by Edmund White
“Daddy is far from convinced.”
“Daddy is an uncouth simpleton. Besides, you can’t divorce me. Remember, with the evidence I have of your depravity I’d get custody of the children and I’d make them miserable as retribution against you.”
“You love them. You wouldn’t do that to them.”
“And they’ve been so spoiled till now that a Spartan convent school would seem all the more painful. What does my mother call Ghislaine? Her majesty? Soon she’d be a miserable, devious little wretch, dirty and smelly, ignorant and superstitious, her brother a stunted, malnourished ragamuffin. Something right out of Les Mystères de Paris.”
Which I’d never read and Adhéaume, I was confident, knew only by reputation or a high school précis. Frenchmen of his generation knew nothing and had heard of everything.
I was wretched. I recognized Daddy was determined to stop paying Adhéaume an allowance and to change the terms of his will, making my eventual inheritance dependent on our divorce. He would have insisted on these terms even if Addy and I had a love marriage, since Daddy felt the only important thing, in the end, was money. Love would come and go, happiness was fleeting, but depression on a feather bed was better than depression on a board. I didn’t dare tell my father that Addy had compromising photos of me and that almost certainly he would get custody of the children, whom he would pauperize and victimize in order to punish me.
I hated Adhéaume and his boring, conceited, worthless parents. When Victorine phoned to see if I would go with her to Puiforcat to select flatware for the château, I told her that she must make the choice on her own, that only she had the exquisite taste necessary. I could tell she didn’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered. “Oh,” I said, “and be sure to order the toucan pattern of plates from Hermès.”
“The what, dear?”
“Toucan. Hermès.”
“Hermès makes dishes now?”
“Yes, the most beautiful. Perfect with your Puiforcat.”
I didn’t mention a casserole dish cost a thousand dollars. My reasoning was that Daddy would see red when he received the bill. And then what?
I was frozen. I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped. I thought it was so unfair that Addy had his wife-swappers, and I’d lose my children due to a not-very-exciting three-way with partners who’d betrayed me and married each other.
I should never have married Adhéaume! I could see now how Spanky had led me to slaughter. I was going to fill the empty family coffers, a classic American plot. The bartered bride. I would be forced to face my own children being brutalized by their father.
I’d always felt too entitled to harbor resentments, but now I found myself daydreaming about Addy’s death and destruction. Although I still appeared the soul of Southern graciousness with an admixture of French aristocratic ostentatious politeness, I secretly imagined violent revenge and sadistic scenarios. At that time I went to the very kitsch Pagode movie theater to see a revival of Melville’s Bob le flambeur, a crime film—which only fed my violent fantasies. Or could I hack him to pieces and burn the body fragments like Landru, who’d inspired Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux? It was an antiwar film. Just before Verdoux is guillotined he says, “If you kill one person you’re a criminal; kill a million and you’re a hero.” But I couldn’t imagine overpowering Addy on my own, and drugging his drink seemed inelegant.
I still had my avant-garde music evenings. One evening was devoted to Ligeti, the Hungarian composer. He was impossibly ugly with thick lips, gray teeth, and no brow, and I wasn’t surprised he was born in Transylvania. Until he escaped from Hungary he’d been obliged to write conventional easy-on-the-ears music but as soon as he came to the West he made a beeline for Germany and Stockhausen, turned out electronic and near-electronic music, and soon became a “serial killer” in the Schoenberg manner. Helen came to our events with Ercole. Sometimes she brought other femmes du monde. She made a big point of saying she found the conversation of the gratin impossibly dull, with its endless marriages and baptisms, its “schedule” of chic watering places, its chirpy gossip camouflaged as “news of the Rialto” (scandal-mongering that was too obvious was dismissed and stigmatized as “worthy of a nosy concierge”). She claimed that she could abide only the talk of creative geniuses, though frankly I found my geniuses to be petty, covetous, and competitive.
