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All Men Want to Know Page 4
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I think about Laurence, harming herself because she is gay. We all do it, for the same reason; my drugs are fear, anxiety and the negative image I have of myself. I don’t like myself. I’m not ashamed any more, but I don’t like what I am, that hasn’t changed; I wonder what I can do to start liking myself more, to trust myself, to recognize my own worth – it may not be much, but it’s all I have, I’m aware of that. Will another woman give me what I’m lacking, by desiring me?
On Rue de la Roquette, I look around, searching. The women all look like her; I gaze at them one by one, my heart starts to beat faster every time, but it’s never her.
The image of my mother appears, superimposed on Julia’s, then melts away – I say goodbye. I feel sad, I’m afraid of bad things to come. I punish myself, again. I walk past number 54 on Rue de la Roquette without stopping. I walk all the way to Père Lachaise Cemetery.
If I am to live, I must leave my childhood behind.
Knowing
My father arrived in Marseille on a cargo ship at the end of the 1950s, took a bus to Toulouse, a train to Paris and then another train to Vannes where he spent a year at school as a boarder before he passed his baccalauréat – he worked hard, came top of his class despite starting at a disadvantage; he adapted, survived, but he hasn’t forgotten the journey, the cold, the items in his suitcase – one suit, three white shirts – nor has he forgotten what he was told after the war was over: ‘Your brother died with the guerrillas, his body hasn’t been found but one of his comrades made it to Tunisia where he kept a promise he’d made to your brother. He phoned Radio Tunis and requested a song by your favourite singer, Mohamed Abdel Wahab. He asked that the song be played for you in the name of the one who loved you more than anything else in the world. May God hold you in his embrace.’
Remembering
I walk down to the Place d’Hydra with my father, my hand in his, wearing tracksuit bottoms with a white tank top and flip-flops.
I’m allowed to dress as I please. My role models are the boys of Algiers on their home-made skateboards, hitching rides behind cars and trolleybuses, my wild, crazy brothers, handsome, muscular, free, playing their reckless games. I dream of joining them.
They’re the same boys who insult my mother, expose themselves to her, lust after her. I share their violence, but I turn it against myself.
My father and I do the rounds of the shopkeepers, the butcher, the grocer, the baker, the florist. They run their fingers through my short hair, they do it to greet me, to show they accept me – at least that’s how I see it.
I stay glued to my father’s side. I’m with the men, one of them, I’m a man, my father’s son.
Remembering
We’d chosen her dress together during a visit to Paris, at the Emmanuelle Khanh outlet store on Rue Pierre-Lescot. There were no changing rooms, I held her bag, the clothes she handed to me. She went behind a clothes rack to change.
It was a yellow dress, with small red and black hearts, a low neckline. My mother looked at herself in the mirror and said: ‘It’s a bit like a bridesmaid’s dress, I’ll buy it.’
We’re not allowed to talk about her being attacked, it’s a closed subject, a secret room with a hidden key.
I wonder who in the town has nails long enough to rip through fabric like that.
Remembering
Ali and I are brother and sister in violence. We’re a danger to other people, to each other.
He ‘comes up’ to my place and I ‘go down’ to his; we have our own geography, a geography of our bodies, a force that pulls us together and pushes us apart when the tensions between us outstrip the pleasure of getting together, being together, inventing a single person made up of the two of us, half female, half male.
We spend whole weekends together when my sister stays over at her friends’ houses; I’m excluded from her circle because of our age difference. I wait with Ali for her to return, though he’s not a substitute for her. I worry for her when she comes home in tears and locks herself in her room to listen to Serge Reggiani or Léo Ferré; she doesn’t talk about what’s making her unhappy. It’s different with Ali, we tell each other when we’re angry, when we’ve done something wrong.
We prowl through the gardens of the apartment block, two maniacs in search of fire, we invent magic potions in our bedrooms, at his house, at my house, poisonous concoctions to destroy our foes; our enemies abound, we’re afraid one might overpower us, crush our deadly, invincible, unrivalled partnership.
Our energy is sexual, devoid of tenderness; our bodies are drawn together, they break apart, come back together, not in desire, but like conjoined twins taking their strength from one another, preparing to ravish an imaginary prey together.
We’re children, making up stories about women, love affairs, break-ups.
Ali doesn’t ask why I use the masculine form to talk about myself, he accepts it quite naturally, that’s why we’re friends. I’m not like other girls, I’m not really a girl. He’s attracted to the boy in me, he’s the one who usually ends up in tears at the end of the day.
I wipe away his tears with my right hand, the hand that was choking him a few moments earlier. I call him my ‘river’.
Each of us is invaded by the other; my sister captures Ali’s voice one day on her tape recorder, and his is the voice I miss the most when our box of cassettes disappears.
Ali is the first to see me for what I really am – a flesh-eating plant.
Knowing
My mother was born before the Second World War; she lived through the bombing raids, and this gives me another reason to admire her.
I picture the sky black with planes, but my mother says it wasn’t like that: ‘We couldn’t see the planes at first, we heard them getting closer and then all of a sudden they erupted and rained bombs down on the city.’
