Sandrine, he adores, the baby of the family who arrived late, unplanned. His face lights up when he speaks of her, though it seems that her coming into the world left his parents stunned. The doctors had given them the news immediately: the baby was born with Down syndrome. There weren’t ultrasounds at the time, so nothing had been detected. Sandrine is permanently stuck in a childlike state. Their father doesn’t know what to do with her, and Nathalie isn’t always nice. She becomes easily exasperated by the little one’s slowness. As for the mother, she doesn’t say anything but has carried with her a palpable sadness since her younger daughter was born.
Thomas is the eldest and the only boy, which he suggests gives him a certain responsibility.
I’m the youngest of my family. My brother is pursuing advanced studies and will soon write his thesis and become a doctor of mathematics, publishing articles in international journals that are inaccessible to laymen and attending conferences around the world. Imagine what it was like growing up after him. As good a student as I was, unfavorable comparisons were made regularly. It’s why, I explain to Thomas, the destiny he envisions for me can be considered only second-rate compared to the one that awaits my older brother. He assures me that I’m wrong.
I add that I almost had a little brother. My mother became pregnant seven years after I was born, but the pregnancy didn’t go to term. The miscarriage happened very late, almost in the sixth month, and the ordeal left my mother drained and given to despair, though she never said a word on the subject. (No, not even one—such remarkable discipline.) He would have been named Jérôme or Nicolas. Often I think of this little brother I never had. Thomas says: You see how we come from different worlds. Worlds that have nothing to do with each other.
I come back to his mother; she is the one who most interests me. Right away he tells me that she is Spanish. She came to France twenty years ago with her brothers, who had found work on a farm. They weren’t exiled because of the Franco regime, or a desire to escape single-party rule—the censorship, the crooked courts, the despotism—no, it was just a young girl and her brothers who knew nothing but work and heard that there was some to be found on the other side of the border. She immediately met twenty-five-year-old Paul Andrieu. The brothers ended up going back, but she stayed.
* * *
I ask him: Where in Spain? He brushes my question away with a sweep of his hand, assuring me that I wouldn’t know it. I insist, so he gives me the name: Vilalba. I say: Yes, it’s in Galicia, in the Lugo province. He’s surprised: But how do you know it? I say: It’s on the way to Santiago de Compostela. He asks if I’ve ever been there. I tell him no, never, but I read about it in a book and remembered it. He makes fun of me, saying: I was sure you were a boy like that, one who knows things just because you read it in a book. He then becomes despondent and adds: But what’s worse is that if someone asked both of us, I’m pretty sure you would be able to talk about it way better than I could.
* * *
Once I become a novelist, I’ll write about places I’ve never been, places I only read on a map and liked the sound of. For example, my novel A Moment of Abandon takes place in Falmouth, on the coast of Cornwall, England, where I’ve never stepped foot. Nevertheless, people who read it are convinced I know it like the back of my hand. Some have even gone so far as to say that the town is exactly as I have described it, that such accuracy is striking. I explain that in general it’s the likelihood that actually matters more than the truth, that the feeling counts more than accuracy, and above all that a place is not a question of topography but rather the way that we describe it—not a photograph but an impression. When Thomas tells me that his mother comes from Vilalba, I immediately visualize a young girl with medium-long hair and black eyes, dressed in a white linen dress, alone on a paved lane, crushed by the heat—and then a church on Sunday morning with the faithful attending mass; also a castle-like fortress where children go to play hide-and-seek, the girl joining them; and hotels on the outskirts of the city for the devout traveler passing through. A fossilized world. I’m convinced that this image is true. And even if it isn’t, the hope is that the reader sees the girl and in so doing will see the town.
