Before she left to go on a week’s holiday to Tangiers, MS worried about how XX planned to keep in touch, knowing that he hated speaking on the phone and ‘like Franz Kafka’, was wary of letters. ‘We’ll find a way,’ XX replied.
Selection of photo messages from XX and MS between 15 and 23 July 2011:
2:15pm, 15 July 2011, XX to MS.
3:02pm, 15 July 2011, MS to XX.
10:38pm, 18 July 2011, XX to MS.
2:38pm, 19 July 2011, MS to XX.
3:50pm, 20 July 2011, XX to MS.
4:03pm, 20 July 2011, MS to XX.
7:52pm, 20 July 2011, MS to XX.
3:03pm, 22 July 2011, XX to MS.
RHETORIC
‘Indeed, we see many men and women who continue to want to talk things out with someone (or something) who will not understand them anyway, and these people carry on like that, shifting between misery and heroism, as if clinging on to the door of a car when a loved one is departing, leaving, and the car sets off: you are running beside it but of course it is unlikely that you will be able to hold on for more than two hundred metres, depending on the car’s speed of acceleration, for some people are very quick when they pull away.’ (Extract from Journal of Truce by Frédéric Berthet.)
Extracts from notes written by MS in July and September 2011.
‘If I’d been aware that it would have only taken a small jolt to rattle you, my pain would have been lessened. No doubt your reasoning comforts you. Nothing has ever seemed more pointless to me, more hopeless than mine.’
‘All this sickens me and gives me a chilling sensation because I don’t know who you are at all any more. Or rather, I know too well. I don’t understand what you are looking for in life. I’m sorry if that’s hurtful but I can’t put up with it any more (illegible scrawl). Maybe it’s also what will finally put an end to my affection, at least I really do hope so.’
‘mystery/intimate/warmth/shares common breath/I’m mistaken/I blame myself/illusion . . .’
‘inexplicable, it escapes us: everything was possible just because there wasn’t any space.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me. Every time you give me these looks of surprise, or infuriation, I could be hurt.’
‘What we’re going through is odd, fanciful, poetic, dangerous, uncertain, touching, hot (last word crossed out).’
‘WE HAVE SOMETHNG HERE. SHIT.’
‘Instructions for use: an insult, to me, is an admission of sadness, a cry – clumsy though it might be – for a little warmth.’
‘You speak foolishly . . . To my eyes, it was your most flamboyant gesture. A highway exit, at last. Be brave be brave.’
‘Inexhaustive list of proposals in the hope of getting me back: inviting me to dinner (I refuse), reinviting me (I refuse) and the same every day until I eventually give in. Taking me on a weekend break to Porto; saying hello by passionately kissing me in the open air; taking me to Fontainebleau by scooter with a small Décathlon rucksack on your back (during office hours).’
Notes written by MS between July and September 2011. Copies of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s broken-heart drawings from his 1950s letter to Catherine Rstakian.
SOCIAL NETWORKS
Facebook France
Customer Services
28, rue de l’Amiral-Hamelin
75016 PARIS
Registered delivery
Dear Sir/Madam
Re: Request for information regarding the viewing of Facebook profiles.
I have been using your services for a short while now, but I have been led to contact you due to several questions that have arisen. Unfortunately, I am unable to find the answers to these by consulting the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities detailed on your site. Therefore, I would be very grateful if you could help me, by any means you deem necessary, to acquire information related to the following three questions:
Firstly, is it possible for a user to be informed about the consultation of his or her profile by another user even if the users are not united by friendship, as defined by your site?
Secondly, can your site alert a user to an abnormally increased consultation rate of his or her profile by the same person? And if so, what are the defined thresholds of abnormality?
Thirdly and finally, is it possible, even temporarily, to gain access to the information available on a particular profile by someone who is not linked to that profile by the aforementioned classification of friendship?
Please do not hesitate to get in touch should you require any further information. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you in advance for taking the time to consider this request.
Yours faithfully
MS
HEPATOSCOPY
Dissection and study of a chicken liver by MS, 3 September 2011. Inconclusive reading.
Chicken liver.
(Source: Monoprix supermarket, rue de Rennes, Paris VI.)
MOBILE TELEPHONY
Bouygues Telecom
Tour Sequana
82, rue Henri-Farman
92447 Issy-les-Moulineaux
Registered delivery
Dear Sir/Madam
Re: Request for information relating to short message service (SMS).
I am writing this letter to your company to request information regarding your short message service/text messages.
It seems to be a well-known fact that errors sometimes occur in the delivery of the aforementioned messages. For personal reasons, I would be very grateful if you could send me statistics outlining the frequency of this occurrence. Failing that, to what extent would it be possible to provide a document that simply confirms that delivery errors do occur?
