All This Has Nothing To Do With Me

by Monica Sabolo

  6:00pm, 6 October 2011, XX to MS.

  I’m leaving now. Tomorrow?

  6:03pm, 6 October 2011, MS to XX.

  OK, tomorrow.

  11:06am, 7 October 2011, XX to MS.

  Shall I take you for lunch?

  11:07am, 7 October 2011, MS to XX.

  I don’t know really, lunches depress me.

  11:08am, 7 October 2011, XX to MS.

  OK, a coffee then, if you have a spare moment in the day?

  11:21am, 7 October 2011, MS to XX.

  Sorry, I think I’ll have to pass.

  4:48pm, 7 October 2011, MS to XX.

  I have the urge for a cigarette.

  Do you want to come for a smoke with me?

  4:51pm, 7 October 2011, XX to MS.

  Let’s go.

  5:50pm, 7 October 2011, XX to MS.

  Thanks.

  5:50pm, 7 October 2011, MS to XX.

  What for?

  7:18pm, 14 October 2011, MS to XX.

  Are you thinking things over?

  7:41pm, 14 October 2011, MS to XX.

  OK. Very encouraging.

  7:41pm, 14 October 2011, XX to MS.

  Sorry, I couldn’t get a signal in the basement where I was (perfect place for thinking things over).

  11:42pm, 17 October 2011, MS to XX.

  Thank you. Fuck, thank you.

  11:50pm, 17 October 2011, MS to XX.

  Well done, you’re the man for the job!

  12:26am, 18 October 2011, MS to XX.

  You need to give me your secret for not giving a toss about anyone.

  12:26am, 18 October 2011, XX to MS.

  Let’s say I do give a toss about something, what do you want me to reply to that comment?

  10:03am, 19 October 2011, MS to XX.

  I’m sorry, I know it’s a bit heavy going.

  1:52pm, 19 October 2011, XX to MS.

  And I dare say you could really do without all this.

  2:12am, 24 October 2011, MS to XX.

  Are you asleep?

  12:52pm, 26 October 2011, MS to XX.

  If you keep ignoring my messages, I will kill the hostage (a multicoloured stripy lighter).

  12:54pm, 26 October 2011, XX to MS.

  I knew it!

  12:55pm, 26 October 2011, MS to XX.

  Now we need to talk about the ransom. The kidnapper is waiting for an offer. Of a non-financial nature, of course.

  2:12pm, 26 October 2011, MS to XX.

  I want dinner.

  2:12pm, 26 October 2011, XX to MS.

  Is that the starting point for negotiation?

  2:13pm, 26 October 2011, MS to XX.

  A kidnapper with a life in her hands doesn’t negotiate.

  7:52pm, 26 October 2011, XX to MS.

  Dalston Central Market: £3.

  8:15pm, 26 October 2011, MS to XX.

  Deal closed. The exchange will take place over dinner.

  2:30pm, 30 October 2011, MS to XX.

  2:32pm, 30 October 2011, MS to XX.

  You will inform it that you’ve been to Corsica for the weekend.

  3:57pm, 30 October 2011, XX to MS.

  11:11pm, 14 November 2011, MS to XX.

  No heart, no balls, no class.

  STAR SYSTEM

  Extract from a promo interview with David Lynch, carried out by MS at Silencio, rue Montmartre, Paris II, 29 August 2011.

  ‘At university I had two girlfriends, one was secret. She was the one I loved. One day, I invited her to lunch and I asked her if she loved me. She replied . . . (whispering) “no” . . . Oh! It was hard . . . After that, I thought about her for twenty years. She returned incessantly in my dreams. Even during my marriages. How many times have I been married? . . . Four, that’s right. Well, during my four marriages, I carried on dreaming about her. But, you know, she did love me. Some years later, she told me. She just hadn’t realized it at that point. One day, a while back, I decided to call her. And you know what? The second I heard her voice (he clicks his fingers), at that very second, it was all over. Freedom. (silence). Would you like a tissue? The things you imagine are much more beautiful than reality, you understand, don’t you?’

  At 7:15pm on 1 September 2011, MS called XX.

