by Rawi Hage
Well, I can’t really remember exactly where I left off. Could you read the last few lines for me?
Yes, you felt helpless to defend your sister from her husband’s aggression. What was the man’s name, by the way?
Tony.
Tony, she said. Okay, Tony.
Are you going to write it down, before you forget? I asked.
No, that’s okay. Later. So, tell me more.
Well, doctor . . .
Genevieve. Call me Genevieve.
Yes, Genevieve. I feel as if I do not know you and here you are, asking everything about me. But who are you? I mean, you are silent most of the time. You remind me of priests in the confession booth. Nodding all the time, and then telling us to go kneel and mumble a few prayers for a virgin, and one for a man with a beard. You know?
Did the priests hit you?
Well, of course. Sometimes.
Did they do anything else?
Like what?
Like maybe asking you for something or touching you?
No, not that I remember.
Okay. So, your sister?
Well, my mother went to the hospital for the delivery of my sister’s baby. This was the first time my mother met Tony.
Yes, Tony. The shrink wrote the name down this time.
Tony, I said. He was in the room when my mother came in. He was smoking next to the window. And my mother, the first thing she said to him was to go smoke outside.
He hid his cigarette behind his back and extended his arm to my mother, and when she ignored him, he smiled at me to show her what good terms he was on with me. Then he walked outside the room and smoked in the hallway with the rest of the fathers.
Was your father there?
No.
He did not come?
No.
Okay, go on.
Well, my sister had a girl. And Tony wanted a boy to shoot guns with. My sister called her Mona.
What kind of work did Tony do?
I’m not sure, really. He joined the militia at one point and he would disappear for a few days every now and then, and then he’d come back. At first, when he made money, I suspected it was because he was in charge of some kind of racketeering. People feared him because he was allied with the people in power. He always had guns.
How did your sister feel about that, guns with a baby in the house?
With a baby in the house? The baby does not understand about guns. What would the baby care?
Yes, but . . .
Maybe what my sister wanted was a fighter. Maybe she wanted to bring a fighter into this world.
Nietzsche!
What?
Nothing. Go on, please.
Well yes, things are different there. Some people had guns over there at the time.
Did you carry a gun?
Yes, later on I did. And I tell you, if I had a gun with me here, I wouldn’t have looked for a rope and a branch.
Why didn’t you get one?
I did not know where to get one in this land. And I did not have any money! I raised my voice.
The shrink was silent. I was silent. I looked her in the eye. She looked back at me. Neither of us moved.
She finally blinked and said: You might get a job. Then you could afford one.
I got up, opened the door, and left. The shrink did not follow me. She did not call me back. That woman is living in la-la land, I thought.
I went downstairs and waited at the entrance to the clinic, and as I waited I paced. I smoked and watched the newcomers to this land dragging their frozen selves into the elevator of this poor neighbourhood’s clinic, where they would wait in line, open their mouths, stretch out their tongues, inflate their lungs under the doctor’s stethoscope, breathe the names of uncles with tubercular chests, eject their legs like pompom girls, say “Ahh” with an accent, expose the whites of their droopy, malarial eyes, chase their running noses, wives, and imaginary chickens . . . I checked my watch. It was around four-thirty. At five, a few employees started to leave the clinic. I imagined the white ghosts of their aprons hung by the neck on the back of their office doors. I positioned myself in a corner close to the elevator and waited for the therapist. For Genevieve.
When she passed, I did not recognize her at first. She had covered herself with a dark coat. But then I recognized her ankles and shoes, and I followed her. She walked from Côte-des-Neiges towards Outremont. I crawled behind her and six legs appeared from my sides like external ribs, and a newly thick carcass made me oblivious to the splashing water from passing cars. No element of nature could stop me now.