As soon as the siren sounded they had to go down to the shelter. It was her favourite moment, like a game. There she was, underground, with the neighbours from Rue d’Antrain, her parents, her brother, her two sisters, it was like being in a cabin. It was magical to think this could be their last night, exhilarating to be confronted with the fragile nature of things and relationships.
The war marked the end of her childhood.
As the bombs fell close to their building, shaking the walls of the cellar they were sheltering in, she felt an overwhelming love for her family, more powerful than any she had ever felt before.
Her father was different in those days. He was gentler, more caring. It was a time of heroism. One night, he had a prophetic dream: their house, destroyed in an explosion.
They moved to a farm in the country; their house in Rue d’Antrain was bombed soon after they moved. The farm was paradise, the animals my mother looked after were so much more docile than people. She’d never known happiness like this before, wouldn’t experience it again until she travelled in the desert in Algeria, going back and forth from one village to another, camping out at night, life in the wild.
Her father decided the family should stay on the farm until the end of the war. He owned the farm and his land was rented out to local farmers; he’d built an empire ‘by the sweat of his brow’, as he liked to say – it was his favourite expression.
He carried on working and came home to visit his family once a week, by car or on his motorbike. He owned five dental offices in the area, including one ‘mobile’ office that went everywhere with him. Nothing stopped him; all he wanted to do was ‘tend’ patients and ‘amass wealth’, or so my mother would say whenever she was angry at this father who worked too much and loved her too little.
In the countryside, rationing tokens and hardships were a thing of the past.
My mother pictured the city reduced to ashes.
Her new life was better, by far.
Remembering
In my new incarnation, I wander through the shopping centre at Beaugrenelle. I think of it as a ship. I run around in the square in front, beneath the concrete tower b
locks.
I’m searching for my lost childhood. I’ve started my life again from scratch, without the incomparable light of Algiers that once illuminated my days. I’m losing my way.
I have no trouble fitting in at school, despite being so different. I’ve tried to stifle my otherness but it goes deeper than I realized. My vibrations must be out of tune with the other girls’ but luckily no one seems to be turned off. People seek my company, I’m the perfect companion for skipping school, breaking the rules; I make everything seem like a game, I’m tough enough for two, I come from Algeria, that feared land of dreams. I have an advantage over the others, I know about life – I’ve hardly lived yet but I’ve seen both the light and the dark sides of life.
I spend as much time with boys as I do with girls. We watch a film at one of the boys’ houses one day, The Story of O. We stop the tape at the parts we find most tantalizing – scenes of abuse and submission.
I don’t tell anyone, but I’ve read the book the film is based on; much of it was lost on me, but I understood what it said about power and its pleasures, about the satisfactions of dominating and being dominated.
The book was in my mother’s library in Algiers. I read it sitting on the carpet in the living room, the sun’s rays slicing into my back, the words like daggers on the page. I wasn’t shocked, I recognized the violence in those words; they opened avenues of desire in me I hadn’t known existed, showed me that pain could lead to ecstasy and gave me an image that will always be with me, of two women together.
Remembering
We mark out our route to the south on the map.
It will take us across the small desert, through El Oued, El Goléa, through the great desert of the trans-Saharan route, past the oil wells of In Salah, then towards Adrar, Tamanrasset, the landscape unfolding before us, a succession of vistas: sand, earth, rock. I picture the Sahara as it appears in prehistoric cave drawings, with strange beasts, lakes, greenery. I imagine the force of the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the terror they must have awakened; this is where we began, in this cauldron, this chaos, I know it, I feel it. I feel it when I’m drawing in my bedroom, sketching the portrait of the faceless man, the alien; I feel it again later when I see the same image on a rock in Tassili and wonder if I’d really seen it when I drew it or if I’d invented it, in thrall to the phantoms of the desert.
My mother wears leather gloves to drive, her palms too sweaty to grip the wheel. We peel oranges for her, she needs the liquid, it’s all we can do; it calms her nerves too though she tries not to show how scared she is. ‘Sing me that song “Breakfast in America”,’ she says whenever she has to overtake a petrol tanker. The road is narrow, like the valley of death – if my mother’s steering is off by just a few centimetres we’ll be smashed to pieces.
Becoming
Elula, the owner of the Kat, asks us to leave. A woman has smashed a glass over Ely’s head and Elula’s afraid it’ll turn into a brawl. She’s been trying to keep a low profile in the neighbourhood since a crime was reported on Rue du Vieux Colombier.
The mafia control the nightclubs. The police provide protection for the Kat. I have fantasies of secret deals – protection in exchange for girls and a share of the takings. I make up all kinds of things. I’m waiting for Julia.
I don’t want to leave. I try to dissociate myself from Ely. She’s just forced herself on a girl in a couple, kissed her. I thought it was funny, but love between women is no joke, it’s life or death from the word go, there’s more at stake here than the simple fact of being in love: finding love means being saved. I understand, although Ely says that real love never lasts more than two years, especially a love born of the night.
