Reader for Hire

by Raymond Jean

  I tell him I’m at his disposal. Without actually being sure what his point is. It’s not long before I understand. He gets up, goes over and takes a beautiful leather-bound book from one of the shelves. Hesitates briefly before showing it to me. Then presents it to me, half opens it, flushing, trembling, palpitating, quivering. It’s the Marquis de Sade, he says, it’s been here for ever, a family heirloom. It was kept in the attic for a long time, then in the cellar. Now it’s here with all the others, because, alas, there’s no one but me left in the house to get their hands on it. That’s just the point, though. For years I wouldn’t allow myself to read it, I didn’t dare, my duties required restraint… It’s only latterly, with my retirement, time on my hands… but, well, now I can’t see… so I thought perhaps…

  I’m flabbergasted. But at the same time I feel cornered. Sort of caught in a dilemma in which my professional honour is at stake. If I escape, I fall into his trap. If I refuse, I’m not a reader. A reader should read, and read out loud, whatever is requested. Please don’t let him ask too much! He seems to have opened the book at random. But with de Sade… I take the book carefully. The 120 Days of Sodom! There’s a bookmark on the page he’s showing me and a passage indicated with a cross. This passage, he says, for example, this passage or another… I look at it and, obviously, see some abominations. I try to harden my heart and tell him I’ll look into it, I’ll have a think about it and we’ll see next time. I’m already getting to my feet. He holds me back by my arm. He looks disappointed. Listen, he says very gently but fairly authoritatively, we could have a little trial right now… for me to get an idea… to hear you… to gauge this voice I’ve been told is such a marvel… Sit yourself down on this sofa here… I’ll sit facing you, in the armchair… I’m listening.

  So I’ve been taken in again. I’m surrounded. Flight or professional sangfroid? Marie-Constance, my girl, I think to myself, professional sangfroid it has to be. You’ve done some acting, you’ve been through the Conservatoire, you know about the stage and performing, you know about men too, you’re not going to let this old toad frighten you. Be brave! I go and sit myself on the sofa. I cross my legs. Adopt an attentive, concentrating expression. Read through my text in silence. I don’t believe this! This wasn’t random! He chose this deliberately! There are words here which, in all likelihood, will never get through the barrier of my teeth and tongue. Won’t get out. What to do? Should I go? The amphibian’s eyes are watching eagerly, behind their thick lenses. There’s a crushing silence in the room. And, there in that silence, I hear myself read:

  A month later, says Miss Duclos, I had dealings with a fucker of an entirely different kind. He was an ageing libertine who, having fucked me and stroked my arse for more than half an hour, drove his tongue into the hole, delving it in there, darting it in there, swirling it and twirling it in there so artfully that I thought I almost felt it in the depths of my entrails. Covering my cunt with one hand, he pleasured himself most voluptuously with the other and, as he discharged himself, drew my anus to him so violently and tickled it so lustfully that I shared in his ecstasy. When he was done, he studied my arse a little longer, staring at the hole he had just widened, and couldn’t help himself planting his kisses there once more, then scarpered, assuring me he would come asking for me often, and he was very pleased with me and the way I’d allowed him to spill his come…

  I catch my breath. My voice didn’t waver or weaken. I didn’t stumble. I’m very pleased with myself. He is too, by the looks of things. I’m very pleased with you, he says. I hope you’ll be able to come back and carry on.