It was a long crawl. I noticed that Genevieve did not seem cold. Some creatures are oblivious to the heat and the cold wind, I thought as I crawled behind her toes. She did not stop to buy supper, or even bread and butter. She lived in a rich neighbourhood with shop windows displaying expensive clothing and restaurants that echoed with the sounds of expensive utensils, utensils that dug swiftly into livers and ribs and swept sensually above the surface of yellow butter the colour of a September moon, a cold field of hay, the tint of a temple’s stained glass, of brass lamps and altars, of beer jars, wet and full beneath wooden handles that gave me a thirst for an executioner’s hands, for basement doors and the downward swing of falling boats, sailor’s knots, and ropes stretched around gulping, gorging, foaming throats, sounding calls for the last meal, the last count, the last sip before the return of the sun.
I saw where Genevieve lived, and then I crawled home.
THE NEXT DAY, FRIDAY, I woke up early. I returned to Genevieve’s place and watched her leave her house for work. Then I slipped past the building’s garage door, went down to the basement, and crawled along the pipes. I sprang from her kitchen’s drain, fixed my hair, my clothes, my self, and walked straight to her bedroom. On the bedside table were a few prescription pills, some books and magazines. A painting of a naked lady in an intimate, yet unrevealing, position hung above the bed. She had a large bed, unmade. I crawled up onto it and sniffed her pillow and bathed in the scent of her sheets. I found a spot that was still warm. I measured it, speculating that the weight of her torso gave it that curved shape (I am fond of torsos, the arched ones that stretch like endless valleys between soft green hills). I curled up and rolled like a kid down the hills. I covered myself with a sheet, inhaled, and wept a little under clouds of cotton and the blue sky. Then I made Genevieve’s bed and lay on my back and looked around her room. I wanted to see what she saw before taking off her glasses, before she closed her eyes for the day. What if I were to stay here, in her bed? I thought. What if she comes home and sees a considerate stranger who makes the bed and saves the other side for her to slip her toes into as she asks me if I am asleep, if I had a good day, kissing my forehead, hoping that I will wake up, take her in my arms, listen to her story about the man who was caught with a rope on a tree looking for a solid branch, in the park, early on a cold day, on a sunny day, and how he confided that he had had the best cup of coffee that morning, and he insisted that he wanted to escape the sun, and why the sun, what is wrong with the sun, mon amour? Can you tell me before you sleep? Can you ignore the desire to stroke my inner thighs, can you please listen to me after my long day in the office nodding to battered wives, impoverished immigrants, depressed teenagers; I need you to listen to me . . .
The stranger stood up and walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge; it was filled with food — French cheeses, ham, and eggs. He made himself some toast, pasted on some ham and tomato slices, dropped a few thin sheets of cheese on top, decorated it all with lettuce, and moved to the living room with a large plate in his hand. As he ate, he examined souvenirs, figurines, pottery, travel books, and coffee-table books. He opened the pages of a large, heavy photography book. Then he picked up a book on Weegee, with its photographic work from the forties and fifties. He ate his ham sandwich and examined Americans dancing the cha-cha, poor people working, kids with hunched shoulders smiling under the fountains of fire hydrants, and then
images of murders, people stabbed, shot in the face, men stretched out bleeding, a dead man lying under the shiny shoes of inspectors, and curious hats gathered to watch the dead, many men with round hats, spectators, some even smiling at the camera. He flipped the pages again and again, looking at well-dressed men lying shot, with open arms, as if still calmly breathing through their blood-covered faces. And the stranger laughed at one caption under a photograph that said: “Here he is left in the gutter.” “Dead on arrival,” another caption said. But the stranger was intrigued most of all by the one that said: “Their first murder.” The image showed a crowd of kids and adults, a close-up of their faces. The photographer must have been very close to the crowd, thought the stranger. Some of the kids were even laughing and playing and stretching their heads towards the lens, and in the background a woman, surrounded by the crowd of kids, was crying.
