Sphinx

by Anne Garréta

  I had judged him, a priori, as moronic, and I realized, triumph and despair mixing indissolubly, that it was true, indeed in every way. I was revolted by this pretty boy’s attitude, by his dumbfounded acceptance and regurgitation of all conventional hogwash. With the aplomb bestowed on him by age and rank, Monsieur would uphold unconscionable vulgarities, which, moreover, he revered—a proselyte! When I arrived, the conversation was revolving around the countries of North Africa, which he had glimpsed during a recent trip to a resort. He passed briskly from the picturesque story of his trip to general commentary on the countries and the samples of the population that one could encounter in France, “in our country,” as he articulated so well. I reveled in ridiculing a rival in front of A*** and put on a show of systematic perversity. The discussion quickly turned sour: when one realizes that one is being unreasonable, it is precisely then that one employs even more uncouth and violent arguments. The offspring of the 16th arrondissement do not like to be refuted, much less mocked; they never think it beneath them to resort to insults, no matter how low. I left, slamming the door behind me, not without having hurled out an extremely spiteful compliment on the quality and distinction of A***’s lover, whom I referred to with a far more offensive noun.

  I was in a very bad mood when I arrived at the Apocryphe, and the music I selected was proof. I exuded my resentment through the loudspeakers, which calmed me down a bit. On the floor that night were some showbiz caryatids, those people that one sees on the covers of popular magazines. They did me the honor of a hello, expecting that I would carry out some of their desiderata: “Could you maybe play X’s latest record…? He’s here tonight, it would be an immmmense pleasure for him,” or else: “When are you going to play some reggae?” It made me snicker that these dignitaries, flush with their new, modern-day power, solicited favors from the feeble authority conferred on me by my position behind the turntables. What an enormous privilege it was in their eyes that they should notice me! In granting me the favor of acknowledging my presence, of pouring onto me a miniscule portion of the celebrity they oozed and tried to pawn off as glory, they tried cheaply to coax my kindness. I made them feel the vanity of their approach, and unless they were willing to own up to the humiliation of failure, they had no choice but to laugh at my sneering. And that night in particular they were made to feel the grace of my cynicism, the bursts of my impertinent irony.

  Common mortals have other ways of expressing their desires. A club does not get filled every night with only the chic clientele. Because there are a paltry number of remarkable characters—and they are remarkable only because their number is paltry—a mass of individuals of lower distinction are allowed into this sanctuary, a privilege through which they are made to feel honored. They would come to the Apocryphe, attracted by the club’s reputation (they don’t accept just anybody—you, me, any old person), hoping to rub shoulders with some celebrities.

  That night I realized something: they pronounce their desiderata, demanding (without really caring) some record, in order to prove that they have a right to be in this milieu where the arbitrary reigns. It’s their sole ontological proof, their sole cogito, their foundation and justification. I want, therefore I am; I need, I breathe. I spend money, they must grant my desire, considering my demands in light of the value that I offer. I pay to exist; the tribute, delivered in kind or in cash, buys the recognition of my right.

  My strategy was to inspire incertitude; I derived pleasure in imbuing these souls with doubt by not playing into their pathetic ruses. Che vuoi? I was leading them to the brink of an essential anxiety. My reply was always “maybe.” It was a dangerous game that exposed me to the disapproval, disrespect, or insidious resentment of the people to whom I denied the assurance of being a subject. Each night I would have to confront this great panic of individual desires that were in reality desires for individuation, for furious revindication. Sometimes I would try—utterly in vain but with a perverse pleasure—to make them understand that the sum of individual desires does not add up to the happiness of all. That when it comes to the music in a club the law of the majority is ineffectual; that neither democracy nor aristocracy, nor even oligarchy, is a possible regime for a coherent musical set. I would argue that a good DJ is one who, rather than simply responding to repetitive wishes that are consciously formulaic and elementary (such and such a record, such and such a song), subconsciously manages to fulfill an unknown desire by creating a unity out of something superior to adding up so many records, so many requests. To appease is not the same as to fulfill.

