"Not too cold, and not too hot. Watch out for dust and dampness. Leave her mask on as much as possible; it protects her," he said before calling a cab.
When I got home half an hour later, I congratulated myself on the lightness of my precious burden. The elevator was quite old and didn't go very fast. I had time to look myself over in the mirror on the back wall. What was the proper demeanor to assume in an elevator with the mummy of a young woman in one's arms? I reached the eighth floor without finding an answer to this no doubt frivolous question.
My feelings for the mummy whose "proud owner" I'd become followed a predictable course. First, passion: I sometimes stopped in the middle of my work to gaze on her fondly. As a translator, I was lucky enough to work from home. I'd set her across from my desk. My apartment was mostly filled with books and a collection of musical instruments I've since then scattered. I am not a musician. The cases fascinated me more than the instruments themselves. For me, the cases of musical instruments were great brown or blackish shells that harbor strange creatures in their fluffy, satiny, or felt-lined insides. Walking-stick-thin or beetle-round, wooden or metal, matte or glossy, inlaid mandolin, stiff flute, or austere violin, most musical instruments looked like insects, and like them had carapaces bristling with antennae, mandibles, rostra.
I collected instruments in their cases because for me their charm resided mainly in the perfect complementarity of container and content, and the contrast of materials and colors. Contemplating the nickeled keys of a clarinet, set in ebony sections nestled in their padded blue sateen dwellings, or the gleaming body of a concert guitar in plush garnet, inspired feelings of luxury if not lust in me.
How long do we remain aware of the presence of someone or something beside us? Perhaps it's scandalous, in a way, to equate the two… but what of it? At the time I was greatly inclined to prefer objects, which reassured me, to people, who often frightened me. I was what one called a confirmed bachelor, hardened in his lonely ways. Hardened: well on the way to drying out and becoming a fossil, an object. That was my life when the mummy, and then Delia, came and turned it upside down. But I'm getting ahead of myself I should tell this story calmly, carefully. It matters little that I should seem at that moment a confirmed young bachelor, prematurely pickled at age thirty-five in his habits and collections.
Sooner or later we wind up tiring of objects as we do people-we lose interest-because other objects, or people, have in turn entered our lives, pushing earlier ones aside. Perhaps what matters most to us in all the world can be safely banished to the very depths of our being. But should disaster threaten our inner attic, it is the one thing we try to save, without regard for all the rest.
My initial wonder dulled as weeks, then months, went by. After so constantly occupying my thoughts, the mummy began to blend into its surroundings in my cramped apartment. My gaze strayed over my possessions and only rarely picked it out; it was just another furnishing.
Then, suddenly… A man who hears a strange voice singing or humming in the night faces a choice: disbelief, rapture, or terror. Should the phenomenon persist, disbelief goes away by itself. Then the choice between rapture and terror becomes one of temperament. One can also waver a long time between the two, to feel them both at once. When this happened to me, I was charmed by what I heard, and at the same time terrified that I was going mad. No one could be singing in my bedroom at that hour, it had to be in my head. ,The first time I clung to the idea that it was a dream, just a dream, a rather poetic one at that. The late hour and the fact that I was in bed supported this theory so well that I managed to fall back asleep, dodging the essential question: Who was singing?
The second time, both theories, dream and madness alike, were shattered. Someone was definitely singing in my room and not in my head. I turned on the light and got up. Trembling, I looked for whoever had woken me. It was a melancholy tune. The voice was soft and sad, and also muffled. The words remained incomprehensible to me.
I'd given up on a bed to leave my books as much room as possible. All I had instead was a sleeping bag on a sofa between my desk and a French window I opened just a crack, once a year, to air the room out. I'd made my way round my desk when I found myself facing the spot the voice was coming from. It was welling up from the mummy. Her features were hidden by her mask, a simple piece of wood sculpted and painted in a summary but not tasteless fashion. It evoked the face it covered with greater precision than might a mass-produced mask slapped on a factory mummy. And that song issued from beneath this mask, through lips supposedly sealed forever.
