Arno Calleja
Salt
an excerpt from the novel Tu ouvres les yeux tu vois le titretranslated by Katie Shireen Assef
In this story, there’s a girl, very beautiful, in a room. The room is in an apartment and the apartment is in a city, in France, in the South. A man is there with the girl. She is timid. He is wearing a suit.
The man tells me here, this is your bed. This is the table. There aren’t any curtains on the windows but it’s fine, no one can see in. The toilet is down the hall. Well, I think I’ve explained everything: now this is where you live. I watch the man from behind, he’s leaving, then he’s gone. And so.
And so, I stayed alone in the room. I put my clothes away. I went to the sink and splashed water on my face. I was drying my face when he came for me. I followed him down the stairs. Into the car. It was raining. His bodyguard had left. We were alone. We ate in a dimly lit place, some people were dancing, I don’t remember very well. Then, I think, he showed me my room and the hallway, the bed, the toilets, the closet, and I put my things away. Or maybe I had already put them away earlier, I don’t remember. Or maybe I’d already told you I had but I hadn’t yet, really. I don’t remember. There’s a blank space there.
In any case, it was after we’d eaten that we were in my room, since in my room I had a stomachache. We went downstairs. In the lobby, downstairs, he introduced me to the girls. Some of them didn’t speak the language. We all had a drink together. I had a stomachache from dinner. From the meat. Then I had to get to work, it was time.
I didn’t go out in the street to talk with the men who passed by. I stayed in the living room. The girls went out and I stayed in by myself. Then they brought a man in to meet me, a man who, they said, likes new ones, likes to try new ones.
We walked up the stairs, me in front and him behind. In the room, he sat down on the bed. He didn’t take off his clothes. I told him to wash his thing. He told me it’s clean. I didn’t insist. It was my first time. He was very confident. I didn’t insist.
He didn’t move. He kept his eyes lowered. I undressed in front of him, I was going to move toward him, to start undoing his trousers. He said I am a nurse. I said nothing. He placed his hands flat behind his back on the bed, and exhaling through his nose he puffed out his lungs and said if you decide to do this every day, to suck cock, to take the cocks of ten, twenty, thirty men a day, and if you decide to let them put it in your bum and if you give yourself to all manner of maniacs and perverts, and if on top of all this you don’t check each condom one by one after every trick, and if on top of all this you don’t wash afterwards and if you don’t make sure to get ten solid hours of sleep every night, I’m telling you in all honesty, three years from now, you’re dead. Upon which his lowered gaze settled on a spot in the carpet, his hands still stretched out flat behind his back on the bed. It seems to me that his legs were trembling, but I’m not sure. Upon which he repeated, I am a nurse.
I was naked, standing there. I looked at him. And then he got up and left. I put my hands on my hips, stood there like that. It was my first trick. A warning, an order had been given. Telling me you must renounce this life, these ways, the giving of yourself to men, to fucking, to money, so that I would know what sort of life and death awaited me. The nurse was my first client.
I got dressed again. Sat there on the bed, in the place where he’d been, and I think I thought hard for a moment. My stomachache was gone. I looked around, at the window, the room, and in what I saw now there was something that frightened me. I knew that downstairs I wouldn’t be able to slip past, to escape. Downstairs were the girls, there was him and his bodyguard, downstairs I would never be able to slip past and leave. And so.
And so, I thought. That I had nothing. Only my bag. And my skirt and some cigarettes. With this thought, an idea came to me. I closed the door, locked it. I went into the toilets and I pulled the lid off the toilet tank, it was very heavy, I lifted it into my arms. I went into the bathroom, held the lid up to the mirror. And I smashed it into the mirror, as hard as I could. And the mirror took the hit. The mirror went flying everywhere. I picked up a piece of the mirror, the biggest one I saw, and with that piece of the mirror I ravaged my veins. Cut deep, my left arm. As deep as I could. Without hesitating. With real precision, like a pro. The way I’d seen a butcher do once with a lamb shoulder.
