by Inès Bayard
Marie doesn’t tell herself it’s over. She knows this is just the beginning. The entrance to her building is a little farther up the street, on the corner of the boulevard Voltaire. It’s not quite eight o’clock; Laurent is most likely having his dinner. He must have been on the way to the restaurant, joshing with his coworkers and his new client while his wife was being raped by her boss, penetrated in every orifice on the seat of a car. She goes into the building and meets the caretaker wheeling out the trash cans. “Hello, Madame Campan, how are you?” Marie keeps her head down and slips away into the shadows in the corridor, answering with “A little tired, but I’m fine! Good night” as she goes up in the elevator. She hopes he didn’t notice anything unusual. She knows already that she’s in the process of hiding the evil event, that she won’t say anything, that no one will ever know about the assault.
The apartment is shrouded in darkness partially diluted by the open curtains allowing light from the boulevard into the living room. There’s no one there. She’d like to call her husband to reassure him. Every step toward the kitchen is painful. The central corridor that leads to all the rooms in the apartment seems never-ending, almost ridiculous. She picks up the handset that she left on the sideboard this morning and dials Laurent’s number. She hopes he doesn’t pick up so she can leave a controlled message with no fluctuations or lurching in her breathing. He doesn’t answer. “Yes, it’s me. So I finally got home, one of the Métro lines was blocked…I’m going to take a shower and go to bed, I’m exhausted. I hope everything’s going well with your client. I love you.”
She hangs up, feeling absent, empty. She thinks this is best, and anyway, if she wanted to admit anything to him she wouldn’t find the right way to do it. He would always look at her differently, not only as his wife but as the victim, the woman who was raped, sodomized for the first time by another penis than his. Marie is suddenly aware of the smell of vomit on her. She doesn’t have the strength to take a shower but she still needs to. If she were single she would just take some sleeping pills and go to bed, but if she doesn’t wash now Laurent will notice this aftershave that isn’t his on his wife’s body, the sheets will be impregnated with the smell, and everything will fall apart all over again.
Standing in the middle of the bathroom she slowly unbuttons her blouse and painfully lowers her slacks with the shreds of her torn panties still clinging to them. Blood has dried on her thighs. Foul-smelling brownish marks trail over her stomach. Now completely naked, she catches her reflection in the mirror above the basin. She moves closer and makes out traces of dried semen at the corner of her mouth. One eye is slightly swollen where he slapped her, but that will almost certainly have disappeared by tomorrow. This vision of herself floods her with unbounded sadness. The anger is sure to come later. The scalding water runs between her breasts, washes over her stomach, flows down the nape of her neck and relaxes her muscles. She collapses against the wall, hunches over, limply holding the showerhead above her. Everything she does becomes an ordeal, as if she’s never previously noticed how difficult it is to perform on a daily basis—stepping out of the shower, wrapping herself in a towel, putting on her pajamas. She knows she won’t be able to get to sleep tonight, nor perhaps for days to come. She needs sleeping pills, but in a flash it comes back to her: after Laurent had a bad reaction to a drug past its use-by date, she decided to have a clean-out. She clearly remembers throwing out the last sleeping tablets. The clock in the corridor says it’s ten o’clock. The pharmacy will be closed and she would never be able to go out again anyway.
The bedroom is a mess. Laurent was looking all over the apartment for his files again this morning and he thought that maybe they were hiding under the sheets. Everything is upside down. Marie never berates him for anything but right now a diffuse anger spreads through her whole body. She was raped this evening, assaulted, attacked, and she can’t even have sleeping pills or her husband by her side or a tidy bed. She buries herself under the cold sheets, turns out the small bedside light, and waits with her eyes open for sleep to be so good as to take her.
