by Lily Pond
“Are you sure it doesn’t bother you if I stay home, honey?”
“I’d rather you went with me, but, if you’re not feeling well, honey. … I’ll just put in an appearance and come back as early as possible.”
She knows Harry has no intention of leaving the party before the last “interesting woman” has left—that is, any woman with protruding buttocks and full lips. Let’s just say that Harry has a weakness for the young Haitian women who are always to be found at the Widmaier parties. But Christina is not jealous and Harry is no fool. He likes to come home. If he fantasizes about black women, that’s his business. In a way, it’s nobody’s business but his own. You have to realize that Christina is the brunette daughter of New York Jewish parents. She loves Woody Allen and her favorite writer (apart from Le Carre) is Philip Roth. So she appreciates humor and has a fairly pessimistic outlook on life. She followed Harry here, but she is herself a professor of comparative literature at the Union School. Harry is working at the American Embassy as a cultural attaché. He is a slender person with a prominent forehead that makes him look vaguely like a sadistic killer. On the other hand, he has sparkling eyes and a sensuous mouth. You really can’t put a label on him. As for Christina, she is somewhat uninteresting, with no lips or bottom, but bright and energetic. Men are attracted to her, curiously enough. At parties, there is always a cluster of men around her. But she distinctly prefers intellectual discussions over screwing. There’s no way you can explain that to a man with an erection. So, as much as possible, she stays away from those social occasions that are simply pretexts for getting drunk and looking for sex. She has been particularly wary since a drunk pinched June’s ass. June is their 17-year-old daughter, born in Manhattan. The name June doesn’t really suit her. Harry named her after a character that had deeply attracted him in Henry Miller novels. That was the sort of femme fatale who had introduced Henry Miller to all aspects of hell. And of paradise. Harry’s daughter has none of those traits. She is a classic beauty. A perfect oval, as they used to say. Her professors love her. She is so gifted that she takes all her courses in French—a language that she learned only after they arrived in Port-au-Prince—and comes out with top grades. June never raises her voice. Always calm. She can always be found in her room working or listening to music. Her girlfriends have finally crossed her off their lists because they can never get her to come to their parties in Kenscoff or La Boule. With growing anxiety, Christina sometimes wonders whether, right under her own eyes, her daughter is not becoming a nun. What had been just a joke between Christina and Harry is now becoming very serious—to the point that mother is now on the prowl in the interests of daughter.
“Know who I saw today, June?”
“Bob Samy.”
“How did you guess?”
“I know you, Ma. You’ve been talking about him for a week so I knew that you would finally manage to get a hook in him.”
Christina took a quick breath.
“Is it alright if I invited him to come for a game of badminton on Saturday?”
“Mom, I have an exam Monday.”
“But, honey, you study all the time. You should get some exercise.”
“We do lots of sports at school.”
“Honey, sports isn’t the only thing in life,” Christina blurts out with an edge in her voice. “There are boys, too, and that helps us girls keep things in balance!”
“What do you mean, Ma?”
“June!”
“Just kidding, Ma. I know what you mean, but I can tell you that I haven’t got any balance problems.”
Christina appears to be lost in thought for a moment.
“Honey, you know that the mind isn’t everything.”
“Why do you say that?” June asks a bit anxiously.
“I’m saying that because I fell into that trap myself, honey,” Christina answers softly.
“I don’t understand, Mom.”
Christina takes a deep breath this time.
“OK. Well, I missed a lot of chances with men I was interested in because I went all out on the intellect side when I was a teen.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Good God! Listen, honey, there are times when only the body should speak. Nothing else, just the body. You can’t do anything about it—we’re made like that. It’s physical, June. It’s natural. We’re animals too, you know! Monkeys do it. Dogs do it. Birds do it. Plants probably do it too if we just knew. June, look me in the eyes. June …, your mother does it. Even nice girls do it. Do you understand?”
“I’m not stupid, Ma. I know all that.”
“June, there’s a big difference between knowing something and accepting it. Or experiencing it. It hurts me to see you following the same path I took. You know I’ve suffered because of it, and I want to help you avoid that pain before it’s too late. I don’t want you to be just an intellectual. I’d like for you to have a mind, of course, but I’d like for you to have … a body too. Understand?”
“Yes, Ma.”
They talked a bit longer and then June went right back to her room to do her homework. Christina went to take more cold showers (menopause). Afterward, she called her best friend, Carol, a young woman who works with Harry at the embassy. Carol has already been Harry’s mistress (Christina knows), but he dropped her after he began hanging around with Haitian women.
“Carol, I told her everything. All of it, even the bit about the animal. I felt like a fool! She stayed calm as usual, but I know my daughter—I’m sure I shook her up. I had to—she’s 17, and good-looking as she is, nobody ever calls except to ask for help with their homework. You think that’s normal? What can I do? I had to take the bull by the horns. I planted the seed and I’ll wait for it to bear fruit. Of course I’m concerned; what do you think! If she were to start going out with four guys at the same time! But I’d prefer that! I can’t sleep anymore. I hear the timer ticking constantly and I try to guess when the bomb will explode. She seems to be storing up fantasies, holed up in her bedroom, you know. She has to get out and get some fresh air, meet boys, have fun, cut up—you know, that’s important. Life is too crazy to take seriously, Carol. I want her to let go (Christina is crying), blow up, taste the apple of love (she is sobbing now). That’s all I want for my daughter. You say that it’s everything I haven’t had. Of course I know that you can’t change your own life through somebody else’s. I’ve got to hang up. Harry just came back and he doesn’t have any idea what’s going on in this house. He thinks everything is fine. The sun. tropical fruit, Haitian women with beautiful asses; he’s in paradise. There aren’t any problems in paradise. I’ll call you again.”
