Drifts

by Kate Zambreno

  I am barely conscious in this heat. I like that I can see the tall yellow daisies from the garden through the front window, even when Genet reclines on the radiator. In the morning he is wrapped in the cheap white gauze of the curtains, like a little bride. I give him the orange bowl as I lick the spoon. I wander around during the day tripping on yogurt containers I have set on the floor for the dog to lick. I realize I’ve been drinking from a jar of water that previously held the dying flowers from the farmers market.

  Lately I have been thinking of the relationship of my body to time. How time moves this summer, so slowly and quickly, how my growing body keeps measure. But also how my body has become a measure of time for others as well. Although I dread the public comments on my body. I never anticipated how many unsolicited confessions I’d receive from people I barely know or don’t know, about their ambivalences and desires and histories surrounding children and pregnancy. I receive them all, in this humid state, without really responding.

  Genet is at his regular perch, looking moodily out the window. We are listening again to the shifting timbre of the man screaming in pain.

  Yesterday, wandering around the apartment in my sleeveless chambray dress like the ghost of my grandmother, in her hot kitchen, my belly huge. I feel as if I’ve been caught within a Vermeer.

  After constant wavering as to our plans, and always on the verge of cancellation, I meet Marie to see the show of early Diane Arbus photographs at the Met Breuer. She insists on taking a car uptown, paying for it, which makes me uncomfortable, as I almost never take cars, but I am sweaty and exhausted from the train. Because I always dress carefully to see her, I wear an off-the-shoulder white jumpsuit with an exaggerated saclike silhouette that I bought at a boutique. I wanted my maternity wear to make me look like a glamorous alien. I wander around the show and think about the anonymity and intimacy of Arbus’s photographs of others, that queasy line that makes them so thrilling. That a photograph was the stilling of an encounter. In a letter, Arbus wrote about her photographs: “They are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you.” Marie wants me to take her photograph in a full-body profile, to announce her newly sloping belly on Instagram. I am already huge and she is still so slim. I feel clumsy following her around, trying to surreptitiously snap her photograph, as cameras aren’t allowed.

  After an absence of two years, Rilke returns to Paris to act as Rodin’s secretary. Paula Modersohn-Becker is staying in Paris as well, having left her husband to try to live the artist’s life. She begins to paint a portrait of the poet, but René Maria distances himself from her, not wanting to take sides, and the painting remains unfinished, as she dies suddenly the next year. There is a stark hauntingness to his blue unfinished gaze in the painting. At the beginning of his novel, his character relates that he is learning to see. He doesn’t know why, but it all enters him more deeply, and nothing remains at the level where once it used to be.

  Before, when Rilke went to the Louvre, he’d found it too full, everything was disturbing, he felt like he was disappearing into the crowds. Now he finds he can see certain pictures, he can actually appreciate the beauty of the Mona Lisa, as if all of humanity were contained within her infinitely tranquil portrait. Now he feels fully outlined, he writes to Clara, like a Dürer drawing. His hatred of the city has shifted onto his fictional double, although all he can do is take notes on his character’s fate, which consumes him. He leaves on a lecture circuit for his book on Rodin, from whom he has now become estranged.

