Infrared (19 page)

Rena presses the phone to her ear—harder, then so hard that it hurts. As she listens to Aziz, the beautiful buildings before her eyes—Palazzo Rucellai, Palazzo Strozzi—are gradually replaced by the housing projects she knows so well, with their graffiti, satellite dishes, leprous walls, broken elevators, rat-infested cellars, young men swamped in hopelessness and rage. Running away from the police this afternoon, two teenage boys had taken refuge in a transformer and died of electrocution.

‘I knew one of them,’ Aziz says. ‘His mother’s one of my aunt’s b-b-best friends…Rena, you c-c-c-an’t stay away on holiday at a time like this…Shit, my work phone’s ringing…I’ll try and get back to you later on.’

Rena recoils as if she herself had just received the jolt of an electric shock. The hairs at the nape of her neck bristle and she feels inordinately, unpleasantly wide awake. Two young kids…
dead?
Oh God, Aziz must be grinding his teeth, smoke must be pouring out of his nostrils…She says nothing of the tragedy to Simon and Ingrid, so as not to weigh them down with it—but as they approach the hotel she can’t help hastening her step. Wishes them a good night the minute they reach reception. Starts dialling Aziz’s number as she goes up the stairs. Connects only with his recorded voice. Leaves him a message: ‘Darling, please try to understand. Everything about this trip is slow and heavy and confusing. I still haven’t had time to check the internet, or even buy a French newspaper…Believe me, I’m as upset as you are about the death of those two kids…Keep me posted, all right? I’ll be waiting for your call, my love.’

When she finally falls asleep at nearly three in the morning, Aziz still hasn’t called back.

A man has set up a camera facing a machine. He stands in front of the machine and declares, ‘No matter what you do to me, I’ll never reveal the truth about…’
(I forget about what).
To prove it, he climbs into the machine, lies flat on his stomach between two metal plates, hooks his left foot to the one above him so it’s bent at the knee, and presses a button. The top plaque starts moving slowly downwards, crushing his leg against his back
—N
o, no, I protest inwardly, horrified
—N
o, stop!
—
but the plaque just keeps coming down and down
—No
, no!
—
down and down
—NO
!
—
eventually crushing him completely.

Rena may have forgotten most of what she learned in her
Introduction to Psychology
class at Concordia, but she still knows one thing: all the characters in a dream are the dreamer.

So. Myself, the guy who brags about his ability to remain silent… the absurd hero who tortures himself to death. I’d rather die than tell the truth about…what?

What would I rather die than tell the truth about?

Getting out of bed, she sees bright red bloodstains on her sheets and nightgown—a shock, coming in the wake of that nightmare.

Damn it all to hell. It’s not fair. I had my period only two weeks ago, in all its crimson glory. It has no right to pursue me all the way to Tuscany—I didn’t pack any tampons. How dare my ovaries misbehave like this?

Not only that, but she was so busy torturing herself that she didn’t hear the alarm clock go off—it’s nine-thirty already and her appointment with the car rental agency is at ten. How will she manage to wash up this mess, pack her suitcase, help Simon and Ingrid carry
theirs downstairs, buy a box of Tampax (Super), put them in place (two—and maybe a Kotex thrown in for good measure) and rush to the agency, all in the space of half an hour?

My periods have got pretty chaotic these past few months.

Maybe an early symptom of menopause? Subra suggests.

Yes, I suppose I’m getting there. No hot flashes so far, but plenty of night sweats…Could be one of the causes of my insomnia, come to think of it. And when I asked Kerstin how long I’d have to endure these symptoms, she said, ‘Tell you the truth, I don’t remember… Seven, eight years, something like that.’ ‘Seven, eight
years?
Are you
serious?’
‘Sure, why?’ ‘Come off it. You mean I’m supposed to put up with this crap for the next one hundred months and keep my mouth shut?’ ‘Oh, I doubt that.’ ‘You doubt what?’ ‘That you’ll keep your mouth shut.’

At age twelve, I faked it…

Tell me,
Subra says.

I was impatient to have my period. I figured that, by making a woman of me, it would bring me closer to my mother. So once a month I’d writhe theatrically in the throes of abominable abdominal pain (loved the way that sounded)—and it worked! Lisa would allow me to stay home from school, and she’d take care of me. Divine days of calm and clarity in my sun-filled room, snoozing in bed and gorging on Daphne Du Maurier novels (an author I worshipped because my mother’s brand of cigarettes was named after her). Every couple of hours, Lisa would knock at my door and I’d put a long-suffering look on my face. She’d sit down at my bedside, stroke my hair and give me my medicine. ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ she’d say. ‘Some women’s periods are more painful than others, that’s all.’

