Untamed Sanctions

The entrance cowered between two other buildings as I approached it, almost as if it wanted to avoid me. The only reason it failed was that a familiar face threw the door open, and ran straight into me. At first we began to yell at each other in the way that any person does when two shoulders and arms collide with another. Instantly the message is sent to the brain that the other person doesn’t know how to walk, or should watch where they are going. Another amusing thing, considering that it is always the other person who seems to be doing the wrong thing, and never yourself. When I reached the top of the stairs, a bunch of underpaid, under motivated men sat at there poorly furnished desks.

“So where is my office?” I asked, perhaps too quickly; I had made no attempt what-so-ever to actually observe much more than the fact that the room was filled with several oak desks that usually had nothing else except stacks of paper and half-chewed pencils. A fat pudgy man with a stained shirt that was busting at the buttons strolled up to me, a grin on his face as he looked at me. He raised only one fat finger and aimed it toward a desk in the corner, that was completely clear and had no signs of being used. Apparently I was deluded when asking if I had an office – silly me for assuming that a writer such as myself would be given an office. In fact, the more time my mind spent on that question, the more idiotic it made me feel. It was just a column in a paper, why would I receive an office?

I sat at the desk for hours, rapping my fingers on the paper that rested in front of me. The page was completely blank. It always struck me as funny that I was never able to write when I wasn’t in front of my trusty typewriter; things always took more effort, more time, more words for what in the end seemed to feel like half the reward. The problem was with these situations is that the money was always important to me and the money was always the reason that whenever I found myself uncomfortable being away from my jet-black typewriter with the faded letters, I just had to deal with it. Andrew had taken the time to give me this job and I felt obligated to make use of the opportunity.

More time passed, and I continued to feel unable to write, unable to talk about anything in a column. There isn’t anything that I could tell these Parisian people, there isn’t anything that they wouldn’t know already or anything that I could do to inspire them. I write mostly for myself, to tell myself things that I don’t know already, and even things that I do know myself. There was no way I could write anything worth putting to these morons, nothing that I could sweet up or dumb down to meet their level or please them with things that they want to hear. Forget the column, forget writing for this fat fuck of a man who had been doing nothing but smiling smugly at me ever since I arrived.

I need a drink, and there is an excellent bar that I haven’t tried yet which might provide some interesting entertainment and perhaps a little bit of inspiration. A writer at a desk, writing for a small-time newspaper – ah, but I need the money. The pen rested on the desk, right on the blank paper and I stood up, headed for the door and opened it; there was a moment where I knew that the overweight man was staring at me. A boss required an answer, and he being my boss, I was obligated to give him an answer for leaving so early and having produced nothing at all for him to see.

“I’m just getting lunch,” I told him and stepped out the door, closing it behind me. The sound of my laugh filled the small stairs that led to the front entrance – a liquid lunch on my mind.

       

Last night had to be one of the most unpleasant nights of sleep that I have ever experienced in my entire stay in this country. It wasn’t so much the constant sounds of the house moving, shifting in the breeze and adjusting to the temperature, because I had gotten used to the way wood moaned slowly during nights. Instead, I could swear on the life of my third grandmother that I heard the shrill sounds of a young child screaming and crying. It was unlike the sounds of a young child crying when it wanted something, or an infant piercing the night with its deathly whine. This child screamed and cried in the way that could only be perceived as being in pain.

Periodically the voice would echo through the quiet Paris air, through the small lanes and between the gaps of any building in its way, into the open window I deliberately let open in attempt to get some form of airflow in the stuffy, small room. It echoed through the night, and right into my ears, ringing more deafeningly than a church bell being struck directly beside me. Usually I am the type of person who wouldn’t care so much about the problems of other people, because I typically believe things happen purely because one asked for it to happen. However, there was something different flowing in my veins last night – compassion, perhaps. A feeling I hadn’t allowed myself to feel for a long time, to say the least, but that was purely to protect my heart.

No, we won’t be going into that.

