Breakneck

by Nelly Arcan

  “Charles? What’s happening?”

  Julie emerged from her corpse role and guessed from Charles’ stunned look what was happening. She was both disappointed and relieved.

  “You’ve been freed. You can become normal, or you can go crazy.”

  Charles sat back on the brown couch, holding his head in his hands. His cock lolled like a dog’s tongue on a summer day, peeking out of his jeans. But there was nothing comical about it, it was sadness itself that hung there, an example, a man hanged in a town square. He felt like crying, but couldn’t. He’d been beaten, destroyed. He didn’t know if a treasure had been taken from him, or a splinter removed from his foot, he knew only that, for him, there would be a before and an after, no matter what that meant. In his familiar ritual, he had seen Julie, but also felt seen himself, for the first time. Now he was cold, sitting on the couch, he looked at himself the way you sometimes watch your life, in a countdown, realizing you fucked up, that you were wrong about everything the whole time.

  Julie put on a bathrobe. She went to Charles and took him in her arms, her left shoulder still aching.

  “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “I’m sorry too,” she replied. “We’ll have to talk about what we’re going to do with our relationship. We can’t continue hurting each other.”

  “You’re right. But I’m not sure I’m happy to have known you. You need to know that. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I resent you. Your problem. It was your problem. You’ve set up a judge inside me.”

  “You already had that judge. Everyone has one, you have to let it judge you. It’s better that way.”

  Charles moved away from Julie, he looked at her, her new ugliness did not attract him. Julie gazed at him in return and saw a confused little boy, adorable in his remorse. She still held one of his knees in her hand despite their distance. They didn’t love each other anymore, maybe they’d never loved each other. At best they’d crossed paths and spent some good times together, but that time was up, it had scraped the bottom of the barrel with Charles becoming impotent.

  “There’s something I want to do.”

  “You want to sleep at your place tonight?”

  “Yes, that would be best. We’ll talk tomorrow. But that’s not what I wanted to say.”

  Charles stood and zipped himself up. He walked to the lemon tree, then slapped the lemon hard, almost knocking the tree over in its terracotta pot, sending out a shower of dirt. He barely managed to right the tree. To their surprise, the lemon didn’t fall, it bounced on the end of its stem among the shaken leaves.

  “What the hell is up with this lemon?” he asked with a smile.

  “An unwilling fruit,” she replied, grateful for the comic relief.

  Charles pulled on the lemon, but couldn’t tear it from its branch.

  “I don’t believe it, how hard can it be to pick a lemon?”

  “It’s a little diabolical, I think.”

  With the unyielding lemon taunting him, Charles got a pair of scissors from the kitchen and cut it out of the tree. He held it in one hand at eye level, triumphant, examining it closely like a curious animal.

  “It’s edible?”

  “Absolutely. You can keep it, as a souvenir of us,” Julie said. All she wanted was for this to be done, and to be alone again.

  Charles left with the lemon in his coat pocket, still looking lost. Julie didn’t know when she would see him again and didn’t feel bad about that, quite the opposite, maybe she was stronger than she looked. She spent the next hours cleaning house. Then she ran herself a bath and watched television from under the bubbles in the tub.

  Tomorrow she’d get her hair done, she’d get back on the treadmill, go back to the weights, her stage, and she’d become a Star again.

  IX

  * * *

  CONVICTION

  ROSE DUBOIS WAS lying on her back. She was counting from one to ten.

  Around her there was movement, people she couldn’t see, noises, voices heard through the rolling of a stretcher not far away, maybe in the corridor, the slamming of a door she couldn’t see either. As she counted, she watched the ceiling dilute, open onto a void, a ceiling of numb cotton that lowered upon her like a shroud. The ceiling was lowering and she would remember, later, that she hadn’t gotten to seven.

