ha m i s h h a m ilto n pres en t s

Five Dials

number 33
Five Dials x @readwomen2014

Part 11

olivia laing et al On Marguerite Duras, the master of desire

zoe pilger The hearts are ripe and obscene
deborah levy My theatre of rib and shadows
molly mccloskey New Fiction
eliza granville We need new fairy tales

Plus: Susan Sontag’s lists, Juliet Jacques, a short story from Anjum Hasan,
female anarchy in socialism, female anarchy in socialism, and a few of Masha Tupitsyn's Reel Men.

Plus: artwork from The Drone Age

 C O N T R I B U TO RS

melanie amaral is an illustrator based in Seattle. Her work deborah levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her novel
can be found at be found at melanieamaral.com Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker
Prize. She is currently writting a new novel, Hot Milk, to be
eliza granville lives in the West Country. Her novel, published by Hamish Hamilton in early 2016.
Gretel and the Dark, was published by Hamish Hamilton and
Riverhead in 2014. She is currently working on another novel. cari luna is the author of The Revolution of Every Day.

anjum hasan’s first novel, Lunatic in My Head, was short- molly mccloskey is the author of short stories, a novella, a
listed for the Crossword Fiction Award, and her second, Neti, novel, and a memoir, Circles Around the Sun. She was born in
Neti (Not This, Not This, and published in Australia as Big Girl the US, though has lived in Ireland since 1989. She worked in
Now), was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her Kenya, for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humani-
most recent collection of stories, Difficult Pleasures, is pub- tarian Affairs for Somalia.
lished by Penguin India and Brassmonkey Books in Australia.
Her poetry has been featured in several recent anthologies susana medina is the author of Red Tales (Araña Editorial,
of Indian poetry. She lives in Bangalore with her writer 2012), and Philosophical Toys (Dalkey, 2014)
husband.
zoe pilger was born in 1984 in London, where she still lives.
juliet jacques was born in Redhill, Surrey in 1981. She is Her first novel, Eat My Heart Out, is published by Serpent’s
currently turning her Transgender Journey blog about gen- Tail. She is an art critic for the Independent and winner of the
der reassignment, published by The Guardian in 2010-12, into 2011 Frieze Writers Prize. She is working on a PhD about
a book for Verso. She writes regularly for The New Statesman, feminism and romantic love at Goldsmiths College.
and her journalism and short fiction has appeared in various
other publications. agata pyzik is a Polish journalist who divides her time
between Warsaw and London, where she has already estab-
suzanne joinson is the author of A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to lished herself as a writer on art, politics, music and culture
Kashgar, which was longlisted for the 2014 IMPAC Prize. In for various magazines, including The Wire, the Guardian, New
2008 she won the New Writing Ventures Award for Crea- Statesman, New Humanist, Afterall and Frieze.
tive Non-Fiction for ‘Laila Ahmed.’ She writes regularly for
publications including the Lonely Planet Anthology 2014. She emma ramadan studied Comparative Literature at Brown
previously worked for the British Council in China, Russia, University and is now pursuing a Masters in Cultural Trans-
the Middle East and Europe. lation at The American University of Paris. Her translation
of Anne Parian’s Monospace is forthcoming from La Presse,
olivia laing is a writer and critic. She’s the author of To the and her translation of Anne F. Garréta’s Sphinx is forthcom-
River and The Trip to Echo Spring and is currently working on ing from Deep Vellum. Her writing has appeared in journals
The Lonely City, a cultural history of urban loneliness. She such as Asymptote, Recess, and Gigantic Sequins.
lives in Cambridge.

2
susan sontag’s second volume of diaries is entitled As Screen to Screen. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in
Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh. It was published by Hamish numerous anthologies and journals. Her blog is:
Hamilton in 2012. Sontag on Film, a collection of her writings mashatupitsyn.tumblr.com
on film, is in the works.
joanna walsh’s work has been published by Granta, The
christiana spens is the author of two novels (The Wrecking White Review, The London Review of Books, The Guardian,
Ball and Death of a Ladies’ Man) and two illustrated books (The Gorse, The European Short Story Network and others. Her col-
Socialite Manifesto and forthcoming The Drone Age). She read lection of short stories, Fractals, is published by 3:AM Press.
Philosophy at Cambridge, followed by a Masters in Terror- She is currently working on a book for Bloomsbury’s Object
ism Studies and presently a PhD on propaganda and political Lessons series.
violence at St. Andrews, which has inspired her artwork for
Five Dials. She writes regularly for Studio International and the marina warner is a prize-winning writer of fiction, criti-
Quietus on art, literature and politics. cism, and history; her works include novels and short stories
as well as studies of female myths and symbols. Her recent
masha tupitsyn is the author of Like Someone in Love: books include: The Leto Bundle (2001), Signs & Wonders: Essays
An Addendum to Love Dog (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013) on Literature and Culture (2003) and Fantastic Metamorphoses,
Love Dog (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), a multi-media art Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self (2004).
book, LACONIA: 1,200 Tweets on Film (ZerO Books,
2011), Beauty Talk & Monsters, a collection of film-based sto- emma wilson is Professor of French Literature and the
ries (Semiotext(e) Press, 2007), and co-editor of the anthol- Visual Arts at the University of Cambridge. Her latest book
ogy Life As We Show It: Writing on Film (City Lights, 2009). is Love, Mortality and the Moving Image (2012).
She is currently working on a collection of essays,

—
Guest Editor: joan na walsh
Editor: cra ig tay lo r
Publisher: s im o n pro s s er
Assistant Editor: a n na kel ly
Five Dials staffers: jay b er n a rd, n oel o ’rega n , ma ris s a ch en ,
s a m b u c han - watts , paul t uc k er, ja m ie f ewery , e l l ie s mith,
ca r ol in e p r e tty, ja kob vo n ba ey er an d e m ma ea s y
Thanks to: t h e po rt el io t f es t iva l
Design and art direction: antonio de luca studio, berl in
Illustrations by: m el a n ie a m a ra l

@fivedials
@hamishh1931

3
a c en te nary appre c iation

Marguerite Duras
The master of desire. The ultimate writer of euphoria, of despair

D uras is the master of desire. The psychological inten-

sity of her work is played out not only in probing
content, but in mesmerizing syntax and pulse, which makes
about it. Telling the same story, staring its changing face
down through the years. And you were wearing a man's
fedora and gold lame shoes, going to school in evening shoes
the act of reading supremely intimate: her truthfulness decorated with little diamanté flowers. And you were a beautiful
resides in conveying an intimacy that is more than the sum girl, a whore, an ugly, beaten animal. And alcohol doesn't
of its parts. Several years ago, I used to reread The Lover at fill the gaps but filters anyway everywhere, in poisonous
least once a year and would dip now and again into Hiro- streams, poisonous rivers. I'm acquainted with it, the desire to
shima Mon Amour. The time has come to do so again, and to be killed. I know it exists. No hope and not much pity, just
celebrate Madame Duras by rereading her other works too the small teeth bared, the desire to get it all, to set it some-
– not only her literary works, but her political views given how down.
in interviews. She once said, ‘Sometimes I think that Le Pen Olivia Laing
should be killed. Not by me … But if there was someone
brave enough to do it ...’ I quoted her in an art catalogue I
wrote, back in 1993. Undoubtedly, our writers need more
passion when it comes to politics. To read Duras is to recover
passion lost.
M arguerite Duras is one of those authors who always
symbolized freedom to me – freedom to choose, to
be sexually satisfied, to choose love and sex beyond other
Susana Medina traditionally womanly things if she wanted to. Jean-Jacques
Annaud’s adaptation of The Lover came out exactly in this
time, when I was budding sexually and was extremely prone

R aking over the live coals of lived experience. Telling

tales on herself, knowing there's never only one way
to such things. Forbidden love set up in colonial Saigon dur-
ing the time of Indochina, with its reversal of roles, shook

4
 ‘At the moment of orgasm she could no longer tell whose body is whose.’

me (it’s the fifteen-year-old ‘colonizer’ Marguerite who is versions had been published as autobiography, and as the
a pauper here, and her twenty-years-older dandy Chinese novel The North China Lover; she also wrote a film script).
lover is rich, though it is he who remains in a dependent, A famous and respected writer, she was still searching, still
begging position in this relationship). When you’re a teenag- turning over the same material to see what was, what could
er, you want to grow up and do those adult things so much be, there.
that everything around this is just breathtaking. It was only On the train to Nice, I read in French and, skimming
later that I realized the nasty implications of the pairing of quickly over the language’s double negatives, I thought,
the fifteen-year-old ‘pauperized’ Marguerite with a Chinese briefly, that Duras’s heroine/avatar told me, To write is not
man, and learned about her involvement with Partie com- nothing; but no: Duras points out, as she does so blankly, of
muniste français, and then the Vichy government (though so many things in so much of her work, It’s not true. What
she was working as a secretary probably to protect her hus- she says is, If writing isn’t all things, all contraries confound-
band, who was in La Résistance). ed, a quest for vanity and the void, it’s nothing.
Duras took up the problem of colonization, exploitation I didn’t find what I was looking for in The Lover, it being
of the East by the West, and the way geopolitics and his- so much less about romantic, and so much more about fam-
tory cross with intimate feelings of love and passion, most ily, love, and hate, than I had supposed it might be, but I
movingly in her Hiroshima Mon Amour script for Alain started writing partly because Marguerite Duras told me it
Resnais’ film in 1959 the most astonishing film to come out was OK not only not to know who I was, or where I was
of Nouvelle Vague. The cinematography of the lovemak- going, but that not feeling like a subject could itself be a
ing scenes – the opening scenes, for example, where the subject.
Frenchwoman’s body melts with the body of her Japanese Joanna Walsh
lover – are some of the boldest ever committed to screen.
Like a piece of body art or even earth/land art, covered in
sand, earth, caressed by sun, fragments of hair, skin, sounds
of orgasm and passionate panting melt into one sculpture, as
it were, and allow us to understand what Duras once said in
F rom Duras I’ve learned that a first-person narrator is
not limited by the imperfections of memory, but rather
freed by them. There is no absolute truth in what is remem-
one of her books: that at the moment of orgasm she could bered, and so what is true in a character’s history can be a
no longer tell whose body is whose; she was a unity with fluid thing, manipulated to the benefit of narrative, even in
her lover. The scandalous assertion that the atrocity of purportedly autobiographical fiction.
Hiroshima is somehow equated with her loss of a German Cari Luna
lover, the public humiliation of her head being shaved, and
imprisonment, was as shocking as it was revealing. It was
best summarized by Janusz Zagórski, the designer of a
Polish poster for the film in 1960 (Poland, then amid the
relative relaxation of its post-Stalinist politics, tolerated
I first read The Ravishing of Lol Stein when I was work-
ing the night shift at a club in London, aged twenty-five.
The second-hand copy I had bought online was a 1966 edi-
such debauchery), who made the lovers’ embrace melt with tion showing a fey woman with flowing hair near an open
the atomic mushroom – simply breathtaking stuff. window. It looks like a soft-porn romance novel. To the
Agata Pyzik contrary, it is a visionary work that I went on to reread
many times, and which powerfully shaped my own writ-
ing and research. The window, a ‘stage of light’, is one of

I started reading Marguerite Duras one spring, on a train

from Paris to Nice. I had lost someone I had loved, and,
feeling lost, I was trying to find my way back by leaving.
the most memorable images of the novel. Lol Stein, still
hysterically numb after a night of heartbreak years before,
wanders through dead streets of a seaside town to a rye field,
‘The story of my life doesn’t exist,’ I read, as the train passed where she lies down and watches the window of a hotel,
from long flat fields ploughed by clouds into cuttings of lit from within. She can see two lovers; she is locked out.
red rock sprouting umbrella palms; ‘Does not exist. There’s Duras writes: ‘She does not even question the source of the
never any centre to it. No path, no line. There are great wonderful weakness which has brought her … she lets it act
spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it’s upon her.’ Beneath Lol’s hypnotic inertia, her failed grace,
not true, there was no one.’ This was Duras writing The is resistance. She excuses herself from a world which doesn’t
Lover. She was in her late sixties, and this was the third time want her.
she’d tried to trace this particular story on paper (earlier Zoe Pilger

5
T he purpose of language for Duras is to nail a catastro-
phe to the page. She thinks as deeply as it is possible to
think without dying of pain. It is all or nothing for Duras.
closely – for me.
Suzanne Joinson

She puts everything into language. The more she puts into
it, the fewer words she uses. Words can be nothing. Noth-
ing. Nothing. Nothing. It is what we don’t do with language
that gives it value, makes it necessary. Dull and dulling lan-
O ne of the qualities that works of art possessed when
I was first grown up was mystery. I didn’t mind not
understanding. I liked the vertigo of the sensations they gave
guage is successful. Every writer knows this, makes a choice me, speaking to my emotions, going straight through to my
about what to do with that knowledge. It’s hard, sometimes nervous system, without my developing an intellectual or
even absurd, to know things, even harder to feel things: analytic grasp of their meaning. The powerful effect which
that’s what Duras is always telling us. Her films are novelistic the film Hiroshima Mon Amour had on me led me to Mar-
– voice-over, interior monologue; her fiction is cinematic – guerite Duras’s novels, and to screenings of her own films,
she understands that an image is not a ‘setting’, it has to hold such as India Song, and, much, much later, to read, with
everything the reader needs to know. Duras is never begging great admiration, L’Amant, her late and well-deserved inter-
with words but she is working very hard and calmly for us. national bestseller. L’Amant doesn’t have the mystery of the
Her trick is to make it all seem effortless. When she writes earlier works; it’s intelligible even though the reasons for the
she ignores the sign on the gate that says Trespassers Will Be love affair remain exceptional and unusual. But Duras’s early
Prosecuted and keeps on walking. She needs a stiff drink to oeuvre brings writing closer to music and dance: words
recover. Too many stiff drinks. But such a sublime walk. and images form structures of enthralling, hypnotic sound
Deborah Levy and cadence and pattern, with repetition used to deepen the
incantatory potency of the drama – to call it a story would
be putting it too strongly.

I think of the seaside and of Mediterranean plazas when I

think of Duras. A woman parking her car, long shadows fall-
ing across the square, the woman entering a hotel and ordering
At an early stage in my writing life, Duras defined artistic
subjectivity for me, and she did so as a woman who wanted
to fashion artistic and psychological liberty for herself, always
a Campari to drink, and then another. In much of Duras’s work working at a pitch of high intensity and making uncompro-
the heat isn’t just present, it is destructive, pulsating. Frustra- mising aesthetic demands on herself. It makes me feel sad to
tions, desires and regret simmer beneath the sun. think about all this, as I haven’t seen her like come again.
I read everything I could get my hands on by Duras over Marina Warner
the years. Hunting through The Lover for sex in my teens,
taken apart by The Ravishing of Lol Stein in my twenties
and devouring Trilogy. Recently it is her non-fiction that
appeals. In Practicalities she writes about the link between
building houses, being a mother, madness and writing. She
I n 1958, Alain Resnais was searching for a writer to make a
film with him about Hiroshima. He had read Moderato Can-
tabile by Marguerite Duras. They met in her apartment in the
describes the various houses her own mother kept, usually in rue Saint-Benoît, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. They
unfriendly landscapes (seven-hour treks along unmade roads) spent five hours drinking together and talking about all the
and the sense of the unhinged that can come from making ways it was impossible for them or anyone to make a film about
a home against the odds: ‘I believe that always, or almost Hiroshima. Three days later she sent him a dialogue between
always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, lovers. Working through the night, she finished the screenplay
the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain in three months. From Japan, he sent her postcards, sending his
the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.’ regards to her lover Gérard Jarlot, and detailing his own dis-
Duras lists the contents of her mother’s kitchen cup- covery, in the bombed city, of locations she had imagined from
boards: gruel, quinine, charcoal … and then she lists the Paris: the café by the river, the nightclubs, the atomic dome.
contents of her own: eau de Javel, Spontex, Ajax, steel wool, In the finished film Hiroshima Mon Amour the woman says
coffee filters, fuses, insulating tape … and what she gives us, to her lover, ‘You kill me. You give me pleasure.’ This yield-
if we read carefully, is a manifesto for female survival. ing of self is voiced as we are swept through the streets, veloc-
Books about desire and how desire undoes us can be writ- ity denying the division between pain and pleasure. The pas-
ten in front of cupboards scrubbed clean. In the same book sage across Hiroshima holds the sensation of the lovers’ bodily
she reports that her house at Neauphle-le-Château is damp yielding and contact. ‘Devour me. Deform me,’ she says.
and it is sinking. She has tried to put in an extra stair but Duras is, for me, the ultimate writer of euphoria, of
when the mason digs a hole to reach the ballasting he just despair. From La Douleur to Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
keeps going, there is no bottom. ‘What had the house been to the brief S/M texts of her later career, she folds extreme
built on?’ The earth can’t be trusted. Bricks and mortar can’t sensation ecstatically into her reckoning with politics, grief
be trusted. and history. She finds in her writing forms of expression
Homes constructed for holding on to children and men matched to a sense of eroticism bound up with violence,
can’t be trusted. Everything is vulnerable for Duras and it proximity, an unfixing of the self.
is that quality in her writing which resonates – perhaps too Emma Wilson ◊

