Leper Tango (25 page)

Tiercé-Magazine
.

“Robinson! Robinson!”

Tranh crossed the street, approached the concierge.

“Madame.”

He executed an obsequious bow.

“I apologize for this gentleman's inexplicable and execrable behaviour. He is clearly suffering from a form of mental distress.”

“
Non, mais allez vous faire foutre, tous les deux!”

Tranh ushered me down the street.

“You are truly incorrigible, Robinson. Come with me. I am inviting you to the
Chat Noir
.”

“You see where altruism leads? I was offering her a month's rent!”

“Of course! Of course!”

He examined me, head to toe.

“You look better, Robinson. Less edgy.”

We descended
rue des Martyrs
until we landed on the wide pedestrian boulevard separating the two sides of boulevard Clichy
, then drifted west, past the German
tourist buses and a stretch of low-grade shops. Maryelove, Palace Video, Folies Pigalle, porn shops and a streamer of virtual promises — aphrodisiacs, blow-up dolls, gadgets, phalluses, all designed to fill holes and gaps — some of them physical, some psychic.

“I have something to confess to you, Robinson. I have never understood America, and I chose you to be my teacher.”

“There's nothing to understand.”

“Oh, but there is, there is. You recall Rhanya
?”

“Sure, I remember her. The Piaf of the Maghreb, right?”

“How many flowers can she hope to sell in an evening, Robinson? Two? Three? She is in a chronic state of hysteria or drunkenness throughout her waking hours.

And look at you, on the other hand. Limitless capability, limitless options. Money, luck, friends, career. Yet you throw it all away. You are the quintessential American.

It is something we of the so-called Third World can never understand about you in the West. You have conquered the world. But you throw it all away. Do you know why?”

“Because we get it all through rape and plunder. Booty isn't meant to be saved.”

“No, Franck. It is because you have no sense of destiny.”

We had arrived at the entrance of the
Chat Noir
. The bartender, a squat man with a walrus moustache, saluted us.

“The usual, monsieur Tranh?”

Tranh nodded. The waiter poured out t wo cognac glasses with a greenish, foggy liquid.

“Absinthe, Robinson. The drink of the shadow regions. You can still find it here. The founder of the former
Chat Noir
, the original club, was named Georges Salis. He created a marvellous form of theatre. The
thé
âtre de l'ombre
. Theatre of the netherworld. It produced
the greatest occult productions of the end of the nineteenth century.
Carnaval de Venise. Flagrant Délit.
Classics from the underground. And sometimes, imagine Robinson, even religious and mystical themes. In the midst of a sewer of whores. Two of its most celebrated
amateurs
were Zola and Alphonse Daudet. The theatre supposedly died with Salis, but if you read between the lines, you can still see it.”

Tranh clinked his glass up against mine.

“I'm ver y pleased to see you. Where did you disappear to? People have been asking after you down at
Le
Tambour
.”

“She's gone, Tranh.”

“Of course. You miss her, don't you?”

“Not exactly. It's more like withdrawal.”

“It's the warm body, isn't it, Robinson? Love we can do without. But, we all need a warm body, don't we? You just miss the warm body.”

“Listen, Tranh, I'm a little short this week. You wouldn't mind fronting a little bridge loan?”

Tranh's rodential laugh darting out of his mouth and into the closest sewer.

“Oh, no, not possible, absolutely not, so sorry, Robinson. But, good luck.”

It was about an hour's walk to
rue du Repos. Père La
chaise
cemetery. I was walking towards the mausoleum,
picked up a flower from one of the paths. A
Bourse de
Pasteur
. She'd asked me to visit the place.
In memory of me, Franck
. I let her talk me into one last meeting. For
old times sake. For a moment, she went off on a real tangent.

“You remember how I talked about harems all the time, Franck? Well, they have taken the idea one step further. Obedience schools, Franck.
Des écoles de dressage
.

And, once the girls have been prepared ... So we can have enough money forever.
Pour aller jusqu'au bout
.” Tears were sliding down her cheeks. They looked real. They looked like she might even believe they were real.

“ We have to settle down, Franck. Forget all this madness. Find ourselves a place and start up a family together.”

Then she had relented, smiled, realized the whole thing was futile. A
brique
's worth makeup couldn't mask the black eye swelling out of her face. It was just there.