  Then she opened her eyes in the recovery room of a plastic-surgery clinic on the western edge of Montreal, not all at once but in stages, emerging from unconsciousness, then diving back like a dolphin playing in water. She’d been carried to a room where flowers were waiting for her: lilacs, orchids, red roses, two large pillows, and a new blanket where a note from Marc Gagnon awaited her, though she hadn’t been able to read it yet.

  The operation lasted many hours, softened by the death that general anaesthesia brings, where the sensation of time does not exist. Not only had she kept no memory of it, but she felt as though she hadn’t lived through it at all. A period of her life had been removed from her memory, deleted, then two disparate moments were stuck back together.

  She had pain between her legs like a drum beating its rhythm deep inside her, but the pain was eased by the morphine cradling her, she was suckling on it, like a thumb, a bottle that provided comfort. When the morphine ran out, the drum beat harder. The pain was intense and reassured her: what had to be done had been done, and done well. The walls of her vagina had been tightened with lasers, her inner lips made smaller and the hood covering her clitoris had been pulled back to reveal it, to thrust into the open the pink teat of her pussy forever alert, a pressure-point seeking caresses, a splinter.

  Her pussy had become the Ideal Pussy. Charles could lick it, nibble on it, pinch it, fuck it, but more than anything photograph it and place it in his collection. Her Pussy might travel the Internet, why not, creep into the lives of other men and push away their women. In her bed with its thick covers where she was all but buried, a new idea formed: she would give herself to Charles, but to all men as well.

  At age thirty, it was late to be a woman but, still, not too late. She still had five years, maybe ten, to reign over men’s desires before losing her crown forever.

  When the pain overwhelmed her, Rose rang and the morphine returned, entering her veins thanks to a nurse who arrived at the press of a button, whose face showed that she knew the nature of her operation, and that nature disgusted her.

  Jealous, Rose thought, like all the others. She often wondered whether women who worked in this business were tempted to have surgery, or whether they were disgusted by it, like accountants with bills to pay.

  Deep inside, she didn’t care. With her Pussy, she wouldn’t need to care about other women, that torment of always feeling out of place was finally over. These bits of skin that had been taken off made her part of the world, no matter what the world thought. Through her new-found tightness, her pussy like a tireless erection, Rose would give pleasure to Charles but to others as well. She would take her place among them and it would be a place she built for herself, that hadn’t been given to her, it was a long path and she had walked it.

  She woke from the operation with the belief that her life would change, and now she had to work on that conviction, the same way her pussy had been worked on.

  For the first time she thought of Renald and Stéphane, her father and her brother, like men. She wanted to talk to them, and open herself up to them. Ideas came calmly to her, strung together without conflict, they didn’t contain the weight of abomination that had thrown her onto a bench a month earlier.

  One of the visual ideas that came to her was the image of a strip joint where she was dancing on stage, she saw herself being watched by a crowd of men. There was the club where she was dancing nude but also the magazines where her photos ran, always naked, legs spread, she thought of the men who would buy the magazines and be in thrall of her pussy that recalled the days before hair sullied sex, the cleanliness of the time before menstruation, almost pubescent but already expert. The transsexual she’d seen i
n Marc’s waiting room came to mind, she saw him in the burden of the wrong body, like a low blow from nature, inspiring sympathy in Rose that comforted her.

  Rose had surrendered and her surrender was like giving birth. Through her Pussy, she’d given herself life.

  When the morphine faded completely, the pain neared an intolerable level and Rose rang, the door to her room opened and the morphine came in accompanied by the nurse who said nothing, who barely looked at her, asked nothing of her, except to describe her pain on a scale from one to ten to determine the dose.

  At one point Marc entered the room and sat next to the bed. He took back the note he had written: “I love you, Rose. Be better now. Let’s be good together. Marc.”

