Ejaculation didn’t take place through the penis.
But something else impressed me in the medical report—something fascinating, encouraging, and beautifuclass="underline" Herculine produced sperm. Though she never realized it. It was discovered in the postmortem report done by microscope when Herculine’s corpse showed up the age of twenty-nine, in a flea-bitten room in a boardinghouse in Paris. He died of carbon monoxide asphyxiation. He committed suicide, or you could say, they pushed him to suicide. After he successfully changed his legal status, after he moved to Paris to avoid the neighbors’ gossip, after he lived through so many struggles and dreams, he finally set out on a new life; but by then it was too late. His friends turned their backs on him. Society had accepted her and raised her as a woman, but it didn’t have the means for his inclusion as a man. Not even in a bustling capital like Paris was Herculine able to hide how singular a creature he was. Finding that Herculine had produced sperm made me feel deeply compassionate, that—finally—the man might have chosen a different future for himself if only he’d known. He might have managed to bring to fruition all that had been denied him in the first part of his life—building a future with a family, producing and raising descendants—and seen his dreams come true. But now he was dead, friendless, having pinned his hopes on Paris because he felt inconspicuous there. How much does loneliness have to weigh for a man to prefer obscurity? How painful Herculine’s loneliness must have been to prefer invisibility over noticing how other people—walking by, chatting with him—could see him but didn’t include him? Obviously he preferred the thought that he wasn’t included because he was out of sight, instead of facing the fact that he wasn’t included precisely because they saw him. That man loved, coveted life, dared leave the protection of womanhood to change his identity, but failed. For years he asked for help. He left the job for which he was so manifestly prepared, as a governess, to work as a waiter, went hungry, “left no door unknocked,” as he wrote to himself. Everything that had been like a song to life at the beginning of his diaries became death at the end. He considered himself dead long before he took his life. That’s why I despaired over reading that he had sperm. I wonder what might have happened had he known that life, the life he naturally loved and wanted to prolong, didn’t have to end with him?
The most poignant element of Herculine’s testimony—later Abel’s—was how honest she had been with herself, how her strength of character allowed her to resist the hypocrisy of the social milieu. Reading the diaries, I knew that Abel had been proud of himself when he died. I found comfort in that. It’s often more than I can hope for, and it encouraged me to think that if this man figured out how to validate himself a century ago when all he received was reproach, then I too should find a way to vindicate my singular maternity. At the very least, I now counted on a strong, faithful companion: him, Abel Herculine.
The last clue:
My maternity has been vindicated.
Game over. If by now you still don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s not for a lack of clues. You must be one of those who read a sheet of paper where the clue is written as if the paper itself were the object they’re trying to find. A sheet of paper is not a clue. A sheet of paper is not an object. The paper is only a suggestion, like smoke is a suggestion, telling you that fire must be lurking somewhere. But to think that smoke, which should lead you to fire, is contained in the clues alone is also a mistake because, as you know, smoke disperses into the air. How could I possibly contain it in a piece of paper? This whole game has been smoke, so don’t focus on the explicit clues alone.
If you haven’t located the fire, then I’ve won. I ask that you allow me one wish before I die, though I don’t expect you to accede to it: I ask that you permit someone else to read my account. Remember what I said: empathy, the fondness of a single reader, is enough to heal me. If anyone else is reading me now, it means you’ve granted my last wish. I am grateful.
Ninth Month: 1999–2011
After a long sojourn in Tokyo, I decided to return to New York, expecting a peaceful old age. I hadn’t set foot in my apartment for several years. I was anxious about a number of things, afraid I might collapse the minute I opened the door as I perceived Jim’s smell. And I was simply concerned about what kind of condition the place would be in after the series of renters. I had no idea yet that the morning, whose skies were as clear and bright as the ones on that fourth of August in Hiroshima, would usher in a whole new period in my life, perhaps the final one.
The first thing I attended to when I walked in was the correspondence I’d received from institutions or distant friends who hadn’t known I was in Tokyo. I fingered through the envelopes until I came across the word Yoro on a return address. You can imagine how startled I was to see Yoro’s name as a sender for the first time. So many years desiring a child before Jim, then so many years looking for Yoro after she became my own daughter through my love for Jim, followed by subsequent years of not looking for her anymore because I felt she was inside of me (or who knows, maybe so as not to have Jim on my mind every second of every day), and suddenly there is her name on an envelope. Her name! And that’s all—there was no last name, no address. But on closer scrutiny, I saw that the stamp was from Zaire. I mean from right here where I’m writing you now, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
I’ve traveled to so many different countries thanks to Jim, yet our outings never lasted long enough for me to adapt myself to the rhythm of true travelers, the people who unpack their suitcases on the other side of the world feeling perfectly at home in the new land by the time they first brush their teeth. The most important thing, though, is that I was completely resistant to the charms of new places; I was a little like a mule with blinders on. I kept my eyes straight ahead, and the only thing I ever saw was Yoro. For the rest—the exotic foods, the friendliness or hostility of the locals in whatever place, the country’s history, its landscapes—none of it mattered to me one whit. So my travels did not help me get to know the world. In fact, they had no repercussions whatsoever on my personal growth, nor did they offer me anything by way of a cosmopolitan attitude, which made me always feel a little unsure of myself outside of Hiroshima, Tokyo, or New York. I clocked so many miles looking forever at the same horizon: Yoro. And then I stopped looking for her and stopped traveling. I stayed put in Tokyo. Until now, back in New York, when I saw her name on an envelope sent from a country I’d never stopped to consider in my life, and a slew of thoughts came rushing into my mind so suddenly that I had to sit right down on the sofa for I can’t say how long, not opening the envelope or even looking around, not taking stock of that space where I had lived with Jim for so many years, full of my belongings, his belongings, and the furniture we’d chosen together.
When I think back on it, for a split second I must have felt something akin to gratefulness, even a jolt of giddiness, since the letter had reached its destination, and it was still recent. Other than that, only questions came to the fore, posthaste and one after the other, so chaotically that I couldn’t stop to analyze a single one through to a conclusion. I was sixty-six years old then. I’d already gone through a lot—everything you’ve read till now. I’d suffered quite a bit. At my age, then, I’d already reconciled myself to the idea of living out the rest of my life quietly. And yet here’s that man calling me right back again so passionately—no, more passionately than ever. Even before I opened that envelope, with nothing more than a name as a return address, Yoro was calling out to me for help, and I was sure it was the only thing she could do, call out from a country I was perfectly unfamiliar with, about which I hadn’t the slightest opinion, except that if there was one place I imagined being the diametrical opposite of my own culture, it was Africa. Aside from my encounter with K, the young woman from Mali whom I had met in Tokyo, Africa had always been an imaginary place for me. It wasn’t real, and I could have died thinking as much, without even considering the reality of an entire continent that I’d relegated to fiction and fantasy. How was I going to face a trip like that on my own? Is Yoro really asking for help in her letter or—worse still—requesting that I go to fetch her there? Maybe it was just the opposite; maybe she wanted to come visit me?