Our Lady of the Flowers

by Jean Genet

  It was this dreadful part of Lou-Divine's childhood that was destined to soothe her bitterness. For we see her in prison the time she ran away from the slate house. There is no point in going into the details of her arrest. A simple policeman was enough to throw her into a state of terror worthy of a condemned man, the kind of terror every man has been through, just as every man has also known in his life the exaltation of a royal coronation. Children who run away from home all give the excuse of being mistreated. One might not believe them, but they are so clever about embellishing this excuse with circumstances that are so new, so adapted to themselves, to their names, and even to their faces, in short, circumstances that are so individual, that all our recollections of novels and stories in newspapers about children who have been kidnapped, confined, defiled, sold, abandoned, raped, beaten, and tortured come back in a rush, and the most suspicious people, such as judges, priests, and policemen, think, though without saying so: “One never knows,” and the fumes of sulphur that rise slowly from the charged pages of cheap novels lull them, praise them, and caress them. Culafroy invented a cruel-step-mother story. He was therefore put into jail, not out of unkindness, of hardness of heart, but out of habit. His cell was gloomy, narrow, and inhabited. In a patch of shadow, a heap of covers wiggled and disengaged a dirty, kinky, laughing little brown head.

  “Well, pal?”

  Culafroy had never seen anything so dirty as this cell, nor anything so sordid as that head. He did not answer. He was choking. Only evening, with the sluggishness it induces, could loosen his tongue, and open his heart.

  “Did you beat it from home?”

  Silence.

  “Oh come on, man, you can talk. You don't have to worry with me. We're among men.”

  He laughed and squinted his narrow eyes. He turned about in his pack of brown rags, which rattled like scrap iron. What was it all about? It was nighttime. Through the closed skylight shone the icy sky with its free and mobile stars. And the miracle, that catastrophic horror, horrifying as an angel, blazed forth, though radiant as the solution of a mathematical problem, frighteningly exact. The little hoodlum pulled back the covers daintily and asked:

  “Will you help me off with my leg?”

  He had a wooden leg which was fastened to a stump below the knee by a system of straps and buckles. Culafroy felt the same repulsion for all infirmities as he did for reptiles. He was assailed by the horror that kept him away from snakes, but Alberto was no longer there to charge him, by his presence, his gaze, and the laying on of his broad hands, with the faith that moves mountains. The other kid had undone the buckles and freed the rest of the thigh. With a sublime effort, Lou triumphed. He put his hand to the wood as if to a fire, tugged and found himself with the apparatus suddenly clasped to his chest. It was now a live limb, an individual, like an arm or leg detached from the trunk by a surgical operation. The peg spent the night standing up, a night of vigil, leaning in a corner against the wall. The little cripple also asked Lou to sing, but, thinking of Alberto, Lou answered that he was in mourning, and this reason did not surprise either of them. Culafroy had also given it so that it might be an adornment, so that black muslins might protect him from the cold and forlornness.

  “Sometimes I feel like beating it for Brazil, but with my trick paw it's not so easy.”

  To the cripple, Brazil was an island beyond the sun and seas, where men with rugged faces and the builds of athletes squatted in the evening around huge fires like the bonfires of Midsummer Night, peeling in fine curling strips enormous oranges, with the fruit in one hand and a broad-bladed knife in the other, as, in old pictures, emperors hold the scepter and the golden globe. This vision so obsessed him that he said: “. . . suns.” It was the word-poem that fell from the vision and began to petrify it; the night-cube of the cell, where the oranges attracted by the word “Brazil” whirled about like suns (which mingled with the legs of an acrobat in light blue tights executing the giant circle on the horizontal bar). Then, releasing a fragment of thought that had been working its way through him for some time, Lou declared: “What is the people's wish?” It was a phrase he had murmured mentally one evening when he foresaw himself in his prison. But did he actually foresee himself in the mahogany of the dressing table, or was it not rather that an unconscious perception associated the place (his room) and the past moment with the word and the present moment (but then what was it that brought back this memory of the room?), superimposing the two ideas so far as to make him think he had had a prevision?

  The children slept. Later they were committed to a home–or colony–for Child Correction. The very day that Lou-Divine arrived at the reformatory, he was put into a cell. He remained there, crouching, for an entire day. He was alive to what he suspected to be the mystery of child outcasts (they have their arms tattooed with the words “Child of Misfortune"). In the courtyard, little feet, dusty no doubt, were lifting heavy sabots in a very slow rhythm. He guessed that punished youngsters, forbidden to open their mouths, were walking round and round in circles.

  During a pause, he heard the following:

  “. . . through the window of the locksmith shop . . .”

  “. . .”

  “It's Germain.”

  “. . .”

  “All right, if I see him this evening.”

  “. . .”

  “Boy, that's some job.”

