Now, Now, Louison Read online

  Now, Now, Louison

  Copyright © 2016 by Jean Frémon

  Translation copyright © 2019 by Cole Swensen

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Originally published in French as Calme-toi, Lison by Éditions P.O.L.

  “Louise Bourgeois as I Knew Her” originally appeared in Granta and is published here with their kind permission.

  First published as New Directions Paperbook 1440 in 2019

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Frémon, Jean, 1946– author. | Swensen, Cole, 1955– translator.

  Title: Now, now, Louison / Jean Frémon ; translated by Cole Swensen.

  Other titles: Calme-toi, Lison. English

  Description: New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018047655 (print) | LCCN 2018051181 (ebook) | isbn 9780811228534 (ebook) | isbn 9780811228527 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: lcsh: Bourgeois, Louise, 1911–2010—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PQ2666.R37 (ebook) | LCC PQ2666.R37 C3513 2018 (print) | DDC 843/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047655

  eISBN: 9780811228534

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

  Now, Now, Louison

  You’ve thrown open all the windows and doors, just hoping to get a bit of air. Not a chance. Not a breath. The city is lethargic. Stunned by the heat. These days in the nice parts of town, they have air conditioning. Did you say heat? Just push a little button, and the problem is solved. But where you live, it’s still the good old days, and you make do with what you’ve got. You moved heaven and earth in the attic to dig out an old fan that you knew had been there for years. Just think — it came from Choisy; you brought it over with everything else after Father’s death. You took everything, everything that was left, everything that no one else — siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews — wanted. Take whatever you want — and I’ll take the rest.

  They took the furniture, the carpets, the clocks, and everything that still worked, and you took the relics, the souvenirs, the knickknacks, the photos — big albums with thick pages interleaved with sheets of glassine with the family photographs carefully mounted and labeled in the beautiful copperplate that Mother had learned at the local school — as well as shoeboxes full of dog-eared snapshots and negatives, people known, unknown, and in between, gone, erased, some with vaguely familiar faces but elusive names, all long gone, long past, even rolls of film never developed — and you took the old 78s, Tino Rossi, Jean Sablon, ♩♫ You who pass and don’t even see me ♫♩ . . . reels of film, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, all of you on vacation, on Sundays, at Luchon, at Le Cannet, Father’s pebble collection (in another shoebox), the dresses Mother had made at Poiret’s, account books, old papers, rags, dishcloths, handkerchiefs embroidered with everyone’s initials, lace camisoles, tablecloths, curtains, buttons, half-empty perfume bottles, scarves, shawls, furs, what remained of the tapestries, including the scraps half-devoured by moths, hats, pipes, canes . . . and the electric fan. To bring all these useless things — a veritable flea market — all the way across the ocean — quelle idée! But that’s how it is. A way of feeling less alone.

  And, of course, the fan didn’t work. You spent a solid hour cleaning it up with rubbing alcohol, picturing Father in the living room at Choisy during a heat wave, in his waistcoat, his collar unbuttoned, smoking his cigar in the humming breeze of this electric propeller, declaring in his satisfied voice, “Nothing, my dear Lucien, is more refreshing than a slaveling with a palm branch.”

  You never knew who Lucien was. An imaginary interlocutor. A way of ignoring us, of diminishing us, no matter what we did to try to shine in his eyes, or simply to exist — we didn’t even achieve Lucien’s status! You hated Lucien, you prayed for the death of Lucien, you cast spells upon Lucien, you stuck needles in a little doll called Lucien, which you’d carved yourself one Sunday from a piece of wood in the tapestry workshop after all the workers had gone.

  You didn’t even know what a slaveling was, but you didn’t ask yourself. It could only be a little slave, a small black person in puffy trousers, turned-up slippers, and a turban, especially hauled out of his indigenous distance in order to have the honor of slowly and evenly waving an ostrich-feather fan over the idly languishing Queen of Egypt. You liked the word, and you liked the thing, and the Queen of Egypt suited you perfectly well.

  You soon appointed Maurice and Jacques as your personal slavelings, exclusively dedicated to your service. Doing everything they could to fit into their new family, they played their role better than even you had imagined. Every morning, you gave your instructions for the day — what they did and did not have the right to do, their chores, and their rewards. And you abused your slavelings, treated them like dirt. You took string and tied them up to a little cart meant to be pulled by a pony or even a goat, in which you then took your seat and set off for interminable tours of the garden, and not without liberally whipping them with a string tied to a stick of bamboo. En route, you kept up their energy by a vigorous flood of insults. Then you requisitioned their portion of dessert and would not relinquish it until you had been satisfied with their services or had received in exchange a ridiculous list of impossible promises. You ordered them to be silent and reserved around your parents so that they would not attract either their attention or their affection. And you missed no occasion to remind them that they were only there through the grand generosity of your family, that they were nothing but little orphans, two abandoned children, two penniless waifs, two intruders.

