Funeral Rites (7 page)

He said:

“Oh?”

I realized what he was thinking. There were ten seconds of silence, and he repeated banteringly:

“Oh?”

And again, with the same smile and nodding his head:

“Oh?”

He snorted.

“But if I stay, you'll start fucking around.

“ I won't.

I said that in a rough tone. And, with a more detached air, I added:

“Oh, do as you like.”

“Oh?”

But as I spoke he stood up, and I thought he was going to leave. He sat down on the bed again.

“Well? Are you staying? Or are you going?”

“Will you let me alone?”

“Shit.”

“I'll stay.”

We talked about other things. From the tone of his answers, the slight constraint of his voice, his hesitation, I had been able to tell not only that he was staying but that he would accept this night what he had hitherto refused.

“Are you getting undressed?”

It was noticeable that, despite his decision to give himself to me, he was postponing the moment of going to bed, of getting between the sheets, of pressing his body against mine. At last, slowly and as if he were sauntering about the room, he undressed. When he was in bed, I drew him to me. He already had a hard-on.

“You see, you're not keeping your word. You said you'd let me alone.”

“Oh, come on, I'm just kissing you. I'm not hurting you.

I kissed him. Then he said, but in a calm voice:

“All right.”

This “all right” indicated that he had just reached a decision, that he was casting himself into the irremediable.

“All right.”

Then, finally breathing easily:

“What if I wanted to, today?”

“Wanted what?”

He scowled impatiently. He blurted out:

“You know very well, but you want me to say it . . . if I was willing to make love.”

The end of the sentence trailed off for want of breath.

Jean.

I stroked his hand.

“Jean.”

I didn't know what to say, or to do. He could feel my happiness. He lay still, stretched out on his back. The position released the muscles of his face, but the eyes remained alert and the lids kept up their regular blinking, which indicated that the kid was on his guard in spite of his excitement. I put out the light. Weary and soft, I lay on his back. A moment later, he whispered:

“Jean, come out.”

Anxious to spare him the slightest embarrassment of attending to his personal hygiene in my presence, I ran my hands between his buttocks as if I were caressing him there, and he, out of like modesty, fearing lest my prick be soiled with his shit, cleaned it with his free hand. We performed this double act at the same time, under the covers, with the same innocence, as if my hand met his buttocks and his my prick accidentally in the darkness. It was then that he murmured the well-known words:

“I love you even more than before.”

I kissed the back of his neck with a warmth that must have reassured him, for he finally dared sigh the following confession into the folds of the pillow:

“I was afraid you wouldn't love me anymore . . . afterward.”

My hand, seeking his hair so as to stroke it, grazed his face and stroked his cheek instead.

Wearing Jean's shirts or his socks wouldn't be enough, nor would loading myself with amulets that he touched, nor weaving bracelets out of his hair or keeping it in lockets. But uttering his name in solitude is somewhat better. If I tried to repeat aloud the words he said, his sentences, the bungling poems he wrote, there would be danger of giving him body within my body.

Language, that language in particular, expresses the soul (I have chosen this word) and speech. (When one yields up one's soul, it seems that it is this physical breath that is the carrier of speech.) The soul appeared to be only the harmonious unfolding, the extension, in fine and shaded scrolls, of secret labor, of the movements of algae and waves, of organs living a strange life in its deep darkness, of those organs themselves, the liver, the spleen, the green coating of the stomach, the humors, the blood, the chyle, the coral canals, a vermilion sea, the blue intestines. Jean's body was a Venetian flask. I was quite certain that a time would come when that wonderful language which was drawn from him would dimmish his body, as a ball of yarn is diminished as it is used up, would wear it down to the point of transparency, down to a speck of light. It taught me the secret of the matter that makes up the star which emits it, and that the shit amassed in Jean's intestine, his slow, heavy blood, his sperm, his tears, his mud, were not your shit, your blood, your sperm.

I had gone to bed with my memory of Paulo merging
with that of Jean. Through the open window of my tiny hotel room I saw the Seine. Paris was not yet asleep. What was Erik doing? It was hard for me to imagine his life with Paulo and his mother, but it was comforting to relive at his side—and at times inside him or Riton—the hours he spent on the rooftops with the militiamen.

