Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir

My parents loved each other, I know that now. But they suffered from the same wound: their ability to love had been sealed over and undermined for years, since well before they met. Their love was boxed in. Sex was a separate thing, disassociated from love: a compulsive, substitute act for my father; remote, imposed and impossible for my mother.

My mother loved my father – his sudden fits of joy, his silence, his zest – but she refused his desire and his strength. She wanted a man’s tenderness only. Protestant traits were strong within her – a taste for limits and similarities, for smoothing people out, pushing away their desires and differences.

The difference was my father’s penis. My mother enjoyed their alikeness but not this big, hard penis, not my father’s sturdy body, his pungent smell, his weight on her, pressing down on her silky curves. My mother liked to dance, to whirl around gracefully, but she did not like to be shaken by the desire of a man.

My parents loved each other without saying so, avoiding each other to escape their love without being able to actually leave it behind. They did sometimes help and console each other, furtively and in secret. My father liked the way my mother took care of him. She dressed him, washed him, made sure that his cotton shirts were spotless and well ironed and that he was always served good food and cold beer. But good food was not enough. My father cheated on the wife who refused herself; he would go off but always come back, and she got used to these departures because there was always a return.

At night, my mental merry-go-round kept coming back to the same question. What is this thing that unites us all? The initial love from which everything follows? That was my question, and when I realised that I had no answer, no clue, when nothing that day had been tender or resembled love, then I would dream of somewhere else that was softer, of flying away, of a land where love would be the focal point of the day, of those films where everything is straightforward and always ends with a kiss so blissful it seems nothing could follow it.

I don’t know if there’s anything more violent than the refusal, the physical rejection of one’s own body by another person. The refusal of its skin, flesh, shape, existence. To be simply denied, held at a distance by a stiff hand or closed lips. That’s violent. For my father it was unbearable. It reminded him of being sent away, of boarding school, of his mother’s cold, dry hands. My parents were not able to say to each other what I am saying today. They were not able to understand each other, to see each other clearly, to join together love and the body. My parents’ love never hatched.

People either emerge from hurt stronger, or they drown. It depends on their nature, and also on luck. My parents drowned, though they pretended to carry on living. My father remarried, my mother never did. I think she waited for my father for the rest of her life, sitting in the living room watching television. I could see that my mother was waiting from the jumpy way she looked up whenever there was a knock at the door, the way her lips gasped apart each time the doorbell rang. The man would come back to her and she would welcome him, take him into her arms, into her body, she would do it for him. She would forgive him everything. She would have thought things through. She would keep loving him, and life without him – those years spent waiting – would have been a bubble, just a bubble that would burst and disappear as soon as my father came back.

I am a divorced child, of divided, uncertain background. Within this division I – supposed fruit of their love – no longer exist. I am sliced in two, separated, fragile. It happened almost forty years ago, yet to me nothing is sadder than my parents’ divorce.

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We return from our holiday sooner than expected. Not to the hotel but to a new apartment my father has bought for us. Everything has been organised, foreseen. We are at the end of a separation process that was begun several months ago. Everything has been planned. Our things and a few bits of furniture have already been moved from the hotel to the apartment. My mother asks to pass by the hotel again. The whore tells her it’s not necessary, that everything has been moved. My mother insists – all this is so sudden – and my father ends up saying yes.

My mother has a few hours in which to say goodbye to the place she has managed and held together for fifteen years. She walks from room to room in a daze, her every movement tracked by the new mistress who keeps an eye on her possessions. My mother retrieves a small jewellery box she had hidden under a pile of tablecloths. The contents are checked and my mother is allowed to take away her memories. My mother is calm, strong. In her distress she does, however, forget some basic items. Towels and sheets, such everyday items in a hotel, are left behind. We sleep in sleeping bags for the first few nights. My mother is shocked, driven out, humiliated, but she doesn’t falter. I follow her protectively. In defiance I feign indifference. I feel so close to my mother, on the same team for the first time.

On her way out, hurried to the door, my mother puts a hand on the Chinese vase in the lobby, coming to a halt by this familiar object which has witnessed her comings and goings for so many years. She often used to stroke it as she walked past, it was a reference point, she loved its beauty and refinement. She opens her arms, deciding to take it in a fit of bravery; it will be her souvenir, her link, proof that life has not come to an end but is continuing under another roof. Every glance at the vase will recreate the earlier setting and my mother will be able to believe, as she focuses on the magic vessel, that her lonely new life is a temporary hell. Hanny screams, and snatches back the vase.

‘That’s not yours!’

This woman is simply evil. She wants to hurt, to take revenge. But on what? My mother is not fighting, the battle is not equal. She is emptied while the other is full of venom. I go to take the vase, but my mother holds out her hand to me.

‘Come on, let’s go …’

‘Take the vase!’

I look up; my father has been watching the scene from the top of the stairs. He avoids my eyes and returns to his attic.