Helen would always sit next to me and hold my hand, drawing arabesques with her finger across my palm. I suppose once I would have found that seductive, but now I was just irritated. Was she trying to see if she had the same power over me? I don’t think she was that devious; rather, she never wanted to admit to herself that a freedom or opportunity was in the past, that she had chosen at a fork in the road one path over another. She lived in a permanent state of nostalgia and ruled over the empire of missed chances, which I found morbid, confusing, and pointless. It was as if she couldn’t fully authorize the choice she had actually made and wanted every affinity to remain elective.
Ercole, on the contrary, was happy to live out the consequences of his decisions. He didn’t like choosing, but at least he had the courage of his choices. He told me, just to make me laugh, that his first wife, Isabella, was such a frightened virgin that on their wedding night she’d crouched for hours on top of the armoire until he could coax her down. They slept chastely like brother and sister that first night. Later, she’d become quite the tiger and poor Dutch Hoob complained she was always in heat and pestering him.
I laughed but I instantly felt guilty as I thought of the miseries my children faced. Daddy was evil, but so was Mommy.
CHAPTER 17
My dear Sister,
Here I am safely back in Jericó with Mercy. We’re completely turned around, yawning at vespers, staggering at compline, impossible to arouse at lauds. We’re like zombies as we move through our daily rituals, which peeves the other religious, as if we’re shirking our work and are guilty of acedia, the sin of boredom that leads to sloth, as if our trip to Rome has made us feel superior to the other women. In fact, we are grateful that the convent allowed us to accompany Pablo to Rome. I may have paid for our travels, but the all-important permission to go there was granted by Mother Superior.
Of course, like any returning traveler who has witnessed life-changing sights, I’m eager to talk about things seen and done, but I bite my tongue lest I awaken some invidia. After all, I’ve seen St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum and the Rotonda church dedicated to San Lorenzo. After all, I’ve been blessed by the pope himself. I’ve climbed on my knees up the Holy Stairs Jesus Christ climbed. In Paris at the Sainte-Chapelle I saw a splinter of the True Cross.
You may wonder why I just stood there when Daddy put his hand up my skirt. I think it was Saint Elizabeth of Hungary who believed that wherever she went an invisible cell glided around her and protected her. Moreover, since she was forbidden to quit her throne and join holy orders, she wore her state gowns but over a painful hair shirt that martyrized her flesh. I thought of her at the time only because I had the strong conviction that God was protecting me. As you no doubt know, Daddy violated me when I was in my early teens and repeatedly assaulted me until I was sixteen and had grown enough pubic hair to repulse him. I even became pregnant but in the second month fortunately I had a miscarriage. No one ever suspected. I went through the whole ordeal alone. Many times I thought of confiding in you, but I wasn’t sure you could keep a secret. Day and night I told myself, “You mustn’t tell anyone.” I said it like the Jesus Prayer. “You mustn’t tell anyone.” My grades slipped for a while; I couldn’t concentrate on anything or even understand a question the teacher would address to me. “You mustn’t tell anyone.” I didn’t want to betray Daddy, who obviously had titanic needs. Poor man, I told myself, he’s a good person and if he behaves so wickedly it must be because lust has overwhelmed him. He must feel so ashamed of himself. Though he frightened me, I pitied him. I certainly didn’t want to add to his travails.
I al
so thought there must be something foul in me to awaken those desires in him. I became convinced that I smelled bad and that if someone at the movies took a different seat it was because they couldn’t bear my stench. I knew it was sinful to touch or even look at my private parts, but I kept running my hand over my pubis and sniffing it. Although I couldn’t detect a foul odor, I knew I must be radiating it; the rot was infecting me everywhere. I tried to keep my legs crossed in public in order to lock down the smell. I sprayed myself before going to school and eventually carried a bottle of toilet water with me, with which I’d douse myself every time I went to the bathroom. Soon kids sitting near me in class began to complain of the sweet, floral smell of my perfume. It was no longer masking my inner corruption but had paradoxically become the nuisance itself.