A vaporous mist had descended over the cemetery. As if to provide cover for fugitives preparing a break-out. Then, for the last time: “What are you thinking, Franck?” “I'm thinking there's a big space between human beings. That in the end we're alone.”

“What attracted you to me, Franck?”

“You won't take it personally?”

“Trust me, Franck.”

She smiled. We both laughed. I realized that it was one of the things we didn't do too often. Some of the things we did just precluded laughing. Maybe it was that she usually smiled before she destroyed things.

“Your cunt.”

“So, it was just like with the others. I was nothing more than your little
pute
, is that it?”

“No, I don't think that at all. You got sidelined, that's all. Your life dream is more traditional. More like, you want a cozy little fireplace, get knocked up again, that sort of thing.”

I walked through the bric-à-brac of headstones, flat tombs, and cairns beneath the cenotaphs and shrines ringing the cemetery like contours of a mountain vineyard, the stones overgrown with thistles and vines. As if to mark the occasion, the day had turned dismal. I arrived at the vertical mausoleum and stepped inside.

The same etched inscription on two drawers.

 

Victor Levy Estelle Goldstein

Rachel Levy [1950-1970]

“a refuge for men in need”

An unsuccessful attempt had been made to remove the swastikas scrawled on the wall. The two sets of graffiti still intact. “
Mort aux juifs.
” “
Juden verboten.
” I recalled her words, as she showed me the door.

“In your own way, it cannot end well for someone like me. That would be a betrayal of what I am. Can you see that, Franck?”

“Why does it have to end badly?”

I wasn't trying to stop her from doing anything. That was her business. But, I was curious, particularly since I didn't have to stick around for the aftermath.

“Franck, there are things that are far worse than dying.”

It was a stupid question. Who does it end well for? At any rate, I'd done my part. She was free, in the same way that the rest of us were free. Which is to say, for the time being.

II

Dawn. Again. I entered the American bar on Mouffetard, where Sheba and I had spent our f irst evening together. I ordered a stand-up blackberry brandy and vodka martini. The place was half full or half empty depending on what time you arrived. A group of South American dykes slouched against a billiards table in the far end. Beside me, t wo couples perched on stools, engaged in a heated discussion while brandishing champagne flutes. She was wearing a fur coat over a rose-tinted blouse and a black miniskirt over black tights. Her left hand curled around three necklaces of lapis lazuli, copal and amber beads. Her right hand held a cigarette, which she was thrusting staccato in the direction of a blonde-haired, foppish boy-toy, in order to assert with considerable vehemence a fact she knew to be wrong. The French are like that. Nubians wearing see-through blouses pontificate blandly about the topography of the Massif Central. “
Tu vas m' écouter une fois pour tout
, Fabrice. Rodez is not the capital of Aveyron.”

She tilted her head to the right, blew some smoke and ashes in the direction of the bartender. Butted out the cigarette. Pulled out another, without lighting it. The boy-toy watched her with an exasperated grimace.

“Rodez. Is. The capital of Aveyron.”

“No, it isn't,
espèce de nul
,” she rebutted dismissively.

I leaned towards her, pushed a briquet in front of her face, lit her cigarette. Threw in my own two bits.

“Sainte Radegonde. The capital of Aveyron.”

“Sainte Radegonde. The capital of Aveyron!” the toyboy repeated incredulously.

“My uncle, a Jew, was shot at dawn there in 43 by the Nazis. I think there are still shells stuck in the South wall. Just beneath the statue of Our Lady of the Underworld.”

“I apologize.
Je suis vraiment navré
.”

He extended his hand. I took it, keeping my eyes on the woman.

“Don't worry about it.”

The woman smiled.

“Caroline.”

She passed me her card. Caroline Tiberi. Communications Agent. Committee for the Re-election of the President.

“M
'sieur
is a traveller?”

“Dr. Franck Thompson. But you can call me Franck.”

“Franck,” repeated Caroline, who obviously recognized a fellow philosopher from the school of relative truths.

“A pilgrim of sorts. With many sins to purge.”

I turned to the bartender. “Drinks for my
friends
.”

“I think
m'sieur
Franck wants someone to show him around Paris,
non
?”

“Paris,” I responded, “the capital of France.”