  The voice he heard was muffled–like the lanterns of prowlers of old–was directed toward a single point by a cupped hand framing the serious mouth of a child. It was addressed from the yard to a friend in a cell whom Culafroy did not hear answer. They might have been whispering about a convict who had escaped from the state prison, which was not far from the reformatory. Thus, the reformatory lived in the shadow of all those suns blazing away in their gray cells–the men–and the kids were waiting to be old enough to be with the big fellows whom they revered, whom they imagined swaggering in front of the guards, insolent and haughty. So the kids were waiting to be able to commit real crimes, as an excuse for going to hell.

  At the home, the other little tramps performed very skillfully their role of telltale imps. Their vocabulary was shrouded with magic formulas, their gestures were faunlike, woodland, and at the same time suggested alleys, patches of shadow, walls, scaled enclosures. Amidst this little world, regulating it just enough so that all that could be heard from it was an indecent snicker, there moved, borne up like ballerinas on their puffed skirts, the nuns. Immediately, Culafroy composed for them a grotesque ballet. According to the scenario, they all went out into the cloistered yard, and, as if they had–Gray Sisters, guardians of the hyperborean nights–got drunk on champagne, they squatted, raised their arms, and wagged their heads. In silence. Then they formed a circle, turned about like schoolgirls dancing a round and finally, like whirling dervishes, whirled around and around until they fell, dying with laughter, while the chaplain, with great dignity, walked through their midst carrying the monstrance. The sacrilegiousness of the dance–the sacrilege of having imagined it–disturbed Culafroy, just as he would have been disturbed, had he been a man, by the rape of a Jewess.

  Very quickly, despite his tendency to daydream, or perhaps because of this daydreaming, he became, in appearance, very much like the others. If his schoolmates had kept him out of their games, it had been owing to the slate house, which had made of him a prince. But here he was, in the eyes of the other kids only a vagabond who had been picked up just as they had been, a delinquent with no other oddity, though it was an impressive one, than his having come from somewhat far away. His finely cruel air, his exaggeratedly obscene and vulgar gestures, created such an image of him that the cynical and candid children recognized him as one of their own, and he, eager to be conscientious, to be the supposed character to the very end of the adventure, conformed to it. He did not want to disappoint. He joined in the rough stuff. With a few others of a small band that was as tightly knit as a gang, he helped commit a petty theft inside the home. The Mother
Superior was said to be of an illustrious family. Anyone trying to get a favor from her would invariably be told: “I am only the servant of the servant of the Lord.” So vainglorious a pedestal abashes one. She asked Lou why he had stolen. All he could answer was:

  “Because the others thought I was a thief.”

  The Mother Superior could make nothing of this juvenile nicety. He was called a hypocrite. Besides, Culafroy had an aversion to this nun which had come about in a strange way: the day of his arrival, she had taken him aside in her small reception room, which was very smartly set up, and had spoken to him about the Christian life. Lou listened to her quietly; he was about to answer with a sentence beginning: “The day of my first communion . . . ,” but a slip of the tongue made him say: “The day of my marriage . . .” Out of embarrassment, he lost his footing. He had the acute feeling of having committed an incongruity. He blushed, stammered, made efforts to rise to the surface; they were vain. The Mother Superior looked at him with what she called her smile of mercy. Culafroy, frightened at having stirred up within himself a whirlpool over a muddy bottom from which he rose up in a dress with a white satin train, wearing a crown of artificial orange blossoms, hated the old woman for having been the cause and witness of that artful and loveliest of adventures. “Of my marriage!”

  Here is what the nights in the home–or colony–were like. The heads disappear under the covers in the motionless hammocks of the dormitory. The custodian has reached his cubbyhole, which is at the far end. Silence is imperative for half an hour, the silence of the jungle, full of its pestilence, of its stone monsters, and as if attentive to the repressed sighs of tigers. In accordance with the rite, the children are reborn from the dead. Heads cautious as those of snakes, intelligent too, wily, venomous and poisonous, rise up; then, whole bodies emerge from the hammocks, without the hooks creaking. The general aspect–seen from above–of the dormitory remains unchanged. The colonists are crafty and know how to draw up and fill out the covers so that they seem to be wrapped around sleeping bodies. Everything goes on underneath. The lads quickly crawl together. The suspended city is deserted. Flint strikes steel, and with the burning wicks they light cigarettes as thin as straws. They smoke. Stretched out under the hammocks, in little groups, they draw up rigorous plans for escape, all doomed to fail. The colonists are living. They know they are free and masters of the darkness, and they form a kingdom which is administered very strictly, with its despot, peers, and commoners. Above them lie the white abandoned swings. The great nocturnal occupation, admirably suited for enchanting the darkness, is tattooing. Thousands and thousands of little jabs with a fine needle prick the skin and draw blood, and figures that you would regard as most extravagant are flaunted in the most unexpected places. When the rabbi slowly unrolls the Torah, a mystery sends a shudder through the whole epidermis, as when one sees a colonist undressing. The grimacing of all that blue on a white skin imparts an obscure but potent glamor to the child who is covered with it, as a neutral, pure column becomes sacred under the notches of the hieroglyphs. Like a totem pole. Sometimes the eyelids are marked, the armpits, the hollow of the groin, the buttocks, the penis, and even the soles of the feet. The signs were barbaric and as meaningful as the most barbaric signs: pansies, bows and arrows, hearts pierced and dripping blood, overlapping faces, stars, quarter-moons, lines, swallows, snakes, boats, triangular daggers and inscriptions, mottoes, warnings, a whole fearful and prophetic literature.