* * *
—
She thinks it’s about midnight when she hears Laurent come home. She recognizes his footsteps, his stride, his rhythm. From the way he lumbers around the hall she can tell he’s had a little too much to drink. That’s good, he’s sure to sleep. Every creak of the wooden floor stresses her. She wishes she could open the windows and jump into thin air before her husband reaches the bedroom. He sidles up close to her, his body hot and naked. “Are you asleep, honey?” She immediately closes her eyes, relaxes the muscles of her face, slightly slows her breathing and gives a few soft grunts. Laurent eventually turns away. His body rolls to the other side of the bed, far away from her. He’s a happy, healthy, well-fed man full of drink and plans for the future, he can fall asleep in a matter of minutes. His wife on the other hand knows she’ll have to pretend to live and sleep for many days to come. Marie opens her eyes. The silence is interrupted by the sound of scooters on the boulevard. Her eyes don’t move, staring straight ahead. Deep in the night, facing the wall that she’s previously looked at while bowled over by pleasure, the trouble down below feels to her like fate’s revenge on a life it deems too easy.
Marie got up several times in the night; Laurent didn’t notice a thing. She thought he’d be very tired this morning after his long evening but he clearly isn’t. She watches in silence as he paces around the kitchen. “I’m sure I put it here when I came home.” Marie doesn’t react. “I’ll end up putting tracking devices on all my files so I can find them. I’m super-late!” Marie can’t remember a single day when she hasn’t helped him find his stuff. Her husband notices something different this morning. “You okay, honey? You seem miles away.” She spots Laurent’s green folder on the fruit dish. She doesn’t tell him, waits for him to fret a little as he watches the minutes trickle by. She’s just about to tell him when he sees it. “Ah, there it is. I knew it was in the kitchen! Okay, I’m off to work, Jean’s waiting for me. And don’t forget we’re going to Paul and Sophia’s for dinner this evening. They’re expecting us at eight. Love you!” He drops his cup in the sink, kisses his wife, and runs out of the kitchen.
Obviously, Marie had forgotten this dinner. The stigmata of last night’s attack materialize again. Her vagina hurts, it’s burning and painfully swollen. All her joints are stiff, her knees and wrists ache. Maybe she should see a doctor. It’s eight thirty, time to go to work.
When she’s downstairs she looks for her bicycle in the building’s small inner courtyard. Gripped with sudden panic, she rings the caretaker’s doorbell. “Hi, sorry to disturb you, but did you see my bicycle?” As she asks the question she remembers: the remains of her bike are still at République. And then she was raped. She backs away slowly. “I’m so sorry, I remember now. I left it at work.” The caretaker smiles at her, thinking she must be working too hard and is tired this morning.
* * *
—
The day seems to go on forever. She wishes she could slip away and lie down, sleep for a lifetime. She sits facing her elderly customer with a rigid smile on her face. And yet the woman is promising a handsome investment, more than three hundred thousand euros of life insurance. With this contract Marie could make her grand entrance into the top three of the sales team for this quarter. Her coworkers will be full of admiration and the CEO will congratulate her personally. He raped her yesterday evening. Marie can’t stay upright on her chair any longer. Her lower back hurts, the pain in her vagina is radiating up to her stomach, wracking her guts with sharp spasms, swelling and subsiding, making it difficult for her to concentrate. “Is that your husband in the photo?” It was four years ago when Laurent arranged a romantic trip to Venice for their anniversary. They were happy. Marie had asked a tourist to take their picture in the Piazza San Marco. At the last minute the ice cream Laurent was holding fell right down the front of his shirt, making his wife and
all the witnesses in the background laugh. Marie thinks about the dinner this evening. She doesn’t know how she’s going to hide everything from start to finish without arousing suspicion.
She’s having lunch with Hervé today. He tells her how helpless he feels with his wife and daughter. Yesterday they had the nerve to open the cage that housed a turtledove he found six years ago in the woods in Orne. When he came home at the end of his day’s work he found the cage empty but for a few feathers, and his wife and daughter laughed in his face at his despair. Marie finds this unbearably sad and wonders just how much pain you can cause another person without suffering any physical consequences. The two women are being so cruel, surely Hervé’s distress will eventually spill over into violence. A good gunshot in the head to each.