  That love letter was clearly ridiculous, he said to himself as he watched Rose sleep. In some situations love should be taboo, and kept at a distance, he thought. Unlike Rose, he wasn’t too sure about what he’d done, he regretted it already. He loved what she had before, her comforting folds, and gazing upon the ablation he’d committed, with the sutures and what he imagined would be the results, one thing was clear: Rose was no longer completely Rose. The illusion of her fragile size, the way he could grab her and hold her, that could hold no longer. Rose was impressive in her will, she couldn’t be small, the whole time she was the one who led. She convinced him to undertake this operation, and he could never possess her.

  “Rose? I’m here. When you’re ready, we’ll go home. It’s better if you’re at my house. I have everything we need to take care of you.”

  “Thanks, Marc. Thanks a lot,” Rose said, not looking at him, with the ecstatic appearance of a woman who has just deposited in a priest’s ear, on her deathbed, the poisonous sin long held hidden.

  Her gratitude hurt him. What was she thanking him for? He wanted to lie next to her and hold her, better, to understand her, her and what she’d been looking for, what she seemed to have found.

  OUTSIDE, SPRING WAS filling the air, everything was in warmth. In Westmount with its streets lined with trees and children, passersby, not young careerists like on the Plateau, but established professionals, parents, Westmount was full of parks, restaurants, and cafés, steep streets with increasingly luxurious houses. The closer you got to the top of the mountain, the more the world smelled like paradise, at least if you were Marc Gagnon’s age. The reedy sound of nature found space to resonate and expand, contrary to downtown Montreal where pigeons cooed in traffic and showered cars and streets with their shit, the sidewalks blocked by the homeless who wandered with plastic bags filled with other plastic bags, sometimes surrounded by huge dogs. Compared to downtown where nature was made of pigeons, dogs, and the homeless all after the same crumbs, a family ecosystem searching for something to eat, empty bottles and cigarette butts, compared to that, Westmount smelled good.

  Rose and Marc were walking side by side down Sherbrooke West, in the sweet air.

  A month had gone by since the operation, a month of euphoria but anxiety too, for deep movements continued to excite and move through Rose. Since her vaginoplasty, she often had the impression that she’d been stabbed from the inside. She would suffer vertigo at the idea that none of this was necessary, it was a bad joke, auto-da-fé in the name of an image she had come upon one night, formed by the words Marc had spoken about a patient of his. During that month she found the time to surf the Internet and located a site she visited every time she felt unsure. It was the website of a Belgian clinic: “Most patients are very happy after a decrease in the size of the labia and a tightening of the vagina. Often they regret not having done the operation far earlier. The comfort and self-esteem substantially increase the quality of their lives.”

  “Happy. Far earlier. Increase the quality of their lives.” Rose said the words out loud, in front of the screen, like a prayer.

  Rose gained confidence as she read further passages: “Sexual satisfaction is directly related to the increase in friction.”

  “Will I be normal?”

  She often asked the question, and always received the same answer: “Yes. You’ll be different but normal. I promise.”

  She saw Charles again and had been worried. He wasn’t the same, he’d lost his photographer’s eye. When she asked him questions about his projects, he hesitated, his eyes averted, scanning the room in short bursts as if tracking a fly, though more often than not he stared right above her forehead, though never more than a second or two. He told her he wasn’t with Julie anymore but he hadn’t tried to approach Rose, even though she’d asked him to.

  “I missed you,” he admitted. “I wanted to call you but I didn’t have your number.”

  This news of the separation should have cheered Rose, but she felt the rug had been pulled from under her feet. She couldn’t let weakness show, when she conquered Charles again, Charles would get better. He was tired, his shoulders slumped forward, everything about him was duller, down to his hair that had lost its shine, but Rose didn’t notice the changes until the end of her visit. She never really looked at men, her eyes couldn’t take them in. That’ll have to change, she told herself, feeling Charles’ distress but not knowing what to do about it.

  But the meeting had its upside.

  “You look good,” he allowed, and as they kissed goodbye, his eyes gained their photographer’s focus, and he held her in his arms, letting her go on a strong note.

