I was allowed an indulgence in the great act of breathing yet to me, that was the most harrowing, appalling fact that would ever strike me.
When she passed I bore such terrible guilt that I should have held her hand and allowed my life to seep into her body. She died a soldier and I died an inept medic who let her expire in both body and soul. Her ashes fly somewhere, on lands past the sight of my eye and in the land of hazy men. I recall nothing of her but her eyes, two stars which hung as heavy stars, shimmering with adoration for their moon.
Upon her death, I moved to Algiers. I lived in the heat of mind and that wretched, restless fervour which encompasses the grieving body. I would open the window and inhale, my breath stifled by the dust and particles of what was once a recollection of her bejewelled love. I found that I could no longer breathe, for all and every natural scent reminded me of when I so vicariously dwelled in times past.
I lived because of my idiocy. Months passed and I convinced myself arduously that my love was nothing but a fib and reduced any human sentiment to ash. The moon’s scent I would through my eyes remove from the sky and the honeysuckle through my ear. I would still miss the touch of her hand upon my shoulder. Her uniform, so rough yet to me like a bride’s veil, stinging to my lip yet ethereal, for I solely bore it once with her.
It was not something I could do anything for. That is how I console myself upon those desolate nights in my apartment, picking at the smoke-stained rattan seat. I despised when men described her hair as of a summer’s midnight, for man can live without those breathless, torn nights. I say it was the colour of the gun she wielded and died embracing; the infant we would never bear.
Upon speaking to another woman I found nothing but persecution and harangue. She spoke so harshly and brash, that a French woman and an Algerian should never have mixed paths for a commencement, much less indulge in that which no woman should ever partake in with another. It was then that my breath gave in and I reckoned that I should never have spoken and that I should cease desecrating reminiscences.
A year passed. My idiocy was excused. My country needed medics; man, woman, rat or cat, they minded not. I once again became part of those same frontlines I had once promised to never lay foot close to for as long as my soul was part of me, in death or existence. Most would say that if their lifemate died they would wish so too, but I feared this imminent death ever so much. I feared not eternal rest, for it would be a void that I put no trust in. There ought to be something, reincarnation or an eternal rest amongst those you love, but I could not fathom the thought that I could take one wrong turn and this would be the last tea and biscuits I would ever sip and munch. Eternally.
I feared the process. I contained a stray tear at the thought that I should endure what she had, my dear. In death she had me and I had set her ashes free to the world, across the battlefield in soldier’s honours. Yet now, I was the sole woman of my country. I feared that in death I shan’t be respected by the men of my countries, my brethren in arms, for they were as unpredictable as rotten beasts if they found me, glacially intact yet shot, one mere puny graze, in my chest. That graze would simply mean that I am no longer there to utter my utterings.
Thus, I held my breath, and, for the first time, it served my body in keeping its earthly status. The soldiers noticed me not and though it was a vile crime to slaughter a medic, I held my breath for my dignity and her. I survived and it is to her I owe this.
I desired to retire, to bear my life in peace and solitude, for I had seen many an atrocity upon the battlefield. I had seen the brethren of mine imposing such cruelty and horror upon the bodies of the poor women of Algiers. I saw the beaches bloodied with carcasses, some of infants and some of men and women. Yet, no eye of theirs glimmered as brightly as that of her, my dear, for she died by the side of she whom she had loved and who had loved her. These people had died in torment, detached from their former lives and humanity and melted away into the abyss not as a moon or a stellar formation but as rotting corpses.
The war faded yet people’s hatred for those like me did not. I was a foreigner, a stranger in the country in which I had resided since my infancy. I was sent to Lyon, for the threats grew ever so loud. The Algerians despised me for having aided the French. What could I have possibly done? I had loved a woman of their country so deeply, I had loved their people as my own and now I saw nothing but hatred and ire in their eyes. Those eyes which once stared at me intrigued and adoring now glared in repulsion. To them, it mattered not that I was a medic. I was a soldier, one of them, and they had every right to despise me.
So, I left for Lyon. It was desolate, the city tired and aching. I lived a grim, terrible year where I turned into a void, numb as ever. I could no longer bear it, their monotonous exercises and beastly roars. Those men who touched the bodies of women in death, my own comrades, were nothing but horrid animals to me.
I left the army and emotion gently and delicately returned to my body. I began enjoying the monotonous life of the Lyonnaise. I would go to the beach and lay upon my rag for hours. Yet, my breath would still be held back, my scent as numb as I had once been. My hair grew back, my callouses receded; I became human once more.
