He wanted to run away, but I grabbed him.
“Don’t be ashamed that you love me,” I said to him. “Don’t be ashamed of that.”
“But I am ashamed,” he replied.
And he’d taken me in his arms, pulled me against him.
“Go now, Rose, go.”
“You have to do it, you have to.”
“No, Rose, never.”
“Don’t you get it?”
And I had stayed with him until dawn, crying, pleading, but he wouldn’t touch me.
That night, when my mother found me on the landing, she feared the worst. And yet, I felt almost purified. Once this torture is over, I’ll have even more innocence and chastity to offer him. The soul, not the flesh, is the true seat of virginity, so I don’t know what lovemaking feels like. I have erected a wall between my body and my soul, a granite wall. When our property is returned, Paul will be out of danger. As for me, I no longer fear danger. I’ve come through the straits. Not only do I face danger, I swim in it with abandon, fully Paul doesn’t yet know where he’s heading, what awaits him, the forces watching him and perhaps already circling round him. And truly, I’ve convinced myself that I’m dead. He knows nothing about being an actor. I’ll put the same amount of talent into my resurrection act. He’s helpless in the face of this tragic unfolding of events, and I’ve foolishly convinced myself I’m pulling the strings. In the face of the element unleashed, I will be a force of nature. Should I fail, I’ll tell myself I was tempted by this role, that if I gave in, it was because I had a taste for it or out of weariness. Look how I’ve moved a killer with my sweetness and submission. Can it be that easy for me to draw on my own strength, and are my resources really infinite? When death comes, will I be able to welcome it with indifference, playing my role until the bitter end? Thirty days is a long time! But what can time do to me, since I’m already dead! I was about to kiss Claude and he said to me: “No, don’t come close, you don’t smell like flowers anymore.” I had put on perfume in vain. How could he know? Once upon a time, he loved me. He stroked my hair, undid my ponytail and buried his face in my tresses, saying: “They smell like wet oak blossoms.”
The hoarseness of his voice makes him only sound older, and sometimes his precociousness frightens me. The final stretch of his life. Soon, the final stretch of all of our lives, I’m sure of it. He has returned in this crippled form to fulfill his destiny. Going from rough draft to hero. So many messy rough drafts around me! And what a messy rough draft I am! Only the hope that I will return to this earth gives me comfort for having to die one day. God owes it to Himself to finish His work, even if He has to redo it a hundred times. I am messing up this life with my obvious bad faith. It’s because I’m sure I’ll die soon. I’ll die and then I’ll come back. Is this my first life? I’m often overcome by fuzzy and mysterious memories, as if the gestures and actions of a past life weighed on my present one. Although I was a virgin, nothing about sex astonished me. I succumbed to indecency like a loose woman. If it had been another man in my arms instead, Dr. Valois for example, I would have been frightened. Far beyond the city, walking down a shady, tree-lined and deserted road with a river flowing beside it, I stopped, eyes on the luminous water, feeling its familiar and comforting coolness on my hands. Sweet nostalgia welled up in my heart as a mist of memories rose from the depths, slowly becoming clearer: I had been to this place before; that house, those trees, that river, I knew them. I had taken a walk under those trees and lived in this house. I was breathless with anguish as if a piece of myself still lived there, forever separated from me. Mutilated, but all the same walking the hard road to perfection. I can’t wait to die. Dead! I forgot, I already am. Murdered, martyred and canonized. I won’t have suffered in vain. Grandfather’s sterile rebellion, Paul’s mute despair, my mother’s terror, my father’s horrible, humiliating situation, are all reasons to fight. Of all of us, my father suffers the most. Head of the family, the man still responsible for the honor and the future of his children, forced to bow and scrape and kiss the feet of his torturers. I can see how he bears all this and how he suffers! I would never have thought he had the courage to face the Gorilla. Slapped a hundred times a day. Tortured a hundred times a day. Face stained with spit and yet always calm. Such shame! What shame! Not on us but on them, our persecutors. Every one of us suffers like Christ, but none martyred as spectacularly. “You with the martyr’s face, the saint’s face.” Me! That’s what he likes, that monster, that fleabag I have felt the very depths of horror. Thanks to him I have hit rock bottom. Submissive, too submissive for a virgin. Was I a virgin? An accomplice? Aren’t I getting used to it, aren’t I trying to enjoy it too? Damning thoughts hunting me down night and day. Not once have I missed a meeting, not once have I been late.
