All the Way

by Marie Darrieussecq

‘Ever since my mother died,’ says Bihotz, who’s using his ‘mystical’ voice again, ‘everything’s gone wrong. We don’t know who lives where anymore. This arrangement, this sharing of roles, it’s confusing. I’m even starting to wonder if Lulu is really a dog.’

  Lulu is dying and her scruffy muzzle seems to be inhabited by an insane number of faces: Madame Bihotz and Solange’s parents and Arnaud and Lætitia and Little Gregory and the other child under the tombstone and the old woman at the cemetery and Bihotz’s weight-watching fat cousin—the dead and the living and the half-dead all mixed together, or as if they were all dead, and it makes Solange want to cry.

  She brushes her teeth and puts on her Snoopy nightdress. Raiders of the Lost Ark is on TV. The film is terrifying and she buries her head in his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ he growls.

  Such an overreaction when right in front of her eyes is the distinctive transformation of his fly into the pyramid shape. It’s even more accentuated when she puts her hand on top of his (he pushes it away). It occurs to her to do what Arnaud is always asking her to do, but something doesn’t seem right—her sucking off Bihotz, or Bihotz letting himself be—no, it’s really not on.

  What to do? What is a girl supposed to do?

  She sticks her small breasts against his biceps just as a bridge of vines breaks under Indiana Jones’s weight. Warmth floods her chest and her heart is aching, filled with all sorts of hidden things, like in the temples, tombs and sarcophagi of Raiders of the Lost Ark. (But who would ever understand?)

  ‘I hope you went to visit Delphine in hospital?’ grumbles Bihotz.

  He visited her poor mother, who can’t get over it. But it was nothing, right? An adolescent fling, and she just reacted without thinking—fancy doing that to her mother! She wraps her leg around his thigh. She’d like him to take her in his arms, right there, shhh, she’d like some rest and for it all to stop and for something (what?) to pick her up and carry her away without her having to do a thing—then she’d be ready and willing for anything.

  ‘Anyway, Solange, you don’t like anyone, you have a heart of stone, that’s the truth.’

  Bihotz gets up. He’s got his pharaoh silhouette, the profile of the pyramid sticking out from his dressing-gown. It’s so pathetic how visible nymphomania is in men.

  ‘Your parents’ marriage is about to disintegrate and you’re just enjoying yourself, Mademoiselle thinks she’s at a hotel, Mademoiselle just wants to have her nails done, Mademoiselle thinks everyone is there to serve her.’

  It’s so unfair that she bursts into tears. She’s never worn nail polish in her life. It’s all such a mess. After all the work she’s done in the shop today, after everything she does for others, to help maintain the shop, the display, appearances, after everything she gives, her generosity, that total gift of herself, her absence of pride, when she thinks of how young she is, her innocence that’s been trampled on—tears well up from deep inside her, from way down, she can’t bear it anymore, she’s suffocating, she’s going to kill herself if that’s what it’s all about, it’s so horribly, atrociously unfair!

  ‘My darling, my love, my Solange, my only angel.’ So now he’s trying to console her. Serves him right. ‘My Solange, my sunshine.’ So he’s kissing her on her eyes on her chin on her lips, he’s wrapping his arms around her, his whole body is around her. She gives into it. She stops crying a bit. She starts to rock herself backwards and forwards on him, it feels good, she starts to work a bit harder at it, she sticks what she’s got down there against what he’s got down there, it’s burning, it’s melting, like rubbing sticks together, like molten wax, images appear in her mind (Arnaud, Indiana Jones, the Kudeshayan boy, Lætitia d’Urbide, the surfer with chapped lips), clothing and flesh part, it’s a bit hard at first, she rocks forwards and repositions herself, See Saw Marjorie Daw—and something—boing—pops in place like a spring.

  She’s not crying anymore, she’s concentrating very hard. She’s sighing and panting. She’s riding up and down, sitting squarely on his thighs, like on a horse but still not quite like that. He’s kissing her passionately, she turns her head away and shuts her eyes but his mouth follows her, wet and gulping—shhh!—she sits up straight but not too straight, so the thing doesn’t slip out, so that she’s right up close, right there, so it rubs, when she goes down again she goes down hard, that’s it, that’s good, he mustn’t move at all, she goes up and down but rocks backwards and forwards as well—she’s got her whole life in front of her, her whole life to learn, to feel, her whole life to keep doing it.

