Flesh and Other Fragments of Love (4 page)

What?

SIMONE

You run away, like him.

PIERRE

I have a right to my instability.

SIMONE

You've always been immature.

PIERRE

Yes. And I claim my right to immaturity. It's necessary. It's the key to progress, evolution and freedom. It helps avoid definition and the prison of institutions.

SIMONE

And meanwhile, I am defined by the guiding principles of family life: virtue, motherly love and good housekeeping!

PIERRE

You wanted your family.

SIMONE

And I still do. But not like this.

5. THE FIST

PIERRE

Simone and I dreamed of an open relationship.

We went through the motions of a wedding in white.

For our families' sake.

The ceremony, the reception, the honeymoon.

The white gown, the crown of orange blossoms, the veil, the bride's bouquet.

We did everything according to their rules,

knowing that once united, we would turn our backs forever on their old-fashioned, absurd, incomprehensible customs.

We had been raised according to the principles of an unfair morality that we rejected with every fibre of our bodies.

We were young,

part of the youth who survived the war unscathed.

Our apartment was always full of graduate students, professors, artists, communists, hippies.

We loved their rebellion.

Of all our friends, we preferred the outsiders,

the losers, the crazies.

We thought they possessed a mysterious wisdom inaccessible to the majority.

Nothing bored us more than respectable people and proper families

like our own.

We hated all prescribed truths.

We had come to see good taste, politics and science as suspect,

and that made us feel so powerful.

Freedom was the only virtue we cherished.

We both had relationships on the side, intellectual and sexual relationships.

Simone and I practised high infidelity,

closing our eyes and gritting our teeth.

I stifled my jealousy,

I ignored hers.

Freedom, pleasure.

All other considerations seemed petty and bourgeois.

We were revolutionaries.

We made fun of chores and the importance of a routine

that stifles poetry before it sees the light of day.

We rejected the very idea of a schedule.

Time is not made to be scheduled.

Furthermore, time doesn't exist.

Appetite is the only thing that is real.

For us, busy people were victims of vanity, caught up in a farce, slaves to endless activities,

driven by greed and the fear of dying.

Until, one day, we had to gently kick the graduate students, professors, artists, communists and hippies out of our apartment.

Give the baby's room a fresh coat of paint.

Simone was expecting our first child.

The outsiders, the losers, the crazies seemed less visionary.

We felt the need for some order and cleanliness,

time became precious,

we made lists of the chores to be done.

We started seeing each other as strange objects.

Yes, of course, a woman, but what do you do with a woman once she's your wife?

Perhaps, deep down inside, without admitting it,

we hoped to become

what is commonly called

a proper family.

*

SIMONE

I wanted to be a revolutionary, but I didn't know how to go about it.

I don't like being part of a group.

I'm never really at ease in that situation.

A family, yes, why not,

the family I was going to found,

far from my mother's neuroses, of course.

A husband, three children,

that will be the perfect size.

We will thrive on harmony, sharing and affection.

It's a choice. It's admirable. It's not revolutionary

but

it's noble.

I'm even prepared to become a busy, bourgeois woman.

I'll talk to myself if I start to feel lonely.

How to explain what I miss every day,

the gnawing in the pit of my stomach,

I've become hunger personified,

with the accompanying acid reflux.

I'm not bored,

I've become boring,

I am boredom,

boredom holding the vacuum-cleaner hose,

boredom dicing vegetables,

boredom dabbing disinfectant on the scraped knee of a child I hardly know.

Perhaps I have no maternal instinct.

How do you know?

Where do you find it?

What price do you pay?

Sometimes I feel like setting the house, the furniture, the books, the photographs on fire.

Where does this violence come from?

And what do I do with it?

Only once did I manage to raise my fist.

High in the air.

My daughters were participating in a student demonstration and I wanted to keep an eye on them,

sneakily hidden so they couldn't see me.

They were expecting a gigantic crowd.

Maybe there would be violent incidents, arrests, wounded participants, police clubs, tear gas, who knows.

I was worried about my daughters,

they're so easily influenced, so romantic, a bit reckless sometimes.

They could end up in the arms of a communist, a terrorist,

a biker.

How lucky.

No, that's not what I meant,

but why can't I find them in the crowd?

What strikes me is all the girls look like my daughters,

and I thought they were so unique.

I'm a bit disappointed.

If I want to fit in, I'll have to sing along with the others,

Stand up, all victims of oppression…

I'll have to raise my fist and sing “The Internationale.”

It's impossible,

I can't sing that,

I'm not a victim of oppression,

I'm one of the privileged.

If Pierre saw me now

he'd find me ridiculous and make fun of me.

He might even be embarrassed,

because changing the world is so outdated.

He often says that we had our turn.

That May '68 was a great party but a failed revolution.

He doesn't believe in ideological movements anymore, and he finds militancy
a bit of a farce
.

The mere thought of my husband, Pierre, made me clench my fist furiously.

Then I simply had to take it out of my pocket

and raise it as high as possible.

I didn't know if it was better to hold your thumb inside or outside,

so I tried both.

I preferred outside.

Suddenly I'm like them,

like my daughters.

I might be old but I have youthful demands

like them.

I have dashed hopes, too!

I want to wage a battle

and build a better world!

I want to believe in the necessity of a revolution!

And its possibility.

I want to be part of the political adventure.

Me too!

I want to leave my house.

I envy your solidarity.

I'm suffocating in my solitude.

Take me with you!

Your song is magnificent.