  I wonder anxiously about the possible repercussions. But no, nothing dreadful. He simply makes it clear he’d like us to chat a little longer, to get to know each other better. He tells me about his career, the different posts he held, his wife, who died a few years ago now and whose death left him inconsolable, how difficult it is to dispense justice properly, if indeed, he says, Justice with a capital J means anything, he’s not sure it does, after forty-five years exercising it. He seems perfectly civilized and even rather pleasant company. He doesn’t offer to show me round the apartment, or to go into detail about his book collection, when I fully expected to have to go deeper into the little corner of ‘hell’ he must have put together within it. No, here we are, talking away, being utterly normal. And after all, if it’s normal for him to read and be read texts like the one he’s just heard, why should I object? I was absolutely right to accept and harden my heart. A model reader should be a perfectly neutral and biddable instrument. Purely a tool. Purely a voice. Purely transparent. That may well be her limitation, but it may also be her glory. I now feel I’m really getting somewhere with my understanding and implementation of my profession. And at the same time I’ve achieved undeniable personal progress. When I take leave of my magistrate I thank him and tell him I’ll come back. We arrange a date.

  The fine weather is back. I’ve put the crêpe dress on again. Eric will be delighted. He and I have really settled into cruising speed. His mother tells me he’s benefiting enormously from these reading sessions, which she refers to as work sessions. If that’s true, well, so much the better. In any event, I can see that his mind is increasingly receptive to literature, and particularly poetry, which I was right, I believe, to try to introduce him to in its newest form. Which doesn’t appear to have put him off exploring it in older forms. He’s inquisitive. He researches. Compares, likens. He’s bubbling over with questions, and to think how rarely he opened his mouth in the early days.

  When I arrive today, for example, I’ve hardly sat down before he does just that, asks me a question, and one that immediately strikes me as strange: Madame, could you tell me what whomsoever means? I’m all the more astonished because his curiosity is usually far more concerned with the content than the form of literary texts, and he openly claims to have no difficulty with language and vocabulary. So I ask what he means by his question, what allusion, quotation or sentence he’s referring to. It’s from a well-known poem by Du Bellay:

  Or like whomsoever wins the golden fleece…

  He’s read this famous poem from Regrets in one of his schoolbooks and the word brought him up short. I admit to him that I find this strange, because it really isn’t very difficult, even for someone unfamiliar with old language, to grasp that whomsoever means whoever. A demonstrative. I break it down: whom so ever, who so ever, whoever. Which is what he would have found had he read the sonnet in a modern transcription. I realize he doesn’t know what a sonnet is. I’m not sure I know exactly myself. I gather up my schoolgirl memories. The rules of sonnets, hmm. OK, it must go something like this. Right. I tell him. I explain. He looks very interested. We embark on a discussion about the relative merits of fixed-form poetry and free poetry. Classical poetry and modern poetry. Eric seems to have achieved the feat of getting me learning again in spite of myself (and has done better in this respect than Monsieur Sora) and turning me from a reader into a teacher. His mother’s absolutely right to say that these are ‘work sessions’. He asks me whether there’s such a thing as a modern sonnet. I tell him yes, in Jacques Roubaud’s work, for example, and I offer to read him one, from the book I gave him. I look for the page. Here it is:

  I am a punctilious crab I am an uneventful mailbag my field is clear pure swept of every last star I have the eye’s convex globe with velvet all that this instrument will identify now are its motes of dust

  I take no risks with silences I counter only words as flat as windowpanes rinsed by the rain and I have a taste for evening a weakness for dawn there is never anything to read in my hand

  He interrupts my reading and, leaning forward in his armchair, takes my hand. There are things to read in your hand, he says. After the initial shock is over, I reply: Perhaps, as with any hand. He doesn’t let go, inspects it, examines my palm, my fingers. Why’s that called reading? I don’t know what to reply, other than: Why indeed? Without relinquishing my hand, he makes a few comments inspire
d by the sonnet whose beginning he’s just heard. He’s not sure he really understands it, but he was aware of silences, gaps. He feels, and this strikes me as an extremely astute judgement on his part, that this poem must have been written to be seen as much as heard, even more to be seen than heard, and he points out that his blind friend obviously wouldn’t be able to appreciate it properly. He’s lucky he can see. He takes the book from my knees (his hand brushes over my dress), studies the page at length. The white bit, the gap, he says, is meant to be seen. And he adds rather mysteriously: The black is too.