There was a lot of blood. I had wanted to do it like in the movies, to fill the sink with hot water and plunge my wrist into it, to make the blood flow faster. But I collapsed first, right there. I saw the neon light on the ceiling, it was turning. The way a clock does, with its hands. Then I wasn’t there anymore, and my spirit ceased to be.
Here, there’s a silence.
I stayed like that for a moment. And then someone came knocking at the door. I heard them but I didn’t speak. Then they beat down the door and the broken door swung open. And that was how they found me, in the bathroom, red all over. That’s how I imagine they found me, in a pool of red. I imagine. Because, as far as I was concerned, the blood had flowed and I was dead.
The girls were shocked. For the man, it was also a loss. On the investment. I imagine they picked me up, to bring my body somewhere. I imagine they cleaned up, the girls, or else a maid. Someone. I imagine someone cleaned the bathroom. I was transported, that much I know. In a car, perhaps, in a big sack, with a blanket thrown over me. In the trunk of a vehicle, perhaps, a delivery truck, folded into a bin of dirty laundry, along with the whores’ sheets, I was transported. To a place. A dump, perhaps, a ditch, someplace common. But not to the hospital. Not to the morgue. Not to my parents’ house, no. I wasn’t put in a fridge. There was no laying out the body. No last rites. I don’t think so. I was transported without a fuss, by some regular people, in a vehicle. By a henchman, by a pimp. In a laundry bin, in a delivery truck.
I didn’t watch the scene from above, in the sky. I didn’t witness the scene of my transport, like in the movies. I couldn’t say.
What I know is that I came back. I came to in the middle of a field. It had just been raining. I sat up, it was difficult. I spit out a bad taste in my mouth. I was somewhere, it didn’t even look like France. I walked in my whore’s skirt. I walked into the fields. It was getting dark, but I found a path. At one point, a shape appeared before me: a farmhouse. I knocked at the door. I went in. There, they fed me. It was a family, of many members. They looked at me, all the members of the family, at my arms, my breasts, my legs, barely dressed. All the eyes of the family, on me. They showed me where to wash and I washed myself. They showed me the sofa and I slept.
I dreamed.
I dreamed of a man, a dwarf. A shirtless dwarf. He had a birthmark on his stomach. A giant birthmark, and he showed it to me. I said to the dwarf it’s beautiful, it’s in the shape of Africa. He said that’s impossible, I’ve never been to Africa. I’ve never left this place. I’m a farmer. I wanted to touch his birthmark. I moved my hand toward it. Then, the farmer dwarf closed his eyes. I understood that he was allowing me to touch it. I touched the mark. The mark slowly changed color. From red to blue. I moved my hand away and the mark remained blue, cobalt blue, Africa in cobalt blue. It was beautiful, even more than before. The farmer dwarf opened his eyes. I woke up.
When I woke up the people from the farm were all there, and someone new, too, a nurse, who’d been called in by the family. The nurse examined me. Palpated my skull. Scanned my body. Saw my wrist. Asked me. I said that’s old, it’s from my adolescence. He believed me. I looked at my wrist too, it was white, almost transparent. A large scar ran across it, not red but white, transparent.
When the nurse left, I went out into the entryway. There was a mirror and I looked at myself in it: my face, too, was white, transparent. I was who. I didn’t know. Neither who, nor where I was. I stood there in front of the mirror. Unable to say. Then I left.
Outside, I walked along a path, still dressed in my whore’s clothes. It was cold. A man in a car stopped. When he’d had a good look at me, he drove off again. It was cold. I squinted at my skin, it was white, whiter than ever before. On my arms there was no more trace of my veins, they’d vanished. I was dead. I smelled my breath in the palm of my hand, it stank of rot. Already, things were rotting inside me. I was dead. I kept on walking. It was cold. The wind lifted my hair, all in knots, damp with earth.
