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Fiction

Brine, Blood, and Mother’s Milk

By Évelyne Trouillot
Translated from French by Paul Curtis Daw
Évelyne Trouillot gives voice to a madwoman on a turbulent journey.

For the woman with bound hands, a vacant stare, and an impudent bottom, whom I glimpsed at Corail one morning during the season of storms

I’ve turned my skin inside out, but I can still feel the treachery of their gestures and mutterings. Braced against the heaving of the boat, my body rides over the crashing waves. I am capsizing in a sinister darkness where silence no longer exists, and I must patiently reconstruct my solitude. Why does that woman on my right insist on poking her foot in my ribs? Why is that man sneering at me?  And yet I was thinking that I’d frightened them for life.

“Look how her eyes are rolling, you’d think they were black marbles, the eyes of a madwoman.”

“And the way she has of jerking her head around like a wobbly top.”

“Poor thing, her milk has gone into her blood.”

“How foul she smells!”

My madness blocks the words from ever reaching me, and if they sometimes come back to me later, it’s because my folly has learned to protect me from their hurtfulness. I am wrapped in my long red dress, not the vivid red that gratifies the senses, but a dark red that expresses suffering. I feel it flap against my legs, a totem of filth and dust that helps me stop crying. I clamber aboard and steady myself with legs spread apart. My black underwear rides up between my buttocks. I greet this familiar irritation with relief. I refuse to put on a clean pair. The pungent yet sweet odor, subversive yet delicate, reminds me of my own body and its needs, my sexual organs and their torment. The odor proves to me that I am alive.

I am lying flat on the deck amidst arms and legs that startle and flinch from contact. On my cheeks are particles of vomit, but I don’t know whether they come from me or my neighbor, who entangles me with her spasmodic movements. Acrid smells assail me from all directions. I cannot say for sure whether I experience the jolts that convulse the others. I am a wave, a fish out of water, a sinner in my soul. I totter above the prostrate bodies and readjust myself with each new squall. I step on nauseating, oozing waste. I catch a jet of sea spray smack in the face. “Shut up, crazy woman, or I’ll toss you overboard.” My laughter becomes froth and derision.

I hear my own cry swallow up the clamor: a child has fixed his unblinking gaze on me. The passengers’ anxieties converge on the madwoman; it distracts them from the overflowing sea. I persist in stamping my feet and screaming, despite the violent kicks I receive. My guts pour out in a long, unbroken howl. My legs thump against the deck in a tom-tom of distress.

 “Take the child away,” calls a voice that I should recognize. “Take him away, she doesn’t like children.” I still tremble from the child’s furtive attention. My agonized cry takes time to wind itself down.

My hands won’t reach my face, so I’m unable to gouge out my eyes or dispel the images that linger behind my eyelids. I’m sick from my chest to the pit of my stomach. Pain intrudes between me and the world. Lashes from a belt, I hunch my back; blows from a stick, I curl my shoulders; strokes of the whip, I lunge with my legs; blows to the midsection, I cover my crotch with my hands. A thousand fingers swarm over me, thrust themselves into all my intimate parts, mark out my own stations of the cross. My skin is cracked. I see my nightmares emerge arm-in-arm from the fissures. A trickle of blood twists around my thighs, coagulating my dreams and desires. A thread-shaped creature emerges from my navel, entwines his long, white tongue around my middle, and squeezes, squeezes to the point of delirium.

A hand forces a sip of seawater into my mouth. I take pleasure in spewing out all my wounds. My teeth sink themselves greedily into the soft flesh, but it has a salty taste and I spit it out. I have always had a sweet tooth . . . That’s because your skin is sweet: Just like the song, Car ta peau est douce. I don’t stop running my hand over your back, I create and recreate you endlessly. I arrive at my fingertips only to discover that they have deliberately lied to me and that you are nothing but a finely wrought illusion.

I thrash around on the deck, colliding with the fears of normal people, who vomit only their bile and hide the rottenness in their inner depths. All the saliva on my lips has dried up. I’ve kissed no one for a very long time. With open arms I seize my rancor, my violent outbursts at day’s end, my wasted opportunities.

My skin stretches, tightens and splits open. My stomach keeps swelling and expands as far as my eyes. I have to choose: close them or make it burst. The liquid that drains from my breasts spreads a fetid odor around me. I lap it up furiously and force myself to vomit, to reject this degradation. I flop down on my stomach and let myself drop again and again. I bounce on my broken springs.

I advance with long strides into the water. On the waves I rediscover my old afflictions, crumpled and washed out. I can only add them to the absurdity of the day. How beautiful I am, floating amid the seaweed with my arms spread and my hair flying in the wind. Gravity, I salute you from the depths of the abyss. I come toward you with no other jest than the splotches of blood on my eyeballs.

The silence slams me without warning. Everything has stopped except the glare of the sky and the roar of the sea. The normal people have stopped talking. In their terror they have walled themselves in solitude and choked back their vomit. Beyond the silent engine, the sovereign sea rages. A fraction of a second elapses in which all movement becomes an indelible imprint, all thought a prelude to panic.

Within me, suddenly, a great turbulence. I swirl in riotous colors, I flail against the walls of my incoherence. Shreds of pain emanate from my throat and jostle each other. My life reels. Insignificant and useless breath, it remains suspended between two infinities, not knowing where to lodge itself. Each location seems to conceal pitfalls and anguish; nowhere do I dare deposit my vulnerability. My uncertainties reverberate in my core and leave me staggering.