So, two bare arms stood out at first against the dark sky, on the rooftop. They were bright. Joined at the hands, one of the arms was pulling the other toward it. The almost desperate effort of those arms of strong, muscular men made them stiff as rods, and for three seconds they remained in a state of amazingly light immobility, a mortal moment of indecision. Then a charge of will shot through the less strong of the two. There was a slight click of steel at the edge of the zinc. That poster picture of two outstretched arms knotted together in manly and brotherly aid almost tore the sky apart, almost punctured it. The stars were too dim to light the scene sufficiently. The arm which seemed weaker rose up a little toward the body to which it was attached. Hope brought it an armful of courage. Riton's torso bent forward a bit more, and the whole well-knit body, its shape broken by the movement, withdrew quietly and slowly behind the brick chimney to which the hand of his other arm was clinging. The little militiaman finally managed to draw from the void the German soldier who had lost his footing on the slippery zinc of the roof. Both of them were barefoot and bareheaded. Helping himself with one hand, which was still clutching his harmonica, Erik got back onto the roof, flat on his stomach. When he was in a safe position, his raised head was on a level with Riton's knees. He let go of the boy's hand. Riton, who was as pale as he was, wiped his forehead. He was in a sweat. Then he dropped his hand wearily with a defeated gesture. Erik, who was
flat on his stomach, immediately took it and squeezed it.

"Danke,”
he murmured.

Then he stood up. He looked the kid in the eye. He saw a tired, naked face powdered with darkness in which two black eyes were shining. He laid both hands on Riton's shoulders and shook him. A sliver of moon emerged from a cloud. Erik nimbly stepped behind the chimney and blended with the shadow. With equal speed, Riton made the same movement, but, thrown off balance by his harness of cartridges, he botched it. Fatigue and nervousness made him clumsy. With one leg forward and the other bent back, Riton was doing a kind of awkward split on the rooftop. Erik leaned over, grabbed the kid from behind, and locked him in his arms. Their weapons collided. The sound was imperceptible. They stood motionless for a moment, with Riton still locked in the arms of Erik, whose hands were joined by the harmonica. They waited a while, open-mouthed, until the waves of the agitation they had just caused in the darkness subsided. Erik unloosed his embrace and dropped his arms. Riton felt a slight sensation of dampness and coldness on the back of his hand and put his hand to his mouth mechanically. He was not very surprised. He realized that Erik's saliva, which had collected in the holes of the harmonica, had flowed on to his hand. The dark blue wool of the militiaman's breeches and the black wool of the soldier's both held a smell which the sweat of the August days and nights and fatigue and anxiety had accumulated and which that double gesture had freed and blended, and naked black warriors with shiny bodies, wearing scalps on their belts and carrying pikes, emerged from the bamboos. The heart of Africa was throbbing in Riton's closed hand. There was dancing to the sound of a distant and insistent tom-tom. The two kids were staggering,
with their eyes popping. Fatigue was pulling and pushing them, was making them whirl and topple.

Erik muttered:

"Achtung,
watch out, Ritônne!”

They sat down against the chimney among the half-awake Fritzes, and Riton fell asleep. He had escorted six German soldiers and a sergeant, the only one left of the section with which his own militia group had been made to join forces. Thanks to the complicity of Juliette, whom the sergeant had been courting, they were able to reach a building where everyone was asleep, enter by the service window, and get to the roof. The sergeant was twenty; his soldiers were the same age. Keeping the little militiaman with them, they took off their shoes silently to go up to the rafters. They climbed up onto the roof around midnight. For greater security, the little group moved on to another building. Then they chose a post and, tired and despairing, squatted between the chimneys. Precisely because of their despair, they were determined to do everything possible to get out of the fix they were in. Fatigue made them drowsy. Erik, who was less drowsy, took his harmonica from the back pocket of his black breeches and played a tune. He gently ran his mouth over the bee's nest. He was playing very softly, actually in a murmur, “The Blue Java.”

. . .
It's the blue Java

The loveliest Java

The one that bewitches you
. . .

The modulation of the popular waltz was strangling the Boche, was squeezing his throat. He was aware that all the sad sweetness of France was flowing from his eyes. It was then that he fell asleep and rolled down the slope
of the roof. Luckily his hand caught on Riton's armor; and Riton managed to get to his feet and pull him back.

