Following the filmstrip we were given a tour by a young woman in her twenties. There were maybe thirty of us—Danes, English people, three motorcycling Germans in leather pants, dragging rolling suitcases. The woman took us through each step of the process, then led us to the bar, where our ticket stubs were exchanged for glasses of whiskey.
Afterward we returned to the hotel for tea. As we drank it, we listened to the couple at the next table. “Well, he’s a bit affected, isn’t he?” the woman said. “The accent, the clothing, he’s, well, affected. A lovely man, but incredibly affected.” She must have said it thirty times.
June 13, 2002
London
We’ve gotten ourselves a mortgage broker named Marcus Paisley, a man we obviously chose for his name. Hugh spoke to him yesterday morning and we spent the rest of the day imagining future calls. “I’m starting to see a pattern here, Paisley, and I don’t like it.”
The solicitor is named Marco and both he and Marie Cécile have begun sending faxes and emails, long, complicated documents I can’t even pretend to read. When this is all done I won’t stop Hugh from referring to “his” London apartment. It may have been my idea to buy a place there, but he’s done all the work.
Dad has rented an apartment to Enrique, one of Paul’s employees, and Enrique’s mother, who arrived from Mexico late last summer. She’s in her early sixties and was recently hospitalized for depression. In many respects her life is better now, but it’s hard to adjust when you have no friends and can’t speak the language. Dad decided that her problem was low self-esteem. Work would make her feel needed, so he hired her to scrape paint. It was only a two-hour job, a $16 opportunity, but after ten minutes he snatched the tool from her hands. “This is how you do it!” he yelled. “Like this.” When she failed to catch on, he screamed at her all the louder. “Oh, get off it. You know what I’m saying.”
The episode left her more depressed than ever, which, Paul says, is the way it works with the Lou Sedaris Self-Esteem Program. “You’re a big fat zero is what you are, so here, scrape some paint.” A foreigner will learn the phrases “Can’t you do anything right?,” “Everything you touch turns to crap,” and “Are you kidding? I’m not paying you for that.”
June 20, 2002
Paris
Yesterday afternoon I opened my Pariscope and there it was: Planet of the Apes was playing at the Action Écoles. “The original,” the ad read. “The one, the only.” When the movie first came out, I saw it seventeen times. I’ve seen it since, on TV and video, but I don’t really count TV and video. Watching it last night on the big screen I found myself laughing at the spaceship computers, big bulky things with dials and switches. The sleep capsules had once seemed sophisticated, but now they looked like props from an old game show. Before turning in, Charlton Heston stubs out his cigar and places it in his pocket. It’s relit later, on the barren desert, and I thought to myself that, though it was stale, it must have felt good to smoke again. After a few moments, his shipmate discovers plant life, and, following a brief examination, Charlton Heston throws his unfinished cigar on the ground and crushes it with his boot.
Well, that’s not right, I thought. Why would he throw away his only cigar? Later on, I wondered why he didn’t offer his silver fillings as evidence that he had, in fact, come from another planet. You saw them, gleaming, every time he opened his mouth, yet they were never mentioned. I noticed lots of little inconsistencies, but that’s to be expected when you’re watching something for the eighteenth time.
June 21, 2002
Paris
Peggy Knickerbocker is in town and took me yesterday afternoon to see Paintings by Doctors, an exhibit at the École de Médecine. It was the last day of the show and several of the cardiologists had come down on their prices. “Look!” the gallery director said. “Twenty percent off!” I’d expected a high level of quality, but it looked much like an exhibit of prison art or paintings done by mental patients. The one exception was a group of still lifes, deft and moody and very accomplished. “Oh, those,” the gallery director said. “Those are by a doctor’s wife.”
After the medical school we walked to the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes and examined the ostriches’ assholes. They’re very complicated and involve what looks like a retracting tongue. When together, Peggy and I always come across some type of interesting assholes. On her last visit, they belonged to prizewinning cows. Yesterday they were ostriches and, later, monkeys. “If mine looked like that I think I’d kill myself,” Peggy said. “I mean it.”