6
o n meat

Ox Heart Diary of a Steak

an extract from Eat My Heart Out an extract from Diary of a Steak

by Zoe Pilger by Deborah Levy

A s soon as the driver opened the doors of the bus, I

began to run, hysterically.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
thursday
Name: Buttercup.
Nationality: English: a vast repertoire of emotionally and
God is love, god is light. Light is Dave, the light-maker! physically unstable symptoms.
Where is he? Born: East Grinstead.
I had expected Dave to run after me, but he hadn’t. Distinguishing Marks: White head. Black patch over left
I ran into Tesco on Clapham High Street. eye. Big boned. Pierced ears.
I grabbed a basket and skipped down the fluorescent meat Father: Prime Hereford. Solid block of face. White feet.
aisle. I swung the basket as though it were a holy thurible Shining eyes.
able to bless the packets and packets of gleaming red ruby Mother: Friesian. Sharp straight eyelashes. Long nose. Dark
meat, rippled with a fat so white it hurt. There was purity in lips. Big boned.
the world. There was passion in the world. I was alive. Hal-
lelujah! friday
I stopped, entranced, at the offal section. The hearts, ripe I am not mad. Pank you.
and obscene, seemed to morph into Dave’s pendulous testi-
cles – I was sure they would be pendulous – blood-bursting friday
and full of the promise of future generations. We would They gave me a bottle of ammonia to smell. I said it was
mate! We would mate! rose water. They gave me charcoal to eat. I told them it was
I clawed at the hearts with love streaming through my chocolate. They gave me a top hat. I told them it was my
veins. There would be twenty, thirty children! There would baby and suckled it in front of the distinguished gentlemen
be eternal children! Dave and I would move in with his par- farmers and independent experts on brain disease.
ents in Devon and I would waddle about the rose-covered
cottage, as happy as a fat pregnant duck. His kindly mother monday
with twinkling eyes and flour on her hands from making so We won the war.
much bread would pat my stomach and possibly perform
an age-old family ritual of swinging a locket around my tuesday
stretch-marked belly in order to tell whether I would be Tell the world we are proud of our hotels and bovine
gushing forth a little Dave or a little Ann-Marie. If I had a vertebral columns.
boy, I would call it Sebastian. I am the national anthem.
I put the packet in my mouth and tore at it with my teeth.
The watery blood that swirled around the edges of the meat thursday
ran straight into my throat. I bit down on the heart with I can feel some erotic hysteria coming on.
urgency. It crunched like a hard peach. Dense, slaughter- It’s coming.
heavy scents overwhelmed me. I had an urgent need to mas- My theatre of rib and shadows.
turbate. I put the brown and messy meat between my legs,
crouching awkwardly on the floor. The fluorescent lights saturday
became gamma-ray bursts. My momm y wen to the incinerator. She was not allowed
‘Ann-Marie!’ Dave was running down the aisle towards to suckle me. I’m a herbivore but I was made into a carnival. ◊
me. He stopped, sweating. ‘What are you doing?’
I threw the packet back on the shelf. ‘It should be per-
fectly obvious what I’m doing, Dave.’ I stood up. ‘You’ve
ruined it now.’
‘Ruined what?’
‘I was having a wonderful time – remembering you.’
‘Well, here I am!’
‘No, Dave. You don’t understand. It’s better if we skip

7
this part. If we fast-forward to the beginning and the mid-
dle and the end and let the tragic chorus begin and let me
feel sad and maybe I’ll even write a poem about it. Maybe I
was close to writing then – with the meat.’ I gestured to the
hearts, which looked as though they had been mauled by a
pack of wolves.
A Tesco worker came striding down the aisle with a mop.
She was irate. ‘Didn’t you hear the announcement?’ she was
saying.
I ran out of the supermarket, grabbing a copy of Grazia
on the way. I didn’t stop until I reached the Tube. I hid
behind the public toilets. There were no police cars. Then
I saw Dave, panting. He was looking for me. I watched his
discomfort for a while, then, when his back was turned, I
ran and jumped him from behind. Dave didn’t fall though;
he was stronger. He held on to the park railings, saying
nothing, until I began to feel foolish. I got down.
‘You’re playing games,’ he said. ‘You’re always playing
games.

P eople were staring at us in the carriage; probably

because we looked like a couple from a romantic com-
edy, totally made for each other, both appearance-wise and
personality-wise.
I got out Heidegger: An Intro and said: ‘I won’t be need-
ing this any more.’ I offered it to the man sitting opposite;
he had a bushy beard and looked vaguely like a philosopher
himself.
‘Who needs knowledge and even education at all when
you have love?’ I said. ‘I was only getting an education any-
way because that’s what you’re supposed to do. And I never
really understood any of it. All I ever really wanted was
someone to love, who loves me. The rest of – all of it – just
seems like a waste of time.’
‘Really?’ said the man opposite. He was holding the book
as though it were a bomb.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘See.’ I snatched it back and flipped to a
random page. ‘Concept of Authentic Life: My existence is
owned by me.’ I gave it back to the man. ‘I mean, who needs
authenticity when you’ve got romance?’
Dave laughed uncertainly. ◊

8
li sts

Sontag’s Choice British Pops (1964)

Lonnie Donegan
Chris Barber
Selected by Joanna Walsh …
Chris Richard + his Shadows
Cilla [Black]
Helen Shapiro
…
Mersey [Beat]:
Beatles
Dave Clark 5
American writer and critic The Rolling Stones
The Beasts
Susan Sontag was a The Pretty Things
The Birds
compulsive list-maker. …
Dusty Springfield
Her famous list of things
she liked (diary, 21
February 1977) included Body type [SS is describing herself ] (1964)
* Tall
‘making lists’. Here are a * Low blood pressure
* Need lots of sleep
few lists from her diaries, * Sudden craving for pure sugar
(but dislike desserts – not high enough concentration)
published in As Consciousness * Intolerance for liquor
* Heavy smoking
Is Harnessed to Flesh. * Tendency to anemia
* Heavy protein craving
* Asthma
* Migraines
* Very good stomach – no heartburn, constipation, etc.
* Negligible menstrual cramps
Verbs (1964) * Easily tired by standing
Slash Slip Away * Like heights
Flake Barter * Enjoy seeing deformed people (voyeuristic)
Judder Tamper * Nailbiting
Spurt Blunt * Teeth grinding
Sprint Bash * Nearsighted, astigmatism
Jar Whimper * Frileuse (very sensitive to cold, like hot summers)
* Not sensitive to noise
(high degree of selective auditory focus)

Nouns (1964)
Panache Armature Regenerative experiences (1965)
Parameter Scuffle
Neologism Cistern Plunge into the sea
Guts Persiflage The sun
Integument Tempo An old city
Snap brim fedora Furore Silence
Gruel Imbroglio Snow-fall
Animals

9
10
Untitled list (1965) Three themes I have been following all my life (1972)
… been sheared off China
… worked into the grain of Women
…pounded flat by Freaks
grudging And there’s a fourth: the organization, the guru
spurned
incredulous
spew
launch
‘New’ British novelists (1976)
unfits one for ...
equivocal B. S. Johnson
pollute Ann Quin
reshuffled David Plante
choice insult … Christine Brooke-Rose
debased Brigid Brophy
dispersed Gabriel Josipovici
makeshift
despondent
2/21/77
Qualities that turn me on (someone I love must
have at least two or three) (1970) Things I like: fires, Venice, tequila, sunsets, babies, silent
films, height, coarse salt, top hats, large long-haired dogs,
1. Intelligence ship models, cinnamon, goose down quilts, pocket watches,
2. Beauty; elegance the smell of newly-mown grass, linen, Bach, Louis XIII fur-
3. Douceur [gentleness, sweetness] niture, sushi, microscopes, large rooms, ups, boots, drinking
4. Glamor; celebrity water, maple sugar candy.
5. Strength
6. Vitality; sexual enthusiasm; gaiety; charm Things I dislike: sleeping in an apartment alone, cold
7. Emotional expressiveness, tenderness weather, couples, football games, swimming, anchovies,
(verbal, physical), affectionateness mustaches, cats, umbrellas, being photographed, the taste of
liquorice, washing my hair (or having it washed), wearing a
wristwatch, giving a lecture, cigars, writing letters, taking
Twelve travellers (1972, China)
showers, Robert Frost, German food.
Marco Polo
[Matteo] Ricci Things l like: ivory, sweaters, architectural drawings,
Jesuit who painted urinating, pizza (the Roman bread), staying in hotels, paper
Soulié de Morant clips, the color blue, leather belts, making lists, Wagon-Lits,
Paul Claudel paying bills, caves, watching ice-skating, asking questions,
Malraux taking taxis, Benin art, green apples, office furniture, Jews,
Teilhard de Chardin eucalyptus trees, pen knives, aphorisms, hands.
Edgar Snow
Norman Bethune Things I dislike: Television, baked beans, hirsute men,
My father paperback books, standing, card games, dirty or disorderly
Richard Nixon apartments, flat pillows, being in the sun, Ezra Pound,
Me freckles, violence in movies, having drops put in my eyes,
meatloaf, painted nails, suicide, licking envelopes, ketchup,
traversins [bolsters], nose drops, Coca-Cola, alcoholics, tak-
Cemeteries (1972)
ing photographs.
New one in Marseilles
Haramont [a village outside of Paris where Nicole Things I like: drums, carnations, socks, raw peas, chew-
Stéphane had a house] ing on sugar cane, bridges, Dürer, escalators, hot weather,
Linguaglossa (Sicilia) sturgeon, tall people, deserts, white walls, horses, electric
Londo Island typewriters, cherries, wicker/rattan furniture, sitting cross-
Highgate (London) legged, stripes, large windows, fresh dill, reading aloud,
Near Taroudant [Morocco] going to bookstores, under-furnished rooms, dancing,
Panarea [island off Sicily] Ariadne auf Naxos. ◊

11
 p o rt f o l io

The Drone Age

by Christiana Spens

12
13
 The Drone Age is published by Blue Pavillion.

Inspired by the work of Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and Gerald Laing,
The Drone Age is a pop art response to current affairs.

Work from the book will be exhibited at Gallery 17 in Edinburgh in September.

14
f i ctio n

This Didn't Happen to You

by Molly McCloskey

arrived in Sri Lanka; Anna was leaving in two

weeks. He had remembered her intensely for a
few days, then forgotten her entirely.
Matt was based in Dadaab now, the sprawl-
ing refugee camp in the east of Kenya. He was
an engineer, managing water and sanitation
projects, and he’d flown into Addis the day
before for meetings. But he had nothing on till
the afternoon, so that morning was going to
the jobs fair for Ethiopians – partly because he
thought an old colleague might be there, most-
ly to avoid paperwork that needed doing. The
fair was at the hideously glitzy Sheraton – what
a friend in Nairobi had described as Versailles
overlooking the slums.
He had been to Addis once before and had
found it instantly dispiriting. He had long since
learned that every impoverished city is ground
down in its own particular way, but where
Nairobi had a kind of pent-up energy, a charge
to the air that felt unmistakably sexual, Addis
seemed diffuse, and a little lost. Out of the
window of the Land Cruiser he could see out
figures squatting on the footpaths, so thin they
looked folded in upon themselves. There were
people missing legs or arms, and there were
others who were physically intact but were
clearly deranged. They wore layers of rags and
raved, like mad truthtellers, as they wandered
up and down the footpaths.
He turned to Anna. ‘So where are you
these days?’
‘Uganda,’ she said, ‘since July. Between
Gulu and Kitgum.’ She was working as part of
a team that was attempting to prepare for the
return of the hordes who’d been displaced by
the war. She too had come to Addis for meet-
ings, but unlike Matt was actually interested
in the jobs fair. This year, it was focusing on
the disabled, and Anna wanted to see what was

H e met her for the second time in the back of a Land

Cruiser, one sunny, spring-like morning in Addis,
where neither of them was living at the time. It took him
being done for them. Where she worked, there were a lot
of maimed.
On the second floor of the Sheraton, there were people
a moment to recognize her. It had been three years and with white sticks and others in wheelchairs, and a few sat on
another continent – the east coast of Sri Lanka, in a room ornate sofas, reading job descriptions in Braille. The doors
decked out with artificial limbs. She’d been a protection to the patio were open and the morning sun fanned across
officer working with Tamils and was at the medical centre the carpet. At one of the stalls, two people signed to each
having tea with a doctor friend of hers. Matt had only just other, smiling. A dwarf led a blind man by the hand, and

15
they too smiled. Everyone seemed to be smiling. All these city looked hard and ramshackle, but there were coloured
people, all these unemployed, disabled people with their lights everywhere and Christmas trees in windows, and in
so-slim chances of a better life, smiled. Through the rooms the tattiness was something wondrous, too.
ran an air of trust and quiet optimism that Matt seldom No one but Kevin and Biata knew Matt was in Ireland –
experienced at such gatherings, and it filled him with sad- not his widowed father in Rathfarnham, not his sisters or
ness. The man who was the official signer for the event wore their families, not the one friend from college with whom
a pin on his shirt that showed, in sign language, the sign for he’d maintained sporadic contact. There was no hurry, he
I love you. Anna asked about the button, and the man taught was planning to stay for a while. He would go to his father
her how to sign it. Matt got coffee and croissants for the two in a few days.
of them and they took a table out on the patio, where the He had left the tree lights on the night before, and when
opening speeches were going to take place. The sun was just he came downstairs this morning – the sitting room empty,
warm enough to make sitting out pleasant; the coffee was his stockinged feet soundless on the floorboards, the lights
perfect, the croissants light and flaky. The whole scene was blinking incessant patterns through the gloom like some
idyllic and bizarre, as though they had chanced upon some code he had to crack – he felt like the last man on earth.
enlightened and progressive land where jobs were plentiful Before bed last night he’d unwrapped what Kevin and Biata
and compassion commonplace, where strangers said I love had left for him: socks, a scarf, two vouchers, a hardback
you upon meeting, and all shapes and colours mingled freely that told the inspirational story of someone, somewhere,
in the palace of Versailles. who’d done something good. There was nothing under
All that was worlds away now: the sun, Anna, their lives the tree now, and it looked denuded and somehow sad
together in the cities of that continent, the tentative sense with itself.
of optimism you wanted desperately to safeguard because it He made coffee and stood at the front window, which
was among the finer impulses on earth. overlooked the canal. Nothing moved. There was not a
It was Christmas morning and Matt was in Dublin, in his person on the street. A thin fog smudged the view. The

‘He had remembered her intensely for a few days, then forgotten her entirely.’

brother’s empty house. Kevin had decamped with his wife willows looked stricken. Rising from the primordial ooze
Biata and their two-year-old to some frozen village in the of the canal were two broken branches and the algaed half-
Polish interior to spend the holidays with his wife’s people. trapezoid of a shopping trolley, all breaking the surface at
That was how Kevin had put it, my wife’s people, as though skewed angles. The canal and its banks had the look of a
he were making good on some ancient promise. Matt pic- misty bayou, a look of stunned aftermath, as though civili-
tured them in voluminous hooded robes, walking sticks of zation had been here and gone.
crooked branch, the child slack-jawed in a sling, as his par-
ents trudged the snow-covered plain until a squat cabin hove
into view.
He had flown into Dublin the night before. Nairobi–
H e had fallen in love with Anna that night, in Addis,
over dinner. He didn’t believe in love at first sight, that
was just chemistry, just nature taking an extreme short cut.
Amsterdam–London–Dublin. Bad planning but he’d hardly But he did believe in love after four hours’ conversation.
minded that it took for ever. He had often felt in the no- He believed that whatever happened after that, whatever
place of airports – nexus of so many lives, actual and pos- they were to discover about one another and whether those
sible – moments of a reassuring weightlessness, when the things bound them or drove them apart, what he felt for her
world seemed vast enough to vanish into. From the back of that first night was love.
the taxi, he’d looked out on to Drumcondra Road and then Anna was in her early thirties, French Canadian, lithe
the north inner city. There were kids in hoodies, some mov- and bird-like, visibly pained and unrelievedly wry, a little
ing with an edgy and purposeful air, others stumbling, in a hardened by years in Chad and Sri Lanka and a devastating
murk of drink or drugs; there were people smoking outside love affair with a war photographer named James who was
the doors of pubs, huddled into themselves and fidgeting for as beautifully ethereal as she was. Four weeks after they’d
warmth; there was a man weaving drunk on a corner and a split up, James had been killed in a horrific car accident
cluster of plumpish young women in minis and heels who while holidaying in Mozambique. He had survived the
parted to avoid him, then tottered back into formation. The Balkans, Columbia, Afghanistan, a smattering of African

16
conflicts, and then had died in peacetime in some terribly had introduced Anna to James, and it was Robin who had
ordinary way. Matt knew a few stories like that, the irony come to stay with Anna when James was killed.
so stark you thought surely it must mean something. It was
a holiday Anna and James had been meant to take together,
and if they had, James would still be alive; Anna didn’t like
Mozambique, she’d have insisted on somewhere else. And
M att didn’t sleep with her that first night in Addis, he
was too … maybe the word was astonished. He felt
astonished at having rediscovered her and yet the sense of
even if he’d convinced her to go there with him, her pres- freefall had none of that anxiety that the early phases of love
ence would’ve altered things. She’d have dallied over break- and desire tend to engender. Instead, it was shot through
fast, they’d have driven the road an hour later, or been on a with an unexpected calm.
different road altogether. She wasn’t blaming herself, she just The next morning he was looking at the news on the
found the fact of randomness overwhelming. Internet and read a blog entry about a Canadian nurse who
In the first months of Matt’s getting to know her, Anna was teaching people how to use condoms. It was headlined:
was still raw enough to cry about it – though she always ‘Sex Nurse in Kenya Making a Difference One Banana at a
insisted she wasn’t crying over James, she was just crying, Time’. He forwarded the link to Anna, and when he saw her
because, well, look around, there wasn’t exactly a shortage that evening at a dinner one of her colleagues had arranged,
of things to cry about. Whatever the reason, she cried when she caught his eye where he was standing with a cluster
necessary and was lovely as she did, one delicate hand cup- of other people, and said, ‘That made me laugh!’ And the
ping her forehead. Then she would quickly regain her com- mood – that first flush of love that can so easily grow pre-
posure, as though the whole thing had been a coughing fit cious, enamoured of itself, as though falling in love were
rather than an emotional disturbance. some totally unprecedented accomplishment – relaxed and
What saved her from becoming tragic, or morbid, was expanded. For a moment they just smiled at one another
her resilience and a silly streak. One day, she’d told Matt that until he detached himself from the conversation and came
she and a friend named Robin used to dance in their little over to her and she leaned forward and kissed him on the

‘Matt didn’t sleep with her that first night in Addis, he was too ... maybe the word was astonished.’