Elula eventually grabs hold of my arm: ‘You too, get out!’ People assume I’m part of Ely’s group, even though I’m not really.
I was hoping to see Julia, I was waiting for her as I do every evening at the Kat, and now I’m out in the street with Ely, Lizz and Laurence. We head for the Seine, in search of a bar; it’s late and the cafes are all shut except the ones on the Grands Boulevards so we decide to walk over there.
Ely, standing on the wall of a bridge, threatens to jump off. No one takes her seriously – Ely loves life too much, girls, drinking, partying. I sometimes think she’s invented the story about her mother, that things didn’t happen as she claims, she didn’t inherit that much money, she says it because it makes her feel secure with the girls; she’d like to be able to buy them, to buy their love. Money is her safeguard against loneliness. She’s got it all wrong though, she knows she has, she drinks to forget she knows. Ely’s young but she’s afraid she’ll end up by herself.
We keep walking towards the other side of the river, ignoring her insults: ‘Wait, you bitches! Wait for me!’ I keep my distance. Laurence walks over to me, Lizz tries to shove her away, but Laurence says: ‘It starts slowly, you know, it has to work its way into the brain, little glimmers at first, kind of like a light bulb, that’s it, little filaments lighting up inside my head, one at a time, inside my body. You have to be patient, it comes on gradually, especially if it’s just smack, a smidgen, that’s all I ever take. I’ve got it all under control. Lizz doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t know how good I am at it, or else she doesn’t want to know – she has a low opinion of me, thinks I’m stupid, talks down to me, doesn’t tell me anything important. We hardly talk to each other any more, not since we moved in together, you know. I thought it would bring us together if she moved in with me, but it hasn’t, not in the least, not even in bed. When we’re together, it’s like she’s drawn an invisible line between us, a line I’m not allowed to cross, no wonder I’m off my head after that. She stays because I’m beautiful. I’m not bragging, I know how good I look, not that I’m proud of it, it’s got nothing to do with me – sometimes I’d like to be shot of it, I’d like people to like me for myself, for who I am inside, not for my eyes, my mouth, my body, no, but for all the thoughts I have that make up who I am, for my past too. Lizz doesn’t know a thing about my past, she never asks, she doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want anyone else to have me either, she’d be jealous. I’m just one of her possessions, something she’s added to her collection without really noticing, something she doesn’t want to give away, and all the time I’m crazy about her, even though she’s cruel to me, or maybe, now that I think about it, maybe because she’s so cruel to me. We’re all a bit masochistic, aren’t we, let’s face it, it’s not easy loving women. It’s a big mountain to climb, you never get to the top, it’s always shrouded in mist and there’s no light up there, and all this stuff, coke, uppers, Es, it’s to break up the fog. You don’t get it, any of you, but I have to live with it every day. I can’t see the light unless I’m wasted, that’s when I see the truth, and when I look into your eyes, I can tell you’re a good person, you’re not cut out for this whole scene – it’ll drag you down, you wait.’
Knowing
After the Liberation my grandfather found a new house to buy in Rennes, near the Thabor gardens; the house in Rue d’Antrain had been completely destroyed, reduced to a crater. My mother says that being a survivor gave her a different perspective on life, with the possibility of death woven through it – fate alone can decide and it answers to no one.
The new house was spacious, with six floors, an attic, a garden, a kitchen garden, one large living room and one smaller salon, the blue salon, decorated in the style of Madame Lanvin’s boudoir, complete with tapestries, velvet sofas and armchairs, china, medals and collectibles; my grandmother didn’t know that her last days would be spent in this room, that she would die there.
My mother says it all started with this house – the depression, the violence, the fear – she believes a house has an effect on its occupants. The walls are its memory.
When they moved in, they found German army uniforms in the kitchen, with champagne glasses, a birthday cake – the party had been interrupted.
Her father became stricter, he was like a
madman sometimes, no one ever knew why. He would lock her in the basement with her brother when they misbehaved. Her mother was distant, cut off from the family, treating them either with pity or with indifference; her work was her refuge, work that gave her no pleasure.
From time to time, guests would stay in the bedrooms on the upper floors; the house was more than big enough, there was plenty of room. My grandmother loved to entertain, she came back to life in the company of other people: the clairvoyant who conducted seances with her, the artist who painted portraits of her three daughters, Monsieur B., a childhood friend of my grandfather’s, who my mother describes as if she were evoking a character in a film, a film whose images live on, images of a life that isn’t real, a life gone by, erased by the passing of the years.
Remembering
In Algiers I see shadows moving across my bedroom walls at night, coming towards me and retreating, entities with a life of their own. I’m sure they’re trying to communicate. I keep myself awake, praying they’ll reappear. I lie in wait, hoping for a sign.
I put more faith in heaven than in life on earth. Because of Ali. He wants to kill me, I know it. I’m part of him, his darker side – I have to be eliminated.
We’re with his mother in Zeralda, a beach resort about ten kilometres from Algiers. The water is grey and cool, not good for swimming. Jellyfish lie washed up on the sand by the dozen. We poke at them with a stick to empty them of their transparent liquid – we think of it as their blood.