My Body in Nine Parts (10 page)

There are about twenty cows and one bull. The cows are nice. Obedient. They stay in the meadow that belongs to your farm. If one of the them wanders too close to the neighbor's lucern, you gently tap her on the backside with your stick, and she moves away.

But the black bull with a triangular spot of white hair on his forehead is greedy. And stubborn. He keeps crossing the ditch that separates the two fields to grab a mouthful of the neighbor's grass which appears greener and thicker than the grass of your meadow.

Wanting to make a good impression your first day on the farm, you hit the bull on the back with your stick to make him go back where he belongs.

The first time Charlot obeys. That's what you call him. Charlot. I have no idea why. But he obeys reluctantly. He moves slowly, keeping his head lowered to show you his long pointed horns. He beats his sides hard with his tail. He looks mean.

The second time Charlot is more stubborn. You have to hit him several times on the back and on his rump. But he raises his head towards you defiantly, and scratches the ground with his hoof to make you understand that you are starting to get on his nerves. He looks furious. But finally he moves.

The third time he categorically refuses to budge. Even when the old dog, Bigleux, that's what you call him because of his one eye, attempts to bark at him.

This time you hit him several times hard on the head. Charlot lowers his head, jerks his horns at you while scratching the ground furiously. His nostrils are vibrating as he sniffs, and drools saliva. He looks enraged.

You may be a dumb naive Parisian boy with little experience of bulls, but you immediately understand that Charlot wants to stick his horns up your scared ass. So you turn around, drop your shepherd stick, and start running full speed back to your meadow towards the fence that divides it from the field on the other side.

Charlot is running behind you. Lucky you are a fast runner. In school, when the bigger boys chased after you to give you a thrashing, you always outran them. But Charlot runs just as fast as you, and he's catching up with you. You only have two legs. He has four.

Before you, not too far now, stands the barbed wire fence that separates the two farms. If you can get to the other side, you'll be safe. You accelerate.

You are puffing as much as Charlot whose trampling hooves you can hear getting closer behind you. You've reached the fence. You get down flat on your back and start sliding under the barbed wire. Half your body is already on the other side. Only your legs are still in danger. As you pull your legs back to safety the nails of the barbed wire bite your left knee. You let out a wild cry of pain, but you keep pulling yourself back to escape Charlot's horns which are now above you. As you pull back your left knee, the nails dig deeper into your flesh, and you let out another horrible cry. But you are safe now on the other side of the fence.

Charlot, who is not dumb, hasn't rushed into the fence. He has stopped. He is giving you a scornful vicious stare, still snorting hard. There is like a smile in his big round black eyes. Suddenly he turns around and walks directly to the lucern field. His tail flapping about arrogantly.

Seated on the ground, you watch the blood trickle out of your wound, you feel faint.

I'll skip the details of how the farm woman, when she heard your cries, came running to you, and helped you back to the house where she poured iodine on your wound, which made you howl with pain, and how after that she took you in her horse buggy to the village doctor who smeared some more stinging stuff on your wound and then put sutures on your knee. And that's how I became your second scar.

Sometimes, Daphne gets so excited when she tells her story, she forgets parts of it.

She forgot to mention how I almost fainted when the doctor insisted on giving me a tetanus shot, because the barbed wire was rusty, and I could get infected.

That kind of accident can happen to anyone, especially when one is young, and knows nothing about farm life. But that day, I could have been killed by a bull. Obviously, it was still too soon.

In any case, the lovely scar I have on my left knee proves the veracity of this accident, and every time I look at her, it reminds me of how much I suffered on that farm.

My third principal scar is on the index finger of my left hand. This one is called Electra.

She's not very big, but she's ugly. I got her when I punched my wife's ex-husband in the mouth.

I was 32 years old. It's a long story which is not worthy of being told. It was such a ridiculous occasion. That asshole of an ex-husband was jealous because Erica and I had decided to get married. It's not my fault if the guy was incompatible.

Electra doesn't like to tell that story herself. So I always do it for her, but without going into lengthy details. Let's just say that one day I had an argument with the ex-husband of my wife. The argument became rather heated, and when the ex-asshole reached for a kitchen knife and rushed towards me, I let him have a solid left hook right in the mouth, and my folded index finger hit one of his teeth. I don't know if the tooth broke, but it cut a mean gash in my knuckle. Of course, I didn't stay around to see if the x was also bleeding. I took off full speed. The result: three stitches, and Electra on my index finger.

In spite of the pain that this left hook caused me, I have never felt more pleased with myself than that day. I had proven to my future wife that I would fight for her if necessary. Especially since the ex-husband was, to put it bluntly, a real asshole. No need to say more about this incident, and about that scar.

Of course, if my wife's x had succeeded in stabbing me with his knife, I might not be here telling this story. But I suppose, once again it was not the right moment for me to make the big leap.

My fourth scar is very grave, grave in the sense of gravity. It made me suffer a great deal, and still makes me suffer. If not physically, at least psychologically.

I got that one when I was operated for a cancer of the prostate. I was 62 years old. It's not my most beautiful scar. She is quite large. She goes from my belly-button to my pubic hair, and even further down. She's very ugly. But I am proud of her, because without this scar I would perhaps be gone already. I call her Antigone. Just as the daughter of Oedipus stayed with him until he died, my Antigone will stay with me forever.

