My name is Carla. It’s as good a name as any other. Not my real name, of course. It’s my Sunday name, because obviously, Carla isn’t the kind of name you’d give a government employee, or a secretary, or a clerk, it isn’t a weekday name. On Sundays in the market, I regale the crowds with edifying stories, stories of my life. So don’t go away, and don’t just stand and stare, come closer. I want to tell you how a man I didn’t love managed to cure me of a sickness common to many women.
I lived in the country when I was a child, in a beautiful house, like a little mansion. In the spring, my mother’s cat would kill young rabbits. Yes, rabbits. I’m perfectly aware that in this town, your cats no longer even kill mice. Your cats eat their feed and sleep all day, while you come here to look at other cats and rabbits in cages. Be that as it may, my mother’s cat was a skillful worker. Instead of tracking his prey, he would seize it by the neck in his teeth and, with an abrupt movement of the spine, would throw it some distance away, then pick it up again, throw it again, and so on. Then he would deposit it at our feet and roll voluptuously on the lukewarm carcass, paw it tenderly, rub against it, and purr. Those of you who are still with me, hold that picture in your minds. Because that’s the way I treated Carl, the man who cured me—like a cat playing with a young rabbit. Let’s be clear about one thing. He wasn’t my lover. The whole point of this story is to tell you how he became my lover. That’s why I’m here, in this market, leaning my back against the pillar of the bridge, between the poultry seller and the organ-grinder with his monkey.
I don’t suppose you were expecting—at least those of you who are here for the first time—to see an organ-grinder with a monkey in this market. He has dark skin and a hooked nose, and he speaks a strange language. He plays an organ decorated with mermaids, and he has a wooden begging bowl in case you like his music. But all he ever does is stare grimly at the female marmoset that simpers at his side. The animal wears a very clean pale blue dress, a little girl’s dress, and a baby’s diaper. She waves a rag doll in a desultory way, occasionally exploring its innards through an unfastened seam.
Now that you can see how Carl treated me—like a slender and elegant she-monkey, something to be exhibited— now that you have understood that he never even looked at me, happy just to show me off and to demand grimly that life be generous to him simply because a pretty woman strutted about at his side, you have to realize he’d never once touched me, my body was as safe with him as a monkey’s backside wrapped in a baby’s diaper.
It was this market that changed our lives, the day we were here together, a day when the people were heavy and we were light. We didn’t have a care in the world, we were hopeless at business but it didn’t matter, we had no children, no mouths to feed, we felt as futile as the umbrellas and balloons swaying gently above the crowd. There was one other person with us—this swarthy old guy, with a profile like a fox, and his barrel organ letting its shrill notes echo high above your heads. The music he played that day was melancholy, and our bodies were restless … Was that why we suddenly became aware that we were one, he and I, Carl and Carla? Be that as it may, at that same moment, I hated him. The thing was, I had behaved, up until then, like a flirtatious she-monkey with empty eyes, and he like a rabbit with soft fur whom I would bite then reject. Our whole life had been a lighthearted and indifferent game, and he had asked nothing more of it, had known nothing else, and suddenly the organ was telling us that we were made for each other. All at once we were becoming the heroes of a love story, Carl and I, Carl and Carla, and we had to do something about it, adapt to it somehow, make a leap from the monkey and the rabbit to these emblematic characters who floated above the crowd like puppets on wires dangling from the sky.
In a rough voice, which I didn’t recognize as his, Carl said: “Stay …”Just then, the man with the rooster passed, knocking against us. Those of you who come here often will know the man I mean—a scruffily dressed man in his forties, pushing a baby carriage with its hood up and a pane of glass stuck across the opening. If you look in through the glass, you can see a heap of personal effects that look like rags, as well as a hen and a chick. The rooster, though, is free, perching unsteadily on his master’s cap, while his master saunters happily across the market without selling or begging.
I could still see the bird with his bright feathers frolicking above the crowd long after the man with the baby carriage had vanished from sight. I told Carl I was leaving—this sterile little game of ours had gone on long enough, we had nothing more to say to each other, nothing more to learn from each other, we had to part before … I didn’t say before what, but I meant before we made love, because that was something I’d never wanted and wanted now less than ever, now that we were floating at the same height as the groaning organ and the red bird beating his wings above people’s heads.
“Stay,” Carl said again in a low voice. He’d stopped walking, and so had I. The crowd was streaming past us on all sides. He was speaking softly and looking at the ground. I didn’t understand, and I was tempted to do a last pirouette in my pretty dress, and just go—bye now, Carlito darling, I’ve seen enough of you, you’ve made me dance enough, you and the likes of you—and vanish into the crowd, the most beautiful of women. I said: “Bye now, I’m going.” He grabbed my arm. He was looking at the ground, and saying: “Don’t leave, all I want…” “What?” I said. “What do you want?” And the man with the rooster passed again, brushing against us. Carl looked up, his eyes imploring. “I want you to come up to my place, once, just once …” “What difference would that make?” I replied bluntly. “All the difference!” he cried. A few passersby turned around. The organ was still groaning. We walked on a little way. A big guy with a droopy mustache, a pipe, and a checked jacket was laughing behind his stall and brandishing T-shirts, each with a huge pair of breasts printed on it.
