Incest

I search through boxes for the telephone number of my father, Pierre, in Strasbourg along with the number of my half-sister, who’s married to a dentist, and of my half-brother, married to a Marie-Christine. I don’t find anything, not one number. I don’t have the strength to check the Minitel or to call information. That would require consistency, a clear desire to reach a particular person, which I don’t have. I would have dialed a number if I’d happened on the piece of paper it was written on. I hadn’t wanted to put them into my address book, to do them the honor, which may well, on its own, be a sign of instability. I had put them in a box. Just in case. This is the case. (And if I did call them, really called them, if I decided to call them now and suggest we spend Christmas together. After all, why not? Is it that bad of an idea?)

Around one p.m. I call Nadine Casta at home, in Paris. In a fit of insanity. I hesitate. I open my address book, I close it again, I hesitate. Finally, I open it. Then there’s another sign:

I entered the number in my book wrong. I put the Cs under A. Chatelain, Constant, Casta. AFAA, Attoun, Art-Press, then all of a sudden Chatelain, Constant, Casta, it ends with an A, Angot begins with an A. I put them on the same page, but Angot wasn’t there. That itself was a sign. The melting of my personality, associating, mixing up, that’s my mental structure, between Élisabeth Angot, EA, and Nadine Casta, NC. EA, an abandoned child, not her but me, NC, it’s hate, not her but me, I already explained it. There you have it, now if that’s not a symptom! Like Emmanuel Adely, there are a ton of EAs among writers.

I put down the telephone, I take a small piece of paper, I write down what I intend to say so I’ll remember, me with my stammering and her, an actress who has mastered language. I’m in tears, my cheeks flushed, eyes blank, hair a mess, I’m sweating and shivering at the same time, I remember. My back is stiff, so stiff it aches, it’s my vertebrae, my back, always my back that’s trembling it seems to me. My lower back. I write it down on a little piece of graph paper: Marie-Christine and I wanted to spend Christmas together in Montpellier. In a new relationship, in love, the two of us wanted to build something together, around us, without any other ties, not even very old ones. Things are complicated, I’m suffering. Her decision to go to Paris has been making me suffer since Wednesday, after your phone call, you insisted she come. We’re going to break up because I can’t tolerate it anymore. You need to know this and the pain that it will cause.

I’m rewriting it from memory, I threw the paper away. I called her, with the paper in front of my vacant eyes, so that Nadine would understand. I got the housekeeper (not two hours a week, all day every day, she takes care of everything, the cleaning, the laundry, the errands, food, at night when she comes home, NC can stretch her feet out under the table, the maid is there, and for everything else, there’s a secretary, professional papers, train tickets, plane tickets, for vacations, Nadine’s or the children’s, or hotel reservations at La Mamounia in Marrakesh, at La Gazelle d’or in Taroundant, she wanted to have a party there when she turned fifty, or in New York, in the Pierre, everyone would have been invited). Close paren, I don’t want to leave the reader stranded like before. Polite, proper, and comprehensible. Frédéric told me the first section was hard to read because things were jumbled. The birthday party ended up being held on Île de Ré. The point of bringing up this anecdote is to underline the modest end, going round the world and ending up in the house on Île de Ré, two storeys, fifteen rooms. In the village of Ars, with the same old people, the Casadesus, the Wiazemskys, Chouraqui, Chesnais, Baye, a little farther away, in the village of Loix, more secret, more secluded, more simple, at least in appearance, it’s much more expensive. “It’s crazy how high real estate prices are now on Île de Ré,” say Marie-Christine and Nadine sitting in the garden of the large house they bought together. I telephone. Chatelain, Constant, Casta, on the A page as if by chance, the little piece of graph paper, the housekeeper answers, “who may I say is calling?” A horrible question. It’s Christine.

—Hello Nadine. It’s Christine. I’d like to talk.

—So would I. But I’m on my way out, I have a lunch date and the taxi is waiting downstairs. When can I call you back?

It was before my reading, afterward I wouldn’t give a shit. Too bad. Go ahead, go to lunch.

—Late afternoon? You’ll be around?

—No, I won’t be around.

—And in the evening?

—No, I won’t be around.

—Tomorrow afternoon?

—Tomorrow afternoon, yes.

—OK, I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon.

—Yes, because there are some things that are complicated.

—Complicated? How?

—We’ll talk.