The stranger finished his sandwich, picked up every crumb and put it on the plate, and closed the book. He thought about murders, about how all nations are built in the image of a murder. Then he noticed a pair of slippers faithfully waiting in the middle of the dining room for Genevieve’s toes to come back, wiggle inside the slippers’ bellies, fuse into one another and slip over the wooden floor in the sequences and stops and waltzes of virgins and princes, to the accompaniment of string quartets (and trays carrying sandwiches of ham, tomatoes, a few thin sheets of cheese, decorated with lettuce) and large fancy chandeliers, and marvellous tables, marble and marvel, darling, and dancing white gowns turning towards bowing men, future officers, who shall bear arms and dance and dance like me . . . After the cockroach danced, so the tale goes, he lay down on the floor. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek on the slippers and acted dead (without a hat), smiling, then inhaling the faint smell of Genevieve’s feet, aware of his own erection, satisfied with his full belly, feeling the soft carpet. With his many feet he caressed the floor beneath him and fell asleep.
When he woke up, he rose and picked up a portrait of Genevieve from when she was younger. She was hugging a handsome man with blond hair and good teeth, both of them smiling back at the intruder in the living room, not seeming to mind his presence, heads leaning in towards each other. In the background there was a blue beach glittering with pools of sunrays, which explained the need for the sunglasses that crowned the lovers’ foreheads. The intruder, feeling at home, turned on the TV, put up his feet on the table, and watched the confessions of single ladies, sleazy men, and a talk-show host discussing relationships, sex, and betrayals. A large lady in a jogging suit was pointing her finger at an ex-boyfriend, saying, “He slept with my girlfriend, my mother, and my sister.” And before the chairs started to fly on the stage, before the crowd cheered for blood, before there was hair-pulling and disorder, the stranger in the house decided to wear the slippers, go to the sink and clean the dishes, roll back the ham, cover the cheese, and put the lettuce back in the fridge. He opened the fridge again, drank some juice, then turned off the TV, left his tube of stolen lipstick, open and red, on the dining table, took the slippers, and left down the drain, hugging his loot, making sure that his prize did not get wet and was not touched by the mildew on the dripping walls.
ON TUESDAY MORNING, the day of my interview at the restaurant, I was awakened by the noise of my dripping faucet, a noise that persisted in its monotonous, torturous tune until it forced me to drag my feet to the kitchen, put my grip on the faucet’s neck, and twist it into a permanent silence, that of a morning lake. And in the same spirit of cruelty, I reached for my slippers and pounded the walls above the sink, flattening a few early risers.
I decided to smoke a cigarette before going to meet the restaurant owner as promised. I also decided to take a shower and walk all the way to my meeting. In the shower, my big toe touched the drain, feeling the stream of water running through it. I also felt a vibration, the sound of the drain gulping like a quenched throat on a hot summer day. I got out of the shower and rubbed my skin with the towel. I walked naked around my bathroom, looking in the mirror behind the door. I combed my hair. Under a certain oblique angle of light I could see the scar on my face. Shohreh had asked me about it once, and touched it with her thumb as if trying to erase it. I told her that I had fallen.
It is a cut, she said.
I fell on something sharp, I answered.
She dropped her hand from my face and said, So, you do not want to talk about it.
Many people in my life had asked me about it, but no one had touched it before, maybe because it looked fragile, as if it was about to burst wide open and spray a fountain of blood.
I looked for my socks, and goddamn it! They were still moist. I usually put them under the bedcovers and slept on top of them to dry them out, but last night I forgot and just tossed them on the floor. Perhaps I was thinking a little fresh air would do them good. I dug around in my laundry and found an older pair that were dry — dirty but dry. I put them on, reminding myself that, no matter what, I should not take off my shoes in the presence of a woman or the restaurant owner. That bastard of an owner has a nose for poverty. He knows well what a threat to his business an impoverished presence might be. The rich hate the poor, and they especially hate those whose odour surfaces like a cloud to overshadow the smell of cigarettes and hot plates or to overwhelm the travelling scent of an expensive perfume. Nothing corporeal, nothing natural, should emanate from a servant. A servant should be visible but undetectable, efficient but unnoticeable, nourishing but malnourished. A servant is to be seen, always, in black and white.
