Uselessness

by Eduardo Lalo

  For a few awkward minutes, I was at a loss. Was this the woman I’d shared my life with for years? Was this Marie, my soul mate, now apparently disguised? Losing all confidence, I regretted coming. Stalling, I asked her for a drink so that I could watch her walk away.

  She was bringing a glass over to me when we both heard someone coming up the stairs and she froze in terror.

  “Hide in the bathroom,” she whispered.

  “You can’t be serious?” Her request was totally out of line. I’d rather witness a scene (which, after all, would be between her and her friend, and the internal politics of their relationship did not concern me) than place myself in a stressful situation that was undignified and—if the man were violent and paranoid, which could be inferred from Marie’s fear—dangerous. We heard the footsteps reach the fourth-floor landing. Marie stared at the door intensely, as if it were a hallucination. Finally we realized the footsteps had announced her neighbor’s arrival.

  “Marcel is jealous,” she said, trying to explain her behavior.

  “You don’t say?” I didn’t hide my sarcasm.

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not. It’s just that I’ve seen you doing something I could never have imagined. Don’t you get it? I don’t care if you believe me or not, but I never thought you would stoop to this.”

  “To what?”

  “I have to explain?”

  “I have a relationship with another man and he’s not you. There’s no reason for you to get involved.”

  “I’m not getting involved, and you’re right, it’s not my problem. But I wasn’t the one who wrote cabrón on my door, who almost broke the door down and then went off without explaining what the hell’s the matter. You’re the one who then comes back and goes to bed with me and says she loves me, and begs me to forgive her, and that I have to understand.”

  “I never asked you to forgive me! I have nothing to apologize for!”

  “I suppose, then, that your behavior is normal and natural. Coming and going and tearing off your clothes is the same thing as shaking hands or going to the movies one night.”

  “I was having a rough time. If I explained it to you, you’d understand. Besides, one thing has nothing to do with the other. This stuff happens. Maybe not to you, but certainly to most people.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Do you happen to have statistics about these things? Is your terror a moment ago normal? Is it normal to do what you’ve done to me knowing that I had nobody in Paris, or any place to live?”

  “The apartment you have is in my name. You got it thanks to me.”

  “That’s true, but thanks to you I lost everything too. Besides, it doesn’t matter now. What matters to me is to know what game you’re playing—I can’t call it anything else—what your intentions are, why so stupid and cruel.”

  She went to the bathroom. Through the door I heard her crying. I waited a while before going in. She sat on the toilet, her face in her hands. She reached out to me. I lifted her up into my arms and held her as she cried. She blew her nose with pieces of toilet paper, a few sticking to her nose, and went to lie down on her bed. I sat next to her.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The days go by, and it’s as if I weren’t living. I’m afraid. I’m afraid everything will get worse.”

  “What?”

  “Life, my life, I can’t tell you exactly. Marcel is married. He has three daughters. I’ve met them: the oldest is at the university. She’s almost my age. He told me he was going to leave his wife, that he would come live with me, but he didn’t stay more than a weekend. He lies to me and I’m afraid. He sells jewelry and has a gun. But that wasn’t why I asked you to hide. That’s not why I’m afraid.”

  “Why, then?”

  She took some time to answer.

  “I love him. He’s not easy, but I love him. I always want to be with him. I can’t get him out of my system.”

  I wasn’t the right person to be listening to these confessions, and yet I knew I was the only one Marie could confide in. What would endure above and beyond all else, including that man, was what we had meant and continued to mean to one another.

  “I can’t go on like this.” I didn’t understand. She seemed to jump from one topic to another. “I have pains, here in my chest. Sometimes I can’t breathe and I see black at the sides of my eyes, as if I were going blind, as if some awful, strange thing were about to happen to me. Besides, there are the bugs, the bugs that get into my skin.”

  I was completely lost.