I kept on walking. There was nothing but fields, paths. Then I said to myself, what’s the use. And in saying what’s the use I understood, speaking the words, that I had nowhere else to go. And so I gave up. First, I stopped walking. Then I sat down on the ground. Then I lay down. And there, I think, I fell asleep. And there in that field a dream came to me: I’m in a boat. We’re all naked, it’s a sailboat. We’re drinking. It’s a party, there’s champagne, a feeling of luxury, a lot of wealth. People are talking, they’re naked but very distinguished looking, it’s strange.
At one point, someone falls into the water and starts to drown. Everyone watches the body and everyone laughs, their throats open wide. No one jumps in to save the body. The woman in the water screams, it’s a woman. She cries out for help, it’s horrible, and they all laugh louder. I’m stunned. I can’t move. I can only watch. And so she drowns. She disappears. The party goes on.
I wake up. I’m underwater. I can hear the party from underwater. I can see the hull of the sailboat, but then I inhale and I sink down deeper. And then everything disappears. And it’s slow.
Then, at the bottom, the water becomes clear. I start to swim. I swim at an incredible speed. The water glows, even though I’m in the depths of the sea. It’s the water itself that illuminates the depths. And so I can see where I need to go, I can see everything. I’m deep down below and, without breathing, without needing to breathe, I swim for hours, and it’s fast.
Some time later, I came back up to the surface to see where I was: I was in the middle of the sea. There was nothing around, only water, flat, calm, still. No wind. I went back underwater, deep down below. The water illuminated everything. As far as the eye could see. It was beautiful. Then, off in the distance, I saw a black dot in the water. I swam toward it and from closer up, I realized it was a cave.
I went into the cave. There was air inside, a pocket, a passage of air. And so I went inside to breathe. I found myself walking on a beach, all around me there were ferns, insects on the sand. Then I was walking on moss, it was a beach covered in moss, like a forest but without trees, just a forest ground.
And then a fox came up to me. He smiled at me. He turned and I followed him. He trotted fast, I had to run to keep up. He brought me to a house, and I watched the house appear. In this landscape of moss a modern house appeared, with a car parked out in front, the garage door open. I stood there without moving. The fox left me there.
I looked inside. At the window, someone was looking back at me. With her hand, she motioned for me to come inside, it was a woman. I went in and right away I recognized the place. I knew this house. I didn’t know the outside, but I knew the inside of the house. A TV was playing. The someone who had motioned from behind the window came over and stood before me. We looked at each other and I knew her, too. It was me. It was me, but an old woman.
I walked toward myself. I knew that I’d known it was me because I was smiling at me. I took my face in my hands. I looked into my eyes. There were no tears, no trembling, for it was a happy moment. The old woman kissed me, and I let her. It occurred to me, while her tongue was turning around, that I didn’t know the taste of my own mouth, my flavor. We made our way to the sofa. I sat down and the old woman, on top of me, arched her back in pleasure. I touched my ass, still round and beautiful. We fingered each other. I undressed her. I recognized my underwear, it was worn. We made love, we knew how. It was easy. There was no embarrassment. We came.
At one point, the phone rang. She answered. It was my father. He was calling to say he’d be home late. I said okay. We came again and again. We didn’t feel the need to stop, to rest. The old woman was out of breath, but she kept on going. For that matter, she was the one who guided us.
Then the phone rang again. It was Éric. He invited me to the movies. I said yes. I had an hour to get ready. And so the old woman went upstairs. I took a bath downstairs. My skin was salty with seawater. Éric arrived. We drove off in the car. We saw an Eustache film. In the cinema, I fell asleep for a while. But he didn’t notice.
On the way home, Éric told me a secret: he loved a boy, I don’t know if I’m a faggot or what but I love a boy, it’s making me crazy, no you don’t know him, he’s a friend of my father’s, but younger than my father, he’s eight years older than me, no he doesn’t know are you out of your mind, if he knew he could tell my father, you have to help me, I have to find a way to see him, yes to see him without my father there, I don’t know what to do, I have the feeling he knows something but I can’t say, nothing is for sure, he’s beautiful you have no idea, I always thought I was straight, it’s weird, I’m a little confused, I’m totally lost, god it’s wonderful.