That conversation took place exactly one week ago. Today Christina has a touch of fever and she’s planning for a restful evening with a toddy and a good detective novel to be followed by a sound sleep. At the last minute, she decides not to go to her own room, but to the guest room instead. It’s an attractive room, smaller than the master bedroom, but intelligently arranged and that makes it very comfortable. Christina likes to hole up in this room, which reminds her of her undergrad days when she had a little room close to Columbia University. At that time, she was torn between solitude and freedom. Let’s say she preferred to be alone rather than free. She would spend her time reading Virginia Woolf even as she hoped somebody would knock at the door. Now, she reads nothing but detective fiction and Philip Roth (a good thing he publishes a novel a year) in order to try to ease the migraine that never gives her any rest. At least this room gives her the impression of still being the young woman who was free and alone in the sixties. From this small room, you can see the porch where Absalom sleeps when Harry isn’t at home. Absalom is the young man recommended by the Widmaiers. He’s a real pearl, as Francoise Widmaier says. He’s polite, hardworking, and very bright. Christina sometimes considers taking him back to New York with them when Harry’s tour is over. He already speaks some basic English and understands everything you say to him. Harry likes h
im a lot because of his ready wit. His quickness at understanding all sorts of complex situations amazes Harry every day. Absalom is already preparing his bed for the night. He has a room where he keeps his things at the back of the courtyard, but Harry asks him to sleep on the porch when he expects to return late from evening functions or those torrid nights with some “Annaïse.” That way, Absalom could react immediately to any alert. There are assassins and thieves in the streets these days. Christina smiles as she thinks that nobody knows she is here since she made a last-minute decision to stay home. She can hear June going down to get a glass of milk in the kitchen. She listens to her daughter’s footsteps climbing the newly waxed stairway. It’s strange, she tells herself with a smile, you can hear every sound from this room. She never noticed that before. It’s a real sound room. Through the open window, she can hear each step Absalom takes on the porch. June is listening to the Billie Holiday record her mother gave her recently when she turned seventeen. “What a serious daughter!” she thinks. A bit unfathomable, too. She has the imperturbable look of an oriental. She’s a quiet flame in the midst of a storm. Christina can imagine her sitting in her room listening to the record and trying to decode the searing poetry of Billie Holiday’s despairing song. Absalom is also listening to music, on the little radio close to his head. Haitian music. Very sensual, gay, lively. Music to dance by. Haitian music and painting have been an agreeable surprise to Christina since she came to Port-au-Prince. It’s such a contrast to the miserable life people lead here. They are hungry, but they never stop creating that joyful music and that lively, colorful art. While we Americans, who have everything, never cease whining. Real pessimists. The Haitian is the absolute opposite of the New York Jew. Today’s Americans are like a fast-food restaurant of despair. They never stop producing the same depressing hamburger, day and night. Man does not live by hamburgers alone, says the Bible. Woody Allen turns out a film every year. Philip Roth, a book. Our annual ration of bitterness. Bitter America. Poor people die. The rich despair. But here, we’re so far from Manhattan. In spite of such terrible misery. Christina remembers (with a little smile) how she missed Manhattan at first. She has Manhattan snobbery in her veins. The radical chic of the seventies—that was the greatest. City lights, random murders, yellow taxis, the wet pavement, Cuban coffee, aggressive whores. That’s the fast life! Before, she missed all that. Not so much now. She remembers, with an enigmatic smile, that she could do in one day everything it takes her six months to do here.
“What’s time?” she wonders without even attempting an answer.
She had been so lost in thought she paid no attention to the curious rustling on the porch.
“Non, Mademoiselle June.”
She listens.
“No, Mademoiselle June, I don’t want to lose my job. We can’t go on. … If Madame hears about this, I’ll get fired.”
“There’s nobody here,” June says drily.
Christina is in a sweat already. Her daughter, June, is coming on to a man. Their servant! Christina creeps over the floor to reach the window. Without making the least noise, she raises her torso. She is all nerves. Finally, she can see Absalom. He is lying on his back with June astride him. A slight breeze is rustling the leaves of the magnificent tree that completely hides the porch from the eyes of curious neighbors.
