Happy Are the Happy Read online

  Philip Chemla

  I’d like to suffer for love. The other evening, in the theater, I heard these words: “Sadness after intimate sexual intercourse one is familiar with of course … Yes, that one knows and is prepared to face.” The lines are from Beckett’s play Happy Days. Oh, the happy days of sadness I’ve never known. I don’t dream about a union or an idyll, I don’t dream about any more or less durable romantic felicity, no, I’d just like to know a certain kind of sadness. I can guess what it’s like. I may have already felt it. An impression halfway between a sense of something missing and a child’s heavy heart. Among the hundreds of bodies I desire, I’d like to come across one with a talent for wounding me. Even from a distance, even absent, even lying on a bed beside me and turning away. I’d like to come across a lover armed with an indiscernible, flaying blade. That’s the signature of love, I know it from the books I read long ago, before medicine stole all my time. Between me and my brother, there was never a word. When I was ten, he got into my bed. He was five years older than me. The door was ajar. I didn’t understand very well what was going on, but I knew it was forbidden. I don’t precisely remember the things we did. For years. Strokes and rubs. I remember the day he first came to me, and I remember my first orgasm. That’s all. I’m not sure whether we kissed, but the place that sort of thing would eventually occupy in my life leads me to believe he must have kissed me. As time went on, and until his marriage, more and more it was I who approached him. No word passed between us. Except for his No when I presented myself. He’d say no, but he’d always give in. I remember only silences between us. No exchanges, no language meant to sustain an imaginary life. No coincidence of emotions and sex. We had a shed in the back of our yard. I’d go there and gaze out through a broken windowpane at the life in the street. One night a garbage truck driver spotted me and winked. The night was dark and the man inaccessible in his high cabin. Later, when I wasn’t so young anymore, I’d go chasing after garbage men. My father, whose brother was in Guinea, had a subscription to the magazine Vivante Afrique. It was my first porn magazine. Matte bodies on matte paper. Stalwart, protective farmers, nearly naked, sparkling on the page. I hung a picture of Nefertiti on the wall above my bed. She kept watch like an icon, untouchable and somber. Before I went away to boarding school, I used to go to various public gardens and offer myself to Arabs there. I’d say, use me. One day when some guy and I were taking off our clothes in a stairwell, I sensed that he was going to swipe my cash. I said, you want some money? He melted into my arms. Things became simple, almost tender. My father is unaware of a big part of my life. He’s an upright man, very attached to filial relationships. A genuine, good Jew. I often think about him. I feel freer since I started paying. My position is more legitimate, although I have to redress the power imbalance. I talk with some boys. I ask them questions about their lives, I show them respect. I address my father mentally, I say, well, there certainly is the occasional detour, but generally I stick to the main road. On Saturday evenings or sometimes during the week, after I’m through seeing patients and there are no meetings to attend, I go to the woods, or to the movie theaters in parts of town where the right kinds of boys can be found. I say to them, I like big dicks. I demand to see theirs. They pull it out. It’s stiff or not. Recently, when I’ve chosen someone, I want to know if he’s into slapping. (I don’t offer to pay more for slapping. Slapping mustn’t be part of the negotiation.) It used to be that I’d ask the question in the car. These days, I ask beforehand. It’s an incomplete question. The entire question would be, will you hit me? And immediately afterward, will you comfort me? You can’t ask that question. Nor can you say, comfort me. The farthest I can go is, stroke my face. I wouldn’t dare say anything more. Some words have no place in such a setting. It’s a strange command, comfort me. One can imagine giving all the other commands – lick me, hit me, kiss me, use your tongue (many don’t) – but not comfort me. What I really want can’t be stated. To be struck in the face, to offer my face to the blows, to present my lips, my teeth, my eyes, and immediately afterward to be stroked, caressed just when I least expect it, and then to be struck again, with the right rhythm, the just proportion, and after I come, to be embraced, supported, covered with kisses. Maybe