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VinceSometimes you meet men who make you think of animals; one’s got the eyes of a lynx, another the ears of a donkey, yet another looks like a giraffe. I’m forced to admit a man built like a house is more rare. He’s tall and solid – a tank, agile and sensual – a wild beast; there are hidden passages he alone knows about. You take shelter in him. He is one of the twin towers, an old hospital transformed into a theater and a très charmante maison in the country with plaid curtains all in one. Behind the curtains, a couple meets in secret. The man and the woman are very shy. They’re in the kitchen, drawn irresistibly to one another. He would like to lead her up to the bedroom. She dreams of him taking her on the dishwasher. He thinks he’s fat. Even if she tells him he’s si charmant. She’s a tall brunette with long thin legs and wavy hair that’s been blow-dried into place. She diets when she wants to squeeze into her tight little jeans. Her waist is so tiny a man can encircle it with his two hands. In the living room, two men kiss voraciously. Their tongues sweep them along into the spiral of desire. At first their hands remain chaste and don’t dare take liberties. Little by little, they enter into a frantic dance where no curve is spared, nor any belt, not to mention any zippers. One of them sinks down off the sofa onto the rug. He coils and contracts and loses himself in lust. The other watches his young lover in his dishevelment. But he doesn’t remove his briefs. The man loves going where he’s afraid to go. However, he’s modest and also knows he can be seen through the window. He doesn’t want to shock an innocent passerby. The young lover’s eyes question this freeze-frame. The older man pretends to hold his head in his right hand and covers his left eye completely with the other. He stands there like a defective tower. Badly wounded on the hundred and thirteenth floor. A symbol of capitalism in spite of himself. A force of construction in service of a country, exalted national hero killed in combat. The twin tower has been relocated and now stands on an island across from Amsterdam. It belongs to Shell, one of the world’s greatest economic powers. You have to take a paddleboat to reach it. The tower has been abandoned since its destruction. But a willing group of men and women would like to live there together to found a new community. For right now, they’re incubating their ideas in an old hospital and they’re rehearsing plays in what was once the dissection room. Usually each has a private life and family but here there are only hardworkers, people who work unyieldingly and who put no distance between their work and their lives. They have their very own way of doing things, they obey no predetermined law. They’re on passion’s clock and their passion is their work and their family participates in this life with love, with unflagging and uncritical support. They don’t obey market laws for they are not goods but rather great bursts of laughter. The man who, singlehandedly, represents the country cottage, the miniature twin tower and the dissection room in the hospital, this man exists. When he arrives you know the world is about to change. We follow in his steps but it’s he who sets the pace. The man is handsome but his beauty is fragile for it is free, he can blurt out “quoi” in French without any warning. He is perfectly aware of his body. He employs even the tiniest muscle to create images with his neck like a swan. And yet this man does not have a bird’s name, he’s called Vince.
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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BrünhildeI love wearing my bathrobe. It’s a good thing I live alone. At home, I walk around naked under my bathrobe. The last one I bought is embroidered with tiny flowers. I’ve got a tummy but I don’t care. There’s no one to see me. At twenty, I weighed twenty kilos less. At school, I met my only friend. She was studying photography, me, dress designing. My only friend is tall with black hair and violet eyes. She introduced me to my male friend. This happened in a restaurant. It was my only friend’s birthday party. Yes, I remember, j’étais assise à côté de lui. He made costumes and scenery for a theater company. Not your everyday kind of guy. We’d just finished school. My only friend had received the highest honors. I also got my degree but fashion wasn’t really my thing. My male friend saw that right away. He’s really someone special. He can see right into your soul. He doesn’t need to talk to you to get to know you. Oh yes, and for ten years I’d kept a file with drawings in it. For me, they represented the ideal in style. Intelligent, refined, full of humor. So,the day I was having dinner with him. Of course in the morning I was already wandering around in my bathrobe. That one was silk with cashmere appliqués. I didn’t know yet I was going to meet him. But just that very day I was looking for the file. It was something I really cherished. I didn’t manage to find it. Thought maybe I’d lost it. Several weeks later when my male friend asked me to help him make some costumes for an opera, I found the file. A lightbulb went off in my head and I said, “hey, it’s my male friend.” He’d made the drawings that had been my bible for all those years. C’est vraiment chouette quand tu as de l’admiration pour quelqu’un et soudainement tu le rencontres et il te propose de travailler avec lui. It’s incredible. The telephone rings. You answer and suddenly the person you