In addition, could you could let me know if it is possible to destroy at long-distance an archived SMS exchange in the telephone of a third party whose number is known. And if this is possible, I would appreciate it if you could outline the steps to follow so this can be achieved.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch should you require any further information. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you in advance for taking the time to consider this request.
Yours faithfully
MS
VOODOO
Monsieur Diakgite
24, rue Albert
75013 Paris
Dear Monsieur Diakgite
I take the liberty of writing to you as I received one of your flyers at the Porte d’Orléans metro station, and the caption (‘NO PROBLEM WITHOUT A SOLUTION’) attracted my attention. I admit that you have succeeded in intriguing me, despite my natural scepticism and the dreadful reputation of your profession. Could it possibly be due to your use of hard-hitting slogans and the simple message of your punchy marketing campaign? Because you see, Monsieur Diakgite, my partner does not run behind me ‘like a dog behind his master’ – in fact he runs around quite freely. But the idea suddenly seems quite appealing, despite the fact that I have never thought in these terms before.
That is why, as you request on your flyer, I enclose a stamped addressed envelope, a photo of me, my date and place of birth as well as a cigarette butt which the loved one has placed between his lips.
I very much appreciate the time and attention that you will, no doubt, give to this issue.
Yours sincerely
MS
‘No problem without a solution’ flyer.
PART TWO
PAST HISTORY
AMBRA
When Ambra saw him for the first time in June 1970, she was nineteen years old and wore a kilt and white socks that came up to her knees. She had just left Aiglon College, a Swiss boarding school for girls which combined the discipline of the Wehrmacht with the customs of the European imperial courts. She often remembered the feelings of relief and dread that overcame her when her parents came to collect her in their Maserati that purred like a luxury cat. It felt as if she was being released after a long prison sentence, and yet life was moving far too quickly to avoid complete panic.
Two months later, she left the house at three o’clock in the morning with a Gucci suitcase stolen from her mother. Alessandro was waiting for her on the corner of via Domenichino in a Fiat Topolino with his guitar, some works of baroque poetry and general literature guides on the back seat. He was twenty-one, with a little girl and a wife who was three months pregnant.
But his wife and daughter belonged to a world before, a world that no longer concerned Ambra and Alessandro as they prepared to leave at 55 mph on the autostrada.
Ambra and Alessandro moved into a small block of flats on via Tiziano in Milan, just a few hundred metres from their respective former lives. (The autostrada adventure had been short-lived, both enthusiasm and petrol finally running out.) There she experienced an indecent amount of happiness, despite the hunger, insects, scandal, inactivity, girls with aquatic hair wandering in all the time and letters from her mother that had crinkled as the tears dried.
In December, she found out she was pregnant. He took out his guitar and a bottle of Moscato. She felt as if she was falling into a hole, but most likely it was just the pregnancy hormones.
Alessandro F returned to his wife and his family home at the start of March, just in time to witness the birth of his son, who was named Tommaso without anyone asking Alessandro his opinion. Ambra returned to her parents’ place, weighed down by the Gucci suitcase and an extra 17 kilos. In the weeks that followed, she felt like a stranger in this body which occupied so much space so scandalously. With liquid eyes and a deathly pale complexion, she wandered from the bedroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the bathroom, without her feet ever seeming to touch the ground. She floated around in a nightshirt, like a voluminous but intangible ghost. In any case, her father acted as if Ambra and her offensive abdomen did not exist, while her mother abandoned the premises, taking refuge in swimwear shops where she dreamt of a new life in Mar del Plata.
On 27 July 1971, at 12:45 in the afternoon, she gave birth at the Grande Ospedale, 9 via Caradosso, alone in a room which reminded her of a prison cell. ‘Alone like a dog,’ she clarified later. Her brother Augusto came round to see her during the day. She blew her nose on her shirt while glancing suspiciously at Monica, who, looking disconcertingly like a chicken, had been plonked at the end of the bed like an unclaimed parcel.
Eight months later, Alessandro F sent Ambra a gold necklace with a pendant of a little girl with bunches. It was accompanied by a long letter, full of remorse and Latin quotations. She burnt the letter, put the pendant away in a pencil case and went to buy some cigarettes.
Photo of Ambra taken by Alessandro F in 1970.
Gold chain belonging to Ambra, pendant of a little girl with bunches.
Ambra, May 1971.
Monica, July 1971.
Ambra and Monica, September 1971.
GENETICS
Let’s pause for a moment to consider the destiny of this foetus that, unknowingly involved in events that did not concern it, was nevertheless marked by those events, which etched a secret memory on its cells. After the euphoria of conception, it developed its first organs in a peaceful world, a world that felt like eternity. And while it was faithfully drifting in the comfort of the current, suddenly an unidentified cataclysm engulfed it, plunging it into a doleful silence, a Dead Sea in which it seemed to be the last survivor. Its heart was beating, its nutritional needs were satisfied, but the organism to which it was linked by an umbilical cord, like an electric cable, was sending it worrisome signals. Long pulses, then short ones, long harrowing moans, queasy hiccups, acidic convulsions, macabre sighs, increasingly feeble inhalations; before transmissions stopped altogether. There was good reason to ponder existence, for it had begun like a large carnival, then seemingly it was extinguished without explanation, in silent misery.
