16th June
Fifty ways to see Paris. We’re only at the beginning where she offers up her shallow and poorly disguised bohemianism. Today I saw her again, letting off steam. Z and I decided to go to the Sacré-Coeur, which prompts me with every visit to see it again and again. And it was a place Z had never been to and he felt my conviction, though he probably wasn’t that interested himself. Sometimes these places have to be avoided, which is why we haven’t been to the Eiffel Tower. It holds no interest. I’m talking crap of course because I’ve seen it a few times but Z doesn’t see why he should visit a place just because it’s mentioned in a book. I agree, but was sucked into the tourist trap when I was younger. But some places really are worth seeing, and I think that the Sacré-Coeur is one of them. At least, I thought so until today’s visit. Did I open my eyes for the first time? No, I think the church has opened itself up, become an enterprise. I’m not religious but a church, a temple, a mosque, any place of such voluminous faith can really move me. I’m not religious but sometimes I envy those who are. I used to see faith as a weakness, the need for a scapegoat, to put our unmoulded existence into the potter’s hands, and to confess all to one of God’s merry men for an abundance of Ave Maria’s. And then it came to pass that my views turned around. I saw the light in the eyes of the believer and I learnt that faith can be a strength, a transition from self to an externalised tunnel of consciousness. And the church, of font and spire or the congregation itself, is the playing field for the union of souls and the support they offer one another. But not so with the Sacré-Coeur this time. Its hush still resounds, and its statues, its many Mary’s with child, its cordoned off seating areas, its votive candles (for a few centimes you can light one) are as any church. But day in, day out, morning till night the tourists lump in through one door and straggle out another, doing the full circle, pace by pace, one following the other’s whispered sounds of awe. Right past the shop, which I swear I had never seen before, where you can purchase books, crosses and wee little statuettes, the kind that pilgrims might once have bought, an icon of their chosen saint.
We chose a route that led us past the African stalls and markets, the Moroccan and Turkish, smelling of incense and the sky was overcast and it was cooler than in previous days. A storm was imminent but we thought we might be at the church by then. We were wrong. Walking down Boulevard de la Chapelle, the atmosphere changed; the whole place changed from a three-dimensional city to a film setting. As the metro above ground rumbled along its track above us to our left, the sky grumbled its first reply and as we saw a double-decker train speed past to the right, below the bridge we walked on, the first gigantic drops of rain hit us and we found the umbrella to be of no use at all. Beads of rain as big as centimes so we ran over to the metro bridge and sheltered beneath it and as the advertising board continued to change its picture over and over in the rain I felt like I wasn’t there. No, I was there but a distance away, looking at the scene through a telescope, seeing Z and I small and still beneath the bridge and all around us movement as people dashed through the rain, zig-zagging this way and that and a girl with copper-coloured hair who rain with a slightly uneven step. The storm didn’t last long and by the time we reached the steps leading to the church the sun was out and the only sign of the wet weather was the water that gushed down the gutters in streams.
I went to the Sacré-Coeur this time to look for something. And I didn’t find it so it left me feeling disappointed. Not only for me, but for my novel as I wanted to use it, and the strange feeling it gave me when I saw it, him. Last time I was there I saw the most precious thing, and I don’t remember how I found it, if perhaps it was hidden away in some small chamber which I missed this time. It was a statue of Jesus, made of bronze perhaps. He was lying, life-size, perhaps larger or at least I remember him being a little bigger than average. After the crucifixion, before the Ascension. Lying on a slab or a tomb, hands at his sides, the fingers relaxed and curled, holes in the palms, or was it the wrists? Holes in the feet, crown of thorns at his side, beside the loincloth he wears, and his face. His beautiful face serene but with the knowledge of his suffering its easy to add another dimension there. I remember feeling something I had never felt before. An empathy, a child-like awe, a yearning to embrace him. It was like seeing a father and a friend at once. And would I have felt this had the statue been of an unknown man with a kind face? I mean, did I feel that way because I’ve been taught to? I don’t know. I’ve seen enough religious imagery and been to enough churches to know that I am not usually affected like this. I have friends who believe, whose faith is rock solid, but it’s never had an influence on me, and they have laughed at my stubbornness and refusal for acceptance into their church. But there was something else, something which made my stomach tighten a little. I remember the feeling now, my toes tingling, something like shame resting on my shoulders, my thighs squeezed together. For what reason, I don’t know, perhaps mischief, I wanted to straddle him. I saw the whole thing in my mind, as I hitched up my skirt, kicked off my sandals, slid one leg over his taut body ever so gracefully, and sat down on the metal which was numbingly cold on my thighs. Then I lent down and kissed his mouth before laying my head on his chest. Innocent, but tainted. And I think perhaps I just wanted to poison something beautiful. Anyway, I didn’t do it of course. Even if there hadn’t been others ooing and aahing over him, I wouldn’t have done it. What I did do, a thing that came so naturally as a solitary act yet which I would have almost scorned at if asked to do it as part of a ceremony. I waited for a moment till I was alone and then I bent and kissed his feet. The metal was cold and I wondered if he could feel the warmth from my lips. At that moment I had total faith. I’m just not sure what it was I had faith in.