I said I would help him. I said we would find a way. I said there could be no real obstacles to love. I told him nothing could hold us back. I told him I’d really liked the Eustache film. That I’d swum for hours underwater. That I could still feel the salt on my skin, even after the bath. That I’d found my own house with the help of a fox. That I’d made love to myself. That I hadn’t known I was homosexual, either. That there are secret passages we can’t know about until we move through them. That fathers often come home late, that they rarely notice when love is born. And that we had nothing to fear from them.
He listened. He looked at me. He smiled. He walked me home. Instead of kissing cheeks we kissed on the lips, in front of my house. I took a photo of him with my cell phone, just after the kiss. He was smiling.
I went home. My father wasn’t there. Or maybe he was in his room, sleeping. All was silent. I stretched out on my bed, I looked at the photo of Éric on my cell phone.
And I spent years like that, lying on my bed, loving him in secret. Until the day he found out and, in friendship, agreed to make love to me from time to time.
We made love twice a year, three times a year, no more. In friendship. We did it in a room, in an apartment someone had lent me. He’d be coming back from work. He’d be wearing a suit. I was shy. We did it. Afterwards, we collapsed into sleep. We always collapsed into sleep like that, for a brief moment, it was strange. We never stayed long in the room, in the apartment. We left quickly. We woke up and we left.
The man tells me here, this is your bed. This is the table. There aren’t any curtains on the windows but it’s fine, no one can see in. The toilet is down the hall. Well, I think I’ve explained everything: now this is where you live. I watch the man from behind, he’s leaving, then he’s gone. And so.
And so, I stayed alone in the room. I put my clothes away. I went to the sink and splashed water on my face. I was drying my face when he came for me. I followed him down the stairs. Into the car. It was raining. His bodyguard had left. We were alone. We ate in a dimly lit place, some people were dancing, I don’t remember very well. Then, I think, he showed me my room and the hallway, the bed, the toilets, the closet, and I put my things away. Or maybe I had already put them away earlier, I don’t remember. Or maybe I’d already told you I had but I hadn’t yet, really. I don’t remember. There’s a blank space there.
In any case, it was after we’d eaten that we were in my room, since in my room I had a stomachache. We went downstairs. In the lobby, downstairs, he introduced me to the girls. Some of them didn’t speak the language. We all had a drink together. I had a stomachache from dinner. From the meat. Then I had to get to work, it was time.
I didn’t go out in the street to talk with the men who passed by. I stayed in the living room. The girls went out and I stayed in by myself. Then they brought a man in to meet me, a man who, they said, likes new ones, likes to try new ones.
We walked up the stairs, me in front and him behind. In the room, he sat down on the bed. He didn’t take off his clothes. I told him to wash his thing. He told me it’s clean. I didn’t insist. It was my first time. He was very confident. I didn’t insist.
He didn’t move. He kept his eyes lowered. I undressed in front of him, I was going to move toward him, to start undoing his trousers. He said I am a nurse. I said nothing. He placed his hands flat behind his back on the bed, and exhaling through his nose he puffed out his lungs and said if you decide to do this every day, to suck cock, to take the cocks of ten, twenty, thirty men a day, and if you decide to let them put it in your bum and if you give yourself to all manner of maniacs and perverts, and if on top of all this you don’t check each condom one by one after every trick, and if on top of all this you don’t wash afterwards and if you don’t make sure to get ten solid hours of sleep every night, I’m telling you in all honesty, three years from now, you’re dead. Upon which his lowered gaze settled on a spot in the carpet, his hands still stretched out flat behind his back on the bed. It seems to me that his legs were trembling, but I’m not sure. Upon which he repeated, I am a nurse.
