Infrared (20 page)

‘We’ll be all set when you get back.’

Five minutes later, the absorbent cotton duly inserted into her innermost being, she emerges into the blinding light of the Florentine morning.

If the vagina were an erogenous zone we’d have heard about it by now, she says to herself. How would women be able to stuff tampons into it four times a day, six days a month, twelve months a year
without feeling at least an occasional twinge of pleasure? But no. Not one of my women friends has ever blushingly confessed to getting her kicks that way…Memory of myself at fourteen, having finally reached puberty after two years of faking it, twisting and turning on the bathroom floor at my best friend Jennifer’s place, legs akimbo, desperately trying to insert a tampon as Jennifer shouted advice to me from beyond the door—’Relax, Rena. You gotta relax. If you tense up, it won’t go in. Don’t worry, you won’t lose your virginity or anything.’ Naturally, I wouldn’t have dreamed of enlightening her as to the state of my hymen.

The car rental is on Borgo Ognissanti, All-Saints Street—same name as Toussaint, her older son. She decides to interpret this as a good omen.

People are often puzzled that a virgophobic atheist like myself would have named her son Toussaint—but it’s because my beloved Fabrice idolised Toussaint Louverture, the great leader of the Haitian Revolution in 1802, and his dying wish was that our son be named after him.

Louverture himself was anything but a saint, Subra points out.

Yeah, his folks probably just had him baptised on November 1st and gave him the name they found on the Catholic calendar that day…Could have been worse. Other kids in France’s former colonies wound up with names like Epiphany or Armistice.

Here we are—Ognissanti.

Rena fills out the necessary forms with the Auto-Escape employee. He insists on speaking French to her, and she answers him in Italian: under pretence of being deferential, both are in fact showing off. At
last he entrusts her with a red Megane.

‘This, madame,’ he explains unnecessarily, showing her the remote control attached to the key chain, ‘is for locking and unlocking the car doors. Do you understand?’

‘Si, certo, signore,’
she retorts.
‘Non sono nata ieri.’

At her first manœuvre on the Piazza Ognissanti, she manages to stall. On the verge of hysteria, she wonders if she should interpret this superstitiously, as Aziz would. Allah does not want me to rent a car; he does not want me to spend four days traipsing around Tuscany with my father and stepmother. He wants me to obey my husband’s subtly expressed command: head straight for Amerigo Vespucci airport and jump on the first plane for Paris.

On her third try, unfortunately, the car takes off like a fireball and she finds herself hurtling willy-nilly through the sumptuous Renaissance city of Florence, Italy.

Reading glasses perched on her nose, Rena attempts to keep her left eye on the road while darting desperate glances with her right eye at the city map on the passenger seat, where the itinerary to Via Guelfa has been highlighted in green by Auto-Escape’s elegant employee. ‘Because of all the one-way streets,’ the man had told her in his excellent French, ‘you’ll need to make a big detour—like this, see? You get on this ring road north of city centre—be careful, it has three different names—then take a right here, in Via Santa Caterina.’ A piece of cake!

Sweating profusely, zooming along the Viale F. Strozzi at sixty miles per hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic, she hears her mobile ring.

Maybe it’s my father…Maybe they’re in some sort of trouble… Maybe someone really did make off with their precious
sacco
this time…

Digging the phone out of her jeans pocket, she tosses it onto the
seat beside her and the map slides to the floor.

Oh God, it’s Aziz! Heart aflutter, she leans over to make sure it really is his name on the screen; as she does so the car drifts leftward and narrowly escapes a collision.

‘Aziz!’ she says, clamping the telephone between her ear and shoulder.

‘Yes.’

‘Hang on a minute!’

‘What do you mean, hang on? We haven’t spoken for days, and when I finally get you on the phone you tell me to hang on?’

‘Just a second, love, I’m driving…’

She slows down, setting off a cacophony of honking horns behind her. Having cut the connection with Aziz, she spews epithets in French and English at the Fiats and their impatient, aggressive macho drivers, nods perfunctorily at a giant fortress to her left and its probable thousands of dead of whom she knows nothing, and finally, perspiring and palpitating, pulls over to the kerb at the corner of Santa Caterina.

‘Aziz. Sorry, love. Driving alone in a foreign city can be a little nerve-wracking.’