In any case, I got up from the mattress that had been thrown onto the floor and looked out of the little window that has the cheap, wooden French doors on it. There wasn’t a soul to be seen at all, not in the other buildings, not in the streets, no where – if I didn’t know better, I would have said that I was the only person who resided in the entire area. Still the echoed cries of a small child, a boy I assumed, skimmed the air and filled my ear canals with screams that made the hair on my body stand on end. With a child, they usually don’t ask for the kind of pain this kid sounded as though he were in and I suppose it made it easier (or harder, depending on how one chooses to look at this predicament) for me to feel sorry.

I actually took to the streets last night, very shortly after looking out that window. I was determined to locate the source of the voice, to find what it was keeping me awake, chilling me so far that night. Very seldom it is that I am scared or chilled by anything that is heard or seen by me, but this seemed to be an exception – as a writer it seems amusing that I can be horrified so easily by the call of a small voice, yet I could create plenty of things that would be deemed far more horrible than that. Perhaps it is that I have become immune to any disgusting, frightening idea I could ever conjure up and so now it is the smaller, less thought of things that will now make my blood turn cold.

Twenty minutes passed with me roaming the streets barefooted, trying desperately to follow the sound completely by guessing that I was hearing from the right direction. Of course, it was a little difficult to follow an echo that seemed to fill my ears loudly, but I tried as best as one can in such a situation. Closed café’s came an went, locked stores that sold wonderful fragrances for both men and women passed me on my left, while shoe stores passed me on my right. A fabrics maker just ahead, and a seedy little lane that led to the more secluded parts of the area, where the more dilapidated buildings resided, where the even less fortunate came to live; the place was always abundant in drugs, and illicit sex.

That child I heard was never located by me and I never found out what caused such an awful sound from such a small throat, and I don’t believe it is something one wishes to imagine or spend too long thinking about, either. The whole thing was so surreal, so real that I was certain it wasn’t me hearing things, so certain that it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me as payback for dousing it in liquor so often. Nevertheless, I returned back home and sat down on the bed, listening, expecting to hear the sound once more. “Lisa!” a muffled voice yelled at the front door, with the sound of fists pounding against it, “Lisa, open the door!”

I sat bolt upright in my bed on the floor and looked around – I was still as naked as I were when I went to sleep earlier, the blanket still laying, if not a little tangled, on my legs. The watch on the table said that it was ten in the morning, but I didn’t understand how that could be – I had only just returned home from searching for the little kid, I was certain of it. “It’s me, Lisa, hurry and wake up, will you?” the voice yelled again as fists whacked away at the wood of the door. I answered that door, being too lazy and distracted to find myself some clothes and dress myself; there was nothing a blanket wrapped around my slender frame wouldn’t solve and I had learned how to tie a blanket wonderfully at the chest, anyway.

It was Andrew; he had come over as he had said to discuss the details of my new job. Apparently he had been knocking on my door for the past twenty-five minutes and knew I was home because he called Lina earlier this morning to make sure I’d be around. It took a bit of convincing on his part, because I still swore on my life that it was only minutes ago that I had stepped back in the door and sat on the end of the bed. The entire details of the voice I heard screaming was being recounted to him by me and he laughed openly at me. It was then that I realised the entire story I had been telling him, the entire story that I had been convinced actually happened and was as real as this very moment, had all been a dream.

       

No, I am not going outside today, I refuse to walk down the slender, quiet, back-streets of Paris today. The womanly man has been trying to encourage me to step outdoor for the most part of the morning, and instead I merely sit in this chair, limp, knowing my weight will be more difficult to lift if I choose not to cooperate. Lina cannot stand it; he mutters words in French at me, venting his anger and believing that I don’t know what it is he says. “Branleur! Pourquoi devez-vous être de cette façon, vous connasse,” he yells at me, before eventually leaving me be, as I slump in the seat and stare blankly out the window to the wall of the building next door, only a meter or two away.