Erik was unable to sleep, despite his weariness. He wandered off. It was August, when the sky pours forth showers of stars. As he moved to the edge of the roof, he saw that he was above a narrow balcony with an iron railing that ran along three sixth-floor windows. With a single leap, he jumped down. Sure-eyed and sure-footed, he landed on the balcony, on the tips of his unshod toes, and, as he wavered on his bent calves and thighs, his hands and fingers hesitated in strange positions, but they were quickly used for balancing his whole body. The apartment was empty. When he walked through it, a slight warmth burned his cheeks for the first time. The revolt of the Parisians seemed to him a betrayal. They had tricked him by feigning a four-year sleep. Under cover of the drinking at bars, the friendly slaps on the shoulders, the kindly explanations given with the hands, the girls, women, and boys who were lazily screwed from behind like dogs by men in boots and spurs, a host of deceitful thoughts were preparing vengeance. Erik realized that friendship can be a trap. But after all, what did he care about Germany! He had joined the Hitler Youth in order to have weapons: a knife for show, and a revolver for pillage. He was like the young French militiamen whose souls thrilled at the feel of a loaded revolver under their jackets. He developed his naturally hard muscles. His life had to have the shape of his body, its delicate inner composition. His muscles, all those nervous, vibrant lumps, are the leaping and bounding of his acts. When he rebelled, his revolt had the violence not of the quivering but of the shape of the muscles of his hams, the same curve, the same opulent, unerring fullness, the run-on lines, the swelling of an iron calf directed by a bold upward
thrust of the firm flesh. His desertion was as heaving as his shoulders, and any murder he carried out had the actual shape of his neck. When he felt daring and wanted to shake the world, Erik had only to squeeze that unique neck of his with his large, thick hands to feel it was a firm column that supported the world, that held its being and head high, and rose above the world.

His will sometimes had pretty consequences: when he was confronted with an obstacle, his forehead would pucker and the golden curls of his over-brilliantined hair would fall on it; he would frown, charge the obstacle, and be gored by it.

Throughout my youth I viewed the world from under knitted brows, so that above my eyes I saw the hard golden hairs that edged them. I knew I was bearing the burden of a very heavy crop, and even in the brightest moments I felt I was a stalk whose head bristled with grains and whose beard was the hair of my eyebrows.

“He no longer has thirty-two creases. . . .”

This remark, which Erik once heard made about a kid who was suspected by his bunkmates of giving himself to an officer, made him think twice and filled him with a secret fear. And when he heard: “ . . . they're going to take a print. They're going to make him sit on flour . . .” he was violently frightened for himself.

“It can be seen,” he thought. “Does it change shape as much as that?”

He does not hate the executioner for that. He will think:

“I'm sure the creases come out again. . . .”

I have created within myself an order of knighthood of which I am the originator, founder, and only knight. I award to the Erik who is rising up inside me ideal decorations, crosses, orders, grants. They are my gobs of spit.

I was looking at myself in the wardrobe mirror of my hotel room. The picture of the Führer on the mantelpiece behind me was reflected in the glass. I was stripped to the waist and wearing my wide black breeches, which were tight at the ankles. I was looking at myself, staring into my own eyes, then staring at the Führer's image in the mirror.

What does spit mean? Can you spit on anyone you like?

The most important part of my body is my buttocks. My breeches keep reminding me of them because they contain them and are so tight that I can't forget about them. We constitute a regiment of buttocks.

“What about his cock, what was it like, and how would you like to take it, sideways or crosswise?”

A scurrilous spirit within me asks this question which I dare not answer and obliges me to look away from his rod and turn to Jean, whom I am ashamed of having left. But I am too mired in eroticism to think of Jean without thinking of our love-making. Moreover, those thoughts are forbidden. I feel I am committing an abominable crime if I recall too precisely the parts of him which I loved most and which are now decayed and being gnawed by worms. What shall I think about? The wallpaper doesn't distract me. Every flower, every damp spot, brings me back to Jean. I've got to think about him. I idealize the memory of making love so that I can avoid sacrilege. The liveliest parts of his body become spiritualized, and his rod itself, which takes possession of my mouth, has the transparency of a crystal rod. In fact, what I am holding by the prick with my teeth and pink lips is a fluid, milky body, a luminous fog that rises
above my bed or over a wet lawn on which I am lying. It is cold to my lips; I thus avoid pleasure. My love-making continues through this icy fog, which veils it. With our hair light and tousled but damp with the droplets of mist clinging to it, after walking in the dew with our arms still around each other's waist, we came to a grove and stood under a beech with red bark. The executioner pressed me against the tree, but gently, laughing as if it were a game, a kind of friendly bullying. All along the way, which he trod with long, very heavy steps—almost as if he were booted and merging with the equally long and heavy steps of Erik in boots—from the path to the shore of the lake, in the fog, only the executioner spoke. Softening his too clear voice, which with a few blasts might have dispelled all the mist in the woods, he had said, looking at the wet grass: