The Correspondence Artist

by Barbara Browning

  Don’t look at me if this story seems overdetermined. Everything about my affair with Tzipi has been overdetermined. But in the aftermath, we did have an interesting exchange about Freud’s essay, “Das Medusenhaupt,” and Hélène Cixous’s “Le Rire de la Méduse.” Tzipi was interested in the figure of castration, and the thesis of the proliferating phalluses, of course, but she really has no patience with the notion of “écriture féminine.” She had also forgotten that Freud suggests that petrifaction symbolizes “the comforting erection.”

  When I testily mentioned having had to pay a surcharge on my ticket to come back early, Tzipi did offer to reimburse me for the whole failed trip. I should also mention that Djeli ended up paying my Bamako hospital bill.

  I realize that I will appear at least as hard-hearted as Tzipi for submitting Melina’s anguish to this treatment – first a distanced irony, and then a clinical, psychoanalytic diagnosis highjacked for French feminist theoretical ends. The truth is that when I saw her slumped over on the floor in that ridiculous get-up come undone, the shadow of her hungry pubic hair and her mashed nipples urgently forcing their reality through her unitard, when I heard her moan and uselessly thud her foot at her uncaring snakes, when I watched her wipe the snot from her nose and grimace in all her exquisite pain, I felt for her, just as I felt for Hannah there on that sidewalk in Tel Aviv, as she clawed at her own arms and howled in agony. I may be a little more understated, but what is this but my own grim display of the intolerable ache of losing Tzipi Honigman? What are these little glimpses of our story together but “luminous spots to cure eyes damaged by gruesome night”?

  Fortunately, I never lost it like this with the paramour. I told you, Tzipi was the one I fell in love with. She’s the one I thrashed over, sobbed at, howled for, in my own quiet way.

  I’m not in love with my lover. My ex-lover. I’m not sure what term to use. The paramour is my friend forever or something like that.

  The following was actually the complete e-mail I sent Santutxo about Darwin. As I read it over, I see why I abbreviated it before. You may find some of it objectionable, on the grounds of certain sweeping generalizations about gender and writing. It’s also pretty unbearably politically lofty. How embarrassing. I was responding to one of Santutxo’s more excessive tirades, in which he’d careened from extremes of feminist speechifying to sexist hissy-fit, the apotheosis of which was a very tasteless joke about the female anatomy. He was irked by the fact that I’d attributed one of his more idiotic comments (about the French elections) to his own gender.

  Saturday, June 9, 2007, 4:08 p.m.

  Subject: Darwin

  Fine, your idiocy is yours and yours alone, it’s not because you’re a man. But then I want you to admit that my aburrimiento and my meretricio are also mine alone and not because I’m a woman.

  You think you’re different (Swedish Basque, homo/heterosexual, right wing leftist, Darwinist feminist…). I also think I’m pretty unusual. Maybe it’s a lot of egotism on both our parts. But of course I agree that we are (we should all be) experimental.

  I understood when you said that your political posture vis-àvis sex seemed arbitrary, the team you were rooting for. But I still think, even if we know we might be mistaken, we should always be looking for a more humane way of living (sorry, I know, this sounds like something Ségolène would say). But I’m serious. Maybe there is no perfect political system, and no perfect relationship between a man and a woman, but it doesn’t have to be that horrid scenario in your lame joke.

  They also say that adolescents are necessarily a pain in the ass, that they have to fight with their parents. Sometimes Sandro asks me, “Do you think I should stop calling you mom and just tell people you’re my friend?” And I ask him why I can’t be his mother and his friend. He agrees but he says that people assume that mothers and sons drive each other crazy.

  I am and I want to remain your friend.

  I loved the story of your neighbor the “old maid,” and your identification with her, and the birth of your feminism. When I say you’re Ultra-Sensitive, that’s what I mean. It’s your empathy. And that’s why I’ll always identify with the left: it’s a politics of empathy. Maybe sometimes it’s off track in the grand scheme of things, but it’s based on this, the possibility of identifying with the other, and especially the more vulnerable.

  There is no happy nation, but I believe that unjust societies are sadder. It’s pure Hegel – the master is as enslaved by slavery as the slave. It’s the same thing between men and women.

  You told me more than once about that thing your Italian woman friend said, that we all want sexual liberty but the tendency is to want to deny liberty to the other. I don’t agree.

  You propose another formula, which I also find suspect (Freudian or not) – that all men want to love and all women want to be loved. I find it difficult to believe that anybody doesn’t want to be loved.

  That’s why we create (compose, write, paint…). My artist friend Raul says, “It’s all about the pussy.” It’s a joke, but it’s true that it’s at least partly about a desire to be loved. I agree with you that Che wanted to construct something much more important than happiness, and I agree that men have a tendency to think this way, beyond the present, way beyond. Maybe there’s also an “all about the pussy” aspect, in the vulgar sense, and in the psychoanalytic sense of a desire to be loved by the mother. But that noble thing that goes WAY beyond the present, that also exists.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about Shakespeare, because of the book you gave me, and because we went to see Hamlet. Well, obviously, that went way beyond the pussy in any sense you might take it.

