‘Do you want me to stop? Are you feeling sick?’
She’d like to go to America. In America there must be heaps of places where no man (or woman) has ever set foot (have ever set feet). Actually, her head’s spinning (or puffed-up) from trying to think about the Earth without human beings. And about the atoms of dead Indians, who were themselves made out of dinosaur atoms carried by the wind and the sea, and from which she herself is constituted at this very moment as she breathes in.
Her mother parks in front of a stone wall and greets an old woman who has a lot of watering-cans. ‘I’d like you to meet my daughter, Solange.’ Hello to the lady, whose atoms look authentically old. ‘I was just saying to myself that I knew you would come,’ said the lady. ‘You’ve never missed a year. And your husband? Men, always working. All Saints Day, and already we’re seeing buds on the pine trees.’
It’s a small cemetery with lopsided graves that are not so much covered in soil as silted up. Her mother, in the harem jumpsuit, has loaded herself up with flower pots and given Solange a watering-can to fill at the tap over there. There are graves with the date 1857 and 1864 and even 1893, the year they chopped off Marie Antoinette’s head. Amazing she can remember anything from her boring history classes.
There’s no border between the sand she’s treading on and the sand covering the dead bodies. Nothing but a little gravel to bear the weight of the living as they walk past. If not for that she’d sink right down into the graves, or a hand would reach out from the sand, like in Carrie, and grab her by the ankle. The gravel keeps her above the abyss, just like circles of ashes keep vampires at bay.
‘Solange?’
Her mother. She gets started with the watering-can, the tap sticks, hurry up. The old woman’s shadow is laughing on the wall. She runs across to her mother, spilling water as she goes, jumping over the glass caskets of the immortals, the ceramic flowers, the angels in faded shades and the In Memoriams in flaky engraving. She mustn’t walk on the graves. Walk between the graves.
Her head is buried in her mother’s harem jumpsuit and everything has shrunk: they’re miniature tombs now. Her mother is tending the dead, digging over the sand, planting things, pulling out weeds and knotted grass, gauzy strands, tangled bits and pieces that she replants and buries. She unpots the big flowers, telling Solange to water them as she digs them into the soil, jabbing her nails in. When her mother rinses her hands under the tap, the water sweeps her sweat, cells, atoms into the sand where they can regenerate, intermingled with the dead of this place.
The photo in the seal on the tombstone is the same as the one on her mother’s bedside table. Now that she tries to think about it again in the car, she’s getting the photo confused with the one she sees everywhere, in the newspapers and on the TV, of the little boy who was thrown into the river and whose name is Grégory, Little Grégory.
On the tombstone, the date—those hypnotic numbers—show that he died before her date of birth. A bit later and it would have been the date of her birthday engraved on the stone, which makes no sense at all, except if, like two ships passing in the night, she and her parents’ son had just missed each other.
There must have been a first name, but at night in her bed it’s no use leaving the light on and trying to visualise the tomb again, the image just fades, the car moves off and the cornfields grow back, along with the vineyards and Milord’s and the Cheap Carpet outlet, while the grave and the first name remain back there, as well as the sand and the roots of the plants, and the flowerpots. It was back there and she’s forgotten (and asking would mean puncturing a hole in that country back there so it can pour into this country, the only even vaguely liveable one, the only one even vaguely possible).
At last, the sea.
They were dozing in his van after their swim, he was stroking her arms, her knees, her hips, and now he’s got his head on her thighs, his mouth grazing the hem of her swimsuit, it’s almost unbearable.
It’s like the thing she’s got between her legs is clamouring for something to drink, without worrying about her head, up there, which is not so thirsty, or which, let’s say, is just observing the thirsty thing down there. (She’s got to stop the whole so thing.)
There must come a time, when you’re an adult, when you do everything automatically—that thing and all the rest—when you’re relaxed, not having to feel everything like this. (Solange is so sensitive.)