  The Ideal Pussy that had lost some of its power in her mind after so many manifestations of pain and itching, so many bandages, was beginning to heal. The stitches had dissolved, the red and yellow discharges had become rarer, the swelling was easing. Though it didn’t yet look like anything known by man, it was beginning to show signs of health, it would soon be ready to act. The night before, she telephoned Julie who’d been waiting for her call. The shoot was to take place the next Saturday on the roof of the building, the date had been set. In anticipation, Julie distributed leaflets to the building’s residents to announce they wouldn’t have access to the roof that day: Photo shoot Saturday, July 22, between 12:00 and 4:00 pm, she’d written in bold.

  Charles was ready, Julie said, she was ready to roll, she claimed, because of the documentary project that she felt.

  “Rose! I’m happy you called me. If you want, we can see each other and talk ahead of time about . . . well, the whole story.”

  “Nothing to say. You and I will never be a team.”

  In the past month, life had brought so many surprises, and they went against her plans. She thought she would steal Charles away from Julie, but wouldn’t need to in the end; she believed she’d fight Julie sodden with drink, but now she’d have to face a different adversary.

  “I agreed to do this for Charles. I’ve begun working for him again, every so often, but not like before. I have other important projects that don’t concern you.”

  “That’s fine with me. But Charles isn’t feeling right. You must know that. You must have seen it. I want to talk to you about that. He might need our help.”

  Our help, she’d said. Bitch.

  “If he’s not doing well, it’s because of you.”

  There was a silence at the other end of the line that told Rose her aim was true.

  Walking on Sherbrooke West, Marc put one hand on Rose’s shoulder, making them a couple in the eyes of human convention and the passersby who looked at them like one, a real one. But their looks didn’t bother Rose, on the contrary, never again, she liked to imagine, would she be seen other than with a man.

  They sat on a park bench like a comfortable couple that needs few words, that can guess each other’s thoughts. The sunlight poured down upon the trees whose leaves filtered dancing diamonds here and there upon them, but this affluent tranquility, the bourgeois quality of the environment that expelled poverty from its sphere, was far from Rose’s mind. She pictured herself on the roof of the building, in Charles’ studio where she would pose for him, in other places too, that they’d never gone to but that she’d heard about, like so ma
ny Ali Baba caverns where she would luxuriate, she believed, or at least not have to fight anymore.

  Rose was already back on her planet of fashion, photos, runways. If she had to be a servant, she would serve men and not women.

  “When I start making money again, I’m going to live in my own apartment. Alone.”

  Marc Gagnon was caught in the trap of youth. He’d known from the start that he could not possess it, unless he hid from the fact that he wasn’t loved, something he was entirely capable of.

  “You won’t be my patient anymore. And I’m not trying to blackmail you.”

  “Yes, I will be,” she answered. “I want to. I’m your mistress and I will be as long as you want me. Sincerely.”

  Marc looked into the distance where earth and sky met, where the forces that move the world begin, waiting to be freed, making the world turn despite human will. He couldn’t help feeling relieved at what he’d heard.

  “You do me a lot of good,” she went on. “If you fall in love with another woman, it’ll be something else entirely. I’ll let you be.”

  “Are you still in love with Charles?”

  Rose didn’t answer. At least, Marc thought, she isn’t lying. He thought of his wife whom he missed sometimes, and whom he’d started seeing from a different point of view. Since Rose had come into his life, he’d been sad with that vague sadness that accompanies the awareness of times passed. But he would keep Rose and the sadness that came with her, because despite the operation that had cracked her open and taken from her whatever virginity she still had, he still wanted her at his side, he couldn’t help himself.

  A little boy who’d been jumping up and down on a picnic table began running in circles, shouting war cries, to the great pleasure of his sister watching him and clapping in encouragement. In his widening circles, he moved closer to the sidewalk where people were walking, then closer to the traffic. His mother got up from the bench where she was keeping watch over them, dropping her book.