Glancing around frantically, I realize my hands are tied in front of me. My eyes follow the damp and soiled rope, and I suddenly feel its movements at the level of my groin. The rope connects me to a man who seems for the moment to have forgotten my existence. Like the others, he has a panic-stricken look, fixed on the sea.

The momentary lull has ended. The passengers’ uncontrolled terror is noisier than the roar of the waves. Only my lunatic’s status protects me from the collective hysteria. I’ve paid dearly for the right to be different. No one pays the slightest attention to my motionless silhouette. Then, with a quick tug, my captor forces me to sit down. I find myself with my legs stretched out and my back wedged against loaded cartons.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we’ll all be lost at sea.”

“I was right to warn against setting out today!”

“What does the captain say? Where is he? Calm down!”

“Luckily, I know how to swim!”

“Even the madwoman is crying. Look at her!”

My face absorbs the strangeness of my tears. I’ve stopped battling against the remembered images; I let them infiltrate me one by one with their precision and their relentless colors.

Rocky ground beneath my feet. It implants its cool, red tenderness under my skin. My toes are impatient for this perennially fresh encounter between my land and me. I slip off my clothes and plunge into the cold water of the river. My senses attune themselves to yours—you whom I call Lacombe from the name of this river where we have loved each other. Where from the first day my barely lucid eyes gently touched your disarray. That day of sweet rain and poetry, when the back of my neck first met your hand. Scents of wet earth, manure, and rank weeds. Effervescence with no smudges of the pre-dawn darkness.

It’s pitch dark now. Where am I? I can’t identify either these shadowy, faded walls or the unfamiliar voices that ignore my presence and humiliate me. The only one I recognize mortifies me more than the others. My father’s cousin, who through a sense of duty took charge of me after my father’s death, harasses and taunts me.

“You filthy whore! How could you debase yourself like that and ruin our good name? Exactly like your mother twenty years ago, and in spite of the education you were given. You’ll end up the same way she did!”

I’m waiting for you to come, so I don’t answer. I close myself up in my confidence, and my affection for you protects me from all stain. My face huddled against your playful laughter, I see neither the anger nor the hatred. With the ample strides of a giant, I elude time and its nostalgic vapors. Already I have rediscovered your arms. Your breathing surrounds me with communion and peace. I am indifferent to suffering. Only my skin bears the abrasions, but I know that even they will vanish under the caress of your fingers, taking away with them all memory of these days of confinement.

“Your lover has gone away! Scampered off to Miami. Did you think he’d risk staying here? Besides, it seems he arranged everything for his departure a long time ago. You’re on your own, girl.”

Despair is not black. It takes on the color of absence, of a denuded landscape, of a riverbed without gentleness. My feet no longer recognize the rocks. They have lost their smooth surface and jab me with their sharp edges. I search in vain for the scent of wet earth; it has been bottled up somewhere part way between the clouds and happiness. The pleasing aromas of the day before yesterday are relegated to my memory. The soft green leaves scatter in deference to my distress. The water’s duplicity perplexes me: It has lost its blue monochrome and become muddy and stagnant. The Lacombe abandoned, and Lacombe who abandons me to my downfall. I dream of being adrift, of churning and tumultuous water, of surging rivers. Torrents and overflowing banks. Drownings and rescues.

When the first one got on top of me, I just let it happen. Why should I defend myself? I no longer recognize this act as meaningful. I anchor myself in solitude even in the midst of the mechanical and sordid gestures of opening and closing my legs. The period of tranquil living allotted to me is cut short as I am battered with slaps, shoves, upending of thighs and buttocks, assaults by bodies and semen. I’ve half-opened two doors: the spasms of silent rage that twist my guts and the stubborn pride that keeps my eyes deliberately open.

I don’t want to keep count. Can one more body on my stomach give a name to the unimaginable? My cousin appealed to a new voice reeking of tobacco and rum, with long hands and fingers tinged green from leaves and mysterious potions. I swallow the tastes of musty earth, of roots long ago yanked from the ground, of greasy concoctions with timeworn labels. I learn not to vomit so I won’t have to swallow the regurgitated mass again. The pummeling I receive reveals new muscles from parts unknown. I neither move nor speak. No wave holds me back. I am the distant shore, the lifeless backwater.

Why did the pain have to germinate at the core of my inert despair? Why this stroke of additional misery that swells my breasts and widens my hips? No trace of blood for three months, except the drops that seep from my wounds. A gob of spittle soils my stomach. “One more whore’s baby.” My pregnancy has taken away my apathy. In spite of myself, I groan when they maneuver into the positions they find most comfortable and satisfying. Only my eyes stay dry, as if all my tears were on the other side of my heart.

Sometimes my dreams toy with me and beguile me with bursts of laughter and sunlight. Two open arms await me. I just need to stretch out to reach the compass points of their tenderness. I play blindman’s bluff with a shadow that smiles at me. Yon sèl manman, miyon, miyon, yon sèl pitit. (One mother, darling, darling, one baby.) I abandon myself to cotton wads of protective softness. There I tuck away my body, which makes itself very small. Without monstrous stomach, without pain or wounds. Alamiyon ou miyon ! (How cute, you darling!)

The days pass in drab light. My dozing blinds me to my nightmarish belly, and my fear is well-behaved in its somnolence. But waking up is always the same, without relief or forgiveness. I cannot escape this excrescence that mocks me, nor the stench of acid and misery that all my pores exude. I banged my head against the wall to drive away the shame, but it stays with me and grows without restraint.

