I woke and saw the peacocks in the middle of the yard, pecking away between strands of Marie's strewn hair. From the porch, where it seemed she'd collapsed, to that spot-the barest, most exposed spot, where she now lay-a purple trickle ran across the brown earth, buzzing with flies. The sun beat down, hard and bright. I bent down and veiled her grey lips, her shit-smeared cheek, with a scrap of stocking before lifting her body. All the way to the steps I had to fend off the distressed birds, kicking out as they screeched and pranced around my legs.
I laid her on the unmade bed. Moistening a corner of the bedsheet with a bottle of gin forgotten on the nightstand, I cleaned every trace of dust and vomit from her face, her hair, even her shoulders. But her lingerie was stained. How could I leave her like this? Piece by piece, I stripped away her faded finery and bathed her body with liquor. Then, from the jumbled crates I picked an outfit she'd never worn before, weightless and maiden-white. Did we have white shoes, too? I finally found a pair buried in a closet. I sat her up to wait, like a doll, in an armchair while I remade the bed with fresh sheets. And mad with activity, I cleared the room of everything cluttering it up-crates, trinkets, bottles, clothes-tossing jewels out the window by the handful except for a blue ring I slipped onto her finger with great difficulty. I even grabbed a broom to make it go faster, pushing objects and dust bunnies out the door all at once. When the room was clean, I went looking for her makeup kit and clumsily applied a little lipstick, a little eyeliner, some powder foundation, and everything I could find in the way of flowers for a corsage: two withered satin roses from a hatband. Then, and only then, with one final look around the room to make sure I'd forgotten nothing, and really done the best I could-emptied the ashtrays, dusted the furniture, laid Marie out nice and straight in her Sunday best on the bedspread, dolled up, perfumed, hair neat, arms stretched out beside her body, eyes closed-I left.
In a shed I found two jerricans of fuel I'd been careful enough to store up and more bourbon than it took to get me drunk as I wanted. The sun was going down. The peacocks continued their idiotic circling. Seated on a jerrican in the middle of the yard, across from the front steps, I threw them feed from time to time, taking small sips and waiting for nightfall. The hour came. I'd given it a lot of thought, and it was better to start with the peacocks, take them by surprise instead of chasing them around in the dark with a full jerrican. Luring them over with one last handful of grain, I had no trouble dousing them with fuel. Next I set methodically about the house. First the roof. I climbed up. Hauling up the unopened jerrican with a rope was a bit harder. Still, I managed. Once the shingles were soaked, I got down again and started splashing the front and sides.
Everything was ready. I took my clothes off and drenched them in fuel. One after the other, I threw the jerricans, almost empty, through the window of the room where Marie lay. Naked as a jaybird and shivering, I set fire to my pile of clothes. The terrified peacocks ran around me faster and faster. I grabbed my burning shirt by the sleeve and hurled it at the house, which burst into flames in under a second. I didn't even need a torch to light the peacocks. Dazzled, they stumbled right into the flames in panic and then ran around a few more minutes, zigzags of light, before collapsing.
I opened the gate and started walking. Right from my first tottering steps, the gravel on the roadbed and the cracks in the asphalt cut into my bare feet. Then came the rocks, the twigs, the razor grass along the embankment and, farther off, the high and spoiled wheat among the brambles.
Paris, Jan. 1973-Apr. 1974
Unlivable
ccommodations obsess me. I have what you might call a housing neurosis. Most of my childhood was spent in cramped quarters (my mother sublet the cellar to me and my father), leaving me with a tendency toward claustrophobia no less crippling than the legacy of agoraphobia bequeathed me on visits to my grandparents (father's side), a pair of fanatical balloonists. I'd rather not discuss my other grandparents' house; my asthma specialist says it's best not to think about it.
Without making too big a deal of things, suffice it to say I've gone through a few rough patches. If I tallied them up, the lows of my life as a renter would vastly outnumber the highs. For a while I lived in flames. Well, I exaggerate. They were flamelets, but annoying all the same. At all hours of the night and day, fires would break out spontaneously in my apartment, here or there, behind a painting, inside a closet, under a chair, in the laundry hamper… None of my belongings were safe. How often did I find myself penniless, needing a new driver's license, all because my wallet had gone up in smoke along with my jacket while I was asleep? I'd be getting dressed when I'd find my pants scorched to knee shorts, my shirts burned to a crisp, my shoes charred and blistered, my gloves in ashes at the back of the drawer where I kept them. My life was a miniature living hell; I always smelled slightly singed; In fact I was slightly singed.
But you can get used to anything; after a while the continual catastrophes became routine. I kept buckets full of sand and water around, wet rags and even a blanket; when a blaze began, I no longer called the firemen, but set to it myself with the jaded efficiency of a seasoned veteran. I could just as well have sat back and done nothing; the fires always wound up burning themselves out. I'd walk in or wake up only to find evidence of fires that started while I was out or asleep: rugs full of holes, blackened walls or doors, furniture it seemed some quickly sated creature had gnawed. I settled for airing the place out.
I could've complained to the landlord, but didn't dare. I hate complaining. An absurd point of pride! But as I've been told often enough, everything about me is absurd. Besides, had I brought up the subject with him, wouldn't he have had good reason to turn against me? After all, could these sporadic flare-ups really be chalked up to the apartment, or just to me, to some incendiary element I didn't know I had inside? I don't think of myself as having an especially fiendish or flammable temperament, but these things aren't always easy to prove. We could've fought it out in court, but justice costs a lot. I opted to keep quiet and moved without asking for my deposit-three months of rent that might've been enough to get the place back in shape after I left.
Thus it was that one morning I put on my least-damaged suit. I decided against slipping my toothbrush into my pocket: although practically new, its handle had melted the night before. Using the first excuse that came to mind, I left the key with the super and, walking out on bits of burnt wood and sooty rags, strode determinedly toward a new life. An opportunity soon presented itself: a burrstone house on the outskirts, nestled behind a wall of lilac and wisteria. What a dream!
I signed without even looking. A rash and reckless thing to do, you might say, and you wouldn't be wrong. But I was afraid that by hemming and hawing I'd let it get away from me. By all appearances it was a fabulous deal. A real house-two floors over a cellar, surrounded by a yard and within walking distance of shops and the train-and all for the price of a studio! It had to be jumped on, and I Jumped. I admit my heart was pounding. Until then, I'd only lived in efficiencies and onebedrooms. I'd had countless disappointments-the aforementioned episode being the most flagrant, if not the most atrocious. I remember spending one winter in a garret haunted by an entire family of ghosts. Every night the whole damnable clan would show up and argue in Croatian around my bed. The super filled me in on the story. A few years ago, a family of Yugoslavian immigrants had been living in my room. One winter's night, the father forgot to check the stove before going to bed. He, his wife, his in-laws, and his three children died of suffocation in their slumber. If you've never heard six people hurling insults at a seventh in Croatian at midnight in a room the size of a pocket-hanky pocket, you've never known true noise, the gift of sleep, or impotent homicidal fury.