I reached out my hand. I'd done so often, my heart pounding at first, and then with less emotion as time passed. Now my hand trembled and my heart pounded anew.
The singing didn't stop when the mask fell away. Had she noticed a difference? Could she even do so? Nothing led me to believe she could. Her expression hadn't changed, her gaze was fixed as ever, mysterious as I'd always known it to be. It was just that her thin lips were moving, rounding or flattening to form words that didn't make any sense to me. What breath, from what oblivion, lent her life? But did I myself even know why I was here in this world? I hadn't the slightest, but did my best to accept my condition. In her way, this creature shared that condition of being alive. None of the rest was any of my business.
Little by little, her voice faded away, like that of someone dying. What was I to do? Call the police, or an ambulance? Alert the press? To do so felt like informing on an infinitely innocent and vulnerable being. I made do with replacing the wooden mask as gently as possible, and then I went back to bed.
On other nights, which followed at ever closer intervals, I was awakened by the mummy singing the same melancholy song. I soon knew it by heart without understanding the words. It sounded Breton to me. One day, while delivering a manuscript to an editor, I ran into Paol Keruzore. He was known to be neither patient nor polite, but we'd met before. With his surly permission, I sang him the lament I'd learned phonetically.
"You should be ashamed, slaughtering a charming song like that!" he finally said.
"It's because I don't understand a word of it. What does it mean?"
"It means-let's see… `Too early in the season falls the apple, no hand will polish it upon a sleeve to make it shine… No mouth will bite into the apple fallen still green, hard as a rock, without sweetness or sap… Pity the fallen apple, fear the wind that blows through the orchards, the wicked wind that spared me not…' Where did you dig that up, anyway?"
I told him the first lie that came to mind. My nursemaid had sung it to me as a boy,
"A pity you didn't learn to speak Breton at her teat," Paol spat.
Then, with an uncharacteristically civil wave, he walked off, humming a Breton air.
I always took the mummy's mask off when she was singing. At first, for as long as it lasted, I sat on a chair I'd pulled up beside her. Later, I fell into the habit of going back to work. One night, a little while after my encounter with heruzore, she stopped and turned her head toward me. Up till then, I'd thought she was only singing for herself. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure she knew I was there. I was proved wrong that night. I saw a pale, thin smile cross her lips. The contrast was striking between the deep, fixed brilliance of her eves and the hesitant expression on the rest of her face.
I thought she was about to speak, but it wasn't time yet. I was witness to an awakening that could only happen slowly. I suspected that the slightest thing would be enough to hinder, delay, or even ruin it forever.
That was all for now. No doubt that hint of a smile remained on her face after I'd replaced the mask. Three nights later, the mummy, spoke her first words.
I'd gotten a Breton dictionary in anticipation, but there was no need. When she spoke, she spoke French. A few disjointed phrases, none of which had anything to do with the situation at hand: something about a younger brother, a house by the sea, a cat. The reminiscing must have exhausted her, for she soon fell silent once more. A bit later that same
night, she spoke up again, mostly repeating herself. After that, the situation developed with lightning speed.
When I say "lightning," bear in mind that whatever their nature, manifestations of the vital spark animating the mummy remained limited and intermittent. She lived the way a lamp flickers. She was rather more like a battery, in fact, a depleted battery sporadically calling on its last reserves. From now on, let's use her first name: Gaud. Her parents probably got it from An Iceland Fisherman. Gaud had no organs left, and therefore no anatomy. She had no way of replenishing what she'd spent. Of course, her expenditures were negligible. A few words, a few slow and awkward gestures… At her request, I undid the bandages wrapped tightly around her body. She reminded me of a newborn fawn, not yet able to balance on her frail legs, tottering with every step. But the fawn would soon grow stronger and bolder, prancing gaily about the clearing where it was born, whereas the unlucky Gaud would never prance about.
