“I don’t know. I’m going to see my friend, Isabel, she’s very sick,” she said as she double-locked the door. On the street, the bright light surprised her — the afternoon was winding to an end. All of a sudden she felt weak in the knees, as if her will were about to abandon her, but her mind was made up. Nothing was going to stop her.
The first man to pass her whistled and came to an abrupt halt as he looked at her. “I’ve put on too much eye makeup. I must look like. . exactly what I want to look like!”
At that time of day only a few people were walking along Boulevard Rochechouart. As always, Zuzanne was at the corner of rue Dunkerque with the flower cart, wrapping carnations in transparent paper. “Don’t let her see me with so much makeup on.” Just as that thought came to mind, Zuzanne raised her head.
“Good afternoon. Any flowers today?”
She would have taken the whole cartful. The carnations must have just been picked, and the round bouquets of Parma violets seemed to be waiting for ladies dressed in gray with veils on their hats, who would take them away to die in crystal vases inside polished rooms with soft lights and velvet armchairs.
“Later, when I come back.
She held the empty wallet against her chest. Someone was following her. In a shop window she saw the man who had whistled and turned to look at her. She waited in front of another window to get a better view of him. She stopped, her heart pounding. How could she manage to look at him? Her eyes were bothering her. She had put on too much makeup.
“Can I offer you a drink?”
Despite the anguish, she noticed he was young and slender. He was wearing a trench coat and a bottle-green felt hat. Without replying she began walking again. When she reached Place Pigalle, she crossed to the center, glanced at the magazines at a kiosk, then headed toward the entrance to the métro. She stopped and leaned against the rail. Suddenly, when she thought she had lost the man who had whistled, she saw him cross the street. All the men were looking at her. She shook her hair energetically and heard a warm voice by her ear.
“You want to come with me?”
She looked at him steadily, calculated, and said in a low, determined voice: “Five hundred.”
A cold shiver ran up and down her body. She couldn’t see anything. A muscle in her leg was throbbing and her head hurt. He took her by the arm and murmured in a dark voice:
“You’re worth twice that. A thousand!”
•
She held the wallet against her chest. Her lips were pale, unpainted. With a sharp gesture she brushed the hair away from her forehead and said, looking at the violets, “One bunch. The one at the very back. It’s the prettiest.” Zuzanne smiled, “Take whichever one you want.”
Timidly she stretched out her hand and took it. It was beside two bunches of carnations. Zuzanne wrapped it in the transparent paper, making the flowers seem even more mysterious. She took the thousand franc bill out of her wallet. Zuzanne looked at it. “I don’t know if I have enough change.” The woman gave her the violets, took the bill, and left it lying on top of the flowers. She began to fumble through her wallet.
“No, I don’t have enough. I’ll go to the bakery, I’ll be right back.”
While she was waiting, a lady stopped at the flower cart.
“How much are the carnations?”
“I don’t know. If you’ll wait a moment, the florist went to look for change. She’ll be right back.”
She was middle-aged. Her cheeks were round, her makeup a tender, rose color.
“The flowers are fresh today. If the Parma violets had a nice smell, maybe I’d buy some, but you see my daughter is wild about carnations. Your bouquet is beautiful. . Was it very expensive?”
She was about to answer when Zuzanne arrived. Scratching her cheek with one finger while looking at the bill, she said, “Your bill is fake. Look at this. You can tell by the lines: they should be purple but they’re bluish. If you know who gave it to you, you can still give it back.”
She left the violets in the same place where she had picked them up, beside the large bunch of white carnations. “Don’t worry; you can pay me another day, take them,” Zuzanne told her.
“No, no. Thank you.”
She walked along quickly, the bill folded in her hand. A surge of liquid rose from her stomach to her throat, so sour it made her close her eyes. She breathed deeply, her mouth closed. She entered the apartment. There was a smell of tomatoes and onions frying: it was from the air shaft, no doubt. She put the bill inside an envelope, and with four thumbtacks nailed it underneath the last drawer of the wardrobe with the mirror. She raised her hand and touched her cheek: it was burning. She looked steadily at the walclass="underline" she had never realized that the branches on the wallpaper looked like a swan. The muscle in her leg began to throb again. “Now what?” Suddenly she leaned over, jerked out the thumbtacks and removed the envelope. When she had lit the gas, she moved an edge of the bill toward the flame and waited for it to burn. Her fingers hurt from grasping it so tightly. Then she went to the foyer, took off her coat, hung it up, and began preparing supper. Her husband would be home soon.
PARALYSIS
Il faut savoir mourir, Faustine, et puis se taire,
mourir comme Gilbert en avalant sa clé.