office in Chad, shaking off the gloom of their jobs or their cheek in greeting.
lives or the world outside – look around – by performing ‘Good day?’ she asked.
mock ballet for each other’s amusement. ‘Stuck inside, mostly. Finishing a report on what happens
They were in a grocery store in Nairobi when she told when you have 200,000 people and twelve toilets.’ He had
him this. long ago begun to couch his work – the business of shit and
‘Well, go on, then,’ he’d said, ‘show me.’ piss – in tones of droll indifference.
And to his surprise she had. Twirling down the aisle, all She gave him a wincing smile. ‘Well, we’re going out
arabesque and pirouette and giggles, while the locals looked to talk to some people from the Disabled Vets Association
on, a few charmed enough to offer a wan smile, most too tomorrow. Why don’t you come?’
tired – of their own hardships and of the sight of overpaid, He took a sip of his beer. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the
cavorting wazungu – to respond with anything but apathy. world.’
A woman about Anna’s age laughed and called out, ‘Lady,
you are verrrry good!’ Those r’s that rolled on for ever.
Anna took a low sweeping bow and said to Matt, ‘Robin
was the real ballerina, I was just the understudy.’
O n the way back to the hotel the next afternoon, he
couldn’t get his bearings. Addis seemed all wide hilly
boulevards that looked just like each other, behind which
She had a hundred anecdotes in which Robin figured. lay webs of shack-lined dirt roads. The baby blue Ladas, the
Robin was from Trinidad. She was Anna’s closest friend. city’s taxis, chugged past like toy cars in varying states of
They’d met on a training course in Copenhagen in 2001 and disrepair. Anna was texting – the office, her mother, Robin
had hit it off immediately, beginning a correspondence that – and Matt was thinking about his return to Dadaab in the
hardly wavered in its consistency, that was both intense and morning, wondering if he would ever see Anna again.
girlish, full of dark realities and office gossip. They’d over- They were stopped in traffic. The sound of chatter sud-
lapped in Chad, and had both wound up working in Juba, in denly filled the back seat. He looked over and saw that she
South Sudan, though at different times. It was Robin who had lowered the window and was giving birr to a clutch of

17
beggars, a couple of teenage boys and two women. mother had died during his final year at university, at the
When the Land Cruiser moved off again, he said, ‘Do you age of fifty-three, five months and twenty-one days after her
often give to beggars?’ diagnosis. In her absence, the already strained relationship
‘Fairly often,’ she said, staring absently out of the window. with his father grew quickly brittle. Matt was too young
He looked at her and couldn’t tell if he was in the pres- then, and too consumed with his own grief, to make allow-
ence of goodness or naivety. How many times had he seen ances for his father’s behaviour, and had heard in the things
children make a beeline the minute they spotted a foreigner? his father said, not the ravings of an agonized mind, but
The reflex of expectation. He thought of a teenager he’d merely all the criticisms that had been kept in check while
seen in Sri Lanka, some months after the tsunami, wearing Matt’s mother was alive. When Matt announced that he was
an orange T-shirt on the back of which was printed, simply: leaving, his father accused him of desertion. As though he
Tsunami. He said, ‘If you give money on the street, doesn’t were a spouse, or a soldier.
it just reinforce the whole trap, the whole donor-beneficiary After lunch, Matt walked towards the city, along the
trap?’ He knew there was an argument to be made, but he canal, down Grand Parade. Rust-coloured reeds as tall as he
hated the sound of himself, of this desiccated language he was rose along the banks. The black water ran like a tunnel
had learned to speak. through the fog. He went as far as Percy Place, then crossed
Anna shrugged, turning to him. ‘If they have nothing,’ the humped bridge and skirted round the church that was
she said, ‘what does it matter?’ planted in the middle of the street as though set down there
She was right, of course. When it came to it, survival from on high. The street bulged either side of it like a snake
trumped psychology. But then he said something that who’d just eaten.
shamed him as soon as it left his mouth. ‘It depends what we The fog had thickened slightly; it was the colour of ash
mean by nothing. Are they starving? The people you gave and cold to the skin. He walked slowly, as though mov-
money to weren’t starving.’ ing through a billowy afterlife. He imagined himself in the
Anna was quiet. He didn’t think she was judging him. She wake of a freak disaster, one that had left structures intact

‘When it came to it, survival trumped psychology.’

knew as well as he did that such calculations were written, but swept living things from the earth. The traffic lights
implicitly, into every day of their lives. Otherwise, they played sentinel to empty streets, something homely and
would all go around giving their money away all the time. proud about them, like lighthouses, safeguarding people
He turned back to the window. The vehicle sat high on its against their own misjudgements.
big tyres, so that he was not so much looking out at the beg- He saw no one until he was on the far side of Merrion
gars as down on them, and he felt ugly, and not a little bit Square. Then, a couple, a young family, a middle-aged man
colonial, dispensing arbitrary favours, or not, while consid- walking a small white dog. He turned up Grafton Street,
ering the distinction between starving to death and merely where perhaps a dozen people strolled like survivors in the
suffering from malnutrition. It was mean of him to have quiet. Everyone walked slowly, and because there were so
tried to call her out on a simple, well-intentioned act; he few of them about, they took note of each other, glances
knew enough about her by now to know that she had seen of shy curiosity, infinitely gentle, as though they could not
far worse than he had in the course of her work, and he had quite believe this world they were living in. When he’d gone
no right to interrogate her. as far as the quays, he turned back towards home.
He thought then that his time in the field was over, in Passing through Merrion Square, he saw two feet stick-
any meaningful way, because he could no longer distinguish ing up at the far side of a shrub. His throat tightened as he
between rational decision-making and a kind of burnt-out stepped closer, but the man was only sleeping. He might’ve
petulance. But he would hold on for another three years, been forty or he might’ve been twenty-five, there was no
because of her, and because he didn’t know what else telling. He had the caved-in face of an addict. Matt thought
he’d do. of gathering him up and taking him home, and imagined
the house swept clean of valuables by morning. His mother’s

M att had never in his life spent a Christmas Day alone,

and he hadn’t spent a Christmas in Dublin for fifteen
years. He had left the city soon after finishing his degree. His
eldest sister had met her future husband when he was sleep-
ing rough under a bridge in Canada. It was 1957. They were
both immigrants. She’d brought him home and propped him

18
up in front of a fire and within months he’d passed his test to would look like when it had finished imploding, and the
become a bus driver, and for the rest of his life was a devoted spectacle appealed at some deep level to a people habituated
husband and an upstanding citizen. He had a beautiful sing- to fatalism. They tried to picture the eighties, that grim era
ing voice and he used to sing while she played the piano, often referenced as a kind of bogeyman come back to punish
and they were ordinary, good people who loved each other them for their hubris, but now with spanking new motor-
through many a long winter. ways and repoed McMansions.
Matt was worried the gates would close and the man He and Anna drove to the West, and all through the
would freeze. He had seen a patrol car parked outside the midlands she gawked at the abandoned, half-built houses
square; it was still there when he went out, and he told one and unoccupied estates. She took pictures on her phone and
of the guards about the sleeping man. emailed them to Robin. She said they looked like the devas-
The guard said he wasn’t to worry. ‘We always do the tation after some natural disaster, and Matt said, ‘They look
rounds.’ like last night’s party.’ It was true, the houses managed to
In the course of his life, Matt had walked past a hundred exude an air of shame, or to induce shame, like the detritus
such men, men who by the next morning could be dead. that greets you the morning after, the sordid evidence of
He’d told the guards, not because it was Christmas, not your excesses strewn in calamitous accusation.
because he was home, but because there were so few people In Dublin they walked the streets, and in front of the
left, so few survivors, that each one of them seemed Aran sweater shops, with their ton-weight cable knits and
precious and necessary. their prim woollen cardigans, passed gaggles of middle-class
teenage girls dressed like hookers from some grim pocket

A fter Addis, it was two months before he saw Anna again.

They’d kept in touch, a few weeks of emails and they’d
agreed to meet on Lamu, off the coast of Kenya. It felt like
of Eastern Europe. They took the DART to Howth; Anna
liked Howth better. They ate oysters and sole in a restaurant
overlooking the water and drank a bottle of white wine, and
a honeymoon, with its air of confirmation and beginnings. afterwards brandy, which neither of them ever drank. By

‘On the whole, Anna tried not to show any disappointment with his country.’

They lolled about in a seafood-and-sex stupor for four days, the time they tripped back out into the daylight, a slight
and decided they’d try to make it work. What followed was breeze had picked up. Everything was sparkling. The boats
several months of back-and-forthing between Uganda and bobbed cheerfully at the pier, and all the colours looked
Kenya, then a year together in Juba, a brief stint for her back clear and true. Matt put his arm around Anna and pressed
in Chad, and finally, the two of them in Nairobi. his face into the crook of her neck, into her hair, and in a
Once, he had brought her to Ireland. It was the summer muffled whisper said, ‘I want to marry you.’ She turned to
before she fell apart, or whatever it was she had done. She’d him and looked straight into his eyes until tears formed in
had the usual notions about his country. It never ceased to her own eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Then she drew
amaze him how, no matter what happened here, no matter him to her and held him tightly, and he had no idea what
how much Big Pharma came to town, how many hi-tech any of this meant in relation to the sentence he had just, to
companies the place played host to, how many drug seizures his surprise, uttered.
made the news and how conspicuous and sudden had come On the whole, Anna tried not to show any disappoint-
the consumption of everything, the nation was expected to ment with his country, and he tried not to feel a satisfaction
remain innocent. All the world could change, but here was in disabusing her of her illusions. God knew she had few
childhood, artless and wide-eyed. enough of them left. This was a woman who spent her days
The visit with Anna was the first time he’d been back interviewing refugees, trying to sort the true stories from
since everything crashed. Immediately he’d felt it, the sense the concoctions, gauging whether the truth was bad enough
of held breath, everybody waiting for the axe to fall, and to warrant furthering a person’s resettlement application. It
then the axe after that. But along with the anxiety and the was a perverse kind of competition people were forced to
anger and the talk of negative equity and denuded pension engage in, and she had told him how almost immediately
funds, there were traces of the queerest sort of pride, like her idea of what was endurable became warped; so much
the pride people take in monstrous hangovers. Also in evi- got relativised, measured against what she’d heard already
dence was a perverse curiosity. No one knew what the place that day, that week, that year. This was a woman who, when

19
 he’d asked her one day how work was, had answered: ing that her reaction should’ve been to retreat from him.
‘The new normal is having been raped only once. Having
been raped just once, by a lone man, is now regarded as a
narrow escape.’
He knew what she was thinking, they had discussed it
M att had met Robin only once, when she was passing
through Nairobi and the three of them had had din-
ner. She was almost exactly what he’d expected, which was
often enough. She was wondering which was the more hardly ever the case with someone he’d heard a lot about.
shocking: the ease, the prevalence of brutality; or the way She was both sharp and warm, animated, he kept think-
people survived it without losing their minds. Of course not ing the word vivacious, though it made her sound shallow
everyone did survive, but enough did that Anna could spend and she wasn’t that. He found her transfixing, actually, not
whole days humbled by the fact, made quiet, in the grip of in a romantic or erotic sense, but because she was so alive.
an awe so sincere it looked strangely like prayer. He felt lifted by her presence and he could see that Anna
Sometimes he felt like a child beside her. did, too. Anna’s intensity eased a few notches, and she felt
lighter beside him, and happier. It was the kind of friend-

B y the time he’d reached the canal again, dusk was leach-
ing into the fog, and the air had gone a steely grey. The
street lights were furry globes. He looked at the sheen on the
ship Matt had never shared with anyone, the kind that makes
the world a different and a better place. When they dropped
Robin at her hotel, he and Anna walked back to the car arm-
water, the opaqueness overhead. He looked at the trees along in-arm, and Anna was very soft with him, playful and loving,
the opposite bank, different kinds he couldn’t name, all bare as though she’d been in receipt of something nourishing and
and black-branched, and he thought that he preferred them vital and wanted him to share in it.
like this, stripped down to their own severe beauty. The day Robin was kidnapped in an ambush outside Kin-
He had slowed to the point where he was no longer walk- shasa, Matt was in Geneva conducting a seminar on Sanita-
ing. Movement seemed a disruption, though he hardly knew tion in Emergencies. Anna was alone in Nairobi. She phoned
to what. It was dark now. Nightfall was time made visible. him at 4 a.m. Details were sketchy. They had been taken the

‘In the sound of her voice, he heard whole worlds, worlds she was taking with her and away from him.’

He thought again of his uncle, in the hour just before his previous evening – Robin, the driver, and a local woman
future wife appeared under the bridge. If his uncle had been who was travelling in the UN car with them, against regula-
granted a wish, he would not have dared to think so big as tions. By the time Matt returned to Nairobi three days later,
what in fact was given him. The opposite, of course, might the driver had been let go and the local woman, her name
also be true. If we knew of the misfortunes to come, would was Justine, had been killed.
we carry on at all? Or would we carry on better? Would we It was sixteen days before Robin was released. There were
do justice to the present instead of enduring it? He won- rumours of a large sum having changed hands, and there
dered – and this was the question he asked himself more was the horrible, inescapable irony that had Robin not bent
often than any other, more often even than why she had left the rules and tried to help Justine by giving her a lift, the
– whether he would have experienced any of it differently woman would still be alive.
had he known they wouldn’t last. But then he probably Robin didn’t contact Anna following her release; it was
did know. There was always that slight hesitation, always said she had hardly spoken to anyone. She went home to
the sense of her not being entirely present and with him. Trinidad. The word going round was that she’d been raped.
There was the day he’d told her he wanted to marry her and It wasn’t fear, exactly, that took hold of Anna in the
she had been moved to tears but she had not returned the weeks after that; it was more like an incapacitating shock.
promise. And there was her way of withdrawing into herself, She was unreachable. She wouldn’t allow Matt to console her.
like an injured animal, when she was pained or troubled, as In a moment of exasperation, he said, ‘This isn’t about you.’
though unwilling to entrust herself to him. It had been that She looked at him, her expression puzzled and oddly blank.
way since the first – he remembered it even from the day in More softly he said, ‘I mean, this didn’t happen to you.
the Land Cruiser in Addis, the people begging, his stupidity, It happened to Robin and to … to Justine.’ He felt foolish
her way of going silent as a form of speech – so that when saying the woman’s name, as though he’d known her. As
trouble hit, trouble closer to home than the horror stories though he knew anything at all about who she had been, or
she’d mostly learned to leave at work, it was hardly surpris- what her days had consisted of, or the people who grieved her.

20
 Anna’s contract was up for renewal in five weeks and she back. But in moments of slippage he doubted it all, perhaps
said to him, very by-the-way, as though they’d been mulling because she wasn’t there to fortify it. There were times he
it over together, ‘I’m going home for a while.’ wondered was love anything more than a collusion of belief.
It had all happened so fast, the kidnapping, the murder In the wake of her departure, familiarity fell away. Places
and Robin’s release, the rumours that filtered out, Anna’s they’d got to know together grew strange, so that his own
decision to leave, and to leave him. Matt felt like he’d missed life felt to him like an unfamiliar neighbourhood he’d wan-
something, like he’d skipped some pages, and suddenly there dered into. There were days he looked around him and all
she was, standing in the driveway outside his Jeep, her two he could see was need, pressing from all sides, each person
huge duffels on the ground beside her. transmitting to him an urgent message of need: a look, a
It was one of those balmy, deceptively gentle Nairobi eve- word, an upturned palm. He felt a sense of depletion that
nings. He drove her to Jomo Kenyatta out a choked Mom- was unambiguous and almost pleasant.
basa Road and watched her from outside the glass until she Each evening, on the way home from his office in the
disappeared behind some checkpoint. From the parking lot, Parklands area of the city, he had to navigate the big rounda-
he sent her a text and she phoned him from departures to say bout near the mall. At rush hour, rank with fumes and in a
goodbye, again. In the sound of her voice, he heard whole lurching state of gridlock, the roundabout took on the air
worlds, worlds she was taking with her and away from him. of a living thing, and he felt a kind of pleasure in witnessing
And then he drove home, feeling like a dream she’d had. it, sitting in one of the feeder lanes as the day cooled and the
light went pale over the jacaranda. A throng of cars would

T he day Anna got on the plane to go back to Montreal,

Matt knew he would leave, too. He had just been
offered a new post in Nairobi, as a water and sanitation poli-
work themselves into a complicated jam, and when the reso-
lution came, in the form of a peristaltic spasm, and the cars
burped off in their various directions, he could almost feel a
cy analyst for all of East Africa. Everyone assumed he’d take collective cheer going up.
it. In fact, he felt flat with apathy. He had, he knew, reached Nearly every evening as he waited he would see to his

‘The more they try, the more they go to an excess, the more pointless it is.’

the point in his career where his dealings would be almost left a man on the ground with no legs, begging for change.
exclusively with other high-ranking bureaucrats. Soon, hav- Drained by the day, lost in his own thoughts, Matt would
ing done his time in the field, he would be given a post in find himself staring, his gaze blank but intense, as though
Geneva or New York, and the circle would be complete. the man were a vision both banal and inscrutable. There
When he turned it down, when he said he thought he were always kids, too, knocking on his window or weaving
might leave altogether, people said, ‘You mean leave leave? through the waiting cars and along the shattered footpaths,
But what will you do?’ However chaotic the worlds in moving with that straight-backed strut the kids there had.
which they moved, there was an apparent, counterbalanc- There were hawkers selling puppies and pirated DVDs and
ing order – the hierarchies strictly defined; the deprivations dodgy Ray-Bans, and there were workers hanging out of
precise, the sites of indulgence clearly mapped, the faces stuffed matatus and others starting the endless trudge home.
recurring and familiar; each city, zone, autonomous region There were young men so skinny their torsos looked
stamped with a number purporting to quantify its dangers – incapable of accommodating all their organs.
and they believed that beyond the borders of all these crises But while the Jeep idled, it was mostly the man with no
lay a world of vagueness and uncertainty in which he could legs Matt looked at. He wanted to feel something, some-
only take his chances. thing more than just this weariness. He wanted Anna in the
He had a few months left in Nairobi while he was finish- passenger seat, her hand on his thigh, the ballast of her. He
ing his own contract, then he would go to Dublin to do he wanted to see himself get out of the car, day after day, and
didn’t know what. Just breathe, maybe. It would be Christ- give the man money. Once he had, he’d pulled the hand-
mas, and the country would feel like it was under lockdown, brake, stepped out and handed him 2,000 shillings, an absurd
and he was almost looking forward to it. The cold, the sum that he hoped the man would not be robbed of. But
silence, the few hours of nothing at all happening. most days he simply waited for the knots of traffic to admit
Most days, he still believed in them, still believed that if him, then fought his own way around the circle and headed
he was steady enough, patient enough, he could ease Anna towards home. ◊

21
a f i ctio n

The Woman in the Portrait

By Juliet Jacques

who worked as a maid at Magnus Hirschfeld’s

Institute of Sexual Science, has radically changed
perceptions of Schad’s work. They were recovered
from an attic in Nice, near Hirschfeld’s home after
his exile from Germany. Along with Schad’s letters
to Dadaist friends, recently discovered by art schol-
ars, they explain how Heike came to be the woman
in the portrait, and provide a fascinating insight
into gender-variant life in the Weimar Republic.

