by Nelly Arcan
While you were eating out with Annie or Martine, I’d go crazy and end up in La Fontaine Park. The intense cold of winter didn’t stop me. Nothing can stop the hysteric in her rush forward, people who see her coming step aside so as not to be flattened, the Malinese found a word to designate her blind, destructive passage: amok. That winter I visited all the spots where you might have made love to Nadine in the warmth of the midsummer nights you spent together, those dark spots where you might have fucked her in the ass, making her shit one with nature, being seen only by the park’s more devoted connoisseurs. They say that voyeurs use a telescope to draw closer to couples making love, they hide behind the curtains of apartments with a view of the park, every day couples practice exhibitionism there, you told me yourself. I noted every tree behind which you might have been seen, the ones off the main path that circles the central lake whose waters reflect the boredom of families out rowing together. I wonder why those trees still do that even today, reveal to me what they should have hidden. The ability to see only into the past is part of mental illness. The day after Nadine’s message landed in your inbox, after eight months of silence, asking you to get back in touch with her, I blocked her email address. The next day you realized that, and corrected the situation by blocking my access to your computer with a password, you demanded your right to privacy. To find your password I typed in the names of every woman you knew, and in the end your computer opened its doors when I entered the name Oreo, your cat.
IN THE STORIES you told about your evenings out, you pronounced Annie’s name a little too conscientiously, I see that now, as if your mouth, tuned to the truth, was trying to say Nadine and you had to rein it in. Every psychiatrist knows that hysteria involves memory that overflows its domain and gains omniscience, they know you can remember something that never happened in the finest detail. If my grandfather were alive, he would tell me that every tree in La Fontaine Park, including the biggest, will one day be cut down because the city’s toxicity had perverted their photosynthesis and forced bud mutations, and from that the plague of plagues would spring and find its most murderous form, and threaten to carry out its purifying work in the human sphere. I believe one day the trees will be cut down, but it won’t be the hand of God, or the seed of urban decay — I’ll do the job myself.
One day you went out, leaving me crying on your bed, and I beat your cat Oreo who was calling for you with pitiful meows, I did it because I thought she should have been on my side. She should have considered my presence and understood; when faced with human suffering, the right thing is to shut up. After that, Oreo stopped pining for you, she didn’t seek out your scent on your desk chair, or wait for the tell-tale squeak of the floorboards that told of your return. She stretched out next to the window and watched me looking outside. Love didn’t move her, only fear did, she might have known that I thought you were with another woman and that my vengeance might be visited upon her, cats are like children, they instinctively know that for the sake of efficiency the big always take it out on the small. Of all the living beings in your constellation, Oreo was the most intimate witness to my despair. She wasn’t critical enough to bring me back to reason. With her, there was no need to remain within the limits of my species and project a human image, she was like me, she had no dignity left to defend.
My only occupation was dying but that didn’t affect her unduly, I could moan or play dead, bite the dust on the hardwood floor of your room, observe the efforts of an ant making its way across your books and Martine’s blown glassware that you filled with cigarette butts. I could rock back and forth for hours, slap my forehead with the palm of my hand, or take a blue pen and draw a map of the Plateau Mont-Royal on my thigh, then with a red one follow every path that could lead you to La Fontaine Park. Even with Oreo I was always alone, both of us in our own heads, thinking of you. Each time you came back from one of your nights out, you told me you were having a friendly dinner with Martine or Annie, or writing one of your stories for Le Journal at the Eldorado or the Olympico, but you could have been anywhere. The problem might not have been Martine or Annie, or even your work, it was the alibi that Martine or Annie or your work represented. In every article about infidelity in Elle Québec, psychologists discuss the effect of distance on couples but never mention that in the minds of partners in a state of doubt, geographic distance doesn’t exist, they never say that the eyes of a jealous person can reach the farthest places, no one ever says in those magazines that a jealous person’s vigilance breaks the bonds of space and time.
One day my grandfather told me that in this life, what we fear most has already happened, he said many things like that because he wanted me to be happy and that meant preparing me for the worst.
THE DAY YOU LEFT, a day that hasn’t ended for me yet, we got along the way people with nothing more to say get along. We were in your room and Martine was in hers, your cat Oreo was sleeping on your desk chair. We talked a lot that day, we said as many things as on the night we met at Nova but we were only half-listening to each other, by then we were so used to each other’s words that they had turned into a dreary chorus, maybe my tears were an interference that put too much space between our words, we’d both become selfish, you thought only of getting free and I thought only of staying by your side. We had made a pre-emptive peace through a non-aggression pact that gave us both the right to privacy. Once we separated, you had the right to be protected from my intrusions, that evening you mentioned the keys to your apartment, I could have copied them without your consent and you didn’t want me slipping in through the back door. In the future things between us would have the clarity of protocol, they would be interpreted through social norms, the economy of energy and social standing was at stake. If we bumped into each other in a bar or a restaurant on the Plateau, we would interact with the courtesy of strangers and shake each other’s hands. If you were with a woman, that didn’t mean I could talk to her and if I was alone that didn’t mean you would speak to me. That day, Josée was waiting for me across from your place in La Fontaine Park and even though she was at some distance, you were angry, she was witnessing something that didn’t concern her. I had asked her to keep watch and pick up the pieces when I left after our farewells, and she was supposed to drive. Maybe you realized later that she served the dual purpose of not having to find out whether you wanted to fuck me one last time. The same fear of an act I expected you to do, or never do, made me block your email address; since Nadine’s message the previous December, suffering always came over the Internet.
