The Endless Week, page 14
*
Sara typed the word shadow on her phone. She watched videos of shadows. She said: A shadow is often behind us, but the shadow should overtake us, it should go first. Every time it stopped, we’d just have to stop. Every time the shadow disappeared, we’d be erased, we wouldn’t need to think. When babies discover shadows, they think they’re animals. She showed a video of a little girl who saw her shadow for the first time and ran away crying. Salim asked them if they thought you could tear a shadow. Sara thought not. Jonathan didn’t respond, and Salim said: You could probably do it in a laboratory if you had huge machines and deep pockets. He wrote the phrase:
I tie up my shadow in the yard
He posted the phrase on the network, and Jonathan liked the phrase. He sent Salim a message asking if they could talk. Salim looked at his phone and he said: I’m right next to you. Jonathan looked Salim in the eyes and they thought about each other for a short while.
Jonathan said: When you stay close to a person long enough, they disappear. He said: When I lived with my mother, she often ended up disappearing. We’d be sitting on the same couch, and I’d watch tv as if I were there without her.
Salim said: Yes. And Sara asked him if he remembered the woman who disappeared in their house. Salim didn’t remember. She said: You were too little. Our parents had invited a woman over for dinner, it was one of our mother’s colleagues, and she disappeared.
During dinner?
Yes. She came to our house in the evening with flowers, it was a woman in a blouse, she smoked long cigarettes. Every time she blew out smoke, she twisted her mouth to the side. She asked: Where is the bathroom? And our father showed her the door. She got up, she went into the bathroom, she closed the door, and she didn’t want to come back out. They knocked, but she didn’t want to come back out. They left her there all night. The next day, she didn’t come out. The night after that, she didn’t come out. The day after that, she didn’t come out. She stayed in our bathroom for two months. She talked to us through the door, she said: I need time.
How did she eat?
We slid her crumbs under the door, that’s what we did. It was just something we did every morning, like opening the shutters. We crushed the food, we slid it under the door. We showered at Grandma’s house. After several weeks, it had become normal, as if nothing had changed. We ended the day, we took our showers at Grandma’s house, we came home. In the end, we forgot about our bathroom. We put crumbs under the door as if the house had never had a bathroom, as if everyone in the world slid crumbs under a door. One day, she came out. Then we remembered she existed. Her hands were soft from living in the bathtub, it was like she had waves on her face and folds in her eyes. As if she were floating. She shook our hands, even yours, Salim, she shook your hand, you were just a baby, but she shook your hand, and then she left. I saw her one other time in our yard, she was tearing out our flowers.
Salim didn’t remember a yard, he’d forgotten about the dinners, the flowers, and his young parents. He wondered if he’d be able to recognize his mother. He imagined a tall brunette all in black, but he could only see a faceless, pixelated form.
Sara said: I think she hated us, she tore out our flowers, she put them in her mouth, she shredded them.
What was her name?
We called her The Lady.
*
Dream #573
I open a door, I see my mother’s ghost.
I say: She’s not dead, I don’t know who I’m talking to.
I say: Since she’s not dead, she can’t be a ghost. But I feel like my reasoning is very complicated. I feel like nobody will understand. I say: If she’s not dead, she shouldn’t be a ghost, I know it’s hard, but please try to understand!
I’m talking in my mind and my words merge with deer in a room. Their antlers touch, and it’s very beautiful. But my mother is an animal among the animals. She doesn’t have any distinctive characteristics. In the dream, I’m afraid, as if I’ve suddenly understood that there is no difference between things and people. Everything looks enormous, everything looks like a ball.
I forget how to tell people apart from each other, the animals apart from each other, and the people apart from the animals. I’ve lost that ability. I cry because, to me, the world is the world. I tell my mother: I’ll never find you, everyone looks like everyone else.
My mother’s ghost laughs, but without a mouth.
Her laugh is a sound in a room.
The ghost’s skull is broken.
The ghost is no longer my mother.
It’s a neutral ghost.
It says: Hello, do you want to break my skull?
I respond: Your skull is already broken.
It says: I want more pieces.
It gives me a hammer. I take the hammer and I hit its skull. The skull breaks with a sound that doesn’t match. It’s the sound of footsteps in gravel. The ghost says: This is my punishment because, first, I killed my mother and then a fly. It says: I’m punishing myself because, first, I killed my mother and then a fly, what about you?