I thought I was losing my mind. I broke out in a rash down there, probably because the alcohol had burned my tender flesh. I thought of confessing my anxiety to a priest, but the idea of confiding in a man horrified me. I wondered why nuns couldn’t hear confession, at least of young women, but soon I learned it’s not for the faithful to question the ways of the priesthood. When I was really in pain, despite applications of the soothing cream I stole from Bobbie Jean’s bathroom and after another girl had remarked, “Ooh-ee! You smell like a lady of the night, I declare,” I decided to muster my courage and confess my worries next Saturday.
When I entered church and saw the red light over the confessional box, indicating that a priest was in attendance and not listening to a penitent, I boldly entered—and became speechless! The priest, in a kindly, soft voice that I recognized, murmured that he was listening. “Father, I have sinned. It’s been a week since I last confessed. I had sexual intercourse with my father.”
“Willingly or against your will?”
“Unwillingly.”
“Did you derive any pleasure from the act?”
“No. It was painful.”
“Did your father show you pornography to excite you? These are all leading questions, which the Vatican forbids, crimen sollicitationis, but I think you may need them.”
“Thank you. No, no pornography.”
“Were you excited?”
“No.”
“Did he give you money or gifts as a reward for the act?”
“No.”
“Do you hate your father and wish him dead?”
“Oh, no.”
“Are you guilty of scrupulosity?”
“What is that?”
“Imagining a sin where none exists.”
“No.”
“Then where is the sin? How have you sinned? Have you slandered your father?”
“No.”
“Have you had an abortion?”
“No.”
“Did you provoke him to sin through lascivious words or bodily movements?”
“No.”
“What are you failing to tell me? Would you say you were raped?”
“How do you define that?”
“Were you a willing partner or did your father force you to lie down with him?”
“I tried to stop him. I cried and begged him to stop.”
“Then you are without sin, my child.”
“But Father …”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t there some acts that are such an abomination in the eyes of God that they must count as sins?”
“A mortal sin is a grave act, such as murder that must be committed with forethought and intention. A venial sin is a smaller sin, like theft, that will not result in eternal damnation. Both kinds of sin can be absolved through confession and contrition. But both kinds require the sinner to plan, to will, to envision the sin; nothing accidental is a sin and nothing merely undergone. It’s rather a martyrdom in your case and is sanctifying.” Of course, I’d been catechized and knew everything he was saying by heart. But he must have thought I needed reminding (and I did).
I confessed a handful of venial sins and he told me to say ten Hail Marys and to pray sincerely and to meditate on my sins before leaving the church.
I went to the altar rail, and as I was praying and then saying my Hail Marys I felt such an enormous relief. I kept going over what I’d told the priest to make sure it was completely true; I worried most that I’d somehow tempted my father. But then I realized I was guilty of scrupulosity. Sin didn’t work in hidden, unconscious ways. It was willed in the full daylight of intention. I was free! I had no need to be absolved!
I don’t know why I bring up such morbid memories. I’ve read enough psychology to know what I’m calling an “invisible cell” would normally be referred to as “depersonalization” (the feeling that everything is happening in a movie) or “derealization” (the feeling that nothing is actually happening). These symptoms are mostly experienced by women between the ages of sixteen and twenty and are brought on by trauma or abuse. Of course, now I know that Daddy himself was abused as a boy, poor man. And I know I was guiltless and that my mania about smelling bad was unfounded. To be perfectly honest, I think my aversion to sex and my vows of chastity are probably not unrelated to that abuse. Also, to be frank, I’m more attracted to women now then men. Since we’re identical biologically if not in our life histories, I wonder if you feel the same velleity. Of course, I wouldn’t act on that desire—well, I did act on it once in Rome. We were staying in a convent behind the Janiculum, twin beds in a simple, whitewashed cell, a very high coffered wood ceiling, a rugged iron cross, immense windows looking out on a garden of lemon trees. It was night, the window was open, and this wonderful cool maritime breeze was blowing, what the Romans call the ponentino, and I felt restless and exalted and in need of human contact. I sat on the edge of Mercedes’s bed for maybe an hour, just staring at her beloved face, so peaceful. She was snoring lightly, like the sound of a finger rubbing corduroy. It was stronger than I was, this urge to touch her. And in the most intimate parts. “Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire,” William Blake wrote. Was he just a mouthpiece for the Devil or was his a superior wisdom? I read that verse by him when I was an adolescent and I’ve never forgotten it. Of course, I was at the age when you’ll believe anything if it’s said with enough conviction and eloquence; you’ll even believe contradictory utterances pronounced with equal verve.
