Кристин Анго: Incest

There was also the trip to Carcassonne where we didn’t end up going, there were a lot of promises not kept. The trip to Rome is kind of the same thing. Ruining it, sabotaging it. Sabotaging life, messing it up. “That screws up a woman’s life,” like that person said in Interview , yes. You win, good answer, good conclusion, good look, good allusion, good hook. Yes, that’s it. Yes, it’s true. Yes, it screws up a woman’s life. It screws up a woman, even, we could take it that far. It’s an act of sabotage. Yes, we could put it like that. This book will be seen as testimony about the sabotage of women’s lives. The groups that are fighting incest will be all over it. Even my books are sabotaged. To take this book as a shit piece of testimony will be an act of sabotage, but you’ll do it. It screws up a woman’s life, it screws up a writer’s life, but, as they say, it doesn’t matter.

Rome

Contrary to what you’ll read in the end, we did go there. I mention it now because of the sabotage, it’s more logical. I open the parentheses to insert what happened after the end of the book. I didn’t know we would go to Rome when I wrote the last page. I came back and I ended it. As agreed, Marie-Christine left for Paris on December 22nd. That provoked very serious anxiety attacks again. I was once again in an unbearable state. I don’t want to revisit it. We broke up right before she left on the 22nd, this break seemed credible, there was still some hope, but very faint. I expected Frédéric the morning of the 24th. Marie-Christine was meant to return on the 25th on the twelve-thirty flight. She was hoping we would celebrate Christmas together that day, with Frédéric, my parents and Léonore of course. Even if we were separated, even if the break was confirmed, it didn’t matter, we could still celebrate Christmas together. I was impossible, I overdid it, again, I read the last two pages I’d just finished writing the morning of the 22nd to her over the phone. She got an ear infection, in Paris, and was not allowed to fly, if her fever went down, she might possibly take the train. I went to pick her up at the station with Léonore on the 25th, she had her presents from the day before, a pair of Jil Sander slacks in a bag, there was also a duvet cover, CDs, gifts from twenty-five people. She was deaf in one ear. She wanted me to be gentle and nice to her, I wasn’t, quite the opposite. In the end, Christmas went well. But things started up again the next day. We didn’t want to go to Rome. When she wanted to go, I no longer did. When I wanted to go, she no longer did. The delirium continued, the violence even intensified. We didn’t leave on Sunday as we were meant to, we were still billed for the night in the hotel. In the end, we did leave, but later, on Tuesday. In the airport we had six hundred francs stolen, it was all a waste. I was a fountain during the whole six days in Rome. I cried in the street, at the restaurants, everywhere, on a bicycle we’d rented. Again, she came close to hitting me, I said “no, I’m begging you.” She didn’t do it. It was still horrible. We really did separate on our return. It’s over. And this time, it’s permanent. It was sabotage up and down the line. We were lucky to be in Rome and we looked like we were at a funeral. One day she says to me “come, I’m going to get you a present, I’m going to buy you a Venini vase,” I lost her on the way to the shop on purpose. As soon as I lost her, I ran through the streets in a panic. I couldn’t find her. The streets were filled with people. I went to the shop where we’d seen the vases, I went to Prada, I went back to the hotel I went to another possible boutique, she was nowhere, the streets were packed, I thought she had gone for a bike ride to get rid of me. It was our last day in Rome, and our last day period. I went back the hotel yet again, she still wasn’t there. I left her a message: I’m looking for you, I went here, here, and here, I’m going out again, but I’ll be back. I went to a restaurant we liked, she wasn’t there, the weather was magnificent, we weren’t taking advantage of it, we weren’t taking advantage of anything. Our trip to Rome was screwed up just like my life. The Venini, which I wanted so much, also screwed up. It was supposed to be my Christmas present. The restaurant together, sabotaged. Claude, Judith, and their child were spoiling the landscape for me, I was having nightmares, I ate breakfast feeling nauseous. I returned to the hotel, she still wasn’t there. I lay down on my bed. The sobs came. We had two beds. She came back around three thirty. I was so happy I couldn’t believe it. But it all started up again. Before the Venini, we were supposed to go to Prada, just to see, we spent the last two hours we had left, it was full of people, foreigners, Japanese people, someone addressed me in English, I did my Pierre Angot impression “I’m not English nor American,” I was an idiot, a bitch, a cunt, a beast, Elisabeth, sassy, impertinent, stupid. At the moment I insult myself all the time, ultimately my narcissism took a real hit in this whole incest story. Marie-Christine was sitting on the ground, she’d had enough. I finally bought some shoes that hurt my feet, I’ll never be able to wear them. When what I really wanted was a beautiful Venini vase, a reflection of my life if she had kept her promises from the start. So we’re not together anymore. I’m not with anyone. I don’t think it’s worth it anymore.

She doesn’t want to see me again, she told me she came close to killing herself several times. She told me she now thinks of herself first, that she has to save herself. That there were very serious consequences. It all weighs on my shoulders. At the beginning, after we broke up, I was calm and then on Saturday I had a very bad anxiety attack. With phone calls, slapping myself and screaming, countless calls to Marie-Christine. And finally calling yesterday, after all, you’d have to be completely drunk to call yesterday. I called Philippe yesterday, my half-brother. His tone was impassive, he didn’t know whom to believe, his father had spoken to him about it, he had said I was making things up. OK, fine, doesn’t matter. I’m fed up with talking about it. I’m happy the book is finished, happy. I’ve already got the opening sentence of my next book. It will be: “I’m not going to spend my time calling Philippe Angot, director of a company for spare antique auto parts.” It will be the first sentence of a very long response to an imaginary interview about art. Writing, art, what I was saying about limits, all that. Incest is the book in which I present myself as a real shit, all writers should do it at least once, after that, we’ll see. Or maybe they should do it several times, or maybe do nothing but that. Writing may only be doing that, showing one’s inner shit. Of course it isn’t. You’re ready to believe anything. Writing is not just one thing. Writing is everything. Within limits. Always. Of life, of one’s self, of the pen, of height and of weight.

Since we broke up, I’ve received two letters from Marie-Christine. It’s hard not seeing her anymore. Yesterday I had just a glimpse, she just drove me to my psychoanalyst at nine at night, for the second time that day, it was nighttime, it was cold out, I asked her if she wouldn’t mind accompanying me. I was expecting her to refuse, to save herself, she really doesn’t want to see me again at all. She agreed, came to pick me up at nine and at ten she drove me home. I’d have liked to spend a bit more time with her, but she doesn’t want to anymore, she says I put her too much at risk. I don’t know if that’s true. Everything is always my fault. You’ve got to give and take. Since the break up she wrote me two letters:

January 6, 1999 Christine One day after another; of course I’m sad alone without you it’s very hard loving someone with whom love is impossible I’m worried that this state of misery will last. I think of you so often. Everything brings me back to you to us and I can’t say us anymore MCA