But, Simone, you're not a worker,

you're not a peasant, you're not a student and you're nobody's slave.

You are a writer, a mother and Pierre's wife.

So comrades, come rally,

For this is the time and place.

The international ideal

Unites the human race.

*

MARY

I'm going to leave Ireland.

My son will be born in America,

far from disapproving eyes.

I'll sail to New York.

Over there I'll work as a nurse,

I'll rent a little apartment,

I'll find a babysitter.

I'll work the day shift,

I'll study at night,

and in between I'll be a mother.

And I'll become a doctor.

My son will go to a good college.

And when I come back to show him Ireland,

I won't be ashamed,

I won't make them ashamed.

They'll welcome my son

who will be tall, strong, well-mannered.

They will all have great respect for my courage,

my silence,

my sacrifices, my ambition,

and they'll regret the suffering I went through.

They'll say,

Why didn't you tell us, dearie! We would have helped you! We would have forgiven you! Look how handsome he is! How tall! My word, he's taller than you!

And I'll look humbly at my son, the only witness to my sleepless nights, he'll put a protective hand on my shoulder, and I'll lower my eyes with the humility that becomes the victor.

PIERRE

Painting, sculpture, architecture,

New York is a manifestation of human genius.

Mary often takes her son for a walk in Central Park.

She brings her medical textbooks.

SIMONE

But her son always demands her attention.

PIERRE

He shows her the trees, the squirrels, the other children.

Look, Mama.

SIMONE

In fact, he wants Mary to look at him looking at something else.

When he says:
Look at the dog, Mama,

he means:
Look at me, Mama, I'm looking at a dog.

PIERRE

Sometimes Mary takes him to a museum.

She thought the paintings would capture his interest.

SIMONE

But the child runs from one painting to another, unable to take them in.

PIERRE

Mary doesn't know how to talk to him about the shapes, colours and movement.

She sees nothing but smeared paint,

vain attempts to seduce a blind crowd.

Suddenly New York wavers in her eyes.

Before, she used to smile at the sight of the children in Brooklyn

playing behind the chain-link fences.

SIMONE

Today she sees children fenced into a miserable fate

and their sadness is blatant.

PIERRE

Childhood is slow,

everything has time to leave its mark.

Like a stamp.

Mary needs the moors,

the cliffs, the bogs, the islands.

SIMONE

She's prepared to play the repentant woman.

That's what they'll expect of her.

PIERRE

It doesn't matter, she's already half dead from indifference.

She'll never be a doctor.

She doesn't believe in God, but she misses God.

SIMONE

She will say:

Yes, I was silly, stubborn, prideful.

I thought I could fulfill my destiny in New York

while raising a child conceived in sin on my own.

My father, my mother, my brothers,

I call upon your mercy.

Please recognize my son as one of yours,

I beg you.

He will avenge the honour of all Catholics, if you ask him to.

PIERRE

So

her son will play on the moors with the sheep with black faces and on windy days he will call out to the forgotten ancestors of young Irish Americans.

SIMONE

You have to admit, Pierre, sometimes we laugh together,

don't we?

Sometimes we go to see New Wave movies…

Sometimes we have philosophical conversations…

We have fun together…

Don't we?

I try to make sure that we have sex at least once a week.

Did you notice?

I try to maintain a certain frequency.

It's important.

Otherwise, we get worried.

At least, I get worried, I don't know about you.

You know what, Pierre?

I should kill all the other women.

Really.

Trying to remain fascinating is exhausting. I can't keep it up.

It's impossible to compete with women you have yet to meet.

Impossible.

They have exactly what I don't have.

I gave birth to your children, and today your children bother you.

Those women are everywhere.

They get younger and younger.

There are more and more of them.

It's a nightmare.

Do you remember when we went for a walk down at the port?

Every boat, big or small, has a woman's name.

I'm telling you, they're everywhere.

And you can't help it.

You're attracted to them even when they're dead.

A woman's corpse on the beach and my vacation is ruined.

Even though I chose an isolated region.

On purpose.

I wanted to take a break from the competition.

I wanted you to have no choice but to contemplate me, me and, if necessary,

Ireland as my backdrop.

But now this dead woman has come between us.

How could I know that you'd discover the body of a woman who drowned?

A dead woman younger than me,

younger than me, forever.

She has managed to disturb you in a way I no longer can.

She has moved you the way any stranger with a bust always does.

You're so primitive when it comes to women, so predictable,

so vulnerable.

It's not fair!

It's not fair!

Not fair!

Not fair!

I can't even scratch out her eyes!

Tear open her belly.

Rip her mouth apart.

The birds did it for me!

And you see nothing!

In your eyes

Mary's death is a sublime ornament,

the woman who drowned becomes Ophelia,

a pure, fixed image, like those exotic butterflies,

forever intact in their frames.

She can't be rotting flesh,

she must remain a white, passive flower, floating eternally

petrified in the beauty of her youth.

But, Pierre,

Mary isn't Ophelia!

Do you hear me!

Mary isn't the immortal mermaid you imagine.

She no longer moves, breathes or thinks.

You adore her because she can't contradict you or resist you.

That's why!

You worship her helplessness.

And you abandon me for her.

Don't forget that Mary is neither saint nor virgin.

Your beautiful Ophelia is actually a monstrous nymph,

her fair skin stained with blue.

Look at her closely,

see how bloated she is.

Soon she will be nothing but putrefaction, decomposition, decay.

That's what you refuse to see.