We don’t close the hotel door when we leave.

My mother is holding the vase like a pregnant belly, and my arms are stretched around the jewellery box as if it were plunder.

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The apartment is a little cramped but we are at home, immovable. My brother and sister argue all day long. Marianne is now a serious, determined, devoted girl. Nicolas is still a roaming kid, his hair has grown and my mother often threatens him with her sewing scissors but can’t catch him. My mother is trying to create some semblance of order, to put on a brave face. She has found work. The judge decreed that my mother had no need of maintenance and must work for her living. She does, working hard as is her way, altering clothes in a smart boutique.

‘We’re a real family now! We’re going to eat healthily, and we DO NOT ARGUE!’

My mother hammers out the words to get the attention of Nicolas and Marianne, who are squabbling even as she is making these resolutions. My mother has changed, become softer, warm. She is making a real effort. It’s a bit late, but it’s nice. ‘Better late than never’ is her new motto. By repeating these banal words she is trying to get a grip on time and on this wait; she is living in hope.

My mother is bringing us up at last. She is aware we are all she has left and that nothing will change this. She encourages me, telling me I can do anything, that I have the potential to succeed. What? I listen to this sudden promotion. I wonder, and cling to it. It’s so different from the old indifference, from what I used to feel, but I try to believe in it. I will need my mother to tell me from morning till night, sober and drunk, happy and unhappy, for every remaining day of her wretched life, that she loves me and that I have talent, the real talent, the talent to be loved, for me to – hearing it so often – start to inhabit this new love, and believe that these words, this change in the air, are more real than what went before.

My mother managed a year of healthy living, without alcohol. She went back to it with the passing time and the never-ending wait. Slowly, gradually, surreptitiously; in a few months she was back to her old levels of consumption. Alcohol and tobacco would be her pastime, her painkillers, till the end.

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The Mercedes convertible has the top down and is speeding along the school drive. The beast groans, beeps, leaps onto the lawn and skids to a standstill a few yards from Sister Marie Immaculata, who is stiff with fear and fury. A big patch of her short green lawn has just been scalped. Her eyes are dark with unfamiliar anger; gentle Sister Marie looks about to attack in defence of her land.

‘It’s my father,’ I say, ashamed and glad. I have been waiting for him since this morning.

My father jumps out of the speed machine as soon as it stops and walks quickly towards me, holding out his arms. I run up and hug him. Hanny is in the car. Her make-up is a caricature of femininity in which my father thinks he can find an easy, simple life. She must like penetration.

She steps out of the car, avoiding me and cornering Sister Marie, who takes a step back.

‘Mother!’ shouts the woman.

‘Sister!’ corrects Marie.

‘Sister, I am the new Mrs Kristel, so I’m telling you’ – she grabs Sister Marie Immaculata by the arm and leads her away – ‘with me, there’ll be no more problems! No more drinking! I will be personally overseeing the education of my husband’s girls …’

My father takes my hand, smiles and leads me towards the car.

Hanny is having an animated discussion with Sister Marie, who is keeping her at a distance by gently pushing her back at regular intervals. My father takes advantage of this to escape for a few minutes, taking me for a short drive. It’s Sunday, the spring colours are bright and the air is warm. I lean my head back and let myself be lulled by the regular, mechanical noise of the engine, a noise I have missed. My father is quiet, happy, and I am dreaming away with the top down.

When they’ve gone Sister Marie Immaculata concludes: ‘There’s only one thing to do, my girl: pray!’

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I have come to say goodbye to Sister Marie Immaculata. I’ve passed my baccalaureate and want to tell her. Unusually, she strokes my cheek, and tells me she knew I would. I talk to her about my plans, because you have to have plans.

‘I want to teach, to share …’

My voice tapers off; I’m struggling to convince even myself.

‘That’s good …’ says Sister Marie, limply.

She doesn’t seem convinced either. She knows me well, and knows all about pious hopes, too. But what ought I to do? I’d like to do nothing. Wait for life to paint itself. But that’s not possible, you have to have a plan, to make the first brushstroke. Becoming a teacher seems to me easy, obvious, noble. I’ll have free time, and hang around with children, remain with them; it’ll be joyful, I’ll stay like them, I can grow up later.

‘How is your mother?’

‘Well. We have new rules at home. We’re a proper family now. Mum is always saying “Better late than never”!’

‘Your mother is wise; that’s the definition of hope!’

Sister Marie is surprised at her own philosophical words and soon returns to more practical advice.

‘Late is perhaps OK, but not backward. Never be backward!’

Sister Marie makes a quick summary of all she has taught me over the years – guidance on how to live well, to be dignified, to take pride in oneself, to win at life. Then she pauses, and reminds me of the thing she’s worrying about: ‘Finally, promise me you’ll see a doctor if it hasn’t come within a year.’

Sister Marie Immaculata is a bit embarrassed, waving at my abdomen.

I am tall but not fully developed. It bothers her.