  On hearing his voice, she hung up.

  She experienced no feeling of freedom.

  THE MIRACLE

  29 November 2011, MS bumped into XX in the lift at work. He raised a hand towards her and adjusted a button on her cardigan. After work, he offered her a lift on his scooter.

  Grey Isabel Marant cardigan, equipped with magic powers.

  THE ENIGMA

  Email sent by MS to XX.

  1:29pm, 1 December 2011. Extract.

  There’s one thing I don’t understand: why did you spend the night with me, if what you feel for me is so obvious? This is a real question, I’m lost. Yesterday you seemed so indifferent.

  Email sent by XX to MS.

  2:47pm, 1 December 2011.

  Response. The night: because in the spur of the moment and with the promise of one night together without repercussions, and faced with such confident desire from you, foolishly, I desired it too. What you felt as indifference: my own feelings suppressed in response to the insistence of the expression of yours. You tell me you don’t understand me, that you find me confusing, so I make an effort to be clear and to the point. But most of all, I don’t want to be cruel to you, and if you feel that I am, I’m sorry about that.

  THE BAIT

  Grey tops worn by MS between 5 December 2011 and 1 March 2012, in the hope of physical contact with XX.

  (Sexual relations between MS and XX between 5 December 2011 and 1 March 2012: none.)

  DEATH

  Email sent by MS to Ambra P.

  11:29pm, 30 January 2012. Extract.

  Mum,

  You asked me what you could do to make me ‘feel better’. Well you could, for example, tell me what you felt when Alessandro left you. I might possibly feel better after that.

  Email sent by Ambra P to MS.

  9:12am, 31 January 2012. Extract.

  Sweetheart,

  I’m sorry to hear that you haven’t managed to pull through. I don’t really remember as I was so young when I was with Alessandro. I guess I felt sad, of course, but as anyone would after a break-up.

  Big hugs, sweetheart.

  YVES

  It was December 1972 when Ambra first met Yves S in a ski resort in Switzerland. She breezed around like a wealthy heiress without a care in the world. They had been seated next to each other at dinner, most likely in the hope they would get together, but not a glance came her way. Back then she still had long blonde hair and a tormented look about her that made some men want to lock her away, forever. Apart from Yves S, it seemed. He thrust his carnivorous little teeth into the red meat in front of him and smiled at the excessively tanned Brazilian girl opposite. He captivated women with his smile and intellectual banter, exuding an uneasy charm, a sort of erotic intimidation. He worked at the United Nations in Geneva, and whilst no one really understood what his job at the International Labour Office entailed, the diplomatic corps number plate on his Mercedes certainly evoked a fascinating world of muffled negotiations.

  According to ‘legend’, the Brazilian turned down his offer of an escort home, and their fate was sealed. Yves S removed his glasses, turned towards the ethereal blonde next to him who was putting on her ski hat and said, rather like a domineering father: ‘Up! Come on. Let’s go.’

  They got married on 4 August 1973 in the hotel gardens of La Réserve by Lake Léman, Geneva. That same day, Yves S became Monica’s legal guardian. The need to move to Switzerland had been explained to her quite simply with an indisputable line of reasoning: ‘This is your dad.’

  Curiously, the little girl does not appear in the wedding photos, while the images of her mother’s long emerald dress create a strange optical illusion, as though her outfit is blending into the green lawn. Guests were thin on the gr
ound and virtually all elderly, which was almost as depressing as Yves’s smile. And when he took off his glasses his melancholy became even more apparent, as did his squinty eye.

  Ambra came to the conclusion that the photos were disastrous and drew flowers and multicoloured balloons on every page of the wedding album. On the photo taken at the Town Hall, she stuck a picture of a gun pointing at Yves S’s head. Monica often flicked through the album with an uneasy fascination. She also studied her mother’s many Indian ink drawings for a long, long time, especially the one that showed her new father in tails, smiling and casually leaning against a wall, brandishing a bloody axe and the bride’s veil.

  Ambra and Yves S: the wedding album, 1973.