  “They come at night and don’t let me sleep. They get into my eyes, nose, anus, and vagina. They’re so little that you can barely see them, but I feel them. I try to crush them but they move too quickly. I know that it sounds like a dream, but it isn’t a dream. They move around inside me, I feel them rubbing their antennae, going from place to place. They eat in my veins. They buzz all the time.”

  Marie stood, gazing at the ceiling. She didn’t blink.

  “Marcel says I’m crazy. But he doesn’t know what’s happening to me. He says it’s nothing.”

  “What are you talking about? What bugs?

  “They buzz in my head. You can’t imagine, it’s like a plague of locusts. Remember that movie we saw about the wheat fields on the Great Plains? Something like that.”

  “You’re hallucinating.”

  “No.”

  “We have to find out what doctor to go to; I’ll go with you if you want.”

  Marie stood still.

  “Go. He’ll be here any minute.”

  Again I felt my neediness. Even with all the distance that lay between Marie and myself, she continued to matter more to me than anyone else in the city. I had nothing to fill her absence with, no one to replace her. She lived so nearby. I had tried to forget her but still felt drawn to what she had been for me. Her ravings upset me and filled me with ambivalence. I wanted to be with her, but at the same time, I wanted to run away.

  I called the next day.

  “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “I am,” she answered with doubt in her voice.

  “Really?”

  “You must forgive me for what happened yesterday. Sometimes I can’t think in a straight line. Please also forgive me for the other thing. I’ll get over it.”

  “What’s the other thing?” I asked.

  “The bugs,” her voice had faded to a whisper. This wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “Don’t take me seriously. These are things that not even I understand. It’s crazy, I know, but very real at times. More real than what I see with my eyes opened. Forgive me if I’ve hurt you and if I still am hurting you. I don’t know if it means anything to you to hear this, but I love you, I love you very much and I’ll always love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  We were silent.

  “Marie,” I said, “What’s happened to us?”

  “I don’t know,” I felt her on the verge of tears.

  “I’ve never understood.”

  “Perhaps there’s nothing to understand.”

  “But something must have happened. Something I’ve done or said.”

  “It wasn’t you or me. It was something that was in our path, something that even setting our mind to we couldn’t have avoided. Some things have to happen and make no sense. Don’t waste your time.”

  There was a pause before she spoke again.

  “I don’t want to lose you.”

  I didn’t know what was in those words, whether it was remorse or a request, or if they were a formula to express the pain of separation or some other incalculable series of emotions. They were, anyway, words I really couldn’t answer, no matter what I said.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “Whatever happens, you’ll always be with me,” Marie was crying. It was yet another of her crying jags I had experienced so often.

  “That’s why I can’t understand what’s happened to us, and what’s happening to you,” and I added,
“Why don’t we give each other another chance? Why don’t we begin again?”

  “If Marcel weren’t in the middle, that would be okay.”

  Nothing made sense. I had crossed the line that I had promised myself, in my more lucid moments, I would not cross. I didn’t have time to think it through, and I was, myself, afraid of being alone. The telephone seemed like a fragile, inadequate connection.

  “He doesn’t have to be in the middle. That’s in your hands.”

  “But I can’t break with him now. I love him.”

  “You love him, or you’re afraid of him?”

  “Both, perhaps. It’s all the same.”

  “You can’t love someone and fear them at the same time.” I opted for truisms, for the reasoning of common sense. But I still knew that what Marie was saying was not only possible but also probably true. I was being stupid.

  “I don’t know. The problem is I can’t figure it out, I can’t go one way or the other.”

  I couldn’t back off. The conversation itself compelled me. I had to fight until I convinced her.

  “But you have to do something, because in this situation nobody is okay and it’s not fair to anyone. Not even to yourself.”

  “I can’t decide now even if I want to.”

  “You’ve got to do it.”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  My days revolved around a single objective. I was drawn to her in the same way I would sometimes finish smoking a cigarette simply because it was lit, acting out of anxiety.