I was naked, standing there. I looked at him. And then he got up and left. I put my hands on my hips, stood there like that. It was my first trick. A warning, an order had been given. Telling me you must renounce this life, these ways, the giving of yourself to men, to fucking, to money, so that I would know what sort of life and death awaited me. The nurse was my first client.
I got dressed again. Sat there on the bed, in the place where he’d been, and I think I thought hard for a moment. My stomachache was gone. I looked around, at the window, the room, and in what I saw now there was something that frightened me. I knew that downstairs I wouldn’t be able to slip past, to escape. Downstairs were the girls, there was him and his bodyguard, downstairs I would never be able to slip past and leave. And so.
And so, I thought. That I had nothing. Only my bag. And my skirt and some cigarettes. With this thought, an idea came to me. I closed the door, locked it. I went into the toilets and I pulled the lid off the toilet tank, it was very heavy, I lifted it into my arms. I went into the bathroom, held the lid up to the mirror. And I smashed it into the mirror, as hard as I could. And the mirror took the hit. The mirror went flying everywhere. I picked up a piece of the mirror, the biggest one I saw, and with that piece of the mirror I ravaged my veins. Cut deep, my left arm. As deep as I could. Without hesitating. With real precision, like a pro. The way I’d seen a butcher do once with a lamb shoulder.
There was a lot of blood. I had wanted to do it like in the movies, to fill the sink with hot water and plunge my wrist into it, to make the blood flow faster. But I collapsed first, right there. I saw the neon light on the ceiling, it was turning. The way a clock does, with its hands. Then I wasn’t there anymore, and my spirit ceased to be.
Here, there’s a silence.
I stayed like that for a moment. And then someone came knocking at the door. I heard them but I didn’t speak. Then they beat down the door and the broken door swung open. And that was how they found me, in the bathroom, red all over. That’s how I imagine they found me, in a pool of red. I imagine. Because, as far as I was concerned, the blood had flowed and I was dead.
The girls were shocked. For the man, it was also a loss. On the investment. I imagine they picked me up, to bring my body somewhere. I imagine they cleaned up, the girls, or else a maid. Someone. I imagine someone cleaned the bathroom. I was transported, that much I know. In a car, perhaps, in a big sack, with a blanket thrown over me. In the trunk of a vehicle, perhaps, a delivery truck, folded into a bin of dirty laundry, along with the whores’ sheets, I was transported. To a place. A dump, perhaps, a ditch, someplace common. But not to the hospital. Not to the morgue. Not to my parents’ house, no. I wasn’t put in a fridge. There was no laying out the body. No last rites. I don’t think so. I was transported without a fuss, by some regular people, in a vehicle. By a henchman, by a pimp. In a laundry bin, in a delivery truck.
I didn’t watch the scene from above, in the sky. I didn’t witness the scene of my transport, like in the movies. I couldn’t say.
What I know is that I came back. I came to in the middle of a field. It had just been raining. I sat up, it was difficult. I spit out a bad taste in my mouth. I was somewhere, it didn’t even look like France. I walked in my whore’s skirt. I walked into the fields. It was getting dark, but I found a path. At one point, a shape appeared before me: a farmhouse. I knocked at the door. I went in. There, they fed me. It was a family, of many members. They looked at me, all the members of the family, at my arms, my breasts, my legs, barely dressed. All the eyes of the family, on me. They showed me where to wash and I washed myself. They showed me the sofa and I slept.
I dreamed.
I dreamed of a man, a dwarf. A shirtless dwarf. He had a birthmark on his stomach. A giant birthmark, and he showed it to me. I said to the dwarf it’s beautiful, it’s in the shape of Africa. He said that’s impossible, I’ve never been to Africa. I’ve never left this place. I’m a farmer. I wanted to touch his birthmark. I moved my hand toward it. Then, the farmer dwarf closed his eyes. I understood that he was allowing me to touch it. I touched the mark. The mark slowly changed color. From red to blue. I moved my hand away and the mark remained blue, cobalt blue, Africa in cobalt blue. It was beautiful, even more than before. The farmer dwarf opened his eyes. I woke up.
