Flesh and Other Fragments of Love (5 page)

You're attracted to Mary because you think she's immutable, incorruptible.

While seeing me age makes you anxious…

Am I right?

You've hated witnessing my deterioration over the past twenty years.

You can't stand seeing my body change.

But you forget that your dead woman's body will spoil faster than mine.

Pierre!

Pierre!

Pierre!

Pierre!

Pierre!

*

MARY

Simone has been calling Pierre forever.

It feels as if she has called out to him since the beginning of time. She's afraid he won't come.
Will he come?
She trembles, she tears out her hair, she rolls on the ground, screaming her despair, she blanches, she stumbles, she vomits, strange, isn't it?

PIERRE

What?

MARY

Your Simone. So madly in love.

PIERRE

Yes.

MARY

Sometimes I envy all that, I have to admit, but envy quickly gives way to an anticipatory fatigue that saps my courage.

Of course, certain impulses are powerful, we're animals, and occasionally, after work, after calling the sitter and claiming unexpected overtime, I've gone to sit in a bar, and wait.

I've even gone so far as to encourage a wandering hand, opened my legs under the table and allowed the stranger's hand to go wherever it wished.

It felt good.

I returned the favour and he seemed to appreciate it.

Afterwards, I went home, thanked the sitter and lay down beside my sleeping son.

I smothered him with kisses.

My one true love.

SIMONE

Mary, you have to help me. You're a doctor, you have to help me.

I'm scared.

I'm really scared, I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm suffering.

She holds her head.

My thirst is constant, unquenchable.

She wrings her hands.

My pupils are dry and gather specks of dust my eyes can't remove.

She points to the nape of her neck.

Without realizing it, I scratch and tear the skin off my arms.

She bares her belly.

When I notice the red marks on my white arms,

I think I see strange writing I can't decipher.

I feel a poison flowing through my veins, devouring me.

I lose my balance.

When he's there, I can't see him.

When he isn't there, he's all I can see.

Is it serious?

MARY

It's love.

It will pass.

SIMONE

Am I going to die?

MARY

You can't die of love.

You can die of everything except love.

6. THE CHEST

MARY

Strange, isn't it?

PIERRE

What?

MARY

They said she suffered so badly from Pierre's absence that she started to invent him.

PIERRE

How?

MARY

Simone is folding Pierre's shirts.

If she were a sculptor, she would sculpt him.

If she were a painter, she would paint him.

If she were a photographer, she would photograph him.

But Simone can't do anything with Pierre.

There's no way to grab hold of him,

no way to bring him back.

In the meantime, she folds his shirts.

She loves touching his clothes.

Even as a little girl, she dreamed of having a husband to dress, instead of her dolls.

They say that Simone is a feminist.

Would a feminist get so much pleasure out of folding her husband's shirts?

A true feminist would say,

You can fold your own shirts,

I'm not your maid, c'mon, really.

SIMONE

I don't see what's degrading about folding shirts.

Besides, my intellectual life is closely linked to my domestic chores.

The more attentive I am to my housework, the more active my mind is,

inspecting, exploring, sifting through the magma of reasoning,

drifting with the flow of imagination, dreams and freedom.

It took me a long time to perfect this performance.

I'm an intellectual.

An intellectual has the right to fold shirts once in a while.

I button the collar, then every other button.

I stroke the silk, the linen, the cotton.

The shirt shivers, comes to life.

I lay it face down on the table.

Pierre appears in all his fragility.

I can see his shoulder blades.

He can't see me.

I press myself against his back.

He jumps.

I took him by surprise.

He doesn't leave.

He doesn't turn around.

He knows it's me.

He breathes slowly.

Then I take his arms and pull them towards me gently.

I look like I'm trying to handcuff him.

But he's the one who puts his arms around me.

I love it when he holds me prisoner.

Now he's facing me.

He needs to look at me.

I can't see his face.

But a ghost of Pierre

is better than no Pierre at all.

MARY

Hello, Simone.

SIMONE

Hello.

MARY

Did you sleep well?

SIMONE

Yes, thank you.

MARY

When I woke up, I realized I had pulled all the blankets onto me.

You and Pierre were completely uncovered.

I hope you weren't cold.

SIMONE

No.

MARY

Tonight, I'll lie in the middle.

I'll be warm between the two of you.

I'm just back from a long walk.

Wonderful.

Invigorating.

The salty air is full of iodine.

The mist hasn't lifted yet.

It spreads a veil that softens the contours

and blurs the landscape like that French painting.

I can't remember which one…

It's going to be sunny.

The yellow irises and the pink rhododendrons are bursting into bloom.

There's a blend of subtlety and boldness in the air this morning.

Pierre will love it.

Is he still asleep?

SIMONE

Yes.

MARY

Amazing how long he can sleep. He scared me!

SIMONE

How?

MARY

He was breathing so slowly. I was listening while his chest rose…

he exhaled and I waited for him to inhale again… nothing.

I waited and waited, time stood still, I watched his immobile chest…

I thought,
oh, no, it's not possible, he's dead!

SIMONE

You're the one who's dead, Mary.

MARY

A bit less, thanks to the two of you.

You invent me, and I invent you in return.

We have become an inseparable trio.

A kind of trinity of desire.

I am the one who allows you to discover each other.

I am your identical fate.

Birds aren't the only ones who feed off the dead.

SIMONE

I don't feed off the dead!

What a disgusting idea!

Go away!

Leave us alone!

He'll forget you and you will never sleep with us again.

I'm the one who will touch him, breathe into his neck, perspire beneath his hands.

I'm still here.

Not you. You are no longer here.

There's nothing left of you!

You have no face.

You are completely defaced.