No, I am not moving from this chair today, I refuse to stand up and do anything in this place, in this country, in this world, in this life. The only words I uttered today was to Lina, the womanly man, asking him to retrieve me a bottle of wine or anything alcoholic. “You aren’t sitting here all day drinking yourself stupid, Lisa,” he ordered me, “I won’t be putting up with you for an entire day, especially if you plan to drink until you no longer remember your name.” It isn’t my name that I wish to forget – how does one manage to forget their name when completely pissé, I wonder. It isn’t my name that I wish to forget – it is he.

He died this very day, this very day he died. Somewhere in between death and life does he exist, for he is dead, he exists no more. It was this very day that I left my home soil and bound my way for Paris, made the decision to follow that idea of being a writer of some sort. I asked him to come with me, that very morning as soon as I woke; I left on impulse, you see, I left only hours after waking up and having the desire to stay in Paris and write. Always on my right, he was, and so it was that I woke and turned to my right and asked him to travel with me. “No,” he said, “I won’t go with you; I don’t want to go with you. I love you, but no.”

“No”? “I love you, but no”? There was something about those words that I couldn’t believe I was hearing. There was something about him refusing to travel with the person he proclaimed to love that I couldn’t comprehend. He explained to me that he was in too good of a job to risk losing what he had; he couldn’t see himself moving anywhere with me just because I asked him to, because I wanted to follow some spontaneous idea. He cared more about his materialistic possessions, his stately home, and his ever-expanding account to leave any of it for me. It wasn’t that he had to leave it either – I always told him this would be temporary, a change of pace and style.

So I left the house with one suitcase of possessions, alone. It was that moment when my foot connected with the dilapidated pathway that he died and, as I say, exists now between death and life. When I realised that he was more committed to the idea of having large amounts of breakable, ‘at the end of the day worthless’ gadgets that seemed to exuberate him, that was when he died within me. I hear that he still lives in the same place, just as happy without me being there as he were when I was there, and I hear he is making just as much money, if not more, than before. One year has passed since I last saw him, since I last had him on my right. No message, no contact of any kind. I suppose I am dead to him, too.

       

It is almost one thirty in the afternoon and I make my way to the café just down the road from the womanly man’s house. The café is more realistically just a community park’s length away, as opposed to just down the road, but I consider the journey to be significantly short in comparison to the typical trips I make around this city. Andrew wanted to see me; he had told me that it was important for me to see him today, at this time. I barely knew Andrew; I only met him because, like most people that come into contact with me, I bumped into him on my staggering way to whatever place I could manage to call “home” on that particular day. When I met him, I managed to score myself at least a week under his roof. It wasn’t until I got fed up with the constant presence of rats that I decided I didn’t have to put up with it.

As I say, I managed to have one week of solid accommodation, for no cost to me at all and as such, I feel that I owe something to Andrew, even if it is just in the form of meeting him at some café, where I will most likely choose not to listen. Now, he is a decent man, of no doubt is there about that very fact, but whenever he opens his mouth and talks about something, I can’t help but feel as though I am comatose. To be sure, he sometimes does have interesting things to talk about, but he lacks the ability to stick to the subject, to remain focused and tell the entire story, as it was. There is always the need to remember that sixty-seven percent of everything he says is embellished slightly or fabricated entirely.

I had never been to this little café before and it was he who suggested that we meet there. The building didn’t look so bad, I suppose – the white metal chairs that sat outside around the matching white metal tables seemed to make the place look slightly better. Andrew has yet to arrive, and I figured it were a better idea to choose a seat where he was bound to spot me, bound to notice. This reminds me, I particularly dislike having to wait for other people, when in an agreement to find each other at a certain location – I usually make an effort to be the one who is slightly late or arriving “just in time” for such events. See, the problem with waiting for others is that you’re vulnerable – or rather, I’m vulnerable – to anything that the person meeting me wants to do.