  Bihotz starts mewling like a cat and something incredibly wet and sticky spills out and he wants to take his thing out but that is absolutely not going to happen, she’s much stronger than he is, she holds on to him and moves up and down and rubs at the top the bottom in front at the back and keeps going and weirdly the thing is a bit soft, she wonders where it’s gone, but she’s already in flight, on her supersonic, roaring aeroplane, and off she goes.

  When she puts her underpants back on, she sees a tiny spot of blood. Hardly worth making a fuss about.

  She falls asleep watching the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Bihotz has disappeared then Bihotz comes back. The sky is clear in the east. He shouts about how idiotic it is that he’s been kicked out of his own home when, fuck it, he lives here. She says, no way, she’s never kicked him out, just like she doesn’t paint her nails (she shows him), is he pretending she’s someone else or what? The TV makes a chrrrrrr sound and the picture goes fuzzy. At her age she needs to sleep so why doesn’t he just go out for a walk—walk as much as he wants. After that there’s a strange lurching of the room as it folds in on them, the walls squash against each other and push them together, the ceiling has swapped places with the floor, and they have rolled, one on top of the other, one inside the other.

  It’s actually right inside her body (she can feel it), it must reach up to about where her bellybutton is, she’ll have to measure it, she can’t feel it all the way along but more or less at different spots. She manages to get him to plead with her about where she wants it (‘tell me what you want’—if he’d just shut up with it now), it’s not always easy to make him understand her, so she sits on top of him, it’s so much more convenient, she goes at the rhythm she wants, she stretches back bit by bit like a bow (or like that alarm clock she used to wind up until it started ratcheting back on itself in a racket of tiny frenzied bells). Every single part of the tubular, layered, round, hollow and bulging area (like Barbapapa’s house) of her cunt has been touched, rubbed, filled and emptied, pressed and squeezed—and it’s really good, even better than when she masturbates, it’s totally great.

  Vulva n. The external genital organs of the woman and of the female in advanced animal species. ENCYCL. The vulva is formed on either side by the labia majora and the labia minor, and in the centre, front and back by the clitoris, urethra and the opening of the vagina, the latter partially sealed by the hymen in the case of virgins.

  Vagina n. (lat. vagina, sheath). The passage leading from the opening of the vulva to the cervix of the uterus. ENCYCL. The vagina is the female organ of copulation; it is situated between the urethral opening and the anus.

  Copulation n. (lat. copulatio, union). Coitus or sexual intercourse between a male and a female.

  And a few days and nights and sunrises and late-night TV programmes later, they are still at it, having a go, trying to understand, doing it again so they can understand better, and so that—according to Bihotz—they can be done with it. Doing it again one last time, getting to the end of it, finishing up for good. As soon as they’ve put an end to it, it starts up again, they come together to be done with it, they struggle, entwined together, but the thing draws even more strength from their struggle. When they chop off one head, two more shoot forth; when they try to excise some of its flesh it redoubles its growth. Sometimes he yells that it’s all his fault, or all her fault, that he only wanted to help out—what can they d
o, how can they get out of this thing. They start up again. She shows him how to press right here and slip his finger in there and lick her with his tongue right there, his dick grows big and fat again, so what can they do? Sometimes it’s him on top and she rubs herself against his belly, sometimes it’s him underneath and she rubs herself against him and it’s even better.

  They stop to eat and she goes to school and they sleep a bit and they take the dog outside and they play cards. Sometimes it doesn’t work so they start up again, sometimes it’s pretty ordinary so they start up again, sometimes they’ve had enough so they start up again, sometimes it’s so great they start up again, she’s really got to stop using ‘so’ all the time. In between their ding-dongs (they have invented their own vocabulary) the rest of the time is almost business as usual.

  Rose has worked out a system, in a homework notebook, for filing her reading. Seven categories of books, from worst to best, arranged according to the days of the week. Monday, lousy. Tuesday, poor. Wednesday, average. Thursday, good. Friday, very good. Saturday, excellent. And Sunday, fantastic.

