In the Absence of Men

You can do nothing, Marcel. You perhaps less than anyone else cannot keep me here.

I carry my dead with me.

I take him on this journey from which I will not return except perhaps in death.

I shall not write to you again. This is my last letter. I am leaving.

I am leaving because I must, because I cannot do otherwise, because I cannot escape the truth.

I am leaving to shake off the deafening silence, the slow death, the terrible mediocrity; to escape the war which is the cause of my grief, the mud, childhood, family, the earth, all the ties that bind, everything that holds one back.

I am leaving because as this foul and rainy autumn takes hold, I need to find sunlight. Clear waters.

I dream of Italy, of Africa, of the Orient. I dream of exile. I dream of scaling mountains, crossing great plains, treacherous lakes, quiet countryside. I dream of walking to the sea, of journeying deep into desert lands, endless landscapes. I dream of coming to the far-flung reaches of a continent, to the ends of the earth, to the point where all bearings are lost. I dream of indecipherable languages, of suffocating heat, of strange vistas, of ominous clamour, of beautiful light.

I dream that I may think of nothing, searching in the emptiness for a kind of peace.

I can guess what troubles await me, not least the need to survive, accepting the vilest occupations simply to live one day more, wandering among beggars in the foul alleys of strange cities, breaking stones to build churches deep in the desert, risking madness. I fear none of these things. I accept all of these things. Better yet, I long for them. I think that hardship and uncertainty are the only things which might save me.

The mother’s eyes fix me still, but her tears have dried. In their place, there is an expression that is both calm and terrible. She has taken her confession to its end. She has said all there is to say. She is relieved. She has done her duty.

She sits there, unmoving, weary. She has finished. She, she has finished. For me it has only begun.

Now I am alone, utterly alone. Stop for a moment and try to measure the enormity of my solitude. All I have for company is a secret which weighs on me, and the pain of loss, the knowledge that what awaits me cannot equal what I have already known. There is his absence like a wound, an amputation, the outward sign of something incomplete which can never be made whole. That is the greatest loss. If I think of this as a game of pitch and toss, I can never win more than I have lost. Why play, then? And yet, I cannot remain indifferent. And yet, to desire another is inconceivable. There is no hope for me with men.

For her, it is finished. For me it has just begun.

An explosion. And, in a second, a torrent of images: the young man of twenty-three, an oval face with an oriental cast, an aristocratic bearing; the young man who does not care for women and who goes to a brothel because he is compelled to; the solitary young man, the onanist, inconsolable. The improbable father unaware of his paternity. The homosexual father whose traits I recognise in those of his son. The friend who does not advise me against the love of boys, but who warns me against the love of this boy, his son. The pacifist who loses his loved ones to war. In a second, as in the instant before death, so they say, everything comes back. An explosion.

She weeps. For the first time she weeps. They are soft, almost peaceful tears, something cleansing. As she weeps, she does not take her eyes from me. Her tearful eyes are on me, they never leave me. They thank me.

A long time passes before she speaks again, as in the reverential silence of a church. And then, she says: I must finish my story, I have to tell you what you do not yet know, what is missing. She says: we are at the point where your story and mine come together by the most bizarre coincidence. She says: you know Arthur’s father. She says: your friend, Marcel, is Arthur’s father.

To the mother, I say: we had nothing but happiness. I want you to know that. Happiness filled every space between us. It is often like that in the frenzy of those first days. But they were n

Arthur was born in Saint-Villier, a village in the south west, where my mother’s family comes from. No one ever mentioned the disgrace of my pregnancy. The child was born into silence, under a blanket of cloud. We returned to Paris when he was learning to walk. It was then that I went into service with your parents.

You are probably wondering why I kept the child. There was an angel-maker, a backstreet abortionist who well knew how to wield her knitting needles. It would have been easy to be rid of the child. Perhaps it would have been for the best. But I simply could not do it. There are some things that one cannot force. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.

She says: I do not regret any of it. Of course, I would have been spared the years of disgrace, I would have been spared the suffering I feel today, but I would have been spared, too, the happiness, those years of incomparable happiness.

That phrase is a revelation to me. Of course it is only the memory of her happiness which makes it possible to accept her suffering now, live with it rather than die of it. And then, in the silence, I hear the laughter, see the bodies roll on the bed, the shared looks, the languorous kisses, the soothing tiredness, the promises heard yet unspoken, the fierce radiance of this triumphant summer. Happiness, yes.