  Each night I made such observations that I would occasionally articulate to myself when pedantic disquisition and contempt started to mutually reinforce each other. I had come to the end of this chapter of my De natura rerum noctis dedicated to the essence of the position of the DJ when I noticed A*** standing near the bar, no longer accompanied by that new moronic lover, being served a glass of champagne by the barman.

  It was late, the Eden had already been closed for some time, and I worried that A***’s arrival at the Apocryphe after our altercation meant trouble. I didn’t know if I was supposed to leave my booth and go meet A*** or if I was supposed to wait for A*** to approach me. Fortunately, we both had the same reflex, and met halfway between the bar and the booth. There was no visible trace of what had happened a few hours before. A*** was drunk, which almost never happened, and from within that drunkenness asked me to dance. People didn’t dance as a couple anymore in those days except during retro sequences when the DJ would revive old dance forms such as the bop, tango, or waltz. And that was absolutely what A*** desired: a waltz, nothing less. I was enticed by this extravagance, and besides, why not? At this late hour, only a small number of people remained on the floor. A waltz would serve as a charming exit, and, irresistibly outmoded, could assume the parodic allure that excuses all improprieties. So from the bottom of the crate I took out an LP of Viennese waltzes that I cued with no transition, following some nondescript funk track. Abandoning the turntables, and without any snarky retort this time, I went to dance this waltz.

  A***, though drunk, was dancing divinely. A classic routine demonstrates one’s sensibility just as much as the unruly improvisations of today’s dance steps. While dancing these waltzes—for we danced many in succession—I had the impression that never until this day had I reveled in such a carefree lightness of being. There was no longer anybody but us on the dance floor; no doubt our perfect execution of the steps had intimidated all the amateurs. A*** had a naïve and clichéd fondness for the antiquated world of the aristocracy, an admiration for the bygone, the retro, the image of luxury that Hollywood associates with times past.

  A***’s drunkenness, at once dissipated and concentrated by the dance, kept us moving. When the Apocryphe closed, we hurried to the Kormoran. Ruggero had a bottle of whiskey brought to my table that he insisted on offering me for the New Year, and as a thank you for the cigars I had brought him back from Germany. And so I too started to drink. A*** and I talked for a long time about everything under the sun. We were drunk, A*** more so than me. There was a warmth, a hint of complicity between us, which soothed the constant tension of our unfinished business. And this happy understanding, permitted by our drunkenness, was further reinforced by the illusory intensity of perception brought on by the alcohol. Leaning toward me and speaking with more abandon than usual, A*** suddenly murmured the following question: “And if we make love, will you still love me after?” Abruptly, I caught a glimpse of what I had given up hoping for, without ever having written it off. It was finally being offered to me, in a whisper and under the extraordinary guise of a fiction, all that we had envisioned and elaborated, that which ultimately gave meaning to all of our stratagems. A*** repeated the query, making it sound like a supplication. I leaned toward A***, not knowing how to respond to the anxiety I sensed in the question.

  My only answer was to wrest A*** from the chair and to take us out of this place. Once outside and without having
discussed it at all, we hailed a taxi and A*** told the driver the address. Without saying a word, we took the elevator. The fear that I had forgotten suddenly returned and took me by the heart, the fear of flesh that accompanies those first adolescent excitements, an anxiety we attempt to combat too quickly with cynicism. I thought I was going to faint, standing there at last on the threshold of what I had so passionately desired.

  I staggered as A*** moved to kiss me; I didn’t know what to do except let it happen. The temporal order of events, even the simple spatial points of reference, all disappeared without my realizing it; everything is blurred in my memory. I have in my mouth, still, the taste of skin, of the sweat on that skin; against my hands, the tactile impression of skin and the shape of that flesh. In a sprawling obscurity—either I closed my eyes or my gaze was struck with a temporary blindness—some vaguely outlined visions, and, in my ear, the echo of soft rustlings, of words barely articulated.

