Nancy Huston - Infrared

The situation worsened with every passing day. Alioune began to drink, and I met the Mr Hyde of his Dr Jekyll. On bad nights, as of the second drink, I could almost see his white teeth turn into fangs and hair sprout from his handsome face. He’d wait for some pretext to come along, then turn and pounce on me, roar at me, crush me beneath the weight of his scorn. Appalled to find myself still vulnerable to the female atavism I most abhorred, that awful paralysis of will which makes us murmur Yes, master when confronted with a male who’s mad with rage or just plain mad — I finally walked out on him. ‘Behave like a Cro-Magnon if you feel like it — but without me.’ That’s when I cut my hair cut short.

Maybe this is as good a time as any to change the subject? Subra suggests.

Right. Mustn’t ever forget that shred of wisdom gleaned long ago on LSD: hell is only one of the countless rooms in the Versailles palace of the brain; you can always close the door on that room and walk into another. I can choose, for instance, to relive the divine love-making of my first years with Alioune. Waking up in the morning, I’d feel his hardened cock against my thigh, he’d slip into me and not move, I’d close my eyes and pretend to be drifting innocently back to sleep whereas in fact I was squeezing him inwardly with all my might, skilfully massaging his sex with the contractions of my own. Then he’d start to move inside me, as gently as in a dream. At first I’d keep my pleasure at bay, purposely remaining above or outside of it, but before long the weakness would become irresistible — a thing I could feel expanding within me, slowly invading my whole body, turning it inside out, and when I came it was like weeping. Afterwards Alioune and I could touch each other in any way at all — I could press my head against the inside of his thigh, for instance, near the top — and we’d be happy just like that. It’s incredible how happy you can be sometimes for no reason at all. Is it possible I’ll never know that kind of happiness again?

Hmm, murmurs Subra. Maybe we shouldn’t hang around in that room, either.

So go back to the night we came home from a party at three in the morning and, having put on a Susanne Abbuehl record, I let Alioune slowly peel off my clothes and carry me to the bed, my loins draped in a scarf of turquoise silk. Giving myself up to Abbuehl’s voice singing e.e. cummings and the warmth pulsing through my body, I released an interminable cry of joy as his tongue caressed the very point of my being and then, after the convulsions, first mine then his then mine again, I remained curled up in the disorder of the sheets as the after-tremors of my body gradually spaced themselves out and subsided, melting into the final poignant chords of somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond… But Alioune, who spoke not a word of English, jolted me out of my reverie by exclaiming, ‘Boy, what syrupy music!’…

Rena finishes dressing, impatient to go down to the kitchen and let Gaia’s chatter deliver her from her demons. When she gets to the landing halfway down the wooden staircase, however, her mobile rings.

‘Alioune! Incredible! I was thinking about you just a minute ago!’

‘Is that so unusual?’

‘No, what’s unusual is for you to call me.’

‘How are things with you?’

Ah, yes. Ritual greetings. Rena loves ritual greetings. The first time Alioune took her to Senegal with him, just before their wedding, she thought people were having her on. ‘ Salaamaalekum! — Maalekum Salaam!’ But no, they weren’t. Ritual greetings are taken very seriously in Africa. And now she misses them. Not easy, afterwards, to readjust to the rude and rapid manners of Parisians.

‘Just fine, thanks…How have you been doing?’

‘I’m fine, too. I heard you were in Italy?’

‘You heard right.’

‘How’s your father doing? Is he in good health?’

‘Not bad, not bad at all.’

‘And your stepmother — is she well?’

‘Hanging in there. What about your own folks?’

‘They’re fine, inch’Allah.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Even when he was pleading in court, Alioune never spoke fast. He refused to be rushed — whether he was eating, walking, reading or making love. The first time they found themselves alone together in a bedroom, Rena was blown away by his consummate calm and self-confidence. He taught her the African tempo.

Tell me, Subra says.

Not many men are so utterly devoid of impatience, so gifted at eliciting desire. Alioune would lie down on me, naked, his sex would approach mine and he’d watch me start to tremble…Oh the beauty of that indefinite moment when, though hard, a man hesitates at the entrance to your body, playing and rubbing and teasing and pretending to wonder if you want him to come in whereas he knows you’re dying for it, yes, when you know for sure he’ll enter you but he wants to keep you guessing as to when…and then he enters you…only slightly at first, to prolong your exquisite torment of knowing he’ll move in further…then he moves in further… suddenly plunging in up to the hilt, and the cry which then rips from your throat is one you didn’t know you contained, a cry of liberation in crescendo…Other times, with me on top, Alioune would guide my body down at a particular angle that made me swoon at every thrust, at, every, thrust, swoon, swoon, close my eyes and give myself up to pure sensation, the infra-infra-infrared of longed-for warmth beyond visibility, oh yes that man certainly did know how to elicit, prolong and intensify my body’s vibrato, quivers becoming tremors, tectonic plates sliding, the earth opening up, boulders cracking, cascades tumbling, volcanoes erupting…Sometimes, when we were already well launched into this mad affair, our bodies would suddenly stop moving and we’d hang there suspended on the crest of an intense, all but motionless thrum — just as a warbler sits frozen on its branch, only the ripple at its throat revealing its lifesong — until at last, far from exploding, we’d slide endlessly down and down together, cascading in slow motion into the abyss…

Ah, Subra sighs, you’ve certainly lost that African tempo since your break-up with Alioune.

La nonna

‘Which way’s the wind blowing, Alioune?’

‘Oh, the best possible way.’

‘Must be a trade wind, then.’

She sees the two of them one evening, strolling through the fortress ruins at the top of Goree, caressing each other amidst the caresses of that divinely cool Atlantic breeze.

‘A trade wind, exactly. And along with my voice, Rena, it brings some marvellous news.’

‘What news, Alioune?’

‘We’re going to be grandparents.’

She swerves to study the hills framed by the six small rectangular windows in Gaia’s front door. A double triptych of photographs. You could shift the images around, she thinks, changing their order, putting the sky beneath the hills…Everything is photography, when you think about it. All of us are constantly framing and reframing, zooming in and out, freezing and retouching the instants of our lives — the better to preserve them, protect them, prevent them from being whooshed away by Time’s mighty current…

‘Are you there, Rena? Jasmine is pregnant.’

Objectively speaking, her legs don’t have a lot of weight to carry, but suddenly they can’t carry it anymore. Of its own volition, her body sinks onto Gaia’s leather couch, which is almost the same reddish-purple as the hills framed by the windowpanes.

When Toussaint was little, he liked playing in the bath so much that he never wanted to get out. So I’d spread a large, sand-coloured towel on the bathroom floor and say, ‘Now the famous explorer has to make an emergency landing in the desert!’ Toussaint would turn to me and stretch out his tiny arms, I’d pick him up by the underarms and lift his small body out of the tub, shake him slightly so the excess water would run off, see his diminutive cock and balls jiggling, set him on the towel that was desert sand, then wrap it round him… How many times did we act out that little play together? Hundreds of times, and then…