Nancy Huston - Infrared

Finished, Subra chimes in, always happy to sing a refrain she knows by heart.

When you’re a mother, you touch your newborn baby boy’s penis and testicles with respect; they’re soft and strange and fragile, sometimes the penis hardens slightly when you graze it and you smile. You wipe your baby’s anus, change his diapers, oversee the cycle, certain liquids and solids going in at the top, others coming out down below. You clean the boy’s penis; later you teach him how to hold and aim it when he pees, whether in the toilet bowl or at the side of a highway…and then…that’s over and done with.

The main reason I decided not to marry Xavier, my handsome French art collector and connoisseur, is that we couldn’t agree on the subject of our future son’s penis. Our worst fight broke out one day in the Louvre. One minute we were standing in front of a seventeenth-century painting of baby Jesus amidst a swirling group of rabbis in coloured robes, one of whom was brandishing a knife; the next minute we were screaming at each other about whether or not to circumcise our son, not yet conceived. ‘No!’ I said. ‘It’s a barbaric practice dating from another age.’ ‘Yes!’ said Xavier. ‘To me it’s a symbol of his connection to the Jewish people. I want my son to feel he belongs to something — a lineage, a history. Even if other customs and rituals have died out, it matters to me that this one be preserved.’ ‘No way!’ I retorted. ‘Customs evolve. You don’t have to go on blindly repeating them, you’re allowed to change them or chuck them. Men have stopped dragging women by the hair, shrinking their enemies’ heads, slitting oxen’s throats at the altar — they can also stop mutilating their children, whether boys or girls. Cut up your own body if you feel like it; no one’s going to damage the physical integrity of my kids.’ ‘How American can you get?’ said Xavier, who knew how much Canadians dislike being assimilated to their neighbours from the south. ‘You have the Americans’ silly naiveté, their arrogant ignorance, their lack of culture, history, and depth — in a word, their superficiality. If you’d read up on the subject, you’d know that circumcision is basically a measure of hygiene. Statistics show that circumcised men are much less vulnerable to STDs.’ Then he added, shouting so loudly that half a dozen Guadeloupian museum attendants moved across the room to shush us, ‘I can’t believe how uneducated you are!’ ‘Uneducated yourself!’ I screamed back at him. ‘Ha! You don’t even know that until recently, all male children born in North America were circumcised.’ There was no way our relationship could have worked out. A few years later, Alioune and I were at each other’s throats over the same issue: only one fight, but a monumental one. ‘No matter what his religion,’ thundered Alioune, ‘a non-circumcised African male is not human.’ This time, though, it occurred to me that my older son could protect his younger brother. For how could we justify circumcising little Thierno and leaving Toussaint intact?

Mother and son, Subra murmurs. Go on.

After two years or so, you stop wiping his bottom and holding his penis to help him pee because he’s learned to do it by himself. He’ll do it by himself for a few decades, after which (as was the case with Kerstin’s husband, Edmond) he might need help again — but by that time you, his mother, won’t be around anymore…Yes, you stop touching and looking at your son’s genitals, and supervising his peeing and pooping. You leave him alone, move away, avert your eyes, give him room to grow — this is indispensable. (It’s hilarious, in a way, to think of all the perverts who, generation after generation in bordellos the world over, reinvent the scatological wheel…and all the whores who, half docile and half despairing, shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes heavenwards and, for a fee, go on playing Mommy to those big fat babies.) Your little boy grows and…and then…of course, it’s only natural…You know his genitals have been growing along with the rest of his body…his cock and balls have become those of an adolescent…Without giving it much thought, you assume dark hair has sprouted in that area of his body you used to attend to and no longer attend to, used to wash and no longer wash…You surmise that, like all pubescent boys, he’s started getting hard-ons, fantasising and masturbating…When you launder his sheets, you’re not surprised to catch an occasional glimpse of what the French call a map of France; you wonder whether the Chinese call it a map of China and the Russians a map of Russia and the Canadians a map of Canada; you sort of doubt the Japanese call it a map of Japan — lots of little islands everywhere — or the Chileans, a map of Chile, one long narrow streak…You abstain from speculating about your son’s sexual fantasies. You have no idea whether they’re homo, hetero, zoo-o, scato or necro. His desire is none of your business so you avert your eyes and avoid thinking about it. That distance is sacred: never again must you be involved with your son’s genitals, the engendering part of his body, the part that will turn him into a father. Yet it’s dizzying to think that the lips which so recently drew milk through your nipples are now teasing and sucking on another woman’s nipples, that the body you once held in your arms is now rising in lovely virile violence above another woman’s body, that the boy who once inhabited your womb is now spurting his seed into another woman’s womb…Then one day a line gets drawn beneath your children’s generation — and, twenty-five rungs farther down the ladder of your life, another generation bursts into bloom, reshuffling all the roles for a new deal. One day you wake up to discover that the grandfather has become a great-grandfather, the mother a grandmother, and the son a father.

‘Rena? Are you there, Rena?’

‘I just can’t…Why didn’t…’

‘Why didn’t he call you himself?’

‘Yes…’

‘Well, I think he’s a bit intimidated…He sent you an email three days ago and it worried him when you didn’t answer.’

‘Ah. I admit I’ve been a bit cut off these past few days. I’m somewhere…uh, in the middle of the fifteenth century.’

‘You do know what’s going on in France, though?’

‘You mean the death of those two boys?’

‘That was just the beginning. The young people in the projects are up in arms. The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan, Rena — there’ll be riots any minute now. I’ve been thinking of you. It’s the sort of subject you usually cover.’

‘Yeah, well, unfortunately, Alioune, I still haven’t learned how to be in two places at once.’

‘Hey!’

‘Sorry. I’ll be back in three days’ time. Don’t worry, I’ll catch up.’

‘I never worry about you, Rena.’

‘Tell Toussaint I’ll…Tell him I…’

‘Sure. I’ll pass your congratulations on to him. Give my best regards to Simon and Ingrid.’

Gaia is waiting for her in the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist and a smile on her lips. ‘Did you have a good sleep?’

Yes, she had a good sleep…even if the universe has shifted since.

Gaia pours her coffee and introduces her to the various jams and jellies on the breakfast table. ‘Everything is homemade,’ she says. ‘Even the bread.’

I admire the way this person turns domesticity into one of the fine arts, she tells Subra. Leading the sort of woman’s life that has always been a mystery to me, mothering everyone who crosses her threshold, planting and picking flowers and fruit to make bouquets and jams, taking pleasure in the simple joys she bestows upon her clients. She must be about Ingrid’s age.

Also the age Lisa would be now, Subra points out, if she hadn’t effaced herself at thirty-seven.