  It’s less typical to find a woman making art at this level of ambition. The creative act tends to be more personal. Which doesn’t necessarily make it inferior, but the tendency is often more modest. I write as a woman. Happiness is a priority for me. I don’t find that better or worse. I just think I’m lucky.

  I’m worried about your insomnia. You wrote me at the hour when I was waking up, and I think you still hadn’t gone to bed. Sleep! It’s one of the secrets to happiness.

  Didn’t I tell you what Florence said about typographical errors? Typos are sexy!

  Santutxo had said in his message that aside from his inability to sleep or to be happy, aside from the insufferable, bellyaching rhetoric of Ségolène, aside from my own half-baked socialist idealism, aside from the pervasive whininess and unnecessary drama of my sex, the worst thing was that he’d reread a recent message he’d sent me and realized that he’d made an egregious number of very stupid spelling errors.

  I’m not the only one who struggles with the paramour’s incongruous and often irreconcilable opinions. Can you understand that I find Santutxo’s profound commitment to feminism and the anticolonial struggle even more moving because of his occasional expressions of oafish sexism and racial and cultural insensitivity? He really does possess an uncanny ability to identify with the Other, even if that means subverting the most fundamental aspects of his being.

  You may just think I’ve been buffaloed, but without those long and tortuous arguments over coffee and cigarettes back at UNAM, surely his most dedicated student would never have been able to come up with this:

  “Marcos is gay in San Francisco, a black in South Africa, Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Isidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, an indigenous person in the streets of San Cristóbal, a gang member in Neza, a rocker on campus, a Jew in Germany, ombudsman in the sedana, feminist in political parties, Communist in the post-Cold War era, prisoner in Cinalapa, pacifist in Bosnia… Marcos is every underrated, oppressed, exploited minority that is resisting and saying ‘Enough!’” – El Sup, “Shadows of Tender Fury,” 1995.

  Massimo De Angelis dubbed this Marcos’s “subversive affinity,” but it’s pure Santutxo – excepting that Santutxo also has moments when he identifies with Nancy Reagan. Naturally, Marcos gets frustrated with his friend, and so does Garzón – but t
o know Santutxo is to love him. If you knew him like I know him, you’d see what I mean.

  Of course not everybody feels this way. Certain members of the ETA-M, for example, think he’s an ass. And that was the reason, as you will have surmised, that I found myself that night in the stranglehold of that scabrous bald guy with the pierced lip.

  “So, Tubal, look at what we’ve got here,” said his swaggering, mohawked comrade. “This is the Txotxolo’s little andragai.” She hocked up a wad and spat in the general direction of my feet. I stared at the impressive glob of slobber on the floor. “Well, little American piglet, let’s see how much your traitor boyfriend really cares for your little American piglet ass!”

  My captors dragged me, struggling, out the back door of the so-called “safe” house. Waiting out back were two more thugs – a short, stocky heavy-metal guy with a bandana tied around his forehead, and a tall, beautiful, young woman with a conspicuous burn scar that stretched from her left cheek down into the deep V of her black V-neck sweater. They wordlessly ground out their cigarettes under foot and joined us in our bungling, contentious march across a small field toward the barn. Since none of us spoke, the only sound was more of those little dried sticks crackling under their boots. I was really regretting having worn high heels, but how could I have known?

  The moon was nearly full, and out there in the country the stars speckled the sky like the pock marks on Tubal’s ugly mug. There was a smell of fresh air, manure, and distant smoke.

  When we got into the barn, the mohawked ringleader told Tubal to take me up to the loft. She and the others would go back to the house to make a couple of phone calls. Tubal dragged me up some wooden steps toward an enclosed loft. I snagged my thigh-high stockings on the way up and gave a little yelp. That pissed him off. “Cállate, American bitch! Nobody’ll hear you out here.” We’d reached the loft. He shoved me into a broken, old arm chair and shut the door. I was trying to keep my cool. Tubal and I stared defiantly at one another. He grabbed a hunk of chorizo that was sitting on a plate on a small table. Tossing it into my lap, he snarled, “Nobody’s going to hurt you – you’ll be out of here in an hour if your old man comes through. Now make yourself at home – but shut up!”

  I was gnawing on my hunk of chorizo when, a few minutes later, we heard a rustling noise below, out in front of the barn. Tubal opened the shuttered window of the loft and looked down. Apparently he saw two men poking around the entry to the barn. “Hey,” Tubal shouted in irritation, “what’re you doing here?” That wasn’t a very bright question, but to tell the truth, Tubal didn’t give you the impression of being the brightest bulb.

  I was later to learn that the men rustling around in front of the barn were a couple of Garzón’s hired henchmen. They weren’t cops – Garzón clearly couldn’t let it get out that he was protecting the Arrano Beltza’s lover – and I have a feeling they were the kind of men who would have played on anybody’s team for the right price. Still, I’m very glad they ended up on mine. “Hey!” Tubal shouted again.

  He rigged the door to the loft shut with a length of rope and clattered down the stairs to confront the intruders. I struggled with the rope on the door and managed to pry it open a couple of inches so I could see what was happening below.