June 26, 2002
Paris
At some point early this week Paul stopped thinking of the Esquire article as a tribute and began thinking of it as a five-page advertisement for himself. Then again, maybe it’s my fault. He’s been working on a website and I mentioned to him last month that perhaps they could print the address alongside my bio on the contributors’ page. I didn’t realize he was looking for a way to sell things: T-shirts, baseball caps, and, now, barbecue sauce.
When I told him I wouldn’t be on the contributors’ page in this issue, he asked if the magazine could print the address of his website on the photos. Andy said it wouldn’t be possible, so Paul called and asked that I work the web address into the story itself. He doesn’t understand the difference between an article and an advertisement, so I had a hard time explaining the difficulty. I settled, finally, on an analogy. “It’s like with the Dr. Povlitch story,” I said. “Wouldn’t it have been distracting to say, ‘After the accident, my mother took me to see Dr. Povlitch (see www.drpovlitch.com or www.braceyourself.com), who began proceedings for a root canal’?”
Paul was silent.
“Doesn’t that sound wrong?” I asked.
“No.”
After we spoke, Dad called me. “Hey,” he said, “why won’t you put Paul’s web address in your story?” By nightfall I was public enemy number one, the mean guy, the fusspot refusing to do his brother this one little favor.
July 8, 2002
La Bagotière
Hugh and Leslie left early this morning for Paris. I was supposed to go with them but decided at the last minute that it’s really not a good time for me. I can’t leave my spiders, for one. On Saturday I started feeding Clifton, who lives above the kitchen sink. He’s big, the size of a pearl, and I’m trying to make him bigger. Yesterday he ate two flies and a moth. The flies took him about three hours each, and the moth, I have no idea. He was still working on it when I went to bed. This morning it’s hollow, propped like a scarecrow on the edge of the web. “Good work, Clifton,” I said.
I love the moment when he feels the prey trying to escape. Their wings vibrate the web and he comes from his little cave to size them up. The other day I threw in a bee. Clifton ran out, saw what he had, and hightailed it back to the corner as if to say, Goddamn, I can’t eat that. Don’t you know anything?
With moths and flies it’s a different story. He attacks directly, paralyzing them with a bite to the back or stomach or forehead. Once they’re unable to move, he drinks them alive, empties them out, and throws the bodies into the trash. I started feeding Clifton on Saturday and began feeding Coretta Scott yesterday afternoon. The flies are easy to catch, especially the old, clumsy ones. During the day they bat against the windows and at night they can be found sleeping on the ceiling. I felt a little guilty about the moth, but flies, who cares?
July 9, 2002
La Bagotière
All day yesterday Clifton stayed folded in his chamber, suffering, I guessed, from a stomachache. He’d eaten three things larger than himself and so, figuring he’d had enough for a while, I concentrated on Coretta Scott and Jerry, a new spider nesting in the window between the stove and the bathroom. It was a slow day for flies, but I managed to catch three of them. Last night I noticed a new colony of spiders on the living-room ceiling. Their webs are complex and sprawling, resembling the new art museum in Milwaukee. There were four of them, and at around midnight they started going crazy, leaping a
round for no reason. There was a lamp on the table beneath them and the light cast their shadows huge upon the ceiling. I caught each of them a moth and then went to check on Clifton, who was gone. His web is empty except for carcasses, and I’m wondering if he went off to mate.
July 11, 2002
La Bagotière
Hugh returned from Paris and I was delighted to see him. It’s scary here alone at night, frightening the way it was when I was a child. In the first place, the house is crawling with creatures—insects, rodents. There’s probably a snake curled up here somewhere. Then there’s the world outside desperately trying to get in. Lie in bed alone and you can hear animals in the yard—something’s outside the bedroom door, something’s overturning a trash can. Before going to bed on Tuesday night, I made the mistake of reading. It’s the memoir of a forensic pathologist, so on top of everything else, I thought of skeletal remains and the way coffin lining sometimes fuses to the bone. It occurred to me that I’d maybe left the door of the milking chamber unlocked, but I was too frightened to get out of bed and check. All in all, it was a terrible night’s sleep.