Self-Portrait with Model remains the best-known work by German *

artist Christian Schad, known as ‘the painter with the scalpel’ for
the cutting, forensic nature of his work. The son of a wealthy On Friday 4 February 1927, Heike went to the El Dorado, a
Bavarian lawyer, Schad was born in 1894 and fled to Switzerland gay club in Berlin which had just moved to Schöneberg, oppo-
in 1915 to avoid military service. There, he became involved site the Scala Variety Theatre. The following day, she wrote:
with the Dadaists, attending their legendary Cabaret Voltaire
in Zürich, before moving to Italy and adopting the Neue Sach- At the El Dorado last night, with Dora and the girls. I got my hair
lichkeit (New Objectivity) style that replaced Expressionism as done like Asta Nielsen in Joyless Street, and I wore my long black dress
Germany’s dominant Modernist form in the mid-1920s. with the beads that Marie got for my birthday. Conrad [Veidt] was there,
Painted in 1927 and currently on display at the Tate Mod- getting drunk with Marlene [Dietrich] before her act.
ern, where it is on loan from a private collector, Self-Portrait is I went on stage and introduced Marlene. A man at the front kept
noted for its mood of suspicion and hostility, and the discon- staring at me. I saw him go to the bar and buy some chips for a dance. As
nection between the artist and his ‘model’, but her identity has I stepped down, he grabbed my hands, told me he’d just moved to Berlin,
long been a mystery. It is not his then-wife, Marcella Arcangeli, took me to the bar and bought a bottle of absinthe. ‘You’re the most beau-
an Italian medical professor’s daughter whom he married in tiful woman I’ve ever seen,’ he told me. ‘Listen,’ I said,
1923. Schad claimed that he saw the model in a stationery shop ‘I’m the third sex.’
in Vienna, where he lived from 1925 to 1927, but the remark- ‘That might be Dr Hirschfeld’s line,’ he yelled, ‘but you transcend
able find of two diaries from 1926 and 1927, by a ‘transvestite’ sex!’ He invited me to his studio in Vienna to model for him. I said I
known only as Heike, a hostess in Berlin’s El Dorado nightclub wanted to be in the movies but Conrad told me it could never happen.

22
‘Ignore that two-bit somnambulist! Once they see my portrait, no director He slapped me hard on the cheek. He sat with his back to me. ‘My wife
could resist you! As far as the pictures are concerned – you are a woman!’ … my son …’
We danced. He kept staring into my eyes, smiling. I tried to kiss him. I stared at the wall.
‘I’m married,’ he said. He gave me a card with his address, told me to write ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
to him and then left. Dora asked what happened. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to Conrad and Marlene,’ I replied. ‘They’ll introduce me to
Pabst and Lang. I’ll start with bit parts but they’ll see, and once they do,
* I’ll pay for your art, I’ll –’
‘Shut up, you idiot!’ he said. ‘They might make films about freaks
After work on Friday 25 February, Heike arranged to meet but they don’t cast them!’
Schad. She thought they would go for dinner and then to the ‘I thought you liked freaks,’ I said, reminding him that Marie had
theatre, and her diaries detailed her dreams of leaving her seen him at the Onkel Pelle.
domestic service to become an actress, but Schad’s note to ‘Not when they seduce me!’ he yelled. He stood over me.
Richard Huelsenbeck, posted earlier that week, suggests that he ‘Should I leave?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘I’ll go,’ I said, ‘just don’t hit
never intended to meet her in public. me again.’ He didn’t move. ‘I’ll put on my clothes, just let me out!’
Silence.
Welt-Dada, ‘What about the portrait?’ I asked.
Went to El Dorado to find The Model – Heike. She – he – is Uranian ‘I can do it from memory,’ he said.
– an invert – but thinks I’ll make her the new Pola Negri – will take her He went and stood by the window. I got dressed and went to the door.
to a hotel – see what transpires. ‘Goodbye, then.’ He looked at me and then turned back. I heard him
open the curtains as I left.
* Soon after, Schad painted his Self-Portrait. It was premiered in a group
exhibition of Neue Sachlichkeit artists at the Neues Haus des Vereins
Heike’s diary for Tuesday 1 March gives her side of their Berliner Künstler, although we know that Heike was not invited. Schad
encounter in Berlin’s Hotel Adlon. sent her a letter, dated Monday 3 October 1927, quoted in Heike’s diary
two days later.
I got to the Adlon at 5pm. From Morning to Midnight by Georg
Kaiser was on at the Neues Schauspielhaus, and I asked if we could go. Heike,
‘I need the time to paint you,’ said Christian. I saw that his easel was The exhibition opened at the Neues Haus tonight – sorry you
already set up. He drew the curtains. ‘Take off your clothes and lie on weren’t there, and about the Adlon, but nobody can know that
the bed,’ he told me. ‘Would anyone cast me if I was famous for being you were the woman in the portrait – I hope you understand.
naked?’ I asked. Marcella and I are finished – perhaps I will see you at the El
‘How do you think Garbo got on Joyless Street?’ he replied, laugh- Dorado.
ing. ‘Take off your clothes and lie down.’ He glared at me as I removed Christian.
my hat. He stared at my hairline, then caught my eyes. I turned
around and took off my blouse, and then my shoes and skirt, and start- *
ed to pull down my stockings. ‘Keep them on’, he said. I turned back
to him. ‘Just the stockings.’ I took off my bra and the inserts, and he Self-Portrait immediately caught the attention of critics, who
just stared at me as I put them on the floor. Then I removed my draw- cited it as one of Schad’s most arresting works. In one of his
ers and lay on the bed. first pieces for influential politics and arts periodical Die Welt-
He looked at my penis. I thought he was going to be one of those men bühne, journalist and psychologist Rudolf Arnheim drew a
who vomit, but he just stood there, breathing heavily. ‘I thought you comparison with another of Schad’s works, which has assumed
said we transcend sex.’ Silence. ‘The Doctor says we’re more beautiful a new dimension since the discovery of Heike’s diaries.
than other women, because we have to –’ He threw me on to the bed. Self-Portrait with Model is outstanding, with Christian Schad
‘Enough about Hirschfeld!’ He kissed me. I thought he was going to kill including himself among the dilettantes, bohemians, degener-
me, he was so coarse and so rough – he just wouldn’t stop. Finally, he ates and freaks who populate his world. With the decadent
got tired. city as a backdrop, Schad is in the foreground, wearing just a
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, looking at my sex again. ‘I can’t.’ transparent shirt which serves only to highlight his nakedness.
‘Why not?’ The artist stares at the viewer, as if he has personally intruded
‘They’ll send me to prison!’ He looked into my eyes. ‘I’m not an on Schad’s clandestine moment of intimacy, his face filled with
invert!’ revulsion, heightened by the narcissus that points towards him,
‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘I’m a woman, and as soon as Dr Abraham coming from the near-naked woman behind him. He blocks
gets there with Dora, I’ll be complete.’ her midriff, perhaps protecting her modesty, or maybe hiding
He laughed. ‘You’re all the same, aren’t you? Hirschfeld, Abraham – something from the intruder. Unwomanly despite her round
you just let them own you!’ breasts, she wears nothing but a black ribbon around her wrist
I stroked his hand. ‘Are you jealous of them?’ I said. and a red stocking, looking away from the artist, stunned if
He turned me over and screwed me harder than I’d ever been screwed. not scared. They both look alone: there are just a few inches
I screamed. ‘Be quiet,’ he whispered, ‘someone might hear.’ Then he between them, yet the distance is huge, and it is impossible
stopped and shoved my face into the pillow. I sat up and looked at him. not to wonder if Schad’s self-disgust and the scar on her cheek

23
are connected. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
The ‘model’ is unnamed, but she bears a striking resemblance She looked at me, trembling. A couple of the inverts came over. ‘I’m
to the transvestite in Schad’s Count St. Genois d’Anneaucourt, fine,’ she said, and sat with me. I thought about when you said that being
which depicts an aristocrat caught between his public image and with her would be the perfect Dada gesture because she was so spectacularly
his desires, and between virtue and vice. The Count stands in ugly in the Portrait, but I was stunned at how good she looked – just like
the centre, ambivalent, seemingly hoping that the viewer will when I first met her.
help solve his dilemma: the demure, respectable woman to his ‘You look incredible,’ I told her. She thanked me. ‘I can’t believe that
right, or the tall invert to his left, his cheeks plastered in rouge, Marlene is in Hollywood and you’re still here.’
his huge frame barely covered by the transparent red dress that ‘You were right,’ she said, ‘they don’t cast freaks.’
exposes his backside? Either way, the transvestite’s resemblance Silence.
to the ‘woman’ in Self-Portrait is noticeable, although Schad ‘Did Dr Hirschfeld …’
claims that the model was chosen through a chance encounter in ‘Dr Abraham got there with Dora,’ she said. ‘I’m fourth in line.
Vienna. Next year, they hope, if things calm down.’
‘Which things?’
* ‘Adolf Hitler says that Dr Hirschfeld is the most dangerous man in
Germany,’ she told me, ‘and if he gets in …’
Heike saw Self-Portrait later that week, recording her thoughts ‘My career is finished,’ I said.
in the final entry of the recovered diaries. ‘Your career and my life!’ she shouted. ‘The club, the surgery, the
Institute, everything!’ Silence. ‘I might die on the operating table, any-
Went to the Neues Haus to see Christian’s exhibition. I was alone – way, like Lili.’ She took a draw on a cigarette. ‘That might not be so bad.’
none of the girls could make it – and as soon as I got there, a group of soci- ‘You don’t need surgery,’ I said, ‘you’re beautiful as it is.’
ety women stared at me, and then went back to the paintings. Of course ‘If that’s so, why did you cover me?’ she asked. ‘It wasn’t a mistake –
they were fawning over the one of the dandy who wants to have sex with I could tell from that scar you put on my face.’
the hostess from the El Dorado but can’t because it’s not respectable. ‘So ‘I was breaking up with Marcella,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t want to hurt her
brave!’ they kept saying. ‘So bold!’ any more by letting her know I’d been with you.’
I decided to find the picture of me, even though Dora told me not to. I ‘The Count’s shameful secret,’ she said. ‘Your shameful secret.’
should have listened to her. I’d tried not to expect anything, but hoped he ‘She’s dead,’ I said. ‘Drowned. There’s no need to stay here. Come
might have tried to bring out something of me – something to show Mar- away with me.’
lene or Conrad, or even the girls – but then I saw Self-Portrait with ‘Where can I go?’
Model. She started crying. I held her hand and I was sorry. She went back to
her friends. I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Will paint to work out how
I stared at it. Some woman glanced at me like I was dirt, looked back I feel about this. Let’s talk soon.
at the painting and then walked away. He’d made a very good likeness of Christian
himself, but he’d brought my hairline down and changed the style, made
my nose bigger and given me breasts. He knew how much I wish mine *
were like that! Of course, they were there because he doesn’t want anyone
to find out how much he likes the third sex, and in the picture, he was In October 1932, Franz von Papen, the right-wing Chancel-
blocking me from the waist down. He remembered my stocking though – lor of the Republic, banned same-sex couples from dancing
he was so desperate for me to keep it on – and he added a flower. The gal- together in public, effectively killing the clubs in which Heike
lery attendant said, ‘It’s a narcissus, it represents vanity.’ Then I noticed worked. The Nazis came to power three months later, and as
the scar on my cheek – the attendant just shook his head when I asked well as stepping up the attacks on Germany’s LGBT population,
what it meant. A man said they were common in southern Italy – jealous they resolved to destroy its Modernist culture.
husbands put them on their wives.I could feel the tears coming. I ran back Perhaps surprisingly, Schad was not targeted, and unlike many
to the Institute and wept, and told Dora that I never want to see Christian of his Dadaist associates and Neue Sachlichkeit contemporaries
or his painting again. whose works featured in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibi-
tion, he stayed in Berlin, being allowed to submit to the Great
* German Exhibition of 1934. He remarried in 1947, five years after
meeting the young actress Bettina Mittelstädt. In 1943, his studio
In summer 1932, Schad had another encounter with Heike – was destroyed in a bombing raid, and when he resumed painting
almost certainly his last. We know this from another letter to in the 1950s, his style had become kitsch. He died in Stuttgart in
Huelsenbeck, dated Sunday 7 August. 1982, aged eighty-seven.
After Schad’s letter, we know no more about Heike. The
Welt-Dada, Nazis raided Hirschfeld’s Institute on 6 May 1933, seizing its
I promised myself I’d never go again, but last night I found myself in the El records and burning its library before repurposing the build-
Dorado. It’s been five years, but I’d only been there ten minutes when who ing and making the El Dorado into the SA’s headquarters. Dora
comes on stage but Heike, from my Portrait. She wore this glittering red Richter had already tried to flee Germany but failed, and was
dress, almost transparent, and I felt scared. As she got down, I called her. never seen again after the attack. We can only assume that
She recognized me and tried to run to the bar. I grabbed her wrist. Heike disappeared with her. ◊

24
fi lm & televisi o n

Does it matter? It doesn’t matter! An invitation to destruction

On Věra Chytilová’s Daisies and female anarchy in socialism. By Agata Pyzik

I n avant-garde Czech director Věra Chytilová’s Daisies

(1966), two young women do nothing for the entire film,
apart from: eating; lying on their bed in flamboyant cos-
Poland or USSR – the conformity of others was essential.
Made two years before the Prague Spring, Daisies was the
product of a deep socialism, with all its sleepiness, sheepish-
tumes; rolling in a meadow; chatting up men and making ness, closure of perspectives and a return to private, family
them pay for them in exclusive restaurants; catching flies; life. Daisies goes against all this. Shot in radical, strong,
sitting/lying down,‘négligé, in stupefaction, like mechani- ‘hippy’ tie-dyed colours, it also went against the greyness of
cal dolls; awkwardly trying to attract men to then run away socialism, creating an anarchic alternative. Daisies remains
from; and throwing and wasting enormous amounts of one of the rarest and strongest satires and subversive fantasies
hard-won and fought for socialist food, in an obvious act of of a life under socialism which never really took place.
disdain for Czechoslovakian men and women workers’ toil Maria and Maria from Chytilová’s film remind me of the
and socialist values. If anything, Daisies is driven by a sense ‘theory of form’ developed by the Polish modernist writer
of play, so rare in cinema, with an open-ended structure, Witold Gombrowicz. In his view, form is something negative:
which at its best works as a series of episodes. If the stabi- a pervading power of conformity, turning us into pitiful
lized socialist society of the Eastern Bloc (as we can call it in members of mass society, an opposition to which would
the 1960s) could be characterized by the rigidity of norms, be a romantic aristocrat of the old type. Yet Gombrowicz
conformity, lack of spontaneity, oppression, stiff rules was rather up for the un-made man, a man without quali-
directing every moment of life, then everything the two ties, without feelings, without dependencies. No wonder
Marias do is aimed exactly at disclosing the organism’s dis- he never came back to communist Poland, but before he
eased bones, as if even the slightest blow of unruliness could became canonized as a writer in France, he preferred the life
easily overthrow this carefully constructed mediocrity. In of a sexual outcast in Buenos Aires, much in the Jean Genet
fact, the state’s power wasn’t that frail at all, as the 1968 lowlife/whore affirmative way.
Warsaw Pact invasion and the end of the Prague Spring The two Marias are on a mission to unmake the socialist
made most clear. But to maintain the ideology – similarly in stereotypes of womanhood: mother, wife, worker, nice girl

25
 ‘They exist between automated dolls from horror movies and eccentrics from a Beckett play.’