Once there was motherhood, but nothing is left for me now but my fantasies of caring gestures and a womb in constant evolution… Must I go to the depths of madness to be able to return from it? Will I be able to accept the weight of lucidity on my eyeballs? It kills me to hear the words I murmur, but who can count the number of arms it will take to console me?

The pangs awakened me in the middle of the night, as if I needed arrows to trace the outlines of the horror. From the depths of my oldest fears,the present sufferings foretell future agonies as painful as gaping wounds. I am no more than nerves stripped bare, senses stimulated, a steamroller, torture, a hanging on the gallows. My haunches settle into a hot, seething pool. I no longer know how to scream, silence is my sole dignity. Long, reddish streaks mark my thighs. My fingernails have kept their autonomy and comfort me for the cries I do not voice.

More than ever, I deny the existence of time. Eternity! Would it be the moment when suffering creates its own pit and plunges into it? Or was it the second when pleasure claimed its share of the stars? Will it make a difference if I can say confidently how long my body detached itself from me to contemplate its anguish? Or if I can fix the instant when my skin inverted itself to repel my memory?

They have left me alone with this bundle of flesh born of horror and betrayal. I don’t see it, but I hear its breathing, a precarious wheeze that gives life to my nightmare of fathers and recurrent torments. My self-hatred and bitterness have finally found an object! Without consulting each other, my hands envelop the wailing form under the already soiled sheets and linens, carefully avoiding contact with its skin. They seek out its ungainly head, encircle the quivering neck, and squeeze, squeeze to the point of delirium.

“Finally, the boat has started up again.”

“Thank you, merciful Virgin. The sea is calm now.”

“Look how the madwoman trembles. I’d never have believed she’d be afraid like us.”

Without realizing it, I must have cut the rope that kept me prisoner. I am at the bow watching the sea drift by. It is now sublimely placid, having shown us the full extent of its power. I feel myself drawn by its sharp odor, its assured elegance, its promise of eternal serenity and redemption. I hesitate between sea and blood. My eyes can’t yet linger on the mirror that faces an irreversibly meandering reality. Visions of dislocated limbs await me at the end of my return journey. Is it my anger that keeps me upright, even as I falter beneath the weight of irreparable acts? Or is it instead the scent of fresh earth that brings back to me a story of sweet water and poetry? Despite the call of the sea and its everlasting oblivion, my toes cling to the tender grass.

I need to know where life is hidden.  

© Évelyne Trouillot. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2011 by Paul Curtis Daw. All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

For the woman with bound hands, a vacant stare, and an impudent bottom, whom I glimpsed at Corail one morning during the season of storms

I’ve turned my skin inside out, but I can still feel the treachery of their gestures and mutterings. Braced against the heaving of the boat, my body rides over the crashing waves. I am capsizing in a sinister darkness where silence no longer exists, and I must patiently reconstruct my solitude. Why does that woman on my right insist on poking her foot in my ribs? Why is that man sneering at me?  And yet I was thinking that I’d frightened them for life.

“Look how her eyes are rolling, you’d think they were black marbles, the eyes of a madwoman.”

“And the way she has of jerking her head around like a wobbly top.”

“Poor thing, her milk has gone into her blood.”

“How foul she smells!”

My madness blocks the words from ever reaching me, and if they sometimes come back to me later, it’s because my folly has learned to protect me from their hurtfulness. I am wrapped in my long red dress, not the vivid red that gratifies the senses, but a dark red that expresses suffering. I feel it flap against my legs, a totem of filth and dust that helps me stop crying. I clamber aboard and steady myself with legs spread apart. My black underwear rides up between my buttocks. I greet this familiar irritation with relief. I refuse to put on a clean pair. The pungent yet sweet odor, subversive yet delicate, reminds me of my own body and its needs, my sexual organs and their torment. The odor proves to me that I am alive.

I am lying flat on the deck amidst arms and legs that startle and flinch from contact. On my cheeks are particles of vomit, but I don’t know whether they come from me or my neighbor, who entangles me with her spasmodic movements. Acrid smells assail me from all directions. I cannot say for sure whether I experience the jolts that convulse the others. I am a wave, a fish out of water, a sinner in my soul. I totter above the prostrate bodies and readjust myself with each new squall. I step on nauseating, oozing waste. I catch a jet of sea spray smack in the face. “Shut up, crazy woman, or I’ll toss you overboard.” My laughter becomes froth and derision.

I hear my own cry swallow up the clamor: a child has fixed his unblinking gaze on me. The passengers’ anxieties converge on the madwoman; it distracts them from the overflowing sea. I persist in stamping my feet and screaming, despite the violent kicks I receive. My guts pour out in a long, unbroken howl. My legs thump against the deck in a tom-tom of distress.

 “Take the child away,” calls a voice that I should recognize. “Take him away, she doesn’t like children.” I still tremble from the child’s furtive attention. My agonized cry takes time to wind itself down.

My hands won’t reach my face, so I’m unable to gouge out my eyes or dispel the images that linger behind my eyelids. I’m sick from my chest to the pit of my stomach. Pain intrudes between me and the world. Lashes from a belt, I hunch my back; blows from a stick, I curl my shoulders; strokes of the whip, I lunge with my legs; blows to the midsection, I cover my crotch with my hands. A thousand fingers swarm over me, thrust themselves into all my intimate parts, mark out my own stations of the cross. My skin is cracked. I see my nightmares emerge arm-in-arm from the fissures. A trickle of blood twists around my thighs, coagulating my dreams and desires. A thread-shaped creature emerges from my navel, entwines his long, white tongue around my middle, and squeezes, squeezes to the point of delirium.