admire most in all the world is on the line asking you something you never would have even dared dream of. He doesn’t need to ask how you are to know exactly how you are. After that he asked me to do something for television with him. We had to make up and act out these little stories, really tiny things using highly literary texts. After that the work kept coming for seven years and then he went into the Church. Once he’d exhausted a topic, the topic no longer interested him. Normal life held no more mystery for him. He’s looking for something. Three years ago I was at home in my black terrycloth bathrobe when the phone rang. He’d left the monastery in the south of Holland. He hadn’t found what he was looking for there. He was headed for a new monastery in the south, closer to where he was born. We could get together whenever I wanted. Je peux le voir quand je veux. And that’s important to me. People are more important than work. When I was little I wanted to be a fashion designer, a vet or a dress designer. Sometimes I think I should give it all up. Parfois je pense que je dois changer maintenant. Mais je ne suis pas une aventurière. I’m not adventuresome. Sometimes I’d like to take my bike and ride through the woods alone. Just like that. No questions asked. But I can’t. I don’t know the names of the plants. I can barely tell a big tree from a small one. There are people who like to do that, head off alone into the forest. J’aime me promener dans les bois. Mais je ne connais pas bien le nom des plantes ni celui des arbres. J’aimerais pourtant beaucoup. Mais je n’ai pas la main verte. Je peux distinguer un grand arbre d’un petit, c’est tout. Il y a des gens qui savent le faire. Moi, je ne vais jamais seule dans les bois. Je me perdrais. J’aimerais avoir un mari. Je me sens si seule. I have only one friend and one male friend. I feel lonely. I’d like a husband to add to the patter of my footsteps. And then at last there’d be another sound besides the rustling of my bathrobe, the sound of a voice calling “Brunhilde!”
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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Jan-Jerome“These two” make one. “He” receives in his long narrow house, a loft fitted out as an office he uses because it’s more pleasant. At first, “these two” had another place where he worked. He lived here. Then he decided to work there and live elsewhere and finally wound up still working there while living there too so he’s going to rent the other place he now only uses to sleep in. Everything’s easier living here. You leave your coat in the unwalled entryway. Then you go down the long uncarpeted hallway which gains its length from the way the single room has been furnished. You see everything because everything’s open, though certain guideposts linked to reflex actions remain to send you towards the toilets when you have to pee, towards the stove when you need to eat, towards the couch when you want to be alone. There are about ten people there this evening. They all belong to the same theater company. They’ve known each other forever, but they’re not sick of each other yet. Like “these two” – inseperable for seventeen years. Makes you wonder if the Dutch aren’t faithful. The menu consists of risotto and lots of starters that are already set out on the table. Everyone’s nibbling calmly, they’re all intimidating for they are very simple and yet emotionally disturbed, how should they act with so much liberty? The meal is delicious. “These two” even went all out for the wine, and there’s a bouquet which is so carefully arranged the flowers look fake. Nothing’s been left to chance in this dust-free interior. Not a single shadow in the scene. A beautiful house. A fascinating profession. A perfect couple. Everything constructed, conceived, improved with age. Like their furniture. “These two” was a dancer then a designer, creating ballets in space. Like this strange piece of furniture for three children whose entirely mobile structure conveys their energy and houses their agility. There’s a whole wall devoted to rock climbing, craters and caves from start to finish, no stairs, three compartments. Invented hanging structures to soothe the restless imps. Of “these two”, one isn’t really there, the other has his feet on the ground. The product of love at first sight. After years of hearing news of each other without ever having met, they’ve touched one another and will never part. Can’t imagine it otherwise since “these two” know each other inside and out. A perfect scene. And then all of a sudden without the slightest hint things are about to go astray, they all begin nonchalantly to remove their clothes while continuing the discussion, while eating the apple pie. They tease each other, check who’s grown thickest in the middle over the past ten years. They walk around, dicks swaying, breasts bared. “These two” continue to live tenderly. Aware of the independence of “his” penis whose own rhythm is out of sync with his steps, he relaxes little by little. Suddenly in the next room, the sound of flashes and a single voice. A woman’s; its rhythmic chanting is tactile and bewitching. She must have long black hair, violet eyes and queenly bearing. She’s most certainly tall, self-assured and freezes people into magical images. No doubt she has a particular way of treating her subject. Like a siren with the singular power of instantly fixing the image of the beloved with the eyes of love. Suddenly the siren’s chant rings out for “these two” like an invocation. We hear: “Jan-Jerome.”