I started a new job as an embalmer soon. I enjoyed the smell of formaldehyde, so poignant in my nostrils. The great pleasure I took in knowing that I could aid someone in their final journey as she would have wanted was something my chest could not at times bear and I would sob into my uniform, a relic of times not yet forlorn.
The bank no longer heard from me. I earned so little money from my service at the morgue that I could safely keep it all in my house in the form of books and nourishment. At times, I questioned whether I was better off in the army. If I died, it would have been an honourable death, a martyr’s death, whence now my highest predisposition of death was my own body.
I missed her terribly, each night and every day, each sunrise and sunset, I prayed for her and kneeled at the altar. I never approached priests, for I feared that they might have been as were my military comrades and kept my divinity far from any human I could shake hands with. I saw her face in the smoke of my hookah, and as it encircled my head I envisioned her, so sullen at having left her to have been the only one to bear an honourable death.
At the morgue, a man met me. He brought fear in me, for he bore a look of great malady. His face was torn by carbuncles and illness yet he came with a request.
“You shall embalm me when I die.”
I nodded. Upon reaching my hand to grasp his, he drew back ever so violently.
“Touch me not. I bear the burden of leprosy. I pray that you do not contract it.”
His name was Gabriel, and he was my best friend for three hundred and sixty-four days after I firmly shook his hand. He reminded me so deeply of her, with his gentle touch and ephemeral gestures of the dying soul.
“Tell me, why did you choose to touch my hand?” he once asked of me. This was when he lay upon his bed, a rattan frame as that chair and foam mattress, soaked by the blood that sprung from his festering wounds.
“Nobody should find another world without having ever experienced the touch of someone who cares for them as the stars do for the moon and the sun for all.”
Thus, he died. His eyes were clear and shimmering, for he had me by his side. I was the one who embalmed him. I was wretchedly wrong. It is not dishonourable to die on your bed when your body has given up on you. Any death is honourable, for it means that you have given up the most sacred thing for the greater good of having another take your place. That is a greater honour than all.
I pursued life as breathless as I was before. I lived in the same scraped apartment, alone, my body yet again a void in which all scent and warm exhalation disappeared and was torn asunder to atoms.
I occasionally visited Gabriel’s tomb, but it felt horrid every time, for I knew better than to disturb a man who had so ardently wished for rest. With every day that passed I felt yet more guilty that he and her were fading from my mind, their image and their thought.
I existed and existed and existed. It was merely a matter of existence. I no longer lived. I no longer felt sadness and gloom, for that had been exhausted by her, my love. I no longer felt any merriment and joy for that had been exhausted by the jolly Gabriel in his final year, as he jested until his death. I no longer felt anger or repulsion, for I felt that every singular day seeing people so horridly deny the ones they loved everything. I was devoid of any emotion and lacking for constant pressure upon my heart.
I met a woman, a Moroccan woman, a kaftan maker. She spoke ever so kindly to me that I felt almost hoodwinked. She asked me if I wanted to become a kaftan model. I said yes, why not?
A month later, I ended up in Marrakesh. Her name, I could not possibly recall. She asked me if I wanted to go to Casablanca for a show. I would be her shining star, a model as my young self had so fervently desired . I said yes, why not?
I went to Casablanca for a show. The star of the night, I verily was so in her embroidered kaftans. Adorned with hamsa jewellery and Aker smeared upon my lips, I was a queen. I had never felt so, for I was always battered and calloused yet now I felt like a woman. We spoke and I thanked her. She asked me to kiss her. I said yes, why not?
Too little precaution did we take, for we were seen by her brother. Cruel was that man, for she was beheaded the day after. I wept not. It was the third time death occurred. I felt nothing. I had become a void devouring those around me. My breath was yet stunned, my throat hoarse and my eyes dry. I felt no scent. Not the sea, not the foetid decay. Nothing did I feel, for all senses had run from me for fear that they shall die next. I sit in silence now, for fear too that any who I would converse with shall endure a faith as harrowing as those ere.
I reduced myself to a life alone in fear that another should have to endure the wretched fate of the three ere. In all my severe lack of monetary means I relocated to Paris, a city to serve as the bedlam to my soul. I resided in the proximity of the Parc Buttes-Chaumont and there commenced my ageing.
I strolled around the park nights and days I worked as a local coroner. My callouses returned, my eyes grew dark once again and I recalled the flamboyant days of modelling and hamsa jewellery with great ache and strain of the mind. I could no longer recall anything, not even the image of those I once so adored. I beheld only the state of the present that I so monotonously thrived in.
