Nancy Huston - Infrared

‘Challenge authority! Invent yourself! Accept entropy, the only truth of the universe!’ My father’s other idol was Timothy Leary, one of whose phrases was to become his mantra: ‘There is no such thing as mental illness; there are only unknown or imperfectly explored nervous circuits.’ After getting himself kicked out of Harvard in 1963 for handing out hallucinogenic drugs to his students, Leary and his colleague Richard Alpert had settled into a mansion in Millbrook, New York and founded the League for Spiritual Discovery or L.S.D. For years Simon Greenblatt had dreamed of going down to work with those pioneers and helping them invent a new paganism. In actual fact, he only set eyes on Leary once. So did I, on May 31, 1969, at age nine. Tim Leary had come to Montreal to support his friends John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their ‘Give Peace a Chance’ event. Simon dragged my mom and me to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel — where the Beatle, his wife and her young son sprawled stark naked in front of cameras from the world over, to express their disapproval of the Vietnam War. Because of the police cordons in front of the hotel we didn’t get to see the bed-in itself, but I did catch a glimpse of Leary’s bell-bottomed jeans when, as reporters’ cameras flashed and popped, he jumped out of his limousine and dashed into the hotel. ‘Look — that’s him!’ yelled Simon, struggling to pick me up and set me on his shoulders, though I was already far too heavy for those sort of antics. ‘One does not carry a nine-year-old child around on one’s shoulders,’ said Mommy. ‘Okay, Lisa, keep your cool,’ answered Simon, setting me back on my feet. ‘That man, darling Rena,’ he went on — I can still remember his exact words—’is a true revolutionary in my field of study. But now that he’s decided to switch to politics and run for governor of California, the path is clear for me to take up the torch and complete his discoveries. Yes, it’s perfectly possible that Professor Simon Greenblatt will some day win the Nobel Prize.’ ‘They don’t give Nobel Prizes in neuropsychology,’ my mother pointed out. ‘Well, they’ll make one just for me,’ my father retorted. ‘You’re not even a professor yet.’ ‘Not to worry.’

They exit the church.

Stupida

It’s only half past three, but Ingrid claims to be hungry. Given the number of pastries she gobbled down at the hotel just a few hours ago, Rena knows this can’t be true — what’s true is that she’s afraid of being hungry. She’s been in the grip of that fear for the past sixty years — ever since the horrendous winter of 1944-45, when hundreds of Rotterdamers starved to death and the rest were reduced to eating garbage, rats, and grass…Nothing frightens Ingrid more than the prospect of lacking food. Her eyes, like everyone else’s, reflect the demons of her childhood.

They spot a perfect-looking café on the far side of the Piazza del Duomo and start to head for it. Oh, but everything is so tedious, so difficult…The throngs on the footpath are stifling. How can my amorous strolls through Florence with Xavier be so very far away? wonders Rena. Was it really the same city? The same life? The same me? How can the past be so irrevocably past?

‘That’s weird,’ Ingrid says suddenly. ‘All the tourist shops seem to be selling Québecois T-shirts. Now, why would that be?’

Perplexed, Rena glances at one of the shops. Oh, right.

Again Simon undertakes to enlighten his wife. ‘No, no,’ he tells her gently. ‘The fleur-de-lys was the emblem of the Medici family for centuries.’

‘You don’t need to laugh, Rena,’ says Ingrid, turning crimson. ‘Anyone can make a mistake.’

‘Sorry,’ says Rena.

She’s right, Subra tells her in petto. Why would a Dutchwoman from Montreal be conversant with the history of the Medici court? Who’s required to know what about what and why? And who are you to cast stones — you who trot the globe hiding behind your Canon, guzzling down information at random, belonging neither here, there nor anywhere, and whose motto could be the ‘Just looking’ muttered by people out of pocket in fancy boutiques the world over?

‘Hey!’ Since they sat down ten minutes ago, Simon has been studying not the menu but a city map. ‘This palace here is called Vecchio, just like the famous bridge. Must be the name of some Tuscan duke or other.’

‘No,’ Rena says gently, in turn. ‘No, Daddy, it just means old. Old palace. Old bridge.’

Those who tourists do become / Must put up with being dumb.

Kodak

After their substantial snack, Simon and Ingrid feel the urgent need to go back to the hotel for a nap. Rena starts leading them in that direction, but in the Via de’ Martelli they walk past a Kodak store and Simon comes to a halt. ‘Maybe they sell disposable cameras here?’

Rena’s heart sinks.

Of course she could wait for them outside, taking advantage of the next fifteen minutes to turn on her mobile phone and call Aziz or Kerstin in Paris, Toussaint in Marseille, Thierno in Dakar…or to take pictures of the Florentine tourists’ feet. She decides against it, though. Whether out of masochism or fascination with her own annoyance, she walks into the store with them.

At once, ear-splitting rock music leaps on them and sets about mangling their synapses.

Here goes. ‘Would it be better to buy a roll of twelve pictures or sixteen? Maybe even twenty-four?’

‘Look — this one’s got sixteen pictures for six euros, and this one’s got twenty-four for only eight, it’s a better bargain.’

‘No, twenty-four’s too many. I mean, we’ll be buying postcards as well — we’ll never take twenty-four pictures.’

‘Are you sure? If we don’t use up the roll, we can always finish it in Montreal.’

‘No, ideally we should finish it in Italy and get it developed before we go home — so Rena can tell us which ones she wants copies of.’

Rena wanders through the store, studying the various cameras on sale with a penetrating, professional air, registering nothing.

This, Subra tells her in a solemn voice, is a real moment of your real life. Every bit as real as when, standing in the kitchen doorway, Aziz picks you up and plants you on his cock and you wrap your legs around his waist and toss your head back and start moving on him and moaning…As real as your two childbirths — or a sunrise in Goree — or the war in Iraq. All these things exist. Okay, you’re uncomfortable being in a Kodak store in Florence with your father and stepmother. Okay, the music is scrambling your brain. But just think, it could be worse. I mean, you’re not a pregnant young woman in the Democratic Republic of Congo, faced with a battalion of young militiamen from Burundi who are preparing to gang rape you, then shove sticks or rifles up your womb to cause you to miscarry, then force you to drink your own body’s blood and eat your own baby’s flesh. That, too, is a possibility of human existence on planet Earth in October 2005. Consider yourself lucky to have nothing worse to complain about than being forced to listen to the hemming and hawing of an elderly couple in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Getting a hold of herself, Rena looks over at the young man behind the cash register. Aged eighteen or nineteen and sporting a Bob Marley T-shirt, he flashes a smile at her. Far from cursing them as tourists, he seems to sympathise with her for having to kill time, assuring her that it’s no big deal, there’s no reason to rush, she’s still in the game despite her age and it’s a gorgeous day.

Who is this boy? Rena wonders. Who are his parents? What’s his goal in life — above and beyond this stultifying job that immerses him eight hours a day in ear-shattering music? What sort of future does he dream of? Our destinies have intersected here — lightly, slightly, it will all be over in a few seconds, this whole event is doomed to oblivion, non-existence, nothing is really happening, yet…What would it be like to stretch out naked on the naked body of this thin, muscular young Florentine, make drops of sweat stand out on his forehead, move my lips over the faint shadow of a moustache on his upper lip, feel his long golden fingers moving between my legs?