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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LeeShe was carried off by the Apaches at the age of three. She had no mother or father, was raised by no one and everyone. She’d always gone practically naked except for a red scarf knotted round her waist. The only thing she has left from her former life. Her mother’s, surely. At least that’s what she thinks. She grew up like a wild animal enjoying the affection of the entire tribe. From this fulfilling and solitary childhood, she’s kept an insolent mysterious air. She has a way of turning up that’s all her own. You never see her coming. All of a sudden she pops up out of nowhere, like a genie from a bottle. She’s a vision of beauty. Very dark, savage, delicate yet strong features. Her body is lithe and handsome without dessication or regret. It reflects the life she’s led. Protected by joy mixed with utter nonchalance, she’s always confronted things with energy and independence. She gathers strength from the arid plains of Nevada. That’s where, at fifteen, she had her first waking dream. At the time, she was very jealous. She was in love with the chief’s son whom the chief wanted to marry with the girl from the neighboring tribe. Her suffering was unbearable. The dream was set in Argentina. She was thirty and she was a big strong man, a sugar cane farmer. It was harvest time and there were so many smells. It’s five in the morning. The sun is rising. The farmer comes out of the farm and yawns at the sun. The fields stretch before him as far as the eye can see. His friends are already there. The coffee’s boiling on a huge campfire that will stay lit until the harvest is done and the friends gone home. There’s an odor of pork and sausage mixed with that of cut wheat. The farmer’s heart leaps with joy. Today’s a happy day for him. His friend, his best friend, is coming. The farmer scans the fields for a glimpse of his friend. He’s sure to be over there. Just as he spies him, an explosion erupts in his heart. He feels himself falling, falling, falling… At the moment his central organ exploded, he heard a blast and saw sparks fly out of his friend’s hands. Then his eyes closed and an image appeared in the dark, his friend holding a rifle. He must accept the evidence. Without reason or motive, his friend has indeed killed him. So in the heart of the plain, the Indian identified her wound – the impact of jealousy. For a long while she lay there unconscious under the stars. Suddenly she felt calm, at peace with herself and her suffering. That was the last time she felt the bite of jealousy. And to hold on to this state of grace, she regularly goes off on an “adventure” in a trance. The red scarf she never removes slips from her thighs. Stark naked, she puts herself into a comatose state. It’s as if a chemical substance spread throughout her body to disengage her soul. In her last trip, she was a lioness. She’d been impregnated by the oldest male of the pride. A highly respected lord. She lived with another female. Also pregnant by the same father. Her cub died. She sniffed the other wildcat’s offspring. It was suckling its mother, grunting in delight. The lioness felt her coat bristle and growled suddenly in spite of herself. Suddenly something rips right through her. When she awakes, she grasps a braid in her left hand. She hears the cries of a newborn and frightened voices which seem to say a name, no doubt her own: “Lee”.
