Incest

Marie and I were arguing, I shoved her dog, on purpose, she hugged it tight. I screamed “no, no, no, no, not that.” I don’t like that dog, Cartier jewelry is always numbered, the trinity ring she gave me was engraved 666, the number of the beast. She has very little direct contact with Léonore, we reject each other through Léonore and Baya, born the same day, July 9, not the same year. I was already infected when I was pregnant with Léonore, the incubation period was several years. I wouldn’t otherwise have experienced such joy, delivering a girl, it’s obvious, already incubating. I was already surrounded by clusters of homosexuals, I cried in her arms on Saturday. And Sunday, the scenario I’d filmed the previous day, during the night at Frédéric’s, I finally produced it. A day late. On Sunday night, the bag, but the blue one, I go up and this time I don’t stop in the middle of the staircase, I go up, and I get Léonore, at Claude’s. I think of Yassou, her stomach pierced by canines. “In a certain way, it works out well for me,” she claimed, “I’m always worried others won’t like my smell” when I didn’t want to lick her. For every impulse, there was repulsion. Repulsion also means disgust. Disgust means ghetto. Ghetto, prison. This group of female homosexuals, this “milieu,” which Claude, with reason, thinks doesn’t suit me. What use are animal clones? Exactly. Finally. Phew. Fortunately it’s over. I went home yesterday with my blue bag. I dreamed of a perfume called Hogana, which made me think of dogana, of a customhouse. She likes me in pants. If necessary, in a dress, not in a skirt. On the contrary, Mayen, last year. Wearing pants, a sweater, T-shirt, no bra. Loved me. I became sober once again, feminine, myself. I have an appointment on Thursday the 14th with a children’s shrink for my daughter. AIDS isn’t really an illness, it’s a state of weakness and surrender, my dear, that uncages the beast we had within. I give it free rein to devour me, I let it inflict on my life what it would have done to my corpse after. Claude: You let her give you a ring, after all. And this ring, after all, is a kind of engagement. And I know how you are, you, with symbols… A ring, on top of it all, is an engagement. I’m sorry, but the triple Cartier ring, it’s an engagement. I hesitated. I didn’t know if I should accept. (I didn’t hesitate at all, that’s not true, I was happy.) The next ring I wanted to give you. We talked about it just this summer. I’d put money aside. It’s crazy how you can be in someone’s life and it all evaporates. Sunday night it was over. Léonore was asleep. But I still called, no one home, left a message, not at all upset. It’s Christine. She called me back. She cried. When she sees the bed… I was calm, I calmed her down. “Yassou is doing better.” In her gay ghetto, conversations about animals. Baya, Yassou, Minou, Djinn, Misty, Victoire, Muzil. Last night on the phone it didn’t go well. Because of one detail that derailed everything. The first meeting at the Esplanade, it was no, homosexuals, heterosexuals, there are two camps. ‘Camps’ is not appropriate: gloves. To turn inside out like a glove, it’s sticky, you need gloves. And you see, I just made love with her, sweetheart. I was going crazy, you know. All autumn long. October, November, December, January. I wanted to hide it. I couldn’t bear the thought that anyone in our neighborhood might imagine me with a woman. That my little girl was the daughter of a woman who lets herself be licked by a lesbian. Your papa, I called him my love and my pet. Yassou is doing better. The civil solidarity pact set off a debate about all possible misuses. How are children made? The man puts his sex into the lady’s sex. Léonore sings with Clara “doing the thing with your lover is dis-gust-ing,” she laughs and starts again. The idea that Marie and I… doesn’t register. Her breasts, her feminine eyes, with make up, getting wet. On my thigh, who got wet on my thigh, how could it register, sweetheart? She left a letter lying around from Annie who was traveling in Africa, “I don’t give a shit about giraffes, with their big eyes, when there are children dying of starvation right next to them.” It might as well be Greece for me, I went back to my native land. She doesn’t want a graft, we’re not going to get a godemiche. I talked to Léonore about the Holocaust, the Jews, homosexuals, communists. Dr. Mazollier said to Léonore “your mom likes words.” Dr. Galy told me “a little early.” Dr. Zériahen said “no one can judge.” Dr. Dhersigny told me I was irresponsible. As a child Marie often had dizzy spells, without doing anything physical. In her head there was a kind of sound, she floated, completely. Claude: you’ll always be the only one, because you’re the first, because you’re the last one I loved, to whom I wanted to make love, to have a child, to go on vacation, to go to a restaurant, to discover the world with and see people live, the one with whom I’d have fought, against her and against myself, to live alone and together. You were my future. You will be my past. My only past. As for the rest, what good is it. In four days, you’ll be thirty-nine. I met you when you were barely sixteen. I want you to be happy. Claude. Thank you for the flowers. Yassou is doing better. Baya got hit by a car. The veterinarian treated her. Misty, Victoire, Muzil. She has a profession, as a doctor, in which you can’t make too many mistakes. I, of course, can afford to leave myself open all the time, to listen only to myself, it’s my stock in trade.