from youth organization, homemaker. They want to live on object, was often a factor in Czech surrealist art and film,
the margins of this society, still manipulatively using their from the 1930s paintings of Toyen to the animations of Jan
girlishness to obtain their goals: a free dinner, adoration, and Švankmajer.
lots of fun at men’s expense. At the same time Maria and In Švankmajer’s work, food becomes basically ‘existential’
Maria’s excesses visibly bring them little jouissance. When- and stands for the general hopelessness of human existence:
ever they’re up to something fiendish, they have their little the hopeless mundanity, the routine and repeatability of
exchange: Does it matter? It doesn’t matter! Precisely: whatever everyday activities, such as eating three meals a day. This is
they do, it doesn’t matter. The fun derived from breaking also deeply felt in the short film Meat Love, and is a motif
the rules, from constant line-crossing, lasts perhaps two min- that he repeats in his late film Lunacy, which was partly
utes, only to make room for the usual dullness and boredom inspired by Marquis de Sade, a huge influence present also,
(even hopelessness) once again. The more they try, the more in a sardonic way, in his Conspirators of Pleasure. The world
they go to an excess, the more pointless it is. They’re on a of Švankmajer is always impossibly twisted and distorted to
quest for form. They are women – which means that within the degree that we barely recognize the familiar elements,
society they don’t have an inherent form just by themselves. stripped down to the libidinal rudiments of id, all consum-
What for Gombrowicz was a blessing and a liberation – ing, violent and unpredictable.
escaping the overpowering form, becoming a dandy of the The screenplay for Daisies was developed together with
spirit, a ready product to be admired – for them becomes the Pavel Juráček and Ester Krumbachová, two artists in their
reason they fall. ‘We will be hard-working and everything own right – especially Krumbachová, a strikingly origi-
will be clean,’ they promise. ‘And then we’ll be happy.’ nal costume designer, writer and director, and a somehow
People who have fallen out of form are a frequent topic in tragic, unfulfilled figure, who collaborated with Chytilová
socialist-era Czech film, because not working was the high- also on the oneiric Fruits of Paradise, and co-wrote several
est form of subversion in countries where it would straight exuberant surrealist Czech classics, like A Report on the Party
away qualify you as a ‘loafer’. In A Report on the Party and the and the Guests by Jan Němec, Karel Kachyňa’s The Ear, and
Guests? Jan Němec’s 1966 film, a group of upper-echelon sys- Valerie and Her Week of Wonders by Jaromir Jires, but then, as
tem beneficiaries lose their form. In turn, they are left adrift a self-reliant director she didn’t have similar success. Watch-
– without the system that made them feel important, they’re ing her only film, The Murder of Mister Devil (1970), we see
nothing. Planning a nice picnic with their wives, they are that despite being possessed by an extraordinary visual
suddenly taken over by a mysterious group of people – appa- imagination, on her own Krumbachová couldn’t go beyond
ratchiks? Government officials? Best not to ask too many a combination of visual gags, without a principle organizing
questions. Again, there’s an obsession with food which can it. In Mister Devil, the visual means overshadow the actual
never be consumed, just like in Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm content. We see a perfect bourgeois woman in a perfect flat
of the Bourgeoisie. preparing a real feast for her rather unimpressive functionary
Are the Daisies’ Marias bored, or empty, or simply stupid? partner/husband. The feast is completely disproportionate to
Their waste of time, labour, food, and the pointlessness of the small scale of the evening, yet the dishes just keep com-
their own ways, suggest they are outcasts of society – and ing and coming, more and more breathtaking, and the whole
they suffer because of that. Is this film really a praise of film reminds me rather of Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe
anarchy? The girls are rather dejected and depressed by all of or a similar transgressive anti-capitalist 1970s fantasy.
the increasingly scandalous pranks they perform, so joyless. Yet given the title, and the superb poster, in which the
They exist between automated dolls from horror movies screaming man is drowned and eaten in a ice-cream sundae
and eccentrics from a Beckett play. Self-reflection makes by a smiling Medusa-woman – designed by Eva Galová-
them unhappy. The two Marias are also women reclaiming Vodrázková, in the best traditions of the Czech and Polish
their time, which normally is supposed to be spent on work, school of poster, with excessive irony and surreal/dada spirit,
nursing men and children. They try (and fail) to realize their from which Linder Sterling must have learned some of her
dreams, like the one of being pure virgins, parading on a technique too – it was a strongly feminist statement playing
meadow with a wreath on their heads. They plant flow- with anti-feminist sentiments, about a woman who’s using
ers and vegetables on their bed; their room is a laboratory one of her only ‘weapons’ – food – as a way to make every-
of fantasy. They seem constantly hungry. The motif of thing in the world implode.
food and femininity in Daisies is strictly surrealist and has Food and wasting food is a great taboo, not only in social-
great traditions in Czech art, which produced some of the ism but also in capitalism. The two Marias walk on food,
most interesting art in that spirit. Food as fetish, as sexual crush it with their high heels – an analogue scene is repeated

26
by Ulrike Ottinger in her Bildis einer Trinkerin, with the the role the exploited woman’s flesh plays in it. Not only was
character walking on broken glass. Yet their consumption consumption as such a highly ironic notion in PRL – LL,
seems far away from a joyful carnivorous feast. Was excessive like many women artists from the socialist republics, felt
eating truly subversive within the socialist state? It definitely the burden of being thrown into a role of a ‘harmless chick’,
was, especially in the light of woman’s role within society, whose only role is to look good and conform well within
of her body being ogled and consumed, combined with her the image of healthy socialism.
role of a family food provider. This is related to the sexu- The Croatian artist Sanja Iveković, coming from the
alization of women eating, which today instantly brings to much more liberal Yugoslavia, similarly thematized woman’s
mind images from hardcore pornography, with the scene of role as a ‘sex kitten’, in the women’s magazines promoting
a zoom on a woman’s face, as she licks sperm from her face, consumerism and ‘self-care’, of endless making up, beau-
the so-called money shot. The sexual attraction of a ‘money tifying, sexing-up through buying clothes and cosmetic
shot’ is a pure male fantasy – but the thing is, as theorist products. She exploited this in the hilarious series Double Life
Mark Fisher points out, that the pleasure lies not in the fact (1975), where she put together magazine advertisements with
the girl really ‘enjoys it’, but precisely that she willingly photos of sexy half-naked models in erotic poses, with her
pretends to do so. As a good worker, it’s not enough she just own self-portraits miming their seductive gestures. Unlike
sucks somebody’s dick, she must do it with a smile. Cindy Sherman, ‘deconstructing’ the rules of the capital-
In The Face magazine in 1988 there was a photo session ist spectacle by pretending to be various people, Iveković
called ‘ALEX EATS’, with a relatively unknown skinny stresses the sheer idiocy of porn or consumption in a coun-
model shot repeatedly as she eats in various settings, the try that remains much poorer than the West, with its ridicu-
stress placed on the food that’s being wasted rather than lous pretensions to Western ‘glamour’. But there are much
consumed. Overeating excessively, yet retaining her skinny darker undertones to it yet. In the compulsory consumption
flesh, Alex was openly mocking existing eating disorders. of the Yugoslavian state she saw the obliteration of women’s
It was the beginning of the 1990s waif-like model fash- reality: in Black File (1976) she juxtaposed the photos of
ion, when magazines openly promoted an anorexic and sexy pin-ups from men’s magazines with paper cut-outs
unhealthy look. In the cardinal scene of Daisies involving about missing women, arranged like a police file, ‘Where is
food, the two come upon an abandoned banquet, with a Liljina?’ or ‘Brankica gone missing’. Women under pressure
table groaning under the weight of gluttonously arranged come back in Structure, where Iveković again plays with the
piles of food, a real Balthazar’s feast, uncannily displayed in ironic caption-image pairing, putting old photographs of
the midst of socialist scarcity. What ensues is the girls break- women, some looking like from they were taken from nine-
ing into a final, elemental jouissance, where the food is con- teenth-century physiognomy books or catalogues of mental
sumed and destroyed, transforming into an ultimate orgy. diseases, and pairing them with ironic commentaries, like
Like children left home alone, they destroy as much as they ‘Expecting her master’s return’, ‘Sought consolation in horse
can. They seem still addicted to the classic denominators racing and nightlife’, ‘Had enough of being a good girl’ or
of beauty – they must parody the fashion catwalk, dressed ‘Executed in Bubanj in 1944’. As if death was the only apt
in mayonnaise, salad and curtains, to finally get rid of the punishment for nice girls gone bad.
nagging beauty ideal. They try to be flirtatious, yet they are In a way, our rebellious Marias are ironically ‘punished’
ultimately afraid of sex: they much prefer their own com- by their creator in the end: after all of their transgressions,
pany to the boring men. food- and time-waste they are angrily dunked in the water –
It seems that a woman’s body can never be right, no rela- but by who? Is it the factory workers, this imagined socialist
tionship she has with food can be liberatory. Too fat/thin, collective, the Party’s construct, who take revenge after all
or not thrifty enough. In Daisies the meaning of food is of the previous damage they’ve done? Thrown hopelessly
contradictory: the two Marias neither really chew and swal- in water, the girls realize the error of their ways and child-
low their food nor take pleasure from their anarchic waste ishly promise, ‘We’re sorry, we’re so sorry! We’ll be good
of it. But this association of women and food runs incred- from now on.’ Yet when they try to ‘mend’ the food and
ibly deep. Women are supposed to take pleasure from eating plates they were so joyously destroying before, it only adds
and preparing food, which makes their bodies equally prone insult to injury. So the world crushes them – literally – with
to consumption. Natalia LL, the pioneering Polish feminist an enormous chandelier! Once again they lose as women,
conceptual artist, made a still shocking series of so-called because this is a punishment which cannot be taken seri-
Consumption Art in the 1970s. The films and film stills show ously. Society’s standards and the two Marias’ standards
LL, then an attractive bimbo-blonde, ‘consuming’ various cannot meet. They’re utopians fighting the world’s hopeless
phallic foods: she’s licking and slowly unfolding a banana logic, and this won’t do in the harsh reality of the mundane
(then also a symbol of luxury) and sucking it intensely; she potato salad. Yet if you are one of those who cried after the
drinks cream and lets it dribble all over her mouth and face. smashed food, to whom Chytilová ironically dedicated her
She smiles seductively as she does it, licking her lips with film, you really deserve what you get. And the film ends
visible lust and voraciousness. She nailed perfectly (and pro- with Second World War footage of bombs falling on Euro-
phetically) the conflation of capitalism and pornography and pean cities. The world must end, because it’s so fucking boring!◊

27
m or e fables

Little Red T here was once a gaunt and symmetrically featured

woman who had earned and squandered a fortune as
a fashion clothes horse during the brief period when she
by Eliza Granville was able to stand sideways without exhibiting any curves
whatsoever. Because of her striking titian
hair – it ran in the family – and her prima
donna temper, she was simply known as Red.
When it became obvious that her young
daughter had inherited her looks, Red con-
vinced herself that the girl would succeed
where she had failed, that is to say, she would
damn well stay thin and make it to the very
top of the modelling profession. From that
day on, austere diets and stringent grooming
practices dominated both their lives. And
since she was always dressed in miniature
versions of her mother’s outfits, the daughter
became known as Little Red.
One day the mother put down the phone,
sighed, and said: ‘That was your Gran. She’s a
bit down today. Not that time of the month
again, I suppose. She needs some company,
but I’ve got a late shift at the supermarket.
Be a sweetie: hop on the bus and see if you
can cheer her up.’
It was three days into the Easter holidays.
Little Red was already bored enough to
agree. Anything would be better than sitting
at home watching the flowers grow. Not
that she didn’t like her Gran. She did. It was
just that she’d rather have been out with her
mates. They’d all gone to Florida. Being a
single parent meant that Red could only
afford one foreign holiday a year.
‘Take her my new Tina Turner Love Songs
album. Make sure she plays it. That’ll put paid
to her fifty-is-the-end-of-the-line nonsense.’
Remembering Gran’s penchant for chocolate
profiterole lunches, Red also slipped a tin of
no-fat condensed soup and two apples into
Little Red’s designer backpack. ‘No hitch-
ing, mind. No hanging about the bus station,
either. Keep to the main road. Don’t go taking
shortcuts through those back streets on your
own. That place is a jungle. And don’t talk to
strangers. All men –’
‘Are filthy predators,’ Little Red finished
for her, stifling a yawn, ‘but rich businessmen
are the most filthy predators of all.’
Living in the country made the big city
both inviting and terrifying: an irresistible
combination. Little Red walked slowly, staring at displays
in department store windows and chewing sugar-free gum.
She soon discovered that the most interesting shops lay
along the side streets, with even smaller boutiques in the

28
 ‘Tom’s eyes flicked sideways, then back to the road.“In bed, is she? ”’

tiny courtyards and passageways hidden behind those. She erotica. Laughter was the best medicine, she said.
wasn’t really breaking her promise. These were nothing like The traffic lights changed to red just before the turn-off
the nightmare back alleys her mother had described. Besides, to Gran’s house. Tom huffed and puffed and revved impa-
she had a foolproof system: left, right and right again – hey tiently. He parked the Rover a hundred yards down the road,
presto, back where she started. even though Little Red pointed out a perfectly good space
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before her sense of direction right outside the gate. When they reached Gran’s porch,
failed her. The terrace that should have curved back towards the Little Red searched for the key hidden under the doormat.
main thoroughfare ended in a cul-de-sac. Little Red was lost. Tom begged for a glass of water, repeatedly moistening his
It was then that she realized she was being followed. A dry lips with what seemed to Little Red an extraordinarily
cough. A snigger. A feeble attempt at a wolf whistle. Lit- long tongue. Standing so close, leaning right over her, he
tle Red whirled round, suddenly nervous. Half a dozen suddenly seemed larger and greyer and hairier than anyone
youths, aflame with lust and aggravated acne, lounged across she’d ever met. The minute she opened the front door, he
the road, blocking her escape. Twelve synchronized eyes slipped inside.
explored her skin-tight leather jeans and her cleavage, which ‘Who’s there?’ Gran was a bit of a drama queen. Today’s
owed everything to Wonderbra and not a lot to puberty. A voice was weak and muffled.
wall of scruffy jeans and beaten-up trainers closed round her. ‘It’s only me.’
Grubby hands yanked off her backpack and riffled through ‘Little Red!’ Gran emerged from her bedroom wearing
the contents. a leopard skin tracksuit, which did nothing to disguise her
And that was when her knight in shining armour exceedingly ample curves. She stopped dead. Her eyes lit up.
appeared – only he was wearing a grey suit and driving a The quaver was transformed into a throaty purr. ‘And who’s
Rover. The knight leapt out, leaving the engine growling this handsome creature?’
softly. ‘Hello, what’s going on here?’ ‘Tom Lupin.’ He stuck out his hand, but instead of taking
The boys melted into the shadows. Little Red felt like crying. it, Gran grabbed his wrist and spread out his fingers.
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled, picking up the CD and the soup. ‘Goodness me, what big hands you’ve got!’
The apples had been kicked into the gutter and were past Tom laughed nervously. He tore his eyes off Little Red
eating. The knight smiled. and glanced towards the door, which was still ajar. Gran
‘You’re all shaken up, my dear. Can I offer you a lift any- nipped behind him and closed it.
where?’ ‘Can I get you a drink?’ By now she had both hands
Little Red looked at him carefully. He was grey-haired clamped around his upper arm. ‘Oh, I say, Tom, what big
and ordinary, a bit like her headmaster, but not so fat . . . biceps you have. All the better to –’
and really old, nearly as old as her grandmother. He was Raising her eyes to high heaven, Little Red squeezed
clean, too, not at all like a filthy predator. And he had just past them and went into the kitchen. She mixed herself a
rescued her. She nodded and gave him Gran’s address. strawberry milkshake and topped it with vanilla ice cream.
‘What’s your name?’ When she told him, he laughed. After finishing off two blueberry muffins and an Apple Dan-
‘Mine’s Tom. Tom . . . er . . . ’ His eyes scanned the nearby ish, she cut the first of several large slices of chocolate fudge
gardens. ‘Lupin.’ cake, added clotted cream and ate until she felt her stomach
Tom held out his hand. Little Red shook it, wondering would burst wide open.
how it felt to have thick hair all over your fingers. Perhaps In the sitting room, Gran had Tom pinned down on the
he was hairy all over. It was cold, but Little Red noticed sofa cushions. His squawked protests were drowned by her
that Tom was sweating a lot. And he kept running his finger shrieks. ‘Gracious, Tom, what huge pecs you’ve got. You
round the inside of his collar, as if it was too tight. must spend all your time working out.’
‘Anyone going to be at home for you?’ he enquired. Little Red ignored them. The television in here was small,
‘Only my Gran.’ There was a long minute when neither but it would do for now. After flicking through the channels
of them spoke. Then Little Red added: ‘She’s not feeling she settled for cartoons. Mum would go mad if she found
very well.’ out about the eating binge. She also wouldn’t be too keen on
Tom’s eyes flicked sideways, then back to the road. ‘In bed, Gran getting her claws into yet another fellow. According to
is she?’ Red, the old lady was a voracious man-eater. But Mum was
‘I expect so.’ If she was really down, Gran slipped under unlikely to find out about either. Little Red and her grand-
the covers with a bottle of British sherry and a large box mother had long ago agreed that whatever went on in this
of Cadbury’s Roses to watch forty-eight hours of German cottage was nobody else’s business but their own. ◊

29
fi ct io n

For Love or Water

by Anjum Hasan

I t was the summer when barefooted

women darted between cars at traffic
lights, selling tiny plastic flowerpots for
the dashboard, each with a pink flower
and two bright green plastic leaves that
waved their arms with battery-powered
regularity. It was the summer when
blowups of three blank-faced teenagers
advertised a new brand of munchies called
‘Timepass’ on billboards all over Banga-
lore. One of my neighbours had started
to get the mobile car-wash service over
every Sunday. A yellow sign would go
up in the middle of the lane saying ‘Car
Spa in Progress’ and then they’d go at the
little vehicle with something that looked
like a vacuum cleaner and sounded like a
dentist’s drill. (This was also the summer
when three dentists opened shop in the
neighbourhood.) The boys would hose
down the car for at least an hour, then go
away leaving behind the smell of rain on a
dusty street.
Actually, the dentists appeared not in
my neighbourhood but the next. I lived
in Bhoopasandra, which had bonesetters
working out of grimy sheds and little
places for pranic healing and astrological
predictions, while neighbouring Sanjay