We did not have the time to be unhappy together.

I look at her, overcome by shame. I think again of the courage it must take to consent to something she believes to be the most humiliating thing a woman can do. I think especially of the courage it must take to make such a confession. It is an abnegation, a loss of self. At that precise moment, the intimacy between us is absolute. A young man and a woman of forty could not be closer than we are at this moment. What has happened is unbelievable.

I long for the story to be ended, finished, for there to be nothing more to hear, no more blows to suffer, but clearly the secret has not yet been disclosed. This nightmare must be followed to its conclusion.

She says: I remember I saw him as he came in. He looked as oriental as I was blond. His face as oval as my body was slender. His appearance as aristocratic as mine was common. His terror as great as mine. I did not despise him for what he was. I despised him for everything he represented. But I thought: better he than another, better this terrified young man than some old dotard. I imagined then that there were many degrees of disgust. I was wrong.

A man to whom you give your body for money is simply a man to whom you give your body for money. Nothing more. It is pointless to deceive yourself. You can look for excuses, there are none. You can try to mitigate the fault, it’s a delusion. In the end, nothing remains but what you’ve done, what you’ve allowed to be done, what you’ve been reduced to doing. Nothing else counts for anything. The filth, the warm flesh, the crudeness, the shame wash over everything, fill every space. Perhaps there are women who succeed in coming to terms with it, who can live with this, who can accept it, but I have never met such a woman, nor was I one.

No doubt there are those who have no moral values. Who knows, perhaps such people are right. In any case, they certainly live well.

I could say to her: I am one such, I have no moral values, I do not understand what such values might be, but my words would be inaudible. I do not understand what offence has been committed, though I can gauge the measure of the pain the offence has caused this woman. But she would not understand. And then, despite the shock I know it will create, I hear myself say this: I have no moral values. The words come though I am not master of them. The words come, though I know the mother cannot understand, though I know that they may destroy the trust she has placed in me. And, in fact, her expression changes sharply. She looks at me, her expression signalling her disappointment, her censure. Her expression signals that she was mistaken to have chosen to confide in me. Her whole being shrivels. I must admit that there is an offence, otherwise her expiation is meaningless. If I am not shocked, I cannot understand this story, this shame, this ordeal she has lived. I feel that the conversation will end here, a landslide has come between us; something has been destroyed which cannot be rebuilt. Therefore, to try to save this last bond before it disappears completely, I say: Arthur loved that in me. That among other things. He loved my indifference to the world, my ability to remain untouched by anything, which is one of the purest forms of freedom. That is what it is: Arthur loved me for my freedom. I can tell at once that what I have said has hit the mark, that speaking of her son, of his love for me, has recreated the bond between us. Suddenly, we remember that what brings us together, what binds us, is this death between us. We can feel the dead man’s presence between us. We are together once more, she and I. And she begins to accept me for what I am, begins to see her life through another’s eyes. She gains some small freedom.

We told each other our life stories as though we had known one another for years. In the end, she said simply: I’ve found a way out of all this. All we have to do is trade on our bodies, since that’s all we’ve got left. Twenty years later, that phrase still rings in my ears, I can hear every inflection in it. It’s not the sort of phrase you forget.

I realise the direction the story is taking. I know where we are headed. I am sixteen, black hair, green eyes; my name is Vincent de l’Étoile and I know where this woman, who is forty but looks sixty, who is a governess by profession, is leading me. Where she goes, I follow.

I look at her: she is twenty. I look at her: she is blonde, her skin is soft, she looks weary, she is frightened. I look at her: she walks through the door which Gisele holds open for her, she walks through the door straight into hell, trying to escape another hell. It is early spring, cold April weather, behind her she leaves the trees trembling in the wind, a poor but dignified childhood, some illusions, perhaps, and she enters the counterfeit warmth of an old bourgeois home that has been converted into a brothel. She has come to sell her body, for that is all she has left.

I think of the courage it takes, of the desperation it presupposes. It is like a chasm. I contemplate the abyss.

Then suddenly she is once again a woman of forty who looks sixty. She closes her eyes. She speaks in silence. Suddenly, I see the weight of the years, the weight of the shame. I see her face, crumpled, destroyed, her body heavy, her hair untied, her whole being shapeless, devastated. I understand everything.

She says: they were very kind to me, they welcomed me as one welcomes a new guest. Their kindness was repugnant. I think I would have preferred it if they had been coarse, brutal. That kindness was the real cruelty.