Infrared (5 page)

Really? She turns her head. Yes. There, by the door. His eyes interrogate, hers acquiesce.

They exit Dante’s house together.

Tell me,
Subra says.

The man is Turkish. Older than my Aziz—who isn’t?—but a few years younger than me. Our only common language is Italian, which both of us speak imperfectly. That’s fine with me. Touchingly, lamely, we exchange a few basic facts—true or false, what difference does it make? He tells me his name is Kamal; I’ll go along with that. As a private homage to Arbus, I tell him mine is Diane. I gather he works for some sort of import-export business…Then we move away from conversation.

In his hotel elevator, Kamal’s eyes move down to my chest. Assuming his curiosity in the area has less to do with my breasts—their exact shape and size, the presence or absence of a bra to enhance their appeal—than with the Canon nesting like a baby’s head between them, I say,
‘Non sono giornalista, sono artista.’
Having gone that far, I figure I might as well go a bit farther. I ask if he’ll allow me to photograph him afterwards, without specifying after what. ‘Verramo,’ he answers—making, I think, a slight error in Italian. Then, stroking my cheek, he moves up close. Murmurs something
about my
occhi verdi.
When his body grazes mine, I feel he’s hard already—and the familiar tingling starts up at once, making me weightless, beautiful, and desirable in my own eyes. As I walk down the worn carpet of the third-floor corridor at the stranger’s side, I am floating.

Go on, says Subra.

He opens the door, revealing a room that looks for all the world like a Matisse—shadowy light, deep colours, red-brick wall, a framed picture of flowers, the bedspread striped by the shadows of half-closed shutters…only the fishbowl and the violin are missing. Every detail offers itself up to me, fairly shimmering with beauty and meaning. I move over to the window—red-tiled roofs, swifts wheeling in the air, the murmurs of passers-by in the street below, the occasional roar of a motorbike, the rich resonance of a church-bell. A faintly dank smell in the room, not unpleasant. The firm grip of the stranger’s hands on my waist. Oh utter delight. All of this exists—painted flowers, shutters, bell, October afternoon, my father napping a mere stone’s throw away. I am in Florence. A man is about to make love to me. Nothing could be more powerful than this anticipation.

No sooner have we settled onto the bed and begun to remove each other’s clothes with the clumsy gestures of impatience than I realise Kamal also knows about passivity—yes, he also knows how to remain still, fully awake and attentive, and give himself up to me as a cello gives itself up to the bow. Arching his back, he surrenders his face, shoulders, back and buttocks, waiting for me to play them, and I do—I play them, play with them. Most men are afraid to let go like this—whereas with a little finesse the wonders of passivity can be tasted in even the most violent throes of love-making. In a delirium of restrained desire, I weigh, stroke and lick Kamal’s balls, then take his penis in my hands, between my breasts, into my mouth. He sits
up, reaches for me and I allow him to explore me in turn. He runs his tongue and lips over my breasts, the back of my neck, my toes, my stomach, the countless treasures between my legs, oh the sheer ecstasy of lips and tongues on genitals, either simultaneously or in alternation, never will I tire of that silvery fluidity, my sex swimming in joy like a fish in water, my self freed of both self and other, the quivering sensation, the carnal pink palpitation that detaches you from all colour and all flesh, making you see only stars, constellations, milky ways, propelling you bodiless and soulless into undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate… And orgasm—the way a man’s face is transformed by orgasm—oh it’s not true they all look alike, you have to be either miserable and broke or furiously blasé and sarcastic to say they all look alike—to me, every climax is unique. That’s why I love to photograph men when they climax—not the first time but the second—or, better still, the third, when they’re completely cut off from their moorings, when they’ve lost themselves and are wildly grateful to you for the loss… Speaking slowly in my poor Italian with the assistance of gestures, I explain to Kamal that to take his photo I’ll use infrared film, which captures not visible light but heat. I add (not quite truthfully) that this will make his face unrecognisable, even to friends. He consents, as virtually all my lovers have. It takes me a while to arm my camera with the ultrasensitive film: since the least ray of visible light would veil the images, I need to slip my Canon and both my hands into a black lightproof bag. But I’ve done this hundreds of times before and I work swiftly, still naked, humming a bit and speaking to Kamal in a low voice, preserving the electric arc of desire between us so it will be easy to pick up where we left off. When our bodies unite for the third time we leave all theatres behind. What happens then has as little to do with the libertinage prized by the French (oh the blasphemers, the precious precocious ejaculators, the nasty naughty
boys, the
cruel fouteurs and fouetteurs)
as with the healthy, egalitarian intercourse championed by Americans (who hand out bachelors degrees in G-points, masters in masturbation and Ph.Ds in endor-phines). Kamal and I are totally immersed in flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements. The word pleasure is far too weak for what transpires there. So is the word bliss. And it’s not even a matter of sharing because, the self having evaporated, you scarcely know whether you’re alone or with another person.

