The young man smacks his forehead and says sorry. He looks extremely boyish and awkward. He has dark-blond hair and eyes somewhat an indeterminate shade between blue and gray. (She may be mixing this information up. In the redundancy of the telling, the story’s details get incrementally embellished, and I would not take anything at face value, especially as that description fits me.) The papers are in his back pocket. They’re all there, he assures her. The people she had talked to have other matters to attend to. He sounds vague about it. He has nothing more to say. He looks like he’s in a hurry himself.
As he turns to go, she can’t resist asking, “Are you the father of this child?”
He replies, “Get out with your son as soon as you can. This country is going to blow up.”
* * *
You have the blood of many nations in you, she always says, to remind me of my unusual origins. The Spanish and the Berbers, the Jews and the Arabs, Europe and China and the Malaysian islands. A self-contained universe, the sound of the sea, of winter, of equatorial storms. The glorious reign of Charles, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and his son Philip, duke of Burgundy and emperor of half the known world. Galleons that skirted the oceans, looking for souls and gold. America and its vanished tribes. And the brave ones who built upon their absence these cities, towers, bridges, highways, and all manner of preparation to make way for your coming.
She says those words to lull me to sleep. To assure me that even though Frank left her, I have always been wanted; she always wanted me. To remind me that life still offers much good, and I am chosen.
Too bad she never believed it herself.
* * *
“If you never actually saw him again after he brought me, how did Mr. Brezsky know what my name was? Why did he wire the money specifically for Jordan Yeats?”
“You’ll have to write to Mr. Brezsky to find out.”
Mr. Brezsky never answers that one, but it’s all right. I grow up with one singular talent: the uncanny ability to detect a lie. Brezsky is our Holy Ghost, the missing angle in our unlikely trinity. He is our religion, the beautiful lie that she has to believe in—and, for her sake, so do I.
On my twelfth birthday, Mr. Brezsky sends me a telescope. For the first time I can clearly see the craters of the highlands where he lives. I write him a letter.
Dear Mr. Brezsky: I know you don’t exist. But thanks a lot anyway.
WSOWOB
Two weeks after my parents’ accident, I’m back at their apartment in La Napoule, and I discover a boxful of eight- and sixteen-millimeter films. They’re the home movies my parents accumulated throughout their lives.
Separately bundled with masking tape are reels of movies of a little boy. For a minute there’s a disconnect. I think it’s me. I look out the window, remembering. The Mediterranean is blue as a computer screen, flat and calm, punctuated only by a speck of gray tearing a thin line toward the horizon, a ferry chugging its way to the Îles de Lérins. I check the dates on the reels, and I realize the boy was two years old by the time I was born.
I call a couple of aunts in Fréjus to ask if they know anything about these mysterious films. They tell me Sylvain and Annette had never meant for me to find out.
It was the son they lost a few weeks before I was born. His name was Mathieu, just like mine. It was the boy who I replaced.
* * *
This is one of the first things I reveal to Janya when I first meet her. The place is Bangkok, the year is 2002.
She’s hanging out in a bar with a bunch of friends. One of them is my editor, Philippe, who’s just arrived from Paris. Phil and I are working on a documentary on the effects of globalization on indigenous communities. He calls me over to join them. Phil is drinking Singha beer, an American is drinking a mojito, and another Thai girl a mai tai. Janya’s drinking something made of seaweed jelly. It looks like green slime. I ask for the same. She has a Sony DCR-TRV900 on the seat beside her. I ask her if she’s a documentary filmmaker herself. She says she’s employed by this nonprofit based in Massachusetts that monitors multinational sweatshops all over the world. Phil says she and I are going to work together, and that she will arrange some interviews for me.
Everyone’s getting drunk except her and me. By the end of the evening I find out that the American is a stringer for CNN and the Thai girl is a dancer at one of the local clubs. He’s married; she’s fucking him. The place has a jukebox blasting ’80s hard rock all night. After a while my throat gets hoarse from having to shout just to be heard across the table. I turn to Janya instead, and we wind up talking to each other alone. She likes saying my last name over and over.
“Aubert, Aubert. Sounds like Flaubert,” she says. “I wonder if you’re as obsessive-compulsive.”
I tell her I haven’t really thought about it, but maybe I am. I ask her how she likes her job. She replies, putting her lips close to my ear, “Imagine that: a Thai girl who’s not being paid to fuck.”
After a couple more rounds, Phil and the stringer and the Thai girl want to hop on to another bar. I’m feeling jet-lagged and want to call it a night. Phil protests. After all, I’ve been here close to a week now. Janya walks to my hotel with me. On the way, she tells me she’s glad I came along. The American and the Thai girl are so into each other they’re annoying, and she thinks Phil is gay.
“Which means . . . ?” I ask her.
“You’re welcome to come over.”
On her bed there’s a copy of No Logo, Globalization and Its Discontents, and The End of Poverty. “A rainbow coalition of the liberal,” she says as she swipes them aside to make room.
I sit on the bed and pull my Nikes off.
“You’re wearing the enemy,” she says.
I lie back and close my eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“Vertigo,” I say. “Too much mai tai.”
“You didn’t have any.”
“No, but the sight of it makes me sick.” Silence. Long silence. I open my eyes. “How long have I been out?”
“Oh, about ten minutes.”
“I’m sorry. My head just went spinning and all of sudden—”
She puts a finger to my lips. “I was watching you the whole time. Watching your face. You looked so serene, like you were having a beautiful dream.”
I pull her down gently toward me. “I like you. You’re cute.”
“Cute?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what fa-rung-sayt call the prostitutes.”
“Who?”
“White guys.”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” She starts to unzip my jeans. “Does that happen a lot? The vertigo?”
“Not since I was a kid. I was a very frail kid.”
“You look quite hefty to me now.”
“Cute and hefty. We make an interesting pair.”
We’re tearing each other’s clothes quickly, fumbling like a pair of horny teenagers. I pull out a condom from my jeans pocket. She takes it from my hand and throws it aside.
“Bareback,” she says.
“You sure?”
“Seems kind of like Russian roulette, doesn’t it, but talking to you at the bar revealed a lot about you.”