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André

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Premessa:

In the late 1980's I've known an intense and quite prolific period when my writing blossomed. Inspiration and ideas came mostly from the intense reading of Proust's “A la recherche du temps perdu”, which entailed a thorough study of other works and a fat share of secondary material on him and turn of the century French literature (surrealism, symbolism), and 1960's French and Italian movies to top it all. Mix well and shake. Of the entire resulting production (mostly short stories), I here submit to your reading a sampling of three long stories, which don't exactly form a trilogy, but are interrelated by sharing the four main characters: Marcel, André, Jacques, and Madeleine (who has actually nothing to do with "Leda"'s main character, save for the Parisian atmosphere).

Besides the four main characters, what holds these pieces together is the rather fin-de-siècle Parisian setting, but most of all the narrative form:

2 – Logo

Dejeuner, n. The breakfast of an American who's been in Paris. Variously pronounced. (ibid., p. 29)

From my purse I extract cigarettes, the cigarette case I keep to remind myself, I offer him one. Softly he flows from this dreamy state that wrapped him up, slides his long bony hand to extract a cigarette, not oblivious to the silver container boasting words of pain. I lit his. I lit one for me too. Feels good this tepid warmth of the sun that invades our surfaces. Feels great to sit here in the sun doing nothing. Our silence is abruptly broken by suffocated sobbing. André is weeping, my fault I think. And yet it's so beautiful to see him weep, so defenseless, so noble. He's crying without inhibitions, he's like that. Sincere, sincere at all costs. Those who do pay attention to us judge we must be very strange indeed: a lusciously dressed démi-mondaine and a sobbing clochard. Shaking, fearful of annoying or fear of provoking myself beyond control, my hand lands on his dark head, malcoupé his hair, long over the ears. A man like him should not be made to cry, better if I did, for I know what I'm good at, at selling my body I'm good, good at hurting other people's feelings, people who love me and care for me, of course; my life made of compromises alone, it's this frenzy of living comfortably, life conceived merely as a pile of money and clothes, prestige and success, but inside it leaves me as arid and lifeless as I was, left with all the same problems only worse. Perhaps my problems ended then? Perhaps I put a stop to this anxiety that keeps me awake every night? Have I quit drinking, or snorting, trying to hide it from Jacques, who hates coming home to a wasted bitch, not even good in bed any more? Have I perhaps stopped lying, and lying to myself? Of Marcel he is the living memory; alright, I'm guilty of depriving André of his own personality, of attributing to him that of another individual no longer between us in body. Nothing has changed, quite to the contrary. I meet his eyes, open and honest. Gloomy and sad. Nothing can supplement what is forever lost, nothing can fill this gap Marcel left our only inheritance. And yet, our lives must go on; my way doesn't fit, agreed, but find a way we must.

What are we going to do now, André? He smiles, faint autumn smile in a day of springtime sun. Nothing, he says, there's nothing, nothing I can do. But even to do nothing you have to do it with dignity, you know? You need an inner, deeper strength to do nothing, you need the desire, the power to oppose your passivity against all the rest. And you have this power? Look inside, I see nothing. No, André, I don't. I have made some serious mistakes, I can't go back, I can't correct them now. Why? Everything seems easy with him, everything is simple to him; he's right, why bother? Because I can't, I cannot make it, I don't have the courage. To do what? To leave. He nods, it's his problem too. Do you want to come? Where? My place, I'll take you to my place. No, I won't come, I'm fine here in the sun. Me too, I'm fine in the sun. Don't ever leave me, André. I've never left you, Madeleine. I know, you are not happy either. What do you want to do, then? I'll worry about it later. Time passes, time goes by, eternal time never lies; I look at people passing in front, each one with a purpose in life, a trade to carry on, a house to upkeep, an affair or a family to support. Whereas we, here, crumbs, the meal-leftovers left from life, content with sitting and staring. You cannot live your whole life just staring at others. Why not? For us, there is nothing else left to do, there is no room for us in this world. Now come, come with me. Where are you taking me? You'll see. He gets up, picks up his black bag, throws it over his shoulder, takes my hand and leads the way. I follow him like an innocent little girl.

I call him pure, innocent and candid.
Proto-punk, psychotic black Vicious a la French.
Sid. We need men like him hard to find these days.
Artaud, got to read Artaud.
"Le poison du théatre jété dans le corps social le désagrege,
comme dit St. Augustin..."

Little Girl, a child still, one day walked out of her home, never to make return. Without desires, without memories of a past she didn't have, Little Girl took on the threshold, that day they had left her alone at home. She left the door behind; in the street she wandered through the sleeping city. Little Girl was walking and nobody saw her. Curious she stopped, looked, stared at the shut down stores, the barred shop-windows, at the locked front-doors, the closed dark windows. Hostile; from her curiosity bleak and grey houses were hiding, barren, on the asphalt, no longer red-hot, she walked on that summer night. Walking and walking, after so much walking she realized had left the city behind. It's open countryside, clouds covering the stars, night. She's walking and she's cold. She's walking and she's alone. A young man crosses her road and stops. He smiles, the handsome youth, inspiring trust in her. She follows him.

The young man is walking across the countryside and she follows him. He arrives, up to an old house, deserted, decaying. He enters, she stops at the gate, a gate that doesn't exist any more, red the rusty iron betraying glorious days of a distant past. A past Little Girl never knew. She now sees its ruins. The young man turns and says, come in. Without scruples or prejudices, Little Girl enters his deserted hall, dirty with fallen plaster and pain, dust everywhere. She looks around, uncertain whether to stay or go. The young man drags himself into a large sitting-room, all furniture covered with dusty white linen sheets. He sits down, thoughtful, dark.

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