When I woke up the people from the farm were all there, and someone new, too, a nurse, who’d been called in by the family. The nurse examined me. Palpated my skull. Scanned my body. Saw my wrist. Asked me. I said that’s old, it’s from my adolescence. He believed me. I looked at my wrist too, it was white, almost transparent. A large scar ran across it, not red but white, transparent.
When the nurse left, I went out into the entryway. There was a mirror and I looked at myself in it: my face, too, was white, transparent. I was who. I didn’t know. Neither who, nor where I was. I stood there in front of the mirror. Unable to say. Then I left.
Outside, I walked along a path, still dressed in my whore’s clothes. It was cold. A man in a car stopped. When he’d had a good look at me, he drove off again. It was cold. I squinted at my skin, it was white, whiter than ever before. On my arms there was no more trace of my veins, they’d vanished. I was dead. I smelled my breath in the palm of my hand, it stank of rot. Already, things were rotting inside me. I was dead. I kept on walking. It was cold. The wind lifted my hair, all in knots, damp with earth.
I kept on walking. There was nothing but fields, paths. Then I said to myself, what’s the use. And in saying what’s the use I understood, speaking the words, that I had nowhere else to go. And so I gave up. First, I stopped walking. Then I sat down on the ground. Then I lay down. And there, I think, I fell asleep. And there in that field a dream came to me: I’m in a boat. We’re all naked, it’s a sailboat. We’re drinking. It’s a party, there’s champagne, a feeling of luxury, a lot of wealth. People are talking, they’re naked but very distinguished looking, it’s strange.
At one point, someone falls into the water and starts to drown. Everyone watches the body and everyone laughs, their throats open wide. No one jumps in to save the body. The woman in the water screams, it’s a woman. She cries out for help, it’s horrible, and they all laugh louder. I’m stunned. I can’t move. I can only watch. And so she drowns. She disappears. The party goes on.
I wake up. I’m underwater. I can hear the party from underwater. I can see the hull of the sailboat, but then I inhale and I sink down deeper. And then everything disappears. And it’s slow.
Then, at the bottom, the water becomes clear. I start to swim. I swim at an incredible speed. The water glows, even though I’m in the depths of the sea. It’s the water itself that illuminates the depths. And so I can see where I need to go, I can see everything. I’m deep down below and, without breathing, without needing to breathe, I swim for hours, and it’s fast.
Some time later, I came back up to the surface to see where I was: I was in the middle of the sea. There was nothing around, only water, flat, calm, still. No wind. I went back underwater, deep down below. The water illuminated everything. As far as the eye could see. It was beautiful. Then, off in the distance, I saw a black dot in the water. I swam toward it and from closer up, I realized it was a cave.
I went into the cave. There was air inside, a pocket, a passage of air. And so I went inside to breathe. I found myself walking on a beach, all around me there were ferns, insects on the sand. Then I was walking on moss, it was a beach covered in moss, like a forest but without trees, just a forest ground.
And then a fox came up to me. He smiled at me. He turned and I followed him. He trotted fast, I had to run to keep up. He brought me to a house, and I watched the house appear. In this landscape of moss a modern house appeared, with a car parked out in front, the garage door open. I stood there without moving. The fox left me there.
I looked inside. At the window, someone was looking back at me. With her hand, she motioned for me to come inside, it was a woman. I went in and right away I recognized the place. I knew this house. I didn’t know the outside, but I knew the inside of the house. A TV was playing. The someone who had motioned from behind the window came over and stood before me. We looked at each other and I knew her, too. It was me. It was me, but an old woman.
I walked toward myself. I knew that I’d known it was me because I was smiling at me. I took my face in my hands. I looked into my eyes. There were no tears, no trembling, for it was a happy moment. The old woman kissed me, and I let her. It occurred to me, while her tongue was turning around, that I didn’t know the taste of my own mouth, my flavor. We made our way to the sofa. I sat down and the old woman, on top of me, arched her back in pleasure. I touched my ass, still round and beautiful. We fingered each other. I undressed her. I recognized my underwear, it was worn. We made love, we knew how. It was easy. There was no embarrassment. We came.
