I apologize for the thoroughly counterfeit and not even particularly convincing facsimile of Binh’s non-existent artistic interventions into our correspondence. It’s hard to know how to do this tastefully.
Simone de Beauvoir also struggled with how to write about, or not write about, Algren. She went on to depict their love affair in a novel, The Mandarins. According to what she wrote Algren about that process, she left out a few details but on the whole stayed pretty close to the truth. Then years later, in a nonfiction work called Force of Circumstance, she was quite explicit about some of the more sensitive things that had happened between them. That’s when Algren pretty much lost it. He made some very angry statements to the press, which he evidently regretted later. Even very early on in their correspondence, Simone was already worrying about how to depict him – how much she could say, and how much she couldn’t say. She was writing a book about her travels through the US, and she didn’t know how to deal with narrating the events when she got to Chicago. She felt it would be somehow inappropriate to write about the initiation of their love affair, but it was difficult to talk about her experience of Chicago without somehow referencing Algren. She wrote him, “Well, I have to find a way of saying the truth without saying it; that is exactly what is literature, after all: clever lies which secretly say the truth.”
So I hope you will forgive me if I tell you that after that catastrophe with the giant-screen projection of my supreme humiliation, Binh evidenced first a somewhat childish indifference, but in the aftermath, when he came to understand what it had cost me, he showed a tenderness that was unlike anything he’d ever expressed before.
I had told him once that I knew that our sexual relationship was precarious, and that due to his constitutional disability and my own instinct for self-preservation, we clearly wouldn’t be falling in love anytime soon. But I said, “Who knows, sometimes I think we could fall in love when you’re sixty, and I’m eighty-three.” That, I could imagine. So after he’d shrugged off the Potsdamer Platz fiasco, after I wept and fretted (unnecessarily, it turned out) about the potential personal and professional ramifications, after he finally held me sobbing in his arms and realized what I’d suffered, he wrote me a very beautiful message saying that who knew, when we were sixty and eighty-three, maybe indeed we’d be lovers, or ex-lovers, or dear friends, or collaborators, but we certainly couldn’t be far from one another.
Of course it didn’t happen like that. The paramour has never seen me cry. Well, there was that one time when Djeli played the kora in bed and his heartbreakingly sensitive response to his own song prompted a small, subtle, sympathetic tear to roll down my cheek. But in general, I do my best to hold it together with the paramour, even on e-mail. That short “I’m irritated with you” message was about as emotive as I ever got. But my lover did seem to feel for me for a minute there after the catastrophe.
You may be wondering if we’ve had any contact in recent days. In fact, not. I responded to that message about the shrink with something light and amiable, and nothing came back. As I said, not getting messages these days is something of a relief. I’m working on this manuscript fairly obsessively.
I did, however, take some time out today to go to see a play with Sandro. It was a company called Elevator Repair Service, and they were doing a very interesting adaptation of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. We’ve seen this company before, and they’re always quirky and inventive. Sandro’s taste runs toward the avant-garde. I once wrote the paramour that in general, I liked my art “small and experimental.” My lover responded that “small and experimental” was good, but so was “big and experimental.” I think this was meant to imply that a fan-base in the hundreds of thousands or even millions didn’t mean that the paramour was not experimenting. In fact this is true. But I’ve already mentioned my lover’s fascination with popular culture – that business about Cameron Diaz, for example. I myself don’t find fame for the sake of fame quite so captivating.
Anyway, we very much enjoyed The Sound and the Fury. It focused on the section of the novel narrated by Benjy, the “idiot” Compson son, so of course it was disjunctive, non-linear, and sometimes confusing. In this production, each character was represented by a couple of different actors, often of contrasting race and gender. That opened up some interesting interpretive possibilities, and shifted around the political implications. There was also some highly stylized and comical choreography. The woman who played Benjy for most of the production was a wiry, child-like, bird-faced actress. I also saw her play Jack Kerouac (excellent).