  Then he releases my hand, rolls his wheelchair a little as if wanting to move away, put me at a distance. As you’ve worn that dress again, he says, it would be good if you hitched it up again. I obey. I lift it high up my naked thighs. We sit in silence. I can barely hear his breathing. Lowering his head, he then says the following sentence very clearly: Next time, Madame, if you could come without your knickers. I wasn’t dreaming. He said it.

  There’s a smell of cool grass rising up from the university campus. I don’t want to disturb Roland Sora while exams are on, but I definitely need to ask him what he thinks of my choice of reading material. I find him making some poor female student blanch over a Huysmans text. He slips out with me for a moment and we start walking up and down the corridor while, back in his office, the girl grapples with the text, preparing to say exquisite things about it.

  What’s good about Huysmans, he says, is he’s much more than a naturalist, but he is still a naturalist, and in a league of his own. He starts drifting off on to the subject, then asks me whether at the end of the day, after almost a year pursuing my profession, I’m happy with the advice he gave me in the early days. No getting away from it, he says, when all’s said and done, the naturalists are the only thing that’s true. Only good, solid, dense texts really say anything and, more importantly, they speak the truth, they really hook the reader. I think you’ve seen for yourself, haven’t you? I want to please him and agree with his views, but I do have to tell him that I’ve never found the truth so elusive as it has been since I started this job: it trickles between my fingers, like water I just can’t hold in my hands. He shrugs. Water! What does that mean, water? He asks me whether I mean fiction. No, I say, absolutely not, I mean absolutely nothing. He stops his wandering, spins round towards me, gives me that peculiarly bright, twinkling look he has such a knack for when he wants to flush out what he (surely) thinks is my touch of madness.

  Maybe he’d like to give me a quick lesson here, on the spur of the moment. But right now that’s the last thing I want. I have no desire to feel like that student racking her brains back there in his office. I wish that he would understand something I can neither explain nor summarize. Which could possibly be put like this: I like to think I’m choosing passages to read, but they’re the ones choosing me. It’s a very unusual adventure, a misadventure rather, and I’ve had all too much proof of that. And that’s why his idea that I should hang on to this or that book which would be most appropriate for reading out loud, well, it just doesn’t hold together, despite all the respect and affection I owe him. Any book will do, if and when it’s spoken by me. And with each of them anything can happen. Which makes me worry that I’ve chosen the most reckless job in the world. I don’t know whether our little town will tolerate me for long.

  I’ve laid out this wonderful argument and it’s in the process of falling flat on its face, just like Sganarelle. At least that’s what Professor Sora must be thinking; he’s still contemplating my face, without trying to hide his commiseration now. I won’t have time to tell him about my latest disasters, which I was planning to do. He’s going to bring the conversation to an end. He’s looking at his watch. His student’s waiting for him. He’s got these exams on his back. And the summer break beckoning. He tells me that, as I know so much about everything, I’ll cope perfectly well on my own. I might even end up opening a school of reading. He has every confidence in my future. Good luck, Marie-Constance!

  Not backing away from the risks, then, I return to the magistrate. I’ve armed myself. I’ve reread the Marquis, on my own, out loud, in the echo chamber. I braved it all. I even tried out a few pages on Philippe. He liked it very much and announced he’d like to get to know the whole book. He’d always been told the Marquis was boring. That’s what people who’ve never read it say. He turned out not to share this opinion. Philippe has anything but a mediocre mind.

