[ . . .] has brown hair and measures 1.59 centimeters. Her facial features are not well defined and appear undecided between those of a man and a woman. The voice is feminine, but there are times in conversation or in coughing when deeper, more masculine timbres resonate. The upper lip is covered in a fine down: there are whiskers on the chin and cheeks, especially on the left-hand side. Her chest is that of a man’s, flat and without the manifestation of breasts. There’s never been menstruation, to the great frustration of her mother and family doctor, who wasn’t able to bring on the flow. The upper limbs are not rounded, as is characteristic in well-formed females; they are quite dark and slightly hairy. The pelvis and hips are a man’s. The upper pubic region is covered in black hair that is growing thicker. Opening the thighs one can see a longitudinal slit, which extends from the mons Venus to the anus. There is a peniform body on the upper part that is about four or five centimeters long from the point of insertion to the free tip, which is made up of a glans that is covered by a foreskin that is slightly flat in the upper part and that has never been perforated. This small member, as far from the dimension of the clitoris as it is from a penis in its normal state can, according to Alexina, engorge, stiffen, and grow. However the erection must be very limited, as the imperfect penis is held from the inside by a sort of frenum membrane that allows only the glans to be freestanding.
WHAT REALLY CAUGHT MY INTEREST in this part of the report was how they describe Herculine’s genitalia as a “member” whose dimensions make it as far from being a clitoris as a penis. That’s exactly my case. A baby stuck halfway between clitoris and penis. But isn’t that just like a baby? A being that is neither male nor female? Why not keep the status open till it’s time for the baby to develop physically and decide an identity for itself? But no, for some odd reason gender is rendered definitively like a judge’s ruling: boy or girl, lad or lass, male or female, old lady or old man.
But like me, Herculine knew perfectly well in her own mind and heart that she was only attracted to one sex. Herculine liked women. She felt like a man, though she was raised as a girl, a woman, surrounded by girlfriends until well after puberty, finding work as a governess in an all-girls school, where she met her first love, one of the headmistress’s daughters. She fantasized about marrying her and envied men who had that right. They slept together every night, and her companion’s mother thought it merely a platonic friendship and felt stirred by their devotion. In her diaries, Herculine doesn’t go into detail about the sexual side of the affair with her young friend, but it’s clear that they are in love with each other and sexually active. So it was strange for me to read a medical report written eight years later by another doctor, E. Goujon, included in the Journal de l’anatomie et de la physiologie de l’homme, referring to Herculine’s case as being an example of “imperfect hermaphroditism.” What does it mean to be imperfect? Has anyone ever recorded a case of perfect hermaphroditism in the history of medicine? If hermaphroditism can be considered a fusion of the masculine and feminine, then Herculine was perfect—taking into account the data given in the report a few years later—since “the shape of the individual’s external genitalia allowed him, though he seemed manifestly masculine, to take on the role of either man or woman during coitus.” Though ejaculation hadn’t taken place through the penis because, according to these reports, it didn’t have an orifice, but instead through the vagina, the latter, at the same time, allowed for penetration. Fifth or sixth hint, I’ve lost track:
Ejaculation didn’t take place through the penis.
