I
ambitieux
civilisation
curieux
difference
grande
potential
possible
silence
n
bed last night, she started reading Tropic of Cancer.
Last week she finished a book by Anais Nin. It was about a gypsy
and a canal boat. She made him read it to her one night. He said
he found it laboured.
He is reading philosophy, trying to understand the implications
of what Aristotle means by the actual and the potential.
She switches off her bedside lamp and turns away from him to sleep.
She turns back to face him. He feels her finger move down the
inside of his thigh and stroke his cock. He tries to concentrate
on Aristotle as he gets harder, but soon he realises he cannot.
He switches off his lamp and stares at the ceiling. In the dark
he can feel her breath against his neck and the hair of her cunt
rubbing against his thigh.
he
is taking French lessons. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening.
She made him come with her once. He wasn’t interested.
The French instructor is Robert, sorry, Robeeeerrrr. Roll the
tongue against the roof of the mouth, so and so and so. Robert
has a high cackling tone to his voice and a jumpy childlike enthusiasm
about him. His teeth are large and white. He speaks English quickly
and dresses in the exile-at-work fashion—white, collared
shirt, barely ironed, navy blue slacks, a pair of cheap, black
shoes. He sweats profusely in the heat, and the tang of his sweat
permeates the small room where they have the lessons.
She comes home energised by her class, smiling. She sees him
sitting at the kitchen table with a book in his hand, grunting
at her enthusiasm. She spends the evening practicing what she’s
learnt. Tonight it is fruit:
‘Une mangue,’ she says.
‘Un ananas’
‘Des peche’
‘Des Fruits de la Passion’
‘What’s that one?’ he says.
‘Passion fruit,’ she says.
He goes back to Aristotle. He has an exam next week.
he
insists on calling her cunt ‘the rosebush’. ‘Come
and smell my rosebush,’ she says. ‘Finger my rosebush.
Feel my rosebush. Fuck my rosebush. Lick my rosebush.’
She is halfway through Henry Miller. Paris in the twenties. She
reads him a piece where Miller is dancing with a girl in toilet,
drunk and coming on her dress while she holds his cock.
‘Can you imagine that sweet dance?’ she says, imploring
him with her hands to imagine it. He tells her he can, though
he cannot pinpoint the reason for his distaste.
e
comes home to find her fingering herself on their bed in front
of a mirror. He doesn’t know what to say. ‘Why are
you doing that?’ he finally gets out, half amazed, half
excited. She reaches off the bed and drags him onto it.
As he enters her, he sees the Miller half opened and face down
on his pillow. She has broken it’s spine in three places.
II
Le jours de la semaine:
lundi
mardi
mercredi
jeudi
vendredi
samedi
dimanche
She bounces around the room, eating chocolate. He glances up
and watches her ass bouncing around underneath her jeans. She
smiles at him. Her teeth are as big as tombstones.
He cannot remember the last time she made him laugh.
He feels tired and alone.
e
is overwhelmed with work. Aristotle moves him and eludes him at
the same time.
She cannot leave him alone. She pounds on his study door in the
night, begging for him to come and talk to her. ‘Just talk
to me!’ she says. He opens the door and reminds her that
he let her move in on the condition that he would be left to do
his work. ‘You let me move in to pay the rent,’ she
says. He doesn’t answer her.
e
should go to Paris,’ she says one day.
‘How do we afford that?’
‘I’ve made a plan,’ she says and hands him
a piece of paper.
‘We couldn’t stick to that,’ he says and hands
the paper back to her.
She takes it and storms off into the front room. The TV is on—a
game show perhaps.
With a sigh he gets up to find her. She is sitting in a chair,
scribbling on her piece of paper. The Miller is sitting on a table
nearby.
‘We could stick to it,’ she says softly.
He sits down next to her. He can see by her face that it means
a lot to her.
‘Where would you like to go in Paris?’ he asks.
‘Oh, you know here and there.’ She looks up and spies
the Miller.