She takes his hand and puts it there, where it’s thirsty. All the water in her body streams down there into her swimsuit that’s already wet from the sea. If only he’d put his fingers inside, a few fingers. But he’s just touching the elastic gently and almost tenderly. So she squeezes his big head between her legs and rubs against him as best she can, on his nose, on his forehead, on his mouth, on whatever bit is sticking out. She writhes around to make him move where she wants him, oh my God, if only he’d stick his tongue in a bit—but he doesn’t want to. She presses like mad but he stays on the surface, so tactful, so scrupulous she could scream.
‘I’m going mad.’ Bihotz sits up (whereas she’s the one who’s going mad).
‘I’m going mad,’ he repeats, pleading almost, as if he was begging for help from the seagulls.
He’s moved into the front seat. His upper lip is glistening, as if he’s drunk a beer. Just looking at that lip makes her squirm, her frustration unassuaged.
She remembers that it’s got a Latin name, since it’s a bit gynaecological and they didn’t find a good simple word like ‘head job’. The only time someone ever talked about it with her was when Nathalie said real men don’t do it. That it’s a gay thing. There’s no way Arnaud would ever do a thing like that.
It’s not like she can jerk off right now. She slides in next to him and in the same movement pulls up the bottom of her swimsuit. Nothing can happen in the front seat. It’s a molten world behind the windscreen. They’re in an aquarium where liquid sun has replaced the water. The sea and the sun are exploding. Rocks, the boom of the surf, colours, and the screech of the seagulls in bursts of red.
She finally got her day at the sea. She frightened him when she swam in the surf, not wanting to get out. She asked for ice-creams. Then she didn’t want to go back to Clèves and they went to a restaurant. She scarcely touched her prawns but she devoured her chocolate fondant. She felt a bit sick so they lay in the back of his van before leaving, the sunset blazing through the windscreen.
Now he’s looking at her, right through her, as if he could see Death or something.
Stop sulking.
The way he’s sitting makes wrinkles in the tattoos on his naked torso. The tiger has grown a long snout. The rose has slanting eyes. Not much further down, under his nylon shorts, his dick is doing its pyramid thing. He’s like a man made out of different parts, plus the skull and the band’s name AC/DC on his arm. Apparently that means Anti-Christ or something.
A few metres in front of them, surfers are doing impossible manoeuvres. The spray separating them from the surfers is like the line between the living and the dead—but it suddenly occurs to her that perhaps she’s the one who’s alive, perhaps I’m alive and all the others are dead (except Bihotz, who is somewhat encumbered by his conspicuous body).
Camping on the beach where they are parked is a group of people they will never connect with. Because she and Bihotz are wretched Clèvians, pathetic villagers, isolated forever. These surfers are sliding around in the centre of a world that is turning without her. Their eyes see only the waves, their ears hear only the call of mermaids, their radar wouldn’t even pick up her presence. These surfers are not of this world; they’re not mere flesh and blood, and as for their dicks, do they even have dicks?
A guy from the van next to them is hanging his wetsuit on a washing line. He’s really blond, sea-blue eyes, a sun-burnished nose, a joint hanging from his chapped lips.
Behind the rocks, waves are breaking, ghosts rising out of the blue, arms in all directions, crashing down, flooded with red light.
The guy with the peeling lips is kissing a female creature. Like Venus on her scallop shell, she seems to have emerged just like that in her fluoro string bikini. A moist mouth, soothing hands—she was put on earth to moisturise him all over. (She recalls an ad from when she was little: a semi-naked girl announcing, ‘Tomorrow I’m taking off my pants.’)
Bihotz turns on the van’s ignition and reverses. They drive back without speaking. Their silence is like an elastic band that stretches from where they were, by the sea, and extends, taut to the point of snapping, all the way to Clèves.
Her mother asks her to mind the shop as she has to see a lawyer. It’s Saturday but the village is empty. The south wind has scattered everyone off to the seaside. Standing behind the shop window, she’s filled again with that searing sensation of everything that’s missing here.