I passed her my business card, wrote down my telephone number, and left the café. I walked up
rue Des
cartes
, and along an abandoned stretch of
rue Clovis, against the chalk walls of
Lycée Henri IV
. I stopped for a moment in front of
Église Ste-Geneviève
, recalling my first ride with Sheba, the front
-
wheel drive spinning out of control, Sheba downshifting into second, the car drifting into the wrought-iron rails surrounding the courtyard of the Pantheon. It was much later that she told me that she had done the whole thing deliberately.

To see how I would react.

On Sunday afternoons, Ducastin-Chanel and I usually went out for our Sunday walk. We had just crossed a bridge in the
Bois de Boulogne
, and were now strolling up the
avenue du maréchal Lyautey
, past a string of acnescarred, Rio de Janeiro pre-op transexuals, parked like Amazons on the asphalt. A storm had uprooted several thousand trees, many of which lay strewn in bric-à-brac piles along the trails of the park. Ducastin-Chanel shook her head disapprovingly as we walked past a six
-
foot Puerto Rican in a miniskirt.

“Look at this motley collection of she-males. In the middle of a residential district. They should respect the quartier
. But it proves what I have always believed,
Franck. Johns don't like ordering escorts over the phone.

You need a sidewalk. Telephone escorts are just a dating service. It has to be a curbside contract, Franck, or it's nothing.
Intuitu personae
. Two parties, vendor and purchaser, cutting a face-to-face, arms-length deal. Value given and received. Over the counter.
De gré à gré.
” Ducastin-Chanel stopped briefly, bent over, coughed up a gob of phlegm and spat it roughly onto the ground. “That's enough for today, Franck. I can't go a step further.”

We continued down the boulevard until I spotted a taxi-stand. I helped her inside the cab.

“You go on ahead. I'm continuing my walk.”

“Stay away from those she-males, Franck!” she sputtered.

I descended the
rue des belles feuilles
towards Trocadero, then down to the river. The
bâteau-mouches
moored like floating hives, tourists buzzing into their places beneath the Eiffel Tower. There were a lot of ways to spend your time on the planet. I was a client of the Parisian whore, a sub-stratum of a certain form of perishables.

One of the first truly global businesses, and with no risk of going the way of the dot.com and the Edsel. Recession-proof. Immune to the usual caprices of the market.

Every group of society had a few members who partook.

Bankers, lawyers, plumbers, artisans, the unemployed, politicians, fathers, community leaders, church volunteers, bank robbers, sewer cleaners, cosmetic surgeons.

Blacks, whites, greens. Ecologists, stalinists, anarchists, realians, eckankar freaks, speed chess players. All voting with their dicks, so to speak. Dicks as big as genetically modified cucumbers, and dicks as small as a clitoris.

Round sticks, limp dicks, dicks as hard as two by fours, circumcised dicks, black dicks, yellow dicks, dicks that wouldn't pass muster at the agricultural fair.

We had no moral qualms about kowtowing during business hours, parking in our stalls and letting society's mechanical milkers hook up to our teats for the day. But once we punch the clock, our thoughts do not turn to the cozy fireplace, or to our spouses and children, or to a prayer of gratitude for god 's infinite justice. We just want to get fucked. Fucked royally if possible, and we are willing to pay through the nose for it. And somehow, not enough to do just that, for at heart, the john is not a selfish creature, but an idealist whose dreams have been shattered at some point in time. Shattered by an uncle who wanted to get jacked off. Or by a ball-cutting wife. Or a boss who will make you grovel for a cheque. Or the discovery that a teacher doesn't believe a word of what he is teaching. So, his act requires a sort of communion with the world. At least, that is the way I looked at it. We lived on the assembly line, so we preferred mass, assembly-line sex. We were crushed, so it gave us pleasure to watch our seed squeezed out of us, rather than be wasted on procreation. We were diseased, so it justified our lives to visualize our disease, to witness the sperm, sputum and vomit wash down the St-Denis artery, before stepping up and making our own offering on the altar of waste. We were beyond words; our only way to articulate was to furtively shove our hard-earned cash into the hooker's hands, skulk behind her down a long corridor, or behind a set of washrooms, or inside a car, and getting sucked off, or jacked off, in other words, acting out exactly what is lived day in and out, but at least for once, calling it what it is.