I ask: Am I dreaming?
It responds: In black and white.
I look at my hands, they’re white and black, the ghost is light gray. It says: Nobody pours water in the sea. Nobody thinks of doing it. That’s too bad. Nobody buys bottles of water to pour them into the sea. That’s too bad, nobody thinks of doing it. That’s too bad, because every time you pour water in the sea, something happens. It says: You can pour blood in the sea, it’s like pouring water in the sea. Blood is made from water. People are made from water. If you want something to happen, you should spit water from your mouth.
I see the sea through the window and I go toward the sea. I open my mouth above the sea and water falls from it. I look up, I see the ghost swimming in the distance. It turns around laughing. It yells: You fucking asshole, I’m you.
999 SHATTERED BOWLS
1
Jonathan was removing the dead from his bed with the door closed. He was getting rid of them because of the nightmares, because of the nightmares he had from all the dead, because there are too many dead people. You look at your phone and you see a death. We’re always seeing a death. All day and all night, we look at our phones, and they’ve announced a death. Newspapers and networks just announce deaths all day long and all night long, the ceiling spun. When he couldn’t sleep, the ceiling spun, he could feel it, something was crawling toward him. What was it? Somewhere, it was coming. For him, for everyone, it was coming. With a distinct, calm, complete movement, death was coming. He sometimes wished he could pray like Salim, he knew it could work. Salim had said many times: It works, if you concentrate, it works, it works every time. But he couldn’t, he didn’t know how to pray, did you have to think in a prayer? Did you have to believe in God? Did you have to imagine the god, their face? If you’re talking to someone, do you have to imagine them? He didn’t imagine anything, but sometimes, he wished that one time, one day, at least once, his hands would come together and his whole body would pray, that it would even pray without him. Just once, one single time, he wished something would exist. Just once, for someone to look at him, someone in the dark, for someone to look at him one time, he whispered: Come on, please, come on.
But the wind whipped the buildings outside. It struck like continual slaps to the face. Claws, ambulance sirens screaming in the streets, but the streets weren’t moving, they didn’t change.
He imagined the air outside, black, the night surrounding the room, surrounding the apartment, all this black air like a mass surrounding the world. All this air, all this night. Dark, outside. Like a creature chewing. A creature, and small, weak people in the city, outside, or in their homes, in their cars, miniscule, insignificant, or in their beds, or in their sad clothes, people, and then, those images were replaced by other images in his mind. Images replaced images that he didn’t understand, shapes, winkings. The images pecked at his skull, like a chick hatching from an egg, pecking, pecking, maybe that was praying, letting his mind wander through images, letting his mind make them, letting his mind think and watching his mind thinking, leaving his mind alone, so he prayed, he prayed, and he kept praying. Where did the dead go? All these dead people. What did they do? They left, they went back in time, in backwards time, against time. They went forward in reverse. On the network, Jonathan looked at children’s pages, he looked at their faces, children of eight or nine, children who filmed themselves. They ate kebabs with fries, they dunked their bread in sauces, they bit into hamburgers while filming themselves. They played video games, they commented on their characters’ movements, and in eight or nine years, other children would be eight or nine. He moved his lips upward and he contracted his nostrils. He contracted his eyes, he opened them as wide as they would go. He kept his face tense like a mask in order to feel, he whispered: Muscles, muscles.
He wished he had buttons for his own body to regulate it. A button for sleeping, a button for laughing, a button for speaking, a button on his stomach for sobering up.
He swallowed some pills, he tapped some images, he said to himself: I’m praying. He shared images on Salim’s page, different butterflies, lizards, he sent a bit of everything, comets, illnesses under a microscope, Russian celebrities.
He took a picture of his room. He sent dark images of his room in the dark. He could send anything, miraculously, every image left. There was no limit, they left easily. They didn’t change on the way, because our images don’t change. If we save an image, we find it again ten years later and it hasn’t moved. A long time ago, images moved, they lost their color. Images were put in books, in frames, they lived in the world like fruits and vegetables. We put them in wallets, in pockets, in drawers, and they changed, the way people do.