  You had heard your parents talking about “taking in those two poor children,” which you had immediately understood as “two children who are very poor.” You constantly reminded them that they were very lucky that you, their cousin, happened to be on hand — as well as your brother and sister, also their cousins, and your father and mother — when their father, Uncle Désiré, that hothead, couldn’t think of anything better to do than get himself killed in the very first week of the Great War. Upon which, their mother, that poor Madeleine — she was never called anything but that poor Madeleine ever again — overwhelmed by grief, took refuge in a silent prostration from which she never emerged.

  We went to see her once a week in Chatillon, in a huge white house at the far end of a park. The same one in which my poor Pierre finished his days. The nurses wore white shirts, and the patients wore gray. An absolutely sepulchral gloom reigned. From time to time, anguished cries broke the silence. Gradually our visits became more and more intermittent. Father said that Madeleine no longer recognized her children, that she was off in her own world, and that it was better not to trouble her.

  OK, so is it going to work now — that fan? You’d have done better just to go buy a new one from the supermarket, though in this weather, there can’t be a single fan left unsold in the entire state of New York. Father had, in fact, a deep and abiding love for Désiré. He was his best friend. ♩♫ Avoir un bon copain, c’est ce qu’il y a de meilleur au mon-on-on-de, oui car un bon copain, c’est plus fidèle qu’une blon-on-on-de. ♫♩ You always thought that Lucien was Désiré, Désiré’s ghost, Désiré’s avatar. A way for Father t
o continue the conversation, in a casual way, with the brother that he missed so much. Désiré had been three years older than Father, but curiously, it was he who was the child. Father felt a big brother’s responsibility for him. You still have a photograph of the two of them together; it must date from early 1914. Désiré is in the army, perhaps just drafted, about to set off for the war, free and easy; they’ve been celebrating. They’re sitting next to each other in a carriage. Father has a white rose in his lapel and his arm around Désiré’s shoulder, his head leaning tenderly toward his brother, their temples touching. Unis, main dans la main. Touching is precisely the word for it. Always a tad theatrical, dear Father adopts an elegant pose.

  But the fan — you’ve already had to change the plug once — and you can’t even plug it in anywhere here without an adapter. The prongs of the male part — the two little phalluses of the plug — are cylindrical in Europe and flat here. It requires an adapter.

  Actually, two. An adapter between here and there and then another one between there and here. And adapters belong to that exasperating category of things that one always loses and always forgets to pack. We need to add another category to Borges’s Chinese encyclopedia: things one always loses. Ever notice that I always say chez nous for here and chez vous for there? Even though my place was there and not here, but it all tends to get turned around. That’s what exile’s like; it rends apart. Apart from here and apart from there. Apart from everything. Advice to exiles, refugees, expats: take an electric adapter or two along with you.

  You had to take the plug from the bedside lamp in Robert’s room, which no one had been in for years, strip down the wire of the fan from Choisy and hook it up to the plug from Robert’s lamp, which would no longer be lighting his late-night reading. Robert, the late-night reader. When did he sleep? Maybe he slept while reading. You loved to think of him reading, you sleeping, or not sleeping. We left the doors to our rooms open. The light from the lamp, the sound of the turning pages, his calm presence, which would have disturbed you if he’d been lying next to you, instead calmed you. A night-light, like one left on by a mother. Robert was a mother. For a long time after his death, the first thing you did when you went up to bed was to turn on his bedside lamp, that presence in the next room . . . the idea of mutilating it now was rather upsetting. But a temporary mutilation; you like repairing things, fixing things; you like picking up the pieces, and you always give back what you have taken.

  And now, Robert’s two little flat phalluses on the end of Daddy’s fan. Hello, Sigmund! And now the thing finally works. ♩♫ Mon Dieu quel bonheur, mon Dieu quel bonheur, d’avoir un mari bricoleur. ♫♩ It takes off with a horrible rattle of clashing metal that barely budges the turgid air. You call that working?

  What do you do with your life? — Nothing, make a little breeze, that’s all. I’m a fan, I just move the air around a bit . . . — And how do you do that? — My spiral, you see, is capable of propulsion — it “propels” — and perfectly — just watch! It’s like an airplane, you know, those airplanes that go to Paris. Of course, they no longer have propellers these days, I know — I’m not completely senile — I’m talking about years ago. It was such an adventure. You love propellers — their spirals; it’s a pure form, and you love pure forms.

  When Brancusi attended an early aviation show with Marcel Duchamp in 1912, the guru walked around a steel propeller suspended from the ceiling and said, “Now, you can’t do better than that,” to which the monkish Romanian supposedly replied, “It’s our job to do better.”