  I’ve come in no-nonsense jeans and a polo shirt, as if for a gym class. Being accustomed to airs and graces, the old man looks rather put out by this. Perhaps to pay me back in kind, he removes his jacket and tie and goes off to put on a silk dressing gown. We’re both relaxed. I’m ready to begin. But he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry. He looks at the living-room clock, as if keeping an eye on the time, as if waiting for something. We could converse a little first, he says. The word converse makes me melt with pleasure. Very well! I say. What could we converse about? He’d like me to explain how I’ve trained my voice, how I became involved in acting as a girl, because that’s my testimonial. I tell him a bit about it, about the Conservatoire, Godot, Sganarelle. He looks surprised that I played men’s roles, asks me why. I say I also often played women: Zéphire, Hyacinthe, Augustine. This seems to arouse his curiosity but also to move him. His eyes cloud slightly behind their lenses. He remembers when he was a child, but of course, he adds, it’s starting to disappear into the mists of time. He performed in a play at a prize-giving, and the character he played was called Céladon. He couldn’t say what the play was called or the author, in fact it may just have been a middlebrow piece with no known author, but the thing that’s still clear in his mind is his costume, or at least one item of his costume, a pink taffeta waistcoat. That pink taffeta waistcoat trills in his head with the sweet, sweet music of memory. Actually, there was a little boy, and he was dressed in gauze, playing opposite him, and his name was Zélamir. He hasn’t forgotten the names, they came back to him, as if at the flick of a switch when I mentioned vaguely similar names just now, and he’s well aware that those were girls’ names: he’s not yet completely deaf or completely gaga (those are his words!).

  Marvellous conversation, but why this constant eye on the clock? The explanation isn’t long in coming. The doorbell rings. The sound of footsteps on the stairs. He goes to open the door. He introduces me to the man who comes in, and he is none other than Professor Dague from the children’s neurological unit. There he is, standing squarely before me, full of confidence, a smile on his lips, short hair, smartly dressed. Obviously, he’s not in his overalls or in his underpants. But I recognize him perfectly well. The magistrate looks rather embarrassed but is eager to explain this visit: The professor is an old friend, a young friend, rather. We get on very well… we often used to meet at some of the finest dinners in town, when I was still presiding. I thought I could invite him to one of these sessions where you show your talent. I think he’d be utterly charmed… I reply in the briskest of terms: Well, we happen to be old acquaintances too! Precisely! says the professor with the heaviest innuendo, while lighting a cigarette. I’m just wondering how long this performance can go on when the doorbell rings again. Another sound of climbing in the stairwell, noticeably faster. Another opening of the door. Another appearance. Superintendent Beloy this time. I can’t believe my eyes. It feels like an ambush. The superintendent gives a slight bow, almost ceremoniously. He’s swapped his leather jacket for a lighter one. Perhaps you know each other too? says the magistrate. Indeed we do, replies the superintendent. I remain silent.

  A peculiar theatre. And it’s not long before the scene is set. What we thought, says the old magistrate, was that the three of us could get together to listen to you. You have such a remarkable organ. Why dissipate the effect it has, its harmonies? Each in our own way, we represent those who are listened to in the town. Why shouldn’t we come together to start listening ourselves? Why shouldn’t we benefit together from your talented readings? I
t was in this sort of spirit that I’ve invited my friends here, as I would to a party. The party is you, dear Marie-Constance, your person! That’s what a reputation does for you!

  He pulls aside a large red drape, a sort of curtain that I haven’t noticed till now, and the sofa on which I sat last time is revealed at the back of the room, by the bookshelves. I’m sure the arrangement of the furniture has been changed, but perhaps that’s a trick of my mind, or my memory. The three of us, he says, are going to sit on this sofa, and you will be in this chair opposite. No sooner said than done. There the three of them are, lined up on the sofa, like dummies, salivating. I feel as if I’m in a firing range at a fairground. And what am I going to do? Read? Read what? I ask the judge. Oh well, he says, the same thing as last time! He’s even got the book with the beautiful binding ready, he’s taken it off the shelf. He brings it over with a honeyed smile.

  It’s too much. Professional dedication has its limits. I take my curtsy. Which, with my jeans and polo shirt, is rather ungainly. I make my exit and slam the door.

  It seems pretty likely that I’m going to be out of work again now.