Ever so gently I brushed my lips against Mercy’s, and, still asleep, she rubbed her mouth with the back of her tiny, pudgy hand as if I’d been a mosquito. She smelled of vegetable ravioli, which we’d eaten for dinner, and I was intoxicated by the odor siphoning through her parted lips. She must have felt my breath. She frowned and her eyes clicked open. She stared at me, wordless, for a full minute. Finally she started to whisper but had a frog in her throat. She swallowed and said, “Hello.” She paused, then said slightly louder, “You can touch me if you please. I’m not drawn to other women, but I will never refuse my body to you. I know you want me. I may sleep through it, but do anything you want with me. I could never say no to you. I don’t want to commit the sin of concupiscence”—she tripped on the word and smiled as she repeated it deliberately—“nor do I want to deny you anything. I love you.”
After those sweet words I stood and went back to my bed. She had cured me of my blind passion and I slept peacefully until the birds outside our open window started their dawn racket. I hope I haven’t alarmed you with this confession.
Did you feel even the slightest stirring of lust looking at Mercedes? I suppose she’s not conventionally beautiful—dark, chubby, short—but to me she’s irresistible. Everything she said to me was perfection. That she loved me but was not attracted to women. That she would deny me nothing, though she refused to sin. That she would suffer my love. That she respected my desperation. Because I am desperate I find it difficult to condemn Daddy. The passions are cruelly real; they whip and spur us into a frenzy, to the point of no turning back. When you are under the lash, you can’t reason with yourself. Passion is like grief; people say those feelings will weaken with time,
which is demonstrably true, but for the lover or the mourner there is no past nor future. Only the scalding present. No words or thoughts or actions are comforting. Distractions feel sacrilegious. Worse than this present pain is the notion you will grow into some future indifference. That feels like the ultimate profanation, a descent from the quickness of pain into the numbness of everyday life, the shift from tragedy to banality. A betrayal.
And then when Daddy was abused by his father? I assume there is an infinite regress of vice and pain.
What do I find so attractive about Mercedes? Maybe because you and I are big and solid, I feel tenderly toward her smallness, her tubbiness, her dark skin, which seems to me not only tanned but infused with heat by the sun. Her guilessness, her stupid playfulness (like her tasteless off-color jokes) make me smile. Her courage and absence of resentment against the society that has been so harsh with her. She likes the other religious, even the sourest nuns. I picture her like a dark version of Botticelli’s Primavera, scattering her flowers over everyone she encounters, her face always fully visible so we can see the total glory of her smile.
I loved your children, my niece and nephew, though you seemed strangely strict with Ghislaine. I’m so used to the nearly wild but always merry children in Jericó, running free, loud most of the time—holy terrors! Sometimes I listen to them playing outside my window, though I can’t see them. They whip one another into ecstasies of excitement and their voices climb and climb perilously high. If you could hold them in your hand it would be like holding a small live bird, its body throbbing, its hot, trapped wings wanting to flutter, its heart bursting with fear or joy.
Ghislaine, in her layers of bleached and starched white skirts, her fixed smiles, her polished pale face like an old-fashioned doll’s minutely painted features, her silence betrayed by her tremor—she seems like a member of a different species. The way you made her curtsy to me broke my heart. I can’t say why. But I thought of a trained pony taught to kneel in the circus sawdust. You had had to reproach her for forgetting to curtsy; then she dropped her curtsy perfectly and if she was being resentful or ironic she concealed her mood behind her antique bisque face. I wish you could be kinder, softer with her; it must be obvious to her how you prefer her brother.