  I would call Marie, and we’d see each other frequently, reproducing almost infinite variations on that phone conversation. I could see the signs of her deterioration. Gradually, imperceptibly, a gesture she made with her mouth acquired the aberrant rhythm of a tic. Her hair had not been colored again, exposing a commingling of colors. Marie would incessantly twine it around her fingers, making braids, pulling it, untwining it, and little by little, she created a bald spot on the top of her head. She’d go without eating, and then, dying of hunger, she’d fill herself with anything within reach: desserts, cheese, sausages, the remains of old, stale food from dinner.

  Summer and the season of final exams were approaching. I shut myself in to study. I’d punctuate my work with dinners beside the radio. I’d listen to interesting programs: roundtables of film or theater critics, which turned into spectacular battles, long and irreverent interviews with all sorts of individuals, world music which I would then seek out in the cassette sections of stores. It was edifying and kept me company, putting on the back burner the pain in my back and in my soul.

  One evening, when I came home after finishing a four-hour exam, I decided on a whim to stop by Marie’s apartment. I wanted to go out with her to eat crêpes, to take a walk as a break from my study routine. I could go to her house without calling in advance because we had agreed upon a system of signals. If Marcel were visiting her, the bathroom window would be open. I peeked into the courtyard and checked that she was alone. As soon as she let me in, I realized something was up. She had a suitcase on the bed and was filling it; she wouldn’t look at me.

  “You’re going somewhere?” I asked, feigning naïveté.

  “Yes, tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “Marcel has a business trip and maybe, afterwards, a few days of vacation. I didn’t tell you before because I’ve just found out.”

  The lie and her pretense that I shouldn’t be upset infuriated me.

  “I came to find out if you wanted to have dinner with me,” I said, humiliated, controlling the violence that I didn’t allow myself to express.

  “I’m soooo sorry,” she dragged the sounds, with silly gestures, “but I can’t now.”

  “I can see that you’re still in your world.”

  She didn’t turn to look at me, but I knew she was alert, sensing that something was about to happen, that her little comedy act had been a mistake.

  “Missus number two is going on a trip.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “She will enjoy fly-by-night hotels near train stations. Oh, the delicious dinners in the Bistros de la Gare!”

  “It’s more than you can give me.”

  “But you don’t realize that you’re not getting anything out of it.”

  Finally she looked at me. She didn’t know what to say, but she would attack anyway. The point was to wound and to win.

  “What do you know about what he gives me? You have no idea what passion is. I was with you for so many years and I couldn’t do it anymore. Out there, in the real world, there are other people and they’re not like you. Poverty gets old and you do too. Finally I was fed up. Let’s see if you finally realize now. I’d better shut up because I don’t want to hurt you.” She accused me of being cold, but my blindness, my stubborn pursuit of Marie above and beyond all reason, were anything but cold. I too was fed up with myself, with her.

  “Fine, we won’t see each other anymore,” I said and it was only when my words came out that I was aware of the clean break they proposed. I couldn’t stop there. One sentence led to another: “Be alone then, or with him or whomever you want. I don’t care. Bon voyage.”

  I stood up and, for the first time since I’d arrived, we were facing each other, feeling a surprising desire to embrace. We looked at each other expectantly.

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  Marie spoke from the threshold, as I was already going down the stairs.

  “I’m sorry. See you soon.”

  I remembered certain texts by Neptune, written at a table in a café near the Alésia metro station, which recorded his meticulous observations over a period of several days. With its statistics of misery the city was there in all its entirety.