  Under the hammocks, amidst the magic of these occupations, loves were born, flared up, and died, with all the usual trappings of love: hatred, cupidity, tenderness, consolation, revenge.

  What made the colony a realm distinct from the realm of the living was the change of symbols and, in certain cases, of values. The colonists had their own dialect, which was closely related to that of the prisons, and hence a particular ethics and politics. The form of government, which was involved with the religion, was the regime of force, protector of Beauty. Their laws are seriously observed. The colonists are enemies of laughter, which might unsettle them. They show a rare aptitude for the tragic attitude. Crime begins with a carelessly worn beret. These laws are not the products of abstract decrees: they were taught by some hero who had come from a heaven of force and Beauty and whose spiritual and temporal power existed truly by divine right. Besides, they do not escape the destinies of heroes, and they can be met every day in the colony yard, in the midst of mortals, bearing the features of a journeyman baker or locksmith. The trousers of the colonists have only one pocket: this is something else that isolates them from the world. A single pocket, on the left side. A whole social system is upset by this simple detail of dress. Their trousers have only one pocket, as the skin-tight breeches of the devil have none, as those of sailors have no fly, and there is no doubt but that they are humiliated by this, as if someone had amputated a male sexual attribute–which is really what is involved. Pockets, which play so important a role in childhood, are to us a sign of superiority over girls. In the colony, as in the navy, it's the trousers that count, and if you want to be a man, “you defend your pants.” I am amazed that adults have been so bold as to set up seminaries for children who are preparing for the role of dream characters, and that they have been shrewd enough to recognize the details that would make of children these little monsters, whether malicious or gracious, or light or sparkling or uneasy or sneaky or simple.

  It was the sisters’ clothes that gave Culafroy the idea of running away. All he had to do was put into action a plan that the clothes conceived by themselves. The nuns would leave their linen hanging in a drying room for nights on end, and they locked their stockings and coifs in a workroom. He quickly learned which was the right door and the way it opened. With spy like prudence, he spoke of his plan to a wide-awake youngster.

  “If a guy wanted to . . .”

  “Well, shall we clear out?”

  “Right!”

  “You think we'll be able to go far?”

  “Sure, farther than this way (pointing to his ridiculous uniform), and besides we'll be able to beg.”

  Don't complain about improbability. What's going to follow is false, and no one has to accept it as gospel truth. Truth is not my strong point. But “one must lie in order to be true.” And even go beyond. What truth do I want to talk about? If it is really true that I am a prisoner who plays (who plays for himself) scenes of the inner life, you will require nothing other than a game.

  So our children waited for a night well-disposed to their nerves in order to steal a skirt, jacket, and coif; but finding only shoes that were too narrow, they kept their sabots. Through the window of the washroom they went out into the dark street. It must have been midnight. It took them only a second to get dressed under a porch. They helped each other and put the coifs on with great care. For a moment, the darkness was disturbed by the rustlings of woolens, the click of pins between teeth, by such whisperings as: “Tighten my string . . . . Move over.” In an alley, sighs were tossed from a window. This taking of the veil made of the town a dark cloister, the dead city, the valley of Desolation.

  In the home, they were probably slow to notice the theft of the clothes, for nothing was done during the day “to stop the fugitives.” They walked fast. The peasants were hardly surprised; rather, they were amazed to see these two serious-looking little nuns, one in sabots and the other limping, hurrying along the roads with dainty gestures: two delicate fingers lifting up three pleats of a heavy gray skirt. Then hunger gripped their stomachs. They dared not ask anyone for a bite of bread, and, as they were on the road leading to Culafroy's village, they would probably have got there very soon, were it not that, in the late afternoon, a shepherd's dog came up and sniffed at Pierre. The shepherd, who was young and had been brought up in the fear of God, whistled to his dog, who did not obey. Pierre thought he had been discovered. He rushed off with jittery agility. He ran limping to a lone umbrella pine at the edge of the road and he climbed up. Culafroy had the presence of
mind to climb up another tree nearer by. Seeing which, the dog got down on its knees beneath the blue sky, in the evening air, and uttered the following prayer: “Since the sisters, like magpies, make their nests in umbrella pines, Lord, grant me remission for my sins.” Then, having crossed himself, he got up and rejoined the flock. To his master the shepherd he related the miracle of the pines, and all the villages around were informed of it that very evening.