I looked up the word “foxglove” in the dictionary. “I always associate you with flowers.” Such an ugly word, “associate.” A plant with purple flowers shaped like a thimble. Digitalis. No. Not just purple, lots of colors. Sky blue as well. I’ve taken all the clothes off the shelf and started throwing them on the floor. I have just enough time to arrive a few minutes early and relax in the waiting room, sit in the armchair next to the sofa looking at the painting of the tree, rock, sheep. I mean with enough time so I won’t be nervous or my heart. . Sky blue. If I wear the red, it’ll seem like. . The black would be more appropriate, but it’s too tight. A doctor in Barcelona examined me once without even asking me to take my dress off. It was hot like today. I was stretched out, and he was feeling my stomach, asking me if it hurt. It was a blue and white silk dress, from The One Thousand and One Nights, several shades of blue. Long sleeves, but with two openings at the top that left my shoulders bare. Where the devil is that blue slip? I’ll have a real problem on my hands if I can’t find it. I still have to wash. Maybe the bottom shelf. My foot hurts when I walk and when I move it from side to side in bed. But it’s fine if I’m sitting up nice and still. I have to tell him the tendons in my leg are sore. If foxglove came in just one color, like garnet red. . Geneva. Foxglove. Leaves erect. Are you Genevese? The grass in the parks is starting to look parched, and the trees are turning golden even though it’s still summer. A city of leaves, green paths, gardens filled with flowers that seem to have sprung up on their own. Like the difficult path toward naturalness. Or spontaneity. Am I not Catalan? Mediterranean. Sirens and dolphins, lots of Ulysses. Thyme, rosemary, broom. Land of gorse and furze, lavender and fennel. I haven’t worn the blue slip for a long time. If I can’t find it and have to wear the red, what kind of impression will that make? I’ll tell him he’s nice, because it’s true, it’ll make him happy. It takes so little to make a person happy. What if suddenly I ask him if he likes foxglove? I’m sure nobody’s ever asked him that. A drop of blood. Seated on the examining bed, legs dangling, he’ll have me place my hand on his knee as he sits beside me. He’ll soak some cotton in alcohol and rub my fingertip, then, quick, he’ll prick my finger with the needle, all the while keeping his eye on me. I’ll bear the pain and try to keep the muscles in my face from flinching. I’ll breathe lightly so it won’t be noticeable. He’ll attach a suction tube and draw blood, fill it half way, then stand up, add a liquid to the tube, go back to his office as he tells me I can get dressed. Shoes, slip, dress. I’ll reappear, sit in the chair in front of his desk, and trams and autos go past, I mean cars and more cars, and the afternoon will wind to an end as he holds the tube with my blood up to the light and adds a few more drops of liquid. Seventy percent. I lower myself into the bathtub, quickly soap myself, and shower away the suds as the mirror fogs up and smells permeate. I brush my teeth, comb my hair quickly. The slip. I phone for a taxi. Cornavin. It’s coming from the Cornavin taxi stand. I go down to wait for it. The driver closes the door; I glance at my address book for the house number, I can never remember it. The dizziness begins. Just a bit, very slight. The same reaction I used to get when I was little, when I would smell the varnish on the trams. Ring-ring. The plane trees along Passeig de Gràcia. Starlings soaring above Plaça de Catalunya, tracing triangles and circles in the evening sky, a fury of wings and shrieks. The peacock tower near Plaça de la Bonanova. Under the bridge, near the church. Buy a votive candle and place it on the right side, straight up so the flame won’t gutter. Pull the wick up before you light it. Let’s walk the tram smells bad. Ring-ring and the tram passes us along República Argentina, heading down the hill. Be sure to buy the newspaper for the obituaries. Pont du Mont-Blanc. The Salève is unattractive, barren in places, but higher up the snowy summit is lunar. Majestic peaks the solitude of the snowdrifts sky crossed by eagles black wings snow storms hurricanes. The mountain that metamorphoses: distant, near, invisible in the fog. The fog off the Arve, down by the river, close to the ground. The bridge of the desperate, where the waters mix, the clear with the turbid, the Arve and the Rhône. Those who jump from the bridge are dead when they hit the water. The idea of suicide makes me feel important, and I sit up straight in my seat and watch Geneva drifting past: “Je pisse vers les cieux bruns, très haut et très loin, avec l’assentiment des grans heliotropes.” Going around a curve the taxi throws me against the door. How can I explain the anguish? The desire to scream. It’s wrong for him to do what he’s doing to me. Boulevard des Philosophes. I have to put one foot in front of the other to go down the stairs, and if I need to get up at night for a glass of water, I have to hold on to the wall as I walk because my foot. . Ghastly. Nerves are a bad thing. All those days of sitting down did me no good at all. Nor did the scalding foot baths with