Naturally, seeing this play made me want to come home and take another look at Faulkner. I’d also been thinking about Faulkner because of Simone de Beauvoir’s letters to Nelson Algren. You may be aware that Sartre wrote a very famous essay on Faulkner arguing that The Sound and the Fury manifested many of the tenets of existentialism. But in their correspondence, Simone de Beauvoir is constantly assuring Algren that he is a superior novelist to virtually all of his compatriots, including Faulkner. This makes you wonder if her opinion wasn’t influenced by the fact that Algren was good in bed. She does, at one point, say that she and Sartre are going to publish a piece by Faulkner in Les Temps modernes. She says, “It is good since he has the Nobel Prize.” As you know, Tzipi Honigman also won the Nobel Prize. Simone de Beauvoir won the Prix Goncourt for The Mandarins. Relative to Faulkner, Nelson Algren was the kind of person Carlo would classify as a “loser.”
“Clearly, for Faulkner, writing is a kind of doubling in which the author’s self is reconstituted within the realm of language as the Other, a narcissistic mirroring of the self to which the author’s reaction is at once a fascinated self-love and an equally fascinated self-hatred.” – John T. Irwin, in the Norton Critical Edition of The Sound and the Fury
Thursday, December 6, 2007, 11:28 p.m.
Subject: your pick
Choose one:
a) After my show in Tokyo last week, all I wanted to do was see my kids and I can’t think about anything else right now. I’ll ask Kadidia to send that cream. My shoe size is 43.
b) My dear friend, I’m really sorry you suffered so much in Bamako all alone. I’d like to write a longer message but I’ve been very busy and I’m exhausted. Everything will be all right, I promise, I’ve already talked with my sister, and with Dr. Touré. They said this is the typical healing process and nothing to be concerned about. The cream will come. I’m not sleeping well, but I read the beautiful little book about masturbation and I thought of you with desire. My children are beautiful and are making me happy. I hope you and Sandro are well, aside from the obvious. Fabienne is doing much better. I will be very glad to see you here in January. My feet are medium in size. Bisous.
c) I’ve had it, enough with hallucinating, needy, scabby chicks, I am indeed a dreadlocked SpongeBob, I spend half my time in a tropical country, I don’t need wool socks.
I sent this in the aftermath of the fiasco. While it’s true that immediately afterwards Djeli had shown uncharacteristic warmth and solicitude, within a couple of weeks he’d slipped back into his customary role of unreliable, sporadic correspondent. I was really worried about how my sores were going to heal once all the scabs had fallen off. My doctor here in New York was vaguely reassuring but since he didn’t have a lot of experience with tropical diseases, I wasn’t sure he was the best source. Djeli had mentioned that his sister Kadidia had suggested a very effective herbal cream and she’d be happy to send some. He’d also spoken with his own GP in Bamako, Dr. Touré, and he also thought this cream would be helpful. Djeli, naturally, never followed up on it. I asked him if he could. I also asked him if he’d heard anything about Fabienne’s health.
In my recuperation period, I read a lovely little book by Harry Mathews about masturbation and I asked Sandro to mail it to Djeli when I was done. I also knit a lot of socks. I began making a beautiful pair for Djeli with a pale green wool fingerling yarn, but handmade socks really need to be made to measure. I a
sked Djeli for his shoe size.
A letter to the editor had recently come out in a music magazine that took issue with one of the wacko political statements that Djeli occasionally makes. The author of the letter had perhaps not fully understood the implicit irony in Djeli’s comment, or maybe he’d actually understood it perfectly and still found it idiotic. In any event, he called Djeli a “dreadlocked SpongeBob SquarePants.” Djeli seemed to like this.
So, as the days passed, there was no word on the cream, no thanks for the book, no reassuring news regarding Fabienne, and, to add insult to injury, no indication of the size of Djeli’s foot. I was stuck wondering whether to bind off the toe, or add another half inch. When I couldn’t wait any longer, I sent him the three choices. He wrote back saying that all three were good. He talked about some other news but didn’t actually answer any of my questions himself. I went with a European size 43. I assumed Fabienne was okay, since I was. Djeli never sent the cream. My sores healed just fine. I was left without a scar.