30
 Nagar had municipal parks, Food World, Mini seemed happy that summer, per- a wet comb and an old lipstick. Today
branches of all banks, two petrol pumps petually cooking egg maggi or singing I imagined her turning into a mermaid,
and apartments with balconies – leafy the same ghazal all Sunday as she casually standing with her mouth open under the
with real plants – that were often empty, flicked at the few souvenirs in the house shower and growing bigger and bigger
even on summer evenings. I’d walk past with her once rainbow-coloured feather the more she drank.
them thinking that if I had a balcony, I’d duster. Almost five years had gone by Mini emerged with her hair wrapped
sit there drinking tea till the light faded. since we came to Bangalore; the final in a big towel, looking innocent.
Bhoopasandra was all right except that exams loomed. I’d sit at my table, look- ‘How could it just go?’ she said.
every second week the water ran out. ing at my frayed notebooks, thinking that We went downstairs to seek Mr Bhat-
My landlord, Mr Bhatkal, would come all these years have come down to this: kal’s help. Mr Bhatkal was a courteous
upstairs and say, ‘Madam, there’s enough the things on this table and the sound bachelor who always wore his trousers
for today. Tomorrow no water.’ How did of Mini’s alarm waking me up at four ironed. He seemed to spend most of his
he know exactly how much the four of o’clock every morning with a sense of time reading the papers and he saved
us – me, Mini, his manservant Hari, and being someplace I thought I had escaped cuttings of anything to do with Bhatkal,
him – would use? However much we and then, when I was fully awake, putting where he was from. There was always a
tried to economize and stretch the little me back to sleep again. neat pile growing on the table next to his
that was left in our rooftop tank, he’d I didn’t know whether to go back big frayed sofa. On his evening walks he
always be right: the water would run home to Darjeeling for good after the wore a baseball cap with the legend ‘Vive-
out the following morning and he’d have exams and my internship, or do an MD. kananda Travels, Bhatkal’. He was unlike
to call for a water tanker, the one with I didn’t even know whether I liked phar- the others in the lane, who, uninterested
‘Annapooneshwari Water Supply’ painted macology. My reasons for choosing it in reading, either went to the temple or
on its side, below that a phone number, could be traced back to conversations broomed. At the crack of dawn, late in
and water inevitably dripping all over the in our living room at home with my the night, in the middle of a sleepy after-
place. The tanker hands would make a parents and one of their famous doctor noon, they were always at it with their

‘The streets full of boys huddled around their bikes,

talking in Farsi, giving off the smell of aftershave and cigarette smoke.’

ruckus in the lane when they came, self- friends – famous, apart from her medical stick brooms, intolerant of even a scrap
important because they knew how much proficiency, for her certainty. ‘Hormonal of dry leaf on their four-by-four com-
they mattered. drugs,’ she’d said, her mouth full of a pounds, no matter how much garbage
Mini and I shared those two rented marie biscuit. She was certain a career in they dumped outside their gates. Even
rooms plus a tiny kitchen. It was a good drug research had great prospects. I was a the car-wash snobs with the biggest house
half-hour walk to the college but I didn’t child then – seventeen years old and eager in the lane – who had made a concession
mind. I didn’t mind the heavy pharmacol- to do the right thing. to art by arranging three blue-beaked
ogy textbooks in my backpack, or the Now, six years on, I wondered if I plaster-of-Paris swans on their terrace
sun burning my neck, or the stench of should have studied something else but –broomed.
the sewer near the Indian space-research I didn’t know what. It could have been Mr Bhatkal locked his hands behind
organization. It always smelt this way poultry farming, it could have been paint- his back and shook his head. ‘Water was
in the heat; when the rains came they ing. I had never felt as fluid as I did that supposed to last at least until morning.’
washed away the stink from the clogged summer. I looked at Mini. She had trumped Mr
water, like they washed away a lot else. I was cooking dinner one evening Bhatkal and really drunk up the water. We
I could have lived nearer the college, when the water ran out. I tried the little went back upstairs and I glanced into the
but Mini and I had planned from the sink in the living room, my hands white bathroom. The red bucket was empty. We
beginning to stick together – we were with potato starch. That was dry too. I always kept it full for our bad days, and
going to cross half the country and enrol banged on the bathroom door. house rules ordained that every week the
in the same medical college, as nervous ‘Mini, what happened?’ bucket should be emptied and filled afresh.
eighteen-year-old first-year students. We Mini took two-hour baths every night. ‘Mini, are you in love?’
wanted to stay away from cramped hostel I imagined her dancing before the mirror, What did she do in there every even-
rooms and we couldn’t stand the thought her arms wrapped around herself, her lips ing? I didn’t remember her spending so
of sharing bathrooms with armies of miming her favourite song, or trying on long locked up when we’d first moved in.
hyperactive, would-be doctors. different faces with not much more than ‘You’re crazy,’ she said. ‘I have to go

31
back home to hook a decent boy, some- I was alone now but the water would coops out on the pavement. Exhaust
one who can cook much more than run out less often. And Mini was just a fumes and stray dogs. The streets full of
maggi. I want to be loved like mad, find ten-minute walk away. But the first Sun- boys huddled around their bikes, talking
someone who feels like dying whenever I day without her felt empty; I lost myself in Farsi, giving off the smell of after-
step out of the door and is so happy when in my books all morning and then walked shave and cigarette smoke. Most Iranian
I come back from the clinic that he’s up and down in the house, looking out students lived in Bhoopasandra, as did
happy to just watch me eat.’ through the windows of both rooms, the Nigerians, though I once heard a tall
‘What clinic? Mini, I can’t even wash though the view was unchanged. My guy explain tiredly to a shop owner as
my hands now.’ room faced an abandoned building called he took his change, ‘Not Nigerian, man,
‘Money’s not important. That’s guaran- ‘Jaleh Nursing College’; below that multi- not Nigerian. I’m Senegalese. We speak
teed but love isn’t. Love never is.’ ple slogans in black paint that all said the French, man.’ The shop guy grinned and
‘Not love and not water,’ I said, open- same thing:‘status quo order 12.01.2009’. I nodded ambiguously. I never managed to
ing my last bottle of drinking water and could hear a neighbour quarrelling with find out where the Malaysian girls in their
abandoning my cooking. his wife, shouting at her in Kannada. pastel-coloured headscarves lived.
Two weeks later Mini told me, as she Every once in a while his anger spilled I bought some khubs, still warm in
daintily dusted her books with her filthy out of the language and he would say in the packet, from Gopal Spices and Con-
duster, that she was moving out. I was an English that rose to a crescendo, ‘You diments. Gopal seemed to have figured
right: she had found someone, a Nepali are forcing me. You are forcing me to hit out what the Middle Eastern boys were
boy who ran a momo-and-noodle restau- you. Bloody idiot! Just shut up!’ homesick for and stocked, apart from the
rant in one of the new glass-faced arcades I didn’t feel like eating by myself but khubs, dates from Saudi Arabia and guava-
on the main road. We’d gone across for when hunger finally drove me out, it was flavoured tobacco to smoke shishas with.
dinner a few times; the place was small early afternoon. Weekend afternoons I walked back home slowly, reluctant
but swanky in a modest, Bhoopasandra were fried-rice time in Bhoopasandra. In to return to pharmacology. There was a
kind of way. the early evening, the skinny boy stripped man standing outside the gate when I got

‘How could he be interested in anything other than surviving pain?’

Mini took me to meet Pavan. He sat at down to his vest would light the coals there, trying to unlatch it.
a respectful distance and got his waiter to under the huge tawa outside al-Kabab, ‘Mr Bhatkal is not at home,’ I told him.
ply us with food, blushing and giggling up the road, and the meat-frying and ‘Madam, it’s you I wanted to meet,’ he
every time Mini looked in his direc- paratha-making would begin. said. He told me he wasn’t trying to sell
tion, whereas she sat straight-backed and The college boys were there already me encyclopaedias or life insurance. He
serious, putting whole momos into her in Rooftop, drinking beers and stuff- just wanted to talk to me for five minutes.
mouth. Love or no love, she was always ing their mouths. I waited for the ever- I had seen him at Mr Bhatkal’s door a
serious when food was at hand. Later somnolent waiters to bring me a packet couple of times before; and if he was a
that week, she packed all her stuff into of rice I could take back home with me. I friend of Bhatkal’s, well then … I let him
her strolley, heaved it into a rickshaw pretended to watch the TV mounted on come upstairs. He climbed the stairs pain-
and moved into Pavan’s rooms above the the wall while I eavesdropped on conver- fully, one at a time.
restaurant. To my parting questions about sations that sounded like I’d heard them ‘Have you hurt your foot?’
the exams, she waved her yellow alarm before. ‘He wanted to marry her but then He laughed. ‘I am hurt all over.’ He
clock at me. he checked her Facebook page and he said, told me he’d been in a car crash three
Mr Bhatkal didn’t budge from his sofa “Fuck, how many men is this woman years ago, which had more or less finished
and his newspaper cutting when I told fucking?”’ him. Since then he’d been operated on
him about her departure; he was tolerant The next evening when I went to give nine times. He was all metal rods, screws
of the world’s instabilities as long as the Mr Bhatkal the rent cheque, his unsmil- and wires inside. He smiled bravely as he
rent was paid on time. When the tanker ing manservant opened the door and said, told me this, like a child who is not afraid
came, he was going to climb the stairs as ‘No sir, no sir. Bhatkal.’ of injections.
always and request me to cover half the So I went for a walk instead; ‘Help me sit down, my dear,’ he said,
bill. He’d be apologetic, seeming to feel Bhoopasandra was empty – what did it limping towards my desk. I usually only
personally responsible for Bhoopasandra’s have except dirty little bike-repair places got to hear my half-literate teachers or
water scarcity. and chicken shops with their stinking else Uncle Bhatkal and his helper, Hari,

32
who insisted on speaking his crazy Eng- anything other than surviving pain? bottom, making it seem all the while that
lish with me. This guy wore a blazer ‘I don’t know your name,’ I said. he was only labouring to get back on his
despite the heat and I liked the way he ‘Dominic. Edwin Dominic. So …’ He feet. I pushed him away and he stumbled
spoke. He was too fancy for Bhoopasan- looked around as if he’d just noticed but didn’t fall.
dra. It was his long blue car parked out- where he was, the poverty of my flat. I was breathless with embarrassment.
side, I realized. ‘Why don’t you come and visit me next Everything was a lie, suddenly. Those schol-
He took my hand, put one arm around door in Sanjay Nagar? I have a nice place. arly spectacles of his and the big car outside.
my waist as if he were going to dance You can come over with your books, if ‘Leave my house,’ I said. I was stand-
with me, and sat down in stages on my you want, spend an afternoon. I have a ing by the door with my back to the wall,
swivel chair. maid, she’ll cook lunch for us.’ trying to hide the shiver in my voice.
‘I’m looking for someone with good I looked him up and down again. Was Edwin Dominic lowered himself on to
English to help me put together a fund- he really that nice? Was this the way out the chair again, groaning.
raising brochure for my school. Blind of crummy old Bhoopasandra? ‘I can’t move. Something’s gone in my
children. Very dear to my heart.’ ‘Do you get water regularly?’ knee. I’m telling you I can’t move. You
He started pulling out cardboard files ‘Ha ha,’ he said. ‘Clever girl.’ shouldn’t have pushed me.’
from his briefcase. There were photo- He told me how things worked in I stood there looking at him, then ran
graphs of the children dressed as angels Sanjay Nagar. ‘If you’re rich enough to downstairs and pressed with my finger
and singing in a chorus, their eyeballs as build your own house, you drill a bore- on the doorbell for half a minute before I
milky as their dresses. well – that’s the first thing you do, go noticed the lock on the door. Grim Hari
‘I lost my job after the accident so now I deep down to where the water is and get was out shopping with his grim little coir
do this. I asked my good friend Bhatkal for it for yourself. You have to go very deep bag. I thought of Mini but my phone was
some writing help, and he told me about nowadays. My neighbour had to drill a upstairs on the table next to where this
the smart medical students living upstairs.’ thousand metres.’ horrid man was sitting. I went up slowly
I tried to take some interest, then ges- ‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘That’s like half the and stood in the doorway, watching him.

‘Every night the longing cancelled out the fulfilment.’

tured to the books on my desk and told way to Australia.’ He was staring into space, massaging one
him about the exams. I didn’t have the He gave me a smile of great forbear- knee and sweating in his blazer. The steel
time, unfortunately. He began to cross- ance, the smile of a teacher who is used to pins and metal plates inside him were
question me about my career options. being interrupted. probably the only solid thing about Mr
What was I doing with an obscurity like ‘Now, the people who build apart- Dominic. Maybe I had really dislodged
pharmacology? Why hadn’t I studied sur- ment complexes bribe the Water Sup- something and the decent thing to do
gery and set myself up for life? ply and Sewerage Board to give the would be to call an ambulance.
‘Heart surgeries,’ he said. ‘That’s where building municipal water every second ‘You girls who come from the north-
the money is. Look at the statistics –more day, so they’re set. That just leaves the east,’ he said in disgust when he saw me.
than 50 per cent of the world’s heart poor chaps with the independent houses. ‘What?’ I asked loudly.
patients are in India.’ They’re on their own – they can’t afford My phone was right next to his elbow,
He put his papers away and I was glad to bribe the Water Board and it’s too late but I couldn’t make myself go near him.
to talk about me instead: I didn’t want for a borewell, they’ve built up every I turned and rushed down again, then
to get rich picking people’s fat-hardened inch of space they had. They’d have to walked to the head of the lane and just
arteries apart; I just wanted to feel a tear down a room to bring in the drilling stood there, completely lost. I crossed
sense of certainty – the way Mini was crew. Sometimes they don’t get water for Bhoopasandra main road, walked into a
sure about Pavan, and Mr Bhatkal was a week, so it’s the tankers for them.’ random side lane and saw a curly-haired
sure about Bhatkal, and this man, despite ‘To which category do you belong?’ boy locking his bike.
his shattered body, was dedicated to ‘That’s what I’m saying, dear. I’m invit- He had eyes the colour of dark choco-
his school. Or seemed to be, though he ing you to come and find out.’ late, the colour of a velvet dress I had
wasn’t talking about it any more. I looked He asked for a glass of water, drained loved as a child, a colour that immediately
at his suit and then down at the boniness it, then stretched out his hand so I could made me think, There’s got to be more to
of an ankle showing through the fabric of help him get up. As he did he slowly slid those eyes than just seeing.
his socks. How could he be interested in his hand down my back and caressed my ‘Water,’ I said.

33
 ‘Yes,’ he answered in a foreign accent. getting more and more ramshackle. We’d aged Christ and calmly sliced egg puffs
‘I don’t have any. Can I borrow a bucket walk on the little track below the railway and aloo buns into quarters for the work-
of water from you?’ embankment where rows of huts were men and students who hung outside his
hidden, women painting fresh rangoli bakery, taking a snack break.

T he same month, the same streets, but

all at once everything smelt of man-
goes. Even the little insects that flew in
patterns out in front and children tricy-
cling in circles, while above the trains
thundered past, unaware.
‘My parents come from the city of
Qom,’ Baran was saying. ‘It’s not very far
from Tehran. My grandfather dammed
through my window every night seemed I would try to imagine what the River Rud-e Qom. There are many
beautiful. I had always thought that love Bhoopasandra was like before it became dams on that river. He supervised the
was a form of boredom, that the people Bhoopasandra. I thought of fields and building of one of them.’
for whom the pop songs were written just bullock carts loaded with fresh farm I looked up and the waiters were lean-
had nothing else to do. Timepass. Not produce, negotiating a dirt track till ing down from Rooftop with their typi-
that I always scorned people like Mini they came to the environs of the palace cally bored expressions. It was five o’clock
who loved love. There is lots of time and where the roads widened and the gentry and no one ever went to Rooftop at five
it must be passed. But that’s not what it appeared. Today the palace was insignifi- o’clock on a working day. At seven the
was at all. I had never had a boyfriend cant and the palace grounds were a venue drinkers would arrive.
before and I was judging things from for wedding parties and rock concerts. ‘All these engineers in my family,’ said
experience for the first time. It was a kind That’s what I enjoyed most: walking Baran, ‘my grandfather an engineer, my
of rain – something total and hard to miss, with Baran. He didn’t have a bike and he father an engineer. My mother said,
something that leaves nothing out. If I didn’t care, though some weekends he “Enough. My son will be a doctor, come
opened my books remembering the first borrowed his friend Ali’s, and we’d go what may.”’
time Baran kissed me, I could even love into town to watch an English film and ‘My parents too,’ I said. ‘I see it now. I
pharmacology, although I did wish I was eat burgers. But most of that summer, always thought that this is what I wanted.
doing paediatrics instead because that was we walked in the neighbourhood; he But I confused what I wanted with what

‘Water was supposed to last at least until morning.’

his specialization. I could have seen more described his childhood in Tehran, while they wanted of me. It’s only when I came
of him then. I saw Baran every day but I tried to paint a compelling picture of here – and I’d wander around on these
the minute I turned to go home, it was Darjeeling for him so that he might say, streets in the evenings looking for some-
as if I hadn’t seen him at all – every night ‘Can I go back with you?’ I knew that he thing to eat because I was clueless about
the longing cancelled out the fulfilment. had been immersed since he was little in cooking in the beginning – that I realized.
Every week I spent with him became a the dream of medicine; I knew he had What am I doing here? I’d think. And the
promise of the weeks ahead. Baran and nothing else – no interests, no hopes, no answer was, They want you to be a doc-
I would walk when it cooled, going past other idea of the future. I imagined him tor, that’s why.’
the fancy apartments on Kalpana Chawla running a clinic on the first floor of my ‘I don’t know about you but I respect
road to the back lanes of Sanjay Nagar parents’ home – that still unbuilt first what my parents want. I’m proud that
and then even further afield – up and floor that they’d been talking about for they have a dream for me. I’m proud,’
down past the magical, hushed, private years. Baran and I would go for similar said Baran, and I loved him more. It
bungalows of Raj Mahal Vilas 2nd Stage, walks then, except that the fruit in my seemed fantastic to me that he could be
symmetrically arranged on roads from bazaars would be different, and we’d here, so far removed from everything that
where even fallen gulmohar petals had smell the junipers that I loved and the was familiar to him, and still not lose sight
been swept clean, and the shirts of the pine trees. of his goal. I thought of the books that I
security guards gleaming because wealth One evening we were walking down was going to have to sit with most of the
rubs off on everything. Each house the main road as usual, and I was half- night and, inspired by Baran, I felt a steely
looked like something the owner had seen listening to Baran and half-observing my determination to conquer them.
in a dream and woken the next morning world through the glaze of my love for We went past the salon with green-
determined to translate into hard reality. him: the decrepit old mattress makers, tinted windows, then the abandoned Jaleh
Sometimes, as if out of loyalty, we stayed and the shop with repaired shoes hung in Nursing Home, then a coconut palm,
in grubby little Bhoopasandra, going rows above the heads of the two cobblers, and seconds later, without the hint of a
north towards the ring road, the houses and the bearded uncle who looked like an breeze, a huge coconut came crashing

