by Anne H
And she goes to the landing to get water from the faucet there.
I promise her that one day we’ll have saved enough for her to have her own bathroom, white and blue. It will be in Spain, surrounded by vines.
She says that what she wants is a fur coat.
MIGUEL ALMEVIDA
The life that we have to put up with, day after day, ever since the construction site in Saint-Nazaire was shut down for good two weeks ago. My father is at home from morning to night, from night to morning. He smokes cigarettes one after another. When I go outside I can smell the smoke on me as if I were my father himself. I’m like someone walking around with a hundred lit cigarettes in his mouth. I reek of them. I’m only ten years old but it upsets me. I have to step over banks of smoke as soon as I’m inside my house. He is there watching me through the blue puffs of smoke. This is not the time to contradict him. It’s as if he’s watching a bull being released into the ring. I tiptoe past him. Above all he mustn’t know that I skip rope at recess like a girl even though he’s forbidden it.
At night I have a dream while he sleeps next to my mother, like a newborn gorged with cigarettes.
A skipping rope hangs down from the ceiling where it meets the wall. It unfurls downwards by itself, very slowly, like a snake descending. I know they’re going to beat me with that rope, that’s why it’s coming towards me. I lie on the ground. I prepare myself for the beating. I beg my father: “Please, not too hard, I’m so tired.”
Is it only in my dream that I cry out? The two of them come to my bedside, barefoot and in their nightclothes. They advise me to be good and to sleep the way the angels sleep, without a sound.
The end of a dark childhood on rue Cochin.
II
JEAN-EPHREM DE LA TOUR
Tall stature, small heart, black skin, white smile, green and blue feathers on top of my shaved head, I am Jean-Ephrem de la Tour. Dancer at the Paradis Perdu. Lights pointed all over my skin, from top to bottom, night after night. I’m turning into an American star. Silver wings fastened to my shoulders. I flame and I die in a single breath. I rule over a population of dancers and acrobats. While jugglers and snake charmers in the backstage shadows secretly indulge in base jealousies and the audience rises to its feet, giving me a thunderous ovation.
I meet him around five in the evening on my way to the post office. He, lost child, little heap of dejection, collapsed on a step of a staircase on rue Saint-Victor. I bend over him. “Hey, little beast! Better straighten up or you’ll be hunchbacked. Unfold yourself, little beast, before it’s too late.”
Frozen with dread, he looks at me unblinkingly. Fear, unalloyed, in his wide-open eyes. I relish it. Will never forget this first fear in his eyes. Bound to him, the frightened child, by the terror that is visible all over his little person curled on a staircase on rue Saint-Victor around five p.m. Such is his destiny, no doubt, to be frightened by me. Such is my own, no doubt, to put the finishing touch on a dread already old, as if it were the original terror, within him. I tell him again to straighten up, not to stay there sitting on the ground. He obeys me as though he can’t do otherwise. Fear trembles between his very long lashes. I give him a smile that shows all my inordinately white, strong teeth. I bow to him. I wish him a good day. I wish him a good evening. Ask him not to be afraid of me. Tell him that I’m good when I want to be and that I love him madly, just like that, at first sight, the way we love the sun when we rise in the morning. He says it’s not possible and that his mother is expecting him for dinner. He wants to leave. I take his hand. I put his two soft blazing hands in my own hard one. I talk to him about the Paradis Perdu. I tell him about the dancers and acrobats, the music and chatter, the feathers and sequins, the barely pubescent boys and girls transformed under the footlights, carried away till dawn by their passion for life. He listens to me closely and dread works all its tricks in him and on him, skin-deep, like a fever that’s subsiding. Seduction has its way and he asks me where to find the Paradis Perdu. I put a pass in his hand. Tell him I’ll be expecting him tonight, backstage, and that he’ll be able to see the whole show.
“See you later, little beast. Make sure that you’re there.”
He goes off so quickly, so agile and light, like a squirrel, that I wonder if he will still exist after this first meeting between us on rue Saint-Victor.
