The Naked Eye Read online

  I knew from Tuong Linh that Charles had quit his studies and was working at a gas station. “It’s not a bad job, as you can see,” Charles said to me as we were watching the film Les parapluies de Cherbourg together. In this film, the climax of a drama took place at a gas station. “Then again the woman didn’t wait for her lover; she married a rich man instead,” Charles added, sighing.

  Tuong Linh loved the composer Richard Strauss. I had never heard of him. When Tuong Linh came home, the first thing he would do was turn on the stereo. A floating soprano voice stroked his pale cheeks coldly, gently. I was afraid of this voice that was trying to carry Tuong Linh off into a gravity-free zone like a whirlwind. He poured red wine into a glass and drank down his own silence. I felt guilty, since there was nothing I could do to give him his strength back. “You should just think of yourself until you are free of your shackles,” he said to me. I didn’t know where he got the idea of shackles as I hadn’t told him anything about myself.

  Later I began to study Tuong Linh’s CD covers when he was out. Vier letzte Lieder was printed on one of them. Why letzte? I recognized this German word and remembered that it had once elicited a mild feeling of hunger in me.

  In the kitchen cupboard I found perfectly stacked packages of glass noodles, shark fins, morels, shiitake mushrooms and rice paper, as well as lotus roots and oyster sauce. I carefully removed the morels and lotus roots from their packages and looked at them for a long time as though I’d never seen them before.

  I began to cook this and that. It went surprisingly well, though in the end I wasn’t sure whether a particular sauce hadn’t once tasted fishier and less salty, whether the consistency of the cooked glass noodles and morels shouldn’t be more yielding or firmer. “I can’t eat anything in the evening anyway,” Tuong Linh said and didn’t touch the food.

  Once, when he was out, I tried calling Ai Van. In the background the song Im Abendrot was playing at full volume. I had meanwhile discovered that this was the piece the Charles in the movie put on and then asked France if she liked it. She didn’t respond. In his broken-down car, the stereo system was the only thing still working.

  I had already prepared my life story for Ai Van. It lay there on its platter, waiting to be served: “At the movies I happened to run into an old friend. She lives in the South of France, where her husband owns a vineyard. She said she could offer me a job there and drove me right away so I wouldn’t have to pay train fare. I’ll come back to Paris when I’ve saved enough money.” I let the telephone ring ten times, Ai Van seemed not to be home. I left a message on the answering machine saying I would get back in touch when I had a permanent address in the South of France.

  One day I made a date to meet Charles at eight p.m. at a movie theater. We were seeing the same film again. He never used to see a movie more than once, but now my repetition compulsion had infected him. When I got home, Tuong Linh wasn’t sitting on his sofa as usual; he was at the dining table, eating. Several bowls of food I had cooked for myself during the day were spread out on the table. He gave me a brochure for a language school and asked if I would marry him. During the night the thought occurred to me that there was perhaps a great misunderstanding between us. But I didn’t know where the place was where I could correct the error.

  When I woke up, I was alone in the apartment. Tuong Linh had the early shift. I spent the whole day looking through the film magazines Charles had given me. In the evening Tuong Linh came home earlier than usual and asked me first thing if I had looked through the language school pamphlets. “No, not yet.” “But you’ve got to do something for yourself, otherwise you’ll remain a hopeless young girl forever. I don’t want a young girl. I want to marry you.” “That isn’t possible.” “Why not?” “Because I don’t have a visa.” “A person isn’t born with a visa like a talent. The visa has to be arranged for after the fact. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He will help us.” “Not every lawyer is willing to help his friend.” “I know. But this one will help us.”

  If I had a visa, I could learn the language and study at the university. It wasn’t too late yet to catch up with my peers. Plus it wasn’t as if I’d been loafing all these years while the others were going to school. I was studying a science that had no name. I was studying it on the screen, along with you.