You are absence, void, abyss, emptiness.

I am full.

I am full of flesh.

I am full of ideas.

I am full of words.

I am talking.

I'm talking to myself.

I'm talking to myself.

I'm talking to myself

and you are dead.

PIERRE

(to SIMONE)
What are you doing?

SIMONE

I'm talking to myself.

PIERRE

Stop thinking about it.

SIMONE

About what?

PIERRE

About her.

SIMONE

I'm not thinking about her.

PIERRE

So what are you thinking about?

SIMONE

About death.

PIERRE

Again?

MARY

They say that Simone was always thinking about death. Like her mother. Obsessed.

SIMONE

I'm talking to myself.

MARY

Her mother loved to visit graves, loved to attend wakes. She loved to wait for bad news and spread bad news. She loved to spill tears, send letters of condolence, write her will, adding or removing the names of her heirs according to her whims. She loved to imagine her epitaph, write it down, read it out loud, weigh its effect. Her mother cultivated death like an orchid.
She'd say,
Love me, Simone! I'm going to die, Simone! You have to love me, I'm going to die!

SIMONE

Love me, I'm going to die!

PIERRE

You aren't your mother. Come swimming with me instead.

SIMONE

I've forgotten how to swim.

I've forgotten how to stick out my tongue.

I've forgotten how to fold a shirt.

Soon I will have forgotten how to speak.

The doctor told me.

Then how will you find me eloquent?

Persuasive?

Colourful?

Touching?

Undeniable?

MARY

Simone consulted doctors.

PIERRE

Several doctors.

MARY

All kinds of tests.

PIERRE

They asked her to do simple things.

MARY

Stick out your tongue.

SIMONE extends an arm to MARY.

PIERRE

She can't do it.

MARY

Try again, Simone.

SIMONE extends the other arm.

Where is your throat?

SIMONE points to her mouth.

Touch your left elbow.

SIMONE opens her mouth wide.

Where is your belly?

SIMONE points to her chest.

Where is your heart?

SIMONE points to her belly.

Very good, Simone.

Very good.

PIERRE

Sometimes we thought she was pretending. We felt like saying: Stop, Simone, stop pulling our leg.

MARY

We'd say: Is she pretending? Does she enjoy making us worry?

7. THE TONGUE

PIERRE

After the diagnosis, Simone began to write letters, frantically, before she was reduced to silence.

SIMONE and MARY deliver the following letter simultaneously, MARY acting as SIMONE's interpreter.

SIMONE

My love,

I mmm apostle temptation before. The words re re re. I am freedom freedom freedom but from what. Maybe image of Cinderella in in I wanted us. Prison. Vestal of my up… Vestal of my bringing up up. Long quite elation frozen freeze time… shine… bright like sssssss sun.

When you go when you tell figments of Mary not Mary not Mary not life just figments of life not the truth the truth her death the place invented her death I invented and I saw I saw I saw you beautiful.

MARY

My love,

I am making an epistolary attempt, before words refuse to leave my body.

That vacation set me free, but free from what, I'm not sure.

Not you, certainly not.

Perhaps from the fairy tale where I wanted to hold us prisoner, a vestige of my proper upbringing.

A long vacation, a long, quiet vacation to make time stand still. I polished that time in my mind until it glowed like sunshine.

It won't be about Mary, just fragments of Mary, the illegible fragments of her life. Mary's death is the place where I invented her, the place where you and I finally saw each other in a different light.

From that place, you appeared so beautiful to me.

SIMONE

With love and misses, your Simone.

PIERRE

I don't understand.

SIMONE

With love and misses, your Simone.

PIERRE

I don't understand.

SIMONE

With love and misses, your Simone.

PIERRE

I don't understand.

MARY

With love and kisses, your Simone.

8. THE FLESH

MARY

Strange, isn't it?

PIERRE

What?

MARY

They say that Simone's disease imprisoned words in her flesh.

And that her repressed speech broke out, occasionally, in barbaric sounds.

They say that in the end her words got all mixed up and created a strange language that only Pierre could understand.

PIERRE

I didn't understand.

MARY

They say that now words are inscribed in her flesh.

That her tissue is made of sentences, fossilized words and ancient stories.

They say that when a bird pecks at Simone's flesh

to tear off a strip

it frees imprisoned words

and flies off with them.

PIERRE

I never understood.

9. THE BRAIN

MARY

Strange, isn't it?

PIERRE

What?

MARY

Simone. The story. My story that she never finished.

PIERRE

She almost finished it. She would have finished soon.

MARY

She wouldn't have known how to invent my death. That's beyond her.

Inconceivable.

Otherwise she would have drowned herself.

She considered that, of course. But water is too familiar to her, too comfortable, too soothing. Simone comes from the Mediterranean coast. It's the egg, the first cradle. Just thinking about diving makes her euphoric—she's enveloped, the water swallows her and spits her out, swallows her and spits her out, until we can't tell which is the ocean, the water or her.

She thought,

A corpse is something else in our culture.

It's much more than a living person.

She thought,

I want to die soundlessly and

death is like a word:

inseparable from the sound it makes.

PIERRE

Simone would have said,

first comes the immersion.

The glottis closes. Mary tries voluntary apnea.

But, quickly, the breathing reflex kicks in.

Simone would have said,

Mary inhales water.

Loss of consciousness.

Convulsion.

Cardiac arrest.

That's it.

The heart stops beating.

Mary floats away.

Mary becomes the white bird buoyed out on the foam of the sea.

The vacation in Ireland is over.

SIMONE

I would have said,

Farewell, Mary

Farewell bird of the loam

I'll write you

I'll write you

Light

A flood of light

Formless light

Shapeless, endless