* * *
He went there many times in the summer during his childhood and adolescence. The visits were always very short because it was impossible to leave the farm for too long. The young apprentice appointed to take care of the farm on such occasions couldn’t do everything, the animals required too much attention, the crops could potentially be lost. The family would take the car, first the green Simca 1100, and later the Peugeot 305 Break (how do I remember that?), the three kids in back and the suitcases strapped to the roof. The heat was unbearable so his father would put tea towels on the windows to block out the sun. Every couple of hours they’d pull over at a rest stop to eat sandwiches that had been wrapped in aluminum foil that morning, or to stretch their legs, go to the bathroom, or fill up the tank. Then they’d get right back on the road. The radio was left on, though most of the time there’d be no signal. The songs came in choppy and inaudible, the endings of all the jokes cut off, and they never listened to the news. It seemed like an interminable journey.
* * *
His mother’s family still lives in Vilalba. The brothers married and have kids. All the kids have cousins who live within a mile. The reunions are always joyous and the goodbyes bittersweet, everyone regretting they have so little time together. Thomas says that he doesn’t know Vilalba very well because they usually just stay at the house for endless conversations, punctuated by laughter and complaints, long lunches and drawn-out dinners. He says that for him Spain is just people in his family who love one another, who eat and drink and cut each other off in conversation until night falls.
I say: Is that the reason you said something of the foreigner?
He says: Yes, dark eyes, olive skin. And the feeling of never quite belonging, of being a person uprooted, as if, maybe, who knows, a sense of not belonging is something one inherits.
* * *
I don’t ask him if he also has his mother’s fragility, even though I’ve been dying to ask ever since he told me that his sister has their father’s strength. He would refuse to answer the question anyway because it’s too intimate. It would require a confession on his part, or at least introspection. But I’m convinced that the fineness of his frame comes from her, and his nonchalance too.
* * *
He says: What I didn’t inherit from her is faith. His mother is very religious, a practicing Catholic who goes to church every Sunday and sometimes even more often, especially since his little sister was born, to demand an explanation from God. Why did he send her this test? Or: How can she find the courage to go on, to be a good mother, in spite of everything? She wears a medallion of the Blessed Virgin around her neck and, of course, always carries a rosary that she rolls around between her fingers; a cross is affixed to the wall above the bed in the master bedroom. She even went so far as to tack a poster of Jesus in the manger to the dining room wall, next to the sideboard. He says that he’s grown up with all that. I say: Religious knickknacks, you mean? He tells me not to use that word. He’s not a believer himself, but he respects his mother’s faith and admits that he pretends to believe so as not to hurt her. It’s like that. His mother needs to convince herself that her son is on the right path.
For a long time I wondered if this oppressive religious ideology—the deliverance from evil as a divine principle drummed in day after day, the biblical message of fixed gender roles that his mother internalized, the sanctification of stable relationships as practiced by this unblemished family—could have exercised an influence on a child forbidden to rebel. I think, probably, yes.
He clarifies that he followed the catechism and took holy communion, as was the tradition.
I surprise him by telling him that it is one thing we have in common.
When I was six years old, all my friends began going for religious instruction on Wedn
esday afternoons, telling my brother and me how much fun they had there. We were forbidden to even enter a church, let alone follow the teachings of a priest! It was quite the transgression for me the day that, unbeknownst to my father, I showed up for class with the group. The priest was surprised to see me, almost suspecting some kind of scam. I assured him that I had my parents’ permission. (Already I was able to lie with impressive self-assurance.) At the end of the meeting, the priest accompanied me back to school. My father raised hell when I returned. He had been looking for me everywhere, beside himself with worry. When he saw me holding the hand of this man of God, it wasn’t relief that he felt (or if it was, it was very brief); in his eyes I could clearly identify a look of pure wrath. The priest, however, had a modest triumph when I spoke up and said that I loved being in the church and that I wished to continue the instruction. For four years, I would attend class every Wednesday and go to mass on Sunday morning, but the enthusiasm I’d felt in the beginning quickly gave way to tedium. The magnanimity my father had shown was in fact a form of perversity. He made me go all the way, insisting I never miss a meeting. By the time I was ten years old and took my first communion, I detested God, the priests, and the church. Well played, Papa.