  MONICA (PART 3)

  Monica adapted to her new life with the flexibility and good will of a child, especially one born in sin. Several months after she arrived in Geneva, she was speaking French and had altogether stopped speaking Italian, a language born of a world that no longer existed to her, like the city of Pompeii, buried and paralysed beneath the ashes and pumice. In August 1974, she joyfully welcomed her brother Fabrice into the world, and, carefree, bounded into the unknown territory of nursery school as if she were being sent away purely due to her own desire for freedom.

  In November 1974, Monica climbed onto a slide at Bertrand Park, and with her mother looking on she dived headfirst onto the concrete. She broke her nose, and for several weeks her face was so swollen that it made everyone feel uncomfortable, but that did not stop her from smiling like a politician principally concerned about the well-being of her electorate.

  From that day on, she made remarkably regular trips to A&E and the paediatrician. It was as if the slide episode had revealed a secret urge to tumble and fall. In fact it happened incessantly, in the street, park, nursery, at school. Falling apart in an unassuming way, silently, but in a very distinctive manner: always falling headfirst, without ever using her hands for protection.

  It was Monica’s personal hallmark and it was responsible for some impressive wounds including giant bumps on her forehead, black eyes, a bloody chin, gashed cheeks, and the acrobatic pinnacle of it all, a head injury sustained by falling off a stationary bicycle with stabilizers. She practised this skilful art until 1977, when she was forced to take up judo.

  There she came to face to face with Mr Weber, a German-speaking Swiss teacher who did not mess around when it came to issues of coordination. So, Monica had to stop expressing her creativity by means of trauma, and finally defeated, she picked up her yellow belt.

  Monica, 1975.

  THE WOUND

  11:45pm, 20 February 2012. The following words were spoken by Anna C in the presence of MS, in an apartment in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.

  ‘I was at Laurence’s place on Saturday . . . XX was there with his girlfriend . . . You know, Constance, she works in the film industry.’

  10:20am, 23 February 2012. MS tripped over the kerb.

  Medical Imaging and

  Examination Centre

  80, rue de Rennes

  75006 Paris

  25/02/12

  Reference: AB/DP

  Madame MS

  Dr Denis Solignac

  X-ray of the left foot

  Indication: localized trauma (dosimetry: PDS: 11.7cGy/cm²).

  Diagnosis: undisplaced fracture of the base of the fifth metatarsal.

  X-ray of MS’s left foot, February 2012.

  L’Express magazine featuring the article:

  ‘Narcissistic Perverts: How to recognize them’, embezzled by MS from the waiting room of the Medical Imaging and Examination Centre.

  DEATH (PART 2)

  Transcript of text messages.

  9:02pm, 27 February, MS to XX.

  My fault, I didn’t think a drink would be so difficult. Sorry.

  9:15pm, 27 February, MS to XX.

  Are you annoyed?

  9:20pm, 27 February, XX to MS.

  No, of course not.

  10:02pm, 27 February, MS to XX.

  Without you, I just can’t do it. I CAN’T DO IT.

  11:24pm, 27 February, XX to MS.

  I’m afraid that has nothing to do with me.

  3:03pm, 3 March 2012. Email sent by MS (work account) to MS (private account).

  NICOLE

  It was December 1985 when Monica realized she was unbalanced, and that most likely her destiny lay in prostitution. She was spending her holidays on the Côte d’Azur with her family and her American penpal, Nicole, a blonde with a ponytail whose sorry smile concealed a pathological obsession with pornography.

  The past year had been a tumultuous one. There had been parties at home, lots of parties, where her mother would dress up as a saloon girl or a slave wearing a metal neck chain, leaving traces of red lipstick around the rims of champagne cocktail glasses. There had also been silence, a pleasant but disturbing silence that fell like snow in the weeks leading up to the first ‘maternal evacuation’. Then one morning Ambra got up, pulled on some jeans, and driven by a dark force that compelled her to abandon the world in general and domestic life in particular, she took to the wheel of her scruffy old hatchback. Her road trip ended in a psychiatric clinic on the edge of Lake Léman, a place that worked wonders with the imagination, for it was forbidden to visit her or even speak to her on the telephone, as if she were in training at some secret service location.