‘Rena, you’ve got to come home.’

‘What?’

‘Drop everything and come back to Paris. Things are getting too serious.’

‘You…I…Aziz…’

‘Stop stammering. Are you trying to make fun of me?’

‘No, of course not…Listen, I just rented a car, my father and stepmother are waiting for me in the street, I can’t just leave them in the lurch…Schroeder’s the one who gave me this week’s holiday…’

‘I’m not talking about Schroeder. Hey, Rena, listen to me, okay? I’ve been up here working for three days and three nights non-stop,
we’re trying to hold things together but the place is on the verge of exploding. The media are already rushing in to do their sensationalist crap. We need intelligent night photos for the magazine. The point of view of someone who has a little background, a minimal understanding of what’s going on, you know what I mean? I can’t put it more clearly than that. Rena, get your ass back here.’

‘No, I…’

‘Okay, forget it.’

Aziz cuts off the connection. As she inches down the Via Santa Caterina, Rena shoves her hat back to keep the hairs on the nape of her neck from bristling.

To her surprise, Simon and Ingrid actually are standing in front of the hotel with their luggage, ready and waiting on time. They load up the car. Ingrid climbs into the back seat and Simon settles in at Rena’s side; it’s almost as if she had dreamed that abominable phone call.

‘I’ll take charge of the maps,’ her father says. ‘I’ll be your guide.’

‘Okay, look…we’re right…here.’

It was your job to show me the way, Daddy. It was your job to help me. You’re the one who taught me to drive.
You
weren’t supposed to get hopelessly lost in life’s dark labyrinths. Lousy Virgil, Daddy! Lousy Virgil…Why so tense now, sitting next to me in the car?

Tell me,
Subra says.

When I was little, Simon would sometimes take me to visit his sister Deborah in the Eastern Townships. When we got onto one of those long straight roads, he’d tuck me between his thighs and let me steer. It thrilled me to think that my tiny hands were controlling the big black Volvo. Every time an oncoming truck pulled out to pass, hurtling straight at us, I’d let go of the steering-wheel and bury my face in my Daddy’s chest. And he’d always make things come out
all right, in a great burst of laughter. I couldn’t help boasting to Lisa about it afterwards. ‘I drove the car all by myself, Mommy!’ Pale with rage, she’d light into Simon for having risked my life.

Where transgression was concerned, Subra says, you were always on your Daddy’s side.

Yeah…sitting between his thighs, mad with excitement. Mad with excitement, sitting between his thighs…

And your father…?

Hmm. I don’t recall his having given my older brother that sort of driving lesson. All I remember is that when Rowan had a minor scooter accident at age sixteen, Simon confiscated his licence for a month.

The sun beats mercilessly down on them. Aziz’s last words ricochet in Rena’s head: ‘Okay, forget it.’

Dear Lord…if I were to lose Aziz…

Tell me,
Subra says.

I fell in love with him the minute I set eyes on him. I’d come to do a reportage in the projects northeast of Paris…One day I walked into a cultural centre and there he was, tutoring a little first-grade kid from Mali. The boy was behind in learning how to read, and Aziz, sitting there next to him, bent over his textbook, was calmly showing him the letters, asking him questions, listening to his answers…I saw the kid staring up in adoration at this lovely, gentle young man and I said to myself, Wow, he’s right. I think the guy’s pretty amazing myself. If only he’d lean over
me
and talk to
me
like that…I didn’t yet know that in addition to everything else Aziz was a poet, a songwriter and a guitarist, that he’d grown up in one of the worst projects in the area, that he was second-born in a family of eight, that his older brother was doing time for dealing, that he’d started working at fifteen, taking night jobs in factories while
attending school during the day, that he had a degree from the Rue du Louvre journalism school…Then one day a miracle happened: he was hired as a reporter by
On the Fringe,
the magazine I freelance for. Our first exchanges took place during accidental meetings in the magazine offices, running into each other in the hall or in front of the coffee machine, but our handshakes rapidly became hugs, our traded jokes traded glances, our hugs kisses, our glances caresses, our coffees lunches…and by the end of the week, the office a hotel room. Though he couldn’t make love to me at first, I was entranced by every square inch of this tall young Arab’s magnificent body—his doe eyes, powerful hands, white teeth, muscular back, firm buttocks, to say nothing of his long, fragile, lovely penis, darker in hue than the thighs it rested on. Never could I have dreamed that this man would have so much to teach me, that I’d teach him to love a woman’s body, and that one miracle would follow another until we found ourselves signing a lease together for a four-room apartment on the Rue des Envierges. Both night birds, we work together in perfect harmony—I’ve never known anything like it! Our marriage means the world to me, but I can’t just throw up everything and fly back to Paris at the drop of a hat…

Subra nods sympathetically. She refrains from pointing out that Aziz generally spends only one or two nights a week at Rue des Envierges, and hasn’t yet come to a decision about moving in with her, let alone making her his wife.