At one point, the phone rang. She answered. It was my father. He was calling to say he’d be home late. I said okay. We came again and again. We didn’t feel the need to stop, to rest. The old woman was out of breath, but she kept on going. For that matter, she was the one who guided us.
Then the phone rang again. It was Éric. He invited me to the movies. I said yes. I had an hour to get ready. And so the old woman went upstairs. I took a bath downstairs. My skin was salty with seawater. Éric arrived. We drove off in the car. We saw an Eustache film. In the cinema, I fell asleep for a while. But he didn’t notice.
On the way home, Éric told me a secret: he loved a boy, I don’t know if I’m a faggot or what but I love a boy, it’s making me crazy, no you don’t know him, he’s a friend of my father’s, but younger than my father, he’s eight years older than me, no he doesn’t know are you out of your mind, if he knew he could tell my father, you have to help me, I have to find a way to see him, yes to see him without my father there, I don’t know what to do, I have the feeling he knows something but I can’t say, nothing is for sure, he’s beautiful you have no idea, I always thought I was straight, it’s weird, I’m a little confused, I’m totally lost, god it’s wonderful.
I said I would help him. I said we would find a way. I said there could be no real obstacles to love. I told him nothing could hold us back. I told him I’d really liked the Eustache film. That I’d swum for hours underwater. That I could still feel the salt on my skin, even after the bath. That I’d found my own house with the help of a fox. That I’d made love to myself. That I hadn’t known I was homosexual, either. That there are secret passages we can’t know about until we move through them. That fathers often come home late, that they rarely notice when love is born. And that we had nothing to fear from them.
He listened. He looked at me. He smiled. He walked me home. Instead of kissing cheeks we kissed on the lips, in front of my house. I took a photo of him with my cell phone, just after the kiss. He was smiling.
I went home. My father wasn’t there. Or maybe he was in his room, sleeping. All was silent. I stretched out on my bed, I looked at the photo of Éric on my cell phone.
And I spent years like that, lying on my bed, loving him in secret. Until the day he found out and, in friendship, agreed to make love to me from time to time.
We made love twice a year, three times a year, no more. In friendship. We did it in a room, in an apartment someone had lent me. He’d be coming back from work. He’d be wearing a suit. I was shy. We did it. Afterwards, we collapsed into sleep. We always collapsed into sleep like that, for a brief moment, it was strange. We never stayed long in the room, in the apartment. We left quickly. We woke up and we left.
This excerpt from the novel Tu ouvres les yeux tu vois le titre was published with permission from Le Nouvel Attila.
Arno Calleja is a poet, novelist, and dramaturg from Marseille who has published eight books of poetry and prose, most recently the novel La rivière draguée (Editions Vanloo, 2021), which was adapted for the stage and performed in Taipei and Aix-en-Provence. A book-length poem entitled Le blanc de l'oeil and a novel entitled Le Mal appliqué are forthcoming in 2025.
A writer and translator of French and Italian, Katie Shireen Assef grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Marseille. Her translation of Valérie Mréjen's novel Black Forest (Deep Vellum, 2019) was a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year. Her fiction is forthcoming in 3:AM.
Arno Calleja is a poet, novelist, and dramaturg from Marseille who has published eight books of poetry and prose, most recently the novel La rivière draguée (Editions Vanloo, 2021), which was adapted for the stage and performed in Taipei and Aix-en-Provence. A book-length poem entitled Le blanc de l'oeil and a novel entitled Le Mal appliqué are forthcoming in 2025.
A writer and translator of French and Italian, Katie Shireen Assef grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Marseille. Her translation of Valérie Mréjen's novel Black Forest (Deep Vellum, 2019) was a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year. Her fiction is forthcoming in 3:AM.