  Back in Paris, he stays first at the Hotel du Quai Voltaire, where Baudelaire finished writing Les Fleurs du mal fifty years earlier, but soon moves to a cheaper hotel on rue Cassette, where Paula Modersohn-Becker had stayed before she moved back to Germany to have her first child. It’s obvious now, he thinks: He must be in the city, he must see art. He drinks milk at his favorite vegetarian restaurant on the boulevard du Montparnasse to fortify himself. A painter friend, one Miss V., brings him a portfolio of Van Gogh reproductions. Even in his most exquisite agony, Van Gogh could paint his hospital’s interior, he marvels to Clara. And the sculptor—even when he’s not feeling well, he can still draw, read Plato, he still lives the life of beauty and of the mind, he still can follow this joy. And yet Rilke himself remains so far from being able to work at all times. He wishes he had no pleasurable memories of not working. Hours spent waiting, flipping through old illustrations, looking at some novel. If only it were enough, he writes, to have a dog and sit in front of a shop window for twenty years. In October he goes several times to the Salon d’Automne at the Grand Palais, returning again and again to these paintings of Paul Cézanne, the hermit from the countryside who made paintings of an indescribable radical colorfulness, paintings of attention and beauty that were deeply inspiring to Paula Modersohn-Becker when she saw them in Paris. Now heavily pregnant and back at the artist’s colony, Paula reads his letters along with Clara. They could not afford for both of them to be in Paris, so Rilke describes Cézanne’s paintings to Clara. He makes saints out of ordinary objects, and forces them—forces them—to be beautiful, he writes his wife, the sculptor. A friend observes of the hermit painter’s work, that he sat looking like a dog, without any nervousness, without any ulterior motive. At the Louvre, looking at the Venetians—what must Cézanne have thought of the colors of Titian, Tintoretto? Rilke begins to look at Paris through this painter’s eyes. He sees the autumn as if painted on silk, and the yellow of the books of the bouquinistes on the quai, the violet brown of the volumes, the green of the portfolio, all this lyricism he later lifts for his novel’s opening. He writes of this painter as a shabby old man, exhausted, seized by rage, like the old white-bearded man of Tintoretto, waking at six in the morning to walk through the town to his studio, the local children throwing stones at him. He would paint until ten o’clock, return along the same road for lunch, and then return to the studio to sit in front of the painting and his objects for hours, leaving only for a nature walk, and then bed at six in the evening, on the edge of collapse. Does Rilke see the irony of romanticizing all of this to his wife, whom he has left alone with the child and the domestic, so that she cannot get her work done? The sculptor or the painter, with their dutiful spouses, the modest constancy and poverty of their studio and work lives, the sameness. To be monastic is to be unmoving—it is what Rilke left behind, for he was a different sort of angel, the peripatetic, the courtly poet, the constant traveler who refused humble lodgings, always searching, grasping, longing.

  At the cabin, after three days of driving across country, my body in burning discomfort while trapped in our tiny Honda. We had to stop every two hours for me to stretch my body and empty my bladder, after downing so much water to prevent the false contractions that come with the extreme heat. Sick of public bathrooms—of wiping down seats, of the cheap toilet paper getting stuck in my pubic hair, of waddling my sore body through doors of identical highway rest stops. I hold Genet on a pillow on my lap, as he agitates at bridges and rumble strips. Disturbed by the looming MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! signs, as we drove through Pennsylvania, through Ohio, through Michigan, like ominous humid beacons that we couldn’t quite believe.

  At the cabin I sit in the cushioned rocker my grandmother would sit in, because of my burning back. Through the window we watch the dog scamper off leash. What a noble creature, John says. I feel close to something here. Perhaps to nothing, that’s what I’m closer to. The ephemerality of this pregnancy, like this summer, a sort of boredom or rapt interiority that doesn’t translate into work. John hands me a plate of cut apples, almonds, cheddar cheese. It’s now noon and I need to nap. John drinks a beer and we watch the dog play. “Country TV,” he says, as the dog takes off, running after his first chipmunk. We go to the dock and dangle our feet in the water. I rest my head on John’s back. The slowness here. I needed it spiritually.
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br />   Now we are propped up in bed. Genet lies between us, farting freely. The long yellow legal pads where I copy out everything in the Rilke biographies. John reading his biography of Walter Benjamin. There are no pressures here, John remarked to me earlier today. I gave him a look. He amends his remark: No pressures of the day, nowhere to go, nothing to do. But he realizes my deadlines—my book, my body. Your beautiful parasite, he says, kissing my stomach. She worms inside of me. I like that phrase, “beautiful parasite.” That’s what an artist is to me.

  It is now raining out. As John strokes the dog tucked next to him, I suck John’s cock, the taste of it earthy and warm. He takes the dog into the other room while I pee, and we fuck in the bathroom, against the sink, John behind me, me watching us in the mirror. We’ve had to try new positions to get around the belly. I watch myself—finding beauty now in my reddened skin, my crooked bottom teeth, the gray hair in my curly mop, my blue veins in these huge milky breasts, these red-brown nipples like abstract paintings.