Sometimes when Djeli takes a while to write me, or writes something vaguely questionable, I write him, “Hm.” He once asked about this. He wanted to make sure he was understanding it correctly. He said that in French, one sometimes said, “Hmm,” as an alternative to, “Bah, oueh…” but that it wasn’t generally written out in prose. He said when he read it in my messages, he imagined me smiling slightly and looking a little distrustful. I said, yes, that that was the appropriate reading. I said my “hm”s also implied a raising of one eyebrow. We had a similar exchange about the word ahem.
On account of his increasing reticence, I wrote him last month:
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 9:16 a.m.
Subject: Ahem
In our relaxed and somewhat foul-mouthed household, when Sandro doesn’t text me back, I write him, “DUDE YOU SUCK.” Between me and Florence, all we have to do is send a BlackBerry e-mail that says “?!” and that usually prompts a quick 3-word assurance from the quiet person. With you, my strategy has been to compose optional replies for you to choose from, a, b, or c. But given that I had an inappropriate temper tantrum within my last menstrual cycle, I’m resigning myself to just prodding you periodically with polite but slightly wry one – or two-syllable onomatopoeic insertions in the chatty missives I send you when I feel like telling you something.
Djeli answered right away, a charming, warm, and informative message. Then he disappeared again.
You will have noticed the reference to a temper tantrum. Actually, that was the “I’m irritated with you” message. It’s true that hormonal fluctuations may have some small impact on the tone of my correspondence. But for the first three years of my relationship with the paramour, I managed to keep this relatively under control. In fact, I don’t think my crankiness had that much to do with my menstrual cycle. I think maybe I was just getting kind of tired of this.
I realize that you may be thinking, “It took her three years to wake up and smell the coffee?” I know that from what I’ve reproduced here, it might appear that my diligent commitment to the correspondence was all that was keeping it alive. But I’m not showing you what Djeli wrote me. I can only tell you that when he was good, as the saying goes, he was very very good. In fact, sometimes, in his lyrical, sideways style, he’d be so loving, I wasn’t sure how to respond.
It’s funny, I’m curious about what Nelson Algren wrote to Simone de Beauvoir, but I’m kind of glad I can’t read it.
There was a pain and it was like a needle in the back of my eye and there were sharp colors and there was a smell. There was a knock and then a thud and the pain behind my eye and there was a woman standing over me and she was speaking French but I was understanding.
“Did you fall? I came to clean the room. Est-ce que vous êtes malade? ”
There was a smell and the pain and I felt cold and hot all at once and then there were two other women and one of them was whispering, “C’est la dengue, c’est la dengue.”
My bones hurt and my eye hurt and the light was hot and sharp and the floor was hard and someone said, “Comme elle gémit, c’est la dengue.”
Somebody was lifting me and lifting me and my panties were wet and cold and I was cold but I was hot and someone wrapped a sheet around me and it smelled like bleach. And then she brushed my hair from my eyes and said, “It’s okay, we’re taking you to the clinic, it’s just a fever, it’s okay.”
And they carried me and then there was the smell of gasoline and rubber and everything was shaking and my head felt like it was going to explode and I felt all my bones, it was like my bones were full of fire, and I was hot and I was cold and it smelled like rubbing alcohol.
And there was a bed and it was white and there was a curtain and it was white and it was blowing a little and the light was like a knife in my eyes and I closed them and a woman said, “Comme elle gémit, poor thing, c’est la dengue.”
There was a television near the ceiling and there were noises that hurt my head and there were shapes and colors but I couldn’t see what they were supposed to be and the light was like a knife in my eyes and someone said, “Fabienne, you have a new roommate,” and the girl named Fabienne moaned, and someone said, “Comme elle pue. Tell Fanta to clean her up.”