I didn't witness how the surgeon pushed my soul back into my stomach after having removed the cancerous prostate. I was anesthetized. For hours I was absent from myself. So I cannot tell how Antigone became my fourth principal scar. Herself, she never goes into details.

She simply says, without me Federman, it's quite possible that you would already have changed tense.

In any case, of my nine scars, this one was not only essential but necessary. All the others were strictly accidental.

I wash it

I shave it

I shampoo it

I dress it and undress it

I cut its nails

I cut the hair in its nose

I also cut the hair on its ears

I put cream on its face

I put all kinds of things that smell good on its face

I powder it all over with baby Johnson talcum powder

I look into its eyes

I stick my tongue out at it

I brush its teeth

I feed it

I make it drink

I massage it when it needs it

I scratch its back when it itches

I touch it everywhere where it hurts

I caress it sometimes without realizing it

I hold its sexual organ when I need to piss

I hold its sexual organ when he wants to piss

I make it shit

I tickle its toes

I touch its members

I tell it how ugly it is

I tell it how beautiful it is

I tell it how muscular it is

I make him shit when it needs it

I touch its sexual organ when it feels like it

I contradict it

I hold its hands

I wipe its ass

I make it crap

I make it fart

I make it spit

I make it cry sometimes

I make it laugh as much as possible

I examine it from top to bottom

I comb its hair at least thirty times a day

I clean it with special soap

I make it smell things that smell good

I beg his pardon when I bang it

I take it to the doctor when it doesn't feel well

I have its teeth cleaned every six months

I look at it in the mirror

I compliment it

I have it flex its muscles

I get mad at it when it fucks up

I speak to it

I thank it

I say goodnight to it

I put it to sleep

I dream it

and the next morning I awake it and I start all over again to do to it all these things but in french this time

Liste de ce que fait à mon corps tous les jours

je le lave

je lui rase la barbe

je le shampoing

je l'habille et le déshabille

je lui coupe les ongles

je lui coupe les poils dans le nez

je lui coupe aussi les poils sur les oreilles

je lui frotte le visage avec de la crème

je lui met des trucs qui sentent bon sur le visage

je le poudre avec de la poudre de talc baby Johnson

je le regarde dans les yeux

je lui tire la langue

je lui brosse les dents

je le nourris

je lui donne à boire

je le fait chier

je le massage quand il en a besoin

je lui tiens l'organe sexuel pour pisser

je lui touche l'organe sexuel quand moi je pisse

je lui gratte le dos quand ça le gratte

je le touche partout où ça lui fait mal

je lui touche les membres

je lui chatouille les pieds

je lui dis comme il est laid

je lui dis aussi comme il est beau

je lui dis comme il est bien musclé

je le contredit

je lui frictionne les mains

je lui touche le membre sexuel quand il en a envie

je le caresse même parfois sans m'en rendre compte

je le fais aspirer quand il en a besoin

je lui torche le cul

je le défèque

je le fais péter

je le fais cracher

je le fais pleurer parfois

je le fais rire le plus possible

je l'examine de haut en bas

je lui peigne les cheveux trente fois par jour

je le nettoie avec du savon spéciale

je le fais sentir les choses qui sentent bon

je lui demande pardon quand je le cogne

je l'emmène chez la quand il se sent pas bien

je lui fait nettoyer les dents tous les six mois

je le regarde dans le miroir

je lui fais des compliments

je lui fais fléchir les muscles

je l'engueule quand il fait un connerie

je lui parle en deux langues

je le remercie

je lui dit bonsoir

je l'endors

je le dors

je le rêve

et le lendemain matin je le réveille

et je recommence à lui faire toutes ces choses-là

everyday either in English or in French

depending on its mood

Born in Los Angeles in 1950, Steve Murez is an American photographer in Paris who has become French. His photos appear in major American and French magazines. He works for a good number of corporations and advertising agencies, exhibits regularly, and creates photo events. His work is part of the collection of the French National Library, and a few images can be seen at his website,
www.Steve.Murez.com
.

Born in France in 1928, Raymond Federman escaped the round-up of Jews in Paris in 1942 by hiding in a closet into which his mother had pushed him, having heard the police starting up the stairs to the family's apartment. Federman emigrated to the US in 1947, following the deaths of his mother, father, and two sisters in the extermination camp at Auschwitz. His early experiences in the US included being a American paratrooper in Korea, a saxophone player in Detroit, and a dishwasher and student in New York City, before earning his PhD in Literature at UCLA in 1963 and becoming one of the first American critical promoters of the work of Samuel Beckett. Federman was hired at SUNY at Buffalo in 1964, where he taught literature and creative writing, and retired as the Melodia E. Jones Chair of French in 1998. His numerous experiences, exploits, and linguistic inventions have become the basis for more than twenty books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, translated into German, Italian, French, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Rumanian, Hebrew, Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and Swahili. Federman is also the recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Foundation for the Arts fellowships, as well as numerous foreign awards. An important theorist of contemporary writing, he has long insisted on the integration and inseparability of memory and imagination, fact and fiction. “I have to still believe, as I often do,” he said in a recent interview, “that one of these days around a street corner I'm going to meet my sisters.” He lives in San Diego, California, with his wife, Erica.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 by Raymond Federman

Cover Design by Geoffrey Gatza
Photographs by Steve Murez

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