The smell of Brigitte, sweet and sour at the same time, lingers on his fingers, his skin. He heads inside, seeking the dark. Finds the same pews and the altar protected by waist-high iron fencing of sorts. He sits in the quiet, trying to feel the ten thousand prayers hanging in the dead, satisfied air. He turns at the sound of rigid footsteps. A young man, dressed in a military uniform, strides down the centre aisle. He doesn’t appear to notice Aimé.
The young man places something over the iron-latticed bars, something small. On his way out, he glances in Aimé’s direction. Aimé thinks his face looks a lot older than when he came in. The man’s eyes look yellow. Must be a trick of the light.
‘Beware the snake eyes,’ the man says. ‘It hurts to bring someone back from the dead. Bright colours will confuse you. Your open eyes will not focus. And when you can see, you will regret it.After the man leaves, Aimé approaches the altar. He doesn’t know if he should touch it, but the pull of curiosity is too strong to ignore. It’s some sort of choker made with what appears to be old bone fragments and bronze snake-eye beads. It is warm in his cunt-scented fingers.
‘I need some good luck,’ he says, clasping it about his neck and leaving the church.
Walking home through the crowded, colourful Parisian streets, the people’s eyes circling round in their fat heads like the Moulin Rouge, he shields his own eyes. Why had the soldier left the necklace? Would the soldier die now? Everything is much brighter and warmer then when Aimé had gone into the church. He wonders if his maman will be home now. He steals tomatoes from a garden so he and his brothers will have something to eat.
At home, his brothers Dominique and Edgard (formerly Donnie and Eddie) sit on the couch watching television. He sits down next to them, shares the red-gutted fruit. They bite into it like apples. The youngest, Dominique, gets some on his shirt. ‘What’s that?’ he says, pointing to the bone choker circling Aimé’s neck, his mouth full of an army of tomato gush.
‘Did you brush your teeth today?’ Aimé asks.
‘Get a new brain already.’
‘I don’t know what this is,’ Aimé says, fingering the beads. ‘I found it.’
They turn their attention back to the TV. Aimé gathers up the empty bottles of booze and the rotting bags of garbage and takes them outside. When he comes back, Edgard has changed the channel to some nature show about snakes.
‘Hey! Turn it back!’ Dominique whines.
Aimé is mesmerized.
‘Snakes have rods and cones in their eyes, like we do, though in different numbers,’ the host says. ‘They have colour vision, but it isn’t as broad ranged as ours. They have a yellow filter that absorbs ultraviolet light and protects the eye.’
‘Who cares? Turn the channel, butt munch,’ Dominique pleads. Edgard sighs.
‘Don’t change it,’ Aimé says.
‘Humans need to thank the snake for helping them develop their vision to see inches away,’ the narrator continues. ‘The ability of humans to have such razor-sharp eyesight resulted from a ‘biological arms race’ millions of years ago between primates and snakes. The primates eventually won out. Scientists believe primates developed their near-vision to pick hanging fruit and capture bugs.’
The front door slams. Maman’s home. She’s with someone greasy– a skinny man in a French cap, grungy black T-shirt, ripped jeans. He has limp brown eyes and smells like cheap wine. Colette stumbles into the living room, sets her purse on the scarred table.
‘Aimé, I need your ski mask, your knit cap, and Dominique’s toy gun.’ She has a plastic bag in her hand and removes something from it, puts it on her head. A bright red wig that monkeys to her shoulders. She looks at her reflection in the mirror above the TV. ‘I look good, don’t I?’
‘You look great, like a delicious whore,’ sleaze-ball says.
‘Wait, I need something else.’ She slips a pair of big sunglasses over her eyes.
‘Maman, why do you need that shit? I don’t know where it is,’ Aimé says, feeling something twisted and sick coil in his gut.
‘Oh, go get it. It’s just a bit of fun, Aimé.’
Aimé gets the stuff and gives it to her. Then she and her greasy pick-up leave. Aimé heats up some water on the stove so Dominique can have a warm bath. Afterward, they eat the last of the tomatoes. Later that night, after his brothers are asleep, Aimé watches TV in the living room. He thinks of his rich grandfather living in America and his horse farms; the grandfather who has never once acknowledged them or tried to help them in anyway. He gets up, goes to the sink, washes the dishes and puts them away, slamming cabinet doors that will soon fall off their hinges. Then he returns to the TV.