My fingertips are haunted by the feel of struggling flies. It’s like holding a living, determined raisin. Coretta Scott’s web has gotten ragged and fragile. Prey no longer sticks. I keep thinking she’ll take up repairs or maybe spin herself a new home, but no. Jerry, the spider in the window, is suffering a similar fate. I threw in a fly and it struggled free. I threw it in again and again, eventually knocking it unconscious. Then I thought, What am I doing? When it revived, I threw the fly to the new, enormous spider on the living-room ceiling. He attacked immediately, no hesitation whatsoever, and I felt as though I were rooting for the Nazis in a Holocaust movie. It’s easier with Hugh around, but when left alone I feel I might be losing my mind. Let me catch just one more fly, I think. Just one more!
July 14, 2002
La Bagotière
A brown bird built a nest in the flower box outside Granny G.’s bedroom. She invited me up to see the chicks, three tiny creatures resembling baby dinosaurs. They were asleep so she prodded them with a sharp stick. “Here,” she said, “watch them move.” I’m planning to go over this afternoon with some grubs and a set of tweezers.
Two of my newer spiders have died, but Coretta Scott just keeps on going. Her web is a mess of paint chips and mosquito parts, yet she refuses to move. I’ve been feeding her for a week but can’t see that she’s gotten any bigger. I’d kill for a good book about spiders.
July 18, 2002
La Bagotière
Yesterday afternoon Paula, the big female Tegenaria in my office, took down a bumblebee, which fought briefly, realized the situation was futile, and surrendered. I’d caught it earlier in the garden and afterward felt terrible. A wasp is one thing, but bumblebees don’t hurt anyone. Like ladybugs, they’re all about love. After Paula killed it, I looked in the mirror, expecting to see a monster staring back at me. I mean, I really felt changed, ashamed of myself for catching this thing and throwing it into her web. “This is it,” I told myself. “No more feeding the spiders.” Then I rode my bike to Flers, bought a magnifying glass and a book about insects, and came home to feed the spiders.
July 22, 2002
La Bagotière
This is just about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen: Yesterday afternoon I threw Paula an exceptionally large fly I’d caught in the kitchen. She took it into her cave and a few hours later I noticed her standing in the middle of her web, surrounded by maggots. I’m not sure quite how this happened, as they emerge from eggs, not live from the mother, whose dead body was now crawling with them. Maybe she’d been looking for a place to lay them and they’d hatched a little sooner than she thought? When she’d finished with the fly, Paula started in on the maggots, not eating them but carrying them to the edge of the web and tossing them onto the floor. It was a nasty job and after a while she gave up.
I took a nap and when I returned, the web was covered with ants, who carried the maggots past Paula’s cave and through a crack in the door. It was as if they were servants she had hired to clean up after a party. Manuela was here, and late in the afternoon Genevieve stopped by. The Gs invited us over for aperitifs, and while the others discussed this and that, I thought of the web full of maggots. It was like a terrible secret that set me apart from normal happy people who could eat peanuts and make jokes. I thought about them some more on the way to the train station and by the time Manuela left, I was sick to my stomach.
July 24, 2002
La Bagotière
While I was at the roundabout in Flers, a child approached me and asked for a cigarette. He was maybe eight. “It’s for my mother,” he said. I asked where his mom was and he gestured behind himself. “At home.”
Later, riding to La Lande-Saint-Siméon, I passed a swastika spray-painted onto the road.