We didn’t look at each other much that day. I didn’t want my tear-stained face to be your last memory of me, and besides, you found other people’s suffering repulsive. You grasped my hands in yours, your hands echoed the iron will that you imposed on the world, the strength and control that had swept me off my feet when we met, your hands reminded me of the man who had loved me in my grandfather’s cabin. One day you noticed our fights always followed the same routine, we would leave your room and head for the door, then we kissed and returned to your room to fuck. I pointed out how you always closed your eyes when I stroked your cheek and how I opened my mouth when you grabbed me by the nape of my neck, I said we both had ready-made answers for everything, we were like interlocking pieces of a puzzle, for me that was the sign of perfect compatibility but maybe it was nothing at all, all the moments of wonder I had in my life were later belied.
Once you loved me but you didn’t like to see me cry, you thought people should keep their intimate liquids intimate, which makes sense when you think how we stuff the faces of hanging victims into bags. You said that children could cry, but in no case should they be allowed to justify themselves and if they were allowed to, it should only be after they’d gotten over their problem, you said justification leads to shrill voices, it facilitates women’s theatrical instincts, it means finding reasons for everything including base conduct, moaning, and snot, justification means tallying up past pains in a body that spreads its m
isery around, which makes the public consent by splashing around in it, justification means raising your voice or, worse, rehashing old debates, justification wasn’t part of your French attitude that involved keeping calm. That day we didn’t look at each other much and I cried a lot, instead of breaking down I wished I could have borrowed some of your European reserve as my head bent toward your shirt collar, but as always it didn’t work, I stayed on my side of the Atlantic.
At one point, in spite of myself, I made a sound that slowly grew and became ever stronger, a sound that had waited for this moment to flow forth from my years of darkness spent loving and being loved by men in a way close to illness, it covered my chest like a burn, it began as a hoarse, drawing sound, an animal cry that had nothing of a sob and ended in a true invitation to death. Suddenly everything stopped, I realized this same scene had happened the night we met, I had heard this howl before and its implacable repetition shut me up for good. You pulled away from me, most likely for the same reason, you got up abruptly and drove Oreo off your desk chair. I didn’t want to look you in the eye, so I looked at your feet. My howl had drawn a line between us that could not be crossed, by screaming I had sounded the knell of our love. You said words you had already said in other circumstances and I left, knowing we would never speak again.
Today I want you to know that in everything I’ve done since, I have put a little part of you in it, be it the Internet porn that kept me company and the Cinéma L’Amour, you should know that killing myself will be a way to cast off the weight of France that you made me carry.
WHEN WE TALKED about subjects you knew all about, you used your French accent, you talked loud and that’s why I remember everything you said. You held me by my neck and that’s why my life was fastened to your feet, that’s why on the day you left I followed. You had cosmic strength that deeply influenced the world around you but you didn’t understand that because your father studied those things. When I think of your father, I think of your mother too who brought your grandeur to term, after nine months of pregnancy during which you shattered the limits of space given to any human body, she must have suffered as you bullied your way out of her, your giant steps had too much determination, gusts of wind rose up from your feet. At the hospital the doctor and nurses had to leave the room to protect themselves, under the injunction of your gaze already dark with decision, they let you take care of yourself. Your mother was also six feet tall, in your family everyone was six feet and I wonder whether someone’s size can elevate his vision of the world, in which case you’ll have to bend over to read my words. The odds of this letter reaching you are slim since I’m not going to send it by email, I prefer a message in a bottle. Maybe another man will find it somewhere on the Plateau, maybe he’ll recognize his ex-girlfriend’s hand, old girlfriends have a way of being unwelcome.
THE END COMES when you live only to sabotage yourself, when on a sunny summer day, you suffer because the sky isn’t taking into account your state of mind. Last spring I developed a grudge against the good weather because it reminded me how well you were doing, you always did well in the spring, you’d go out every night and meet people, it was your season of love. You never knew what my zodiac sign was, you laughed at people who thought signs had influence on love or work. Those sorts of beliefs were for girls, girls had a soft spot for magic related to numbers and birthdates, as a joke you said it was because they came from Venus. If you’d known my sign, it wouldn’t have changed anything between us. Great predictions come true only centuries later, they appear only once the event is understood, ah, so that’s what it meant. When my death comes, maybe someone will read this letter as a prediction.