34
 down and burst on the street. Baran and nately,’ said Baran. ‘I remembered that won’t come, however much you cajole
I stopped and looked back at what could today is a sad Iranian festival and on a day and threaten them. You know the tanker
have brained either one or both of us, and like this we don’t make fun. We pray and scam, don’t you?’
we smiled at each other. I knew that our are serious.’ Baran, of course, had no idea who this
fates were linked and I let go of his arm I didn’t realize then that the best sum- man was or what he was talking about. He
and turned into my lane, while he turned mer of my life had ended. I kept trying asked me where he should put the bucket.
into his on the other side of Bhoopasan- to patch it together, kept trying, every ‘When the municipal supply is down,’
dra main road. second day, to get Baran out for a walk so said Mr Wired as he edged towards the
That was the summer when Mr Derin we could drink his favourite pomegran- door, briefcase under his arm, ‘the Water
Derin was arrested with 609 grams of ate juice at the corner stall and then walk Board tries to requisition the tankers
cocaine and three mobile phones outside under the giant rain trees. to send out water, but they won’t go.
Gopal Spices and Condiments; I don’t But whatever was left for him to say They’re making too much money filling
think Mr Bhatkal went so far as to keep didn’t need the trees. He said it in his up their tankers with subsidized munici-
the cutting, but he was proud anyway as room one day, his beautiful face red with pal water and selling it for many times the
he showed me the news because, as he the effort of it, while I sat there crying price.’
said, it wasn’t every day that Bhoopasan- openly, frozen in that moment, unable to ‘I understand,’ Baran had said suddenly.
dra got into papers. breathe at the thought of Bhoopasandra ‘In Iran this would never happen. In my
I didn’t care about Derin Derin, who- and my studies and the parched desert of country they would make sure that there
ever he was; the exams were over and the rest of my life without Baran, whose is enough for everyone.’
Baran and I were going for a holiday in name meant ‘rain’. In Koramangala, where I now live, the
the hills. We would sleep on an overnight Mr Bhatkal was proved wrong because apartments come fitted with swimming
coach or not sleep at all but talk till dawn. Bhoopasandra featured in the papers two pools, the supermarkets have more than
I was packing too many clothes into a further times in quick succession before anyone needs, and the roads are wide and
backpack and chatting excitedly with Baran, the end of that summer. The first was just pleasant to walk on.
who was at the sink in my front room, after Baran and I broke up. Ali Bukhari, If someone like Mr Wired ever rang
repeatedly splashing water on his face. the shy Iranian boy whom I knew as the bell, I’d sniff him out at once and
‘Baran, watch the water,’ I called. ‘It’s Baran’s housemate, killed himself. In the slam the door in his face. When I need
all I have till this evening.’ newspaper item that Mr Bhatkal showed to fool myself, it’s Baran I imagine at the
‘Why,’ said Baran in his precise way, me, the suicide was described as having door, come back to make amends. After
‘does a house with only two small rooms been caused by depression. Soon after, that afternoon in his room, I never saw
have so many sinks?’ a tabloid reported that a group of stu- him again – not even by chance in Gopal
‘Baran,’ I said with sudden impatience. dents from Jaleh College of Engineering, Spices or hanging around chatting with
‘You never seem to hear what I say.’ Bhoopasandra, had written anonymously the other Iranian boys. He must have
He turned his wet face to look at to the paper, stating that the college done his internship in a different hospital,
me through the bedroom door, the tap management was greedy and corrupt, because I never spotted him in college
behind him still running. I straightened that everything they had been promised either. He’d moved his orbit very far from
up from my packing and looked at him during the time of admission – such as mine.
too, waiting, but he didn’t say anything campus placements – was lies.
at all. He just stared at me coldly as he
wiped his face with the fresh towel I’d put
out for him. Then he turned and went
As for Mr Wired, I saw him one more
time. He was driving his car and he raised
his hand in greeting as if he were a man
O n that last day in his room, resolute
despite my crying, it was love that
he’d talked about: how it had no place
out of the house without a word, ignor- without a memory. I stood there getting in the future scheme of things: the clinic
ing the running tap. wet, looking at the car as it drove away, in Tehran, the ageing parents, the veiled
‘Nobody speaks to me in such a voice,’ thinking, Maybe it’s the rain. wife, the demands of children. In none
he said when I, having waited for an Despite the hurt that gnawed at me of this was there any room for us, he said,
hour for him to return and explain, went and followed me back home to Darjeel- and I thought about the way I used to be
over to his house myself and found him ing, I would fall in love with Baran all before I met him – sceptical about love,
absorbed in his laptop. over again every time I remembered how absolutely certain it meant nothing.
I went into his kitchen and made him he had saved me from Mr Wired with a Nowadays, when I return from my
a cup of tea by way of a silent apology. I bucket of water, how he had so readily eight hours under the bright white lights
sat and waited for him to say more. His offered to carry it across for me that day of the company lab, I mostly sit out on
housemate, Ali, returned with loaded when I needed his help. my balcony, twice as large as the bal-
bags from some shopping-mall expedi- When Mr Wired saw him that evening, conies I once envied. I sit there in the
tion and they chatted endlessly in Farsi he’d sat up and nodded politely, then got evenings for timepass. Nothing from
without a glance in my direction. to his feet without any assistance. that summer is ever going to come back.
‘Baran,’ I said finally. ‘The coach is ‘Such a problem, this water,’ he said, The only thing that hasn’t changed is the
leaving in two hours. Have you packed?’ avoiding me completely, talking only water.
‘I think we have to cancel, unfortu- to Baran. ‘And sometimes the tankers There’s still too little of the water. ◊

35
lingui stic subv ersi on

Translating Anne Garréta’s Sphinx

Emma Ramadan on the complications of a genderless love story

Sphinx is a story about je and A***. overdose and must dispose of the body. A***’s death. Sphinx is the story of je’s
With no other options, the club’s manager struggle with the gnawing aimlessness
Je (I), the first-person narrator, is a makes je the new DJ, which marks the of youth, the attempt to reconcile this
theology student living in Paris, comi- beginning of je’s descent into the world new nocturnal world with a bourgeois
cally frustrated by the inanity of the other of the clubs and cabarets of 1980s Paris. background, and the despair lurking
students and the professors at the univer- This is where je meets A***, an African- beneath desire.
sity. Je becomes friends with a priest, who American cabaret dancer from New York.
introduces je to the Apocryphe, a club We watch their relationship bloom and A macabre masked ball: people tripping
where they witness the DJ die of a heroin then suffer, and we see je grapple with over streamers that snaked down from the

36
 ceiling, coiling around the supporting strict and sexist rules of grammatical gen- an intense solitude, I was watching
pillars. To distill music, to set bodies der. This allowed them to better express A*** dance, letting myself be invaded by
in rhythm, was to be the priest of a themselves as women, as trying to do so A***’s movements, feeling the tension of
harrowing cult. within a patriarchal language was thought this immaterial thread that linked us even
to be a self-defeating process. This move- from a distance. Then a sudden inva-
Sphinx is a genderless love story, an ment was spearheaded by Julia Kristeva, sion of anguish: looking at this body and
Oulipian text that uses constraint as a Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, and in knowing it to be ephemeral.
way to raise socially significant questions, particular by Hélène Cixous, who called
solidifying Garréta’s place as a member of for women to write their sexual libido Translating Sphinx is understanding
the experimental French literary group on to the page in her text ‘Le Rire de la seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Oulipo, in 2000. To combat the strict méduse’. Sphinx pushes these ideas to a French literary references and a wide
gendering of the French language, Gar- new level: rather than tweaking words range of religious references, is being able
réta had to avoid certain verb tenses and to highlight gender bias within language, to recognize legal and military undercur-
never applied adjectives directly to either Garréta leaves behind the system of gen- rents in the language. Translating Sphinx
of the two main characters. That this has der altogether. Sphinx enacts the ideas of is searching for words in old dictionar-
never been repeated in French since Roland Barthes in transcending and disa- ies, crafting a high-registered voice in
demonstrates just how difficult a linguis- vowing the binary of gender difference, American English, and reading Alan Hol-
tic subversion it is to achieve. By omitting and also queers Lacanian clichés about linghurst, Jeanette Winterson, Monique
the supposedly ever-present phenomenon sexual identity as constructed through a Wittig and Roland Barthes. Translating
of gender, Sphinx both reveals and under- language that serves to differentiate. Sphinx is maintaining a gap between high
mines sex-based oppression, as Garréta language and low events, finding transla-
simultaneously demonstrates and subverts And here I found what I had come looking tions for untranslatable words like jouis-
gender distinctions within modern soci- for: before my eyes, a sweltering, sance and désouevrement, deciding whether
ety by emphasizing the absurdity vitrified clash of light and flesh in the to translate contemption as the common

‘Translating Sphinx is maintaining a gap between high language and low events,
finding translations for untranslatable words.’

of the idea of ‘difference’ between the swaying red darkness. English word ‘contempt’ or the more
sexes. Sphinx exposes reader assumptions unusual ‘contumely’. Translating Sphinx
about gender roles as readers guess, or Beyond the level of syntax, the nuances is eating steak across from Anne Gar-
unconsciously assume, the sexes of the two of Sphinx continue to multiply. Sphinx réta as she explains how using the word
main characters. Sphinx shows that gender is a theology student giving sermons corseté to describe the morals of je’s fellow
is merely an optional addition to, not a in nightclubs, a parody of the Catholic students strategically refers back to the
necessary determination of, our stories. novel and of the classical French works of purple lace corsets hanging in the sex
Racine and Flaubert. Sphinx is retrospec- shop windows je noticed twenty pages
Languid nights at the whim of syncopated tion and retro-projection, soundscapes earlier. Translating Sphinx is understand-
rhythms, fleeting pulsations. The road and visions, flesh and de-fleshing, Eden ing the narrator’s anxiety in a café in
to hell was lit with pale lanterns; the bot- and enfer, dialectics of presence and Pigalle, seeing how the reasons for that
tom of the abyss drew closer indefinitely; absence, a journey through the excite- anxiety change dramatically depending
I moved through the smooth insides of ment and drain of desire. Sphinx is figural on je’s gender, and realizing how the book
a whirlwind and gazed at the deformed and a-grammatical, is things lurking hinges on the different ways readers will
images of ecstatic bodies in the slow, hoarse beneath the surface, is Proustian. Sphinx interpret specific events.
death rattle of tortured flesh. is a text that put nightclubs into the
French discourse, that wanders through Those arms, the intense sweetness, a series
Sphinx is a radical feminist text, which death, desire and drunkenness. Sphinx is of scenes that still ignites a carnal flame in
builds on many of the ideas that came different depending on how you interpret my memory.
out of the écriture feminine movement in the gender of the characters at any given
France in the 1980s. A group of female time. Sphinx is a text that changes in my Translating Sphinx is learning how to
writers deconstructed and rebuilt the translation. maintain a specific tone and style in a
syntax of the phallogocentric French language that is less suited to abstractions
language in their work, breaking the And from within a profound paralysis, and sentence fragments than French. In

37
 ‘Sphinx is translating an absence.’

order to construct the identity of this number of strategies to avoid revealing sensation dans ma chair du contact de ses
bourgeois, highly educated theology stu- the sex of je or A***, including rewrit- membres alors qu’ils n’étaient plus là pour
dent, Garréta heavily employed the passé ing certain passages to avoid personal la provoquer.’ Translating Sphinx is ‘In
simple – a very formal, literary tense that pronouns altogether, and applying adjec- my flesh I had the sensation of touching
does not exist in English – and the sub- tives directly to the subject rather than those limbs, though they were no longer
junctive, which is not commonly used in to something possessed by the subject. there to provoke it.’
American English. To make up for this, I Although the function of gender differs
chose to emphasize the elevated vocabu- between languages, an examination of At every moment I had the distressing feel-
lary used throughout the text in order to the social construction of distinct gender ing that this body was lingering just out
keep the tone the same in the English as roles is one that can be done in any cul- of reach, even though I was holding it in
in the French. For example, in a passage ture. Translating Sphinx is making sure my arms.
on page 45 detailing the disposal of the this examination does, in fact, take place
DJ’s body into a septic tank, the narrator’s among different languages and cultures. Translating Sphinx is also understand-
use of the subjunctive and passé simple ing that sometimes none of my strategies
contrasts starkly with the coarseness of The temporal order of events, including will work. That the careful construction
the scene, further underscoring je’s own even the simple spatial points of reference, of a deliberately ambiguous scene in
dissimilarity with the surroundings of the was abolished without my realizing it and French has to be dismantled and rewritten
club. In my translation, unable to utilize everything blurred in my memory. I have in English in order to maintain the same
the passé simple as Garréta did to mark in my mouth, still, the taste of skin, of the combination of eroticism and elusiveness
this disparity, I chose to accentuate the sweat on that skin. that holds the text together. Sphinx is
narrator’s uncommon and refined word ‘Sexes mêlés, je ne sus plus rien distinguer.’
choice wherever I could, for example by Translating Sphinx means being able Translating Sphinx is ‘Genitalia/privities/
translating immondices as ‘putrescence’. to picture any given scene four different private parts/reproductive organs min-
ways at once, and making sure the reader gled, I wasn’t able to distinguish anything
A terror silted up my throat; the desire I can do the same. In a particularly difficult any more.’ What about pudenda? Puden-
had felt welling up in me at the sight of passage of fantasy, je describes the begin- da: a person’s external genitals, especially
these distant movements on the stage of the nings of desire for A*** in a paragraph for a woman – that won’t work. What
Eden had been suspended. I could do noth- riddled with possessive adjectives, which about thighs intertwined? Not explicit
ing but adore. Those eyes, so black, fixed in English would normally be translated enough. Thighs, sticky, intertwined?
on me, were subjecting me to an unbear- as his or her but which, in French, agree What about loins? Not specific enough.
able torture. with the gender of the noun in question. What about crotches? Not elegant
Sphinx is ‘Le souvenir de son parfum, enough. Crotches conjoined? Crotches
Sphinx is translating an absence, a lack l’empreinte résiduelle, à peine sensible, crossed? Translating Sphinx is imagining
that cannot be felt in the text, in order to de son épaule appuyée ce matin contre a world in which English speakers can
maintain the presence of a message, call- la mienne tandis que nous parlions me explore the explicit within the ambigu-
ing to mind other Oulipian texts such as torturaient.’ Translating Sphinx is ‘The ous, the writing within the constraint.
Georges Perec’s La Disparition (‘A Void’). memory of A***’s scent, the residual Translating Sphinx is sharing a new way
Translating Sphinx often means putting imprint, barely there, of a shoulder rest- of looking at gender, and communicating
the constraint before the words, aban- ing against my own this morning while the possibility of moving beyond the dis-
doning what’s on the page to create an we spoke, was torturing me.’ Sphinx is ‘Je course of Difference.
analogous situation that can take place in sentais comme la fantôme de sa presence
the English language. Translating Sphinx contre moi; sa main, un instant posée sur A fall would be brought about by a purely
sometimes means envisioning a new Eng- mon visage, sa cuisse que le peu de place internal and continually foreseen rending;
lish that can achieve all the things present dont nous disposions pour nous asseoir an imminence suspended on a final thread
in Garréta’s French. Translating Sphinx is avait amenée contre la mienne.’ Translat- that never broke but that, taut and twisted
maintaining a constraint that hinges on ing Sphinx is ‘The ghost of A***’s pres- unbearably, never ceased trembling. The
an aspect of language that varies between ence against mine; a hand poised for a agonizing tension of always being about
French and English. Because gender moment on my face, our thighs pressed to crack without ever being able to allow
works so differently between the two together in the cramped space in which myself the relief of chaos … such was my
languages, I have had to come up with a we were sitting.’ Sphinx is ‘J’avais la annihilation in those beloved arms. ◊

38
fi ct i on

Reel Men
by Masha Tupitsyn

I knew this man. He didn’t know me,

but he talked to me like he did. It takes
a while to know someone, but not always.
Looking for a different woman who
wasn’t me, this man walked into my room
at the tail end of one summer and acci-
dentally found me reading a book on my
bed. He said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’
It was August. It was raining. The
ocean was sliding back and forth as usual,
and Fred, this man, wearing a yellow
raincoat, walked in with his head down,
concerned, like he was the coastguard and
I was a boat in peril.
Inside, Fred slid off his hood and lifted
his bowed head to me like a monk, a
humility obscured by the fact that he’d
hadn’t bothered to knock before entering.
His face was freckled, covered in beads of
water, like the windshield of a car.
Looking at him was like looking out
the window or driving down a road.
I put my book down and we stood in
my room talking, trying to make sense of
his sudden appearance.