  C h a p t e r S e v e n

  B e l l e d e J o u r

  Hopeful as little bells ringing, ominous as clanking chains, a sound is approaching in 2/4 time. The coachman and his colleague sit side by side wearing black top hats and tailcoats that remind me of bats. Behind them sits a young woman who is being played by you. Beside her sits a man of about thirty, possibly the son of a large landowner. His prosperity strikes him as a natural talent. I used to flippantly describe such men as pigs from the upper classes. In this man’s face, however, one could discern both seriousness of purpose and a sense of responsibility—qualities I’d only ever seen in the faces of a very few, young Party members. The man and the woman speak together intimately; then a shadow passes over the eyes of the woman and the face of the man turns stony. He stops the carriage, forces the woman to get out. She refuses, and he orders the bats to help him. They pull the woman out of the carriage, grab her by the wrists, and drag her body through the woods like a sack of grain.

  Secretly I was watching Charles, who was sitting beside me. The expression on his face was blank. When the screen brightened after the next change of scene, reflections from the screen flickered on his eyebrows. He didn’t notice I was watching him.

  From a thick branch hangs a rope with which the woman’s wrists are bound. The man tears her dress, baring her back, and commands the bats to give her a whipping. The woman moans, rejoicing at this punishment. What does it mean to play a role? After all it is you doing the moaning and no other woman. Have you submitted to being whipped because you regretted having whipped a worker in Indochina? It wasn’t your fault that Eliane was born into the ruling class that exploits others. Why wasn’t the son of the landowner having himself whipped instead of his wife? The whip slices the wind into tatters, the woman screams—it is surely painful, and yet there is no real tension. The participants are bathing together in lukewarm violence.

  The son of the landowner gives the younger of the two bats a sign. This bat walks up to the woman and nibbles the back of her neck. She moans; he looks coarse and uneducated. Typical for the culture before the Revolution, I think. In the previous century, aristocratic families gave their painters a lot of money to make them appear more beautiful in their paintings.

  The man who is having his wife whipped appears two hundred years later as an upright citizen in pressed pajamas. He has the same woman with him, also dressed in pajamas. The two of them are having a relaxed conversation as if there had never been an act of violence between them. The man speaks gently, almost politely to the woman. Did this man replace his heart with another one when he was reborn, or does this scene mean that one and the same man can act differently under different social circumstances?

  The cruel, upright husband and his black-haired friend are standing in a field, stirring a light-gray mass in a bucket with shovels. It is a mixture of muddy earth and cow dung. While the horses move with regular steps along the broad avenue, the cows are anarchistically scattered in the landscape. The woman is dressed in breezy white garments like a Korean shaman, but once more she is tied up and suffering like a Catholic saint. The men throw handfuls of dung at her chest, belly, and face.

  I don’t know how this cow dung episode can be integrated into her bourgeois existence. The different times are playing cards that are constantly being reshuffled in memory and then laid blindly upon the table. No fixed order defines the relationships between the cards. The pips remain hidden until the cards are flipped over. My last day of school in Ho Chi Minh City and the boring math class on the inscrutable topic “differential equations” I fell asleep in had no connection with the moment my airplane landed at Schönefeld Airport. The hour at the hotel
restaurant in East Berlin was cut off from the hours in the pizzeria in Bochum with its glittering slot machines. And the seeds from the rapeseed fields of Bochum couldn’t drift all the way to Paris. I could no longer trace the points in time leading back to Saigon since these points were now scattered across the Earth.

  This director was not gentle with you. In another film he cut off one of your legs, and this time he has you whipped and pelted with cow dung. “He also made a film about the Revolution, but I think he was more Catholic than Communist,” Charles said.

  After the movie I walked home alone. Charles said he had a date, and I suppressed my urge to ask with whom. As we said goodbye, he asked succinctly, “When will you be marrying Tuong Linh?” “Soon.” “It’s good that you met him.” “Thank you. That was a gift from you.” “It was your destiny.” His soft curls bore the faint scent of cigarettes I didn’t recognize.

  Sometimes on my way to the theater I would observe people as if they were part of some movie I knew. The men sitting beneath the awning of a café, peacefully drinking espresso: perhaps they too had their wives whipped in another scene. If only I could rewind the film to learn all these things! I saw women standing at the edge of the sidewalk. With longing in their eyes, they watched for an empty taxi. The paper bags they were carrying contained not the clothing they’d just bought at a boutique but whips.