that perfection doesn’t exist outside the kind of love I don’t know. Ever since I began to pay and thus became able to control the order of events, I’m free to be myself. I do what I can’t do, and get what I can’t get, in real life. I kneel, I abase myself. My knees sink into the earth. I return to total submission. Money binds us as well as any other attachment. The Egyptian put his hands on my face. He held my face, he pressed his palms against my cheeks. My mother did the same thing when I had an ear infection, she tried to cool my burning fever with her hands. Otherwise, in normal life, she was aloof. The Egyptian licked my mouth. He disappeared into the night, like the garbage collectors in days gone by. I walk along the side path, I plunge into the woods. He’s not there. If I make an effort, I can still feel the dampness his tongue left on my lips. A dizzying summary of some knowledge I don’t have. Jean Ehrenfried, a patient I’ve grown attached to, gave me a copy of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. He said, a little poetry, doctor, would you by chance have time for that? He opened the book in front of me and read the first lines (I noted in passing that the timbre of his voice had thinned since his last visit): “If I cried out, then who among the angelic orders would hear me?” It’s a small book. I keep it near my bed. I’ve reread those lines, thinking about Ehrenfried’s diminished voice, about his combinations of polka-dot ties and fancy pocket handkerchiefs. For weeks those poems have been waiting under my bedside lamp. I get up at six-thirty every morning. I see my first patient an hour later. I can see around thirty in the course of a day. I teach, I write articles for international journals of oncology and radiation therapy, I go to fifteen or so conventions a year. I have no time to put my existence in perspective anymore. Sometimes friends drag me to the theater. I recently saw that Beckett play, Happy Days. A little umbrella under a dazzling sun. A woman whose body is sinking deeper and deeper, sucked into the earth. She wants to endure lightheartedly and rejoices in minuscule surprises. I know about that. I admire it every day. But I’m not sure I want to hear any other words. Poets have no sense of time. They draw you into useless melancholy. I didn’t ask the Egyptian for his telephone number. I generally don’t ask. What good could come of it? Still, sometimes I get guys’ numbers. Not his. But he left a mark on me, something I can’t define. Maybe it has something to do with Beckett’s evil genius. The Egyptian isn’t what I’m searching for in the rendezvous spots behind the big worksite fence in Passy. Although I even look for him in assignation rooms where I’ve never seen him before, the thing I’m really seeking is the smell of sadness. It’s an impalpable thing, deeper than we can gauge, and it has nothing to do with reality. My life is beautiful. I do what I like to do. I get up in the morning bursting with energy. I’ve discovered that I’m strong. I mean, qualified to make decisions and take risks. My patients have my cell phone number, they can call me at any time. I owe them a lot. I’d like to be worthy of them (that’s one of the reasons why I want to keep up with the science and carry on oncology research alongside my clinical practice). I’ve known about the existence of death for a long time. Before I started studying medicine, I could already hear the clock ticking in my head. I bear no grudge against my brother. As for his place in my life, I don’t know exactly what it was. Human complexity can’t be reduced to any causality principle. It may well be that had I not lived through our years of silence, I would have had the courage to face the abyss of a relationship comprising both sex and love. Who can say? I generally pay afterward. Almost every time. The other must trust me, as though offering a token of friendship. But the Egyptian I paid beforehand. I took a chance. He didn’t put the bill in his pocket, he kept it in his hand. That bill was in my field of vision all the while I was sucking him. He put the bill in my mouth. I sucked his cock and the money. He stuf
fed the banknote in my mouth and put his hands on my face. It was a pledge with no tomorrow, a promise no one will ever know. When I was a child, I used to give my mother pebbles or chestnuts I’d find on the ground. I’d also sing little songs to her. Offerings at once useless and immortal. I’ve often had to convince patients that the present is the sole reality. The Egyptian boy put the banknote in my mouth and placed his hands on my face. I took everything he gave me, his cock, the money, the joy, the sorrow.

