secret from you, a big secret. You loved me so much that you never let me keep anything to myself, not a single thought, a single act. There wasn’t anything that was entirely mine. I could have snuck off and gone for ice cream instead. Though of course ice cream wouldn’t have given me the same pleasure, that same great pleasure, so the secret wouldn’t have been as important.
Besides, Alkis, it was all your fault. You wanted to know where I was every second of the day. You were always calling me at the apartment to make sure I hadn’t gone out. Every morning you asked what my plans were for the day. And if I told you I was going to a girlfriend’s house, you’d call to make sure I was there. Of course I’d told them all that when you called, they should say I’d just gone out for cigarettes. I never actually went to see any of them.
I told you more innocent lies, too. You might ask if I liked some vase in a shop window, and I’d say no, even if I liked it a lot.
I lied to you everywhere, constantly, from the first moment we met. Even at Aunt Louisa’s, that first Saturday, I was lying when I told you I loved the estate, and Aunt Louisa and Uncle Miltos. I only loved the twenty-seven dogs—they were the ones I went for, the ones I wanted to see.
That first time, remember? When I told you the estate was a paradise on earth? I was lying then, too. I was bored out of my mind on those Saturdays, with the TV and the kids and Aunt Louisa’s incessant prattle. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I never liked the idea of paradise anyway, it always seemed so boring.
Why did I tell so many lies? I don’t know. I only enjoyed lying to you. To everyone else I always told the truth.
Perhaps it was because those lies gave life a phantasmagorical glow. I could turn each day into fireworks, shape it however I wanted, as if I were God. And the strange thing is that you actually liked it, you knew I was lying to you, you even knew about the lovers, but you never said anything because you were afraid I would leave again. Isn’t that right, Alkis?
You liked that endless lie that glittered like a diamond, it was a gift I gave you every day. You knew, but you didn’t dare say anything, and didn’t dare transform the lie into something else, give it another dimension, the way I did.
To embellish reality with makeup, with silk and royal purple, isn’t that what we all should be doing? Beneath the life we live every day the silk and the purple are hiding, waiting for us. A person just has to dare to throw off his everyday clothes, to rip them off and to put on the silk and purple that exist, I know it. But we’re the ones who cover them up. Out of boredom, indifference, fear. Mostly fear.
So right from the first moment I met you, my lies were always the truth: in telling them I unveiled the world for you—the hidden world, the true world.
You were really the one who lied. You wanted everything to remain untouched, paradise to be paradise, and me an angel. But you made a fatal mistake: you never believed me. You never understood why I lied, that through my lies I was giving you a unique gift: the truth. You always tried to control me—out of love, of course. But is there any word more ambiguo
us than the word “love”?
Alkis, I would have preferred if you had loved me less and understood me more.
Alkis, true reality is liquid like a stream, pure and treacherous like a desert wind, real only when it’s false.
My truth was always hiding behind those lies. But perhaps you didn’t love me enough, or didn’t have the imagination, madness, or balls to become an alchemist of life like I was, to spin gold out of the boredom and emptiness that surround us.
I would have loved you then, Alkis. How much I would have loved you if you had just said: “I know you don’t go to the movies on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And I think it’s extraordinary how you transform your lovers into films, so it’s just as if you really were going to the movies, and I’m not jealous at all. But don’t you think, perhaps, that a good film is worth more than even three lovers?”
Or if you’d said: “Why don’t we make love only with each other, since I know how much pleasure I give you, and afterward, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night, we’ll go to the movies together, and choose the films carefully, as if they were your lovers, and we’ll experience them together, in our minds, you and I.”
How much I would have adored you, Alkis, if you’d said all that, how much I would have respected you, how much you would have excited me, body and soul!
But you never said anything. You knew, but didn’t dare speak, because you were scared I might leave again—and you infected me with that fear, and that’s why I left. You forced me to leave, you pushed me away.
I might be even more unhappy about our separation than you. Because I know why I left, while you never understood.
Alkis, I loved you. And you ruined everything by treating me like a liar. You were always checking up on me: where was I, who was I with, even who I was—I said, breaking into a laugh.
You know something, Alkis? Beneath all that cleverness, you’re pretty stupid. Just like reality, which you always wanted to be static, your cleverness is false, a façade, a mask for your fear.
You know something, Alkis? I hate you. Because you’re so good, and yet such a fool. You never understood anything about life. You had the audacity to think you could keep me close to you with your love.
Paradoxically, I’m the only woman who never really lied to you. I simply distorted reality in order to bring it closer to the truth. But you didn’t understand anything. Anything. And I hate you for that.
You were the one who always lied, not me. You’re the one who abandoned me. Me, I just left. So find another woman, a woman who will actually go to the salon every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for her manicures and pedicures and waxings, and who’ll lie to you constantly. You never understood me. And that’s why you don’t deserve me. But let’s stay friends. After all, friends are people who don’t really love one another. You only deserve my friendship. As for you, feel free to love me as much as you want. Since it’s not really me you love, what do I care? You love a figment of your own imagination, a veterinarian’s wife. That’s all I wanted to say. Now I have to paint my nails and try out a new brand of cigarettes, Rothmans Reds. I’m dying to try them.
I heard him sobbing into the receiver.
—Alkis, don’t cry. Do you want to come over and celebrate?
