‘Rena? Are you there, Rena?’
‘I just can’t…Why didn’t…’
‘Why didn’t he call you himself?’
‘Yes…’
‘Well, I think he’s a bit intimidated…He sent you an email three days ago and it worried him when you didn’t answer.’
‘Ah. I admit I’ve been a bit cut off these past few days. I’m somewhere…uh, in the middle of the fifteenth century.’
‘You do know what’s going on in France, though?’
‘You mean the death of those two boys?’
‘That was just the beginning. The young people in the projects are up in arms. The proverbial shit is going to hit the fan, Rena — there’ll be riots any minute now. I’ve been thinking of you. It’s the sort of subject you usually cover.’
‘Yeah, well, unfortunately, Alioune, I still haven’t learned how to be in two places at once.’
‘Hey!’
‘Sorry. I’ll be back in three days’ time. Don’t worry, I’ll catch up.’
‘I never worry about you, Rena.’
‘Tell Toussaint I’ll…Tell him I…’
‘Sure. I’ll pass your congratulations on to him. Give my best regards to Simon and Ingrid.’
Gaia is waiting for her in the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist and a smile on her lips. ‘Did you have a good sleep?’
Yes, she had a good sleep…even if the universe has shifted since.
Gaia pours her coffee and introduces her to the various jams and jellies on the breakfast table. ‘Everything is homemade,’ she says. ‘Even the bread.’
I admire the way this person turns domesticity into one of the fine arts, she tells Subra. Leading the sort of woman’s life that has always been a mystery to me, mothering everyone who crosses her threshold, planting and picking flowers and fruit to make bouquets and jams, taking pleasure in the simple joys she bestows upon her clients. She must be about Ingrid’s age.
Also the age Lisa would be now, Subra points out, if she hadn’t effaced herself at thirty-seven.
True. It’s weird being older than one’s own mother — do you realise you’re my little sister now, Ma?
‘Do you have any children?’ Rena asks out loud.
‘Just one daughter, in Milan,’ Gaia says. ‘But three grandchildren,’ she adds, pointing to their snapshots on the fridge door. ‘What about you?’
‘Two sons. Also grown.’
But no, no photos. I, the professional photographer, have always eschewed carrying around photos of my sons. I wonder why?
You avoid simple happiness, Subra clowns, imitating Ingrid’s voice.
Yet I’d give anything to be able to show Gaia what Toussaint and Thierno looked like last summer, and no longer look like, and tell her that Toussaint teaches children with learning difficulties, lives with a vivacious young colleague of his, named Jasmine, and will soon be a father…
Instead she says nothing. Contents herself with nodding as she listens to her hostess’s patter and samples her delectable homemade jams.
After a while, Gaia turns on the radio and starts washing the dishes. A Bach cantata comes to an end and is replaced by the heavy, monotonous drone of a man’s voice.
Rena tenses up at once. ‘Mind if we change stations?’
‘Ma perché?’ Gaia says.
‘I have a thing about preachers…’
Seeing her hostess’s eyebrows knit in incomprehension, Rena catches herself in time and banishes the words she was about to utter — Oh, men’s voices! Men’s voices! They have the right to harangue us, harass us, boom at us at all hours of the day and night from balconies, pulpits and minarets the world over; do they have to invade our kitchens, too? — and replaces them with ‘I prefer Bach.’
Wisely, Gaia switches off the radio, goes into the living room and puts on a recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Then, untying her apron, she dons a pert blue hat and announces in Italian, ‘I’m off to town for ten o’clock mass. I should be back at around noon — will you still be here?’
‘Oh, no, definitely not. Spero di no!’
So Gaia hands her a bunch of keys — this one’s for the door to the driveway, these two are for the house — flashes a bright smile at her, and vanishes.
Good thing my anticlericalism didn’t alter her kindness.
Bach…
No, all right, she concedes to Subra, who has been frowning at her sceptically for the past half hour. I didn’t leave Alioune, Alioune left me.
For once I’d made an exception and agreed to see one of my lovers in Paris. Yasu was a photographer. I’d first met him in a gallery on top of Tokyo’s Mori Tower. He’s my twin! I breathed in astonishment the minute I set eyes on him. Young, slender and androgynous, with black hair and dark eyes, dressed in black from head to toe, he was utterly engrossed in the photos he was taking. At first I mistook him for a woman. I wanted him to be a woman; I would have liked for a woman to be engrossed in her work to the point of not even noticing my existence, and when I realised he was a man I wanted to be him — or, failing that, to be one with him. When that dream came true within the hour, I learned that he had delicate hands, long sinewy limbs, hairless, amber-coloured skin and an incomparably graceful body, but that he was a twisted, perverted little prince. Apart from himself, Yasu loved no one but his dog — a young pedigree bitch named Isolde. As for women, he made love to them only to keep them at bay, took them to bed with him only to icily reject them afterwards. His photos were as cold, beautiful and frightening as he was — either inhuman urban landscapes with sharp angles and starkly alternating light and shadow, or ultra-refined pornography.