This is when I take my picture, from deep inside the loving. The Canon is part of my body. I myself am the ultrasensitive film—capturing invisible reality, capturing heat.

Afterwards, Kamal smothers my hands with kisses. He’s happy and so am I. My whole body radiates happiness, from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet.

A final request. ‘One of
your
photos. Could I take a picture of one of your photos, Kamal?’ It’s not easy to make clear in Italian—no, not a photo of you, but one you carry around with you everywhere, like a talisman. A picture of your wife, your son, your father, whatever—or you, but as a little boy…‘Would you have a photo like that in your wallet, Kamal?’

I learned to do this while working on
Whore Sons and Daughters.

Kamal hesitates. Thinks it over. What are the chances his wife in Gemlik will ever hear about the opening—in Paris, Arles or Berlin—of a show called
My Lovers’ Loved Ones
by a weird lady photographer named Diane? None at all.

His wife’s dark eyes glint mischievously. Because of the red headscarf she is wearing, she bears a vague resemblance to Monica Vitti in
L’Avventura.
Kamal is showing me this person, whom he loves, to tell me that yes, we’ve truly been together in this room. I get the photo in my finder. Sense it. Capture it.
Press the shutter. For the rest of my life, the young Turkish woman’s face will be imprinted on my retina, my film, and my very being.

‘Thanks, Kamal. That was fantastic.’

‘Thank you, Diane. I wish you happiness. A long life.’

All this takes place within a quarter of a second on the third floor of Dante’s house, as Rena walks past the stranger and heads for the staircase. She doesn’t have time to go with him, unfortunately—so she brushes past, lowering her eyes.
‘Scusi, Signor.’

Will he now go off to write his
Comedy?

Ah. Hopefully, the warmth gleaned from the virtual body of handsome Kamal will last her until bedtime.

Arriving at Hotel Guelfa (hey, Guelfa must mean Guelph, just as Roma means Rome,
Those who tourists do become…
), she climbs the stairs three at a time to her narrow Room 25.

Simon and Ingrid have slipped a note under her door—they bought sandwiches for themselves and decided to retire early, to be in tip-top shape tomorrow morning.

Rena lights a cigarette and goes over to the open window to smoke it. As she stares down at the little garden below, San Lorenzo’s melting brain comes back to her—and, on its heels, the scene with her parents in front of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel…

1969, the turning-point.

In 1969 she was playing the little mouse even more zealously than usual because her parents had just decided to kick her older brother Rowan out of the house, packing him off to a Catholic boarding school east of Montreal. Terrified they might reject and expel her, too, she took care never to complain, bother them, ask for anything, or object to having to spend so many evenings alone with Lucille the
maid in the big house whose mortgage payments they were finding so difficult to meet.

Good thing you came along, Subra.

Yes…That same year, Rena had been brought up short by Diane Arbus’s portrait of an adolescent girl: long, straight blonde hair, heavy fringe all but covering her eyes, white lace dress that looked terribly scratchy, face and body frozen in sadness…If you can do that with a camera, she’d said to herself, I want to be a photographer. Rena had recognised her soul sister in this melancholy girl—and, choosing a name for her by spelling Arbus’s own name backwards, resolved to do her best to divert and amuse her. Ever since, the constant rubbing of Subra’s mind against her own has been a source of warmth to her; she’s eternally grateful to the great American photographer for the gift of this precious alter-ego.

Fatigue suddenly catches up with her and knocks her flat. She undresses, brushes her teeth and crawls into bed with her copy of
Inferno.

When she falls asleep towards midnight, she is musing about Lethe, the river in Hell whose name means oblivion.

A year from now, she thinks, I’ll have again forgotten whether Dante was a Guelph or a Ghibelline. Fifteen years from now, I’ll have forgotten what the two sides were fighting over. And it’s quite possible that thirty years down the line, my brain will contain no memory at all of this trip to Tuscany…or of Dante.