June calmly takes off her white blouse. Beneath June’s firm breasts, Absalom keeps his eyes closed. The rosy nipples are erect. Christina is getting goose bumps. With a shiver, she thinks to herself: “My daughter is in heat.” Fascinated, she keeps watching. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion. Time has grown limp. Christina is really tense. There’s June, her June, calmly kissing Absalom’s trousers. Down to the knees. Suddenly, she grabs hold of his white-hot penis and slips it under her skirt with no formalities. June closes her eyes for an instant at the moment of contact. Her tongue emerges to wet her lips. Abruptly, she seats herself on Absalom, with all her weight. Not a whimper. Time stops. The girl’s nostrils flare and contract with increased rapidity. Another instant. Then a violent orgasm seizes her. Christina watches her daughter coming with the little squeals of a mouse caught in a trap. It’s endless. And just as it’s over, it returns more strongly and she has another orgasm. The cry of an invisible bird in the foliage of the mango tree. June is galloping. She comes with her mouth wide open this time. Yelling. It’s impossible to say whether it’s a cry of pleasure or pain. Again! Desire puts her in agony this time. Like an animal trying to bite its own tail. Unbearable desire. A strident yell. It’s as if she would like to stop but can’t break off. She is galloping. Faster and faster. She bounds higher and higher. For the fraction of a second, Christina glimpses her delicate thatch of pubic hair. Drops of sweat are breaking out on her anxious forehead. The pleasure is intense. And the girl is all seriousness. She seems to keep articulating something. A prayer? Christina is silently weeping. That life (Absalom’s penis) is inserted in the middle of her daughter’s womb. A few abrupt movements. She rares back with her breasts pointing skyward. Her mouth is twisted and she is moaning. She wants to rip her skin off. Pain. Spasms. Stop. Her body is stretched out on Absalom. Rest. An occasional shudder. She is convulsing like a fish out of water. There is a groan that seems to come from a sea creature. Her body begins to move. Slowly. Gently. That unbearable sensation. Suddenly, she opens her eyes like somebody just emerging from a terrible nightmare. A few more sharp groans and another scream. She completely arches her back. The veins are standing out on her neck. “She’s going to hurt herself,” Christina suddenly thinks. But her face shows such an openly violent and penetrating pleasure that Christina lowers her eyes. It’s a private moment. “I never felt that,” Christina murmurs, letting herself slump back to the floor. She sobs for a long time, until sleep overtakes her in a foetal position.
Christina abruptly awakens when she hears Harry’s car come in the gate. Suddenly, she starts: Harry absolutely must not find June there. She manages to calm herself before glancing over the windowsill. Nobody is on the porch. As if nothing had transpired. She hears Harry’s steps on the stairs and the passionate voice of Billie Holiday (“Strange Fruit”) coming from June’s room.
Bucolic
Mariela Dreyfus, translated by Alfred Mac Adam
This is what seduces here in the forest:
in the thirsty nights of this August
we can appear on the terrace
—the screen is the limit
between the insect’s song
and its burning sting—
and on the table, unbalanced
and scratched in its wood
place the liquor that like a river
rocks us and soaks us and returns us
to a diaphanous bank among the rocks
primitive and mad with their hair in the wind
sitting astride the other
naked without prudence or pity.
My love tenderly pours the wine
the crystal stem here is my waist
the base so soft and so round
my hips that touch makes vanish
my forms dilute as he drinks
I pour and grow thin and giant-sized
I am the riverbed and the mud and the current
the wind that contained no longer whirls about
I am the moisture the heat and a certain chill
that runs through my veins when we fulfill each other.
I am the shadow that gives and also denies
and the kiss of the insect on the screen.
World Tonight
Carole Maso
YOU ARE WALKING DOWN a dirt road alone—free for a moment from the sorrow and drama of your life, free of your body’s pain. Free of. Free …
You are walking without physical pain for a moment though it informs each step. A little free, a little free of—dragging a right foot.
While you have not forgotten it, for a moment, sucking on a paintbrush and looking up into the fiesta of the sun you see
yourself walk away—walk out—out of your leather corset, your steel corset, your plaster corset, your corset of thorns and tears. Your abyss of dark birds. Diego, Diego.
I am sweeping the earth. I am soaking the earth with my tears. Dragging a right foot. Sorrow.
Brushing up, rubbing up slightly against her—I am sweeping the earth with my hair, with my grief.
All is failed—but the light is not failed. Walking away from your marriage which seems to be failing for a second time. One good leg.
You take her hand. She pulls on your necklace of swallows and thorns. You take her to the ditch at the end of the dirt road. You chew the earth at her door, screaming for her to come with you—down the dirt road—home. And you take the woman’s hand and pull her with you, free. A little free. Free of—
You have come to the place of utter sorrow and coast as the end approaches.
As the end nears. You cradle a sugar skull.
And the small boats put up their white sails and your workers of the world unite once more … See how the shoreline recedes and the boats and the dirt road you loved and walked on. And the roses. You are dragging her here to this—and your country soaked in blood and broken. Lost roads. Yes, you whirl in your communista, raising a fist and cigarette and swagger. Mouthing Trotsky, all your thorns and roses. Your country, body gone to blood and broken. And you charm her with your fetish and promises and she watches as you suck on the edge of your corset. You swear into her ear as you lower her. You bisect in every possible way her body, in the ditch, laughing maniacally, left for dead, on the dirt road
home—
Without pain.
In pain in dread—you are devouring time and the earth and the woman—you are devouring women—in your bravada—fuck me right now.