  On my way back from the theater, I would retrace the series of images I’d seen in the movie. If I yanked the strip of film from the projector and used it to make my own road, I could walk down it image by image all the way home.

  The woman you are playing is named Séverine. She sits in the back of a taxi. Her friend next to her is excitedly talking. There is something solidly bumpkin-like about her young face, and her head resembles a chestnut. Despite the great agitation in her voice, there is nothing about her that suggests she might be on the verge of a breakdown. She would rather send other women to walk the streets than so much as peer down an alleyway herself. Séverine is amused by her friend’s report, but soon a plan appears in her eyes. Cut.

  Séverine is walking through the city, which is reposing in daylight. A sign says “CITE Jean de Saumur.” Séverine nervously inspects her surroundings. A young woman with painstakingly made-up eyes and erotically disheveled hair walks past, casting an observant, somewhat envious glance at this beautiful sister-woman, and vanishes into the building at number eleven. Séverine leaves the square, cools her heels for a while in a park, and then returns to the same place. This time she slips stealthily into the building and rings at the door marked “Anaïs.” A short-haired young woman, slender and severe, opens the door. In her polished gemstone eyes, Séverine probably looks like a girl in need of help. The young woman scrutinizes the applicant thoroughly. She is apparently in charge of this establishment. Should money be invested in this product? Her cool-headed gaze contains a trace of that feverish consumerism that might overcome another woman at a boutique. The boss decides to keep Séverine and kisses her on the lips. Séverine tries to avert her lips from those of her employer but she is too late. Two seconds of lip paralysis pass, and the kiss seals the contract.

  There are already two cheerful women working for the boss in this apartment. When they gather at a table in the living room, the atmosphere changes to that of a girls’ school. A well-dressed customer rings the bell and enters the apartment. A short man with hair like strands of cotton-wool—a Martian. The women surround him, trying to catch his fancy. The man uncorks a bottle of champagne, hands the women a magic box as a gift, and laughs like a broken washing machine. From his Martian face gleam the eyes of a brutal child. Séverine stands alone in a corner, her back to the others. The Martian points to her. He has chosen her as his purchase for the day. The boss orders her new employee to go to the bedroom with the man. Séverine refuses, but is secretly pleased when the boss with the severe gaze and harsh words gives her a little shove from behind. The zipper of her dress is opened. To my surprise, your limbs, chest, and belly are as toned as those of a champion swimmer. Your body now covered only by marble-smooth undergarments displays no superfluous flesh, no fat, no milky softness. The man throws Séverine on the bed. Cut.

  With the other movie, which was set in the parking lot and at the highway rest stop, I felt I was seeing all the events of the story. There were no sudden cuts. But in this film the scenes that might have been provocative and interesting always ended abruptly in fade-outs, as in Tristana. Who was doing that, and why? I didn’t have to be made any more curious than I already was. My eyes wanted to see everything. And what happened to the pictures that were cut out of the film?

  At first you didn’t reveal to me that your name is Séverine—you call yourself “Beauty of the Day.” In the same building in which strange men are received lives a little girl whose name is also Séverine. A workman caresses her body, the priest shoves wafers made of sperm into her mouth, and several women praise her for her good grades at school. Séverine just stands there silently, her back ramrod straight.

  I didn’t know how one referred to a parlor in which women played cards while waiting for strange men. I caught the word “maison” and then something else that sounded like “publique.” My idea of a house open to the public would be, say, a museum or a library. In school I learned that a capitalist society was just a huge bordello. Therefore it was quite natural for a woman who worked in a bordello to be an integral part of this society.

  Séverine returns home, where her husband is waiting. During the day he wears a lab coat, and in the evenings he sits at his desk studying medical journals. Séverine sits on the opposite side of the desk wearing a pink nightgown. They sleep in separate beds that are arranged side by side. Between them is a gap of perhaps fifty centimeters. This distance is not large, but it is unbridgeable. One time the man tries to creep into Séverine’s bed. She makes a slight gesture of refusal, and at once he desists.