I’m out for a walk with friends in the Buttes Chaumont when suddenly I see, looming up in the middle of the park, a huge white hill made of some unidentifiable substance that looks like wax or chalk. Climbing to the top, I crumble a bit of the substance between my fingers and realise it’s artificial snow. A deep crevice appears at the heart of the mountain, I grab onto the walls but they’re smooth and slippery, I lose my footing and tumble into the crevice. It’s an endless fall, like Alice’s in the rabbit hole. Even as I fall, I start worrying about the fragile parts of my body
—
my sex in particular
—
that are liable to be damaged when I land. The moment of impact is absent. When I finally catch up with my friends in the Rue Botzaris tearoom, I tell them I left my body behind in the park
—
it must be badly hurt
—
will they please come and help me find it? But they just go on with their conversation, paying no attention to me. After a while they get up to leave. ‘B-but
—
what about my body?’ I stammer, icy with panic.
‘I
can’t leave without my body!’

How strange, comments Subra when Rena wakes up. If there’s one part of a woman’s body that can’t be damaged when she falls, it’s her sex.

Some other kind of ‘fall’, then? And why would the snow be ‘artificial’?

The snow of my childhood…Phony snow…or perhaps…a phony childhood? My lie-riddled childhood come back to haunt my adult life? Sitting there in the middle of my neighbourhood in Paris, as conspicuous as a ‘mountain’?

I remember when Simon shoved Rowan’s face into the snow. It must have been a Sunday morning, we were out skating in Mount Royal Park—was Lisa with us? probably not—suddenly I turned around and saw my brother waving his legs in the air, gasping for air, and my father laughing as he held his head firmly in the snow
with both hands…What had Rowan done? Talked back to him? Refused to obey an order? Broken a skateblade? I don’t recall. Simon punished both his children, but his son more often and more harshly than his daughter…Finally he released my brother and acted as if nothing had happened, wanting to pick up our shenanigans where we’d left off—but Rowan sulked for hours, incensed at having been humiliated in front of me.

So many snow games with Rowan and his pals when we were little. Snowball fights that went on for hours…I hated the bite of the cold, like an electric saw the length of my spine, when a boy would shove a snowball down my neck—but the boys themselves I loved. Four, five, six of them—and me, always the only girl. I loved the violent mixing of our bodies when the sled would hit a bump and we’d be ejected, rolling over and over in the snow, elbow on forehead, knee in gut, head slamming nose—it hurt like hell but it warmed me up and turned me on; I wished it would never end.

First a tomboy, then an androgyne, Subra says…Forever hanging out with boys, hankering after a man’s life and a man’s death…When did that end—when Fabrice died? Or when, scarcely a month later, little Toussaint was born?

Rena stays in bed for a while, eyes closed, breathing in the Florence air and slowly intoning the words Tuscany, Renaissance, beauty.

The laughter of a small child wafts up to her from the street below, bubbling and gurgling like a brook—oh, the word gurgle was invented for that laugh.

Tell me,
Subra says.

Toussaint’s laughter at age two—his mad joy to be running down the footpath between Alioune and me, left hand in his father’s right, right hand in my left—Toussaint the dwarf thrilled to have the undivided attention of two giants, two gods—one, two,
three-ee-ee!
—his
feet would leave the ground, he’d go soaring through the air, his laughter would ring out, we’d set him down—’Again!’ he’d say—one, two,
three-ee-ee!
—his feet would leave the ground, he’d go soaring through the air, his laughter would ring out, we’d set him down—‘Again!’ he’d say—and we’d do it again, five, ten, twenty times—that day, another day, then another—it was infinity, eternity, we wanted it never to end and so did he—‘Again!’—the joy of it—‘Again!’—his feet leaving the ground, Mommy to his right and Daddy to his left (yes, Daddy: given that Fabrice died before Toussaint was born, Alioune has always been his father)…And then it was over. One day we stopped playing that game with Toussaint and started playing it with Thierno…and then it was over for Thierno as well. Finis. Nevermore. And no one noticed the moment of the ending. Did Simon and Lisa ever play that game with me? With Rowan? If they did, I have no memory of it. Neither, most likely, do my sons. They’ll play it with their own children, who will forget it in turn. Invisible connections…