I tell Thomas in a joking voice: You see? We aren’t so different.
* * *
This memory brings me back to the idea of fathers. I realize that Thomas speaks little of his, though he certainly evokes his type, his robustness, and the difficulty he had accepting his daughter’s disability. I imagine a handsome man, taciturn and frugal. I suppose that he’s a man essentially consumed by work, determined to keep the farm going. But I know nothing of the rapport between him and his son. Thomas says: It’s hard to know what he’s thinking. It’s an elegant way of suggesting that his father isn’t affectionate, tender, or reassuring, that he remains aloof, that what he offers is a mix of reserve and unspoken pride for his son. I know what that’s like, to be the son of a man like that. I wonder if it’s cold fathers who make the sensitive sons.
* * *
Thomas and I lie on the bed, my head resting on his chest. I wonder how we came to be in this position. I assume that it happened through the conversation. Not far from us stands a mirror that I usually use to look at myself in the morning, to see how I’m dressed and to comb my hair. I use it now to contemplate our reflection. In this position I suddenly understand that I’ve changed—aged somehow. I’m no longer a neurotic, frightened, easily insulted boy, but rather a boy who’s thinking, who’s been awakened. It’s something that comes from using the body. From stirring up desire, sharing oneself with another, finding victory over a kind of solitude. Of course I can’t say anything on the outside, it’s part of the contract, but I believe that the change in me is visible, that if one looks closely, one can see a difference. It’s bursting out of me.
* * *
Recently when I was going through some papers from the desk in my childhood room after my mother decided to “redo the place and get rid of useless things,” I came across two photos. The first was dated freshman year, the second was from the summer when I took the bac. In the first image, the young man appears stunted, with slumped shoulders and an anxious look in the eyes. In the second one, he’s completely different, a smiling youth with sun-kissed skin. Of course circumstances played a role, but I’m convinced that it was this hidden love that accounted for the transformation.
* * *
Thomas looks at the watch on his wrist. He wears a Casio digital. I noticed it at our first meeting, thinking I would like one too. He immediately gets up, forcing me to give up the cushion of his chest. He says that he has to go, his father is waiting for him, that he’s already late, something to do with the vines. He puts his clothes back on in a hurry. I protest, telling him that the bus won’t come for another half hour, that he can stay a little bit longer, but he tells me that he didn’t take the bus. He has a Suzuki 125 that he parked up the street. I don’t remember ever seeing him with a helmet. He says that he rides without it most of the time, that he never runs into cops on the country roads. I say: Will you take me for a ride one of these days? I expect the raised shoulders and the smirk, reminding me of the rules. Instead he says: You want to? I believe that yes, definitely, something is changing.
* * *
He will keep his promise. A few weeks later he’ll take me for a ride. He’ll pick me up at the edge of town, with a helmet this time. I don’t know if it’s as a precaution, to respect the law, or so that we won’t be recognized, but I get on the back of the bike and hold on to him. We drive at high speed along back roads, through woods, vineyards, and oat fields. The bike smells like gasoline and makes a lot of noise, and sometimes I’m frightened when the wheels slip on the gravel on the dirt road, but the only thing that matters is that I’m holding on to him, that I’m holding on to him outside.
* * *
In the meantime, he takes off, walks down the stairs, barely saying goodbye before leaving. When the door closes, the silence is heavy enough to make your knees buckle. The trace of his scent, an intimate mixture of cigarettes and sweat, is the only thing that saves me.
* * *
And after? There are more secret meetings, mostly in my room for practical reasons. The more last-minute ones require inventiveness, organization, and caution; sometimes we have the impression that we are coconspirators. Back then there were no cell phones, so I had to call him at his house. When I would hear a voice I didn’t know, I often hung up, but sometimes I introduced myself as someone else; after all, Thomas was allowed to have a friend named Vincent! Or then again, I would leave a note in his locker at school with a day and a time, but no signature or any other identifying sign; he responded using the same methods. Sometimes it happened that we set a date for the next time as we were leaving the room, but that was rare, as if there were something vulgar about it, that it would reduce our relationship to a mere erotic obsession.