Still, she made undeniable progress. It was impossible to speak of a "normal" life for her. She neither ate nor drank, and her attention span lasted no more than ten minutes, after which she grew still, her face frozen. Eyes wide open, she sank into sleep, or a kind of sleep, for an unspecified length of time.
Once I'd removed her bandages, the question of clothes came up. I gave her a blanket, and bought her an outfit the next day. Picture a mummy in jeans and a sweater: that was how Gaud looked from then on. I'd also bought her sneakers and a baseball cap; her shaved head bothered me. Docilely, she assumed the appearance of a modern-day teenager.
She'd come in a Styrofoam sarcophagus, but she didn't like it there. I offered to lay her on a folding cot like I said, there isn't much room in my place, and she was so slight. She categorically refused my offer, and instead chose to dwell in my double-bass case. Whenever seized by one of her unassailable languors, she'd curl up in this cavity, this womb, with a sigh of pleasure. With a weary wave, she'd ask me to shut the lid, and I obeyed. I was afraid she'd suffocate at first. I feared in vain. She was as likely to suffocate as she was to catch a cold.
She suffered a great deal. Not physically. She was racked by anguish all the more deep-seated since she never managed to give it a name. Everything in her was unsettled, shifting. She sought for words at length to say the least thing. I don't know if you could call what she had amnesia, but the events of her own life seemed distant and uncertain. Sometimes she seemed completely detached from them. The next moment, she was overcome with immeasurable nostalgia as she recalled a possibly invented memory. A moment later, and she'd forgotten everything.
I was used to her, of course. Wasn't she pitiable, and in distress? Wasn't I available? Besides, through the simple act of "owning" this object which was also a being, I'd taken on certain responsibilities. But I'd taken them too lightly. A few scraps to clothe her, a few words to comfort her when she woke chilled through by a cold not of this world… What loved one wouldn't ask more of us? If I'd continued to perform these tasks with my undivided attention, she'd probably have reached the end of her path in peace. Little by little, consuming what energy was left to her, she'd have slowly faded away.
Life, it seemed, had it in for her. Here I was, a man who'd lived alone forever, making do with affairs that ended the morning after, and I had to go and meet Delia! Delia was passionate. She was passion itself. Fierce, fearless, fervent in everything she did. Someone else might've deserved her more, and been better equipped to brave such a human tornado. But through some divine unfairness I'll never be thankful enough for, she chose me. Before her, my life was stale and musty.
I hadn't felt the need to tell Delia there was a teenaged female mummy in my life, more or less alive to boot. She found out by accident, even if that accident was inevitable. We'd been lovers for a few months already. We almost always wound up at her place. It was more convenient, especially because of the size of her bed. So she'd only been to my place two or three times, and had never spent the night there, when a metro strike forced her to stay over. I'd already shown her my instrument collection before, neglecting of course to open up the double bass case. I'd stashed the double-bass itself in a closet. Since I'd started dating Delia, I rarely slept at home. I felt a vague remorse at the thought of all those nights when Gaud woke up and found no one to open the lid and keep her company. I settled this remorse by telling myself that she hadn't ever brought it up. That either meant she hadn't noticed, or that she forgot any hypothetical grief my absence caused her. At any rate, while Delia and I lay entwined on my narrow couch, the Breton lament sounded in the silence.
"Good God, what's that?"
"Don't be scared." I said, "It's Just Gaud."
I opened the case. Delia and Gaud studied each other with clear mutual loathing. Could they have been friends or allies? Perhaps in each encounter there's a moment-a split second-when our feelings might go either way. Perhaps the only difference between love and hate is chance. Weren't Delia and Gaud complementary? Together, with one's perfect body and the other's sublime eyes, they could have made the ideal woman. But this miracle failed to happen.
