Marie Ndiaye - All My Friends

“How handsome he is, how handsome — don’t you think?” she murmured.

“Yes,” said René, despairing.

She passed over the next pictures more hurriedly, some of them showing Anthony fully nude, and then some of Anthony and E. Blaye as a couple, also nude, in a whitepainted bedroom. René felt like he’d been punched hard in the chest. Distraught, he glanced at Madame Mour. But, bent over the screen, intent, she only stroked the backs of her ears, where her hair stayed obediently tucked. Her lower lip was slightly curled under — was she at least puzzled? René wondered. Or cautiously refraining from judgment, for the moment? Did she want to gather all the necessary elements for an explanation, and then an excuse, for. . In a neutral tone, René asked her what had happened to Anthony. Then:

“Are you sure it’s him?”

“Don’t you recognize him?” she said, arching her eyebrows, incredulous and mocking.

And, at full speed, she replayed that extraordinary archive of Anthony’s nudity. Beside him, E. Blaye looked short and drab. Her skin seemed to be made of wax, her hair of wool. She smiled tightly, lips pressed together, while Anthony seemed to take every opportunity to exhibit his teeth, whiter and more regular than René remembered.

“René doesn’t recognize our Anthony,” said Madame Mour indulgently, turning toward Anthony’s brother, who’d just come in.

The Mour brother grunted, amused. He glanced vaguely at the screen, gave René a slap on the back. Then Madame Mour turned off the computer, explaining that the Mour father would be home any minute, and there was no way he. .

“He can’t stand this, God knows why,” said Madame Mour.

She gave a dry little laugh. She asked René what was so terrible about it. René was trembling all over. He couldn’t come up with an answer. Madame Mour shook her head and made an indignant face.

“Here we are, finally digging out from our troubles, and my husband wants to quibble about the methods. Anthony’s a success, someone was willing to take him in, he helps out his parents, it’s only natural. Isn’t that natural? Wouldn’t you follow a woman, any woman, René, to rescue your mother from hardship?”

“Help me,” René murmured.

“Help you?”

“I’m for sale, same as Anthony. Find someone who wants to buy me. Please.”

Madame Mour sat back, crossed her arms. She studied René, reflecting. Snug in a new pair of pants, her long legs shifted gently from one side of the chair to the other.

“It won’t be easy, my little René,” she said. “But I’ll try.”

* * *

Leaving the Mours’ farm to head homeward again, René’s excitement almost kept him from noticing the Mour father coming and going from the pickup truck to the barn, transporting all sorts of tools and bags with stolid determination, rubber boots on his feet, and wearing a broad hat that left René, whose heart was swelling with joyful hope, half expecting to see the Mour father leap onto his horse and gallop off toward adventures without end.

René broke into a laugh. How he loved the Mours, all four of them, even Anthony’s brother, without whom Anthony’s grace would stand out less brilliantly — how he loved the Mours, how he loved, he repeated to himself, every good little family!

His own seemed no less worthy of affection that evening, when he realized he’d soon be telling them goodbye. And with this, the squirming, tangled mass of neglected children, the caustic, gloomy, indolent presence of his mother, even the tyrannical imposition of food to be eaten by him and him alone (some dish of noodles glistening with butter, veritably bellowing at him from the other end of the table), none of it could get to him now, nothing could enrage or defeat him. From time to time the memory of a naked Anthony raced through his mind, gilded, exultant, displaying his teeth (whitened?), his legs spread wide in a virile stance, index finger upraised before his lips (plumped with silicone?), and nose (reshaped, slenderized?), as if mischievously swearing the viewer to secrecy, and then, dizzied, he wondered if that really was Anthony Mour, if Anthony’s new existence could one day be his, René’s, his physique duly amended, if, in short, anything was possible, even his own acquisition by. . not by E. Blaye, but. . but why shouldn’t she have two boys around her to. . to do what? René’s head was gently swimming. To serve her, to show her off at her best, to ease her sorrows, to love her deeply?

“I can do anything,” murmured René, gripped by an uneasy vainglory, a tremulous joy.

He’d always known he could make a gift of himself. Assuming someone would take him, assuming someone was eager to have him, him, a colorless boy named René, he could subjugate himself to the will of anyone at all. Little matter if he was purchased or picked up for free. Either way, for him, it would mean making a gift of himself. But. .

What had he seen, that cruel night the previous summer, in the cold gaze of the man who, as he carelessly strolled down the hill between two fields of corn, grudgingly informed him that he was his father? What had he seen, if not, more excruciating than hostility, an irreparable shame? And then a glacial dismissiveness, a scornful “keep your distance,” instantly and expressly aimed at that disappointing, insignificant boy, René, by this stranger who, René could clearly see, no one could possibly consider a catch? Before that evening, René still believed he had only to offer himself with conviction, and he would be taken — but if no one ever sees you, where do you find the courage to tell the world you’re there, open and new, just waiting to be snatched up? If no one ever even sees you?

* * *

René walked down the highway, cut across furniture-store parking lots and car dealerships, stepped over the railroad tracks, went on through abandoned depots with graffitisprayed walls, his pace eager and brisk. Reaching the start of the Way of the Cross in the nearby pilgrimage town, he wiped the sweat from his face and set off uphill. He paused at the first station to kneel and mumble he didn’t quite know what. A woman was already there, and René nudged her a little to one side.

“Well, really!” she huffed.

She shot René a glance. Then she hurried to her feet and somewhat stiffly raced off toward the next stop, further uphill. Noting her bare feet, René took off his old shoes and stuffed one into each pocket. He joined his hesitant hands.

“Let me be bought, bought, bought.”

The sun shone through the unstirring boughs of the tall ash trees and fell in lacy patches onto the road, which was littered with crumpled papers that René carefully sidestepped. He was surprised to find the dusty asphalt so cool against his soles, struck by the desert-like, timeworn stillness of this place of devotion. “Bought, bought,” sang the half-broken concrete figures beneath each little shelter, in an echo. “Let me be bought, and I promise. . ”

“I won’t be choosy,” René whispered fervently. “I’ll go with the first person who wants me.”

Had he the right not to suffer, he who was asking so much? He continued his climb, deliberately treading on anything that showed some sign of sharpness. At the very top, he met up with the barefoot woman again, and she eyed him in fear and defiance as she knelt on the steps before the enormous, severe, gilt-covered statue of Anthony Mour amid his disciples.

René dropped to his knees alongside her, breathless, his feet smarting, but stunned, almost blinded, by what he’d just seen. Finally he found the courage to look up again, hesitant and awed. And saw. . Glorious, Anthony Mour looked benevolently down at him, still nude, apart from the customary strip of cloth vaguely knotted around his slim hips. René immediately lowered his eyes. Flashes of violent, slashing light shot through his skull. A sort of shame turned his face crimson. Anthony Mour saw this, and he knew what naïve hope had brought René to this place, alone beside the believer who was now sitting on a step, knees apart, trying to cram her fat feet into the shoes she’d pulled from her shopping bag, puffing and grumbling — Anthony Mour saw it all, he who never had to pray to be desired. Perhaps Anthony Mour was about to speak, gently mock him, pity him. Or tell him, perhaps, that his chances, or his hopes. . If he could only summon the strength to look up one last time, would he not find that one of the disciples bore René’s face, beneath the gilding? Idiotic, ugly, but wholeheartedly faithful René’s face?