A hand forces a sip of seawater into my mouth. I take pleasure in spewing out all my wounds. My teeth sink themselves greedily into the soft flesh, but it has a salty taste and I spit it out. I have always had a sweet tooth . . . That’s because your skin is sweet: Just like the song, Car ta peau est douce. I don’t stop running my hand over your back, I create and recreate you endlessly. I arrive at my fingertips only to discover that they have deliberately lied to me and that you are nothing but a finely wrought illusion.

I thrash around on the deck, colliding with the fears of normal people, who vomit only their bile and hide the rottenness in their inner depths. All the saliva on my lips has dried up. I’ve kissed no one for a very long time. With open arms I seize my rancor, my violent outbursts at day’s end, my wasted opportunities.

My skin stretches, tightens and splits open. My stomach keeps swelling and expands as far as my eyes. I have to choose: close them or make it burst. The liquid that drains from my breasts spreads a fetid odor around me. I lap it up furiously and force myself to vomit, to reject this degradation. I flop down on my stomach and let myself drop again and again. I bounce on my broken springs.

I advance with long strides into the water. On the waves I rediscover my old afflictions, crumpled and washed out. I can only add them to the absurdity of the day. How beautiful I am, floating amid the seaweed with my arms spread and my hair flying in the wind. Gravity, I salute you from the depths of the abyss. I come toward you with no other jest than the splotches of blood on my eyeballs.

The silence slams me without warning. Everything has stopped except the glare of the sky and the roar of the sea. The normal people have stopped talking. In their terror they have walled themselves in solitude and choked back their vomit. Beyond the silent engine, the sovereign sea rages. A fraction of a second elapses in which all movement becomes an indelible imprint, all thought a prelude to panic.

Within me, suddenly, a great turbulence. I swirl in riotous colors, I flail against the walls of my incoherence. Shreds of pain emanate from my throat and jostle each other. My life reels. Insignificant and useless breath, it remains suspended between two infinities, not knowing where to lodge itself. Each location seems to conceal pitfalls and anguish; nowhere do I dare deposit my vulnerability. My uncertainties reverberate in my core and leave me staggering.

Glancing around frantically, I realize my hands are tied in front of me. My eyes follow the damp and soiled rope, and I suddenly feel its movements at the level of my groin. The rope connects me to a man who seems for the moment to have forgotten my existence. Like the others, he has a panic-stricken look, fixed on the sea.

The momentary lull has ended. The passengers’ uncontrolled terror is noisier than the roar of the waves. Only my lunatic’s status protects me from the collective hysteria. I’ve paid dearly for the right to be different. No one pays the slightest attention to my motionless silhouette. Then, with a quick tug, my captor forces me to sit down. I find myself with my legs stretched out and my back wedged against loaded cartons.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we’ll all be lost at sea.”

“I was right to warn against setting out today!”

“What does the captain say? Where is he? Calm down!”

“Luckily, I know how to swim!”

“Even the madwoman is crying. Look at her!”

My face absorbs the strangeness of my tears. I’ve stopped battling against the remembered images; I let them infiltrate me one by one with their precision and their relentless colors.

Rocky ground beneath my feet. It implants its cool, red tenderness under my skin. My toes are impatient for this perennially fresh encounter between my land and me. I slip off my clothes and plunge into the cold water of the river. My senses attune themselves to yours—you whom I call Lacombe from the name of this river where we have loved each other. Where from the first day my barely lucid eyes gently touched your disarray. That day of sweet rain and poetry, when the back of my neck first met your hand. Scents of wet earth, manure, and rank weeds. Effervescence with no smudges of the pre-dawn darkness.

It’s pitch dark now. Where am I? I can’t identify either these shadowy, faded walls or the unfamiliar voices that ignore my presence and humiliate me. The only one I recognize mortifies me more than the others. My father’s cousin, who through a sense of duty took charge of me after my father’s death, harasses and taunts me.

“You filthy whore! How could you debase yourself like that and ruin our good name? Exactly like your mother twenty years ago, and in spite of the education you were given. You’ll end up the same way she did!”

I’m waiting for you to come, so I don’t answer. I close myself up in my confidence, and my affection for you protects me from all stain. My face huddled against your playful laughter, I see neither the anger nor the hatred. With the ample strides of a giant, I elude time and its nostalgic vapors. Already I have rediscovered your arms. Your breathing surrounds me with communion and peace. I am indifferent to suffering. Only my skin bears the abrasions, but I know that even they will vanish under the caress of your fingers, taking away with them all memory of these days of confinement.

“Your lover has gone away! Scampered off to Miami. Did you think he’d risk staying here? Besides, it seems he arranged everything for his departure a long time ago. You’re on your own, girl.”

Despair is not black. It takes on the color of absence, of a denuded landscape, of a riverbed without gentleness. My feet no longer recognize the rocks. They have lost their smooth surface and jab me with their sharp edges. I search in vain for the scent of wet earth; it has been bottled up somewhere part way between the clouds and happiness. The pleasing aromas of the day before yesterday are relegated to my memory. The soft green leaves scatter in deference to my distress. The water’s duplicity perplexes me: It has lost its blue monochrome and become muddy and stagnant. The Lacombe abandoned, and Lacombe who abandons me to my downfall. I dream of being adrift, of churning and tumultuous water, of surging rivers. Torrents and overflowing banks. Drownings and rescues.

