The Erotic Potential of my Wife (2 page)

In addition, each collection stirred different emotions in him. Some, such as the pages of a book, were more sensual. Some collections, sensitive ones, of great purity, once gone, became fabulous sources of nostalgia. And other more carnal collections, one-night collections, so to speak, touched on more brutal and physical spheres. That’s what it was like with the cocktail sticks. One cannot make a life with a cocktail stick.

Of course, he had sought treatment before to prevent himself from starting a collection, to abstain; but nothing helped, it was stronger than him. He would fall for something and feel the irrepressible need to collect it. He had read books; all told of the possibility of repressing or exorcising a fear of abandonment. Some children who are neglected by their parents choose to collect as a form of reassurance. Abandonment is a time of war; the fear of lacking leads to accumulation. In Hector’s case, it could not be said that his parents had neglected him. Nor could it be said that they had smothered him. No, their attitude stagnated between the two, in a kind of timeless lethargy. Let’s see.

Hector had always been a good son (we have seen, and, in some cases, appreciated how he approached his suicide attempt with discretion; there was something caring in telling everyone he was in the United States). He was a good son anxious to make his parents happy, to lull them into the illusion of his success. In front of their door, he put the finishing touches on his smile. His eyes were ringed by rings. When his mother opened the door, she did not see her son as he was but as she had always seen him. If our family relationships are films seen from the distorting closeness of the first row, Hector’s parents were seeing them from inside the screen. A parallel can be drawn between the need to collect and the need to be noticed as a
changing being
(one could simply say
living
).

We will return to this hypothesis later.

By and large, we will return to all hypotheses later.

The composure required not to shatter the myth of the accomplished son is formidable work. These things are easier to imagine than to achieve. To make believe that we are happy is almost more difficult than to actually
be
happy. The more he smiled, the more his parents relaxed; they were proud to have such a happy and caring son. They felt as good as when electrical household appliances outlive the end date of their guarantee. In the eyes of his parents, Hector was a German brand.

Today, he finds it more difficult than ever. Admitting to the suicide attempt is on the tip of his semi-blue lips. For once, he would like not to pretend, to be a son in front of his parents, to cry tears large enough to wash away the pain in a torrent. There’s nothing he can do; as always the smile on his face blocks and fetters the truth. His parents were always passionate about their son’s interests. For them the word
passion
is a flash feeling, an orgasm of the smile. (‘Oh really? You found a new soap holder … That’s fabulous!’) And it would stop there. It was real enthusiasm (Hector had never questioned it), but it seemed to perch perilously on the peak of a Russian mountain, and after exposure, it fell dramatically into a silent void. No, that is not quite right: his father occasionally tapped him on the shoulder to express his pride. Hector, in these moments, wanted to kill him; without really knowing why.

Hector ate at his parents’ even when he was not hungry (he was a good son). Meals took place in silence hardly disturbed by the gentle slurping of soup. Hector’s mother liked making soup so much. Sometimes, our lives should simply be reduced to one or two details.

Here, in this dining room, no one could avoid the grandfather clock. Noise of terrifying loudness, and precision, owing to the precision of time, could make you go crazy. It was this movement that punctuated the visits. This loud movement of time. And the waterproof tablecloth. But before the waterproof tablecloth, let’s focus on the grandfather clock.

Why do pensioners love noisy clocks so much? Is it a way of savouring the remaining crumbs, of relishing the last slow moments of a beating heart? Everything could be timed at Hector’s parents’; even the time remaining for them to live. And the waterproof tablecloth! The passion of all these old people for waterproof tablecloths is just incredible. Breadcrumbs feel at peace there. Hector smiled slightly to show his appreciation for the meal. His smile resembled the dissection of a frog. Everything was stretched out, grotesquely, to accentuate the traits as though they were coming directly from a pop-art painting. This likeable absence of finesse is a common trait of belated children. His mother was forty-two at his birth, and his father almost fifty.

Somewhere, a generation was skipped.