Then there’s the fact that one is just sitting there, with no real purpose other than to wait for someone. Everyone is surrounding, perhaps observing at some point and if you’re at a café, then you’re almost certain to be paid a visit by a staff member. They note your solitary status and keep it in their mind for a while, especially if you inform them that you won’t be asking for that coffee you want, because you’re waiting on someone else. Vulnerable, as I say, because anything could happen and one could easily be left to think anything if they sit there for long enough. Those rare moments where the person that was designated to meet never turns up, and you’re left sitting there looking completely ridiculous and stood-up, perhaps for a good reason and perhaps not. All the while, as I write this, everyone is still just watching!

Its fine when with someone else and waiting for a third or more, because then the humiliation or whatever feeling that comes along can be equally distributed over the two. You no longer have to look pathetic waiting on your own for someone that never comes and you can order that coffee with the sweet froth on the top and the fancy swirl made with the milk and cream. Of course, the coffee isn’t denied when alone and waiting, but it always seems habitual that it isn’t ordered until you’ve successfully lived through the self-effacing moments. Anyway, Andrew finally arrives and informs me that the reason he was so desperate to meet was because he had found me a job.

At first I questioned his motive, because I definitely hadn’t asked him to search for an occupation for me, and he absolutely did not owe me a single thing in this materialistic world. Yet, as I sat there finally enjoying the vanilla flavoured latte that I ordered immediately on his arrival, he explained to me that he took pity on me, felt that he should help me out whenever and however he could. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a job, but it was writing a small-time column on page fifty-two for some Parisian newspaper that he happens to work at.

He knew of my writing and perhaps became the first to really see anything I had seriously created when I put ink to paper, and so I suppose that instinct told him I would be the perfect candidate for the opening position. “If anyone can talk shit about absolutely anything, just to have some sou in their pocket, it would be you, Lisa,” he told me. I smiled a little and tried not to appear too amused by it; I remembered how easily I wooed said man with my simple words.

I start next week, apparently. He’ll come over to wherever it is that I’m staying when the time comes and inform me of things I need to know, where to go, etc, etc. He couldn’t tell me much more than this, because he claimed he had other things to do, though he did pay me the simple curtesy of feeding my pocket a few francs before patting me on the shoulder as he walked away. The feeling he left me with, I couldn’t be certain if it were offence or something different; I felt as though his pat was condescending, yet I also felt it was just him being friendly and supporting. Supportive of what, I’ve yet to decipher, but I assume it relates to pity, if anything. Nevertheless, if I must play on Andrew’s pity to get some money, then I will.

       

My eyes are confronted with the sight of a rotting ceiling, where the thin layer of poorly applied white paint was cracking and peeling away from the surface. I say white because that is the colour it was intended to be, when the coat was laid many years ago. I say white because it is far more settling in my mind than the degraded, mouldy, dark murky greenish-grey that it had become. As usual, I remember nothing about how I arrived in this bed but usually think nothing of it; chances are I stumbled into some people who took pity on me, either because of my intoxicated state or my lack of a place to stay. One or the other is fine by me, but both together are also a plausible cause.

The smell of bacon with eggs floats over in my direction inspiring a low growl, warning me that it could kill a horse and eat it all, if it weren’t for the fact it was a stomach and not an animal of its own. A meal! How I came across a meal so early in the morning without any recollection of it escapes me but there desire to linger on the issue is nil. There I lay, on my back with my legs hanging off the bed, half in, half out, with the blanket half on and half off my body. For several moments, I wonder if I had managed to find one of those rich bastards in the restaurant and entice him back to his place, with me at his arm, for a meal, in exchange for a lay.

Entertaining that thought didn’t last much longer as a man bursts into the door and walking over in my direction. He didn’t look familiar to me, I had no idea of who he was but he was speaking to me, in French or perhaps another language. At second guess I considered it German, but I knew that language, I would recognise it. Then I heard him, as plain as day, “You lazy fuck, there’s breakfast on the table waiting for you! Why aren’t you even dressed yet? Christ, must I do everything for you?” and with his final ranted question, he flung my clothes at me, hitting me straight in the face. Funny as it were, I never really noticed that I wasn’t wearing my clothes and it surprised me slightly that I didn’t notice. Maybe it was that I did exchange a meal for a lay.