I wanted to feel this again in Sacré-Coeur because I haven’t felt it since and I don’t know if I’ll feel it anywhere else. And when I didn’t see him I didn’t think I’d be able to remember those feelings. But I do, I remember them so clearly and now I know I’ll be able to write it in the novel. I want Maria to feel those things, because she must have some kind of belief to start with, before it’s taken away from her, before she finds the ability for absolute cruelty.
And this is something I must acknowledge before I proceed with this thing. I know Maria will be hurt. Here in Paris, she will put her trust in people. She will love her friend Arianne who will fail her. Who will never actually promise a complete love but who Maria will have trusted to be around forever. But she will fall for a man, a believer in Christ who will take Arianne on this journey with him. Therefore, when Maria sees Jesus in the Sacré-Coeur she will hate these feelings she has for him, because he has come to mean the loss of Arianne, who left the security of their none-physical relationship for another none-physical relationship with God. Maria will begin an affair with her tutor, who will fail her. She will fall for a good-looking artist, who will use her atrociously. He will steal from her all her secrets, her past, as she finds she has used him as her priest, as her therapist and told him stories she has told no one else. Her vulnerability calls out to be picked over like a carcass, which he does, before telling her she has gone bad and spitting it back at her. So, provoked, she hurts him. She makes him bleed. The thought of physically or emotionally hurting someone before would have been an unreality. I think perhaps I’m remembering my own relationship, in part, with Chris. Those parts of it I recall, things I haven’t thought about for so long, now coming to the fore, now that I need to remember that energy, that clarity and that fecundated emotion. His childlike face, at once innocence in those happy eyes, and then the deepest sadness I’d ever seen in a person. The suicide notes, the number of times I ran amok looking for the boy after another note said he couldn’t be alive anymore. Only to find him sitting in the park laughing and joking with his friends. Our three month relationship that was an unrelenting game, a chase to the finish. And his asking in that quiet voice for me to cut him while we fucked. Nothing much, he would say, just press a knife into my back while I’m fucking you. Any excuse like, I don’t have a sharp knife here, and he’d offer to run out and buy one. Because it was the only thing on his mind. The pain, the explosion during orgasm, like asphyxiation, but sharp and quick instead of a consuming throb of pain. I couldn’t do it. He’d offer up various makeshift tools, anything to break the skin , but I couldn’t. And I think now on that relationship and wonder. I saw these masochistic currents running through him, an electricity keeping him alive; in fact, the only thing worth living for was the feeling. Now I wonder. He used me as a child uses his mother. Hating her and needing her and tormenting her into giving her full attention. And I don’t think there was masochism there. I think there was cruelty. He took what he could. And what if I had cut him? I didn’t want to but what if I had? Then I would have been doing it against my will and he would have enjoyed that aspect of it. Does that make him sadistic? The line between user and used, sadist and masochist, is so fine, like that age-old silk thread between love and hate. Not that Sacher von Masoch would probably agree, but I’m sure Sade would. The divine Marquis knew there was little difference between the two. Only those who took the name Masoch and turned it into what it means today did so in error. The two men had completely different ideas. But, I digress. Maria, in her bitterness will find that not only can she make the bastard bleed, she can steal all copies of his novel too. She’ll begin a new life with a vow to not be used again. She will become the user. Like Sade’s Justine and Juliette, she will act out both sides of a personality, become almost two people, neither of them completely in charge of their actions or their destiny, both of them acting this way because of their identity within their social frame. It’s becoming clearer. I must go and write…
18th June
Yesterday was a good day. The writing spree, which went on till 3 in the morning with a white wine accompaniment, was taken up again today and I have only just put down my pen. My index finger has an indentation in it and I’ve had to cut my nails which were getting so long they were leaving tracks in my palms. These writing marathons are great for the soul, and for the core that says ‘I won’t be able to do this. I’ll get writers block or what I write will be shit and why would anybody want to read it anyway?’. These bursts of writing energy say in response ‘I can do this and who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks?’. Okay, so it’s important for a publisher to like it as well but hey, small fish. I’m getting into her heart. Maria’s four-chambered organ is accepting me like a blood transfusion. I’ll get into her soul too, in time. She is me and she isn’t me. Sometimes it’s weird writing a novel about my life, aspects, selections of my own identity. That’s just it, I’m choosing what parts of myself to infuse into Maria and what to leave out. But does that make it less real? We can’t choose what parts of our own identities to reveal. We might think we can hide some of them away, but they show, in our eyes, in our body language and gestures, in an uncontrolled grimace or fake smile. But surely I can’t put the whole of myself into her. That would be a confession such as Maria gives to the writer, to be used to another’s advantage. And besides, she can’t be all me. I can’t lay myself 2d on paper; it would be impossible.