  Tubal was lumbering toward the two men like a zombie. I screamed. Tubal looked over his shoulder irritatedly.

  “She’s up in the loft!” one of them said.

  “No way you’re getting up there!” Tubal shouted threateningly.

  “Well,” said the other guy, “it’s better to have loft and lost than never to have loft at all.”

  That’s when the free-for-all started. Tubal was chasing the guys around in circles. Hay was flying everywhere. The chickens started squawking. Two horses watched the action with expressions of boredom. A cow bellowed.

  The first hired man took a dive into a haystack, and the second man and Tubal followed. All I could see were sprays of hay shooting up into the air. Suddenly, Garzón’s third man came running into the barn with a pitchfork. He ran over to the lucha libre in the haystack and poked poor Tubal in the ass.

  “Mierda!” he shouted, turning to encounter the new threat. He was busy fending off the pitchfork when, to my great relief, Santutxo came running in.

  “I’m up here!” I shouted. Santutxo looked up at me with – I swear to you – pure compassion and affection in his eyes. He ran over to Tubal and socked him in the neck. Tubal fell down and Santutxo came running up to the loft.

  He’d finished untying the rope from the door and we had a quick embrace when suddenly the other three ETA thugs came running into the barn. Now it was going to get really hot.

  Santutxo yelled from the loft, and all eyes turned up to him. The mohawked ringleader had her hand on the pistol tucked into the waistband of her jeans. “Okay,” she said threateningly, “which one of you is the ‘Arrano Beltza?’” Her voice dripped with bitter irony as she pronounced Santutxo’s once proud nom de guerre.

  With the fire of righteousness burning in his eyes, chin thrust forward, Santutxo intoned, “I am the Arrano Beltza.”

  There was a pause.

  And then Garzón’s first hireling, a goofball with a greasepaint moustache, a swallow-tail coat, and a cigar, stepped forward, saying, “I am the Arrano Beltza.” And then the kooky Italian with a pork-pie hat stepped forward, saying, “I am the Arrano Beltza.” And then the guy with the pitchfork, an angelic blond lunatic, stepped forward and honked a bicycle horn. Because this wasn’t really a remake of Spartacus. This was the last scene of Monkey Business.

  When the shock had settled on us all, Santutxo took a headlong dive from the loft into the fray. He landed directly on top of the ringleader. Garzón’s men joined in and once again the hay was flying. The beautiful woman with the burn scar rose up momentarily, and the loon with the horn bonked her over the head – out cold. The thug with the bandana revived, briefly, only to get bonked himself. Santutxo was having a genuine fisticuffs with Tubal, and the moustachioed mercenary started clanging on a cowbell as though this were a boxing match: “Now they’re in the center of the ring, and the crowd ROARS!…” And a cow mooed.

  That’s when Garzón himself came charging in, and the story was over.

  Friday, April 18, 2008, 2:01 p.m.

  Subject: religion

  Everybody thinks Obama looked weaker in the last debate, but it was also because Hillary came out swinging so he was in the defensive position the whole time, which is always the weaker position. Take a little piece out of that, put it on the Yahoo! home page and it looks even worse. But it’s true, she looked better this time. This doesn’t convince me that she’s the better candidate, just that she really wants to win.

  I know you’re not exactly in the anti-religion line of Marx. You’re getting close but you were always more complicated than this. Somewhere in between this, Dionysus, and your friend Cornel West. Me too. I’ve been interested for a long time in various religions because of the political, ethical and aesthetic possibilities they offer. Liberation theology, of course, the Black Church, even spiritism fascinates me. But I always feel better when I see in the people connected to these things a tiny hint of ironic distance, something that shows that even though they believe, they know it’s a fiction.

  It’s like that fiction I told you about, the fiction of being in love. Maybe it’s not a necessary fiction, but it can be pretty productive. Which is more or less your friend’s argument.

  But living in this political climate here, where everybody has to keep repeating he or she is a Christian the whole time, it makes you a little queasy over the topic.

  When I said that the article about the girl in the Abu Ghraib photos was moving, I should have said it was disturbing. Deeply. It just shows you how dehumanizing war is.

  She’s a lesbian, everybody says she was extremely sweet, very innocent. She’s also monstrous. She went over there, participated, wrote about it, wrote e-mails to her girlfriend saying first that
it was funny, then it got worse, she got disgusted, she wrote saying that she couldn’t take it any more, that it was a nightmare, she started documenting the nightmare, but always with that adorable smile as if it were a picnic in the park, that “thumbs up” – it shows you something about photography, something about war, maybe something about women as soldiers.

  The most disconcerting thing is the photographs. She looks so adorable and sweet.

  Those young anarchists you mentioned sound a lot like Sandro and his friends. Very free. Sandro also wants to have an adventure with that 58-year-old friend of mine, the beautiful one. If she wanted it he’d do it in a minute along with another friend of his, boy or girl. When you wrote saying that this was “very important,” I didn’t understand if it was because they represented a new political moment you see emerging, or if it was important as a liberatory experience in your erotic life. Maybe both. It’s good to feel free.