The issue of the mysterious power of transmission arises here. What do you transmit to your child? Blonde hair, blue eyes, very small feet? But also a taste for cigarettes, panettone, boys with guitars? Is this foetus’s life destined to be filled with suitcases packed in the middle of the night, suitcases that will always return to their point of departure some weeks later?
In other words, is this foetus destined to relive, again and again, emotions encoded in a fossilized region of its brain and thus, almost simultaneously, experience love and the end of the world, hope and lightning, a romantic comedy and a horror film?
LEGACY
Study of the transmission of genetic material from one generation to the next.
Data relating to the father has been established by deduction, historical reconstruction or on the basis of witness statements deemed admissible despite the unpredictable independence of thinking with regard to the sources of information.
MOTHER
CHILD
FATHER
BLUE EYES
BLUE EYES
BLUE EYES
BLONDE
BLONDE
DARK BLONDE
GIFT FOR DRAWING
/
GIFT FOR MUSIC
BLOOD GROUP A
BLOOD GROUP A
Rh positive
DATA UNAVAILABLE
PULMONARY WEAKNESS
PULMONARY WEAKNESS
DATA UNAVAILABLE
STOMACH DISORDERS
ECZEMA, SHINGLES, PROBLEMS WITH BALANCE
DATA UNAVAILABLE
MANIC DEPRESSIVE
LYRICAL MELANCHOLY
LYRICISM
DEPENDENT PERSONALITY
DEPENDENCE UPON ELUSIVE MEN
ELUSIVE PERSONALITY
ROMANTICISM
FALLS IN LOVE EASILY
DON JUANISM
CHRONIC IMMATURITY
CHRONIC IMMATURITY
CHRONIC IMMATURITY
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER
NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
NICOTINE ADDICTION
NICOTINE ADDICTION
NICOTINE ADDICTION
MONICA
During the summer of 1977, Monica was lovestruck. She spent her holidays in Guadeloupe where she collected shells on the beach whilst her parents took siestas to recuperate from a year of toil and the demands of urban high society. But it was Monica who was more exhausted than anyone else. During the first six years of her existence, she had developed superpowers, a sensory awareness allowing her to distinguish every shift in her mother’s mood. Her body seemed to be studded with sensors: she detected the tiniest magnetic variations, tremors in the air, organic vibrations, respiratory rhythms, even her mother’s heart beats. Like sharks that detect the electric field of fish in distress, she continually received information indicating maternal instability. She went to school, played with her brother, and took judo and ballet classes (where, incidentally, she stood out through a cruel lack of coordination). But these were just extra-curricular activities. The world revolved around Ambra, this blonde, melancholic creature who chain-smoked and found it harder and harder to get out of bed.
That summer, Monica got to know a boy in red swimming trunks, swimming trunks that he wore on every occasion, including those where they did not seem to be appropriate, like tennis practice or mini-golf. Instantaneously, he inspired a feeling of fear and respect in her. He exuded a remarkable calmness, and his movements were unbelievably synchronized.
He did cartwheels, jumped across rocks, slam-dunked at table tennis, dived backwards into the pool, and ‘mimed a sex act’ by rubbing himself in the sand. He was seven, and essentially knew life at its darkest and most
dangerous, as well as all that related to the anatomy. She did not immediately understand the butterflies that fluttered around in her stomach when the red blot of his trunks suddenly appeared in her field of vision.
One afternoon, when he had lured her into his hotel bedroom by promising that there was a crime scene to look at, she discovered the corpse of a crab on the carpet, its legs twisted, its eyes lying alongside its body like two miniature snooker balls.
She took refuge in the bathroom, reflecting on the dangers of everyday life (the tragedy apparently occurred due to the converging of a pincer and a plug socket), and in turn she also received a fatal shock. He entered the bathroom, closed the door behind him with terrifying determination, and spoke the following words, which consumed her body like flames: ‘Kiss me, or you’re not getting out of here.’
From that moment on, Monica’s movements were no longer controlled by her brain but by mechanical reflexes, a sort of survival impulse, all in slow motion and with a hum that filled the air as though a swarm of bees had moved in behind the shower curtain. She moved forward and while her heart made strange suction noises, she pressed her pursed lips against the mouth of the hostage-taker.
The whole time he kept his hands on her hips like a man who had seen it all before, whilst she clung on to his shoulders with the despair of someone drowning.
All This Has Nothing To Do With Me Page 3