Something dark and furry in the corner catches his eye. He tries to ignore it, goes completely still. He pounces and the dancing rodent is in his mouth. His upper and lower jaws disengage to further enlarge his mouth so he can swallow it. He can feel the warm blood of the animal, its furry heartbeat, slide down inside him. His vision is fuzzy and his whole being vibrates. The room is a buzzing quadrant of flashing lights and bright colours. He sits on the couch, feeling sick, until his vision returns to normal. His stomach hurts.
He didn’t just eat a mouse. He couldn’t have. Thawed, appropriately sized, room temperature mice didn’t usually turn him on. He has a sudden urge to rub aspen shavings and damp sphagnum moss all over his body and climb shelves. And he’s cold. He rubs his arms and something comes off on the couch. Shiny, iridescent scales.
He clutches the bone choker around his neck, remembers the snake-eye beads, the words of the soldier in the church: “Beware the snake eyes,” the man said. “It hurts to bring someone back from the dead. Bright colours will confuse you. Your open eyes will not focus. And when you can see, you will regret it.”
He tries to slip the choker off his neck but it won’t budge. Later, the door slams again; Sleaze-ball and his maman come in from the slimy night. Sleaze-ball holds his maman’s arm; she can barely walk. Aimé thinks she is drunk again until sleaze-ball commands him to help him get her to the bedroom.
‘She’s been shot,’ sleaze-ball says, like this is an ordinary, everyday occurrence for people’s mamans to be shot. ‘Help me get her to bed.’
‘Shot!’ Aimé cries. Panics. Sleaze-ball slaps him hard across his face. Aimé feels tears coming but keeps them in check.
‘You never saw me today.’ Sleaze-ball leaves them there. This is not Paris.
‘Aimé? Aimé, is that you, Aimé, my beautiful, beautiful son?’ Colette says.
‘Yes, yes, it’s me, Mom. It’s me, Andrew.’ He’s crying now, brushing the wig hair gently from his mother’s forehead.
‘We need to get help… what happened?’
‘No, Aimé. You’re all better off without me. I robbed a store. The money’s in my purse…’
‘I’m taking you to the hospital…’ But Aimé’s mouth freezes. His maman’s eyes go cold like milk glass. He feels for a pulse and doesn’t get one, puts his hand over his mouth. His vision starts to tunnel.
He sits with her for hours, watches the sun come up. He doesn’t know what to do. He gets up, shuts his maman’s door, and when Dominique and Edgard get up, he tells them maman isn’t home yet. He sends them off to a bakery with some money. He says he found it under a couch cushion.
Aimé shuts off the lights, pulls down the shades, and sits on the coolest part of the couch. Someone knocks on the door.
‘Colette? You home?’
Aimé feels threatened. He farts. Snakes produce a unique scent from musk glands located near the anus when threatened. Copper belly snakes smell like skunks; rat snakes smell like cucumbers. Why does he have to be good at science? Why does he remember shit like that? And why does it smell like cucumbers? He tries to speak and instead hisses. He opens his mouth again.
‘She’s not home,’ he manages, making sure his maman’s bedroom door is still shut.
‘Can I come in?’
Aimé gets up and opens the door, then returns
to the couch.
Snakes are predators and fussy eaters. Rat snakes eat rats, mice, chipmunks, and occasionally landlords.
The landlord sits down. Aimé does not look at him. He fingers the bone choker around his neck, strokes the smooth white fragments, the rounded, bronze snake-eye beads. Beware the snake eyes. He has a sudden desire to crawl under heavy mulch.
‘Where is Colette, boy? The rent is due today…’ He licks his lips. He always speaks to Aimé like he’s an idiot.
Anger surges inside him in a burst of rainbow-boa strength. His fingers meld with the bone choker as he wishes his maman would come back to life. All snakes are carnivorous, small animals; they like to eat lizards and other snakes, rodents and other small mammals, birds, eggs, insects. The room brightens again; he feels another burst of rainbow consciousness. His maman’s bedroom door opens; she stands there in her red wig, her eyes like dead dull marbles. Aimé vomits.