In real life, teeth fall out and hair goes white. Faces sag, but people don’t change. We can’t see people changing from second to second. We look at a person, but they aren’t changing. When people look at themselves in the mirror, they don’t see themselves changing. They aren’t changing. They aren’t progressing. This face. It would take years for it to advance. People could spend sixty hours in front of a mirror, they wouldn’t see any changes. Everything is so slow. Everything goes so slowly. And hands? Do hands change? No. It takes months. It takes years for a change to appear. We can watch them, but they don’t do anything, they do almost nothing. Every day, the same face. Every day, the same face as before. Every day, the same hands as before. Almost nothing happens. It’s almost as if nothing happens, as if nothing changes. Jonathan let his mind invent a situation. He said to himself: I’m praying, and his mind invented a situation:
change completely every day
If we changed completely every day, we’d wake up with a new body every morning, a new smell. We’d bite into food with new teeth, we’d lick the floor, we’d lick the walls, we’d lick the roads and the cars, because everything would have a new taste. We’d want to discover it, experience the taste of street lamps, screens, the taste of mint or a madeleine, of the countryside, of beets. We’d walk in the streets, we’d walk slowly, because everyone would be a stranger to everyone else. We’d speak, we’d say:
I don’t know you.
Me neither.
Did you try the rivers yesterday?
Yes, they tasted like grass.
I know. It’s raining. Open your mouth. What’s it taste like?
Endives.
It’s snowing. Open your mouth. Well?
Oat flakes. Can I taste the back of your neck?
Yes.
Curry. Do you want to lick my back?
Watermelon.
I don’t like your face.
That’s okay, it’ll change tomorrow.
The next day, we’d touch our new hair with our new hands. We’d cast our new eyes on new trees, and each branch and each lock of hair would be new. One day we’d have curly hair, one day straight, and we’d be bald the day after that. Our arms would be new, they’d move differently depending on the weather, backwards or twisted like curves, we’d film our arms, the movements of our arms, we’d film our legs, the videos would be new.
Every day, there would be a new sky above us, new colors, a new climate, cold gray, good hot, twenty hours of lightning, a two-second storm, green sand, dark mist. Sometimes, the sky would open up, we’d be able to see the galaxy. Sometimes, we wouldn’t see anything, the sky would open up, but we wouldn’t see anything. There would be ten openings that led nowhere. We’d take photos, we’d bite our nails, the next day, our nails would be long, they’d be painted, they’d be hard. We’d wake up next to a brand-new person, we’d say: Show me your face. We’d always be surprised by the faces, we’d measure time with faces. We’d say:
How old are you?
11,465 faces old.
You don’t look it.
What about your baby?
365 faces old, it’s his birthday.
What’s his name?
Thomas.
What about yesterday?
Zaïa.
We’d taste different every day, we’d bite into our own arms every morning to get to know ourselves. At birth, mothers would taste their babies, they’d bite their thighs. There’d be photos of mothers with a piece of flesh in their mouths. That would be the birth photo. On the announcements, people would write: Abdallah, born June 5 at 12:00 pm, flavor: fern; Amida, born May 8 at 4:00 pm, flavor: chamomile; Huguette, born September 14 at 10:00 pm, flavor: tire. We wouldn’t be able to choose the flavor of our children, but we’d accept them. We’d be sad sometimes, we’d be worried. A mother might say:
My son, when you were born, you tasted like dill. The next day, you tasted like pears, but the day after that, you tasted like a dead bird, my son. I tasted you and I got scared, I panicked. Your father let the nurses know, the doctors came into the room, they tasted you, my son. Your grandmother and your aunts, your grandfather and your uncles, we all tasted you, my son. Only your skeleton was left. There are dead birds in salads, in sandwiches, in dishes, so we sometimes also taste that way, my son. The doctors told me it was normal, my son. I’ve eaten dead birds, I’ve eaten the wings of dead birds and that’s what you tasted like, you had that flavor, it was common and it was sad. Your grandfather cried. We perfumed you with vanilla, but, my son, you tasted like vanilla-flavored death.
In the street, we’d taste the passersby, it wouldn’t be embarrassing, everyone’s skin would be accessible. We’d walk around with a bitten hand, a missing nostril, a piece of eyelid, we’d walk around with split necks. We’d taste our friends’ skin, strangers’ skin, the skin of tourists, the skin of shopkeepers, but not the skin of poor people. The poor would never be bitten. They’d carry signs: Bite me. Just one bite, please. A little nibble. But who’d want that skin? Who’d want to bite poor people? We’d never see their bones. Bones would be glory, success, diamonds. The opposite of poor people.