When the first one got on top of me, I just let it happen. Why should I defend myself? I no longer recognize this act as meaningful. I anchor myself in solitude even in the midst of the mechanical and sordid gestures of opening and closing my legs. The period of tranquil living allotted to me is cut short as I am battered with slaps, shoves, upending of thighs and buttocks, assaults by bodies and semen. I’ve half-opened two doors: the spasms of silent rage that twist my guts and the stubborn pride that keeps my eyes deliberately open.

I don’t want to keep count. Can one more body on my stomach give a name to the unimaginable? My cousin appealed to a new voice reeking of tobacco and rum, with long hands and fingers tinged green from leaves and mysterious potions. I swallow the tastes of musty earth, of roots long ago yanked from the ground, of greasy concoctions with timeworn labels. I learn not to vomit so I won’t have to swallow the regurgitated mass again. The pummeling I receive reveals new muscles from parts unknown. I neither move nor speak. No wave holds me back. I am the distant shore, the lifeless backwater.

Why did the pain have to germinate at the core of my inert despair? Why this stroke of additional misery that swells my breasts and widens my hips? No trace of blood for three months, except the drops that seep from my wounds. A gob of spittle soils my stomach. “One more whore’s baby.” My pregnancy has taken away my apathy. In spite of myself, I groan when they maneuver into the positions they find most comfortable and satisfying. Only my eyes stay dry, as if all my tears were on the other side of my heart.

Sometimes my dreams toy with me and beguile me with bursts of laughter and sunlight. Two open arms await me. I just need to stretch out to reach the compass points of their tenderness. I play blindman’s bluff with a shadow that smiles at me. Yon sèl manman, miyon, miyon, yon sèl pitit. (One mother, darling, darling, one baby.) I abandon myself to cotton wads of protective softness. There I tuck away my body, which makes itself very small. Without monstrous stomach, without pain or wounds. Alamiyon ou miyon ! (How cute, you darling!)

The days pass in drab light. My dozing blinds me to my nightmarish belly, and my fear is well-behaved in its somnolence. But waking up is always the same, without relief or forgiveness. I cannot escape this excrescence that mocks me, nor the stench of acid and misery that all my pores exude. I banged my head against the wall to drive away the shame, but it stays with me and grows without restraint.

Once there was motherhood, but nothing is left for me now but my fantasies of caring gestures and a womb in constant evolution… Must I go to the depths of madness to be able to return from it? Will I be able to accept the weight of lucidity on my eyeballs? It kills me to hear the words I murmur, but who can count the number of arms it will take to console me?

The pangs awakened me in the middle of the night, as if I needed arrows to trace the outlines of the horror. From the depths of my oldest fears,the present sufferings foretell future agonies as painful as gaping wounds. I am no more than nerves stripped bare, senses stimulated, a steamroller, torture, a hanging on the gallows. My haunches settle into a hot, seething pool. I no longer know how to scream, silence is my sole dignity. Long, reddish streaks mark my thighs. My fingernails have kept their autonomy and comfort me for the cries I do not voice.

More than ever, I deny the existence of time. Eternity! Would it be the moment when suffering creates its own pit and plunges into it? Or was it the second when pleasure claimed its share of the stars? Will it make a difference if I can say confidently how long my body detached itself from me to contemplate its anguish? Or if I can fix the instant when my skin inverted itself to repel my memory?

They have left me alone with this bundle of flesh born of horror and betrayal. I don’t see it, but I hear its breathing, a precarious wheeze that gives life to my nightmare of fathers and recurrent torments. My self-hatred and bitterness have finally found an object! Without consulting each other, my hands envelop the wailing form under the already soiled sheets and linens, carefully avoiding contact with its skin. They seek out its ungainly head, encircle the quivering neck, and squeeze, squeeze to the point of delirium.

“Finally, the boat has started up again.”

“Thank you, merciful Virgin. The sea is calm now.”

“Look how the madwoman trembles. I’d never have believed she’d be afraid like us.”

Without realizing it, I must have cut the rope that kept me prisoner. I am at the bow watching the sea drift by. It is now sublimely placid, having shown us the full extent of its power. I feel myself drawn by its sharp odor, its assured elegance, its promise of eternal serenity and redemption. I hesitate between sea and blood. My eyes can’t yet linger on the mirror that faces an irreversibly meandering reality. Visions of dislocated limbs await me at the end of my return journey. Is it my anger that keeps me upright, even as I falter beneath the weight of irreparable acts? Or is it instead the scent of fresh earth that brings back to me a story of sweet water and poetry? Despite the call of the sea and its everlasting oblivion, my toes cling to the tender grass.

I need to know where life is hidden.  

La mer, entre lait et sang

Pour cette femme aux yeux perdus et aux mains liées, à la croupe insolente, que j’ai entrevue à Corail, un matin de grand Nordé.

J’ai tourné ma peau à l’envers mais je peux toujours sentir la perfidie des gestes et des murmures. Elle survole le bruit des vagues et s’arc-boute aux secousses du bateau. Je sombre dans une obscurité pernicieuse où le silence n’existe plus, où je dois patiemment recréer ma solitude. Pourquoi s’obstine-t-elle, cette femme a ma droite, à pousser son pied dans mes côtes ? Et cet homme qui me regarde en ricanant ? Je pensais pourtant leur avoir fait peur à jamais.

