Ordinary Whore

by Dieter Moitzi

  I wanted to open it right then and there, but she protested. “I don’t want to know. If the clowns come back and ask me about it, at least I can tell them truthfully that I don’t have the foggiest.”

  “Why would Father leave the bag with you?” I asked.

  Aunt Juliette shrugged. “He didn’t trust your sisters, is what I understood.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask me questions I don’t have answers to. He just said that you were the only one in the family who would know what to do with it. Said you were the only one who wasn’t selfish.”

  “But I’m…”

  “Self-centred, yes. That’s plain to see. But self-centred and selfish are not the same thing.”

  Before I left, Aunt Juliette said, “Listen, Marc. Your father warned me, and I can see he was right. You’re naive. Very naive. You need to man up. You’re not a child anymore. Don’t bury your head in the sand. Face reality.”

  And here I am now, trying to do exactly that. More or less.

  Or am I running away again? Frankly, I don’t see the difference anymore.

  What I do know—I don’t feel like going home at once, even if “at once” would mean driving back to Charleville-Mézières, then taking a train. In fact, I thought I would stay with my aunt for a couple of days. That’s why I rented the car for more than twenty-four hours. I didn’t count on an unwholesome alliance of Eastern European and US-American “clowns” threatening the old lady. I didn’t think I would only be granted a brief audience, then more or less thrown out.

  When I reach Sedan, I don’t hesitate and drive on due south on a secondary road. By now the sunlight has chased away the last clouds, inundating the fields left and right.

  Again and again, I think of my aunt. Her stern features, her brisk, hard diction, her solitude in that big house surrounded by the whispering forest. Her expression when she talked about Father. She didn’t really soften, but her face showed… pity. Pity and regret.

  What she told me was so stunning, so unexpected that without interrupting I let her deliver the monologue she must have been preparing ever since my father appeared on her doorstep. I still don’t know what to make of it. I still can’t seem to get to terms with the change in my own vision of that man.

  My father… who never wanted to get too close to his children for fear of turning out to be as violent as his own father had been. Who suffered all his life from separating himself from us deliberately, for our protection.

  This echoes Jane’s assertions in such a strange way… Father protecting us, protecting me…

  And Raphaëlle, Angélique, and I never knew, never understood. Up to the point that I believed since I was ten that my father had allowed a dirty old man in Normandy to lay his dirty old fingers on my body and taint me, soil me. I believed my own father capable of watching my ordeal and enjoying it and even taking photos.

  But if my aunt can be believed, which means if my father can be believed, he only found out about that ghastly experience much later.

  All of a sudden, while I’m driving, the memories sneak back into my mind. They stretch tentatively at first like vampires locked up for too long in too small a coffin. Then they step forward, determined, inescapable, dark silhouettes standing there and demanding to be acknowledged.

  I can see it all again. The three of us—my father, the old vicomte, and I—sitting around the vast, polished table having dinner. The trickling conversation between the two men, which felt like the murmured exchange of unintelligible secrets to me. The smells of rain and dust and decay and roast beef. The dark red wine in the adults’ crystal glasses. My father getting tipsy and withdrawing early.

  I had almost forgotten about that detail. My father hadn’t. He told my aunt that he had had only two glasses and had suddenly felt heavy and tired. Up to his death he had been asking himself if he had been drugged or not.

  As soon as he had disappeared, the old vicomte led me down a corridor full of flickering lights and tricky penumbras. We entered a library. A fire was crackling in one corner.

  With a groan, the old man sat down on an armchair and beckoned me closer. I stopped two feet from him, but he reached out with a clammy hand and pulled me closer still.

  Memories are strange things. Sometimes they only brush against you with the sweet delicacy of abstraction, suggesting blurry sepia-tinted images.

  And sometimes, inexplicably, they flood you with the force of a tsunami, bringing back tangible scents and sounds and tastes, sharp if chopped-up visions, prickling sensations on your skin. We are sensual animals, after all.

  Here they come, those memories I tried to lock away…

  Rapid breathing that smells of wine, and the tang of sweat wetting armpits, and musk rising from a crotch.

  The glimpse of light dancing over wooden bookshelves, thousands of spines blindly gazing down from deep shadows.

  Hoarse words, croaky and thick with layers of lust—come here be nice to me you know you want it too you’re so beautiful so handsome so soft so sweet… Moans and groans and the ceaseless tick-tock of grandfather clocks.

  The vice-like grip of trembling fingers on my wrist. The dry skin. The bristly white body hair.

  The salty taste of unflowing tears and semen.

  The shame that my body was betraying me, reacting unwillingly to the groping fingers of a contemptible man.

  And then the guilt. What a powerful emotion, guilt. For centuries it has been tolled across our countries by countless church bells, a message so essential for those in power that it took those metal behemoths to drive it home with sufficient force. We’ve been ruled by guilt. And fear.

  Maybe we still are.

  I clench my hands on the steering wheel, fighting the sudden urge to wash them, cleanse them, scratch them to rid myself of the sensation of slime and grime that the memories bring up. That movement and the vision of my white knuckles on the black plastic ring allow me to raise the mental dams that keep the overflow at bay.