  Loula Moreno

  Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who shot sixty-nine people to death and killed eight others with a bomb, said during his trial in Oslo, “In normal circumstances I’m a very nice person.” When I read that statement, I immediately thought of Darius Ardashir. In normal circumstances, when he’s not applying himself to my destruction, Darius Ardashir is very nice. Apart from me, perhaps his wife, and the women who have had the misfortune of becoming attached to him, nobody knows he’s a monster. The journalist interviewing me this morning is the kind of person who drinks her tea with careful movements while performing a series of irritating little rituals. Yesterday at around six in the evening, Darius Ardashir told me, I’ll call you in fifteen minutes. My cell phone’s on the table. No call, no text. It’s noon. I nearly went crazy during the night. The journalist says, you’ve just turned thirty, do you have a wish? —I have a hundred wishes. —Pick one. I say, I’d like to play a nun. Or have wavy hair. Appalling answers. I’m trying to be witty. I don’t know how to make simple, superficial small talk. —A nun! She produces a slightly twisted smile meant to affirm that I wouldn’t be the first choice for such a role. —Why not? —What’s your main fault? —I have a thousand faults. —The one you’d most like to get rid of. —My bad taste. —You have bad taste? In what? I say, men. And I immediately regret it. I always talk too much. A little girl, surely a schoolchild, is cleaning the table next to us. She moves the match holder, she places the pastries menu on another table, she wipes the waxed wood with a damp cloth, whirling her hand in deft, efficient circles; then she puts everything back where it was and goes away. From where I’m sitting, I can see her go to the bar and ask for another assignment. The real waitress gives her a tray of advertising cards folded in the shape of tents and points her to some empty tables. The young girl sets about putting a card next to the potted violet on each table. I love her seriousness. The journalist asks, do you prefer a certain type of man? I hear myself reply, I prefer the dangerous, irrational type. I filter that through a gurgle of laughter and say, I’m talking nonsense, Madame, please don’t write that. —What a pity. —I’m not attracted by smooth, handsome guys, the Mad Men type, I like the little, dented ones, the kind that look bad-tempered and don’t talk much. I could continue banging on like this, but I choke on an olive pit. I say, don’t write down any of that. —I’ve already written it down. —Then don’t publish it. Nobody’s interested in that. —Au contraire. —I really don’t want to talk about myself that way. —Our readers will be honored. You’re giving them a gift. She readjusts her skirt under her bottom and asks for more hot water for her tea. I finish the olives and order a second glass of vodka. I let myself be reeled in, I have no authority over these people. The journalist asks me if I have a cold. No, I say, why? She finds my voice deeper in real life. She says I have bedroom intonations. I laugh stupidly. She thinks she’s flattering me with that idiotic expression. My cell phone’s still on the table, and still not giving any sign of life. None. Not one. The little girl is calmly walking back and forth among the sofas, her chin thrust well forward. —Loula Moreno, where does that come from? It’s not your real name, is it? —I took it from a song by Charlie Odine … Loula waits for her big day to come / In some drab impresario’s bed, / Chews empty promises like gum, / With dreams of applause in her head … —So does the big day come? —In the song? No. —Has it come for you? —Not for me either. I finish my vodka and laugh. It’s wonderful that we can laugh. Laughter’s like a joker. It works however you play it. The young girl’s leaving. She’s become a child again, with her raincoat and her schoolbag. At the moment when she disappears outside the glass-paned wooden door, I see Darius Ardashir come in. I knew he could sometimes be found in this bar. To tell the truth, I even chose the place deliberately, in the infinitesimal hope of seeing him. But Darius Ardashir isn’t with his usual co-conspirators in their dark suits and ties (I’ve never understood exactly what it is that he does, he’s the type of guy whose name is linked to politics one day and the next to an industrial group or an arms sale). He’s with a woman. I empty my glass in one gulp, igniting my throat. I’m not used to drinking. The woman is tall, with a classic look to her and her hair in a blond chignon. Darius Ardashir guides her to two armchairs in the corner near the piano. His hair’s wet. He’s got his hand on the small of her back. I fail to hear the journalist’s question. I say, I beg your pardon, I didn’t get that. I raise my glass to a waiter and order another vodka. I say to the journalist, it wakes me up, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I always have to justify myself. It’s ridiculous. I’m thirty years old, I’m famous, I can dance on any precipice. Darius Ardashir’s trying to close a little printed umbrella. He fights with the struts, brings no intelligence to the effort, and ends up crushing the thing together with