39
 ‘What are you doing here?’ Fred asked In Provincetown, with its wood of a few years, he later told me. That day
me. shingles, sandy interiors, and old screen was not the first day, but it was the first
‘I live here. What are you doing here?’ I doors, doors that didn’t close all the way time I’d heard about it. I never thought I
asked Fred. from the salt-air bloat, people didn’t even could be so oblivious, meeting Fred over
Fred was happy because when he saw lock their doors at night. They left their and over again, and it barely registering,
me he knew exactly who I was. wooden gates open and filled the sandy me not taking note. Like some dumb
Whereas I was confused. My memory paths to their houses with piles of old movie where the point is to be obtuse and
needed jogging. bicycles. negligent until it’s time not to be.
After ten minutes bent over my desk, Things slipped in. Sand dunes spilled In the movies, you get multiple chanc-
trying to scribble some words down in on to the road, and asphalt unfastened es to discover how great someone is, you
a note for the woman (my roommate, into loose grain the closer you got to the get chances and you don’t even know that
Izzy) he’d originally intended to find in water. The tide erased all strings over and that’s what they are, and this is fun to
my house, Fred kept looking up at me in over, and men showed up in rooms unin- watch, but not fun to live.
disbelief. His visit was now taking on an vited without trying to kill you. I was lucky to have Fred say those
entirely different purpose, he said. Fred had spent years watching me and, words to me. I was feeling so low. It was
Fred wondered whether he should looking back on it, I’d seen him doing my worst summer on record. It was like
keep writing a note that no longer mat- it. Not just in my room, but all over the I wasn’t even there. I remember someone
tered, to a person he no longer wanted place, both in Provincetown and New telling me they’d barely noticed me all
to find. He stopped and looked up again, York. It took me a few minutes to recall summer. That I was a ghost. Sometimes
then right into my eyes said, ‘You are his miscellaneous gazes, the where and I think I shouldn’t have been there at all,
above and beyond bullshit,’ even though when of them, the scenes they came with, should have just gone home, not come
he couldn’t have known that for sure. the years they happened. to Provincetown after two months of
I didn’t hear Fred come in, but I knew Standing in my room, Fred waited for roaming around Mexico with Sarah, after
it was raining. I was reading on my single my reaction because time was ticking. she was done with her ceramics classes

‘Fred wondered whether he should keep writing a note that no longer mattered.’

mattress when he walked in. I listened Time is. But I guess I was speechless. in San Miguel de Allende, and I was out
to the words I was reading drum on the Later that night in my bed, I searched of money, we both were, my stomach
page, louder than the rain on the roof. and found Fred’s eyes glued to the back still battered from the parasite we got
Back then I could spend an entire day of my head as though they were stars up over Christmas in Oaxaca. We woke up
reading. in the sky I could look up at. I followed at the exact same time, in the middle of
When I looked up, Fred was just stand- Fred through the long, continuous maze the night, to vomit our guts out in the
ing there in his wet raincoat, an insect that of my fuzzy memory. In bed, I wandered concrete bathroom of her shared house.
had accidentally flown into the room. through all the times I’d missed what In Oaxaca, Sarah drank to make herself
I wondered how he got in but also Fred’s eyes had tried to tell me, and if feel better, cooked big meals, and I read
wanted him out in case he did something hearing him then would have made any and disappeared for hours like a petulant
dangerous. difference. lover. I took naps on park benches, ate ice
If we’d been in New York, I would In Provincetown, things come up to cream, and hung out with stray dogs. At
have called the police or yelled for help. I the surface. Wash on to shore. Debris the town square, Sarah and I would take
would have defended myself. But in New becomes memento. Sometimes you don’t turns crying into each other’s arms and
York, Fred would never have been able to even have to wait or try. The tide is a not speaking. We couldn’t even put words
get in. He would have had to break down sure thing. to things. We’d lost language in Mexico.
a metal door that cannot be broken down. In bed, I asked myself: wouldn’t Fred But once, even with the language bar-
Appearing suddenly in my room in New need more time to come to a conclusion rier, our tears got across, and two elderly
York would have meant something totally like that? What I was ‘above’ or ‘beyond’. Mexican women sitting beside us at a
different. There would have been a sound, Whether I had any bullshit in me. But square in Oaxaca took our hands in theirs,
a jolt, some obvious thunder. Glass might what I didn’t know at the time, or any stroked our hair and smiled, which made
break. Or maybe nothing would break. other time, was that he’d actually had the us feel better. One night, Sarah and I
But violence. Violence surely would time, independent of my knowledge of it. watched The Fifth Element in Spanish in a
be there. He’d come to this decision over a period deserted, industrial part of town because

40
we’d already seen it in English two times. each and every day. I could remember In my room that day Fred said: ‘I
We watched movies together for years. him and everyone else. I went back the thought you were thirty-one.’
In college, in Provincetown, at Sarah’s way every detective goes back to a crime ‘Why thirty-one? I’m only twenty.’
place in New York, at my place in New scene. I stuck around the way every ghost ‘It has nothing to do with your skin.
York; in theatres around the world. But sticks around. I had nothing to do with Your skin is perfect. It’s everything but
after we fought up at her grandmother’s everything around me. I had too much. your skin.’
house in Tuxedo, NY, a few weeks later, I In the movies people say things. Words There was no small talk after that day.
had to get out of town, fleeing the crime get across. Images depend on it, oth- Fred’s random appearance and cryptic
scene, which was a comatose female erwise we’d be lost in them, the way non-sequiturs instantly bonded us, even
friendship that would never wake up we’re lost in our real lives. In real life, though we’d previously been disconnect-
again. Sarah watched me from the top of sometimes people don’t say anything. ed, or I spent years ignoring him, which
the staircase, holding on to the banister, They miss their chance to say something is a kind of connection. Pretending that
like a 1940s femme fatale, screaming and or they say a lot of other things they what’s there isn’t there.
pleading for me not to leave, but not shouldn’t instead. Words in place of other When Fred said this, there was a storm
coming down to stop me either. Back words. They waste time. They lose time. outside. Fred came in looking for another
then I was such a good Glenn Ford. Such Time is lost and people are lost. Mov- woman, my crazy roommate, Izzy, a
a withholding man. It took me years to ies know that at some point you have to painter and baker at Café Edwige, where
become a woman. When I left for Prov- attend to the thing you want to ignore. I was a breakfast hostess. A friend of his,
incetown and Sarah started taking drugs It’s a basic metaphysical requirement that and a one-time sexual encounter, Izzy
and forgot all about me. cinema is plugged into. To fix whatever told me about Fred in the kitchen one
‘I’ll drive you to the train station,’ mess you’ve made with whomever you’ve night over tea, a few weeks before he
Sarah offered at the last minute. made the mess with, either through showed up in my room. At the time, I
In the car, we talked to each other like the person you made the mess with or didn’t put two and two together. Fred
it was the last time, and basically it was. I through another person who helps you didn’t stand out, not even after a story.

‘Time is lost and people are lost.’

didn’t want to look at her, and the leafy clean up the mistakes you made with oth- How many chances did I have with this
summer trees obscured what I could see ers. man? I had so much patience, so much
out the car window. I needed to get some When Fred told me that I was above gall, then.
distance, but it was summer, the season and beyond bullshit, it jumpstarted my Driving up from Brooklyn for the
of close-ups, so there was no distance. I life again. He’d finally succeeded in get- weekend, Fred thought maybe he could
wanted to do the opposite with Sid. Go ting my full attention, or there was finally try again with Izzy. He’d check to see
back to him by zooming in really tight. I nothing preventing me from giving it to if she was home. If she wasn’t he’d leave
knew Sid wouldn’t be back in Province- him. No Sid blocking the way. Before her a note. Maybe they could have dinner
town, wouldn’t do something as stupid that, I’d totally ignored Fred. He’d said or go to a movie. He wouldn’t be pushy,
as rub salt into the wound in a place that other things over the years, but I hadn’t because he wasn’t pushy.
was all salt so soon after our breakup. heard them. Fred was soft-spoken and sensitive, yet
That’s what I did. I knew how to lick old Fred: ‘We’ve actually met many times. his entire life was dedicated to cultural
wounds. I was a pro. You just don’t remember.’ detritus. A skateboarder, an insomniac, a
On the phone, months before, Sid said Me: ‘We have? I’m sorry.’ former drug addict, a TV and magazine
he wouldn’t be back and he meant it. But The deleted scenes. The out-takes. junky, he seemed to only read fashion
I would, and I meant it. After Fred left, I went back and magazines, which he carried around
I waited for Sid to show up all summer. rewound. I realized that I had managed to under his arm. Yet he didn’t even know
I believed some residue of us would still catch some of the things he’d said to me how to dress. I was obsessed with clothes
be in town and I could rent a place and over the years. I played our encounters but never read fashion magazines. Fred
live in it for one more season. I could ride back and watched those old silent movies talked about models like they were his
my bike around our old haunts, circling of us. friends.
them a hundred times. I could swim in it. I was twenty when Fred walked into Back in the City, our conversations
I could take pictures. I could look at the my house. But we’d also met when I was drifted into triviality and gossip in a
pictures I already had of us. I could revisit seventeen, eighteen and nineteen. way they hadn’t in Provincetown. We

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suddenly had to comment on the world door. I wanted to include a barrier in the ate comments. His awkward attempts to
around us and realized we had nothing in intimacy because obstruction had always talk to me over the years. At a birthday
common. And yet I liked him. Over the been between us. It was what connected party in Brooklyn one winter, Fred inter-
years, I’d met Fred at various parties on and disconnected us, this thing always in rupted a conversation I was having to
the Cape and in New York. the way, so why get rid of it? Why not ask me how my arms ended up being ‘so
Before the Twin Towers fell down, we use it? Minutes would go by and we’d beautiful’. ‘Do you work out?’ he asked,
danced to go-go music at Windows on still be standing there. I’d make Fred hold blushing. I laughed at his question, which
the World with friends. On a few occa- his pose until he was out of breath from was ridiculous, and walked away. Then
sions, I found Fred on the dance floor and trying to get near me. He’d say my name. I looked around the room for Sid, who
made sure our bodies didn’t touch, even He’d beg quietly. He’d move to express was rumoured to be at the party. When I
by accident. When the planes crashed his pleasure. His eyes were never plain. I’d saw him, I went upstairs, locked myself in
into the two towers, I imagined sliding say, ‘I remember you.’ He’d stand there, a room and cried. But I also would have
off the black marble dance floor and fall- without letting his posture shift. His shirt cried if Sid hadn’t been there.
ing down one hundred and ten storeys. would be open, parted slightly like a cur- The first time I saw Fred, we were with
Fred had freckles and looked like tain. I’d slip in and go behind it like Jane a group of people sitting outside of Ben
Bobby Kennedy. He was preppy, plain. Eyre. I’d say, ‘I know it wasn’t like this & Jerry’s by Town Hall in Provincetown.
He was easy to miss. I remembered think- with Izzy.’ I’d say, ‘Only time can do this We were sitting on the ground with our
ing that at a party in Wellfleet when he to people.’ ice cream cones, Sid by my side. At one
walked up to me. His brown hair was One weekend in September, we went point, I looked up and saw Fred staring at
always perfectly straight and parted on swimming at Slough Pond in Truro. Fred me. He wasn’t just looking. He was in the
the side. He wore his gingham shirts but- wouldn’t go in the water. Instead he sat middle of a long take. He’d been looking
toned all the way up. It was hard for me on a fence post with a towel around his the whole time. When our looks attuned,
to imagine what his body was like behind neck like some cowboy watching me I was only partly there, in the eyes, look-
all those boarded-up windows. There from above. It was the cockiest thing he’d ing back. The look was strong enough

‘Sid said: ‘That guy likes you.’ I said: ‘What guy?’

was no way I could ask him. Most of all, ever done. Because timing is everything, I to come across, to stop me from talking,
I didn’t want him to know I wanted to decided to swim across the pond with my but I banned its meaning from fully reg-
ask. At night, after a stint at the Hyannis ex, Josh, not to get closer to the past but istering, ignoring whatever thing Fred
Hospital for a ruptured ovarian cyst, I fell to get away from the future, which was was trying to tell me. I let the look fall
into bed high on some codeine a nurse possibly Fred. Someone I wasn’t ready for away. Fred looked scared, like I’d caught
gave me. I was so dizzy, I had to leave the after Sid. As a thing of the past, Josh was him going through my things. I didn’t
bar I was in. In bed, spinning, I imagined already too far away for there to be any know his name then, and when we were
the lullaby of undoing each one of Fred’s chance of my getting caught up in him all standing and saying goodbye, Fred
buttons slowly in my room as it twirled again, no matter how present he was. walked up to me and introduced himself
around me. In my mind, I discovered that Fred had a face that receded into the instead. ‘Bye,’ I said, to no one in par-
Fred’s chest had no hair on it, just more background. A face that was easy to lose ticular. ‘I’m Fred. We’ve met a couple of
freckles. We’d be standing in front of each if you were caught up in another one. Sid. times,’ he told me. With our arms around
other, the moon out the window, and our The memory of Sid. When I first met each other, Sid and I broke free from the
faces an inch apart. I’d be able to feel him him it felt like he was a car crashing into crowd and went to the movies.
breathing. I’d let his speed up my own my body. His face shattering the glass of Sid said: ‘That guy likes you.’
breathing. I could hear his heart beating. mine. Our meeting felt violent. So my I said: ‘What guy?’
‘Look how close you are now,’ I’d say. I’d first instinct was to get away. Fred’s face Love is also the place where something
make him hold that position for as long left almost no impression over and over. happens.
as he could hold it. I’d say, ‘Close your He had a face that needed to be seen at Three years later, I rented a room at
eyes. You don’t have to look any more. the right time in order to make sense, to Izzy’s because I’d always wanted to live
You can’t. Things are different now.’ catch on, and it was never the right time. at the beach house on 411 Commercial
I’d touch him without letting him kiss I had to look to find what was in Fred’s Street. Crazy Mitch, a liar and a painter,
me, without applying any pressure, as face. It was my face to find. had lived there in 1998 and 1999, and we’d
though we were kissing through a screen I remembered all of Fred’s inappropri- all piled around him, sprouting these

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short-lived friendships, and I thought if I sweater wafted between Fred and me as chances. At not actually being anywhere
couldn’t have that any more, or ever again, we walked. with anyone at any time.
I could at least live near it. After nearly a year of occasionally In the movies, more than anything,
I wanted a house that people could emailing back and forth in New York, people want to be known. But in real life,
spontaneously visit. At first I loved it and neither of us cared or called or emailed people are willing to remain inscrutable.
then it scared me. I started locking my any more and when Fred and I did see I’ve always been good at seeing through
door because I felt too ugly that summer each other again two years had passed, things. Fred even said so after only know-
to be so impromptu with people. When and we were so angry, or hurt, or disap- ing me for about five minutes. Fred made
Fred came in unannounced, I was wear- pointed, or indifferent that we never the observation at a bar, in front of other
ing overalls and a hideous acrylic orange spoke again. I know it mattered to both people. He said it about me, not to me:
sweater with gold buttons that I had of us that we connected like we did. ‘I’m she sees through everyone. Fred actually
found in a charity shop. The gold was a good judge of character,’ Fred once told surprised me a lot. For a while I thought
chipping off like paint. Why did I buy me at a party, and I believed him since he he was just a wallflower. I did stupid
this, I asked myself when Fred walked in. chose to sit next to me all night when he things like drunkenly cry in front of him,
I discovered how humiliating it was to be could have kept moving. The most radical more than once, and he never said a mean
unprepared. thing to do in a room full of a hundred thing. He let me do what I needed to do,
When he walked into my house, Fred people you barely know is stay put with and say what I needed to say, without
said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ like he couldn’t one person you barely know the whole saying much of anything himself. He
believe his eyes. I sort of knew what he night. looked at me with patience in his eyes.
meant by that, the way I sort of always But time makes you stop doing what And the more time passes, the more I
know what someone means when they you once would have done. I wanted to think these things, which just seemed like
say that kind of thing. When I heard it, send Fred things – words – things I still filler at the time, on the sidelines of the
it felt more like I was a viewer watching say in my head to him, but I have always so-called big things that were happening
what was happening to me, to us. It’s a stopped myself. I saw a photo of Fred in my life, are unforgettable. But I might

‘He let me do what I needed to do, and say what I needed to say.’

prescience or reflexiveness all of us have, on Facebook a couple of years after that be wrong, as there’s always the chance
mostly due to romantic movies. I felt summer and it made me sick because he that I’ve been wrong about Fred all these
Fred realize it was me. I felt it matter to looked like he didn’t need anyone any years, thinking he had these rare quali-
him. I felt him land in something impor- more. He’d lost that quality of needing ties that people either never have in the
tant to him. The room itself was a form that I liked about him. Later he took the first place or lose after time. Fred, who
of serendipity. photo down because maybe he knew he didn’t necessarily have determination,
Afterwards, we went into town. looked like that and it wasn’t true. Images or faith, or purpose, or doggedness, but
Walked down Commercial Street in the have different meanings for different peo- who had other precious qualities in raw
pouring rain in our raincoats after talk- ple, often showing what isn’t really there, form – qualities he’d somehow managed
ing in my room. Walked to The Gover- what isn’t really happening. I know pic- to keep, even though I could see that he
nor Bradford, a bar, walked to Spiritus tures lie, the way people lie to themselves was getting weary, and that’s already a lot
Pizza for a slice, ran into some people we and others. But I’d rather believe this in this world. This ability to see through
knew on the way. A small promenade picture of Fred because I am more afraid people, as Fred put it, really just meant
town, everyone raising their eyebrows of lying to myself about what I see than I that I knew some things that I couldn’t
at the sight of us together. I was recov- am about seeing through lies. But this is have learned. In fact, it’s the things that I
ering from some unspeakable trauma I a new fear, one that I didn’t always have. have learned that have pushed away the
couldn’t get across. Everyone around me It’s so thoroughly modern to see people things I was born knowing. I also have
knew what it was and never brought it you don’t actually see any more. To talk faith in things other people don’t believe
up, like Sid had died instead of acted like to people you don’t talk to. So brutally in and doubt in things other people don’t
an asshole who was still alive. In the rain, modern that people are everywhere and question. And now, after believing that I
my orange sweater reeked of mothballs nowhere in your life, which is a series of knew some people deeply, I realize that
after a life in somebody else’s closet. It online accounts now. We’ve gotten so I have actually never known anyone. I
was so bad people kept asking where the good at not really showing up for anyone think they only knew me, though I’m
smell was coming from. The stench of my any more. At stalling. At missing our sure they think they didn’t. ◊

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Five Dials

number 33
Five Dials x @readwomen2014

Part 11