  Her head is spinning. It’s as if Rose is talking about her, her and Bihotz, about their week, but no, that’s impossible.

  Rose’s characteristic enthusiasm means that she has catalogued most of the books under Friday and Saturday, very good and excellent. She’s also created subdivisions, ‘very good+’ and ‘excellent+’. She has been filing her reading since she was eleven, since she read The Diary of Anne Frank, which she liked so much that she invented the category ‘super+’ and decided that no other book could ever be better than that one.

  That’s a bit like sanitary napkins.

  ‘You have a sick mind. Anyway, Anne Frank is the first writer ever in the world to have written about periods. There’s nothing dirty about it at all.’

  It’s getting harder and harder to talk to Rose.

  I thought she wrote about the concentration camps.

  Rose’s mouth opens wide, then she condescends to explain to her childhood friend, to her ignoramus childhood friend: ‘She didn’t write about the concentration camps, precisely because her diary stops when she’s deported.’ Rose is the keeper of knowledge that is so much more important than periods and fucking; it’s knowledge that separates adults from non-adults, historical and political knowledge.

  Politics is a sort of vast tilting globe of the world from which individual heads emerge, masses of them, appearing and disappearing. The grid lines are creased here and there around particular names and places. Clèves isn’t marked at all. The past, made up of mountain ranges, takes up a lot of space, it’s full of Egyptians and Chinese, and the future is a wide esplanade occupied by people who all have a cause. Rose’s father, who reads Le Monde Diplomatique, moves his finger over the surface of the globe, tracing big circles that solve problems. The circles make huge fiery oil slicks around a microscopic central point: around her, Solange (peripheral and anxious, not central), Solange the individual (Solange is such a free spirit).

  She can’t help noticing Bihotz kneeling under his canna lilies, weeding madly, his trowel and spray beside him.

  Doesn’t everyone have a cause?

  ‘And what would be your cause?’ Rose asks, annoyed.

  Solange the free spirit, the individual, inside a snowball, her arms raised, calling for help. I’m against racism. And against the atomic bomb (she declares in order to gain time). And against the killing of animals. Against the systematic killing of animals (she adds) (one of her father’s adjectives).

  Rose’s interest is sparked by systematic. ‘And what do you actually do, to resist it?’

  I think about it, she replies, with enough conviction to stand up to Rose’s sniggering.

  When her father was a pilot, she used to keep the planes in the air through the sheer power of her own thoughts, for as long as she could follow their flight path in the sky.

  And she also gives butter to the birds in winter. Her mother has donated to the Ethiopians. Of course that’s not the same thing, but alleviating suffering at home (and not simply tracing big circles with a compass), that’s the way to change the world.

  ‘Charity begins at home,’ Rose says ironically. She’s always got the knack of plucking the perfect sentence out of nowhere.

  If she only knew, if Rose could just glimpse the week that she has had, it would take her down a peg or two. With an adult man. Who is almost twice her age. (Obviously she mustn’t say who.)

  She flips through the homework notebook. The category ‘fantastic’ is full of Boris Vian titles and so stuffed with ‘so’s that it’s like Rose has run out of steam, through a lack of words, or what? (Does enthusiasm have anything to do with orgasms?) (Does Rose have orgasms?) At the other end, filed under ‘lousy’, there is only one book, Albert Cohen’s Belle du Seigneur (‘recommended by my mother’).

  His vision of women is so appalling, ridiculous, ludicrous. He wants her to love him while he wears the mask of a repulsive old man, whereas he would obviously not love her if she was horribly ugly or even just a little bit ugly. Does he even ask himself that question? Can you love a woman for her inne beauty her intelligence? Like when she has separate toilets built so that their love will last, as if their love had no real bodily functions. And the worst thing of all is the lack of punctuation when you’re in her head, as if she had no idea about putting full stops at the end of sentences, it’s such a phony sense of style. And the height of ludicrousness is when she calls having an orgasm taking her pleasure.

  She stops there. (Orgasm?)

  ‘It’s the most ludicrous book I’ve ever read, but you might learn a few things,’ Rose suggests.