Searching for my glasses, I put them on and make with putting on my clothes. One foot in my trousers, he watches me with an interested expression on his face, examining my body as much as he were memorising it. It amused me how easily he sounded more like a woman than even me. I say that he sounded like a woman but what I mean is that he had an amazing ability to whine and nag at the drop of a pin – he actually had a rather deep, low voice in that near perfect throat of his. In fact, he wasn’t all that bad looking; clean shaven, nicely dressed if still a tad too casual, not much hair on his head but that didn’t matter much. He seemed to have a case of Russian hands.

“Listen,” he says, “I’m sorry for being so snappy just before. I didn’t expect you to still be laying there, after everything that you mentioned to me, everything that you told me. I thought you would be out of here by now, but its fine that you’re not; you’re welcomed to stay here for as long as you need. I remember what you had mentioned to me last night, I know that you are almost poor and have unstable accommodation…” Unstable, he said. I continued to slip my pants on and buttoning them at my waist as I tried desperately to recall what it was I had told him. I scarcely know what happened yesterday morning, so trying to recite the actions of last night whilst incapacitated on red wine is nothing more than a blur.

Still, this bastard of a man chewed more of my time. Bacon was waiting on a plate downstairs – smoked bacon by the scent of it all, and those eggs that called seductively to me all the way up the stairs. This bastard stood between me and my next meal and he continued to pour on and on about ‘last night’ as if I remember it as plain as day. The more he continued, with as many words crammed into a single breath, the more I thought he were a woman in a previous life. He had all the physical details of a male and probably half of the mental ones too, but on his sleeve was a heart - the heart of a woman; smooth and caring, delicate and loving and ultimately fragile.

“A writer, you said. A writer! You chose to live your life in France, writing you book on life however you saw it. I never read a single thing that you wrote, but no doubt you will show me soon and I know this because you promised me. ‘Fucking modern-day writers,’ you said, ‘constantly coming in and writing nothing but fragmented thoughts on anything and everything. Those fucking modern-day writers, they could spiel on forever about a conversation they had and turn it into a fourteen page story, when it was hardly that at all. They drifted; they did shit all, and complained about everyone else who did shit all.’ When I asked you what kind of writer you were, you told me you were a modern-day writer.”

I had to stop myself from laughing in hysterics. These words he recited perfectly are words I cannot remember telling him but sound precisely like something that I would have told anyone. He looks at me, imploring that I venture on what was so amusing to me but I fail to pay him the time of day. Already a fair amount of time had been consumed by him, swallowed by that jaw that moved up and down constantly and overflowing with words like the fountain in the courtyard outside the window. It occurred to me that he may not have had anyone to speak to in a long time, and for almost as long, never had anyone to listen to. I sensed that he needed someone, perhaps me, but in general, anyone.

“Listen,” I said, “You seem like a decent fellow, so I propose to you this: every night I’ll return here and ask of you a meal and in exchange you can pin your heart to my sleeve every so often and I’ll tell you what you need to know and I’ll hear what you want me to know. A meal is all that I ask of you.” It seemed reasonable enough to me and the best part about my proposal was that I needn’t dip my hand into my pocket and hand over a few francs for our time. See, I could tolerate listening to this sad sap for however long he chooses to drone on and on about pointless little things. Handing him money, however decent and genuine that he seemed was an entirely different issue.

Call me a fucking modern-day writer because of that, if you wish, but it was settled all the same. He agreed to feed me and I agreed to listen to the womanish man whenever he required; he was lonely, he wasn’t about to turn down some company, regardless of its quality, if all it meant was that he had to make a feed or two for some woman he met. I threw my shirt on and walked past him, gliding down the stairs toward the scent of what was getting closer to my hungered stomach. A meal, at last.