She must have been used to having that kind of effect. Anna giggled to see me go so catatonic. As for me, I actually would have liked to take a more active part, but I could hardly keep my eyes open, that’s how tortured I was by her nudity, which I found unbearable. She sucked the marrow right out of my bones, just by being there, and it was as if whatever energy and intelligence my body possessed had taken refuge in my cock.
Finally, what had to happen happened. She lay down beside me and placed her head on my belly. Then she did the thing she ought not to have done, but which I so badly wanted her to do - she stretched out her hand and, to amuse herself a little, took hold of my organ. It was terrible, because I went off with no warning and she got all of it right in the kisser. Just thinking about it still makes me shake. It took her slightly by surprise, but not as much as I might have thought. It was her fault too. One should be aware of what it is to be that perfect. Perfection makes you so horny it ends up being a form of castration. The only clever thing I could find to say to her was “it’s apparently good for the complexion, due to the astringency.” Afterwards, since she hadn’t yet gotten off herself, and as I was no longer in any danger, I practised boning her because I was still hard and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
It ended in total confusion. She told me, with a wry smile, that wasn’t the way to make a woman come, but she didn’t have time to show me how, since she had to leave because Nihil’s course was going to start soon. I gagged. It’s always hard on the ego to have someone tell you you don’t know how to fuck, even when she’s a friend, and even more so when she’s a friend who, theoretically, doesn’t want to hurt you but says it because that’s what she truly thinks.
She could tell from my look of dismay that I was taking it badly. So, while we were dressing, she promised we would have another go at it, when we were in no hurry, and she advised me not to be upset, because sex, like everything else, can be learned.
My own thinking was that with such a goddess there was no room for mistakes, and that even if I put my name back on the list, my next turn would be a long time coming, and I would never again have the chance to learn from Anna Purna, and it made me miserable and broke my heart.
My teeth stayed clenched the entire way back, despite Anna’s smiles and her doing everything possible to encourage me not to take such a bleak view of life. I was hardly any more talkative in Nihil’s course, and he found I wasn’t taking enough part in the discussion.
“You don’t have much to say today, Mister Tremblay. You have accustomed us to more loquaciousness. I would, all the same, like to hear more from you. You certainly must have something to say.”
I answered that I was not in the mood to talk, at least not with my lips, that I would have to talk to him with my heart and doubted his ability to understand. The songs of the heart ought to be audible without the involvement of the mouth, without the interference of the tongue, that leech, distorting the emanations of the words and cries of the heart.
“The heart does speak, believe me,” I added. “It actually speaks much more than it beats. In fact, only the heart can speak adequately. The vocal chords, the mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, palate are there just to translate, just to interpret what the heart has to say. What the heart has to say is essential. The heart doesn’t beat for nothing. Heartbeats are man’s true language. The mouth warps everything it says. The mouth is a parasite of the heart. The heart says one thing, the mouth says the opposite. Mouths ought to be made to shut up, they’ve already led us astray enough as it is. Mouths are for eating. Man’s voice is the heart. When the heart goes silent, a man dies. When the heart no longer knows how to beat, a man no longer knows how to speak, how to live. We should learn to speak without moving our lips.”
Nihil claims what I’m saying makes no sense, that it’s inherently contradictory, that it doesn’t stand up since I’m speaking with my lips. Nihil likes whatever is logical. What I’m saying isn’t. He says one should be careful about what one says, that one can’t say just anything, lose control, that grandiloquence can backfire, that one should think before speaking, that essence precedes existence.
He wishes I would justify my point of view, explain, endeavour to eliminate the contradictions. I’m unable to do so. There is no justifying the language of the heart. To justify is to betray. To explain is to destroy. I am not logical.
Nihil insists. I keep quiet. Not a word. He demands a response. He doesn’t know how to listen.
“Listen to the silence,” is what I tell him. “That’s my heart speaking. Try to understand!”
Nihil doesn’t want to play the guessing game. He asks me to stop acting like an idiot. I keep quiet.
“Why do you keep quiet? Say something!”
“I’m too taciturn for that. I don’t have anything to say. If you’re incapable of listening to the words of the heart, you must be deprived of that organ yourself. People who have no heart make me lose heart. You tear my heart out, you dishearten me. You’re just a pair of stammering chops, an overactive tongue. What you say always makes perfect sense, but it doesn’t interest anyone. You’re smothered by your logic. It’s not with those lips that you’ll drink nectar. You should drink hemlock instead. It would do you good to die a little. In fact, it would allow you to verify the existence of an afterlife. A little trip to the spirit world would restock your brain. Travel blows the mind. It would expand your horizons. You could discuss your beautiful logic with Saint Thomas Aquinas. That way he could take a rest from angels with boas and feathers and you could take a rest from illogical students.”
Nihil didn’t have time to reply because the course ended on my harangue. But I could plainly see I was busting his balls and that it bothered him, even though he probably didn’t put them to much use. I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
I slipped out in a hurry because I didn’t feel like meeting up right away with Anna after my performance that afternoon. What can you do, I’ve got my pride.
I went home by way of various detours that all led to alcohol. The usual circuit of Saint Catherine Street joints, where I got methodically and diligently drunk. A good eight hours of mixing everything together so the head might forget the heart and the brain lose its bearings. A man has to take the necessary time and measures to work off his shame, no, to drown it in the hope it’ll never rise again.
When I emerged from the void, it was only to populate my night with a long nightmare, the kind of dream that seems so present, so frightening, that even as you dream you try to persuade yourself it’s not real, the kind of vision that pursues you even once you’re awake, that’s how much it’s taken hold of you. The grip of this particular dream was so strong, it wouldn’t leave me when I opened my eyes in the early hours of the morning after spending a good part of the night sobering up by puking while stretched out on the bathroom floor. Then, as I gradually came to my senses, I was overwhelmed by panic. Because the more I thought about it the less sure I was it had been a dream. And it was enough for me to go down to the basement to be convinced, to have it all come back to me, and for me to realize then and there that I was buried in deep shit, in the mother of all shit.
It must have been around one in the morning, and it was all I could do to get back home after my night of stupor and intoxication. He was leaving his mistress’s house and heading toward the street corner, where there were always taxis to be found. He had his back toward me. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was just too easy because he hadn’t seen me, because there was no one around, because I can’t stand CEOs of multinational corporations when I’ve been drinking, and because all of a sudden I was presented with a golden opportunity to assert my freedom - how should I know? Maybe I was simply too plain drunk, and it was enough for the back of his neck and that big rock lying by the curb to both come into my visual range at the same time, just about when he was passing directly in front of my house. Anyway, it took me three steps to catch