I walked down St-Laurent and approached the Artista Café. Inside it was foggy with smoke and warm breath, and the glass of the window dripped water. I stuck my face close to the glass (so as to see others and not my own ghostly reflection for once), and I moved my eyes left and right, searching to see if any lost immigrants had arrived. No one I knew was there yet, so I continued walking.
A merchant was sprinkling salt on the sidewalk like a prairie farmer. Taxis waited on the corners with their engines idling, precipitating fumes like underground chimneys. A falafel store on the corner sported a sign with neon hands and a swinging moustache, the hands slicing meat with the speed of light. A Portuguese used-clothing store hung churchgoers’ dresses in the window, dresses suspended behind glass like condemned medieval witches. A little farther down, the street, gentrified now with a strip of chic Italian restaurants, was getting ready for the lunchtime specials.
I like to pass by fancy stores and restaurants and watch the people behind thick glass, taking themselves seriously, driving forks into their mouths between short conversations and head nods. I also like to watch the young waitresses in their short black dresses and white aprons. Although I no longer stand and stare. The last time I did that it was summer and I was leaning on a parked car, watching a couple eat slowly, neither looking at the other. A man from inside, in a black suit, came out and asked me to leave. When I told him that it is a free country, a public space, he told me to leave now, and to get away from the sports car I was resting against. I moved away from the car but refused to leave. Not even two minutes later, a police car came and two female officers got out, walked towards me, and asked for my papers. When I objected and asked them why, they said it was unlawful to stare at people inside commercial places. I said, Well, I am staring at my own reflection in the glass. The couple in the restaurant seemed entertained by all of this. While one of the officers held my papers and went back to the car to check out my past, I watched the couple watching me, as if finally something exciting was happening in their lives. They watched as if from behind a screen, as if it were live news. Now I was part of their TV dinner, I was spinning in a microwave, stripped of my plastic cover, eaten, and defecated the next morning just as the filtered coffee was brewing in the kitchen and the radio was prophesying the weather, telling them what to wear, what to buy, what to say, whom to watch, and whom to like and hate. The couple enjoyed watching me, as if I were some reality show about police chasing pe
ople with food-envy syndrome.
I thought, I will show this happy couple what I am capable of. One of the officers came back from her car, gave me back my papers, and said, You’d better go now if you do not want trouble. So I started to walk. And when I passed the man outside his restaurant, I spat at the ground beneath him and cursed his Italian suit. Then I crossed the street, entered a magazine store, flipped through a few pages, and came out again. I watched that same couple from behind the glass of the entrance to an office building. Now, all of the sudden, they had something to say to each other, so they had started to converse. And I watched the owner come to their table and talk to them as well. Excitement had been injected into their mundane lives. I bet they even got an apologetic complimentary drink on the house at my expense. Bourgeois filth! I thought. I want my share!
Finally the man stepped outside. He buttoned his blazer, put his hand in his pocket, pulled out his keys, and pointed a small electronic device at a blue BMW. The car responded, opened its locks, blinked its lights, and said, I am all yours, master, and all the doors are open for you. The man smoked a cigarette outside while he waited for his woman to exit the restaurant with a fresh-powdered nose. I crawled to the edge of the pavement, rushing with my many feet, my belly just above the ground; I climbed the car wheels, slipped through the back door, and waited on the floor. The man opened the door for his partner and slipped her fur coat in. From below I could see her fixing her hair in the mirror. They both buckled up. The car purred, and neither of them said a word for a while. When we reached the highway, the woman said something about the place, then something about the food. She asked the man if he remembered the owner’s name. Alfonso, the man said. I believe I have his card here. He passed it to her. She glanced at it and threw it on the dashboard, and neither of them retrieved it. Then there was silence again. At last the woman said something about the other Italian place, the one they had gone to last time, with Helen and Joe. It is quieter there, she said. St-Laurent Street is becoming too noisy and crowded with all kinds of people.