My solitude I grew and aged to take solace and enjoyment in. I became a woman content in herself. My salary permitted that I should indulge in luxury from time to time and my status permitted that I should not be shunned by society, but rather deemed a mediocre of the general populace. My annual trip to Brussels became my joy and the little money I kept I spent on books and perfume. I was a materially happy woman with no reason to object to anything life allowed me to behold.
I met many a people and none died. Thus, after years of isolation, I allowed that I should give in to the pleasures of life and speak to them.
I met him in the park. He was feeding the ducks grain and seed and I found it admirable that he fed them not bread like the rest did, which often killed them. He was rather petit, much shorter than me but his smile always awakened when he noticed me. He bore the uniform of a power plant worker and his face was plastered day by day with a crust of coal, dirt and a bright smile which spoke more than his soiled countenance ever would.
“Madame, but it is ever so odd to stare at me and never once reciprocate my smile!” he once screamed after me.
It was so. I refused him any joy for prejudiced I was against that hardworking individual. I almost feared that his hard-work would outdo mine, that he would endlessly slobber and brag about how his labour outdid mine and I felt almost threatened by him in his coal-blackened overalls. My breath closed in upon me, my eyes fell shut and I recall with great difficulty the thought that brought a feeble smile upon my lips.
“Content?” I inquired.
“Content.”
From that day on, he became my sole branch which kept me rooted to my human nature which was fleeing my body upon every second I spent. I soon became ever so jealous of his good fortune. He was young, I was getting older. He had a harder job than mine, and I soon began to feel inferior. His confidence was admirable yet mine had been wrecked by years upon years of torment. He had never endured the loss of a lover or friend, yet I had. He still had his breath and could feel as a human being does, yet I had lost my freedom of breath.
Soon, his room had been taken away from him and he came, weeping at my door whether I can take him for a night’s repose. I accepted with great reluctance, for in such times I still yet recall her, my first love, and how disloyal I was for permitting such a lowly man to enter into a sanctuary which should have been hers.
“Why do you treat me with such contempt?” he asked of me after I had settled him a cup of tea. “Is it because I am grimy on my visage? Is it because of my job? Is it because I can truthfully smile and you cannot?”
We began despising each other after that night, yet naught could be spoken between us. We kissed each other upon returning from work. I washed his face, shaved him like a young boy and upon those nights, I felt like he loved me like a sister. I too enjoyed seeing the soot wash away from his face which still looked like a little boy’s. I began to pity him, for he looked so youthful yet his eyes haunted that which he beheld and I grew increasingly sorry for him. I saw my own self in his eyes so devoid of any human element.
Months passed and he became laconic.
“Stephane, what is wrong?,” I would ask him.
“Nothing.”
That is how he would reply. His eyes grew darkened, his face sullen and I began to think that, as my throat constricted, my curse had once again befallen another person. He spoke not, he only stood and watched the sky from my balcony. That was the sole time his eyes brightened, for the moon shone unto them and gave them a clarity that this boy would never come to find.
A month later I would return to find him still upon the counter, his hands trembling. He spoke not, yet I knew it. I recalled that gaze, so void-like and empty, devoid of humanity and lacking any terrestrial element. He had witnessed something at the plant just as I had in the army. I so finely recall my face upon seeing my comrade, strung from the ceiling of our barrack after we had been defeated. That is when the gaze overcame me and I kissed him. He replied not, and his visage turned the hue of the kitchen tile. He had died in my arms, his childish eyes now grown and shining, even in expiry.
I was the local coroner. I had to perform the autopsy. I could not bear to open the body of the boy I once saw as a sort of brother. I could not get my hands soiled. My breath too stopped and I stood back. For the first time in my life, I wept. I wept not for his loss to me, but for his loss as such a young human being, a human being so similar to me yet with such a different fate. We had both endured such things, yet he had given up. Was it ever more honourable to give up when he knew he could not bear it, or to live on and spread the malevolence of your existence to those around you?
He had poisoned himself after witnessing a factory accident. He believed that he could not tell me and the sole thing he wrote over is that he never loved me as a lover does, but as a son loves his mother. What difference does it make now? He is dead anyways.
I attempted, I truly did, to never meet anyone again, for fear that I shall never breathe again in mourning. It’s been thirty years yet my breath is still not free.
✶
Lizic Senvisier (she/her) is somebody who appreciates the sinister, the fine line between what is acceptable and what is shunned. Reproach, sin, and everlasting guilt are sentiments she is compelled by. She explores all three in both her writing and her visual art, mediums she deeply cherishes.