Franketienne - Ready to Burst

— Monsieur Raynand, I’m told you’re studying law and economics.

— Yes, I’m in my third year.

— You must have quite a lot of work, in addition to your daily activities.

— Work overwhelms us, overburdens us. We’re overloaded with tasks to accomplish. But that’s life. We rest only when we’re dead.

— When all’s said and done, that’s certainly to be preferred. One has to prepare one’s future while one is young, I’d say. Do you work all day, Monsieur Raynand?

— No. Only in the morning. I teach social science in a high school. And I teach literature courses at several secondary schools.

— Once you’ve completed your university studies, do you intend to remain in the country?

— Oh, no! I plan to head for Canada, where I expect to get a work contract. A friend up there has begun the process; he assures me that I’ll easily be making two thousand dollars a month.

— I certainly agree with that plan. I encourage you to keep moving in that direction.

Raynand was sure to have won the battle, having unloaded a whole host of lies and counterfeit currency on his adversary. He felt uncomfortable — ashamed, even. He had been diminished in his own esteem. He had fought with forbidden arms. A combat without glory. A false victory. A face-off between clowns in a circus that one leaves disillusioned. Sweat on his temples. His skull under a burning, blinding 100-watt lightbulb.

Suddenly, he got up to leave. He had the urge to let out a full-throated laugh. To laugh to exhaustion, till he had no more breath left in him. To scream. To yell. To explode. To burst into a thousand tiny pieces of flesh. To become a blood spatter, a flattened mass, crushed under one of those caterpillar tanks. He held out his hand to his hosts and asked them to pass his good wishes to Solange. She was on the second floor. She came lightly down the stairs, entered the salon, and, visibly intimidated, greeted her friend just as he was being accompanied to the little iron gate.

Raynand walked quickly. He wanted to see a familiar face as soon as possible. He wanted to speak to someone close to him. To tell the truth. To get rid of the vile and alienating straitjacket weighing on his shoulders. Scrape off the mud of imposture. He quickened his pace. He was almost tempted to run. He smoked, biting on his lip each time he took a puff. Yes, he needed to tell the truth. To speak to a friend. To shout from every street corner, I’m not a student, not a professor of anything, and I have no travel plans in sight. But they’re the ones who wanted all those lies. Had I confessed that I’m constantly unemployed, they wouldn’t have given me the time of day. But they sure did smile when I told them about my plan to go abroad and about the two thousand dollars I’d be getting in Canada. The old fool twirled his mustache and gave me a sidelong glance, seemed pretty satisfied.

When Raynand got close to his house, he charged into the home of a neighbor, a childhood friend.

Once there, he burst out laughing, to the stupefaction of the people there, who had no idea what to make of his strange behavior. He was laughing like a madman. Clutching his stomach. Undoing his belt. He threw himself onto the narrow iron bed. Rolled around on the mattress. Fell to the ground.

Raynand stood up and kept on laughing. He woke up the kids, who’d already gone to bed. No one was able to interpret this prolonged fit of laughter, interspersed with giggles. A few minutes later, his laugh changed strangely into a combination of staccato gasps and guttural spasms. His chest convulsed. It was as if he were suffocating in a spacesuit. Or rather in some kind of steel diving gear. Asphyxiating in a space filled with octopuses that tightened their grip around his torso. Lungs trapped in an iron straitjacket. Then he began to weep, to cry like a child, without ever getting a chance — or the guts — to tell anyone how it was that he’d discovered, through painful experience, that his mind was sick, his heart unstable, and his spirit deranged by a state of near-schizophrenic alienation.

In the very beginning, Raynand visited Solange twice a week. Once fully welcomed into the household, hardly a day went by where he didn’t see her. Their love seemed to get stronger in the relative freedom they had to spend time together, in the little routine they’d created, the gestures, the words, the shared debauchery — that is to say, all the ritual that comes with the early days of a love story. Each time they made love was marked by rich ceremony, for which Raynand proved himself a passionate and talented officiant. Strange liturgy of kisses, ticklings, caresses, nibblings, and acrobatic hip movements in their horizontal altercations. And Raynand became an ever more fervent believer during these solemn and sensual sexual high masses. He celebrated his passion in a feverish language that demanded no artifice, because — for once — he was truly sincere.

— Solange, I lived so many crippled romances that my heart came out of it all somehow unhinged, used up. Then I met you. And now today, like a child without any memories, I say yes to love — to you, whom I love. I’m happy.

— I haven’t any doubt about that. I’m happy, too.

— Solange, I need you to love me without hesitation, I need you to trust me.

— I love you and I trust you, my dearest.

— Ah! Do you have any idea what a slave I am to your charms? Even in my own home, I remain your slave. All the most familiar objects in my room are marked by your name, your face, your presence. Night and day, you dance in my head. Ever since I met you, I’m nothing more than a home for you. Besieged from all directions by your image, I’ve come to know the full extent of love’s tyranny.

Solange stretched out naked. And Raynand caressed her face and belly with his hands.

— You’re so beautiful, Solange. Nature could lose her bloom, the wind of death could blow cold over all things, day and night play hide-and-go-seek in a ballet of light and shadow, you’d remain the most delicate, the most beautiful.

— I love you, Raynand. I belong to you. I’ll always be yours. You know how happy I am with you. But great joy is just like great sorrow. I don’t sleep at night. You slip into my room on the wings of silence. You enter me. Your presence stands guard over me.

— You too, my love, you move through me. I don’t sleep at night either. You walk in my room. You unmake my bed; you make it back up. Without making a sound, you cover me with your gaze. You become the air I breathe. I raise my eyes, you’re there on the ceiling. Entirely encircled, I raise high the white flag of surrender. I am your slave.

— I’ll grant you no quarter, my love — no peace — in love. I am your mistress.

— I kiss your feet like no other. I place my heart in your hands. I beg you, don’t break it, Solange — it already hurts so much. It’s up to you whether I end up a wise man or a fool. Save me by cradling our love. You are the green light on my entire life. You can make of me your spouse or a lowly wanderer.

— But, Raynand, I love you, I adore you, what could you possibly fear? Is it doubt about my feelings that makes you go on endlessly like this?

— No, it has nothing to do with doubting you. My worries come from a much deeper unease. In my experience, love has always been an explosive mixture. But I’m always the one who gets torn apart, left in pieces. And life is just one hassle after the next. On top of that, misery seems always to be knocking at the doors of the living. And so many trials … At the tiniest spark, I explode and am irreparably destroyed.

— But, Raynand, do you think our love so fragile that it wouldn’t be able to face such challenges? Don’t you know I’ve placed my love for you above all pride, above all modesty?