  Séverine enjoys submitting to the power of her procuress, who is far more severe than her customers. During daytime hours, “Beauty of the Day” belongs to her. Mao said that each person should work according to his abilities and take what he truly needs. Séverine is not merely a worker, she is also a product. She wishes to become a thing, complete with chest, thighs, neck, and buttocks: this is her own desire, her own decision as a worker. What would Mao say about this?

  A Mongolian beekeeper comes to the bordello. I’m not sure if he’s really Mongolian, but the actor’s name is Genghis Kahn or something like that. Despite his enormous body, he looks kind, but the women in the bordello are afraid of him. In a small black-lacquered box he is holding something that is buzzing. Surely a bee, perhaps even an electrical one, for the buzzing sounds artificial. One of Séverine’s colleagues peeks into the box and exclaims in horror: “Non!” Séverine, though, embraces the beekeeper and beams, which is something she never does. The procuress is watching Séverine’s reaction with astonishment. With this customer she would have been prepared, for once, to accept a refusal. The beekeeper accompanies Séverine into the back room, and shows her with his chin, eyes, and voice that she should keep her brassiere on. She is to bare only the lower part of her body. The combination of milk and honey produces weariness so most beekeepers are afraid of milk and the body part from which it flows. The Mongolian beekeeper takes a tiny little bell from his pocket and rings it. Perhaps a ceremony to drive out evil spirits. Séverine laughs unabashedly. The film doesn’t show us what happens between the two of them after Séverine has surrendered the lower half of her body to the bees.

  The beekeeper is gone. I’m not sure he really was a beekeeper. Séverine remains on her belly for a long time, buried in her thick hair. Finally she lifts her face, which is radiant.

  If you happen to have a weakness for Mongolian beekeepers, it’s possible you might like me. The landscape of my face is a mixture between the Indochinese peninsula and the Mongolian steppe. My mother once told me there was a Mongolian among our ancestors. He rode from the s
teppe all the way to our seaside home to pay obeisance to the Emperor and bring him honey. On the very day he arrived at the palace, he fell in love with a court lady who sat in a boat on the pond, singing wondrous melodies. He leapt into the water to reach her. As a Mongolian he was good with horses but had no clue about the properties of water. And so he flailed about in vain and soon sank beneath the water. The court lady undressed with lightning speed and leapt into the water to rescue the beekeeper. She pulled him out, laid him on the grass, and tended to him for three days and three nights. Later she gave birth to my grandfather’s grandfather. Perhaps this, too, was a story without roots and leaves, for my mother often made up stories. But I didn’t care whether it was a lie or not—my face had certain Mongolian traits. Some day I’ll visit you, I’ll knock at the door of your house and say that I’m the beekeeper’s daughter. You’ll open the door and let me in.

  The considerate husband in pressed pajamas has no idea what his wife likes to do during daylight hours. I knew you better than he did. I’d already made your acquaintance in Repulsion. At the time you were only twenty-two. I also knew you as a twenty-one-year-old in Les parapluies de Cherbourg. Séverine’s husband had no way of knowing these segments of your life, for he was only a character in a movie. He wasn’t permitted to see another film.

  I was alone when I saw this film for the second time. I had called Charles three times that evening, but he wasn’t home. Tuong Linh sat down on the sofa and asked me how the movie was. Often he tried to relax by listening to me rather than talking about his work. Even on Sundays when the alarm clock didn’t ring at six, he got up by seven at the latest, quickly made himself a pot of green tea, and sat down at his desk. “Are there any new movies?” he would ask. He still didn’t have the strength to go to the movies in his free time and saw me as his deputy. I was permitted—even expected—to go to the movies in his place. “It’s fun to go to the movies with Charles,” he would say, even though it was I and not he who was the one going to the movies with Charles. “Charles hasn’t been home much lately.” “Perhaps he’s been struck by Cupid’s arrow. It would certainly be a shame for such a wonderful man to be alone forever,” Tuong Linh said, laughing. I realized I was jealous.