Кристин Анго: Incest

January 7, 1999 Christine One day follows another, hour after hour, not thinking farther ahead than that concentrating on the moment not thinking that your body is far from mine that tonight you won’t be in my arms that I won’t go out to dinner with you, to the movies with you, on vacation with you that I won’t make love to you that I won’t see your neck your eyes I have your eyes in mine Sunday night your sad frightened eyes No idea what to do too much hope too much despair I don’t know what to do to stop thinking of you all the time Still I know that I’m supposed to go on day after day trying to start living again to start hoping again but hoping for what going where I think too much about you MCA

When I got into her car last night at nine, it was nice, there was music, it was Aznavour’s La Bohème la bohème . I was in a cozy little cockpit, but only for the duration of the drive. It was really, really, truly over.

I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. I’m not going to spend my time calling Philippe Angot, director of a company for spare antique auto parts. But I’m not going to wallow in sweetness either. So:

With Marc

I’m sixteen. Marc is thirty. He’s a friend of my mother’s, he becomes my first lover, he’s from India, a chemical engineer with Henkel. He goes to see my father, he tells him he has to stop, the sodomy, he tells me it could be dangerous for me too. He talks to my father about it. The three of us go to the movies one day, I’m staying at the hotel with Marc and my father, but not with him. But in the cinema, a science fiction movie with Charlton Heston, Soylent Green. Soylent Green . I jerk them both off at the same time because I’m sitting between them. It’s my worst memory of all. I do it so as to not reject my father, he already feels so rejected because I’m with Marc and on top of that I told the secret. He hates talking about it. I won’t be able to tell Marie-Christine, it’s too dirty. Not even in her arms. Not even if she tells me she won’t be disgusted. I made a big slip more than once. I was quoting from Les Autres . The phrase the Arab girls say “because people who write disgust almost all of them,” I write instead: because almost all people who are disgusting write.

Sodomy

It was a village in Isère. It must have happened there. He looked for a pharmacy far out of the way to get Vaseline. He found some. He didn’t look before trying, but after. I was complaining. He told me to appreciate my luck, very few men did this, it might be a rare or maybe even the only chance in my life to experience it, this sensation that certain women, that many women adore and they complain that their husbands don’t do it, nor, most of the time, do their lovers.

Stop

I asked him to stop. I told him I didn’t see any advantage and I was scared of becoming disturbed, very scared, he saw the advantages: on the contrary, this way you know it’s a man who loves you. In Isère I wore a Shetland wool turtleneck sweater I liked a lot, red and tan. He loved it too, why? Because it flattered my breasts. This sweater I loved disgusted me, I’d have preferred he just like the sweater. He took pictures.

The watch

Grenoble isn’t far away. My birthday isn’t far off either. My birthday is not a date that matters to him but we’re so close, he’s going to give me a present, we shop for it together, it’s a silver watch, with a rigid wristband also made of silver.

The clementines

He has gotten some groceries. He’s naked. We almost never leave this house in Isère. But we go on walks, he loves nature, he loves the calm, he likes to hike in the mountain and along trails. Whenever he meets anyone, he says hello clearly. It’s polite. That’s what one does. He does. I have to, too. I have to be polite. He puts clementines on his penis for me to eat. It’s disgusting, disgusting disgusting disgusting.

Food

I met him in the Strasbourg train station buffet. He had ordered choucroute. Choucroute for lunch. It’s the specialty, the station buffet’s choucroute was meant to be good. He ate a lot at lunch. People who eat a lot at lunch disgust me. They often smell after. I hate the smell of food on someone’s breath. The smell of medicine or fatigue on someone’s breath, fine, but from something they’ve eaten, revolting. The worst being: garlic, raw onion, shallots, sauces, béarnaise, chives, even meat, especially at noon. I discovered restaurants with him, good restaurants, pleasant restaurants, with stars, I know what the symbols in the Michelin guide mean, stars, forks and spoons. Red, black. I often ordered smoked salmon. I discovered frogs’ legs, with toast, grilled, hot, warm. Sometimes though the conversation dragged. And the prospect of a nap weighed on me. When I was born, he was thin, there was a period when he was fat, at the time, he was average. He looked like Jean-Louis Trintignant, a less handsome version, he had the same smile, the same teeth, not the same voice, the same mouth, the same lips, the same type. He wore same kind of sportswear.

I’m not looking to accuse him. Monsters only exist in fairy tales. I’m not looking to accuse or excuse him. Only one thing counts, the mark. He left a mark on me.

Phrases that accompanied the gestures

The week in Strasbourg when the others were away on vacation. I spend my vacation in their home, it goes badly, everyday I get yelled at. For the milk, for the keys, I remember one phrase. We’re in the marital room, “the marital bedroom,” I had suggested sleeping in Mouchi’s room, “no, the marital bedroom” said with a certain irony, a quip, a game, everything is funny. He is stretched out and I’m seated on the edge of the bed. He looks at me, I’m above him, he says “you are beautiful, very beautiful, you will be able to get yourself very handsome men.” Such a gift, such an opportunity, to have very handsome men, I’d never imagined, I’d never have dared, to go after such very handsome men. This is good news, unexpected news to me, but “you could have gone after” would be more fitting now. Because I realize that even if I could have , it’s finished now. He announces this piece of news, he’s the one who announces it, no one before him had announced it, his news is rotten. The fruit comes from dirt, it would have been a beautiful piece of fruit.

“You have very soft skin, like your mother.”

He compared the size of our breasts, me, my mother, Elisabeth, and Marianne, his mistress at the time. I was jealous of Marianne. She was a student, she was doing political science, she was young, she was free, he was in love with her, he hadn’t seen her for a while. She was an important part of his life, a student, young, free, making love to quite a few guys, including a Black man he saw her with once. Sometimes she just did it if she thought she’d “get pleasure” out of it. She could have been his daughter, I was jealous of her but not of Elisabeth, Elisabeth’s crotch smelled of “rotten fish,” he never licked her. That was something he didn’t like in general, he would tell her, he couldn’t tell her the real reason. But he told me. Another thing, the grimace she made when she came, he didn’t like seeing her face at those times. He had told her, but she started doing it again, maybe she didn’t realize what she was doing with her face, otherwise she would have paid attention. A German, a certain Brigitte, my mother remembered, me, I don’t recall her name. This German woman’s breasts, grapefruit, me, oranges, my mother, lemons, Elisabeth, oranges and not a bad figure besides, a lovely waist. And nice, above all very nice, very attentive. Stupid, but nice. Two problems, her face and her vagina. Marianne, lemons, “that can be touching, too, small breasts or no breasts at all.” I’ve had enough. One morning, with Marie-Christine, I started telling her about it all again. I told her about the clementines, the milk, the lock, she knew about it, the politeness, the complete lack of grammatical mistakes, perfect accent when speaking other languages. The rotten fish, Marianne, of whom I was jealous. The picture I had of Philippe and Mouchi, he gave it to me when I met him at fourteen. I wanted to have at least one photograph of them. Mouchi had a little tweed coat, she was smiling, one day my uncle said that Philippe looked like me. It was a big event. My mother didn’t comment on these resemblances, or didn’t notice them. I also told Marie about “you have very soft skin, like your mother,” I told her about it stroking her back gently. She left to take her dog Baya for a walk after, along the edge of the Lez, she left me alone to write before doing one or two Christmas shopping errands. We were planning on spending the 25th together. She was landing at the airport at twelve thirty. We had all of Christmas day together, Frédéric, who is coming down from Paris by train early in the morning of the 24th, will be there, my mother and André, and of course Léonore. Who, like me, has my father’s hands and feet.