And yet I feel a burning pain when I try to move after these ordeals, and I have to make an effort to walk. I continue to rush downstairs so as not to worry my parents. Not a single day did he spare me. Tonight, he was crazy. He screamed, he sniffed and licked me like a beast. Then he thrust his fist into my body and watched in ecstasy as the blood poured out of me. Vampire! Vampire! I saw him sipping and getting drunk on my blood like wine.
From the beginning, I knew what to expect. Since these men showed up on our land, I knew it would come to this. A sixth sense? No matter how far away things are, I can recognize their scent. I have been able to detect the tenacious and intoxicating perfume on engravings of oriental flowers; and I’ve sneezed from the dust raised by the hoofs of a ranch horse stamping in a movie. My mother would say: “Have you caught cold?” “No,” I would say, “it’s all that dust.” “What dust?” my mother would ask. And I would point to the screen with my finger. But I have also dilated my nostrils at the majestic sight of the heavy falls at Niagara: they smelled of rainwater along with something else I can’t quite put my finger on. I scrape and scrape, deep into the very entrails of the earth. I dig and dig, and already know the warm humid flavor of its grayest roots, the musty stench of everything that crawls upon the buried bodies.
It was six years ago that my mother first put her hand on her heart. And that day, I heard it beat more heavily, more irregularly, as if performing hard labor. The day her heart stops beating, I’ll know before she does. “My God! My God!” she sighs, her fingers gripping her dress above her stomach. If Grandfather weren’t so old, if he weren’t so preoccupied with the little one, he’d realize a great many things. But he sees only Claude. Actually, we’re all alike, but each of us plays at hiding from one another in different ways. The little one has detected an indecent smell on me. There must be something unsettling and innocently perverse in me, and only the fact that I’ve been forced stops me from climaxing in this man’s arms. If I could free myself from this, I would probably make a partner worthy of him. Yesterday, he knelt in front of the bed and gently wiped the sweat on my brow. “I would like to please you,” he said to me. “I’m very ugly, but I would like you to at least enjoy it when I caress you.” He closes his eyes halfway and cries out: “You’re so beautiful, my saint!” He has a strange look that then becomes transformed and softens in pleasure. He gave me a tour of his house. I could smell the dogs before I saw them. I drew back and he grabbed my wrist and dragged me over to the huge cage where he locks them up as if they were wild animals. “I had them brought here from overseas,” he told me, “see how fierce they are?” They were foaming with rage: “You see, there’s only one way to get respect in this world: be like them,” he added. He doesn’t realize these are the affectations of a despot, surrounding himself in such luxury.
“Do you like making love, my saint, do you like luxury and jewelry?”
