knows where, are far away.
Marie-Thérèse lights a white candle like an altar candle. From the flame she lights her cigarette. Then she says, do you want to see Alice's letter? Adam watches the thread of black smoke disappearing. He says, show me. Marie-Thérèse lays her cigarette down on a trefoil-shaped ashtray and goes off to fetch the letter.
Alice's letter is addressed to Marie-Thérèse Lyoc, Domaine des Hocquettes, Suresnes 92, Francia. Barely legible over the Spanish stamps, the postmark reads 1971.
Adam takes the sheets of paper out of the envelope. Four pages, covered right up to the edges in handwriting that is instantly recognizable and instantly painful.
MALAGA, SATURDAY AUGUST 14
Mujer (my burden!)
,
There's never any paper at all in the shithouses in Spain or Morocco, it's still as disgusting as ever and even though you wrote to me on some kind of toilet paper, which was a relief because I thought you were turning bourgeois, I don't use it despite my catching dysentery in the south of Morocco! I've got the cramps and heartburn, etc., it's such a “pain in the
ass” that for the past four days I've stopped smoking … cigarettes. I'm here at the station, on the way back to Paris, a lot of hesitating, as I wanted to stay with Nordine at Diabet (a mile and a half from Essaouira, look on the map, dear). You can live on nothing down there, it's a village where the only people are hippies and Moroccans, but they're not stupid pricks, they take no notice of the hippies, don't regard them as strange animals the way people do everywhere else. Not a single tourist, it's really paradise. My parents would never have been able to find me down there, impossible. When I got here I found a letter from my father that starts like this: “The little notice you take of us speaks volumes for your inability to fulfill your most basic obligations. Am I to assume that you take a similarly casual view of your examination at the start of the new term and, beyond that, the year ahead? I must remind you that there's more to life than running after guitar-strumming morons on the beaches of the Costa del Sol.” You can see what that kind of language does for one's morale! The truth is I find it hard to see myself going back to the lycée. To begin with, I've forgotten everything, absolutely everything, and, besides, for the past three weeks I've been stoned, this is the first day I haven't smoked, not taken my little dose of brain vitamins. You knowghita tea, opium tea? In Morocco everyone's high, even the customs men smoke, you smoke with the policemen, who are great, out in the street, in the cafes
,
everywhere, you never hide and it costs nothing. For seven francs you can get a pound of very good kif The truth is I can't see myself remaining in Suresnes. Nordine wants to come and meet up with me after working in San Sebastian for a month and we'll go off to Amsterdam where he's got something fixed up. He wants us to get married, have a son, and travel. He's very nice, I like him. I've even talked to him about Tristan and also Julio, who's waitingfor me in Madrid to go off to Argentina and do craft work there. He wants a son, too, it's an obsession, I don't know what's got into them, that they all want a son (apartfrom Tristan). I need to make my mind up once and for all which of them is the best for me, and stay with him and forget all the others because things can't go on like this (at the moment it's going fine).
[ S UNDAY 15 (8:30 A.M., SNIFF-SNIFF)]
Here we go! I told Nordine I wasn't going to stay in Madrid but I thought it was too ridiculous, after Julio and me writing rubbish to each other for a year not to go and see him and I went, a bit reluctantly and it was the big WHAMMO, all over again. We were together from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. I've just left him, he was weeping, it
5
stupid to play at ghosts, we really love each other! I think I'm going to go off to Argentina with him. Of course there's
the question of
Marie-Thérèse lights a white candle like an altar candle. From the flame she lights her cigarette. Then she says, do you want to see Alice's letter? Adam watches the thread of black smoke disappearing. He says, show me. Marie-Thérèse lays her cigarette down on a trefoil-shaped ashtray and goes off to fetch the letter.
Alice's letter is addressed to Marie-Thérèse Lyoc, Domaine des Hocquettes, Suresnes 92, Francia. Barely legible over the Spanish stamps, the postmark reads 1971.
Adam takes the sheets of paper out of the envelope. Four pages, covered right up to the edges in handwriting that is instantly recognizable and instantly painful.
MALAGA, SATURDAY AUGUST 14
Mujer (my burden!)
,
There's never any paper at all in the shithouses in Spain or Morocco, it's still as disgusting as ever and even though you wrote to me on some kind of toilet paper, which was a relief because I thought you were turning bourgeois, I don't use it despite my catching dysentery in the south of Morocco! I've got the cramps and heartburn, etc., it's such a “pain in the
ass” that for the past four days I've stopped smoking … cigarettes. I'm here at the station, on the way back to Paris, a lot of hesitating, as I wanted to stay with Nordine at Diabet (a mile and a half from Essaouira, look on the map, dear). You can live on nothing down there, it's a village where the only people are hippies and Moroccans, but they're not stupid pricks, they take no notice of the hippies, don't regard them as strange animals the way people do everywhere else. Not a single tourist, it's really paradise. My parents would never have been able to find me down there, impossible. When I got here I found a letter from my father that starts like this: “The little notice you take of us speaks volumes for your inability to fulfill your most basic obligations. Am I to assume that you take a similarly casual view of your examination at the start of the new term and, beyond that, the year ahead? I must remind you that there's more to life than running after guitar-strumming morons on the beaches of the Costa del Sol.” You can see what that kind of language does for one's morale! The truth is I find it hard to see myself going back to the lycée. To begin with, I've forgotten everything, absolutely everything, and, besides, for the past three weeks I've been stoned, this is the first day I haven't smoked, not taken my little dose of brain vitamins. You knowghita tea, opium tea? In Morocco everyone's high, even the customs men smoke, you smoke with the policemen, who are great, out in the street, in the cafes
,
everywhere, you never hide and it costs nothing. For seven francs you can get a pound of very good kif The truth is I can't see myself remaining in Suresnes. Nordine wants to come and meet up with me after working in San Sebastian for a month and we'll go off to Amsterdam where he's got something fixed up. He wants us to get married, have a son, and travel. He's very nice, I like him. I've even talked to him about Tristan and also Julio, who's waitingfor me in Madrid to go off to Argentina and do craft work there. He wants a son, too, it's an obsession, I don't know what's got into them, that they all want a son (apartfrom Tristan). I need to make my mind up once and for all which of them is the best for me, and stay with him and forget all the others because things can't go on like this (at the moment it's going fine).
[ S UNDAY 15 (8:30 A.M., SNIFF-SNIFF)]
Here we go! I told Nordine I wasn't going to stay in Madrid but I thought it was too ridiculous, after Julio and me writing rubbish to each other for a year not to go and see him and I went, a bit reluctantly and it was the big WHAMMO, all over again. We were together from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. I've just left him, he was weeping, it
5
stupid to play at ghosts, we really love each other! I think I'm going to go off to Argentina with him. Of course there's
the question of
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