The Shattered Sky

by Bernard Uzan

  “Yes, someone loved me!” they say as they look at those relics of their past loves.

  “At least I’ve experienced love!”

  “It’s better than being alone!”

  “I love him.”

  “I don’t love him.”

  “I don’t love him anymore.”

  “I love him, do I love him or don’t I?”

  And time goes by.

  “I thought I loved him, but it wasn’t true.”

  “I forced myself to love him to convince myself that I could be in love.”

  “And you know, I obviously had my own physical needs.”

  “It’s not pleasant to always be alone.”

  “It’s because of my parents!”

  But everyone can be loved, me included. My brother told me once: “Don’t worry, everybody can be loved, even you with the legs you have, will be.”

  I forgive him, he was cruel as you can be at age fifteen…

  So Catherine if you do love this guy don’t tell him about me at all, don’t talk about me. Burn my letters, break the records I gave you, tear up the address books, change the furniture in our apartment, sell your clothes, change your hairdo, speak a different language, forget everything I taught you, be new, new, avoid the memories that have nothing to do with him otherwise you’ll lose him just like you lost me… I don’t exist, I no longer exist, I never existed … Capish?

  Maybe by now he’s stroking your face and you love it and he goes on getting you drunk on his chatter and his empty smiles! No! Enough! Enough!

  Enough!

  I’m screaming “Enough!” into the phone and my poor friend Jean thinks I’m mad at him.

  “I understand your saying ‘enough’! The situation is unacceptable; no one knows what they should do anymore…I’m in such bad shit, how do I get out of it? …Tell me…how do I fix it? Huh?”

  “Fix what?”

  “I don’t know, fix nothing.”

  “See that Jean, we automatically recite those dialogs from Philippe’s movie script, we’re so mediocre that it’s frightening, Jean. I’m not feeling good at all, I’m down in the dumps, I’m fed up, I can’t take it, I feel like shooting myself.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense! You’ve got prospects, you’ll make it, and you’re young. But in my case, it’s all over….”

  “Yes I have an incredible project. If it works I am saved, I’m finally out of the shit for good, fuck! I hope it works, but this time I’m really hopeful.”

  “I wish you well, Julien.”

  “Obviously if this goes through you’ll work with me, you know we could … I don’t know… I need your help.”

  “Have you heard from Philippe at all?”

  “No, nothing! Not a word. But, Jean, listen, you have to excuse me but I have to go, I have an appointment. Good bye for now, good bye Jean, we’ll call each other again and get together.”

  “See you soon, good bye Julien, thanks for calling”

  Click, click!

  Jean, Jean my friend, my only real friend, honesty personified…What’s going to happen to you in a world that doesn’t fit you? You love the theater for the potential truth it offers but no one believes in your kind of theater. I can picture you with your gaunt face, your lanky body, your constant sense of humor… Jean, Jean what’s going to happen to you? I don’t want you to get lost too…

  I never really had any friends.

  Already as a teenager in Tunis I would invent friends with whom I’d go out on Saturday afternoons and rarely in the evenings. Nobody really wanted to spend much time with me, I was hard to take, I thought I knew everything, I had an opinion on every subject, and on top of all that I slowed everybody down so I’d end up in a neighborhood movie theater with John Wayne or Victor Mature and my favorite—Christopher Lee, Count Dracula…

  They all quickly become my best friends… I love the movies, the actors and actresses; later on I’ll be an actor and I’ll go to Hollywood and become rich and famous. I buy all the movie magazines; I cut out the pictures of the stars and paste them in a little scrapbook. I make some funny and surprising montages: Marilyn Monroe becomes a victim of Peter Cushing, the terrible Doctor Frankenstein. Jayne Mansfield is tortured by Spencer Tracy as Mr. Hyde… I dream of becoming a director, a film writer, of making movies and managing a studio. I read about their lives, and their adventures, how they would get ready to play a part. I become Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Charlton Heston as Ben Hur. I look at myself in the mirror and make faces in an attempt to look like them. Sometimes, often actually, I’d linger on the cleavage of Marilyn, Gina Lollobrigida, or Lana Turner. Then I’d look at myself in the mirror, throw the scrapbook on the floor and burst into tears.