It was night and the dark was moving like shapes, like animals, and I was afraid and I started to cry and Fabienne moaned and someone came and put some little pills in my mouth and made me swallow some water, and my skin felt like needles were going in it and I felt sick and I leaned over the bed and I was sick and Fanta came back to clean me up again and I slept.
In the morning the light was moving on the wall, it looked like leaves, and someone tried to feed me something but I had a hard time swallowing, I thought I was going to be sick again, and someone said, “Comme elle bave,” and it smelled like leaves.
And I peed in my bed and someone lifted me and someone cleaned me up and they put me back in a bed and it smelled like bleach and my head was heavy and I cried.
I’ll spare you any more of my bad Faulkner impersonation. You get the idea. I had dengue fever – like everybody and his brother in Bamako that week. It was a raging epidemic, over almost as quickly as it began. My timing was impeccable: I’d gotten to town just as Djeli’d had the good sense to get the hell out. I spent five days in the hospital with my little roommate, Fabienne, a 12-year-old girl, coincidentally the daughter of a friend of Djeli’s, with a case as bad as mine. The hotel maid had discovered me, passed out in the bathroom, the morning after my dinner at the Bar Bla Bla.
During my hospitalization, Sandro was blissfully ignorant. He told me afterwards that he didn’t even miss getting my little harassment text messages about homework and piano. He figured I was just having too much fun with my Malian rock star. When I didn’t answer Florence’s e-mail, she figured the same thing. Djeli, of course, was worried when I didn’t turn up in Paris. He finally called the hotel and found out what had happened.
After three days of very trippy fever, diarrhea, and vomiting, I began to recognize my surroundings. Then came the rash. It started on my legs and wrists, then the red spots started coming out on my chest. They itched like crazy. There was pus coming out.
If you can avoid getting dengue fever, I’d recommend it.
Nothing like having scabs all over your body to make you feel de-eroticized. It was a while after that before I felt compelled to send another dirty picture to Djeli. But our correspondence isn’t all about eroticism. As evidenced by the bits I’ve reproduced, a lot of it is about books and films, and politics. I think Djeli likes it that I sometimes challenge him on his wacky political positions. That is to say, many people have criticized him in the press about some of the seemingly contradictory things he’s said, but in his day-to-day social life, he tends to surround himself with people who are willing to brush things aside on account of his lyricism and his personal charisma, or maybe (this is a more cynical assertion) his fame.
It’s interesting that while people love to com
pare him to other national music icons, no one has ever called him “the Bob Marley of Mali.” In point of fact, despite his hairstyle, Djeli has serious doubts about Rastafarianism. In his critique (in keeping with his critique of pretty much all organized religion), he never fails to raise the question of gender and sexual politics. That’s all well and good, except that Djeli has a very cagey way of skirting the issue of his own relationship to these things. Cagey may not be the best word. Let’s say, his argumentation is often circuitous. He’s so smart, and his thinking is so subtle and complex, it’s very hard to tell exactly what he’s saying. He gave an interview on the topic of religion and sexuality which was, you might say, confusing. Somebody else responded that it looked like his politics were “spinning” from left to right. Djeli wrote me noting that if you actually examined the movement of the spheres, the world was spinning from right to left and he like the rest of us was going along for the ride. He was just trying to keep his bearings. I wrote him back:
Wednesday, December 7, 2005, 3:51 p.m.
Subject: the movement of the spheres
I’d already understood everything you said about that interview. The world doesn’t spin from left to right and it’s reductive to say you do – but let me think at least once in a while that some of your arguments leave a person a little dizzy, and it’s not always helpful. The denial had a circular logic, and if you follow it, fine, maybe what you’re saying is even more radical than the “politically correct” argument. But also, it’s not. And if the world weren’t also spinning the way it’s going, maybe this wouldn’t be a problem. But it is. When they “accused” Charlie Chaplin of being a Jew, he said, “Unfortunately, I don’t have that honor.” It was a simple response, maybe too simple, but it was beautiful. This story of yours is more complicated. Your way of thinking about it is very complicated.
The Correspondence Artist Page 11