She still took care with her outfit: a pair of 501 jeans passed on from Lætitia (and accepted gratefully), a loose-knit cotton top that flatters her small boobs, and a bandana knotted across her forehead, with a bouffant hairdo on top. She checks herself out in the squares of mirror stuck on the wall drapes (for clients who want to see what they look like when they try on the knitted vests). It’s great how much taller a pair of 501s can make you look.
23 57 01
Not a single phone call from Arnaud since he’s been in Bordeaux.
The telephone is sitting there, horribly accessible, like a chocolate pudding with the spoon already in it. But does he even have a phone in his uni dorm?
Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?
Who pulled her out?
Bihotz of course. Exactly like he’s always predicted.
She wanders around barefoot like Catherine Deneuve in Le Sauvage. When she lights all the candle jars, as her mother instructed her to, everything gets hotter and shimmers red-orange.
The Key to Clèves, a name chosen by the previous owner, who already sold Virgin Mary barometers and pewter platters. An interior décor boutique, not a souvenir shop, insists her mother. (And definitely not a store. But why not a supermarket like the Kudeshayans run?)
And yet the same things have been here forever. Souvenirs waiting to find a home. Waiting to be forgotten under the dust, to become invisible after being there so long. But they’ll outlive their purchasers just like the soft toy dogs outlived Madame Bihotz. Souvenirs in the shape of crystal dolphins, enamelled metal owls, porcelain ringed hands, Doctor Zhivago musical boxes, princesses made out of shells, snow domes with distressed figures inside, their outlines blurred, their arms raised in the blizzard.
Above all, there is the box of secrets—it’s been written there on top since Solange learned to read. A little chest with labelled drawers: my birth bracelet, my first lock of hair, my first dummy, my first tooth, and even my first movie ticket, everything organised chronologically in cute compartments. She has always coveted this object. It’s expensive, 199 francs. Time is passing, everyone’s time, Clèves’ time. Soon it will be too late. My first wedding ring, she daydreams. (My first Tampax.)
Her mother makes a point of dusting it, she’s frightened it will go out of fashion.
The shop window is a rectangle of dusty sunlight, framing a view of the village with drifting shadows.
Ding a ling—Rose and her mother.
Her back straightens instantly, an orthopaedic-commercial reflex inherited from her mother (and her father). (Two parents, two whores.)
Rose’s mother’s red boots tap on the tiled floor. (Apparently she is leading a double life, on the coast.) They greet each other with a kiss.
They are looking for a present for Rose’s father. A Rubik’s Cube. They’re allowed a five per cent discount with their loyalty card. She wraps it up nicely, tugging on the gift ribbon with the edge of the scissors. Gift ribbon is something Rose knows nothing about. Rose’s mother is in raptures at how the pretty flowers of ribbon curl up like that.
Rose, who reads Best magazine, tells her that Marvin Gaye has been killed by his own father. Rose’s mother says she should come round and listen to the record at home, it’s so stupid, these two young girls don’t see each other any more: her witness is Madame Kudeshayan, who has just come into the shop, ding a ling, followed by her son and Raphaël Bidegarraï, ding a ling ding a ling, it’s getting crowded.
There’s a staggering family resemblance between all these Clèveans, an actual familiarity about them. Even though Madame Kudeshayan is as black as (if Solange remembers correctly) Marvin Gaye was. It’s quite surprising in an Indian woman (or Pakistani, or whatever she is). She would have expected beige-coloured, or dark salmon-pink. And her son’s skin colour is not much lighter (nor her husband’s).
It must be the village. It’s changed. It’s become a city. It seems like even the Kudeshayans have become diluted. Perhaps the efforts of Rose’s parents have finally borne fruit—they swapped their Solidarity union badges for the yellow hands logo of SOS Racism. (You should sell those hands, Solange told her mother.)
For example, you can’t even tell anymore that Concepción is Spanish; she even wants to call herself Magali. And apparently Bihotz’s father was Jewish. But if anyone can testify that Bihotz’s dick hasn’t been cut, it’s her. And her mother explained that you can’t be Jewish and also have a name from around here. She would really like to ask her father to confirm this point but he seems to have completely done a runner. Yes, perhaps Clèves is becoming a modern village, an American melting pot, a mixed village like the cheese, fromage mixe, because people are all the same anyway and racism is really dumb.