But something else impressed me in the medical report—something fascinating, encouraging, and beautiful: Herculine produced sperm. Though she never realized it. It was discovered in the postmortem report done by microscope when Herculine’s corpse showed up the age of twenty-nine, in a flea-bitten room in a boardinghouse in Paris. He died of carbon monoxide asphyxiation. He committed suicide, or you could say, they pushed him to suicide. After he successfully changed his legal status, after he moved to Paris to avoid the neighbors’ gossip, after he lived through so many struggles and dreams, he finally set out on a new life; but by then it was too late. His friends turned their backs on him. Society had accepted her and raised her as a woman, but it didn’t have the means for his inclusion as a man. Not even in a bustling capital like Paris was Herculine able to hide how singular a creature he was. Finding that Herculine had produced sperm made me feel deeply compassionate, that—finally—the man might have chosen a different future for himself if only he’d known. He might have managed to bring to fruition all that had been denied him in the first part of his life—building a future with a family, producing and raising descendants—and seen his dreams come true. But now he was dead, friendless, having pinned his hopes on Paris because he felt inconspicuous there. How much does loneliness have to weigh for a man to prefer obscurity? How painful Herculine’s loneliness must have been to prefer invisibility over noticing how other people—walking by, chatting with him—could see him but didn’t include him? Obviously he preferred the thought that he wasn’t included because he was out of sight, instead of facing the fact that he wasn’t included precisely because they saw him. That man loved, coveted life, dared leave the protection of womanhood to change his identity, but failed. For years he asked for help. He left the job for which he was so manifestly prepared, as a governess, to work as a waiter, went hungry, “left no door unknocked,” as he wrote to himself. Everything that had been like a song to life at the beginning of his diaries became death at the end. He considered himself dead long before he took his life. That’s why I despaired over reading that he had sperm. I wonder what might have happened had he known that life, the life he naturally loved and wanted to prolong, didn’t have to end with him?
The most poignant element of Herculine’s testimony—later Abel’s—was how honest she had been with herself, how her strength of character allowed her to resist the hypocrisy of the social milieu. Reading the diaries, I knew that Abel had been proud of himself when he died. I found comfort in that. It’s often more than I can hope for, and it encouraged me to think that if this man figured out how to validate himself a century ago when all he received was reproach, then I too should find a way to vindicate my singular maternity. At the very least, I now counted on a strong, faithful companion: him, Abel Herculine.
The last clue:
My maternity has been vindicated.
Game over. If by now you still don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s not for a lack of clues. You must be one of those who read a sheet of paper where the clue is written as if the paper itself were the object they’re trying to find. A sheet of paper is not a clue. A sheet of paper is not an object. The paper is only a suggestion, like smoke is a suggestion, telling you that fire must be lurking somewhere. But to think that smoke, which should lead you to fire, is contained in the clues alone is also a mistake because, as you know, smoke disperses into the air. How could I possibly contain it in a piece of paper? This whole game has been smoke, so don’t focus on the explicit clues alone.
If you haven’t located the fire, then I’ve won. I ask that you allow me one wish before I die, though I don’t expect you to accede to it: I ask that you permit someone else to read my account. Remember what I said: empathy, the fondness of a single reader, is enough to heal me. If anyone else is reading me now, it means you’ve granted my last wish. I am grateful.
Ninth Month: 1999–2011
After a long sojourn in Tokyo, I decided to return to New York, expecting a peaceful old age. I hadn’t set foot in my apartment for several years. I was anxious about a number of things, afraid I might collapse the minute I opened the door as I perceived Jim’s smell. And I was simply concerned about what kind of condition the place would be in after the series of renters. I had no idea yet that the morning, whose skies were as clear and bright as the ones on that fourth of August in Hiroshima, would usher in a whole new period in my life, perhaps the final one.
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p; The first thing I attended to when I walked in was the correspondence I’d received from institutions or distant friends who hadn’t known I was in Tokyo. I fingered through the envelopes until I came across the word Yoro on a return address. You can imagine how startled I was to see Yoro’s name as a sender for the first time. So many years desiring a child before Jim, then so many years looking for Yoro after she became my own daughter through my love for Jim, followed by subsequent years of not looking for her anymore because I felt she was inside of me (or who knows, maybe so as not to have Jim on my mind every second of every day), and suddenly there is her name on an envelope. Her name! And that’s all—there was no last name, no address. But on closer scrutiny, I saw that the stamp was from Zaire. I mean from right here where I’m writing you now, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
I’ve traveled to so many different countries thanks to Jim, yet our outings never lasted long enough for me to adapt myself to the rhythm of true travelers, the people who unpack their suitcases on the other side of the world feeling perfectly at home in the new land by the time they first brush their teeth. The most important thing, though, is that I was completely resistant to the charms of new places; I was a little like a mule with blinders on. I kept my eyes straight ahead, and the only thing I ever saw was Yoro. For the rest—the exotic foods, the friendliness or hostility of the locals in whatever place, the country’s history, its landscapes—none of it mattered to me one whit. So my travels did not help me get to know the world. In fact, they had no repercussions whatsoever on my personal growth, nor did they offer me anything by way of a cosmopolitan attitude, which made me always feel a little unsure of myself outside of Hiroshima, Tokyo, or New York. I clocked so many miles looking forever at the same horizon: Yoro. And then I stopped looking for her and stopped traveling. I stayed put in Tokyo. Until now, back in New York, when I saw her name on an envelope sent from a country I’d never stopped to consider in my life, and a slew of thoughts came rushing into my mind so suddenly that I had to sit right down on the sofa for I can’t say how long, not opening the envelope or even looking around, not taking stock of that space where I had lived with Jim for so many years, full of my belongings, his belongings, and the furniture we’d chosen together.