  My attraction to Simone—with whom I took an exam and went out frequently during that time—was no coincidence. She introduced me to places and people I otherwise probably would never have known. We went to tiny bars with minimal decor where the local customers drank countless glasses of red wine, enveloped in the thick smoke of Gitanes cigarettes. At the tables sat workers with oozing sores on their hands and lonely, bitter women who had a tender word only for the dogs they treated as their children. I’ll never forget the parties at the house of Simone’s cousins. When her aunt, a fat woman around seventy years old and eccentrically wrapped in two multicolor shawls, opened the door to us the first time, she gave her niece big kisses and, without a greeting or handshake, immediately gave me the generous glass of whiskey she had in her hand. The ancient apartment, with its many small rooms, was always dark, as scarves or handkerchiefs were draped over almost every lampshade. In one corner of the living room there was a Rouault, since, despite appearances, her aunt was well educated, a staunch disciple of Jacques Maritain, and Catholic. Her offspring were an extraordinary collection of eccentrics. The eldest, who was a professor of architecture and also had a PhD in philosophy, barely spoke, and drank one whiskey after another in a corner of the library while reading a novel by Simenon. Her oldest daughter had been in analysis for over ten years: she had twice attempted suicide, was a kindergarten teacher and a fanatical reader of Marguerite Duras. However, the most interesting thing about her was that her daughter’s father had been her own mother’s student and lover. Another daughter was no longer a daughter but a son who, after many trips to Holland, had completed a sex change. Sometimes he’d show up at these soirées with his girlfriend, a rather overweight blonde who worked at a post office. The youngest, closest to Simone, had converted, successively, to Hinduism and to Islam, and then after spending some time in Fez, had just returned to France and had rather fanatically rejoined the Catholic fold. If they had enough to drink, they were the perfect family. Gradually they’d all flop onto the sofas and the beds, twisting in contortions, uttering incredible words or calling attention to themselves in hilarious ways. At the end nobody would say good night. If you wanted to go, you would simply open the door and leave.

  Simone and I would lea
ve the apartment laughing hysterically, seriously drunk, amused by our zigzagging footsteps. Our rides on the last metro seemed endless because the motion made us dizzy. On more than one occasion, I had to take Simone home and hold her head over the toilet. Afterwards, she’d flop onto the mattress and go straight to sleep deeply until late morning. Later, she’d make some vague excuses, and with a cup of coffee and the first cigarettes of the day, we’d recall the collective delirium staged by her relatives.

  Despite these festivities, I still couldn’t find my way out of this dark period. When I was by myself, as I usually was, I tried to soften the tedium by drinking wine before going to bed. Often this meant I’d stay up until dawn beside the radio, rolling a cigarette between sips, feeling the early hours were the best time of the day. Then, after so little sleep, I’d spend the day tired, feeling out of sorts. I’d find some consolation in my routine activities, but there was always, deep down, the unsteadiness of what I had lived in the city and that, now, after the last incidents with Marie, had intensified.

  I had only a vague idea of what I really felt. I experienced everything through the opaque filter of a love story. Love was the big catchall of all my problems, a big dictionary of false definitions.

  Sandrine brought the news. Marie had attempted suicide and was in the hospital. The story we were able to piece together that night had a lot of holes. Some time later we learned she had sunk so low that Marcel had no choice but to reduce his visits and invitations to her. Apparently Marie had demanded that he leave his wife. She didn’t realize that was impossible.

  She spent days without leaving the house, using up the last of her food, calling her lover’s office every hour, and at night, calling anyone listed in the telephone book. Finally, she decided to swallow a whole bottle of antihistamines. Then, sleepy and nauseous, tormented by her failed attempt, she had slashed her left wrist with a kitchen knife. The pain and blood forced her to react. She called her mother in New York, who, terrified, immediately telephoned the Paris police. When the policemen arrived at Rue de Sèvres, they found her sleeping with the door opened, a kitchen rag tied around her left hand, and upon being awakened, sufficiently lucid to tell them what had happened. Fortunately the wound had not been deep and had not reached her veins. Because the police were involved, she couldn’t leave the hospital until they had done a psychiatric evaluation. Her mother had landed in Paris that afternoon and called Sandrine. She invited us, Sandrine and me, out to dinner the next day.