‘You really are becoming more and more of a babe.’
Raphaël Bidegarraï’s acne has got worse, it’s as if the diaeresis in his name has spread all over his skin. There are rumours—incredible—that he might be with Rose. (Poor Christian.)
Meanwhile the two mothers (Rose’s and the Kudeshayan mother) are still chatting away, as if they were at home, and all for a thirty-nine-franc Rubik’s Cube. And the Kudeshayan (Cutie Shitting) kid is fiddling with the trinkets—and, she can’t believe it, he’s turning his nose up at them.
YOU BREAK, YOU PAY. She wants to wave the sign under his nose. She can almost understand why her mother gets migraines.
‘Clèves—how could you leave.’ The sign had finally been erected at the entrance to the village, after consultation with Clèveans of voting age. ‘Achieve at Clèves’ was thought to be too much of an advertisement. And Rose’s mother was against the line ‘Believe in Clèves’ (false advertising, in her opinion). Madame Kudeshayan had laughed: ‘Anyway, it won’t be long before the independence movement start to graffiti the sign with their mumbo jumbo.’
If she could vote (but who cares about teenagers?) she’d like ‘Clèves, cleave to me’. Clèves actually does make you think of clinging to somebody. And it starts with the same letters as clitoris.
‘That d’Urbide bitch is a fat dyke,’ Bidegarraï whispers to her. ‘Arnaud Lemoine wanted to fuck her and she yelled that it was rape and told him that she only did it with girls.’
You’re kidding?
(Arnaud and Lætitia. That rumour, of course.)
‘She was having sex with Delphine. She got up in the middle of the night to eat her out—all she had to do was go downstairs.’ A pimple of excitement explodes on his forehead. ‘And Delphine, no surprises there. The only thing she hasn’t lain down for is a train, oh and girls, trains and girls…’
He’s trying to be witty but he’s lost the thread. She cuts in: She even got laid by Cheap Carpet.
Their laughter catches the attention of the two mothers. Apparently Delphine is getting better, they feared the worst, but she only took about ten sleeping pills. Her mother had left them lying around, how mindless, what a messed-up family. The women lower their voices.
‘She even got laid by Cheap Carpet,’ Bidegarraï echoes in her ear, stifling a burst of laughter.
He’s really overdoing it n
ow. Bidegarraï, the guy who held her head under the tap, the guy who cornered her in the playground, the guy who stuck his hands on her breasts when they were what, ten, Bidegarraï who’s ugly now and covered in acne, that Bidegarraï is now looking for her approval. Has he forgotten everything? (Nathalie is always telling her that with boys, everything comes back to their dicks. ‘With most boys anyway,’ she adds.) He smells of Azzaro for Men but the whole world has started to smell of Azzaro.
And how can she make the word dyke fit in with that moment in Lætitia’s bedroom—a moment like the light from the candle jars, shimmering and hot, a moment she likes to recall, rekindle, even though neither of them has uttered a single word about it—not that they’re embarrassed, no, but they just behave as if nothing happened.
‘It’s a lamp made out of salt from the Himalayas,’ the Kudeshayan mother is explaining to her son (the Himalayas, my arse). She’s holding the lamp in her cupped hands and she tells him to put the tip of his tongue on the lamp.
Instead of stopping them, Solange lets them carry on. She’s mesmerised. It’s as if the mother was recalling memories of her times in the mountains, of paths among the glaciers, and with the tip of his tongue, her son, a loving son, was tasting the salt with a gesture both dutiful and playful. A loving son, yet another find in this curiosity shop—a mother and son laughing together over a little lamp, able to share the world, its continents, its exploration, its riches. Such exotic items, a lamp and a loving son.
‘What have you done with your key?’ asks Bihotz.
Her house (her parents’ house, or should she say from now on, her mother’s house?) is locked. She has inflatable parents, just like those dolls. You pull out the plug and they float away, looping through the sky.
All the Way Page 15