* * *
—
Laurent comes home earlier than usual so he has time to get ready for dinner. Marie is rummaging frantically through her walk-in closet, she has no idea which dress to wear for dinner. Too dark an outfit would only emphasize her mood. Something too colorful might be misinterpreted as a sign of happiness. Pants are out of the question, her vulva can’t tolerate the pressure of thick fabric. She can’t wear panties, just very fine pantyhose. Laurent notices this when she takes off a dress for the tenth time. He comes over to her from behind, strokes her breasts, and plants a kiss in the crook of her neck. “You’re very sexy in your pantyhose…We could get to work already, you know…We still have a little time.” She’s forgotten about the baby. The plan that so thrilled her only two days ago now seems laughable, stupid, disgusting.
Laurent is turned on, she can feel him hardening against her buttocks. She lets him have his way, can’t see any alternative. She’s never rejected him, he’d think it was odd if she did now for no obvious reason. Being tired won’t always be an excuse for escaping her conjugal duty, especially if they’re still planning to have a baby. Laurent lowers her pantyhose, turns his wife around in his arms and lays her down on the bed. His hand slips inside her, strokes her with slow circular movements. He kisses her, explores her mouth with his tongue, takes a handful of her hair, pinches her nipples between thumb and forefinger. Marie is frightened it will hurt. She prepares for the pain she will feel when he penetrates her, taking a breath in and letting it out slowly. He drives into her. Her body tears on the inside as if a great heated file were being inserted into her vagina. Her mouth twists and she groans in pain. Laurent pushes harder. Every thrust of his hips, the least undulation is torture. She suddenly feels as if she is being drained of all her blood, she can feel her organs sliding downward inside her, a gaping wound opening up in her stomach. Laurent plunges a finger into her anus and she screams. He pulls it out. She feels raped all over again, by her husband. He’s not noticing her, is tormenting her body, inflicting superficial pain to escape the confines of an excitement that’s become all too familiar. Now there’s no distinguishing between the two situations. Her rapist’s sadism feels to her just like Laurent’s, the husband who doesn’t notice her suffering. “I’m coming…Wait, I’m coming…” He comes inside her. She’s going to throw up, represses it. A few vestiges of her lunch come into her mouth. She smiles at him, puts her arms around him, breaks away. He watches in silence as she gets up. He can’t possibly know that this second ordeal endured by his wife marks the end of any compromising on her part.
This dinner is a bad idea. On the way there Marie thinks about how she’s going to say hello to her friends, about the moment when she has to sit down at the table, evading certain questions, certain forms of eye contact. Paul and his wife Sophia live in the Monge neighborhood. Marie and Laurent had hesitated for a long time before settling on their apartment in Charonne; they’d been offered an exceptional property on the rue Daubenton but didn’t yet have the funds to afford it, much to the disappointment of Marie and Sophia, who’d been friends for years and liked to go to the Sunday market together on the rue Mouffetard.
“Are you staying in the car, or what?” Agreeing to make love with Laurent before the meal was also a bad idea. Her body had begged her to stop but it was too late and now she must simply wait for the pain to subside a little. Marie finds it hard to get out of the car. Her husband slams the door, doesn’t notice the trouble she’s having. “I do like Charonne but you gotta admit this neighborhood’s quieter. It’s better for kids.” He still hasn’t given up.
Paul and Sophia have a three-year-old son and live in a large duplex apartment. He’s a gynecologist and she a dental surgeon. Marie has always found it practical having friends with a medical bent, but this evening she’s wary of Paul’s experience. After the rape she thought of the sexual diseases she might pass on to Laurent and the psychological trauma of abused women, but she hopes she can forget, erase all the suffering of this period. She’s going to take refuge in her work and her marriage. Perhaps the longing to have a child with her husband will resurface in a few days, stronger than before.