  My mother would bring me back to reality.

  “Don’t come back too late tonight.”

  “Yes, mom”

  “As a rule in your condition you shouldn’t be going out at night.”

  “Yes, mom.”

  “You know that your father and I have done everything we could so you could walk again, so…don’t do anything dangerous.”

  “Yes, mom.”

  “And be careful to avoid meeting any bad people, in your condition.”

  “Yes, mom.”

  “Don’t forget that you’ve been very sick.”

  “Sick? You call this being sick? Like a bad cold?”

  “What are you saying? Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, mom.”

  “Don’t forget your cane.”

  “Shit, mom!”

  “I’ll tell your father.”

  “Yes, mom.”

  My father…that failure with his tender-looking eyes…

  I wish you had stayed alive just so you could see me succeed. How happy you would have been to see me on the stage, you’d have stopped everyone in the street to say, that’s my son! He’s in the theater, he’s on the stage, he’s a good actor my boy, he’s my son, yes, bravo, my son.

  My father… I haven’t a single bad memory of you, and who can really brag of having no bad memories about his father? You tell me, you tell me who?

  Me, me, I can, yes I can... Again I must set myself apart… I am narcissus, Narcisso Yepes, the herpes of Narcissus or a flower, a faded flower unable to bloom.

  Daddy, I can’t think of you without feeling like ripping my balls out! And one of these days I will cut my balls off and eat them! Viva la muerte! I’m a castrated bull without horns.

  I am eight years old. I go up to his bed, on Sunday mornings while mom pretends she’s reading.

  “Dad let’s go and wrestle on the bed, ok?”

  “No, not now!”

  I move closer to the bed anyway with my duck-like walk. I let my crutches fall on the floor. I jump, no, rather I trip onto the bed and pull myself painfully up to my father’s level. It hurts but I like to wrestle. It hurts and I’m eight years old.

  “Dad, Dad, look I’m the strongest! I’m holding you by the throat, by the legs, by your back, so you can’t move anymore. How’s that? Say that I’m the strongest, say it! But say it!”

  “It’s true, you’re really a very tough guy! What strength! You beat me; you’re like Tarzan, like Zorro…”

  “Dad, Dad do you think I’ll walk someday? That I’ll really be strong? That I’ll be able to run, to play soccer and dance!

  Ah, to dance in the sky just like Peter Pan!”

  Daddy, Daddy! Help me! Answer me! You have to help me, you’re my father! You have to do everything for me and you can do nothing, I hate you. It’s your fault if I’m like this, you shouldn’t have had me, when you came back from the camp you only weighed ninety pounds. It’s your fault, you were too sick to give birth to me, since when do skeletons have children, since when do the dead create life, I hate you Dad, I hate you, you’re not my hero! I hate you… I hate you.

  Don’t cry Daddy…don’t cry… You’ll see we’ll go to the movies together and we’ll eat some caramels and I won’t leave you all alone in th
e afternoon, I swear and I’ll buy you pistachios and we’ll take walks together. You’ll see Daddy you won’t be ever be alone again, even if mother leaves you. Don’t cry Daddy, you’re my only friend, I swear it’s true. You know, when I’ll get bigger and will be able to walk, I’ll do so many great things for you. I’ll be an actor and I’ll put on scenes for you and you’ll be proud of me and we’ll go everywhere together, I promise you that, Dad.

  He died before, that asshole!

  I hate you Dad. I beg you, help me! I hate you.

  “Julien help me die, help me!”

  “Daddy I’m here with you.”

  “Yes but help, help me.”

  “How Daddy, tell me how?”

  “Help me, help me.”

  “But I’m here, right here, next to you.”

  “Help me, help me.”

  “Yes, Daddy, yes.”

  “Help me, help me.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “Help me, help me.”