‘You wouldn’t believe how I found out about menstruation,’ she added once. ‘My mother was a prude—it embarrassed her to talk
about such things, so she told me nothing at all. Then, the summer I turned twelve, a cousin of mine in Sydney—a couple of years older than me, and far more worldly-wise—told me all about it during the Christmas holidays. I thought she must be pulling my leg. Are you nuts? Blood dripping out of us once a month—nah, come off it! Just as I was about to get on the train and head back to Melbourne, she stuck a medical pamphlet under my nose and said, “Don’t believe me if you don’t want to, I could care less, but if by any chance you’re interested, read this.” Well, I read “that” on the train and it left me speechless. When I got home, I realised I still had the pamphlet in my bag—how could I get rid of it? I couldn’t toss it into the wastebasket because all the wastebaskets were emptied by my mother. So I went up and hid it under a pile of old magazines in the attic, as if it was pornography or something.’

Mommy laughed and I laughed right along with her. I was grateful to her for assuming that at age twelve I knew about pornography…which I did. Thanks to the neighbourhood I walked through every week for my dance classes, a red-light district rife with strip joints, sex shops, peep shows and hostess bars, I was far more savvy about dildoes than I was about menstruation. Even as I went on playing the role of the obedient, submissive young daughter in my official life—the smooth, clean world of Westmount from which my brother had been banished—I was magnetised by the sordid scenes on Saint Catherine Street.

Lisa went on with her tale. An unusually thorough housekeeper, her mother had stumbled on the pamphlet one day as she was cleaning out the attic. ‘She figured it must have been left there by former tenants and decided it would enable her to teach me about puberty without pronouncing a word. “Here, Lisa. Time you knew.” And that was it.’ I giggled. Mommy hugged me to her, then pressed her lips to my forehead. ‘You’re fine, sweet Rena. You don’t have a fever. See
you later!’—and she trotted off to receive her next client.

I loved it when she said ‘sweet Rena’. I loved hearing her call my name from her office or the kitchen, and rushing to her side. Sometimes I’d drag my feet on purpose, just for the pleasure of hearing her call me again—’Rena!’ It was marvellous. I existed. This woman was my mother, and she wanted to see me. No matter what the reason (whether to send me on an errand or to use me as a go-between in one of her quarrels with my father), when her lips formed the word ‘Rena’ it meant that instead of struggling for women in general, she wanted to see one woman in particular, a diminutive woman whom she held infinitely dear. Me. Her daughter.

I was so proud.

Didn’t happen often, Subra remarks drily.

Stupid tears drip into the tiny bathroom sink of the absurd Room 25 in Florence’s Hotel Guelfa, where Rena is feverishly rinsing bloodstains out of her nightgown. Good, good, the biggest one is gone.

Washing out menstrual blood is one of the arts of womanhood. You have to do it as swiftly as possible, preferably before the blood has had time to dry, and using lukewarm water, neither too hot nor too cold. Memories of standing at sinks early in the morning or late at night, over the course of three decades, and scrubbing away at sheets, the corners of sheets, bedspreads, sleeping bags, underwear, skirts, tights, trousers and dresses, in hotel rooms, apartments, lofts, campground bathrooms, hovels, trailers…And Samuel-the-bearded-cantor’s indignation when, after our first clumsy attempt at love-making, he spotted a drop of blood on the sheet, then another on his shrivelled penis. I saw him recoil. He leaped out of bed in horror. ‘Rena!’ ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘You…’ ‘No, no, I wasn’t a virgin, don’t worry.’ ‘You’ve got…you’ve got your…’ ‘Yes, as you can see. It just started this morning.’ ‘You mean…you knew you
were impure? You wilfully caused me to transgress…one of the most sacred laws of my religion?’ The question went through a weird crescendo, attaining scream level by the time he reached
religion.
I still remember Samuel’s wide-open mouth, his teeth and tongue visible in the middle of his beard, screaming the word
religion
at me.