Sophia appears on the landing looking radiant in a loose-fitting orange tunic. She takes Marie warmly in her arms. A delicious smell of Middle Eastern spices hangs in the air in their living room. “I made a couscous—Granny Zara’s recipe!” Sophia was born in Morocco. She’s proud of her roots and makes a point of passing on a few words of Arabic to her son so that he’s familiar with his second culture. Paul is not very enthusiastic about this and thinks it will end up giving the child identity issues. “There she goes again! We’re not in the medina now, baby!” They tease each other, laugh about it, understand each other. Marie envies their natural intimacy. Maybe Paul would have known straightaway, unlike Laurent.
Every subject they broach around the table strikes her as dull. She’s distracted, far removed from the dinner, aware of the sounds without really hearing or understanding them. She stares blankly in one direction and then turns and alights on another. A few words ring out: “She was covered in bruises. Her body swollen and bleeding. She was most likely raped several times.” Marie’s eyes light up, her body is electrified, she wakes up at last. Paul is talking about one of his patients, a girl of seventeen who was beaten by her father for years and probably raped by him, and who came to see Paul in his office after a violent altercation. “When I examined her everything was confirmed. I didn’t even need a speculum.” There’s a brief silence. The subject is disturbing, a bit disgusting. Sophia gets up to fetch the couscous from the kitchen while Paul continues to give details of the story.
Laurent doesn’t seem put out, continues to chew absentmindedly on his piece of bread, as if to pass the time. “But are you sure it’s the father? No, it’s just these days it seems like everyone’s been raped and the perpetrators are named before anyone can be sure it’s really them.” Marie doesn’t say anything, this contribution smacks her full in the face. She feels dirty and ashamed before her husband, suddenly guilty for what she may have provoked the night before. Paul is used to this sort of discussion and tries to present a different argument. Good, evil, men accused of rape turning out to be victims of spite, the public lynching of some men, the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, Polanski…
Sophia comes back into the dining room and puts a large colorful earthenware dish on the table. The couscous is almost overflowing. “Maybe we could talk about something else? I mean we could do without your work stories about rape when we’re trying to eat.” Marie wants them to talk about it. She wants to get up and scream that she too has been raped, by her boss, and she understands this young girl. She wants to announce loud and clear to her husband and friends that she was forced to take a penis in her mouth, in her ass and in her vagina, that her body was butchered, she had blood on her thighs, semen in the corner of her mouth, puke all over her breasts, and shit spread over her stomach. She could do it. Her mind fights to speak out. But she doesn’t have the courage. She’s afraid she’ll destroy everything, lose her husband and friends, be judged, be suspected of lying or exaggerating. She decides against it.
They m
ove on to something else. The subject is changed. “So, Laurent told us the good news. Enjoy yourselves while you can because they don’t leave you in peace for a single night in the first year!” The baby again. Marie doesn’t think she can keep this up. Her vagina feels stretched, torn between her thighs. She slips away to the bathroom, as natural as can be. Her breathing accelerates, on the verge of a panic attack. The walls close in, the paintings hanging along the corridor talk to her, criticizing her weakness. Uncontrollable tears spill down her cheeks, distorting her face, smudging her makeup. Her reflection appears. She looks like a whore. A raped whore. A few smears of blood seep into the toilet paper.
When she joins the others again, there are North African gazelle horn pastries proudly displayed on the table. “Is everything okay? You look a little tired this evening.” Marie smiles, claims she hasn’t been feeling too good since yesterday. Her husband puts his arms around her, cuddles her, and says they’ll leave soon. Marie drains her coffee as she listens to Sophia’s ideas for their next winter vacation. The four of them could go to Switzerland together. Her mother will look after their son. Skiing in the glorious alpine landscapes around Geneva, nothing better just before Christmas. Marie is mortified, she realizes just how much the future means to people. No one ever talks about the present, and not much about the past. The evening when she was raped is already long ago, almost forgotten, obsolete. Even if she spoke about it publicly, she couldn’t be sure how people would react. She’ll have to see her attacker in the workplace, maybe even accept his congratulations for the contract she will soon have signed, walking beside him, smiling at him and smelling his aftershave. He will have forgotten, time will pass, and justice will too. The facts will have lapsed.