  We sleep in a cabin surrounded by forest. The lake is still. Last night I listened to an owl in the distance and wondered whether I will have silence again, afterward. On the morning walk I am slow and overheated. Later John puts a cool washcloth all over me to cool me as I sit down to drink some water. The constant labor of hydrating and eating. I go for a swim in the lake. How I welcome the weightlessness of the water.

  Even with the peacefulness of this week, so much obsessing over what we will do when the baby is born. Where can we afford to live, how can we afford childcare, how do we afford John’s unpaid paternity leave. How will I continue to teach through my last trimester, and how will I teach the following semester, with a newborn, even though I’ve agreed to three classes on three campuses, panicked about money. Perhaps we can attempt a Rilke year—a cheap farmhouse upstate. An intellectual sanctuary, John says. He wants to be home, to not miss the days our fathers missed. He wants to paint and to write about art. A monastic life. I want it too, with him. To be guardians of each other’s solitude, like the Rilkes. Yet they, too, were always so worried about money. It didn’t work out for them.

  Back in the city. I haven’t seen my cat all summer. Sometimes I think I see her tail swinging around the corner or underneath a car, but don’t know if I’m hallucinating.

  It alarms me, how large my belly is growing. I can’t see my pubic hair any longer. I feel I’m running out of time. Maybe Rilke was right about the impossibility of sustained work in the summer. My belly is so hard and sore. It’s 7 p.m. and it’s still so airless outside. I’m wearing my orange hippie tank dress with nothing underneath.

  I cannot turn Drifts in at the end of the summer. I have had to beg for more time. The fall, I promise, before the baby is due.

  It is now the end of August. Anna writes me that she’s confused about her book, which she’s still rearranging. She can’t tell if it’s off and bad or close and good. She asks me whether I’ve read it yet. I tell her I haven’t been able to. I’m extremely pregnant and uncomfortable, I write to her. She tells me in return that she’s been in bed for two days with a wasp bite on her foot, how badly it’s swelled, how itchy and painful. How phobic she is of deformity, she writes. How awful, I write, balancing my laptop on my belly, trying to be sympathetic. She’s packing to leave soon for two weeks. A literary festival somewhere international and cosmopolitan. We talk about how much we’ve both been spending on skin care. For her, lipsticks and sheet masks. For me, an expensive deep blue balm for my pregnancy eczema that I smear on my face every night, a calming ritual.

  She sends me a photograph of Elsa Morante at her desk, morose, chin down, staring at her books. That’s me, she writes, except in bed. I send her links to Paula Modersohn-Becker’s self-portraits. Later, when I ask how her foot is feeling, ask when she’s leaving, she tells me that she has begun reading Modersohn-Becker’s letters. She asks me if I want to go with her to a publishing conference in September. That’s a hard pass, I write to her. Yeah, I don’t want to go either, I don’t know why I agreed. She’s been reading the letters of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, and that she thought of our friendship, our intimacy and forthrightness. Which one is Hannah, and which one is Mary? I ask her. We decide that neither of us is either of them.

  Genet lays down hot on the wooden floor outside my office so he can watch me. He is waiting in protest for two hours before his lunchtime. I take him outside quickly, just avoiding the murderous row.

  I see her frizzy hair bobbing outside my window—I realize my hair looks like hers now.

  I keep on receiving the same voice mail message from a number I don’t recognize, which makes me panic every time. Emergency situation. Go into lockdown now. It is from the college where I haven’t taught since the fall.

  On the porch, eating a large bowl of overripe melon, staring at the garden. I am attempting again to organize my notes from the fall. Genet sits on my foot, a protective measure. He then circles around, not knowing where to slump. The sun has traveled to the far corner of the porch, where the wood is rotten. I call him back over, stroke his soft ear, a soothing gesture for both of us. The garden is so overgrown—there is almost no path to walk past—yet our landlord has once again cut down what remained of the butterfly bush.