  Oddly enough I never wondered why I didn’t see the vicomte’s son back then although he was said to be in the château.

  Well, he saw me. Saw me through the lens of a camera. Me and his father, the victim of whose unwholesome attentions he had been for years, it seems.

  At least that’s what he told my father, later, when he brought him the photos and asked him for a little favour. Blackmailing him, in other words.

  Just the way I had done.

  And I had been so wrong, so wrong…

  More guilt, more shame.

  I focus on the meandering road. There’s a longer straight stretch, so I reach over and switch on the radio. Someone, probably the previous client, left it tuned into Radio Classique. I catch the last minute of a piano tune; a Liszt piece if I’m not mistaken. Then a soothing woman’s voice announces Bruckner’s 7th symphony.

  I let myself drown in the smooth, wide-spanned, almost dreamy first theme, keeping thoughts and emotions at bay. The music is like a maelstrom, reaching peaks that remain suspended in the air for a second before a sudden change of tone and theme intervenes, keeping things floating, unresolved. It’s swell after swell after swell, sometimes so majestic and painful that I almost wince.

  Bruckner’s music is like an abstract mathematical equation put into heart-rending notes, each statement a variation of the whole, the whole an expression of deep thought. The first movement ends with a grandiose finale including the repetition and simultaneous retrograde of the first theme, so perfectly executed that I feel my eyes sting.

  Then comes the elegy of the second movement. I don’t pay attention to the road signs, just drive on and on, slowing down automatically when I cross a village, working the gears, stepping on the clutch, the break, the accelerator when needed.

  —20—

  I thought I would end up in Verdun, from where I could have gone on t
o Metz or Nancy. But to my surprise, I finally arrive eighty kilometres farther west, in Châlons-en-Champagne.

  It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. The town looks nice, relaxed and sleepy. I decide I’ll stay here for a couple of days. Châlons-en-Champagne or another place, what difference does it make, anyway?

  After driving around for a while, I see a hotel to my right. It looks tidy if unpretentious. Two storeys high, in a nice neighbourhood of low buildings, the bell towers of a church rising behind the roofs.

  I park across the street on a car park surrounded by trees, stuff the men’s bag into my travel bag, cross the street, and enter. The reception hall is wide, sunny, with lots of houseplants in pots and a lounge area with leather sofas and armchairs to my right.

  The smiling receptionist tells me the Chambre deluxe is free, so I take it for three nights.

  —19—

  In my room, I take out Father’s men’s bag. It’s made of leather, an expensive brand, too. I unzip it, turn it around, and shake it.

  Several savings books and a bundle of documents fall out.

  I take the first savings book.

  BAWAG Linz is written on the cover.

  All right. Linz. Austria.

  I open it.

  On the first page, there’s a Post-It with the word “MonfilsMarc” in my father’s handwriting. The same words he used in his appointment book, without the blank spaces. MysonMarc.

  The savings account, apparently of the anonymous kind and secured by a password (MonfilsMarc?), holds 14,999 euros.

  I didn’t know you could still open anonymous accounts in Europe.

  I also ignored you could do it in Austria.

  The nine other Austrian savings books—from banks in Wiener Neustadt, Leoben, Judenburg, Wolfsberg, Villach, Spital an der Drau, Bischofshofen, Salzburg, Wels—contain similar amounts.

  The rest of the documents I briefly skim through point to more accounts in Luxemburg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Jersey.

  My head is spinning.

  All in all, the documents make the person who possesses them some ten million euros richer.

  Father’s mentions in his appointment books make much more sense now.

  And I finally know where all the dough has disappeared to, as well.

  I shove the bunch of papers back into the men’s bag and zip it up.

  I need to talk to Jane. I’m sure she’s the only one who has answers to this riddle.

  I don’t know how to contact her, however—she has strictly forbidden me to reach out to her.

  Suddenly, I remember what Aunt Juliette said. “Man up.” And, “I won’t have two stupid strangers tell me what to do or when.”

  Jane will have to accept I don’t always do what I’m told, either.

  And I have to accept that from time to time you need to be conniving if you want to get answers.

  I send Jane a text message.

  Remember that Kristeva-book

  you showed me the other

  day? Would very much like

  to read it. Could you

  tell me more about it

  (title etc.), please?

  Thanks, Marc.

  I hope she gets the subtext and understands that I need to talk to her.

  I guess she will. She is a very smart woman, after all.

  Part Eight | Ordinary Home

  —18—

  Getting home. At last. While I’m walking down the side street to my apartment building, I repeat that thought in my head. I don’t know why I’m feeling so relieved as the three days I spent in Châlons were uneventful—a series of silent walks along the river Marne, quiet coffees and drinks in one of the bistros, takeaway lunches on park benches while gazing at ducks and swans, dinners in small restaurants, nights in my Chambre deluxe, a lot of thinking.

  And dreams. Never the same, but always including a face and a melancholic gaze I seem to know so well by now.

  Maybe these are the reasons why I’m glad it’s over. The thinking. And the dreams. Both get too much after a while. When you fight against uncertainties like a latter-day Don Quichotte, when you try to battle against chimerical windmills, when you deal with Whats and Hows and What-ifs, your final destination is always confusion.