His name is Miguel Almevida. He whispered it in my ear before he disappeared like a vision of him that I might have had before dying.
I don’t know yet that he has just turned fifteen.
MIGUEL ALMEVIDA
I’ve waited so long for this night filled with risk, without knowing I was waiting for it, timidly, amid the erosion of childhood, day after day, despondent, often crying. And now the feast for which I was destined, for all eternity, throbs softly like a quivering heart behind the walls of the Paradis Perdu. Slipped through the darkness of the streets for the first time, alone and dressed in my finery in the night. Far away is my father, who’s unemployed most of the time, hidden by his smoke like a cuttlefish by its ink. Far away, too, is my seamstress mother with her deafening sewing machine. The thieves of the Sentier who exploit workers will have gotten off lightly. One day my mother will be queen and I’ll be the king at her side.
Tonight I make my entrance into the world. The world is opening before me. A little longer and I’ll know the secrets of the earth. Dear God, how innocent I am and how my knees are trembling. This is the little hidden gate I must pass through to experience the living splendour of the universe.
He is there behind the door, waiting for me as promised. Half-naked, black, smooth, the eyes enlarged with kohl, the mouth blood-red, the teeth awe-inspiring, green and blue egret feathers on his head, silver wings on his shoulder blades, he is the angel of darkness, born for his own ruination and for mine. His shadow on the wall is that of a giant, bristling with strange frills and flounces.
He tells me to go away and I go. He tells me come here and I come. Upon my obedience my happiness depends. When the curtain goes up on the show, I shall be ready to see everything, to hear everything. The very wellspring of the earth will be revealed to me then, in bursts of music.
He asks for something to drink and I fetch it, wandering the unfamiliar corridors and stairways where half-dressed boys and girls go back and forth, not yet ready for the show, in the process of being transformed into angels or devils.
He says again, Little Beast, do this, do that.
I murmur so quietly he has to bend over to hear me: “My name is Miguel Almevida and I’m not a beast.”
He laughs so hard that his wings clash together on his back. He claims that it’s a compliment, that for him the word “beast” is sacred and that only gods are entitled to be called it. In a deep voice, almost too deep, he adds: “Little Beast is fine, it’s beautiful, it resembles you. Call me Beautiful Beast in return. And everything will be equal between us, the animal and the sacred. Except that I’m the one who is master.”
He laughs again. His wings stir. He grabs my hand, places it against his naked chest. “Can you feel my heart beating, Little Beast? Stroke my heart, the way you’d stroke the breast of a black horse to reassure it before a race. In a few minutes I’ll be on the track, pawing the ground and scared to death. Call me Beautiful Beast and wish me luck. Say break a leg, break a leg, break a leg, in my ear. Tonight the corrida will be terrible, I can sense it. They might cut off my ears and my tail as they do in your country. You’ll no doubt be given the honours of the ears and tail. They’ll bring them to you on a silver platter. Little Beast, idiotic and sweet, you’ll know this very night what a real feast is. All of life, all of death, on a silver platter like the bloody head of John the Baptist.”
He talks like a book that I’ve never read. He chokes with laughter. He straightens his wings. I stand there frozen, my hand on the naked chest that becomes misty little by little
from a slight sweatiness like dew.
This man possesses the knowledge of good and evil, that’s certain.
Three muffled knocks ring out in the dark. Everyone on stage. The feathers, the plumes, the fake jewels, the sequins suddenly appear, jostle me along the way, warm bodies brush against me, the mingled odours of girls and boys prickle my nose, go to my head. The black sun of nocturnal feasts will rise once again above the stage of the Paradis Perdu.
Between the dressing rooms and the stage I listen to the unleashed music, to the dancers’ rhythmic feet. Noisy inhalations, laboured breathing dart across my face like quick drafts of air.
After this I’ll never be the same, dressed in childhood as in a piece of clothing that’s too tight.
