Fences in Breathing (5 page)
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She has always known how to put her hope to the test. From time to time, the image of the oh-so-blue eyes of her mother lying in bed or shivering in the bathtub comes back to haunt her. This evening, Laure would like to talk to somebody, but nobody in town remembers her. Nor does she remember them, in any case. Her head is filled with nothing but the thousands of pages printed in the name of the Law so that the Law might prevail, infiltrate every dimension of society like carnivorous water, soaking up millions of inkblot citizens. One does not touch the Law without another law authorizing one to do so. A law like Russian nested dolls. Laure always hopes to be able to touch a speck of truth at the bottom of each one of them. But today, why so many mirrors in a simple hotel room? All these facets of the same person, the pain that becomes lighter or heavier depending on whether you are facing yourself or about to turn to face someone else.
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Evenings when tiredness is too great and allows nostalgia to settle into the château, Tatiana asks me to read to her from a novel by Dostoevsky. She insists I use a silver ritual pointer that belonged to her grandparents.
Yad
. I learned
the word one day in Paris when visiting the Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme. Because of its link to reading, I immediately incorporated it into the other language, hoping to ensure its long life. ‘Use the
yad
, it will propel me into another world, because, I confess, this one weighs heavily on me.’
I read, the secretary joins us. She does not begrudge me taking her place. She knows that what links me to Tatiana Beaujeu Lehmann is as deep as the lake, which has become an obsessive presence in my story. After the reading, the secretary sits at the piano. An outdated world envelops us and we find ourselves at the mercy of a great feeling of melancholy and fervour. During these sessions, I remain on the alert, amazed at hearing my own voice, husky and multiple, drifting through time, disappearing then re-emerging in me, a foreigner.
Every fly has its shadow.
Châteaubriand
A light at the end of the hallway is I realize quite clearly in the other language a light bulb a thing deep in the eyes that encroaches on words like a symphony in a park on a beautiful July afternoon with traffic noises in the distance and fragments of silence strewn here and there in my life I’ve been told I should repeat the same words often and not be afraid of burning like money in your pocket and that nobody would complain because the more we are able to catch new expressions in another language the more it becomes legible and beautiful with new sounds so I am going directly to invent the horizon and be careful of my mother’s bare feet on the bathroom tiles while my brother waits for me in the kitchen making holes in the hard oak with a knife like he has done ever since he started chasing after words I often caught sight of him naked he was indeed holding his knife in front of him and opening an armoire to retrieve a sketchbook or a message in a
white envelope I know I watched him get on tiptoes and he was talking to the armoire singing a tune our mother loved before her death she who all her life wanted to live at the bottom of the lake there to sing while blowing bubbles unable to get to the end of the lyrics while I spread the tablecloth to the vast confines of the universe where reindeer reign as do polar bears always very white when running at the foot of the mountains on the turquoise ice of the glaciers great mirror this I know at the core of my soul although I often remain trapped in the image and the impasse of the violence of glaciers when they start to crack like ice floes I know you have to run and breathe deeply nobody is guilty of breathing well nor of breathing loudly like at the movies or like Charles when he is making his holes in the wooden floor with nails like mouths round and dark awaiting a straw a little pea or a marble or eyes that can see from the inside and that pierce my soul the floor is also a coffin my mother often went dancing there on days when a friend brought cake recipes and Charles ate all the apples yelling Adam Adam it’s mine what are we going to devour today the tree or the living wood of the forest while looking at the château in the distance and a lot of words that would love to penetrate me I am not afraid I am not afraid to go where it is necessary to translate the names of sponges and shells birdsongs and the law book that injures if it falls on my fingers are we today going to
sponge my mother’s large back caress her silences or let them drop into the bathwater while watching the foamy little waves around her thighs and the delicate shadow on her back naturally scrub the spine the nurse had said for there under the skin is a living world I listen to it while scrubbing always a bit harder yet I must finish this report I would like to write what I was told to write without leaving any traces I also think the opposite while caressing my mother’s hair as I help her to get up it’s as if there were fences in our breathing and this helps me to draw sketches in the morning when I get up and breathing is difficult the sketch is filled with lines and nasty black nails that fall hard on the page if the wind passes through my lungs like I want it to shaking the Damask roses in the garden then I no longer see the fences and can more easily get closer to summer by looking at the lake I love separating the colours and caresses of June and of Kim that estrange me from my soul it’s as if I were behind a hedge of thorns when I look at them and I tell myself I must breathe everywhere with my body because I need all of my breath and I also need nails to stash in the armoire for later next to the unstamped white envelope that contains my inventions.
I have secrets that’s normal it’s true about me as it is about others when I run through my own secrets it’s like crossing barbed-wire fences that soil my shirt and make bloodstains on my hands and my knees down to the heels
not at all in the morning when there is too much mystery in my crazy canopy bed that I built like a large armoire I pretend I’m breathing or walking while moving away from myself and making sure to scream mysterious syllables that sometimes produce a list of beautiful fruits and vegetables that I put in my jacket pocket then I thrust my hand into the list it’s easy to follow with my finger to understand and draw better fences in the end it’s true I am on the verge of tears but in a state of fatigue not at all.
People think badly of us because we live in a village with a château vineyards and a post office as landscape and because we hide behind the windows in an armoire in the far reaches of our hearts not at all not at all often I say it’s nothing let’s give it a good soaping dunk the loofah glove in the water and let’s go back to square one to the great cry of dawn let out at birth and then let’s dive once again into the tenderness of mothers and let’s suckle their breath their breast their life let’s suckle from the very first day before going off to wander again estrangement will surely come.