The old concept of orderly, symmetrical development of character died when it was discovered that unconscious motivations are entirely at odds with fabricated conventions. Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry. They oscillate, expand, contract, backtrack, arrest themselves, regress, mobilise, atrophy in part, proceed erratically according to experience and tribulation. Some aspects of the personality mature, others do not. Some live in the past, some in the present. Some people are futuristic characters, some geometric, hard-edged, some abstract, vague, others softly mellow. Some of their insights remain relative. And we can no longer think of a character as good or bad but a combination of traits that vary according to relationship and point in time. We know now that we are composites in reality, collages of our fathers and mothers, of what we read, of television and film, of friends and associates and we are aware when we are playing a role far removed from our genuine selves. Putting this into a fictional perspective can be the hardest part of writing a novel. And then, to fully realise those characters that are so different from ourselves. How many characters will it take to fill a novel, to bring a story to life? Maybe two or three, perhaps twenty or thirty, each of them different to the last yet existing on the page in harmony or at least at harmonious opposites. Like a sparring team of imaginary friends.
It was fun last night, drinking, smoking and writing with Z sitting at the opposite end of the table, painting. He has been inspired by some of the things we’ve seen, the café life, the antique shops, the graveyards, and is working on his own style, with pale watery colours extending over and beyond the pencil lines as though there isn’t actually a limit to what is on the paper, that the identities or personalities of what he paints can be seen through this kind of aura, that it can live even as it becomes a representation.
I think he was also inspired by the Musée de l’Érotisme. I’m not talking about the phalluses, though some of them were pretty awe-inspiring in the least! As a U-turn from the Sacré-Coeur yesterday we decided to wander on down to Boulevard Clichy, from the hushed tranquility of the church, past the red hot hard live sex shops with their hawkers outside hankering all the couples and single men with their pussy talk, and to the Erotic Museum. What a great place. Five floors of artwork, film and artefacts depicting the history of sexuality. Initially, the cavemen-type simple and often bestial drawings, fertility masks and plants made up of penis shaped flowers with large bell-shaped heads, Greek and Roman vases, plates showing many an orgy, because sex was important and special, and open. And then came Christianity with its monotheism and sex became taboo, and presented itself as the ideal subject for jokes, black-market shops selling hard-core paraphernalia and farcical films. Hence by the top floor there were ‘dolls’ with hideous faces and pictures showing nuns and vicars romping, soft porn films from the twenties which were the least erotic thing in the place. But there were many great pieces of art on display, mini corsets and various contraptions, wire images that moved, rotated, whirled. Including one which showed a woman trussed up and blindfolded and gyrating slowly round. Which was very clever in itself, but more important and obvious than this was the shadow it cast from appropriately placed lights. The shadow was bigger than the piece itself and its movement more fluid than the lazy twisting of its wire doppelganger. I was entranced by this, the way a shadow or a silhouette can be so significant. It made me think about my writing and how perhaps I ought to tone it down, to stick to the shadows, or the colour outside the lines.
19th June
My hair is frazzled by this heat, by the sun which has lightened it blonde, and the ends are breaking off all over the place. I’m moulting like a dog. All those years of dying my hair are taking their toll. So Z cut it for me. I don’t know who was the bravest, me or him. I was taking a chance in walking around the fashionable city with a paper bag over my head, and he was taking the risk of my wrath. Actually it’s fine, comes just to my jaw line now, makes me less hot. There are random long pieces of hair but I quite like that. I’ve always had messy hair anyway, shouldn’t expect anything different just because we’re in Paris. It turned into a stupid night. It was after midnight when he put the scissors away and I cleaned up the hair from the floor. But it turned into a scuffle as I threw a handful at him and he got me back by throwing me over his knee and spanking me. Which is kind of like being tickled and though you hate it you can’t say stop because you’re laughing too hard. So I lashed out, a knee-jerk reaction but I hit him hard in the face. My stomach withered as he cupped his nose in his hands and bent over and I felt so terrible, so sorry. I kissed his hands and his face and said forgive me I didn’t mean it. And then he grabbed me and he’d fooled me the trickster and he tickled me all the more. We fucked after that. Good fucking that made me forget I was with someone I’ve been with for four years. I thought of strangers, of a little bit of force, but not too much because it’s tough when someone is touching you so delicately that his fingers feel like drops of water.