I said nothing. I don’t think I have ever opened my mouth after what I’ve seen except to moan or sigh in pain. I think that’s what he prefers from me; according to him it makes me look even more like a martyr. But am I the martyr I say I am, that I’ve convinced myself I am? I anticipate his desires. My submissiveness is nauseating. I undress an
d lie there with my legs spread, arms splayed in a cross, and wait. Torture! What torture! He has said to me: “If you wish, I will keep you till death do us part.” He’s learned to read my eyes and he anxiously monitors my every expression. “You like that, huh?” he cried out, although I was moaning in pain, “you like that too!” Still no response from me. “Rose, my little sister!” Paul used to call me. And he would carry me on his back so I wouldn’t have to walk on thorns. Once he was offended when a peasant surprised me as I was taking off my rain-drenched dress to wring it out. “Quick, hide, Rose!” he said to me. His eyes were full of tears. What does it matter if I give my body to the eyes and kisses of a monster, as long as I can save him. He’ll get out of here. Alone. As for me, I will slip down the slope of easy affairs, discreetly of course, very discreetly, with my saintly face. I’m full of self-pity. Is my fate so appalling? More than a few husbands probably behave just like this man. Vices sanctified by the sacrament of marriage. In any case, I have lost my innocence. Was I ever innocent? I understood the ugliness of life too early and it aged me. Jaded without experience, I’ve been like this since childhood. Like Claude. He can guess too many things as well. The day Anna began hating me because of the sewing box her father gave me, I felt it; just as I knew she’d torn my dress on purpose despite the innocent look on her face. I was only fifteen when I was already toying with Dr. Valois. That sensuous Normil force! Hits hard! Hell had its eye on us for some time and now we’re deep in it. The stakes have traced the infernal vicious circle, and maybe the hands that planted them are less guilty than ours. We are reaping what we sowed, the curse of our ancestors will disappear with our line. We must be hated and loved to the same extreme. I admire my father’s moderation, he’s the only one who stands out among us. How could Grandfather love him? Keep the sheep far away from us, for we would devour them. We, too, belong to a race of wildcats and raptors, that’s why we struggle so fiercely against those who’ve taken our lands. And the history of our property is quite murky. I heard my mother and father talking about it when I was six years old.
My mother was saying: “Grandfather insults me, he calls my father a drunk and a good-for-nothing; if I were mean I’d throw in his face what people say about his father.” “And what do people say?” my father asked. “They say he murdered a man to secure ownership of the land.” “Oh Laura, repeating such wild rumors?” my father replied. And my mother lowered her head.
One day, I had fallen asleep under the oaks. A man came to me in a dream wearing a bloody shirt that he took off to show me two gaping wounds on his back, and he said to me: “Look, he stabbed me with his knife to make his own justice. I will get my revenge when I put a weapon in the hand of one of his descendants, who will kill a man just as he did.” As he was talking, I detected his dull, atrocious stench. The smell of death, of clotted blood and rotting flesh. The memory of him has never made me feel uncomfortable, but I know he’s waiting there, two stones away from the ancestor’s grave. If Paul doesn’t leave, he will kill someone and I don’t want that. None of us will ever kill again. Grandfather must think that we deserved to be punished, that our tormentors were guided by a divine hand. The curse weighs on us and he knows it, but he rebels out of pride. It’s up to me to pay for this so that my children and Paul’s children can be free of it. Acquit myself without balking and be done with it. I’ve lived long enough with the superstitious fear of this curse falling on my brother’s head. He doesn’t deserve that. I struggle with the conviction that justice is not on our side. What right do we have to property? What gives us the right to such privilege while others wallow in poverty? The poverty of the people my peasant ancestor must have exploited, the misery of the poor who looted his garden and whom he had whipped without mercy, the poverty of the beggars taking on the uniform, the poverty of the man avenging himself through me for having been rejected by the women he desired. Suppose one day I too was forced to beg, to feel humiliated, would I not be proud to see Paul in a uniform with a gun on his belt? I don’t know. It’s difficult to put myself in others’ shoes, and I am still too well fed to understand what misery and hunger can make you do.