Now I was genuinely pissed off. ‘What do you expect?’ I said with a shrug. ‘Serves you right for fooling around with a…um…what’s the female of goy, again? A goya? No, sorry—a shikse.’ Though Samuel had deemed me shtuppable because of my Jewish name, I knew he was really attracted by my goyity. My mother was a goy so I was a goy; without admitting it even to himself, he’d wanted to go to bed with a goy. It always annoys me when love-making diminishes me instead of enhancing me—when it reduces me to one dwarfy little aspect of myself instead of multiplying me and turning me into a giant…‘Listen, man, you wanna shtup a shikse, you’ve got to accept the quirks that go along with it. Sorry, but shikses don’t feel impure when they menstruate. Now, whatever shall you do to purify yourself?’ Samuel, who had been dressing hastily as I spoke, stopped and stared at me in wide-eyed disgust. ‘Dip your kosher pickle in virgin donkey milk? Beg papa Abraham for forgiveness?’ The cantor high-tailed it out of there.

That incident took place in my little student’s studio on Maison-neuve Street. A few months later I found myself between the same pair of sheets with my French professor, a Catholic who was keen on shtupping me because I was Jewish. In the heat of the action, even as he groaned and panted, he repeated over and over, ‘You’re really Jewish, aren’t you? How do you like my goy cock, huh? How do you like it? Jesus-Mary-Joseph I can’t believe it, I’m fuckin’ a fuckin’ Jewess, oh, Momma, if you could see me now, oh, if you could only see me, Momma, hey you guys I’m fuckin’ a fuckin’ Jewess, I’m gonna come I’m gonna come I’m gonna come, aaahh good Christ
it’s coming, it’s, aaah. Aaaaah. AAAHHH—AH!’ After which, from the bathroom where he was washing his crotch with my facecloth, he made some terrible puns about foreskins and foreplay, and two weeks later I discovered I was pregnant.

Fortunately Mom was able to smuggle my Canon into the hospital. The photos I took there—clandestinely, using an 87C filter and infrared film—turned out to be my first published reportage. They created quite a stir. Curettage with no anaesthesia. Blanched faces of very young girls, grimaces of pain and fear, blood-drenched sheets, sadistic nurses. I quoted one of the latter in the text I wrote to accompany the photos: ‘She had her fun, let her scream a bit. Maybe she’ll think twice before she sins again.’

That’s all well and good, Subra says, but shouldn’t we be looking for tampons?

After slipping six carefully folded Kleenexes into her panties, Rena drags on her tightest pair of black jeans to make sure it won’t even occur to the blood to go slithering down her thighs.

‘So much blood!’ as Lady Macbeth put it. ‘So much blood!’ whispered Alioune, my proud Peulh husband, who was annoyed at all the noise I had made giving birth to our son. I had whined, laughed, moaned, caterwauled, and chatted my way through the afternoon and evening, whereas a Peulh woman—to prove herself worthy of her future role as mother, enduring all sorts of suffering in stoical silence—mustn’t let so much as a sigh escape her during delivery. When, after sixteen hours of labour, Thierno’s head finally burst from between my thighs along with a flood of blood, plunging me into an incomparable state of ecstasy, the plenitude of absolute creation, I saw that Alioune was as white as a sheet. ‘So much blood!’ he said queasily. ‘Stay with me, my love,’ I told him. ‘Don’t look down there, stay up here next to my head. It’s all over, Alioune, stay here, don’t look at the blood…Alioune! Our son has arrived!’

But he had passed out.

Even as a child, Arbus was fascinated by menstruation, pregnancy and delivery. As a grown woman, she took delight in every facet of her femininity, refusing to shave her legs and underarms or even use deodorants. If she had her period while on an assignment for
Life
or
Vogue,
she’d boast about it to the whole crew. She insisted on having a home birth for her second child, and later described it as the most grotesque and sublime experience of her life. Few women artists—none, in fact, with the possible exception of Plath and Tsvetaeva—ever embraced maternity as wholeheartedly as she.

A pity, Subra murmurs. A pity that, one sweltering day in July 1971, she decided to add several pints of her own blood to the bathwater in her Manhattan apartment. Yeah, a real pity she wound up killing herself. Hmm, so did Plath, come to think of it.
Molto peccato.
Hmm, so did Tsvetaeva. What a coincidence.

‘Vorrei una scatoletta di Tampax, per favore…Grazie.’

As she goes back up the hotel staircase, she passes Ingrid and Simon coming down.

‘You guys packed?’

‘Just about, just about. Have you had breakfast already?’

‘No, I’ll grab an espresso on the way to the car rental—I should be there now.’