—Celebrate what? Alkis answered. We’ve been separated for two years, and I miss you more each day. Life without you bores me to death. I’m with a woman now who’s very smart and very beautiful. We have great sex. But she never says, “I’m going for cigarettes,” and goes for ice cream instead, the way you did. You—you would disappear all of a sudden, and I never knew where you’d gone. But with her, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday when I stay late at the office she really does go to the movies, not to any lovers. I always know where she is, every minute of the day. As for the phone calls, she beats me to it, she calls me at the office and says: “Alkis, from three to a quarter to five I’ll be at the salon,” “Alkis, I’ll be at the university from eight to nine”— she’s a professor of semiotics—“Alkis, I’ll be home at twenty to ten,” “I love you, Alkis” I never call to check up on her, because I know she’s telling the truth. How much I miss your lies! It hurts her that I never call. But she always beats me to it, she doesn’t leave me room to worry, to doubt. With you, I’d chase after you all day, I’d call everywhere and never find you. What pleasure! Only now do I realize how much I enjoyed that constant absence. You left me free to love you as much as I wanted, and I adored you for it. Never to know where you were—it brought tears to my eyes, tears of pain, but tears of pleasure, too, of adoration. I still adore you, my little Proust. You’re such a child, and yet so cunning, an angel and devil in one. I miss you so much, so much! Can I come over?
—Yes, I told him.
—I’m on my way. I’ve waited for this moment for two whole years.
He came with an enormous bouquet of chrysanthemums.
—But they’re the flowers of the dead, I said.
He didn’t answer.
We made love all night long. We’d never made love like that when we were married. We looked up at the full moon, and it looked down on us.
Afterward, Alkis stretched out naked on the bed and silently smoked a cigarillo, stroking my breast.
Day was breaking.
—I have to leave. I have to get ready for work. Will I see you again? he asked from the door.
—From now on, you’ll be seeing me every day, I answered.
I heard his car disappearing around the corner.
It was dawn, but the moon was still in the sky. It seemed to be hanging by a golden thread that was about to break. The sky was dark blue, like ink.
I felt an indescribable pleasure, alone in the night. The city slept, sailing on like a ship. I went into the bathroom and washed the makeup from my face with Clinique Mild soap. The blue and purple eye shadow began to run, the black mascara, the rouge on my cheeks. I looked in the mirror. I looked like a clown. I patted some Clinique Clarifying Lotion No. 2 onto my face with a cotton ball, then put on my moisturizer, Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion. My face glowed, shining, translucent. For the first time I realized that I was much prettier without makeup. I slathered my whole body with Clinique Exfoliating Cream to take off the dead cells. My skin became as soft as a baby’s. I brushed my hair a hundred times, fifty with my head bent forward and my hair touching the marble tiles, and fifty with it flipped back over my shoulders. I put on my white linen nightgown with lace at the shoulders and hem. Then I went out and sat at the round table next to the big window.
The moon was like mercury, the sky the color of some pale, metallic ink. The moon and the sky both seemed to have come right into the room, and the walls and ceiling glowed a frozen white.
I felt an indescribable pleasure, so intense that my legs trembled.
I put all the different brands of cigarettes I’d collected over the years on the large round table. Then all my body and face creams. I carefully read the directions for each cream and the percentages of nicotine and tar on the bottom of every pack of cigarettes. I lined up the creams: Clinique, Lancôme, Vichy, Estée Lauder, Prairie, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Clarins, Guerlain. Then I read the names of the cigarettes out loud, from the mildest to the strongest. I had a few brands of cigarillos, too, Silk Cut Yellows, Blues, and Purples, Les Must de Cartier, Trussardi Extra Mild. As I read the names of the strongest brands, my voice, too, acquired a new strength: Rothmans Blues, Rothmans International, Dunhill, Benson & Hedges, John Players in the flat black box, John Players in the white box with the blue sailor, gold-filtered Davidoffs. Then my voice was even stronger; I had reached the cigars: Café Crème, Partayas, Tobajara, Lonja, Rivarde.
There was one brand of cigarettes I’d never smoked before, Rothmans Reds. They had just come onto the market. I lit one ceremonially with my black lacquer Dupont lighter, a gift from Vanessa. The cigarette had an extraordinary taste, neither light nor heavy, and the smoke slid down my throat like velvet.
I put on some music, Billie Holiday.
Night and day…
Her voice flooded the room, climbed up the walls, spilled over the carpet, caressed me.
I smoked. I fixed a Bloody Mary and took it with me into the bathroom.
I poured bath oil into the tub and let the hot water run. Soon the bathroom had filled with steam.
With my finger I carefully wrote my name on the mirror, which had fogged over with fragrant mist: Louisa.
Suddenly I remembered Aunt Louisa, her lapdogs covering her like a fur coat as she came running into the yard to greet me.
I painted my nails a dark red.
45.
Louisa sank into the hot, fragrant water, still wearing her white linen nightgown.
In her right hand she held a scalpel she had stolen from Alkis’s office years earlier, because the silver handle had caught her eye.
Once in the hot water, she was about to plunge the blade deep into her veins. But she felt such pleasure at the thought of it that she almost fainted. It was an image she had carried inside her for years. She would walk down the streets and see this image—the bathroom, the razor—reflected in all the shop windows, or, if it was raining, shining on the asphalt.
An orgasm began to tremble above her like a foreign body. It moved slowly from her chest down to the tips of her toes.
She smoked her Rothmans Reds and drank her Bloody Mary, her nails dark red against the glass. Her white linen nightgown swirled in the water. Her little dog Lyn came and stretched out on the marble tiles beside the tub.
The velvety, metallic voice of Billie Holiday came from the other room. The sun had begun to rise.
Rien Ne Va Plus Page 10