Human beings have an eerie resemblance to certain animals. I was struck by my resemblance to a panther I saw in a movie once. Same features, same fierce gaze veiled by false gentleness, same supple neck beneath an elegant head with wide, quivering, sensual nostrils. He, on the other hand, looks like a dog. One could easily mistake him for a gorilla, but that’s not the case. His hands are misleading since they’re long and hairy, but he’s just a dog; a poor dog craving affection who turns into a wolf as a result. A beastly couple, made for each other. A lascivious and insatiable panther! I will tear my impure body with my nails. A dog biting simply to defend himself, a poor dog used to kicks, who barks and bites to prove that he’s something other than a dog. “Are you tired, my saint, are you tired?” he says, and tenderly wipes my forehead. How can he get it so wrong when it comes to me? He’s ugly and that pains him. I will tear my impure body with my nails and I will die of it. The stench of a wildcat in my sweat. An animal stench in our sweat, all of us. Man is just an animal hemmed in by a narrow conscience; this is why it is his lot to suffer. The struggle between mind and beast tears at him from within. A tragic fate, a relentless struggle where the mind rarely wins. God has toyed with us…
I caught Mélie with one of them. She was underneath him and was saying: “Kill him, kill them, you’re the strongest, kill them, they deserve to die.” Does she sleep with them only out of hatred for us? Who is naïve enough to believe that you can win a servant’s heart with kindness? Inferiors only fear and respect you if you dominate them. Wearing one of my dresses, she spies on us, fornicates with the enemy and calls for our heads. A horde of beggars and ignoramuses finding salvation in crime! Is it their fault? Women and men together in uniform, women and men bearing arms, women and men marching, denouncing, murdering? Is that what awaits Mélie when she puts on a uniform? I can see her goose-stepping, rifle on her shoulder. I can picture my mother’s face when she sees that spectacle, imagine my mother seeing her son in uniform, rifle on his shoulder, goose-stepping next to Mélie. “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” [35] she would cry out. The anguished question of a poor creature to Him who had promised her everything and had taken away everything, taken it away from a woman without a father, who has never had a father, and who is growing old alone as she waits for death.
Part Three
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The rocky road climbed abruptly, its sides shaded by almond trees, their leaves this time of year jutting from their branches like huge red tongues. Their dancing shadows traced strange arabesques on the ground. The sun hid behind a cloud and everything took on a new cast, bathed in filtered light. Paul climbed up the slope and arrived at the field where Fred Morin and the others were waiting for him. They ran to meet him, and lifted him up despite his protestations, carried him off in triumph. He struggled, meting out kicks and punches that the others took in stride. When he managed to get free, he faced them with his teeth on edge, hateful, fists up.
“If any one of you touches me I’ll smash your teeth in!” he shouted at them. “Bastards! You dirty bastards!”
He was yelling as loud as the grandfather would have, and he saw them draw back in perplexity, their shoulders drooping.
He ran his hand through his bushy mane and left without a word. Never again, never again, he kept saying to himself. He stumbled down the slope, retracing his steps.
They gathered around him almost immediately.
“What have we done to you?” Fred Morin asked him. “Why are you running away from us?”
“Let’s shake hands before you go, Paul, we’re begging you,” another said.
He watched them kneeling at his feet and he spit on the ground.
“Is it true you’re going to join the Blackshirts soon?” asked the youngest in the group, who was only sixteen. “If that’s true, put in a word for us with your sister’s fr
iend. He’s important, mention us to him. We’d all like to wear the uniform. And when they give us weapons we’ll be feared and get some respect.”
A car went past them, slowed down, backed up and stopped. In the backseat was a man in a black uniform whom they all recognized. The man stuck his head out the window and looked at Paul for several long moments, then called him over with a flick of his long hairy hand: he wouldn’t budge. The man waited for some time, still leaning out the window; then he slapped the driver’s shoulder, gave him an order, and the car took off.
“Are you insane?” Fred Morin whispered.
A shiver ran through Paul. He gave Fred Morin a withering look, spat on the ground a second time and left. The grandfather was talking quietly with the child on the porch. He walked past them and into his room, opened the drawer, took the knife and tucked it inside his shirt, and went out again. He walked for an hour aimlessly and found himself almost randomly in front of the customhouse where his father worked. He pushed the door and went in. Someone he didn’t know greeted him and asked if he could help him with something.
“I’d like to speak to my father,” he replied.
“And who is your father?”
“Monsieur Normil.”
The employee’s expression changed immediately. He smiled with deliberate friendliness and hastened to admit Paul into the first room, where two typists were at work.
“Come on through, please come on through.”
He saw his father at his desk. He was sitting in a rocking chair and was talking to a tall, very elegant man in a nicely cut dark suit. The man was bowing before him without daring to support himself and, not knowing what to do with his hands, ended up swaying back and forth as though he were walking.
Louis Normil tilted back in his chair, his crossed knees nearly reaching the height of his chest. From on high he looked at the man planted in front of him.
Love, Anger, Madness Page 28