  When she returned home, there was no real evidence to say what she had been up to on her little trip, apart from the fact that she chucked all the cheap ashtrays in the bin. Family life returned to normal, and her other existence, impalpable like the shadow of an illusion, was never even mentioned.

  That winter, Christmas was spent in Cap d’Antibes, in a hotel overlooking the sea, a place of excessive white marble and abandoned deckchairs that emitted a morbid sadness.

  Nicole had flown over from Rhode Island with the firm intention of mastering the French art of love. She smoked at the window every evening, waiting till midnight when, at that precise time, she would sidle down the corridor wearing a miniskirt and irresistible perfume and disappear until the early hours of the morning. For the first few days, Monica watched these antics with a mixture of alarm and amazement. Providence never ceased to remind her that she could rely on nothing and no one. But mostly, she just felt excluded again when she wanted to be part of the action. It was like everything was happening far from her gaze and all that remained was anxious contemplation as she waited to experience the thrills of womanhood.

  For the first few days, she stood watching at the window with a wilted smile, following the fragile figure of Nicole as she evaporated into the darkness.

  During the day, Monica watched in admiration as Nicole, this duplicitous young woman in a tennis outfit, fooled everyone around her. She was wonderfully polite, even a little reserved, and nothing hinted at her succubian night-time alter ego, apart from the menacing looks she gave Frank, the barman from Cannes: she had already demonstrated for him the meaning of the term ‘blowjob’.

  On Christmas Eve, Monica decided it was time to live dangerously. Throughout the day, she had felt a sort of intense excitement, the impatience mixed with relief that usually precedes the final accomplishment of a dangerous endeavour. At midnight, she trailed behind Nicole, walking through the revolving door of the hotel lobby and straight into a car outside that stank of sweat, tobacco and ham sandwiches. Once Monica was inside, the car door slammed shut, and she planted her forehead against the steamy window, watching the moving shapes outside dissolve into the distance as if they were swimming in an aquarium.

  She spent the evening with Jeff, an Australian surfer, twenty-two years old, and huge at six foot three. When she was with him it looked like he was having an inappropriate relationship with a child. However, he was strangely devoid of sexual drive, as if his brain was a different age to his other more prominent organs. Or perhaps practising a sport in the open air had drained his body of all erotic desire. He put his arm
around her shoulder in the car and that was the one and only indication of sexual conquest.

  On New Year’s Eve, Yves S surprised Monica and Jeff at two o’clock in the morning as they sat on the wet sand, surrounded by incriminating evidence of sin and depravation – packets of cigarettes, bottles of beer and a bath towel.

  Nicole had altered her modus operandi, and was now satisfying her appetite for French culture in the bedroom she shared with Monica, where members of the local community were made very welcome each evening. Whilst that was going on, Monica wandered along the beach in the humid evening air. Jeff accompanied her, gathering up fragments of shell, explaining in detail the different species of snakes in the Australian outback, or politely and half-heartedly pecking her on the lips.

  Monica sometimes played with the buckle on his belt, or slid her hand under his jumper, but Jeff did not seem to notice, preferring instead to run his fingers through her hair and rearrange her side parting.

  But it seemed that Yves S was unaware that they had the nonexistent sex life of an elderly couple, or hippies who only make love to nature. The following week, he stopped speaking to Monica, who continued to slowly turn into a ghost gliding along the corridors of the hotel, whilst Nicole played tennis with Ambra.

  Back in Geneva a few weeks later she received a letter from Jeff – mostly talking about his journey home to Alice Springs and getting bronchitis – and Yves S called her a whore and said she was going to end up ‘being screwed by everything that moved’. Monica was banned from going out until the following summer, when she was sent to spend three weeks with Nicole in Providence, Rhode Island. There she was greeted by a family that was as distant as her own, although a little more friendly, and she was able to connect once more with the warmth of another human being. She was almost happy there, especially during the calm summer nights spent watching X-rated films, snuggled up to Nicole, who stared at the screen whilst softly stroking her arm with an innocent little smile on her face.