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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GretaShe’s medium height, blonde with blue eyes, skin that goes with. The impression of integrity she gives off instantly numbs anyone who tries to approach her. She has the ominous allure of a pirate ship. At the same time, the mystery she shrouds herself in operates like a magnet. Around her hovers a blur of childhood noises, a boy and a girl babbling in stocking feet. This softens – though it’s hard to say why – her rock-solid build. She doesn’t like appointments. Especially in noisy places. She sits and reads the paper, glances about and says “they’ve got things to say,” cracks a smile then goes back to her reading. Afterwards she thinks of her childhood. As a girl, she lived in a village near Rotterdam. Her mother was a dancer but she quit when the kids came, especially when the retarded son was born. A man came along who taught her mime and pantomime. Then one thing led to another, she doesn’t know how or why she fell into the job of actress. She’s not an actress. What’s an actress? A voice, words? Whereas the woman with her newspaper is incurably introverted. It’s impossible to remember the tone of her voice, the intonation of her sentences, her pronunciation. She is gaze, she is disturbing, she is intimidating, she is not malleable nor is she discernible from the outside. She likes being on stage but hates having to prove something. She often says to herself, “You don’t need to get up on stage to live.” But she doesn’t really know if this idea comes from her or from her past. She grew up with the certitude of loving the stage but when she thinks about it, she’s not sure it was her own idea. Once there was pleasure in it, but also much prompting and encouragement. She’s since become aware of the difference between the past and the present. One has habits from the past. Presently, she’s seeking her own truth. Meditation helps with that. “Once you’ve reached the state in which you are spirit, you ask yourself questions. You question yourself with open eyes, sitting face to face with yourself, and answer your own question with your eyes closed.” And so little by little she got to know herself and even managed to eliminate certain habits that were spoiling her life, debris from her past. Existential anguish that at times made her impossible to live with. Did someone express the desire to spend an evening without her? She’d be thrust into unending despair. “They wanted to leave her for good, it was just an excuse for pulling away little by little without making her suffer. Love had flown and would never return.” So went her thinking. With the effort she’s making at self-improvement, she’s since accepted the fact that someone may want to spend an evening apart from her without necessarily wanting to leave her and – craziness – then want to see her the next day. It also came clear to her she should quit being an actress. In fact, it had always been hard for her to leave a comfortable setting. Even as a fetus, it took her three weeks to realize the time was up and she had to face reality. And here she still has a hell of a time distinguishing her dreams from her true desires. If someone asks her about her ideal lifestyle, it seems possible to her to live more simply than with a big house, four bedrooms and money. However, if she digs to the bottom of her soul, she knows the most important thing for her is “to be the best you can be.” She feels herself present on earth but has a sensation of being transparent – transparent means that pleasant feeling of being alone in the woods, like walking through the woods, alone. It’s wonderful when suddenly in the distance an outline appears, that of a man and everything changes, your perception of the landscape Your pleasure Your body The forest Echoes This name “Greta”
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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ClarenceHis highly feminine aura, combined with the immediate impression he gives off of kindness without docility, establishes his authority from the very start. One imagines the Man is very industrious in all his endeavors. Ideas and intelligence seem to emanate from his high forehead. The Man must have a certain gift for divination. There’s something indecent about the disproportion between his diminutive size and the scope of his thought. After years of struggling, waiting for the phone to ring, today he’s the one who decides: “sorry, I haven’t got time,” he tosses off as a lame excuse. Oh yes, everything’s coming up roses for him. Yesterday was the dress rehearsal of one of his plays. The actors were pleased and so were the critics. It struck him as normal and self-evident. His imagination runs wild by instinct. The roles seem to write themselves in his head. When his mind’s not elsewhere. Right now he has a fascination for Princess Magarita. An aristocrat for whom he’s reserved a tragic end. The man derives a certain pleasure from watching her wrestle with the media like a lobster in the pot. Margarita says she’s the victim of a plot. On the one hand he’s tempted to believe her, but on the other he knows she’s nuts. Her paranoia even drove her to phone the Prime Minister two years ago to complain: “They’ve got my phone bugged! They’re keeping my husband out of work!” And yet, there’s a history of hysteria in her family. In fact, her mother wrote a book in which she tells of embracing trees and begging them, “Aidez-moi!” In the palace they’re all depraved. They live in seclusion in a chateau in France far from view. They go to bed with each other. Margarita’s father is having an affair with the nanny. When she arrived back in the country, the queen mother waved to the people with her right hand and flipped them off with her left. Oh, the rich! It’s like that asshole producer the Man saw yesterday. He grew so bored with this famous fat guy that suddenly he got an idea. He plunged his knife in the guy’s stomach. Watching him bleed like a stuck pig was truly