The tallest and the handsomest of them all is Jean-Ephrem de la Tour. His long legs, his long arms, his misty chest, the whole of his body that rushes forward and soars, undulates and sways, contorts itself and comes undone, then immediately re-forms itself again, intact and pure, to the sound of some discordant music.
He wraps himself in a big towel and sweats so much it’s as if he’d fallen into the Seine. Half-naked boys and girls bring him food and drink. He signals me to leave. “Get lost, Little Beast! I’m tired.”
I go home, alone in the night as it draws to a close.
ROSE-ALBA ALMEVIDA
I no longer have a son. I disown him. I mourn him. I hate him. I could tear his eyes out. He came in at dawn, haggard, with circles under his eyes, exhausted as a hooker at daybreak. My husband says that’s just fine, his son is now a man and it reassures him to know it. “Involved with a woman at fifteen,” he repeats proudly. He laughs. While I cry. Probably Karine, the pale little freckle-faced nitwit who came here from the cold countries. What a disaster! Pedro my husband tells me to be quiet and let his son rest till late tomorrow morning. I obey and I fall asleep in the warmth of my tears.
PEDRO ALMEVIDA
I have just one son who has never been mine. Hardly out of childhood and now he sleeps like a new man after love. Everything is finished between us without ever having begun. I am not the father. He is not the son. He’s asleep now. In his dreams he is arming himself against me. He must grow and I must be diminished. So it is written.
I set my mind at rest. For a moment I remind myself of my inalienable rights as head of the household. I dictate my last wishes: a tough virile son finally out of school, which only numbs the mind, dropped into the world of work with nerves of steel and arms of iron. Let his strength have no equal but mine until I die. Amen.
Two men in a house is too many. Who will be the first to drive the other out?
MIGUEL ALMEVIDA
Night poured down over the city by the bucketful, laden with stars or with storms, night keeping watch around the streetlamps, encircling them, night, supreme, spilled out all around, outside, inside, even in the concierge’s lodge on rue Cochin at the family dinner hour.
Patience, my soul. Another mouthful or two, another word or two exchanged around the table and the lights of the Paradis Perdu will be turned on like a beacon in the city and I will be free to run towards its strange forms of bliss. I drop my napkin onto the table. In anticipation my heart fills with spells and dread. I slam the door. I’m outside.
“That child is intolerable,” says my mother.
“The girl who’s got hold of him is a devil, that’s certain,” says my father.
“Sure, sure, sure. I have to know,” says my mother. She gets up from the table, dons her red hunting jacket, her bright earrings, she goes onto the street, follows me from a distance all the way to the Paradis Perdu, buys her ticket, and sits in the front row, between two elderly gentlemen who ogle her greedily.
I don’t notice my mother there in the dark until my gaze, shifting from the wings to the audience, settles on her by chance.
She came backstage after the show. They asked if she was there for an audition. A bunch of girls and boys, their makeup half-removed. They measured her, weighed her. Laughed at her. Cried, “Oh!” Cried, “Ah!” While studying the numbers on the ruler and the scale. They told her she was outside the norm, buxom and squat, she repeats “buxom” and “squat,” mulling over the unfamiliar words as if they were insults. She weeps with rage.
Jean-Ephrem de la Tour approaches her, wrapped in his big towel. With one movement of his long upraised arm he waves away the mockers surrounding my mother. The towel is half-off him and she can see his black streaming chest. She looks and doesn’t blink. He takes my mother’s face very gently in his two hands, their orange palms, in the way one might hold a newly opened peony about to shed its petals.
“What a lovely face you have there, Madame!”
I cry out: “But she’s my mother!”
He doubles up with laughter. The towel at his feet. He is immersed in his sweat and his laughter, almost naked before her. To her, he represents everything about the Paradis Perdu, its wonders and its infernal rhythms, the entire world of magic she’s always dreamed about. My mother’s desire to lose herself in the whirlwind is as strong as my own.
He asks for the towel which has fallen to the floor. He shivers and trembles. Says that he’s going to catch his death of cold.