After eating, snakes become torpid while the process of digestion takes place. A snake disturbed after eating will often regurgitate its prey in order to be able to escape a perceived threat.
The actual home of the martyr– across the red fields and up the hill.
Colette sits between them, like something out of the movie Frankenhooker. She steps in the vomit but doesn’t notice. Aimé gets a towel, cleans it up. The landlord doesn’t notice that big chunks of furry rodent have ejected forcefully from his gut? Hair and tiny claws excreted along with uric acid waste? He doesn’t see the circus of flies guzz-guzzing around his maman?
Aimé’s undead maman is already beginning to stink.
‘I’m here for the rent, Colette. God, it stinks in here.’ He pinches his nose. ‘You should maybe take out zee garbage once in a while.’
‘Don’t have the rent,’ Colette says, her eyes dreamy and unfocused. She puts her hand up, touches the wig on her head. ‘I feel pretty. I feel so pretty. Where’s my horse? It’s a half hour to showtime!’
The landlord’s eyes roll over her body. He licks his pasty lips again. ‘We can settle the rent in other ways.’ He pinches her tit right in front of Aimé.
‘Maman, don’t. You don’t have to do that…’
‘Aimé, let me go.’ Something about her voice in the music-butchered daylight broke-stomped-splattered his heart. Aimé, let me go…words hanging like tinsel on the arm of a Christmas tree, glittering for nobody.
‘Take it outside, boy,’ the landlord spits. ‘Outside.’
Aimé hesitates but goes. He waits a few moments then glides around the back, looks through the first floor bedroom window. He sees the landlord shove his maman stomach down onto the bed, push her green-and-white polka dot dress above her hips. She isn’t wearing panties. He knows he should look away but his head won’t turn.
‘Little fucking slut,’ the landlord barks. ‘You like this. Only thing missing is a pool table, eh? You dirty American.’ He puts his fat cock in the crack of her ass. Then he rises in the air, banging away, his big fat hairy ass a ghostly mountain of flesh, his balls slapping against his maman’s curved buttocks, her face tilted up toward the window, blank, but her lips still knifing the tinsel-crisp words, ‘Aimé, let me go. Let me go.’
Aimé shakes. The choker.
His eyes move back and forth as he tries to focus. He grips the choker and wishes her dead again. He feels it when she dies, her pale flesh unmoving as the landlord continues to bang her.
‘Jesus, Colette, some effort? I bang a goddamn corpse.’ He looks down, sees her head turned to the side, open-mouthed, her glassy-eyed stare, and screams. ‘Oh God! The stupid bitch is dead! Dead!’ As he dresses, Aimé slithers back inside and waits for him.
The landlord hurries from the bedroom, closing the door behind him. ‘Aimé, we took care of business. Your maman’s… sleeping. I go now. Don’t worry about the rent.’ He is a basket of sweat. Aimé stares at him.
He tries to go but Aimé stops him, bites him, the movement coiled, lightning fast.
‘Ow kid! What the fuck!’
Aimé hisses. The landlord clutches his chest and falls dead of a heart attack.
In the dark, shades-still-drawn room, Aimé feels his skin crackle and stretch, his head begin to take an odd triangular shape. Is his imagination choking him? No. Aimé knows his power now, his cobra-like purpose. He looks at the landlord’s body. Aimé has the power to reanimate the dead. He didn’t realize it until he brought his maman back. And then wished her dead again with the fanged marrow of his thoughts.
Dominique and Edgard won’t be back from the bakery for a while. He sits on the couch. Closes his eyes until the room again becomes venomous swirls of colours and bright lights. He concentrates on the landlord’s body and hisses rainbow-boa life back into him. The bones in the choker around Aimé’s neck tighten, become a little sharper, poke into his skin, draw blood.
The landlord stands, his lips so red now they remind Aimé of bloody steaks. The actual home of the martyr– across the bruised purple fields and up the red hill.
‘I feel like shit. Like shit,’ the landlord mumbles and scratches his ass.
Aimé imagines him walking out the door, like a pilgrim journeying to the graves, looking in vain for the things he doesn’t want. Then the landlord actually walks out the door.
Aimé thinks, watches as the landlord acts out his thoughts, walks into the busy street, into the path of an oncoming vehicle. France is very pro-tenant.