  How should she respond? If she argues with her then here comes trouble. It’s not just about learning, but about things going wrong. And it’s not just about having a cosy little clean conscience. I’ve been through some traumatic stuff.

  Rose doesn’t get it. Or at least she doesn’t get the connection.

  You remember when my father flashed his dick at the carnival?

  Rose still doesn’t get it.

  When he pulled out his thing? In front of everyone?

  ‘Your father has never been a flasher. He was just a loser.’

  She’s speaking about him as if he was dead. (A flasher?) (A loser?) It’s always the same whenever she goes to Rose’s: the planet shifts on its axis, there’s ice at the equator and a thaw at both poles, everything’s upside down up, unrecognisable—the oceans and the land, her father and her mother, and Clèves.

  I saw him, right in front of me, in front of the priest, it was midnight, he was with his mate Georges from the yacht club, and everyone saw him and I was convinced that that was it, that I could never face anyone ever again.

  ‘I do remember one carnival when your father and Georges were completely pissed, that’s right. We’d gone on the dodgem cars with Christian (oh my God, we were so young!). But the rest of your story is complete bullshit, you must have been smoking too much dope. Firstly, it wasn’t midnight (we weren’t allowed out that late). Secondly, he never showed his dick, I would have remembered that.’

  (The dodgem cars blinking under the electric sky. And Christian with his baby face.)

  ‘My mother says that your father is always trying to make out that he’s got a big dick. But that’s just an expression. It’s not literal,’ Rose continues (incomprehensible, as usual). She rummages in her bag (a real leather handbag, for women) and takes out a tampon, show-off, like it’s a gutsy thing to do, as if she’s the first girl in the world to be on the rag. She leaves the room without a word. There’s a fragrance in the air—soap, roses and cleaning products.

  As for her, she hasn’t used a tampon yet. It must be a while since it’s been that time of the month for her. Her cunt is driving her crazy, it’s so itchy, sticky and swollen like an overripe pear. Too much fucking.

  Bihotz takes her out for dinner. He’s chosen a restaurant miles away. Of course everyone has seen them togeth
er in Clèves, but they weren’t together like they are today. She’s never thought of it like that before.

  Attack of the itchy cunt again. By tipping her pubic bone forward and sliding her buttocks so her underpants are dragged to the side, she makes contact with the cold fake leather of the car seat and gets some relief. She likes the smell of this van. Of this Peugeot J7. Before, it used to smell of hay, petrol, rabbit. Now there’s a smell that makes something leap inside her chest (not her heart, that would be laughable).

  Clèves recedes in the rear-vision mirror, the J7 gains speed and she wants never to return to the village, to its mushroom houses and its child-eating children, she’d like to unwind from its ribbon road (and they all lived happily ever after and had, no, didn’t have any children).

  She puts her hand on Bihotz’s shoulder and he turns to her (he’s got the eyes of a gentle troll who has just captured the princess). What they need is for the night to swallow them up, for the night to become a cave where he can keep her concealed. Life in a cave with Bihotz.

  Take her pleasure, what’s wrong with saying take her pleasure?

  ‘In two or three years,’ murmurs Bihotz as he gently peels her hands off him, ‘in two or three years we’ll be able to go out together properly.’

  She had clung to him, stupidly shy. She hadn’t been expecting this kind of restaurant. Smart waiters and fancy white tablecloths. She’d imagined the sea, a toasted cheese sandwich with Australian surfers, bars filled with Kim Wilde’s voice. Under the lampshades, Bihotz is glowing, smiling. He’s tied back his hair, he looks different.

  ‘You are very pretty.’

  She nicked Lætitia’s eyeliner and worked out the right technique: smear it on the eyelid and then rub off the extra bit with a cotton bud. (Obviously no one must come into the bathroom during the procedure.)

  ‘The appetizer,’ announces the waiter.

  They dive into tiny bowls of orange mousse with lumpfish roe. She sticks up her little finger like rich people do; she’s wearing the butterfly rings her father gave her the day of her twelfth birthday. It’s so cool to eat without having to set the table. Bihotz orders the fish soup and the kidneys in Madeira sauce with gratin dauphinois (and he hesitates over the confit de canard). The waiter has seated them near the fireplace.