delightful. That breathed some life into something already half-dead. The Man is himself at a turning point in his life where he knows he’s invulnerable; the loser, the piece of shit loser vous haït. Of course, it’s got nothing to do with growing olives which is a simple pleasure. If you want love, si tu veux de l’amour c’est plus dur, it’s harder. Only dogs give you what you you expect. What the Man likes best are honors, getting invited to a big festival, eating a huge breakfast in keeping with his taste for coffee, sausage and champagne while perusing the daily schedule, having the limousine chauffeur wait for him in the lobby, the conversations among people of the World which leave you free to think of nothing. He’s got a kind of vague interior smile that rises to the surface of the shadow of his lips. You have to know how to make yourself respected. Everyone has their own method. The Man’s hand reaches up to his cross, the one he bought in Lourdes after having settled the score with that brunette with the violet eyes on a bicycle who’d taken a candid shot of him. He was just leaving a fabulous rendez-vous with a young man. At that very moment, as the Man was feeling so happy, so vulnerable, she surprised him by calling out the name that made him turn around: “CLARENCE”
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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LudwigHe looks like Helmut Berger with that steady gaze and handsome face bearing the delicate marks of an unhappy life. Tortured A veil of coldness presses down on the grass A tree hundreds of years old Dares He weeps and the clouded puddles In the chill morning air A song “At thirty, I fear going out. I’m not well. Everything to do with life destroys me. I only find peace when lying on the floor. Something must change. It’s the meeting with my psychiatrist. Immediately I see right through his psychology. But I want to forge ahead. Be optimistic. Every day is a new day. Even if the man isn’t the father I’d dreamed of but a simple psychiatrist, cold and hardened. I could eat his brains. A man’s got to eat, no?!” “Flesh took shape and that delicious moment in the middle of the night when at last we became as one, began filling me for the first time with a feeling of love I’ve had ever since.” “I think of you endlessly, I long for your mouth, your nature. When spring came to the city, instead of the fragrance of flowers, the perfume of your skin, salt, your scent. Our bodies dancing, one swallowing up the other, sweeping along. I long to be within your lips. I long to smell your tongue. I long for your sweetness, your special caresses. It’s sheer madness, the call of my body and my heart for you. I like your unfruitfully rigorous counterpoise. I feel my heart throb, my heart that was once so numb, so tormented, so fragile, that I’d left alone to recover from its wounds. You revive me physically and I follow my sentiments as a shadow follows a person. Unable to resist. I have a passion for you. Insane and magnetic. Physical and crazy. Terribly piercing and vibrant. Something that gives life an enchanting density. You are a wonderful human being for you have a pure heart. And the timidity of our meetings for nine years both terrifies and enthralls me. You alone can resist me and petrify me with love. I’d like to be transformed into a soup so you could eat me, imbibe me, lap me up.” “With your flesh, I made my own. You penetrated me. You constructed me. Little by little you came into my life, from psychiatrist to lover, you even became a father to me. I met your family. Me, who comes from a straight-laced Catholic home where no one interrupts, I participated in the excitement of those meals where everyone talks with their mouths full and there are as many conversations as people present, among you and your five brothers not to mention your mother. I shared your pain when she was diagnosed with cancer, I tried to be there for you, to support you even when you and your brothers decided she wouldn’t spend a single day in the hospital and you had to take shifts, bring in equipment. It was so different from my own father’s cancer that went unspoken. We pretended nothing was wrong, no one said a word, no one suffered, especially not him. In your family there was laughter at least, everyone mocked death, that old bitch who’d get us all one day.” “When death came, father asked for a priest. My brother and I carried him out to the armchair where he was to take his Extreme Unction. My father shoved us away. He asked for my sister. Was it because she’s younger? He hugged her. He kissed her. He cuddled her. And he died. Everyone cried. It was pathetic. I would have liked not to have been a cliché. But that’s all I am. A poor rich kid raised by a nanny. A troubled adolescence after the premature death of a father who even on his deathbed wouldn’t speak my name. Right up to his last breath I kept praying to hear that word he found so hard to pronounce: “LUDWIG”
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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FrederiqueIf this were a man, he’d surely be methodical and very neat. Dry and gnarled like the branch of a cherry tree, lovely little delicate white flowers would blossom from him. His eyes would be like two marbles shooting out of a child’s hand, master of their fate, ready to affront any pitfall even if it meant going the wrong way and missing their target. If this were a man, he’d be kind and confident, prone to instruction. He could be a computer scientist, a biologist or a philosophy professor. At any rate, he’d have a mustache, glasses, students and a lab. He’d love to teach. He’d be cultivated and highly perceptive. He would have noticed that, in February, the sun is brighter than at the start of December, then how in January the star grows more luminous. His mother would have had a huge influence on him and her expressions such as “what do you know, the freckles are back” would have a determining effect on his existence. He’d undoubtedly love