It took me years to understand I was part of my grandfather’s lineage. When you and I were in love, when everything was good between us, I got sick and started having visions. If I’d been a member of some other animal species, I would have been left alone to die, animals sometimes have more heart than men, they don’t search for remedies to resuscitate their dead. These days, children are used for all sorts of things, especially for carrying adult disillusionment, they’re used to develop allergies that alert their parents to the decline of their genes. My family was Catholic but my neighbours thought differently, they said in this world only the vanquished imagine other people’s defeat, my neighbours didn’t fret over life too much, they aspired to success and were interested in politics. I’m not like them, which proves that children don’t inherit anything from their neighbours; for once, a platitude is entirely true.
Only my grandfather had the right to say what he thought in the family, he had a voice and it rose above all others. When I was a child, my father would speak only in the name of his father, he would say my father this, my father that, he would raise his eyes to the sky when he spoke and we never really knew whom he might be speaking to; my father didn’t speak, he quoted.
My father was the loyal spokesman for his father until the day my grandfather decided to take over my education and bring me to his house twice a week to review my lessons in life. My grandfather watched me grow up and thought I had bad manners. They fought over my care — it was the first time my father challenged his father — but both knew who the real father was. My father gave up on me. By that time I was past the age of sitting on his lap and of no interest to him, the day he gave up, I became my grandfather’s daughter.
For five years I spent every weekend with my grandfather in his little house in the country listening to whatever he had to say, and when I’d come home to my parents, I wanted to tell my father about what my grandfather had told me but that was out of the question, my father respected the order of transmission of speech through his lineage. My grandfather would bring me to church every Sunday morning and draw attention to my absent parents. He said God had died quicker in Quebec than in Europe, he said in Europe God had lingered on in agony for centuries whereas here he went suddenly. Here, we dispatched him, and his body was still warm, the hypocritical and child-raping priests in every soap opera proved that.
At my grandfather’s place there was a laundry chute in the wooden staircase that led to the basement where he had his washer and dryer, a couch and a television, a workshop and a cord of wood to heat the house; my grandfather’s basement was a lively place. My grandmother would spend her days down there because she was always pregnant, at the time pregnant women hid in basements, it was because of their weight. In the wooden staircase that led to the basement, there was a step that could be opened with a small chain, and under it you’d drop your dirty clothes into a hole, you could pull the clothes out later through a small door under the stairs, we called that place the Cage. When I was a child it seemed big, at the time it could contain several children, my cousins and I spent a lot of time there, talking and telling each other our fears, the Cage was our private club.
Each time I went to my grandfather’s house and he left me to my own devices, I’d hide in the Cage. There, a secret life was possible, I understood you could do things hidden from other people, and that shame had its place.
One day, among the last I spent my with my grandfather, I wanted to go into the Cage, but to my surprise, my grandfather was there, silently weeping. Years later I learned that he rarely cried but when it happened he’d do it in the Cage. The day I saw my grandfather cry, the smell hit me: the Cage stank.
YOU COULDN’T UNDERSTAND my madness, it threw you off. You hated the way I trumpeted my own weakness and saw other people as sources of danger, you said they were too bright for me, and haloed in light, I had to protect myself by looking at them from a distance. At Bily Kun I usually ended up in a dark corner, I had a natural tendency to retreat, kneeling came naturally. I gave my spot to anyone who asked, at Bily Kun I would disappear every time one of your old girlfriends came and talked to you, I went into the bathroom and held my head in my hands. Cocaine helped me, it convinced me you were in the right. At one point in our story, you had enough of having to drag me out of my sullen moods, and you left m
e alone; every time I knew you were thinking about Nadine’s smile that gave her such visibility in public as everyone gathered around to watch. You said I was envious, but I was just trying to survive. To do that, cockroaches stay in the shadows, they know their ugliness is intolerable in the light.
You hated my way of always finding the worst in everything, the worst in the laughter and flirting around the table where people tried to charm each other, the worst in children’s toys whose manufacturers calculate the odds of the product bursting into flames and determine when it might explode to dampen the chances of a successful lawsuit, and the worst of the worst, when hoping to escape loneliness you have to endure the open happiness of couples walking together in the springtime. My grandfather always disapproved of lovers kissing in public, for him it was perversion, for me persecution.
You hated my pessimism that fought with your colonialism, though you liked it that my book sold well in France; it was a sign that I’d escaped the masses. You hated the way I criticized but you liked the fact that French people loved my novel. You didn’t know yet that destruction is for sale everywhere, it even pours out of books. For you writing just meant writing and not dying every day. Writing involved a well-crafted story containing information and not torture, you said your journalism was efficient and my writing noxious. For you writing meant researching on the web, it was as easy as pie. You didn’t like my book but you liked my success, for you there was no relation between the two. I was an open door for you, you put yourself in my place.