Hector had a big brother, a very
big
brother: twenty years older than him. It could be said that his parents’ obsession was the polar opposite of accumulation. They had contemplated Hector’s conception (which gave a subject to this tale, so thanks are due to them), the day that Ernest (the brother in question) left the nest. One child at a time. And if menopause had not taken away this theoretical momentum, Hector would have had a younger brother or sister who would surely have been called Dominique. This concept of the family was taken as original, and as often with everything that appears original, nothing is. We were in a place that was barely exciting, a place where time is required to understand things. This surpasses all praise for sluggishness. To summarise: Ernest was born, he had made his parents very happy, and when he was leaving they had thought: ‘Hold on, that was good … And what if we made another?’ It was as simple as that. Hector’s parents could never concentrate on two things at once. Ernest was very shocked when told the news, he who had dreamed of having a younger brother or sister when he was a kid. Having a child as soon as he left could have been considered sadistic, but, as we know, sadism wasn’t their style.

Hector saw his brother once a week when he came to eat the family soup. It felt good to be a foursome. There was the atmosphere of a Bach quartet, minus the music. Unfortunately, these meals did not linger. Ernest talked about his business, and no one ever knew the right questions to prolong his stay. They had a certain incompetence in the art of rhetoric and conversation. Hector’s mother – let’s call her by her name this time – Mireille (writing this, we realise we always knew she was called Mireille; everything we had learned about her was typical of a Mireille) dropped a tear when her older son left. Hector was jealous of this tear for a long time. He understood that no one cried for him because he returned too soon. For a tear, the separation needs to be at least two days. It would’ve been almost possible to catch Mireille’s tear, weigh it, and know exactly when Ernest would come back; oh, this is an eight-day tear! A heavy tear, the bubble of depressive lives, through which we see Hector in the present time, this time of narrative uncertainty, to face a terrible epiphany: though he is now an adult and comes to slurp soup once a week, his mother does not cry for him. Suddenly, her weightless tears are the heaviest burden that his heart has ever had to bear. We are faced with the certainty that his mother prefers his brother. In a strange way, Hector almost feels good; we must try to understand, it is the first time in his life that he finds himself faced with a certainty.

Our hero knows that what he feels is wrong; it is palpably simplistic. His parents have a stunningly narrow range of emotions. They love everyone the same. It is a simple love that extends from a sponge to their son. This good son, thinking himself the least favourite, had treacherous thoughts towards his parents, hatred even. Some days, he dreamt that his father gave him a couple of hard slaps; the image of a red mark on his skin would have made him feel alive. At one time, he had thought of provoking reactions in his parents by becoming a problem child; he never dared to in the end. His parents loved him; admittedly in their way, but they loved him. Therefore he had to play the role of good son no matter what.

Parenthesis about Hector’s father in order to know why his life is only moustaches, and outline a theory that considers our society exhibitionist

His father sighed from time to time, and these sighs revealed the extent of his role in his son’s education. In the end, it was better than nothing. This father (let’s say it straight: this Bernard) had sported a moustache very early on. It was in no way indicative of a carefree attitude, as many people would lead us to believe; a lot of thought had gone into this moustache, it was almost an act of propaganda. To understand this Bernard, let’s allow ourselves a short break, it will last as long as a sigh. Bernard’s father, born in 1908, died heroically in 1940. The word ‘heroic’ is a great mantel. Everything can be hung on it. The Germans had not attacked yet, the Maginot Line was still virginal, and Bernard’s father and his regiment had a small village in the east under siege. A small village where there lived a woman weighing 152 kilos who wanted to profit from the regiment’s passing. Though men usually didn’t want her, she had more chances in times of war, in times of abstinence. To cut a long story short, Bernard’s father decided to attack the mountain, and due to the sliding of a sheet, in a rotary motion whose horror we do not dare to imagine, there occurred what is commonly referred to as suffocation. This story (quiet now!) had been spared from his family, by masking everything with the word heroic. His son was only ten. Bernard was thus raised with the cult of his father as a hero, and slept underneath a portrait that covered that of the Virgin Mary. Every evening and every morning, he blessed this face curtailed by death, this face adorned by a moustache full of vitality. We do not know exactly at what moment the damage took place that led Bernard to be marked by his father’s moustache for the rest of his life. He prayed to no longer be smooth-cheeked, and sanctified his first hairs. When his face had the honour of accommodating a dignified moustache, he felt himself become a man, become his father, become heroic. He had relaxed with age, and wasn’t angry upon noticing a certain virgin terrain on his sons’ upper lips; each lived the life of hair he chose. Bernard thought that all men had become beardless, and that it was a mark of our modern society. He liked to repeat that ‘
we live in the least moustache epoch there is
.’ ‘Our society cuts the hair, it is pure exhibitionism!’ he shouted. And always, after these rants, he would return to his intimate thoughts, encumbered by nothing.

