Nancy Huston - Infrared

Standing in front of her at the cash register is an obese American couple. ‘Isn’t it hard to believe,’ the woman says, ‘that the people who built this house had never even heard of the United States?’ Her husband nods gravely. (Those who tourists do become / Must put up with being dumb.)

The second floor contains a pedagogical display on the famous war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, an episode of European history which for some reason never sticks in Rena’s mind. She deciphers the explanations. Ah, yes, it all comes back to her. Civil wars in Germany and Italy in the late Middle Ages, spiritual versus secular power, Guelphs for the Pope, Ghibellines for the Emperor, their bang-bang-you’re-dead lasting a good two centuries…The usual crap. Infighting, too, naturally. Within the Guelph ranks: moderate Whites versus fundamentalist Blacks, bang-bang-you’re-dead…The Blacks of Florence wound up expelling all the Whites, including Dante Alighieri. Banished from the beloved city of his birth, never to return. All glory to exile, all glory to intolerance — were it not for the war of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, there would have been no Divine Comedy!

On the third floor, she finds visitors seated in semi-darkness watching a slideshow of the Inferno. Illustrations by Blake and Dürer, recorded excerpts…

‘So with our guide we moved on unafraid By the red bubbles of the scalding ooze Wherein the boiled their sharp lamenting made.’

Mesmerised, Rena contemplates the tortures of the damned, listens to their screams and blasphemies, feels herself being sucked down into the vortex…

‘The soul that had become a reptile fled With hissing noise along the valley side And the other sputtered at it as it sped.’

Suddenly, to her left, she senses a man’s eyes on her.

Really? She turns her head. Yes. There, by the door. His eyes interrogate, hers acquiesce.

They exit Dante’s house together.

Tell me, Subra says.

The man is Turkish. Older than my Aziz — who isn’t? — but a few years younger than me. Our only common language is Italian, which both of us speak imperfectly. That’s fine with me. Touchingly, lamely, we exchange a few basic facts — true or false, what difference does it make? He tells me his name is Kamal; I’ll go along with that. As a private homage to Arbus, I tell him mine is Diane. I gather he works for some sort of import-export business…Then we move away from conversation.

In his hotel elevator, Kamal’s eyes move down to my chest. Assuming his curiosity in the area has less to do with my breasts — their exact shape and size, the presence or absence of a bra to enhance their appeal — than with the Canon nesting like a baby’s head between them, I say, ‘Non sono giornalista, sono artista.’ Having gone that far, I figure I might as well go a bit farther. I ask if he’ll allow me to photograph him afterwards, without specifying after what. ‘Verramo,’ he answers — making, I think, a slight error in Italian. Then, stroking my cheek, he moves up close. Murmurs something about my occhi verdi. When his body grazes mine, I feel he’s hard already — and the familiar tingling starts up at once, making me weightless, beautiful, and desirable in my own eyes. As I walk down the worn carpet of the third-floor corridor at the stranger’s side, I am floating.

Go on, says Subra.

He opens the door, revealing a room that looks for all the world like a Matisse — shadowy light, deep colours, red-brick wall, a framed picture of flowers, the bedspread striped by the shadows of half-closed shutters…only the fishbowl and the violin are missing. Every detail offers itself up to me, fairly shimmering with beauty and meaning. I move over to the window — red-tiled roofs, swifts wheeling in the air, the murmurs of passers-by in the street below, the occasional roar of a motorbike, the rich resonance of a church-bell. A faintly dank smell in the room, not unpleasant. The firm grip of the stranger’s hands on my waist. Oh utter delight. All of this exists — painted flowers, shutters, bell, October afternoon, my father napping a mere stone’s throw away. I am in Florence. A man is about to make love to me. Nothing could be more powerful than this anticipation.

No sooner have we settled onto the bed and begun to remove each other’s clothes with the clumsy gestures of impatience than I realise Kamal also knows about passivity — yes, he also knows how to remain still, fully awake and attentive, and give himself up to me as a cello gives itself up to the bow. Arching his back, he surrenders his face, shoulders, back and buttocks, waiting for me to play them, and I do — I play them, play with them. Most men are afraid to let go like this — whereas with a little finesse the wonders of passivity can be tasted in even the most violent throes of love-making. In a delirium of restrained desire, I weigh, stroke and lick Kamal’s balls, then take his penis in my hands, between my breasts, into my mouth. He sits up, reaches for me and I allow him to explore me in turn. He runs his tongue and lips over my breasts, the back of my neck, my toes, my stomach, the countless treasures between my legs, oh the sheer ecstasy of lips and tongues on genitals, either simultaneously or in alternation, never will I tire of that silvery fluidity, my sex swimming in joy like a fish in water, my self freed of both self and other, the quivering sensation, the carnal pink palpitation that detaches you from all colour and all flesh, making you see only stars, constellations, milky ways, propelling you bodiless and soulless into undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate… And orgasm — the way a man’s face is transformed by orgasm — oh it’s not true they all look alike, you have to be either miserable and broke or furiously blasé and sarcastic to say they all look alike — to me, every climax is unique. That’s why I love to photograph men when they climax — not the first time but the second — or, better still, the third, when they’re completely cut off from their moorings, when they’ve lost themselves and are wildly grateful to you for the loss… Speaking slowly in my poor Italian with the assistance of gestures, I explain to Kamal that to take his photo I’ll use infrared film, which captures not visible light but heat. I add (not quite truthfully) that this will make his face unrecognisable, even to friends. He consents, as virtually all my lovers have. It takes me a while to arm my camera with the ultrasensitive film: since the least ray of visible light would veil the images, I need to slip my Canon and both my hands into a black lightproof bag. But I’ve done this hundreds of times before and I work swiftly, still naked, humming a bit and speaking to Kamal in a low voice, preserving the electric arc of desire between us so it will be easy to pick up where we left off. When our bodies unite for the third time we leave all theatres behind. What happens then has as little to do with the libertinage prized by the French (oh the blasphemers, the precious precocious ejaculators, the nasty naughty boys, the cruel fouteurs and fouetteurs) as with the healthy, egalitarian intercourse championed by Americans (who hand out bachelors degrees in G-points, masters in masturbation and Ph.Ds in endor-phines). Kamal and I are totally immersed in flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements. The word pleasure is far too weak for what transpires there. So is the word bliss. And it’s not even a matter of sharing because, the self having evaporated, you scarcely know whether you’re alone or with another person.

This is when I take my picture, from deep inside the loving. The Canon is part of my body. I myself am the ultrasensitive film — capturing invisible reality, capturing heat.