At the château when opening my mail my hands tremble because of age and memory which wrap around the wrists and the beautiful day crouched in my brain like a magic charm deep inside me that makes me tremble with fear they say this often happens when someone is plunged into the void after making mistakes in her language for
plunging into the void of one’s language and being afraid are similar especially when no sketches remain.
In the morning when looking at the shores of the lake I hold my breath for the roses the shrubs pruned into round shapes the giant trees the wooden floor make me groan as does my mother’s great beauty when she is dancing just before falling into the lake with time people have forgotten nobody recalls having seen her leaning over her transparent torment which raised a scorching wind right into my hand and which I was watching closely to see the boats head out with imprints of full-body contact tucked into time yes I love taking the time to imagine how it happened when my mother fell into the lake to finally refresh her hope.
The village is not the village without the flies and their buzzing in the landscape that yields like a great fruit tree a darling of a tree that provides good wood and offers the knife the opportunity to cut into the true shape of secrets not at all it must be said the well-drawn shape of a wounded man for it takes ink or a lead pencil a memory whited-out in real chalk to approach a wounded man one must take pleasure in the true shapes of women enjoying their breakfast while watching the lake in the trembling air that swallows up the light the wind the fog the roses the entire landscape of death and life today my body is restless wild with words and strike-throughs not at all it is just
bruised all over like in a dream or when in the early morning I go to the post office to buy white envelopes for my secrets there are strange flavours in my mouth tickly manoeuvres of goldfish or crazy tongues slightly naughty always very soft and full of surprises that make you rush headfirst into the abyss with hands and thoughts flapping so as to hurt yourself not at all because of the strike-throughs in the wood the pieces of bark scattered over the workshop floor I wear myself out making useful holes and looking inside my memory at images of time in the wood it’s as if I were opening and closing the pages of a celestial dictionary at will and always falling upon the words
hair fur
and
sex
until a bunch of distant images arise at the same time as June when she kneels in front of me her tongue making little cross-strokes in my full-moon fur my enchanted-lake fur we should do it again so that I too can stroke through June’s fur.
In the garden I hear Tatiana’s voice repeating beware this beauty is dangerous beware the faces of people who are beautiful heartbreakers beware the holes in darkness that we enjoy photographing believing we are speaking the truth or something important yet it’s quite easy to understand that words yield at the slightest opportunity amid birdsongs and clever manoeuvres that do not explain the misery of living beings and the buzzing of flies in ears attentive to the language of humans petals vines and
brambles that you wind tightly round stones the shadows of stones and words here I am caught in the trap of words that do not drown out suffering so many cleft words and worried embraces that I no longer know how to make use or hope of so evil and mean has the world become that the day before yesterday church bells started ringing again with a hellish noise that threatens any shaky belief they cover the buzzing of flies the other sounds make no echo in the shade of the lovely afternoon I wait for June’s hand to lift my sweater very close to us I hear the steps of a small animal in autumn’s new foliage a sound like the rustling of a crumpling page I wait I watch my face still looks for light in the holes of my mother’s night the foreign tongue is now in my head daily it crowds me with its words and burns me pressures me with verb tenses that wrap around me searing ribbons sticky tape then it erases me regardless I listen with my muscles and when it’s too much I stroke and I strike lather and lather erase whole pages of the book of law while eating my salad.
People think badly of us because I sleep with myself in a canopy bed they’re right the bed is ridiculous with its pink silk and apple green which is not a true colour come siesta time it’s obvious that beds are full of stories full of murders and blood it’s as obvious as scanning the pages of civilization with bonnets turbans bicornes tiaras top hats and baseball caps while always doing whatever runs
through your head and a lot of money of course I’m careful I always move forward stealthily and allow myself to roll around in the heat changing my image at every page and every hour I can now rid myself of my own presence change the colour of the night in me change languages to get closer to the secrets on the reverse side of the real oh! how I love to clean the universe with this soft oil behind the characters’ backs but we must beware because things stroke things scratch things whistle and hiss immoderately when comes the hour of the bells.
Since this morning I’ve been wandering through my memory like in a theatre I open and close the curtains I have learned the text by heart I haven’t yet had time to think about my makeup when the bells won’t stop ringing like wild women they make my text inaudible illegible so then I prefer somebody to play the piano behind my back this way I can hide my feelings I never pretend to be somebody who is wounded like my brother when he shows me his sketchbook my brother I don’t know why has left for town with fruit in his jacket pocket why in his hunting pouch he put sketches with my name and June’s on them sketches like those he showed me on my birthday and it was frightening.
Nobody can remember everything exactly everything which is why my armoires are empty except when on tiptoes I slip a white envelope into one of them it’s not a
secret for anyone I slip words into my tiny armoires and have never dared destroy them even though they take up too much space next to the crystal carafes I cannot always pretend that this is happening inside me really for I am me and many others at the same time it is frightening I often go to the hotel to become someone who stretches out next to a woman to sleep in a large room with flowers and a black leather sofa I drink white wine then I get to work while listening to the noises and silences of my damned fellow humans who kill and receive slaves for free without a contract in no time at all it’s easy and it makes me want to slip my joy into a black hole when I don’t know what to do with my fur I try to remember my pleasures by filing them in chronological order but things of the past are finery and fences too high with their bars they make me feel ashamed they are like a curtain of smooth nails falling on my face all sorts of big scratches that form a grey screen in front of me I prefer hotel rooms with wooden benches already notched and bruised with coarse words like those upon which I sometimes sleep in the summertime I can spend days without speaking to anyone I don’t understand why my sister and her friend June look like two madwomen when I speak to them softly and give them my heart.