During his uneventful adolescence, Hector regularly visited his brother. He sought advice from him to better understand their parents. Ernest told him that there was no user guide, apart from ‘maybe making Mum believe you love her soup’. He should not hesitate to resort to the little respected domain of the sycophant when he wanted to go to a sleepover. (‘I think I will need to take a thermos of your soup, Mummy.’) Except that Hector had no friends, at least not friends that would invite him to sleep over.

His relationships were limited to trading cards in the playground. No sooner had he reached eight years old that his reputation as a formidable collector was established. Thus, Hector asked for advice from his brother, and very quickly this brother became his mentor. It is not that he wanted to be like him, but he was like him. More precisely, he looked at his life telling himself that it would perhaps belong to him. Everything relied on this ‘perhaps’, because in truth his future was a blur to him, it was a paparazzi’s shot.

Ernest was a big dull man who had married a short rather exciting redhead. Hector was thirteen when he met his brother’s future wife, and he dreamed that she would take charge of his sexual education. He didn’t realise that our lives had become twentieth-century novels; the epoch of the epic deflowerings of the nineteenth century had ended. He masturbated wildly, thinking of Justine, until the wedding day. Family – there was something sacred in that idea. A short time later, Justine gave birth to little Lucie. When her parents were working, he often babysat the little girl, and played dolls with her. He could not believe that he was someone’s uncle. And faced with that child, he was unable to conduct a perfectly normal life; in the face of innocence, we see the life that we are not living.

Hector had studied law without being very dedicated. Nothing interested him apart from making collections. (If only collecting could be a career!) He was hired as an assistant in his brother’s firm, but since he had not graduated, this post risked being the pinnacle of his career. In a way, this was a relief, as he then would avoid the anxieties of career planning and, even more of a relief, the office politics of all these lawyers with teeth that needed filing. He had noticed that success always comes with beauty; certain female lawyers had breasts and legs that would ensure them magnificent appeals. Hector would shrink in his chair when they passed next to him; of course this was useless, because even if he’d been two metres tall they still wouldn’t have noticed him. In any case, women only interested him in the obscurity of his bedroom a few minutes a day. He sometimes cheated on his masturbation by going to see a prostitute, but this did not have much importance for him. During all these years, women were resting in the back-room of his excitement.
¹
He would look at them, admire them, but did not desire them. Well, let’s be frank, when Hector believed he did not desire women, he actually believed that he could not arouse desire in them. He would repeat that his time was completely taken by his passion for collecting; even if anyone doubted the evident evidence, we could still bet the first lover of his body would sweep him into a horizontal position.

He thanked his brother for getting him a job, and this brother mechanically answered: ‘Between brothers, you have to help each other.’ Hector was lucky to have a big brother that was like a dad.

Let’s go back to when Hector was eating his soup. He has not been to visit his parents for six months. They are not looking at him. The atmosphere is incredibly jovial, his return is a day of celebration. What joy to see him again after such a prolonged trip! ‘And Americans, do they sport moustaches?’ worried Bernard. Like a good son, Hector detailed the incredible moustaches of Californians, blond and bushy like Scandinavian kelp. They were swimming in good humour, a beautiful good humour where cheerful croutons could be dipped, and it is within this feeling of latent happiness that Hector had the idea that it might be time to tell the truth. It was less an idea than being unable to contain his suffering any longer. His heavy heart could no longer bear it. For the first time he would be himself and not hide behind the ill-fitting costume his parents had designed for him. He would be relieved, and would finally be able to end the masquerade and not suffocate anymore. When he got to his feet, his parents looked up.