  Inside I watch the short film Agnès Varda made while she was pregnant. L’Opéra Mouffe, in English Diary of a Pregnant Woman. Par une femme enceinte. The opening shot of a naked pregnant body, the contracting of it, the clever juxtaposing shot of a large gourd being sliced open, the scooping out of its insides. Walking around rue Mouffetard. The filmmaker is watching the old women at the vegetable stand talking energetically. Staring back at those staring at her.

  Apparently my uterus is now the size of a pumpkin.

  The French word for “pregnant,” enceinte, also means “border” or “enclosure.” The enclosing walls of a fortified place. How secret a pregnancy can feel and be, how internal and private.

  The other day I saw the old woman outside on her chair on the porch. I crossed the street to say hello. Enjoying the sun? I asked her. Enjoying the shade, she replied. She was wearing her beige trousers, the pink oxford shirt. Has she been inside all summer? Have I?

  Today I saw a striped cat with green eyes and a raccoon tail on her lawn—it looked exactly like an older version of my cat. I fear my little cat is dead.

  Last night in the warm (not hot) bath, we saw the baby moving under my skin. I turn over to my side and let John cup handfuls of water over me. Genet has taken to giving cursory licks to my nipple when he greets me in bed, and when he stands up to kiss me at the edge of the bath as I bathe every night this week (only lukewarm water allowed), my back aching. John wonders if my nipples smell different now.

  I saw the woman in her chair again this morning, in her white robe and nightclothes, with what looked to be the newspaper. Me void-like in all-black linen. I waved at her with two hands. I wonder if she’s noticed by now that I’m pregnant, if she remembers me at all. I like your doggie, she says to me, a recurring phrase. John and I hold hands, are very affectionate.

  How noble Genet looks in his big-cat stance. Genet just went berserk at the postal worker as he was bringing an Amazon box for the Italian, who apparently lives here again, having returned to sublet the actress’s room in her latest absence. I forced Genet back on the porch, picked him up, despite his resistance, and kissed his face and chest and belly—trying to calm his nervous system against my own. And now he is stoic again.

  The larger striped cat, the doppelgänger, stands in our path on the sidewalk, in front of the big house with the exquisite garden. It looks so much like my cat, I fantasize that the wealthy residents have adopted her. Maybe it is true.

  Days spent complaining online about my lack of maternity leave and writing long emails. Rilke complaining of not writing despite the volume of his correspondence. I can’t seem to work on the Rilke story—it has stalled. I don’t know how I’m supposed to
narrate his life. I am sitting on Genet on the couch—or wedging my massive body against him and pillows—as he freaks out at the large moving guy who keeps going in and out of the house. The self-help guru is moving out. I will miss her, her ghostliness.

  Everywhere I go in public someone has a comment about my body, or unsolicited advice. The man who cuts my hair asks me question after question: What parenting style, astrology sign, name, gender, will I have a vaginal birth? I smile, I respond. Why do I answer? Most of the answers I do not know. He dyes my hair dark, like the swatch of fake hair I pick out for him; he cuts my hair into a more manageable bob. I don’t like it. But I just want to feel in control somehow.

  There are tender, intimate interactions in this public space. I go again to Pema, the woman who painted my nails. She asks me how I’m feeling. But mostly I am a throbbing, public thing. I miss anonymity—privacy—the ability to wander around. That I had actually become invisible was a relief to me.

  That’s right, you’re pregnant. The Italian is tan and slimmer, back from Rome. I am sitting on the bench with the dog. He gestures to the notebook on my lap. Are you writing? I’m curt with him. I just want him to go away. He has probably heard my weeping sessions this week, panicked and stressed about money, the future. I don’t know how my body can handle the commute to teach in the fall. The bureaucratic tone of human resources at the college upstate, telling me I don’t get any official sick days or leave when I go into labor near the end of the semester. Finally soothed over the phone by the head of that department, who has always been kind to me, reassuring me that I can miss a class or two, under the table. He had recently published a novel from the point of view of an aging feminist, to some acclaim. How humiliating this all feels, this constant prostration. It is like one of Kafka’s novels, John says to me—they won’t tell you what you need to do, and any proposed solution is met with nonresponse. The university also tells me I must make up the class, but they won’t tell me how.