salts. Just the opposite. Will it ever get well? Life is such a fragile thing, so difficult to keep it balanced till the end. I asked for little and gave a lot. What if I’m wrong, and I’m exaggerating what I did? I don’t think I’m deceiving myself, playing tricks on myself; I wasn’t brought into this world to play tricks. I get out of the taxi, pay, and go inside. The stairs are sad, the elevator ancient. The nurse is just a girl, young, short, her flaxen hair poking out from beneath her cap. She looks at me carefully, speaks very slowly, as if weighing each word, spelling it letter by letter. The correct words emerge, sure of themselves. I’m in the waiting room with the painting, rock tree sheep. I pull back the sheer curtain and gaze at the street. Foxglove. The elastic waistband has stretched and my panties are sliding down. I pull them up. I glance at myself in the mirror in front of the sofa, pick up a magazine, and sit down. According to the statistics, Geneva is the city that has the most cars in Europe and rains the least. I hear a door shutting at the other end of the apartment. I stretch out my leg and slowly move my foot from side to side. It hurts. I’m drowsy. I put down the magazine but don’t feel like looking at another. When I realize that I am filled with this terrible despair, I think about what he’s doing to me, though he denies it, says I’m just obsessed, the anguish settles under my heart like a huge beast and won’t let me breathe. There’s nothing to know I don’t want to know. Break this silence! Watching cars isn’t enough, I need something stronger to drive away the anguish that’s devouring me. All the pain I’ve caused him. . just something he invented. It’s all fairy tales, fiction, tall tales. I shouldn’t complicate things. Nothing matters. What’s important today won’t be important two or three years from now. Not at all. Not to middle-aged me. Me, right in the middle of my life. The odor from the tram always used to upset me, and when I got home I needed to smell cologne and sometimes even lie down. How much is the foxglove compared to the Royal jasmine, the starry flower clambering up the wall along the ivy path? Above the white stars in the heart of Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, all the way up to the rooftop. Doing the shopping in the cool early hours. Every morning in front of the grocer’s lies a sad, shaggy dog whose owner pretends to tie him up with an invisible rope to an invisible pole, and he lies there calmly, convinced he’s tied up. In the early morning the gardens are still withdrawn; they must think night perseveres. If plants had eyes, they’d realize it’s never clear when night will end and the sun will begin to gild them and finally annoy them. They’ve closed the door, and I assume a reasonable face. Now he and the nurse must by tidying up, throwing away cotton, changing the linen sheet, disinfecting scissors and tweezers. He’ll wash his hands and come to get me: tall, wearing his impeccable white coat, calm, a smile on his face. So, tell me how you are. My foot aches, and nothing eases the pain. He was recommended by one of Rafael’s coworkers, and while taking his pulse at the house the doctor raised his eyes and saw the woman I’d painted on Canson paper, madly, with a damp cloth, soaking the paper. What is it? A fish? No, it’s a woman. And, still taking Rafael’s pulse, he doubled over with laughter. I showed him more of my paintings. I think I broke the elastic waistband when I sat down. It would be. . Halfway along the corridor I’d be paralyzed, not a true paralysis but because my panties would fall to the floor and shackle my feet. I have a strong urge to laugh and mask it with a tiny cry and cover my mouth with my hand. What is it? Is it a woman? No. It’s a fish. No. It’s a woman. Blue, purple, pink. A triangle for a head, half of her face streaked with fine lines, broken here and there by a wipe of a damp cloth. I showed him to the bathroom to wash his hands, and while he was sudsing them he whispered, “I don’t believe he’s ill; he’s pretending so he can be with you.” I was silent, but when he left I studied myself in the mirror in the foyer. A friend of mine once told me, there’s something inexplicable about your manner, something about you that I can’t put my finger on. I’m uncertain about what’s changed, but I’ve seen it coming on slowly, day by day. Stained teeth? Face full of pores? The whites of the eyes? The whites of her eyes are a bit blue, my grandfather used to say, have you ever noticed? Now it isn’t white or blue, but tending toward ivory, streaked with the odd blood vessel. What does a burst blood vessel mean? Just a little vein that comes and goes. I mean it appears then suddenly dissolves. If my red corpuscles were what they should be. . They’re always low, and I have to take iron. My neck muscles have twitched. Tired of being in place since that first cry. Rebellious, these neck muscles. What’s the matter? Me and my neck against the light. When I laugh I raise my face, but when I’m worried like now because of the pain in my foot. . What’s the matter? The look he gave me made me cover my neck with my hands. As he was washing I heard him say something about a disinfectant and I went over to him