We skip classes too, pretending to be sick. He says this will raise suspicion and on these days, he is always nervous.
* * *
We make love.
I slip down the straps of his tank top. It seems to me that there is no other gesture more sensual, more stirring. He runs the flat of his hand across my back, caressing my stomach, my hips.
He hands me his cigarette so that I can take a drag. I immediately start coughing. Pathetic. I give a little lick to every one of the moles on his body. I count thirty-two of them. I change his bandage. He was injured by a vine branch that has given him a deep cut on his thigh.
I watch him doze and then his face rolls over to the left, instantly waking him up. He puts the headphones from his Walkman on my ears. He wants me to listen to Bruce Springsteen.
A little tipsy from the half bottle of wine we snuck upstairs, he dances in front of me, listening to the muffled echo of the song. I feel like I’m dreaming.
* * *
The rest of the time we stay in bed, kissing, sucking, and fucking.
* * *
One day I suggest we go to the movies. I’ve prepared my argument well: There’s hardly ever anyone at the Club, the town theater, especially at the afternoon showings, and the rare spectator is older anyway, we won’t risk being recognized. I propose that he go in first, during the previews, and if he doesn’t come out after five minutes, I’ll know that it’s safe to go in. He can see I’ve thought of everything. I reply that with him I have to. He asks if I’m reproaching him. I say: No, I just haven’t forgotten everything you told me that first day in the café with the gamblers and drunks.
I discovered the cinema four years earlier when we first moved to Barbezieux from the village where we lived above the school with the linden trees. It was a small theater, with only a few seats, but to a child from the village, a boy who had to go to bed at eight thirty every night regardless of his pleas and ploys, a boy who had never in his life seen a film before, it was a new world.
From the beginning, I loved the
darkened rooms, the deep, soft brown velvet seats that rocked back (brown was not considered a terrible color back then), the giant screen (giant in my memory at least; in reality, probably a little less so), the smell of popcorn (and of mustiness, since a constant humidity prevailed). I even loved the classic animated Jean Mineur ad where a smiling kid rides into a theater on an undulating film strip and then throws his ice pick into a target to hit the number 1,000, causing a phone number to appear, signaling the start of the movie.
At twelve or thirteen years old, I didn’t go to see the films intended for my age, the animated films of Walt Disney for example. I didn’t like action films, or science fiction, or even the French teen romantic comedy La Boum, which every teenager knew by heart. They didn’t interest me. No, I chose the films for old people. Films by François Truffaut, André Téchiné, Claude Sautet, scandalous films too, like The Wounded Man by Patrice Chéreau and Possession by Zulawski. When I admit this to Thomas he says: That doesn’t surprise me.
* * *
Even so he adds: You really went to see The Wounded Man? I respond that it was one of the biggest shocks I have ever felt. For the first time, I saw homosexuality represented on-screen in a raw, direct, and uninhibited way. I tell Thomas about the filth and urgency of the train station, the promiscuity of the urinals, the medley of whores and pushers, the very distinct sense one has that everything stinks of shit and semen. I tell him about the trafficking of feelings, the life at the margins, the bodies that seek, press against each other violently, and then separate. I feel his disgust. He says that it’s not that. . . . He doesn’t say: It’s not the homosexuality. He can’t even say the word; in fact, he will never once say it. He says: It’s a disgusting portrayal. I remember this expression “disgusting portrayal” that he used, instead of “unhappy portrayal.” There are some who have criticized Chéreau in the same way. I tell Thomas that he’s mistaken, that it’s a love story above all, about the passion that one young man can have for another. I talk about the purity of that kind of crazy love. He tells me that he will never see the film.
Lie With Me Page 5