  What outrageous pretension — on both sides. Duchamp chose a bicycle wheel, while Brancusi made a bird. Is a bird better than a propeller? A bird is a bird; a propeller is a propeller, and a sculpture is a sculpture. They were always pontificating, always showing off, puffing on their pipes, leaning back in their chairs, concentrating on their chess game as if it was the entire world. All fathers. Even those that don’t have any children. Even worse, they who pontificate like fathers, but without the benefit of the generosity and aggravations that children impose. Reducing the world to a chessboard. But the queen on a chessboard, my friends — she heads straight on, gliding diagonally, piercing through your lines, and gobbling you up in passing. Because it’s not the world; it’s a chessboard, your chessboard. And the world is not a chessboard, it’s a world, infinite, complex, disordered, chaotic. Now, now, Louison. You’re getting all worked up. It’s just that they’re rather irritating after a while, those two — the bearded old rascal, arriving on foot from his native Transylvania, the hermit of the Impasse Ronsin, and the other, the lipless chess professor, Saint Touch-Me-Not, who would, without a word, a priori dismiss the next two generations of aspiring sculptors and painters. Clearly, he realized from the start that he’d never be more than a mediocre painter, so he just forged on ahead, scorched earth policy — paintbrushes and turpentine, so uncool, and they stink. And you — still doing that? Open your eyes, buddy! They died off ages ago, those two, and yet they’re still taking up all the room. Étant donné, given this and given that, blah blah blah . . . they’ll teach you a lesson. But not an object lesson, like they gave you at the Lycée Fénelon, dissecting real frogs, germinating real peas.

  You put the peas on the windowsills — there were so many windows in the house at Choisy — wrapped in damp cotton. You liked to watch their translucent stems rising up insolently toward the light; small, innocent, transparent phalluses, without ego, without aggression, with no desire other than to see light through a window.

  No, the lesson these gentlemen give is a lesson about lessons themselves. — What do you have to give, Gentlemen? — Lessons! — Thank you very much. And what do you ask in return? Praise, of course; you ask that your lofty perspective and the depth of your understanding be hailed far and wide. And if there’s no one to sing your praises, to braid your laurels, you’ll take care of it yourself, and with a supercilious air. Wouldn’t you rather look out the window? You might see a few peas germinating — it’s quite instructive. A young shoot entirely occupied with simply continuing to be — it’s actually quite moving.

  It’s a fact: all fathers are vain braggarts and vacillators, particularly mine, and all presidents of absolutely anything — the republic, the hunting club, the local council, or the housing association — are ineffectual and pretentious, strutting about at the drop of a hat, all Don Quixotes — Leave those windmills to me! I’ll take care of ’em! All generals, marshals, admirals, colonels, and sergeants are grotesque puppets who, without even raising an eyebrow, send boatloads of young men off to get shot as an example to the reluctant. All the celebrated, the decorated, the honored by the powers invested in me etc., etc., all who flaunt their authority, who hide behind their authority, who constantly convince themselves of the solid basis of their authority are ridiculous balloons that we pop like the plump paunches that constitute their entire catechism.

  You loved mathematics. At least there, they can’t dress it up. It’s either right or it’s wrong; it’s not a matter of authority, prestige, or clever bluff-ability; no Vatican, no Pantheon, no Kremlin has the power to change it. You loved that rigor, the pure curves that intersect at just the right spot, one established in advance by an inviolable calculation. What pleasure!

  The fridge is empty. You don’t eat when you’re alone. Cooked enough in your life. The family. Always ready to pull up a chair. In Easton, at the table: Robert, the children, their friends . . . with a collective clear conscience . . . the food would get to the table all by itself, like magic, every day a different dish, no one even asking where it all came from. And you cooked it up, put it on plates, and then washed them up without anyone’s even noticing, to the point that they’d say compassionately, encouragingly, “But do come sit with us — we never get to see you.”

  That said, you’d better have something if you don’t want to die of dehydration, as this heat wave isn’t going to break any time soon. A slice of toast with banana and sardines: Madame is served, ro
yally. Smashed with a fork, half a banana and sardines in olive oil on a slice of bread. They’re horrified! Not by the taste — they’ve never tasted it and never will — no, they’re horrified by the idea. It’s simply not done — you do not eat fruit with canned fish. And why, might I ask? Because that’s just how it is. There’s nothing to discuss, and yet me, I’m going to discuss it, whether you like it or not. I could go on at length about the merits of the banana-sardine blend. On toast. Or on bread toasted not. Even on a cracker, if it comes to that. With a glass of milk. Cheers.

  You caught the weather report on TV: “fair,” period. Not a single storm in sight to break the heat. Take cover, old folks! Protect yourselves! It’s true — heat waves take out the old. The old people and the babies. And the unfit, the weak links — a good heat wave comes along, and that’s it — end of story. While over in Europe, it’s just like spring. Jerry has all the luck.

  You go up to the corner of Eighth Avenue to buy some fruit and a pizza. The florist on Twenty-Fourth Street is liberally watering the sidewalk in front of his shop in the mad hope of rescuing his flowers from the onslaught of heat, creating a mist that rises into the hot air. Your feet sink a little into the softened asphalt as an acrid, sticky smoke emanates from the drains.

  “What you’re doing there is hardly socially responsible, Mr. Cooper,” says Sam to the florist. “They say on TV that there’s a water shortage. The reservoir in Central Park is empty. We have to conserve.” Sam slides slowly into the passenger seat of his dilapidated yellow cab, sipping Coke from a huge paper cup.

  “Saving flowers? Not socially responsible?! You’d have a hard time finding a more worthy cause on this planet!”