I wanted to show him that it wouldn’t mean anything. That it wouldn’t make any difference if I took off my dress and my fine underwear for him. “All right, let’s go up to your place,” I said wearily, hating him, thinking: A good way to have done with it, since there’s nothing between us, nothing at all. He’ll see I’m frigid and that’s why I play with men like a cat with its prey. Yes, that’s what I was, a frigid woman, ladies and gentlemen, as cold as a mermaid after so many years and so many men, so this one could beg all he wanted, I’d lead him to his doom like the others. Let him beg, and out of sheer weariness I’d lead him on, and then I’d go and throw myself in the river that runs alongside the market, because there was no way I could bear again, even once, the thought of a man trying desperately to make me come, and me observing his failure and mine, like a merchant who can’t sell her wares.
We went up to his room. It was on the top floor of a house that overlooked the market and the river. The market, as you can see, is situated between the river and the houses, on a long narrow strip between two bridges. The room, too, was long and narrow, but in the other direction, between river and garden, one of those town gardens, extensions of the houses, alive with roses and the song of blackbirds. It’s there that he said, “You don’t owe me anything,” adding, almost awkwardly, “We’re up here, that’s all I wanted.” He turned his back on me and stood looking out of the window on the garden side. I didn’t try to understand. I undressed and lay down on the bed. He opened the window wide and leaned out, as if he wanted to hail someone or simply to see if the rose tree was in blossom yet.
I suddenly had a definite feeling that I shouldn’t stay on the bed, waiting, knowing what was going to happen—one more room, one more man. I got up and went to the window that overlooked the market and the river. I opened it wide and leaned out, naked. I thought I’d throw myself out, finish it there and then. It was swarming down there, swarming with bodies, clothed and hidden bodies, bodies rough to the touch, but with soft dresses to mop up the blood, and jackets to cover my broken limbs. It was then that a cool wind began to blow through the room, from the garden to the river, or from the river to the garden, I don’t know anymore, how should I know? And you’re not the ones who can tell me, you don’t care about the wind unlesss someone points it out to you, with a finger wet with saliva. Be that as it may, the air was floating over the small of my back as I knelt to watch the crowd, to watch you, advancing below. I leaned out even more, turning my back on the man and the room. The ribbon of air rippled over my skin, chilling me. At that moment, I felt him enter me. Carl. The man I didn’t love. Quickly but without urgency, his cock as proud as a rooster standing on a hat. He moved inside me as if pushing his way through a crowd, no begging bowl, nothing to sell, simply because he had to go from one place to another and come back, there inside me and back, and it didn’t matter to him what happened, if it was terrific or a disaster, or simply just another body, the body of a woman as slow and indifferent as the crowd. It didn’t matter to me anymore either, since I was going to kill myself any second now. I’d stopped feeling the cold wind. Heat flooded my body like a furnace. A voice began to speak from nowhere, from deep inside him, from deep inside me, I don’t know which. When you were little, you used to walk about half naked in the middle of winter, you were hot, Carla, always too hot, and the grown-ups would chase after you with coats and bonnets and woolen blouses and a torrent of concerned advice, then one day the heat went away, abandoned you, and you started to dress like everyone else, sometimes, poor Carla, yes, sometimes you even put on gloves and a scarf, and now once again you’re burning all over, you’d like to take off your burning limbs and throw them one by one through the window for the fall to cool them down, or so that they can take to the air, like birds.
My body was sliding under Carl’s thrusts, sliding down, toward the crowded market. One last time I looked at the waves of the river and the waves of the crowd flowing in the opposite direction, one drenched in sunlight, the other in the shadow cast by the houses. Suddenly an animal cried out, as if someone had picked it up carelessly, to show it or sell it. I couldn’t see where it came from—the sweat was pouring into my eyes—but that cry of agony rose above the clamor of the crowd and the hooting of the barges and the lamentations of the barrel organ. The young rabbits cried out like that, little Carla, just before the cat brought them to your door-step. Then I cried out too, as violently as an animal, because suddenly the cruelty of the torturer and the gentleness of the victim united inside me in a new and radiant and delicious pain that arched my whole body and spread to every extremity, infinitely.
Afterwards, I felt cold. Carl covered me. I began to cry. Carl didn’t say a word. Carl got dressed, Carl left, leaving the door open on the staircase leading down.
I never saw him again.
Now I’m here every Sunday to tell you about him. Tomorrow, I’ll go back to my office and my boss, who looks at me as if I’m wearing a T-shirt with a huge pair of breasts printed on it. But next Sunday, I’ll be here again, as true as my name is Carla. I’ll take up position here, my back against the pillar of the bridge, between the man selling poultry and the organ-grinder with the monkey. Sometimes, through a torn seam, the monkey’s hand will rummage in the doll’s innards, and that’ll amuse her for a while. But then she’ll get that vague look in her eyes again, just like a casual passerby—just like you, in fact.