to travel and would be capable of heading off to the Canary Islands to birdwatch, stopping by the Place de l’Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe en route. Most of the time he’d live in Amsterdam. He’d love Amsterdam with its canals where each night he’d watch for the the first star to appear. He’d obviously live in an apartment along the water. The little bridge across from his entryway would be charming and he would never grow tired of the incessant gurgle of the water. He’d get so much out of observing the waterlife. Especially the swans, but the other species too like the heron that lives there, even certain rare species that come to the city for refuge from the hunters trying to kill them in the country. He’d no doubt be particularly interested in the small black duck with the strange white line on its bill that gives it a rather peculiar tragic aspect. This duck has a very specific way of building its nest with little branches but also with all sorts of wrappers, making for several different colors. Normally it uses branches broken by natural causes such as storms or old age, but in the city it makes do with tires. If this were a man, he’d be perfectly happy to live here, it’d be like a dream come true. He would have come to town for the first time at the age of five with his mother and sister to buy shoes. It would have been a shock and he would have lived here ever since and never stopped feeling at home here. Paradoxically, the village of his youth would have been built up while the country would grow more and more present in the city. In the country, daily activities, journeys, errands, administrations would be slowed down, while urban organization would make them easier. He could only be an actor in this role reversal between town and country in which the town is joined up by the country where the fields, the cows and the country had little by little disappeared. If this were a man, he would be a good man, balanced and sound-minded. He would like women and respect them. He would surely choose a beautiful one, kind, modern and interesting. He would go hiking and eat organic food in the Alps. They’d be a peaceable couple that got along under every circumstance. If this were a man, you’d have to look for some flaw to believe he existed. You’d wonder if he was selfish though everything would seem to prove otherwise. He would be a perfect man which is why it’s not possible. In fact, the man is a woman with the name of a man or a woman: “Frederique”
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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NicoSomething incredible happened to me this morning. I was in my bathroom as usual. Suddenly I discovered myself face to face with a woman who was almost beautiful. I’d forgotten my own image. It’d been ages since I’d looked at myself in a mirror. With this tall dark woman staring impertinently at me I felt both flattered and terrified. “So what are you going to do to me?” I asked her. She’s tall – over six feet – and dignified, the tilt of her head is dreadfully alluring. She can lift a 200-pound marble slab with a single hand. Her massive body gives off a destructive and intimidating force. Her attitude is provocative. Her left hand on her hip, she leans with the other against a workbench as her eyes flash the message: “I’m something special, and I milk being a woman for all its worth.” Her lashes are so long they reach the sky, and make her gaze undeniably intense. As for me, I’m rather embarassed by my body. To such self-assured eyes, I could almost seem gauche. A soul much too gentle for such a powerful build. Makes for an imbalance. My right hand doesn’t know what to do. It wedges itself against my hip. Gives me composure. But I’m still ill-at-ease, so I lean against a table. In general, I don’t pay any attention to people’s bodies. I believe in karma. My motto is, “if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.” The woman pierces me with her fierce gaze. She’s hungry for me. I want to toss her a bone as you would to calm a rabid dog. I look deep inside to find something that might work. The only object I can think of that characterizes me enough to quench her thirst is my bike. It’s small and collapsible; I take it everywhere. Besides, I’ve always got it with me so it won’t get pinched. My bike has saved me more than once, especially since I live 13 miles from Amsterdam. The woman facing me studies me while thinking of what concerns her most these days. She’s just moved into a new home by the sea. A large old building in need of complete renovation. Luckily she’s not afraid of work, or gardening. The woman loves the location, a little out-of-the-way spot not far from a small provincial town called Haarlem, like Harlem in New York. In fact, New York was called New Amsterdam when the Germans bought it from the Indians so they could sell it off to the British. I love living beside the sea. And Haarlem is a particularly charming village. I feel at home in this little town of 160,000 inhabitants that shares the name of one of the toughest neighborhoods in the American capital. This is where I was born. For me, Amsterdam is a suburb of Haarlem and not the other way around. No one pays attention to you over there. They run you right over without even saying ‘excuse me.’ Here, everything gets worked out, even the problems people try to pass off onto you. Like the old owners who took three months to clear out the house. The woman facing me is very solitary. Untamed. When the day finally came for me to move in, she thought it was the Apaches coming for her skin. Luckily, she had my rifle that had belonged to my father after having belonged to her father’s father. Her mother taught her to shoot. In our family, it’s the women who teach the women. What a fucking fireworks display that was; she even had trouble salvaging a little good flesh for the preserves. She savored me, repeating a litany: “Nico.”
text made by Stéphanie Cohen in Holland
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