When I think back on it, for a split second I must have felt something akin to gratefulness, even a jolt of giddiness, since the letter had reached its destination, and it was still recent. Other than that, only questions came to the fore, posthaste and one after the other, so chaotically that I couldn’t stop to analyze a single one through to a conclusion. I was sixty-six years old then. I’d already gone through a lot—everything you’ve read till now. I’d suffered quite a bit. At my age, then, I’d already reconciled myself to the idea of living out the rest of my life quietly. And yet here’s that man calling me right back again so passionately—no, more passionately than ever. Even before I opened that envelope, with nothing more than a name as a return address, Yoro was calling out to me for help, and I was sure it was the only thing she could do, call out from a country I was perfectly unfamiliar with, about which I hadn’t the slightest opinion, except that if there was one place I imagined being the diametrical opposite of my own culture, it was Africa. Aside from my encounter with K, the young woman from Mali whom I had met in Tokyo, Africa had always been an imaginary place for me. It wasn’t real, and I could have died thinking as much, without even considering the reality of an entire continent that I’d relegated to fiction and fantasy. How was I going to face a trip like that on my own? Is Yoro really asking for help in her letter or—worse still—requesting that I go to fetch her there? Maybe it was just the opposite; maybe she wanted to come visit me?
Even now, when I think back on that time, it still puts me so much on edge that I’ve overlooked an important detail: Yoro didn’t know I existed. So the letter must have been addressed to Jim. That basic point hadn’t even crossed my mind as I sat there those first few minutes holding the envelope in my unsteady hand: I didn’t exist for Yoro. In any case, I opened it and read it. So many things happened in those five minutes after reading the letter. I screamed, I cried, I broke the pitcher Jim had given me as a gift, that had never broken on its own, the pitcher no renter had dropped in all these years, that continued reminding me not only of Jim’s absence but of the absence of everything else, of Yoro, of my own self. I felt like tearing the letter to shreds, forgetting it. But instead I folded it away and kept it on me at all times. That day I entered my ninth month of pregnancy, which would still last for a long time, but it gave me one advantage: I could now take fewer precautions, move around in the shower without the fear of slipping. I felt less heavy because Yoro was no longer growing inside of me. Now she was on the outside and I had to find her to cut the umbilical cord, to rock her in the cradle and sing a lullaby in the name of Jim’s love.
WHEN YOU READ what Yoro wrote in the following pages, sir, try to imagine what it all meant to me. Then read the letter from the point of view of the future as you know it, and you’ll see that if it doesn’t absolve me entirely, at least it justifies my acts. I spent the first part of my life focused on Yoro, and the second half, my years in Africa, looking for her, afraid that I might die before I found her or didn’t find her in time. Let’s just say that when I got there and found out what happened, nothing else mattered. I don’t know how to explain it. I wanted and I want to spend my old age with Yoro, but the great mission of my life, to hug her and hold her, had already been accomplished. So the hatred I felt then for the people who had hurt her far outweighed the possibility of being able to swallow that hatred in order to spend the years or months left of my life with her, which some might consider a more thoughtful response. It was a strange feeling for me.