‘Oh, the Champs Elysees.. in the dim light. The Rue Lafayette…
the Pont Alexandre III …. Oh! The Rue de la Lune…
the Boulevard Madeleine.’
She stands up and jumps up and down like a little girl.
‘Yes,’ he says after each one ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh.’
And when she pauses he says, ‘Yes, and the Eiffel Tower,
and the Louvre.’
She stops and looks hard at him. All her enthusiasm has evaporated.
She looks at him like she’s looking at him for the first
time. ‘No,’ she says. ‘That’s not what
I meant at all!’
hat
night she tries to start something, but he stops her and holds
her in his arms and says the words. He only likes to say the words
now.
III
bleu
noir
brun
marron
gris
vert
blanc
rouge
rouge
rouge
They haven’t had sex for six weeks and he doesn’t
mind. He is too busy.
She has reread the Miller twice and is onto it again. She takes
it with her to work in her handbag. She sits with it quietly beside
her in the evening, watching television and browsing through it
while the commercials are on.
From some unresolved sense of guilt, he tries to touch her, to
lay a hand upon her, to kiss her, but she is often cold now. The
only time he sees her smiling is when she comes back from the
French lessons and she paces the room reciting her new words.
But then she is not smiling for him.
‘How is Roberrrrr,’ he says, rolling his tongue ironically.
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘He’s just fine.’
‘She’ll come around,’ he thinks.
IV
du pain
des legumes
de la salade
du buerre
de la viande
du sucre
du lait
du vin
For her birthday he has made Coq au Vin, with crumbed camembert
for an entrée and profiteroles for dessert. He has been
in the kitchen for half the day. Everything was bought freshly
this morning. He wants it just so. His exams are finished. His
papers handed in. Aristotle hangs spectre-like in the back of
his mind, a problem to be mulled over in idle moments and tackled
again in the months ahead. But not now. ‘Now is for us’
he convinces himself.
The smell of the cooking chicken has wafted through the whole
house. He pours himself another glass of the red wine—the
vin rouge—and waits for her. He arranges the table:
the candles, the cutlery. He has cleaned and aired the bedroom
and changed the sheets. The wine makes him happy to wait.
She comes in through the front door, weary from work to the dim
glow of the candles and the smell of the food. He is standing
to greet her. He holds out a glass of wine for her which she takes
with a smile. He raises his glass to her, to her tombstone teeth,
to her smile. ‘Happy birthday,’ he says.
She claps with delight as every course is served and more wine
is drunk. The evening is filled with talk of Paris, of France,
of French. She tells him so much, he feels as though he has been
away from her for months. He is enticed by her again.
In bed that evening, on the clean sheets, he doesn’t fuck
her, he makes love to her, like they used to. Simple, quiet, shimmering,
subtle. No rosebush. When he comes into her, it feels like a stream,
a flowing extension of himself, of his relief. They are both drunk
and afterwards they babble like children until after midnight.
When he falls asleep, it is with her hair tickling his face and
the smell of her cheeks in his nose.
V
j’ecrirai
je viendrai
je verrai
je tiendrai
je voudrai
je pourrai
je saurai
Telos - Aristotle believed that everything existed for
the sake of an end.
The postcard sits for him in the letter box. He takes it inside
and leaves it lying face up on the dining room table. The Eiffel
Tower. The postcard mischief of the perfect blue sky. He glances
at it while going about his evening rituals: changing clothes;
making dinner; watching the news. Each time he passes, he picks
the postcard up and places it back down again, unread. He moves
it from the middle of the table to the edge and back again.
On his way to the bedroom, he succumbs and reads the card.
She has written “ ‘You can’t put a fence around
a human being. It ain’t done anymore.’—Henry
Miller.”
He thinks, ‘I have been picked clean.’
That is all.
n
bed that night, the moonlight shines in through his open window.
He thinks of Aristotle—the potential of the object is always
betrayed by it’s actuality.
‘Ultimately,’ he thinks ‘ we are all dead things
like the moon.’
[END]
© 2006 Shane Strange - Contributor's
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