  “But, Dad…”

  “Help, me.”

  “Daddy…”

  “Help me, help me.”

  “Daaaaaad….!”

  You were my only friend and now I have no more.

  It’s raining buckets now! Raining buckets! What a great cliché of a sentence! It was raining buckets, the blows came down hard, tough, harsh, crushing, see! Those wonderful adjectives language has to offer… “Allons enfants de la patrie…” “Let’s go children of our homeland…the day of glory has come.” No, it never came… He will never come… The Messiah, the golden age, friendship among men, it’s all a pile of rubbish, of bullshit…

  “I don’t give a damn about God, the Devil and the holy altar.” In any case screw you, I’m not Italian, I’m not Tunisian or Vietnamese and even less Palestinian, I’m nothing and I don’t give a shit... no I do care, do I or don’t I care?

  Who I am and what I am?

  I have to make a phone call…who do I call? Jean? No I just did that.

  Then who else? Call myself, yeah, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll call myself. Maybe I’ll be at home, I’ll ask how I’m doing, if I have any prospects, if I have a new girlfriend and all that stuff. Finally I’ll make an appointment with myself and go for a walk with my own shadow that looks like my twin brother.

  My shadow, the shadow of a shadow, the shadow of someone who will be, or rather, of someone who doesn’t even exist.

  Why is she looking at me like that? Yes, that one over there!

  She craves me, I can sense it! The window we’re both looking at is filled with grotesquely modern trinkets. Modernly grotesque! It’s what they call the “designer” style. You grab some plastic, some steel, some glass, some leather, you mix everything and you become a great “design” stylist… A fraud, a joke! Anything is good enough to make money! Don’t try to convince me that she’s interested in this! If the answer is yes then it means she’s an asshole! If it’s no then it means she likes me.

  She looks at me and smiles and I give her my hooded look, the Rudolf Valentino look my father used when he was the most popular guy in town before he was deported to the camp with the other Jews, before they drained the life out of him, before being crushed. I can sense her eyes are fluttering and she has a slight tremor in her body!

  She looked at me with curiosity, then blushed, no she went pale… She’s swaying a little. She must be some slut! And she’s got an ass that’ll give a corpse a fucking hard on! That slinky silk dress that wraps her body in a mold, that flirt! Damn it! She’s so beautiful.

  She: “Do you find modern style interesting?”

  He: (Looks at her thinking: what a shithead!) “I really love the new shapes.”

  She: “I agree! There’s something fascinating about it! Don’t you think?”

  He: (Man she really is a shit head!) “I would even go so far as saying that it’s exciting.”

  She: “Yes, that’s it, that’s precisely it, the right word: exciting.”

  He: (Can’t believe she’s so dumb) “You must know that you have a really stunning ass. An ass that gives me a hard on, an ass that even eunuchs would go crazy about, MMMMMMMMMMMMM

  She: “You bastard!”

  He: “Actually you’re even dumber than I imagined. Very well then, goodbye sweetheart.”

  She leaves, looking indignant… I’m sure she’s going to turn around to look at me; she’s really got a fantastic ass… There she is… I won… She turned around… I really am a genius.

  Bastard! Bastard! We’ll see about that…

  Do women think I’m bastard? Perhaps. I really can’t tell… I know that I like to look at them and make comments that are sometimes not well received at all; I shall try once again…

  I’m going to sit on a park bench and watch the ladies walk by!

  “Like a soldier who wants to die standing up.” Poetry is totally useless, but useless things can be beautiful! Beautiful? “It’s beautiful.” Now that is a real statement. I heard it hundreds of times at the University of Nanterre… When you wanted to utter the final word on just about anything you’d say…”It’s beautiful!” And everyone had a different opinion; an endless totally useless discussion would begin that lasted forever. The French know how to talk and say nothing just to make a show of their knowledge about everything that allows you to keep a conversation going all evening with the Attorney at Law Maurice Pommard and his two nieces, the Gauduchon sisters.