They never spoke to each other directly. Gaud ignored Delia, and Delia pretended to see her as nothing but an anatomical curiosity. Though Gaud sang and spoke, Delia considered her no more sentient than she would a mynah bird. At least in theory, for she never missed an opportunity to humiliate her. Right in front of Gaud, she advised me to let her go because "it wasn't sanitary" I pointed out in vain that Gaud was in fact very sanitary, and when she wasn't needed only a little dusting or occasional vacuuming. A few weeks later, Delia tried another approach. It was not only "unclean," but "dangerous," too. From then on, whenever she found herself alone and free to move about, Gaud played pranks, big and little. She might try to vandalize the apartment in some way within her paltry means, like knocking over a vase or making a minor mess. Reshelving the books exceeded her strength. But she might also leave the gas on, or slit her wrists. The incident with the gas didn't lead anywhere, thanks to the firemen's intervention. Nor did slitting her wrists: nothing flowed out. I kept the box cutter she'd used under lock and key, and put a bolt on the kitchen door, thus keeping her from reaching the gas, any sharp objects, and above all any potentially dangerous sources of heat.
Life went on-an odd life, I'll admit. What Delia and I had shared at the outset of our relationship was ruined. Where she once gave herself to me without restraint, she now refused two out of three times. The woman who'd once seemed so well-balanced and optimistic to me now often seemed willfully sullen or aggressive. For my part-torn between what I owed my mistress and the feeling of responsibility for Gaud that I couldn't quite shake-I was getting gloomy. As for Gaud, well, if a mummy could waste away, it was clear she was also feeling the effects of the situation. We were all unhappy.
All this led us to a vacation. I didn't usually take one. I hate beaches and sunburn. Delia didn't see it that way. She wanted to go to the shore with me. I surrendered on one condition, and remained firm about it: Gaud was going with us. Leaving her alone for a month was out of the question; you couldn't ask the super to look after a mummy the way you would a canary. In truth, I'd long planned to take Gaud back to the Brittany of her childhood. The name of the little fishing village where she'd been born floated to her lips like a cork plucked from a net and tossed ashore by waves. I kept the idea of the pilgrimage to myself. I made sure Gaud knew nothing about it. And as for Delia, who'd reluctantly given in to being burdened with her rival-it was pointless to tell her.
We left one morning in July, in Delia's car. She was at the wheel, with me beside her, and Gaud in the backseat, in her case. Delia didn't say a word the whole way. She'd given in. The vacation she'd dreamed of for so long was ruined in advance. She was determined to make me pay dearly. There was nothing but rain and wind en route.
I'd rented a house in the back country, a few kilometers from the village where Gaud was born. The wet summer made me dig deep into the woodshed. I kept a fire crackling in the hearth i
n the main room. Unable to swim or sunbathe, Delia was always going out for walks through the waterlogged moors. Never one for slogging through mud, I staved and worked by the fire. Delia would come back with her nose dripping, smelling of moist earth and the heath. If I offered to warm her up as only I could, she'd turn me down and glare at the case leaning against the wall, across from the bed.
One morning neither more nor less disastrous than the others, I put my plan into action. I'd seen Delia head off in the opposite direction from the village. I carried Gaud's case to the car. Since our arrival the mummy had only stirred from her torpor twice, and quite briefly. I was guessing she had no idea where we were.
A little ways from the village, I turned down a dirt road leading to the sea. The nonstop drizzle had discouraged most visitors. The rare figure stuffed into a jacket, bright yellow or fluorescent pink against the seaweed, punctuated the shore and the exposed rocks.
I parked at the edge of the dunes and got the case from the car. I'd never woken Gaud before. I opened the lid and whispered, "Gaud! Gaud! Wake up! Look where we are."
Her eyes were always open, even when she was asleep. Her nose and lips quivered, telling me she was awake. When she saw the sky and felt the drizzle on her cheeks, she knew, even before she'd climbed out of her shell and looked around.
"You brought me back?"
"Yes. I thought-" In heaven's name, what exactly had I thought?
"Help me."
I obeyed. She crawled from the case and stood up on her wobbly legs.
"Hold me up."
In my study, she'd never taken more than a few steps before, leaning on my arm.
Despite the dull gray sky, it was still too bright out for her. She held one hand up to shield the masterpiece of Leonello Guardicci.
"It was over there!"
A Life on Paper: Stories Page 14