Later, when his brothers get home, he tells them this is not Paris and their mother is dead. They cry.
‘What do we do?’ Dominique, who still smells of tomatoes, sobs.
Aimé tells them about the bone choker and his new powers. Then slowly, slowly, Aimé sheds his skin. Dominique claps his hands with delight when he is done. Edgard doesn’t say anything. ‘We’ll never go hungry again,’ Aimé says. ‘And no one will ever separate us.’
There are lots of rats in the City of Light. Lots of rats. There are four times as many rats as people. Rat with Chestnut and Duck. Lemon Deep Fried Rat. Sautéed Rat Slices with Vermicelli. Liquored Rat Flambé. Black Bean Rat. Braised Rat garnished with sprigs of cilantro, morsels of rat meat swaddled in crispy rat skin.
‘The first nibble of rat exposes a rubbery texture,’ Aimé says. ‘The skin coats your teeth with a delicious slime. It’s like chewing a thick wad of lard. But you get used to it.’ German Black Pepper Rat Knuckle. Rat soup– delicate threads of rat meat mixed with thinly sliced potatoes and onions. Surprisingly sweet. Rat Kabob. Out of love, Aimé bites his brothers so they will have the power to survive, too.
There are a lot of rats in the City of Light. And he is the king of the Hill of Martyrs, a seeker of heated cathedrals and lazy girls, a music-loving butcher, a boy who dances with thoughts and colors. A pair of spectacles pushed down someone’s nose, a black-and-white café where the drinks have a price, the fat tip of a lit, discarded cigarette on grey-black cobble-stoned streets, a boy-snake-man who can roll back asphalt with his big, whalebone thoughts. And this is not Paris.
About the Story
I spent a weekend in Paris in 1986. I was a young woman in love. It was the summer before my sophomore year in college. I tried to cram as much of the culture, history, and ambience of the city into that weekend as possible. I was fascinated by the street vendors, the fountains and statues, the grounds surrounding the palace of Louis XIV. The inner quiet and peace of Notre Dame. Walking the streets at night I felt like I was strolling through van Gogh’s painting Café Terrace at Night, the first painting in which he used starry backgrounds. He went on to paint star-filled skies in Starry Night Over the Rhone, and the better known Starry Night. I was with people I loved, making new friends, I couldn’t speak any French, I didn’t really dig French food, but I loved the city. One thing I love about Paris is the mix of people, painters and prostitutes and artists and street performers, travellers, visitors, coffee drinkers, and of course, writers. I wanted to remember some of the sights and smells and fantastic memories
of the place and also to write about the things that people martyr themselves for. And the things they don’t. So Hill of Martyrs was born. When people read this story, I want them to wonder, is it a story about magic? Is it a story about a young man who once had stars in his eyes, but who builds elaborate illusions around himself to survive the abuses in his life? Or is it a little bit of both? Paris will do that. Put stars in your eyes. But not everybody has a romantic view of Paris, even if they are standing on the second-highest viewpoint after the Eiffel Tower, the sky is a bowl of bright-ness and their ordinary, dirty life is far below them.
Gargoyles and Sidewalk Cafés
by Peter Baltensperger
Jacqueline was sitting comfortably on her fold-up canvas seat high atop Notre Dame where the gargoyles watched over the city with their enigmatic stone eyes. She loved the gargoyles. They were such mysterious creatures from so long ago, such distorted and grotesque beings from a distant era of architecture and popular beliefs that they inspired a deep feeling of awe and wonder. She loved sketching them, trying to capture their essence, attempting to derive some universal meaning from their existence, some personal insights from their bizarre faces, their misshapen bodies.
For a while, she just sat there on the balustrade, leaning against the ancient stone wall. She was content just looking up at them through the early afternoon light, waiting for the sun to come around a bit further and produce the patterns of light and shadows she wanted to capture on this particular day. Her carrying case stood on the stone floor beside her, her sketch pad balanced on her knees, her charcoal ready in her hand.
It was a perfectly pleasant spring afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, the sun still quite low and soft, the perfect conditions for plying her trade. All she had to do was to sit there for a while, wait for the light to change, and gather her thoughts, imagining the four gargoyles perched in the corners above her the way she wanted them to appear on her sheets of paper.
Sex in the City Paris Page 11