  I don’t know how to recount precisely what happened, or how to describe or even attest to what I did, what was done to me. And the effect of the alcohol has nothing to do with this eradication; it’s impossible to recapture the feeling of abandon through words. Crotches crossed and sexes mixed, I no longer knew how to distinguish anything. In this confusion we slept.

  When I awoke from the incredible sleep that follows the appeasement of the flesh, I saw A***, watching me and smoking a cigarette. The memories I have of my life at that time are all of this order. Dissolved are the restless nights, the clammy visions of crowds of bodies mangled and shredded by the spurts of light that cut through shadow. Crystallized at the bottom of my memory remains the recollection of these sleeps and these wakings where one floats between the resurgence of desire and the memory of its satisfaction.

  Never until then had I longed to see A*** dance on stage. When A*** danced in the Apocryphe, I didn’t have to share the pleasure I took in watching: I was allowed to imagine that the dance was dedicated entirely to me, without the crowd being there to prove me wrong. Watching this body moving uninhibited, this body that wasn’t mine in any way, I reveled in the uniqueness and the exclusivity of my gaze.

  However, not long after that first night, I decided to go and watch the show put on at the Eden. From my place in the audience, I watched A*** perform one of the club’s best numbers. I can only describe it as a syncopated progression of movements, the ecstatic miming of a song written in English entitled—I learned later—“Sphinx.” I was struck by the lyrics, at least by the ones I could grasp in the moment. I came back to this song so many times, keeping it as an emblem, the enigmatic prophecy of all that ever came to pass between A*** and me. I was struck that night by certain lines, which I deciphered or guessed from watching their silent pronunciation on A***’s lips. Erratic blocks of words, fragments that resounded in me even more violently because they were incomplete, that I grasped only insofar as they seemed to articulate something of my relationship to this strange figure I had only recently succeeded in conquering.

  Later I translated the exact words of the song and watched as their meaning, which I had imperfectly intuited that night, unfolded. I transcribe the essential lines here:

  I can’t stand the pain

  and I keep looking for all the faces I had

  before the world began.

  I’ve only known desire and my poor soul will burn

  into eternal fire.

  And I can’t even cry,

  a sphinx can never cry.

  I wish that I could be

  a silent sphinx eternally.

  I don’t want any past

  only want things which cannot last.

  Phony words of love

  or painful truth, I’ve heard it all before.

  A conversation piece,

  a woman or a priest, it’s all a point of view.

  The vision comes back to me instantly: A*** crossing the stage in the feline roving of the choreography, embodying an enigmatic, silent figure twisting to the extreme limit of dislocation in miraculous movements that were syncopated but not staccato. Even as this body fades away, a spectral figure remains, immobile; the stage is populated with incarnations, sudden gestures, hieratic poses set in a relentless progression. There was something cat-like or divine in this body that, moved by some sly, sensual pleasure, was embodying in nonchalant strides a languid damnation, an immemorial fatality made into movement.

  When I entered the dressing room, I found A*** immobile as if in prayer or confession, legs bent, forearms fixed on a high barstool supporting A***’s entire body weight. Hands dangling, wrists slack, gaze abandoned and lost in the emptiness, then focusing on me as I entered and following me to where I sat down opposite. It was like the disdainful pose of the sphinx (or the image I had of it then), the same sharp aesthetic. I thought this to myself and, laughing, affectionately let slip, “my sphinx”—as if I had said “my love.” We remained face-to-face, our bodies as if petrified. A terror silted up in my throat; the desire I had felt welling up in me at the sight of those distant movements on the stage had been suspended. I could do nothing but adore. Those eyes, so black, fixed on me, subjected me to an unbearable torture.