I finished An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma. The novel’s main character, Ram, is a corrupt bureaucrat who raped his daughter when she was young and wouldn’t mind doing the same to the granddaughter. He’s odious and self-pitying, yet you can’t help but like him. Here is a striking passage:
No adult minded the small violences I perpetrated. Violence was common. Grown men used to rub kerosene on a bitch’s nipples and watch it bite itself to death. For a while, the men had a hobby of lashing together the tails of two cats with a cord and hanging the cats over a branch and betting on who would scratch whom to death. When the father of a friend of mine clubbed his wife’s head with a piece of wood, her speech became slurred and she started having fits, but not even the village women, friends of my friend’s mother, found this to be an unspeakable evil. Their lives were so sorrowful that they treated what had happened to her not as a crime committed by an individual but as an impersonal misfortune like a badly set bone that warps as it heals.
August 13, 2002
La Bagotière
Paul called on Sunday to say that he and Kathy are going to be parents. There were congratulations, etc., and then it was revealed that she was, by their estimation, possibly five hours pregnant. Most people wait a while before telling everyone that they’re expecting a baby. Andy and his wife kept the secret for three months. Paul and Kathy started calling people the moment they got the results from the home pregnancy test. By nine a.m. Raleigh time, they’d already phoned every member of the family, both his and hers, and were working on a list of possible names.
I stayed up all night on Sunday, working in the attic and leaving my desk every hour or so to explore the milking chamber with a flashlight. At three a.m. I discovered a beetle who’d crawled in under the door and was settled beneath a web eating discarded fly heads. I mean, that’s his diet. Fly heads! At four a.m. I found Gail. A member of family Dysderidae and genus Dysdera, she’s a female Dysdera crocota, a bright red, putty-textured spider who normally lives beneath logs and eats woodlice. I kept her overnight and let her loose in the shed yesterday afternoon.
I’ve exhausted Hugh’s patience as far as my spiders are concerned. Yesterday morning I found Paula’s drained, desiccated body on the floor beneath her old web. There’s really not much left but the legs. I invited Hugh to study the corpse with my magnifying glass, and he tossed a cigarette butt into one of my webs, threatening to clear them all out when the men arrive to begin reroofing.
August 28, 2002
Paris
Shannon called to tell me I’m at number nine. This makes fifty-two weeks—a year on the Times paperback list. While she was very excited and congratulatory, the news left me slightly embarrassed, the way you feel when you’ve stayed too long at the party and notice your hosts looking at their watches. The hosts, in this case, are all the superior writers whose books haven’t sold more than a few thousand copies. On the bright side, I think I can write something much better than Me Talk Pretty. And if it fails and no one buys it, I can really feel good about myself.
August 31, 2002
Paris
Along with
some books, Amy sent me a carton of the new Kools. For decades the packs featured simple green letters on a white box. Two years ago they changed their design, adding a picture of a waterfall, and now they’ve changed again. The new pack is ice blue. Beneath the logo they’ve written “The House of Menthol.” Their way of discouraging smoking is to make the pack increasingly embarrassing. I counted yesterday and should have just enough cigarettes to last me to October.
October 5, 2002
New York
Since returning I’ve noticed how often the words New York are followed by the greatest city in the world. It’s on billboards, on the radio, in newspaper ads. “Where else but New York, the greatest city in the world?” An ad outside the Prince Street subway read WOULDN’T YOU RATHER BE GOING TO CHELSEA IN LONDON? and it struck me as insubordination. New York has always referred to itself as the greatest but more so after September 11. We’re the greatest, damn it. We’re the greatest, remember. You want to go along with it out of pity, but still, it’s hard. At two p.m. it takes an hour and a half to get from Kennedy to SoHo in the greatest city in the world. Cigarettes now cost $7 a pack in the greatest city in the world.
This is definitely not the greatest apartment in the world. Our subletter now has a dog and we’re thinking she must bathe it in the sink. Daily. Hugh made a snake out of a coat hanger and fished from the drain a wad of hair the size of a shrunken head. The halls are filthy. There’s an air conditioner lying on the kitchen floor and no place to put anything. The hotel that’s gone up next door has placed its exhaust system in what was once our backyard, and while we used to hear traffic on West Broadway, now we hear a dull, never-ending roar. They’ve opened an outdoor bar so in the evening the roar is accompanied by the sounds of lively drunks. It’s like a party held on an airport runway.