Rich people would get bitten from the moment they woke up. They’d only go out as skeletons. Skin would make them laugh, and for costumes they’d grow cheeks. They’d touch their faces, they’d use the word: Sinister.
On the networks, people would post pictures of their bites. They’d write: Thirty-two bites today, a great day at work. Bitten by my boss. So happy, the jury decided to bite me. Every morning, students would bite their teachers and teachers would bite their students. Nurses would bite patients and patients would bite nurses. But we’d never bite the dead, never the dead. That would be punished. A long, hard punishment for dead-people biters. We’d put them in dark cells with other dead-people biters. They’d bite each other, they’d even bite each other’s bones, it’d be horrifying, horrifying.
In real life, no one is surprised by their own face. Everyone recognizes themselves. Faces are fixed. When you look at children, they’re not in the process of growing. When you look at children’s mouths, their foreheads, their lips, they aren’t progressing. Nothing is happening, they’re not changing. We look at the world, and nothing is happening.
And two parents could say:
How old is your son?
Eight months old.
He still looks the same?
Yes.
I have twins, look at them. Look at their hands. They aren’t advancing, they’re not changing.
It’s true, they’re stagnant.
Every time I look at them, I recognize them.
Then Jonathan wondered if dinosaurs had had the same faces every day during the age of the dinosaurs. He typed the word dinosaur, he hit search, he read: The probability of drinking a glass of water containing a dinosaur molecule is 100 percent. The water drunk by dinosaurs is the water we drink. He whispered the word: Dinosaur.
He didn’t feel like the person saying the word: Dinosaur. He couldn’t feel this person’s mouth. He couldn’t feel it. He’d looked at himself last night in the bathroom at the bar. He’d fallen asleep last night in the bathroom at the bar. In truth, he’d fallen asleep from fear. He fell asleep from fear sometimes. He’d been thinking about things being replaced by things he didn’t understand. Outside, the wind is tearing at the wind, it’s tearing away layers of wind, the wind is tearing itself apart. Why is the wind tearing itself apart? That’s what he’d thought. If the wind is tearing at the wind, which wind tears that wind apart? There are several winds in the wind, a boss wind, servant winds. If there weren’t any eyes, there wouldn’t be any images. If there weren’t any ideas, there wouldn’t be any eras. There are scenes because there are people. If there weren’t any people, there wouldn’t be any heads. Here’s what he thought: It’s like my head is like a horse’s. It’s heavy and it hangs like a horse’s head. He prayed, finally, he prayed: There’s a sick horse on a plain, this is the story of a horse, there’s a sick horse on a plain, it’s eating a cadaver on a plain, it’s eating its mother’s cadaver in a dream. A sleeping foal, a sleeping foal wakes up, it runs, it’s a dead-foal race. Where are the dead? A door in a house that leads to another house. The door of the first leads to the second, the door of the second leads to the first. Has the world disappeared? I’d open the door, there wouldn’t be a door, there wouldn’t be a knob. I’d look at my hand, there wouldn’t be a hand. Who are the people that draw on bathroom walls? People like my mother, my mother, like my mother, my own mother, my mother drew the singer in chalk on the street, on sidewalks, she told me: You look like him. She said: Look like him. I would fall asleep on her chest, I liked the smell of her breath from her nose, the smell of cigarettes mixed with pastis that came from her nose, I’d fall asleep, and I’d dream of locks of hair and roots, maybe I was praying, I don’t know, they flow and my teeth fall into the toilet, a river and I’m drowning. Algae, and I surface, I’ve rescued something, I’m dirty. I was wearing heavy clothing and pink fleas. I come back to life, I dream, I’m cared for. I’m killed, the doorbell rings, I open the door, I die. I dream that I’m peeing, I’m standing, it won’t stop. My mother is looking at me, she’s drawing me. Moldy fields of wheat, I roll in sap, the dream of a spoon that holds nothing. I dunk, my mouth is empty, why my mother? I don’t even have a tongue anymore, my mother laughs, she says: My big idiot. I’m lying in a burrow, there’s a wasp on my forehead, I’m bleeding from my brow, I’m dreaming because I’m dreaming. My mother and her piece of shirt. My clone is talking to me, I don’t know why, he’s talking to me, we’re fighting. A lamb is dying in the bathroom, my thighs, that’s it.