– Regarde ses yeux comme ils roulent on dirait des billes noires, des yeux de folle ».

– Et cette façon qu’elle a de tourne la tête comme une toupie désaxée »

– La pauvre, son lait est passé dans son sang.

– Ce qu’elle sent mauvais ! »

 

Ma démence filtre les mots avant même qu’ils arrivent jusqu’à moi et s’ils me reviennent quelquefois c’est qu’elle a su comment me protéger de leur méchanceté. Je me suis enveloppée dans ma longue robe rouge, non pas ce rouge vif qui courtise le sans, mais un rouge sombre qui respire la douleur. Je la sens flotter contre mes jambes, talisman de crasse et de poussière qui arrête mes larmes. Je grimpe pour monter à bord, je m’accroche, écarte les jambes. Ma culotte noire s’infiltre entre mes fesses. J’accueille avec soulagement cette irritation familière. Je refuse d’en mettre une autre. Son odeur forte et douce, subversive et tendre, me rappelle mon corps et ses besoins, mon sexe et sa tourmente. Son odeur me certifie que je suis vivante.

Je suis couchée à même le sol parmi des bras et des jambes qui sursautent et se crispent. J’ai sur les joues des traces de vomissures mais j’ignore si elles me viennent de ma voisine qui m’enlace de ses mouvements spasmodiques. Des effluves acidulés m’arrivent de partout. Je ne peux dire avec certitude si je ressens les soubresauts qui secouent les autres. Je suis vague, poisson sans eau et pêcheuse dans l’âme. J’équilibre par-dessus les corps prostrés, je jongle avec chaque nouvelle bourrasque. Je déambule sur les déchets nauséabonds, dégoulinants. Je reçois un jet de crachat de mer en plein visage. « Tais-toi, la folle, ou je te fous à l’eau ». Mon rire devient écumes et dérision.

J’entends mon cri dévorer le vacarme : un enfant a plongé en moi son regard immobile. Toutes les angoisses convergent vers la folle pour oublier les débordements de la mer. Je n’arrête pas de trépigner et de crier malgré la violence des coups de pied. Mes tripes s’échappent de moi en un long hurlement ininterrompu. Mes jambes frappent sourdement le plancher, tam tam détresse.

– Enlevez l’enfant, crie une voix que je devrais reconnaître. « Enlevez l’enfant, elle n’aime pas les enfants ». Je tremble encore de ce contact furtif. En moi, mon cri prend son temps pour rogner son agonie.

Mes mains n’arrivent pas jusqu’à mon visage. Je ne peux donc pas crever mes yeux ni enlever les images qui persistent au-dedans des paupières. J’ai mal depuis les seins jusqu’au bas ventre. La douleur s’interpose entre le monde et moi. Coups de ceinturons, mon dos se plie, coups de bâton, mes épaules se cabrent, coups de lanières, mes jambes s’élancent, coups de reins, mes mains protègent mon sexe. Mille doigts fourmillent en moi, s’introduisent dans tous mes interdits, griffonnent mes chemins de croix. Ma peau s’est lézardée. À travers les fissures, je vois sortir mes cauchemars bras dessus bras dessous. Mon sang s’entortille autour de mes cuisses, il coagule mes rêves et mes envies. Un être filiforme me sort du nombril, il déroule sa langue longue et blanche tout autour de mon ventre et serre serre jusqu’à la déraison.

Une main force une gorgée d’eau de mer dans ma bouche. Je prends plaisir à cracher toutes mes déchirures. Mes dents s’enfoncent avec délices dans cette chair mais elle a un goût salé et je recrache. J’ai toujours eu un faible pour le sucré. Car ta peau est douce… Je n’arrête pas de passer mes doigts sur ton dos, je te crée et te recrée inlassablement. J’arrive au bout de mes paumes seulement pour découvrir qu’elles m’avaient sciemment menti et que n’es que filigrane.

Je me roule sur le pont, me heurte aux peurs des gens normaux qui ne vomissent que leur bile et gardent leurs pourritures au fin fond de leur être. Mes lèvres se dessèchent de toute sève. Je n’embrasse plus depuis bien longtemps. J’attrape a bras ouverts mes rancoeurs, mes deblozay de fin de jour, mes occasions ratées.

Ma peau s’étire, se tend et se fend. Mon ventre n’arrête pas de grossir et de monter jusqu’à mes yeux. Je n’ai qu’un choix : les fermer ou le crever. Le liquide qui sort de mes seins répand autour de moi une odeur fétide. Je l’éponge rageusement avec ma langue et je me force à vomir, à rejeter cette déchéance. Je me mets sur le ventre et je me laisse tomber et retomber. Je rebondis sur mes ressorts cassés.

J’avance à grands pas dans l’eau. Sur les vagues, je retrouve mes vieilles angoisses fripées et délavées. Je ne peux que les ajouter à l’absurdité du jour. Que je suis belle flottant parmi les algues, les bras ouverts, cheveux au vent. Pesanteur, je te salue du fond de l’abysse. Je viens vers toi sans autre escapade que le reflet du sang dans mes prunelles.

Le silence me gifle sans préambule. Tout s’est arrêté sauf l’éclat du ciel et le bruit de la mer. Les gens normaux se sont tus. Face à l’épouvante, ils ont cloisonné leurs solitudes et on ravalé leurs vomissures. Souveraine, la mer fait rage devant le silence du moteur. Une parcelle de seconde où tout geste devient empreinte indélébile, toute pensée prélude à la panique.