  I’m looking forward to sitting on my sofa with a cup of coffee, maybe selecting a smooth tune to chill out for a moment and switch off my brain. My apartment may not be the cosiest of places, it may feel a bit impersonal, but it’s still home. Somehow.

  When I enter the building, José, the janitor’s son, is standing halfway up the staircase to the first floor, washing the steps, his movements brisk and efficient. His father must have instructed him how to do it correctly. I see him soak the mop in the bucket at his feet, wring it out thoroughly so as not to leave the steps dangerously slippery, then clean three steps at a time before moving down and repeating the procedure.

  He hears me close the front door, turns around and shoots me a sullen look.

  “Bonjour, José.” I force myself to sound good-humoured. “Helping out your dad?”

  He frowns before mumbling something. Then, he picks up the mop and tackles the next three steps. He’s a short and sturdy kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen—what do I know?—with the same thick, jet-black hair as his parents.

  I walk over to the lift and press the button. The mop makes a discrete swish-swish-swish sound. The lift stops on the fourth floor and stays there as if someone was preventing it from moving on. I press the button again before turning around. “Everything okay at home?” I ask José’s back.

  “M-hm.” Swish-swish-swish.

  I remember that his mother is currently pregnant, so I enquire politely, “Your mom all right? Your sisters, too?”

  The kid sighs, turns back to stare at me, and says moodily, “They’re all at the hospital if you need to know.”

  “Oh? What’s the matter? Your mom’s due already?” She must be in her seventh or eighth month—again, what do I know?

  José shakes his head. Only now do I notice his red-rimmed eyes. His lips are quivering as if he wanted to start crying. “No. It’s Dad. He had an accident…”

  “An accident? Tomas? My God—what happened?”

  José sniffs, and a solitary tear trickles down his beardless cheek. “We don’t really know. Yesterday afternoon when I came back from school, I found him at the bottom of these stupid stairs.” He gives the steps a loud, wet whack with the mop. “Must’ve missed a step and fallen down. Broke both his arms and a leg. Knocked himself out, too. He was unconscious when I found him. I called an ambulance, and they said it was a miracle his neck wasn’t broken.” He sniffs again. “He’s still in the intensive care unit, in a coma.”

  The lift arrives at last with a bling. The doors open—tchuk—but nobody steps out.

  I’m too stunned by José’s news to move.

  Bling. Tchuk. The doors close again.

  “Jesus Christ!” I whisper.

  José doesn’t seem to hear me. He sniffs, wipes his cheek, and wrinkles up his forehead to prevent more tears from falling. Then, he glares at me as if everything were my fault before pushing his mop into the bucket. Yellowish water splashes over the steps below.

  I just stare at him. Press the lift button again. Bling. Tchuk. The doors open. I step into the cabin, the doors close.

  The last thing I see is José moving the bucket and starting to clean up the mess he has made.

  I’m home. But my initial relief has vanished.

  —17—

  On my way up, the lift stops on the fourth floor once more. The door opens—bling, tchuk—but no one is there. I peek down the corridor, but I’m all alone.

  After José’s story, it’s a bit unnerving, even if I don’t understand why.

  The corridor up on my floor is empty, too. The ceiling lig
hts flare alive when I switch them on. I walk to my apartment, let the travel bag fall on the floor, and insert the key. When I’ve unlocked the door, I step into my anteroom cautiously, silently pull the door closed, and take in the dimly lit room and the corridor behind it.

  Everything looks the same as when I left three days ago.

  Still eager to make no noise—I don’t even know why—I take off my shoes, place them in a corner, and in stockinged feet carry my bag to my bedroom. I don’t dare to switch on the lights, and the walk down the dark corridor feels endless. The apartment seems to hold its breath, seems to wait for something to happen.

  I put the bag on my bed and look around.

  At a glance nothing is out of place.

  Well, if this isn’t me behaving in the most irrational, stupid and paranoid manner…

  ———— Fff-t ————

  Fuck!

  What’s that?

  I heard something. It came from the living room most likely. An almost inaudible sound like the rustle of clothes.

  Is it possible that someone is here, in my apartment? Despite the fact that the front door was locked when I arrived? Someone just waiting for me to leave my bedroom before they…

  What? Attack me? Hurt me? Kill me?

  I feel a shiver run down my spine. Holding my breath, I listen to…

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  Only the faint sound of traffic humming down in the streets, the purr of the refrigerator in the kitchen, and the pumping of my blood through my veins.

  I slowly let out my breath and try to calm down. Nobody’s here. I must stop overreacting. Anyway, if someone has crept in, they have no right to be here. Fuck it, this is my home space, my safe ivory tower. If I have to fight for it, I’ll fight.

  A weapon! I tell myself. I need a weapon. That’ll give me the courage to go from room to room and make sure I’m overreacting.

  Quietly I leave my bedroom and walk down the corridor. There are plenty of knives in the kitchen. I open the kitchen door and sneak inside, half-turned to close the door in silence, and…

  … when I turn back, I stop in my tracks and gasp.