  The following winter we planned a trip to New York to visit A***’s family, including A***’s mother, uncles, aunts, and cousins. We thought of it as a break, an interpolated parenthesis in the delirious lifestyle caused by our jobs. We wanted a rest from the excitement—and the resulting comedown—of our nights of partying, to flee the invasive rumble of the social scene. We also wanted to repair the damage done by A***’s inability to remain faithful to me, by those passing flings that always led to remorse and then a sudden resurgence of desire and a whirlwind week of all kinds of debaucheries. We were hoping that through a month of intimacy, of living free from constraint, we could erase the hurts that a year of voracious and nocturnal passion had inflicted on us.

  We left right at the beginning of January, not long after the New Year. The day we arrived we visited A***’s mother, whom I was meeting for the first time. She was living alone in a studio, on the twelfth floor of a building on Second Avenue. Behind her apparent reserve upon their reunion, which contrasted starkly with the effusive demonstration of affection deployed by A***, I perceived the joy, or rather the painful relief, brought on by this homecoming. The insidious pain inflicted on her by A***’s long absence seeped through her happiness. I sensed the misery, the despair caused by the distance from the sole person she loved. She wouldn’t even allow herself to show this sadness, so deep was the wound. She considered me attentively without asking any questions and, it seemed, accepted me without need for discussion. I was there with A***, who seemed to be attached to me and to whom I seemed to be attached. What did she suspect our relationship to be? What did she think of it? I never knew. All I learned, which I heard through A***, was that she appreciated my attentiveness and my lack of histrionics. Of all the people she had had the occasion to see in A***’s company, it was for me, apparently, that she had the most esteem. She was astonished by how young I was (ten years younger than A***). She thought it was a good omen that I wasn’t particularly extroverted. I think she feared for A***, not knowing anything about her child’s life, and what she imagined or heard of it did not reassure her in the least. And, though she never regarded A*** with disapproval, she did not manage to conceal her anxiety. She was as apprehensive of meeting me as she was excited: she was no doubt dreading that she would not care for me as much as A*** was counting on it.

  We stayed in a hotel for three nights, waiting for one of my former fellow university students to hand over his apartment in the city, which we would stay in during his upcoming absence. Our room, on the 25th floor of a modern building, opened onto East 42nd Street. We had agreed to spend our first nights in luxury: the room was big, the bathroom adorned with marble, and the bed immense. Despite the long trip and despite being awake for more than 24 hours, we weren’t tired at all, nor did we want to sleep. Through the taxi window, I h
ad avidly observed all that passed before my eyes: the graffiti on the palisades and walls; the waves of oversized cars; the baroque decay of certain neighborhoods; the diversity of the people walking on the sidewalks. I felt intoxicated; the dreams I had suppressed in my state of prolonged wakefulness were turning everything I saw into visions: eyes open, I was dreaming this newly discovered city. The almost electric atmosphere of this place, completely new to me, was as exciting for me as it was for A***, whose childhood and adolescence had been lived out in this familiar setting. For the first time, we could feel like a couple; in this restless, teeming city we were experiencing an ineffable, exalting feeling of intimacy and togetherness. The city before our eyes and under our feet united us through its simple strangeness or familiarity. I was trying to decipher the traces of A***’s past life, and for A*** this trip served as a type of secret confession.

  Turning away from the window where I had been contemplating the night sky and the horizon of lights, I did a little dance toward the bed. A*** came out of the shower, wearing only a towel. I coaxed A*** onto the bed, and then held my new prisoner captive between my arms and legs. As we rolled around, a juvenile excitement seized me, the desire to play, to roughhouse, to run out of breath doing something frivolous. I couldn’t remember having had such a desire for a long time; I had forgotten that state of mind, lost since childhood, and it returned to me suddenly in a hotel room smack in the middle of New York. I whispered inconsequential words in A***’s ear, who could do nothing but laugh. My body was immense; it could have embraced all of America. The blood in my arteries, the air in my lungs, the ideas in my head all shared the same lightness. I horsed around with A*** like I had never dared to do before, allowing myself the liberties and improprieties that formerly I had thought of as obscene, but which now seemed innocently naïve. When asked what I was doing, I replied that I had finished my homework and certainly had the right to play with my toys before my afternoon snack.