My mother’s eyes are glued to me as I pick up the towel and drape it over the shoulders of Jean-Ephrem de la Tour in a way that lets my mother know I belong to this man, body and soul.
As I wrap him in the towel and rub him down vigorously, we exist so powerfully together, he and I, that it makes my mother want to fight me. Her dearest wish would be to be in my place, close to Jean-Ephrem de la Tour.
She declares that she’s never seen anything as wonderful as the show at the Paradis Perdu. Then she says nothing for a long time, consumed by bitter silence.
Jean-Ephrem de la Tour steps into the shower. He exclaims: “Screw off, Little Beast, and take your mother too, I need to get some rest.”
Rose-Alba Almevida leads me away, drags me by the hand as if punishing a child. On rue Cochin not even a small lamp is lit, the lodge is dark, more of a rat hole than ever. My father is no longer there.
PEDRO ALMEVIDA
Out of my home, thrown onto the street, I’m outside my house like a snail without its shell. At the corner café I drink white wine. I search in vain for what’s true and what’s not. Try to untangle reality from dream. Sourness in me as if I’d eaten sour cabbage. I struggle to sort out my ideas. I kick the bar. Head down. I examine the fake marble. I see in it vague lines like the ones in my head. Determined to shake off all my concerns like dead leaves in autumn, I drink white wine. With shirtsleeves rolled up, bare elbows on the fake cold marble, I consider the twists and turns in my mind and in the shimmering marble. Then all at once, mingling with the glints on the counter and the whirlwinds in my head, she appears and she struts before me as if she were innocent. She takes her black hair that she’s had cut off, that I used to love, and flings it in my face. My loved one, my sly one, says “sure, sure, sure,” just like that, three times, then runs onto the street and doesn’t come back. Setting off on the trail of the ungrateful son we made together one night in Spain at the hour when gardens collapse under their heavy scents.
Suddenly gusts of jasmine and orange blossom sweep into the smoke-filled room where I drain my glass. I’m astonished, for a long time, especially since I’m apparently the only one of the drinkers seated here to detect the sweet perfumes quickly transformed into the most acid vinegar, then all at once I fall asleep with my head on my arms, like a dead beast.
MIGUEL ALMEVIDA
Faster, always faster, I must live without wasting one minute, I’ve got just enough time, too many minutes wasted in the day, waiting for evening and the enchanted night that speeds along so quickly it’s already over by the time I get my breath back. At eight p.m. I start getting ready and I take a long look at my face in the lit
tle mirror hanging on the bedroom wall. Behind me, my mother grows impatient and demands her share of the mirror. She doesn’t like my face with makeup on and wants to obliterate it, replacing it with her own beautiful countenance. Fraternal struggle for a little piece of mirror. False eyelashes and mascara. Complicity and mutual adoration. This happens on those evenings when my father isn’t home, when he’s in the suburbs or the provinces, nails and hammers, going about his construction worker’s business, and we’re free, my mother and I, to go to the Paradis Perdu.
I offer roses to the customers there. I go between the tables selling roses. Tight trousers and silk shirt, hair falling onto my forehead and neck, I earn my living at the Paradis Perdu. No more school.
Every night, Jean-Ephrem de la Tour gives my mother a pass for the promenade gallery. She loves being there among the damp bodies crowded around her, she watches the show so intensely that it hurts her eyes, as if she were looking too long at the sun. Sometimes the warmth of a hand brushes her too closely, slips onto her, settles on her hip, burns her, makes her limp as a melting candle. She frees herself gently, smoothes the pleats of her black taffeta skirt and says: “Hands off.”
Very quickly, she turns back to the show, all trembling and wet.
The greatest marvel of the evening is unquestionably Jean-Ephrem de la Tour, with plumes on his head and his quivering wings unfurled. He moves and dances. His tall body vibrates and sways. He is radiant; a thousand stars at once, all the way to the back of the house, pierce my heart, while I prick my fingers on the roses’ thorns.