Thinking rationally, anyone might conclude that my responsibility was to stay with her, shower her with Jim’s and my love, try to make up for everything she’d lost, all those years of silence. But when I had the occasion to exact revenge, to avenge her—indeed, not just her—I did, even knowing that it meant separation, and this time forever, and that I would be subject to your brand of justice. But you know something? I believe I was kept apart from Yoro for a reason, something that was determined by the fate imposed upon us. Because, tell me, what was I going to do once I found her? Pretend I’m Jim? Pretend I’m finally a fulfilled mother? Pretend to be playing house at my age? Pretend to be killing time exchanging life stories and circumstances, everything we didn’t know about each other, like two old friends reencountering each other? People throw out empty expressions all the time, like we’re making up for lost time or we’re just catching up. I might have unthinkingly used catchphrases like those before running into Yoro, but now I was aware of them, I realized how a catchphrase is but a euphemism that hides what these sentences really are: vacuous words empty of meaning. You can’t make up for lost time and you can’t catch up for one very simple reason: we are so much more than random pieces of data.
In fact, I’d say 90 percent of what we are is not merely information, but has to do more with the senses. I could tell Yoro how being constantly frustrated while searching for her, and then losing Jim, had made me a recluse for a number of years; that walking outside was like stepping into a spinning tunnel; that for years I truly felt her in my belly, sensed her growing there. I could tell her all of that and much more, but would it help her to comprehend my love? No. And though it isn’t the case in this situation, data can be falsified. Why? Precisely because data is empty of meaning: it’s interchangeable, superfluous. What matters is saying while you are physically present with the other: “Yoro, here I am. Feel in this embrace all the weight of the life I’ve spent looking for you.” And it’s true that in the culture I grew up in, physical contact is not customary, not even in extreme cases, but I’ve been a hybrid for a very long time. It doesn’t matter; modify it if you want, morph it into some gesture instead of a hug, and it’ll still mean the same thing. What doesn’t work is raw information.
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sp; Had I plenty of life yet before me, I could fill it with facts and figures, shared experiences alongside her, and it has value, this shared future, but for the three days I have left in the world, I preferred to guarantee that nobody else will fall prey to the hands that abused Yoro in the name of peace. I may not dress in uniform, sir, or carry a name as slick or unctuous as that greasy pizza of military men and mozzarella, but I do have power, the same as anyone else, and it’s a pretty remarkable power, simpler than you can imagine before you actually wield it: the power to take a life. And that’s what I did: no need to hide behind a flag of peace, which they rape each time they rape a woman. I alone am enough. So once I embraced Yoro, I knew it was all she needed to understand what she needed to understand. Yoro acknowledges everything, she acknowledges us, she acknowledges Jim and me. We needed nothing else. Ours was an atavistic attraction, an attraction that connected us from an ancient place where we recognized each other without being conscious, without knowing what it was that bound us to each other so tightly. I allowed myself to become a criminal because I sensed that everything was spilling over now. At my age. You see? No time for regret, much less a desire for it.
So go ahead now, read Yoro’s letter below to see what it was that I read that day, which according to the date stamp had been sent a month and a half earlier:
Dear Dad:
In a few minutes, a friend and confidante will come to take this letter and send it clandestinely. Things aren’t easy here—I’ve been trying to smuggle this letter out for years. Till now I’d only written it in my head so nobody else could find it. Everything happened so abruptly, they just came to tell me that it’s now or never, my chance has come; so let me go straight to the most urgent point. I’m somewhere in Zaire. Look for me. Do you still remember me? You’re all that I have. All the other foster families have turned a blind eye. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I lived with five different families. A new family every two years. You’re the only one I stayed with for a longer period of time, those first five years of my life. The address on this letter is the one you obliged me to memorize. I’ve lived hoping against hope that you haven’t moved. Each one of the families took really good care of me, I can’t deny that, and I missed each one of them when I left, but your love is what I remember the most. I don’t know if perhaps I’m idealizing things because I was so little. I’m frightened to think you might be dead or that you’ve killed me off in your heart, where I remember once being.
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