‘You’re not very talkative today, Rena,’ says Ingrid after about an hour’s drive west on the FiPiLi (Firenze, Pisa, Livorno).

‘Sorry.’

To bring them up to date on what is happening in France’s impoverished suburbs these days, she’d have to give them a lecture on French colonial history since 1830. Not having the
strength for that, she holds her tongue.

Ingrid hums to herself to fill the silence.

Obsessed with his responsibility as guide, Simon keeps his eyes glued to the map and sees virtually nothing of the gorgeous landscape it represents.

Lunch break. Across from their charming restaurant at the cliff’s base, the Tuscan hills undulate to infinity. Grapevines, cypress trees, red roofs: the very landscape Leonardo immortalised in his
Giocanda.
Ah, ineffable harmony…

Harmonious, too, are the hues and flavours of the dishes brought by the waiters.

Among the three of them, though: nothing but false notes.

Looking at her stepmother, Rena thinks of her mother and feels anger rising within her. She is furious that it should be too late for fury, too late for anything.

Oh, Lisa! Mona Lisa! Nearly thirty years now since you effaced yourself, like Alice’s Cheshire Cat. Yes, that’s one way of putting it. It’s as if Leonardo had rubbed out the Giocanda’s hair…the contours of her forehead…her cheeks, her eyes, and finally her enigmatic smile…Now all that’s left is the landscape, undulating to infinity.

She gets up and goes to the bathroom, where she changes her tampons and has a good cry. Still sitting on the toilet, she wipes her nose and crotch, then starts flipping through the
Guide bleu
to calm her nerves.

Hmm. Turns out Leonardo had not two but
five
mothers—Caterina, Albiera, Francesca, Margherita, Lucrezia. All but the first (who gave birth to him) were married to his father—successively, of course. Not simultaneously, like Fela Kuti’s wives.

You see? Subra exclaims. The word ‘family’ has always meant
una cosa complicata.

Yeah, you’d think people would stop acting so surprised about it. As if the norm were a stable, stainless-steel nuclear unit. Bullshit. Œdipus grew up with adoptive parents, far from his native Thebes. Kerstin’s son Pierre has only a nodding acquaintance with the man who sired him; my Toussaint, Fabrice’s son, was raised by Alioune, whose own father was polygamous and absent; as for Aziz, his dad died when he was four and he has no memory of him at all. Families have always been a mess, so why am I sitting here crying my eyes out in the toilet of a restaurant in Vinci?

‘It’s nearly three,’ she says, re-entering the dining room dry-eyed and straight-backed, all her fluids under control. ‘Shall we do some visiting?’

Vinci gives them the choice between two museums, the Leonar-diano at the top of the hill and the Utopian Museum at the bottom. Both promise wondrous machines, models and sketches. (A wooden bridge, for instance, built without a single nail! Logs, nothing but logs, criss-crossed into a structure of mutual support—very handy, if you’re an army and you run into a river…)

‘Which do you prefer?’

‘I’ll let Dad decide.’

‘Dad?’

Her father hesitates, compares, skims the brochures, dawdles, temporises, checks out the façades of church and castle, admires the panoramic view from the esplanade.

The minutes go sliding by.

Finally he makes up his mind: ‘Neither…This little book will do just fine.’

The story of his life.

‘Well, then, let’s at least visit his birthplace—it’s called Anchiano. It’s just three kilometres away.’

A winding mountain road…

It was on winding roads such as this, in the Laurentians, that my father later gave me real driving lessons. Teaching me, for instance, to avoid carsickness by moving to the left of the white line as I came out of a leftward curve. I’ve now got that technique down pat; I wish Simon would notice it and say something about the good old days…