  Miss Gauduchon and her sister are between twenty and twenty-five years old, clean, polished, homogenized, well bred, cultured, and unfucked, but very charming, with their unused vaginas, nubile and ready and willing to be married off!

  They speak very intelligently, with lots of poise; they sit down in a distinguished manner on those crushed velour armchairs; they don’t wear much makeup, just enough to enhance the natural beauty of their heritage, the Gauls perhaps or what’s left of them.

  “Official engagement of Miss Anne Gauduchon with the young and brilliant graduate of the École Polytechnique Albert Desballes. To both of them go our warmest and most sincere best wishes.”

  May god bless them and all that jazz! Amen!

  Most conversations are meaningless and begin only to lecture using your own ideas better known as “opinions” and to attempt to show how intelligent you are with a wry little smile. The ideas and opinions are of no interest to anyone but from the beginning of the evening they are looking for an opening to inject the most brilliant statement and any device to achieve that purpose is good enough. Since all this has been repeated so many times everything is perfectly well rehearsed and people think they are sparkling, amusing, passionate and even seductive. I deeply feel for couples who have to listen to the same repetitious old stories, the usual predictable jokes, hundreds upon hundreds of times, enough to make you hate your partner or drive anyone crazy.

  “What are the opportunities for a worker’s son to reach important positions in our society compared with the child of a top company manager? Do they have the same opportunities?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “But yes, I tell you…”

  “But it depends…”

  “The real issue is very different…”

  “Take me, for instance…”

  I don’t want to listen anymore, I don’t want to hear. I sink in the deepest kind of boredom, but it goes on.

  “What time is it?”

  “Half past twelve.”

  “What strange weather we’re having this season.”

  “And at this hour?”

  “As you know here, in Paris, time is meaningless!”

  “Well, there are no seasons left, as well!”

  “Seasons are a figment of the imagination.”

  “Yes, that’s correct, a figment.”

  “As you can see these days, sharp repartee is hard to come by!”

  “There’s no humor left, nobody has the time, everyone is running, racing…so, what kind of l
ife is it anyway? It’s exhausting.”

  “And all this because of the Americans, they really are fucking us up—you have to excuse my French—with their imperialism, their war, their conquests, Vietnam is a real disaster as an excuse to fight communism. Nobody really cares about any of that.”

  “You’re right, and everybody is tired out anyway.”

  “If only that could be true!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If only it were true!”

  “What?”

  “If only everyone could just croak, good evening madam.”

  “That guy is crazy.”

  If only everyone could just keel over... Then we’d have peace... I must say that I was lucky on that score … Everybody around me dropped dead very quickly, they just vanished from view… Even though I never saw them, I knew they were there and I felt a bit stronger.

  And…now perhaps very soon it’ll be my mother’s turn… During the afternoons around six I have to go to the hospital… She’s been there for two months and I’ve been going there every day, well... almost every day… I am a good son; I bring her cigarettes and instant coffee and tell her everything is going well and that I have a lot of work. Not to reassure her or comfort her but because I can’t bear her thinking that I’m a failure.

  “I’m starting a movie next week.”

  “Oh! Really? That’s wonderful, my son.”

  Tyrone Power, The Eddie Duchin Story I saw that movie with Dad fifteen years ago and I cried throughout the screening and my father held my hand all afternoon and we hugged when we walked out, it was so moving, so beautiful.

  The emotion we felt could compete with the stories of the two orphans—Little Orphan Annie and Little Red Riding Hood.

  Later on when I’ll be a movie director I’ll make a movie on the friendship between a father and a crippled son and everyone will cry and I’ll have them hand out free tissues at the door just like they did for Love Story and I’ll win the Oscar at the Academy Awards for the most incredibly schmaltzy movie of the year. That will be fantastic! Naturally in my movie my mother will be in the hospital and I’ll limp along to pay her a visit every day.

  I must admit that going to the hospital is no big chore, since I’ve got nothing to do, nothing, absolutely nothing to do. I also have an excuse to do nothing…I have to go to the hospital… So I have no time for anything else.