En moi, soudain, un grand fracas. Je tourbillonne de couleurs débridées, je rue dans les parois de mon incohérence. J’entends sortir de ma gorge des lambeaux de douleur qui se frappent les uns aux autres. Ma vie tremble. Souffle insignifiant et inutile, elle reste suspendue entre deux infinités, ne sachant où se placer. Chaque espace me semble cacher des pièges et des détresses, je n’ose y déposer ma vulnérabilité. Mes incertitudes rebondissent au creux de moi et me laissent chancelante.

Je tourne mes yeux de folle à l’endroit et me rend compte que mes mains sont nouées devant moi. Du regard je suis la corde mouillée et sale dont je sens soudain les mouvements au niveau de l’aine. Elle me rattache à un homme qui pour l’instant semble avoir oublié mon existence. Comme les autres, il a le regard affolé, fixé sur la mer.

La seconde de grâce est terminée. Leur peur sans amarres est plus bruyante que le bruit des vagues. Seul mon statut de folle me protège encore de l’hystérie collective. J’ai payé cher le droit d’être singulière. Nul ne prête attention a ma silhouette immobile. Puis, d’un coup sec, mon geôlier me force à m’asseoir, je me retrouve les deux jambes allongées, le dos coincé contre des cartons remplis.

– Jésus, Marie, Joseph, nous allons tous mourir en mer.

– J’avais bien dit de ne pas prendre la mer aujourd’hui !

– Que dit le capitaine ? Où est-il ? Calmez-vous !

– Heureusement que je sais nager !

– Même la folle pleure. Regardez-la !

Mon visage absorbe l’étrangeté de mes larmes. J’ai cessé de me battre avec les images, je les laisse m’envahir une à une avec leur précision et leurs couleurs irrémédiables.

La terre rocaille sous mes pieds. Elle infiltre sous ma peau sa tendresse rouge et fraîche. Mes orteils s’impatientent de cette rencontre toujours nouvelle entre ma terre et moi. Je laisse tomber mes vêtements et je rentre dans l’eau froide de la rivière. Lentement avec une jouissance jamais diminuée, mon corps s’adapte à la température de l’eau. Mes sens s’accordent aux tiens. Toi que je nomme Lacombe du nom de cette rivière où nous nous sommes aimés. Où mes yeux à peine lucides ont dès le premier jour effleuré ton émoi. Ce jour de pluie d’eau douce et de poésie, où ma nuque a rencontré ta main. Odeurs de terre mouillée, de fumier et d’herbes folles. Effervescence sans bavures du crépuscule au douvanjour.

Obscurité étanche. Où suis-je ? Je n’identifie pas ces murs d’ombre et de flétrissures, ces voix inconnues qui ignorent ma présence et m’humilient. La seule qui me soit familière me mortifie plus que les autres. Ce cousin de ma mère qui par sens du devoir m’a pris en charge depuis sa mort me harcèle et me provoque.

« Putain ! Comment as-tu pu ainsi t’avilir et salir notre nom ? Exactement comme ta mère vingt ans avant, malgré l’éducation que tu as reçue. Comme ta mère, tu finiras ! »

J’attends que tu viennes et je ne réponds pas. Je m’enferme dans ma confiance et ma tendresse me protège de toute souillure. Le visage blotti contre ton rire gouailleur, je ne vois ni la colère ni la hargne. À grands pas de géant je défis le temps et son haleine nostalgique. Déjà j’ai retrouvé tes bras. Ton souffle m’entoure de complicité et de paix. La douleur m’indiffère. Seule ma peau garde les traces des écorchures, mais je sais qu’elles partiront sous l’effleurement de tes doigts. Emportant avec elles tout souvenir de ces jours d’enfermement.

« Il est parti, ton amoureux ! Parti dans un canter pour Miami. Tu penses qu’il allait se risquer à rester ici. D’ailleurs, il parait qu’il avait déjà tout arrangé pour son départ depuis bien longtemps. Tu es seule, ma fille ! »

Le désespoir n’est pas noir. Il prend couleur de l’absence, couleur de terre dénudée, de rivière sans douceur. Mes pieds ne reconnaissent plus les rochers, ils ont perdu leur surface polie pour m’agresser de leurs aspérités. Je cherche en vain l’odeur de terre mouillée, elle est restée quelque part accrochée à mi-chemin des nuages et du bonheur. Senteurs d’avant-hier consignées dans ma mémoire. Le vert tendre des feuilles s’éparpille au gré de ma détresse. La duplicité de l’eau me déroute, elle a perdu son camaïeu bleu et est devenue boueuse et stagnante. Lacombe abandonnée, Lacombe qui m’abandonne à notre déchéance. Je rêve de dérives, d’eau bouillonneuse et tumultueuse, de rivières en colère. Débordements et crues. Noyades et délivrances.

Je me laisse faire quand le premier, il se couche sur moi. Pourquoi me défendrais-je ? Je ne reconnais plus cet acte comme signifiant. Je m’accroche à la solitude même au milieu des gestes mécaniques et crasseux qui ouvrent et referment mes jambes. Ma ration d’oiseaux heureux diminue à coups de taloches, de bousculades, de renversement de cuisses et de fesses, d’agressions de corps et de spermes. Je n’ai entrouvert que deux portes : la colère qui tord mes entrailles de spasmes silencieux et ma fierté tenace qui garde mes yeux délibérément ouverts.