brute force and then wrapping the fabric around the frame as best he can. The woman laughs. This spectacle is killing me. The journalist says, do you feel nostalgia for your childhood? By the way she’s bending toward me, as one does with deaf people, I gather she must have asked me that question at least once already. Ah no, not at all, I say, I didn’t like childhood, I wanted to be a grown-up. She leans even farther forward and says something I can’t make out. I seize my cell phone, get up, and say, excuse me for a second. I head for the ladies’ room as discreetly as possible, swaying a little because of the vodka. I look at myself in the mirror. I’m pale, I find the circles under my eyes a nice touch. I’m an attractive girl. I write a text on my phone, “I see you,” and send it to Darius Ardashir. A few days ago, I told him I was his slave, I said I wanted him to keep me on a leash. Darius Ardashir answered that he didn’t like encumbrances. Even a little suitcase disturbed him, he said. I return to the dining room carelessly. I don’t look toward the piano. When the journalist sees me coming back, her face lights up with a practically maternal glow. She says, can we continue? I say yes and sit down. Darius Ardashir has surely received my message, I see him absorbed by his cell phone. I arch my back and stretch my swanlike neck. I must absolutely avoid looking in his direction. The journalist rummages in her notes and says, you said … —My God. —You said, men are love’s guests. —I said that? Me? —Yes. —Not bad. —Can you expand on it? I say, will I get fussed at if I smoke? I’m afraid so, she says. My cell phone lights up. Darius A. is responding to my text: “Hey, sexy.” I turn around. Darius Ardashir is ordering drinks. He’s wearing a brown jacket over a beige shirt, the blond woman’s in love with him, you can see that from miles away. Hey, sexy, as if nothing’s going on. Darius Ardashir is a genius of the pure present. The night erases all traces of the previous day, and words start bouncing around again, as light as helium balloons. I text him: “Who is she?” I regret the text at once. I write, “No, I don’t give a shit,” but luckily I delete it. The journalist sighs and settles against the back of her armchair. I write, “We were supposed to have dinner last night, right?” I delete, delete. Reproaches make men take to their heels like sprinters. In the beginning, Darius Ardashir told me, I love you with my head, with my heart, and with my cock. I repeated that sentence to Rémi Grobe, my best friend, and he said, a poet, this guy of yours, I’m going to give that a try, there are some dopes it might work on. It works mighty well on me. I have no desire to hear music that’s too subtle. I say to the journalist, what were we talking about? She shakes her head, she’s no longer sure herself. My own head is spinning. I wave the waiter over and ask him to bring us more salted nuts, with extra cashews. I’m not going to leave that Who is she? hanging out th
ere all by itself, it’s too weak. Especially since he’s not answering. I write, “Tell her you only like beginnings.” That’s excellent. I’m pressing send. No, I’m not pressing send. I can do better. I call the waiter over once again. He arrives with potato chips and nuts, a goodly portion of them cashews. I ask him for a piece of paper. I say to the journalist, excuse me, things are a little disjointed this morning. She raises a limp hand in a gesture of complete dejection. I don’t have the time to be embarrassed. The waiter brings me a big sheet of typing paper. I ask him to wait. I write my sentence on the top part of the page and fold it with care. I ask the waiter to deliver the note discreetly, without disclosing its source, to the man in the brown jacket sitting next to the piano. The waiter says in a frightfully clear voice, Monsieur Ardashir? I flutter my eyelids in confirmation. He goes away. I fall on the mixed pistachios and cashews. I absolutely must not look at what’s going on beside the piano. The journalist has roused herself from her torpor, taken off her eyeglasses, and stored them in their case. Now she’s starting to put away her documents. I can’t be abandoned there, not right away. I say to her, you know, I feel old. One doesn’t feel young at thirty. Last night I couldn’t sleep, and I read Cesare Pavese’s journal. Do you know it? It’s on my night table. Reading sad things is good for you. In one passage, he says, “Madmen and wretches have all been children, they played as you did, they believed something beautiful was waiting for them.” Don’t write this, but I’ve thought for a long time I wouldn’t be anything more than a shooting star in this profession. The journalist looks at me nervously. She’s nice, poor thing. The waiter comes back with the folded paper. I’m trembling. I keep it in my hand for a moment before unfolding it. There’s what I wrote at the top, “Tell her you only like beginnings,” and at the bottom, in a fine, black hand, he’s written, “Not always”. Nothing else. No period. To whom do those words refer? To me? To his wife? I turn my head toward the piano corner. Darius Ardashir and the woman are in a very good mood. The journalist leans toward me and says, something beautiful was waiting for you, Loula.