It’s too early to leave for the ferry, so Ferris and Vince wander out to the workshop, where Vince shows him an array of power tools and a birdhouse he’s planning to elevate next to the livingroom window. It’s a mess, big enough to house a raven, but Ferris doesn’t say so.
On the ferry back from the island, Ferris writes this in his notebook:
What if our erotic lives are not written on water; but are a kind of graffiti scribbled on the planetary and cosmic slate, an inscription of meaningless insights and temporary states of emotions and prejudice by which we are nonetheless going to be mercilessly judged, not by a divine being but by the volume of darkness and misery we generate with them.
“Well then,” he says aloud. “I will generate no more darkness.”
The man sitting next to him looks up from the book he’s been dozing over. “What did you say? Were you talking to me?”
Ferris laughs. “No,” he says. “Not directly. Thinking out loud, I guess.”
He pulls his bag onto his shoulder. The ferry is nearing the mainland terminal, but he’s got time for a pee before it docks. After that, he has distant places to go, faraway people to meet and write lies about.
Over the urinal is scribbled the following barely literate message:
I guess the confusion is universal, Ferris thinks to himself as he tries to come up with an answer to the graffito. Trouble is, it exists in specific conditions. Some of them lead easily to violence, others get resolved by small bursts of insight, and some simply remain unanswered and unrelieved.
He feels the gentle bump of the ferry meeting the slip, hears the rumble of the motors as they reverse. He leaves the graffito unanswered, and seconds later he’s back in the crowd of travellers hurrying to the next destination.
LIES by Geraldine Zwang
translated by Maxim Jakubowski
It was past four in the morning when I opened the door to my flat, hesitant like a thief. I felt dirty, exhausted by what I had just come through. In the hallway’s mirror I quickly noticed the darkness surrounding my eyes, as well as a look of exaltation I had never glimpsed before. In the penumbra of the hallway, the mirror was showing me the very image of a loose woman, so far from the conservative and restrained bourgeois fifty year old image I tried to adhere to.
I silently made my way to the bathroom when I heard my husband’s voice from the corridor.
“Do you know what time it is?”
Unknowingly, he was saying the exact same words my father would throw at me whenever as a teenager I returned from parties at my friends. A wave of fear coursed through me, a fear which quickly changed into anger. Anger towards the proprietary male, the accountant in our couple. I’m anything but a submissive woman, far from it, but there has always been a kernel in me that makes any woman of my age her husband’s woman.
As a soothing April dawn neared, I knew I no longer wanted this relationship and that from now onwards I would lead a new life according to my own will.
“I’ve just been fucked,” I said, enunciating the words carefully, with an assurance that surprised me.
Sometimes silences can feel endless, but this one lasted an eternity.
“Is that your idea of a joke?” my husband asked disbelievingly.
I knew for a fact that his voice was not that of someone who had just woken up. He had been waiting for me. I wasn’t surprised when he appeared at the door fully dressed. His eyes moved between wrath, incredulity and consternation. The ironic tone of his earlier question disappeared as soon as he looked at my face. I really did look like a woman who had been fucked. Eyes tired but grateful, lips ever so swollen by kisses and bites and an overindulged body that had lost its social remoteness.
The “where have you been?” triggered an avalanche of questions: who had I been with? what had I done?
The more he spoke, the more he was overtaken by fear. Without even providing him with any answer I was already assuming a dominant position, watching him shrink with every passing moment. I was no longer afraid and could observe this man who was my husband with detachment, even with curiosity. How could I ever have been physically content with this man for so many years? I was now resentful for the cold years when physical desire had faded to just being a memory. So, in a spirit of vengeance, to test him also, I decided to tell him everything, with nothing left out and invited him into the salon and ordered him to sit, facing me, behind his desk.
I confessed that I had had an adventure with two men I had met at an art gallery opening.
My husband’s face froze and I was unable to read any of his feelings right then. It was as if he was discovering a new woman he had never truly known. All of a sudden, all his certainties were falling apart. His voice all muted, he continued his interrogation.
“But what actually happened, you didn’t go with them together, surely?”
“I did, one in my cunt and the other in… my mouth then… in my bum.”
My honesty and poise affected him even more than if he had witnessed the act. I saw him tighten his fists but, visibly excited, he still wanted to learn more. I knew from that very moment that power had shifted from him to me.
“Did you know when you followed them, what they were expecting of you?” he stuttered.
“Of course. Each one as they rubbed against me whispered into my ear what they would do to me. I was both embarrassed and flattered by their lust.”
“What did they say?”
“The first man was just about thirty years old. He was short but well proportioned. He hadn’t said a single word before he moved against me. I could clearly feel the tip of his cock against my leg. I’d noticed him a few times already moving around the art gallery and had found him handsome. I don’t know what came about me but I pressed hard against him to confirm I could feel his cock and didn’t mind him rubbing against me.”
“But what did he say to you?”
My husband couldn’t contain his excitement.
“He said: ‘I’d love to split your luscious middle-class arse open while you’re sucking my friend off.’ His lips barely moved next to my ear, but the faint breath that came from him was already making me wet with desire. He rubbed himself against me even harder. ‘Once you’ve expertly lubricated him, he’ll slide underneath you to fuck you.’ There was a smoothness and a lack of aggression to his vulgarity. Without even thinking, I asked him: ‘Where is your friend? I’d like to feel his cock against me too.’ ”
My husband’s patience exploded.
“Sophie, how could you ever say something like that?”
“I wanted that man, so why not his friend too if he was pleasant enough? Why be a hypocrite and wait for another day to gift myself to the other man?”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Why should it be disgusting to provide pleasure to two nice young men and get some in return? Would you consider it healthier to masturbate while watching your porn tapes?”
Once again I’d defeated him, and he would rather suffer and know more than order me to be silent. I continued:
“Jean-Marc introduced me to his friend Yvan. He was a very young boy, not quite twenty. He was quite beautiful and his youthful features were fascinating. I could have been his mother. I was proud of the fact they desired me. I felt young and was entertained by the envious looks of the other women surrounding us. Yvan moved towards me, his two arms outstretched as if he was about to lead me onto a dance floor.
“She looks really hot; we’re going to have great fun. You warm her up a bit more and then come and join me at the bar,” Jean-Marc said.
Yvan took me in his arms as if he had always known me. I didn’t even try and avoid the hard bump of his cock as it brushed against me. I could feel he was hard. As much in defiance as in provocation, I swivelled shamelessly against his young cock. His voice was very soft, still tinged with echoes of childhood, but his erotic vocabulary was way beyond his age.