Afterwards we talked for a long time. All these books he’s been reading lately. He has a non-fiction habit and his intellect is immense. I used to feel a little humbled when he tried to explain something that I couldn’t get my head round. I would nod as though I understood. Now I just tell him to either shut the fuck up or explain it in my terms. It’s always religion, philosophy, psychology, sorcery, a little bit of voodoo. He spoke last night about the ’self’ as being something we must get rid of. And I thought he meant our identity and couldn’t see how we could or why we should. But he meant the self in terms of ego, the view of ourselves as being bigger or more important than the next person, or, the other way, inferior. If everyone was rid of the ’self’ we would have no reason to treat another person differently to how we would want to be treated ourselves, we would not feel bad if insulted, we would rise above the crap. A simple idea which could never be executed of course, because people wouldn’t want to give up their ’self’, it’s their importance that puffs out their chests and flutters their tail feathers. Still, it got me thinking about my journal. Z is pretty much confused by my need to write down a record of events. But it’s not a record of events, I tell him, it’s a chain of thoughts and emotions which I get to live out twice or more, whereas those who just feel it once, leave it then to become distorted in memory. It’s for accuracy, it’s to gain a foothold on certain emotions so I can retain them for my writing, and understand them in the process. I share Sartre’s view of the self-made personality. That a neonate, like a piece of wood or lump of clay is blank and that life gives it meaning. Just as the wood can be manipulated into a table and the clay into a vase, so the untainted mind can be moulded into a personality by experience. Z thinks self-analysis is absurd. That’s because you’ve never tried it I say. He scoffs. His opinion is that the human being is born with an innate knowledge of reason, of perception and a certain way of seeing. And that to get to the truth a person must re-train their mind through forms such as meditation. He sees the rock or the piece of wood as encompassing the knowledge that the impressionable mind or ‘personality’ has learned to suppress. That if we can understand the reasoning behind its knowledge and beauty, then we will be aware. To be rid of our preconceptions is to return to a child-like state, he says. Like the id, I suggest, returning to Freud as always, the impulsive, desirous urges, without the mediator. It’s not quite the same thing though. I reel off terms I know from psychology, but he states these are preconceptions too, late-labelled for easier understanding. He speaks as a seer, as a yogi, but still we disagree. I don’t want to lose what I know – I want to add to it, and learn about my ‘self’. I see my journal writing as the difference between egotism and egoism and I think Z actually thinks this is a form of conceit. It is self-importance, that is true, but it is trying to understand a life, a conscience; why I should feel a certain way and act a different way; why we have evolved into a trained way of thinking; why we should push boundaries etc. I record the behaviours and actions of other people. I am a voyeur, an observer and I like to write about what I see. Z would probably disagree even if I said something he had thought himself. It’s his way of having the last word. His stubbornness still amazes me sometimes. So we left the conversation finished, as far as Z was concerned, as it neared 4am. Had I not been so tired I would have continued, though I know the conversation would have just gone round in circles. I kissed him on the top of the head and went to bed in the other room. Sometimes he makes me so mad I just want to strangle him.
I woke at 6.45 this morning with the sheet on the floor and my body star-like. It was so hot but as I swigged down some water from the fridge in the bright morning light, and saw Z fast asleep on the sofabed, the dream came back to me, sharp like the shattering of glass. At my mother’s, with her, Z and my sisters all sitting around a bath, discussing politics or some such thing and there was I, perched on the edge with a doll, washing it gently in the water, not joining in the conversation. And occasionally Z would pat my head or ruffle my hair in a patronising gesture. And then swiftly the dream changed and I was pregnant, a huge swollen belly like an egg and I went into labour. I was back at school and I ran into the toilets which I remember so well. In one of the cubicles I tried to force out the baby. Standing, leaning against the wall in the cramped space my skirt was hitched around my waist and blood poured down my thighs, and then I began to squeeze out the monstrosity. The head, the size of a baby’s, was that of a beetle, black and its antennae twitching madly. I was repulsed and grabbed hold of it to yank it out. But as I pulled the head came off in my hands. The body was still inside me. That must have been when I woke up.
I went back to bed but staggered under the heat and couldn’t get back to sleep. I am so tired now. Always so tired and hot and staving off this irritability with a large café creme at every café stop and more cigarettes than ever and I was supposed to be quitting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Kendall is editor of Sein und Werden and has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies including Nemonymous, Connections, Thieves Jargon, 3:AM, Straight from the Fridge, Cherry Bleeds, Darkness Rising 5 and others. She lives in Manchester, UK, with a man and a mannequin and a small collection of late animals. You can read an interview with Rachel here.
Wow! now this is high- class.