Je ne veux pas compter. Un corps de plus sur mon ventre, peut-il faire nommer l’inconcevable ? Mon cousin a fait appel à une nouvelle voix senteur de tabac et de tafia, à de longues mains aux doigts verts de feuilles et de potions inconnues. J’avale des odeurs de terre scellée, des racines ayant depuis bien longtemps coupé contact avec le sol, des huiles aux papiers d’identité jaunie. J’ai appris à ne pas vomir pou ne pas avoir à ravaler cet amas régurgité. Mes muscles se découvrent des espaces inconnus sous les martèlements que je reçois. Sans bouger, sans parler. Aucune vague ne me retient. Je suis rives absentes, insensibles remous.

Pourquoi a-t-il fallu qu’au creux de mon inerte désespérance, la douleur prenne vie ? Pourquoi ce bris de détresse supplémentaire qui gonfle mes seins et alourdit mes hanches ? Aucune trace de sang depuis trois mois, sauf les gouttes qui tombent de mes blessures. Un jet de crachat salit mon ventre. « Un enfant de pute de plus ». Ma grossesse m’a dépouillée de mon apathie. Malgré moi, je gémis quand ils cherchent des positions qui leur seraient satisfaisantes et confortables. Seuls mes yeux restent secs comme si toutes mes larmes étaient de l’autre côté de mon cœur.

Quelquefois, mes rêves se jouent de moi et m’ensorcellent dans des éclats de rire et de soleil. Deux bras ouverts m’attendent. Je n’ai qu’à me pencher pour arriver aux quatre points cardinaux de leur tendresse. Je joue à colin-maillard avec une ombre qui me sourit. Yon sèl manman, miyon, miyon, yon sèl pitit. Je m’abandonne aux ouates de douceur qui me protègent, j’y enfouis mon corps qui se fait tout petit. Sans ventre monstrueux, sans douleur, sans blessures. Ala miyon ou miyon !

Les jours se passent en clair-obscur. Mon sommeil me cache mon ventre cauchemardesque et ma peur est sage dans sa somnolence. Mais les réveils sont tous pareils, sans douceur ni pardon. Je ne peux échapper à cette excroissance qui me nargue, à ces relents d’acides et de détresses qui remplissent tous mes pores. J’ai cogné ma tête contre le mur pour que se dégonfle cette infamie mais elle ne me quitte pas et s’étale sans pudeur.

Il était une fois la mère mais il ne me reste que mes songes de gestes tendres et un ventre en devenir… Faut-il que j’aille jusqu’au bout de la démence pour pouvoir en revenir ? Pourrai-je accepter le poids de la lucidité sur mes pupilles ? Je murmure des mots que je meure d’entendre mais qui pourra compter le nombre de bras qu’il faudrait pour me consoler?

La douleur m’a réveillée au milieu de la nuit comme s’il me fallait des flèches pour délimiter l’horreur. Du fond de mes peurs les plus anciennes, les présentes déchirures annoncent des angoisses au goût de plaies béantes. Je ne suis plus que nerfs dénudés, papilles catalysées, rouleau compresseur, supplice et pendaison. Mes hanches s’enfoncent dans une mare chaude et vivante. Je ne sais plus hurler, le silence est ma seule dignité. De longues traînées rougeâtres marquent mes cuisses. Mes ongles ont gardé leur autonomie et me soulagent de ces cris que je ne pousse pas.

Plus que jamais, je nie l’existence du temps. Eternité ! Serait-ce cette minute où la douleur crée son propre gouffre et s’y jette. Ou alors était-ce cette seconde où le plaisir a réclamé sa part d’étoiles ? Fera-t-il une différence si je dis avec certitude pendant combien d’heures mon corps se détacha de moi pour contempler son agonie ? A quel instant ma peau se tourna à l’envers de ma mémoire?

Ils m’ont laissé seule avec cet amas de chair née de l’horreur ou de la trahison. Je ne le vois pas mais j’entends son souffle, un vagissement incertain qui donne vie à mon cauchemar de pères et d’angoisses multiples. Enfin circonscrites ma haine et mes rancoeurs ! Sans se concerter, mes mains refusant tout contact direct, recouvrent la forme gémissante sous des draps et linges déjà souillés. Elles cherchent la tête maladroite, encerclent le cou branlant et elles serrent, serrent jusqu’à la déraison.

– Enfin, le bateau est reparti.

– Merci Vierge miséricorde ! La mer s’est calmée.

– Regardez la folle comme elle tremble. Je n’aurais jamais cru qu’elle aurait eu peur comme nous.

J’ai du sans le savoir couper la corde qui me tenait prisonnière. Je suis à l’avant du bateau et regarde défiler la mer. Elle demeure superbe dans son accalmie, nous ayant signifié la pleine étendue de sa puissance. Je me sens attirée par son odeur poignante, son élégance sure, sa promesse de sérénité éternelle et de rédemption. Je vacille entre mer et sang. Mes yeux n’osent encore s’attarder sur la deuxième face du miroir et ses méandres irréversibles. Des visions de membres disloqués m’attendent au bout de mon retour. Est-ce ma colère qui me tient debout alors même que je tremble face au poids des actes irréparables ? Ou plutôt est-ce cette odeur de terre fraîche qui me revient d’une histoire d’eau douce et de poésie ? Malgré l’appel de la mer et de ses oublis éternels, mes orteils s’accrochent aux herbes tendres.

Il me faut savoir où s’est cachée la vie.

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