ABOUT FACE

Cecile Rossant

Description

Cecile Rossant's About Face is an eclectic jumble of short fiction, ranging in length from three and a half lines to 23 pages, sucks you in under the pretence of being short stories and before you know it, lo-and-behold, you realise you're reading a poem. It may not always look like a poem, or even sound like one, but Rossant's writing is so beautiful, so lyrical that by the end of the collection there is no doubt: poetry it must be.

Sujets

• Literary
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Red Hen Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781597092173
• Langue: English

Extrait

About Face

About Face Short Fiction by Cecile Rossant 
Red Hen Press   Los Angeles

About Face
Copyright © 2004 by Cecile Rossant
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Cover photograph Interior No. 1
by Nanae Suzuki
Book design by James M.J. Harmon
Cover Design by Mark E. Cull
ISBN 1-888996-20-X
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2004095867
Published by Red Hen Press
The City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department,
California Arts Council and
the Los Angeles County Arts Commission
partially support Red Hen Press.
First Edition
Acknowledgments
I owe my deepest thanks to Edith Ferber whose grace and generosity provided the ground for the realization of this book.
I am very grateful to—
Kate Gale and Mark E. Cull for their invitation to make this book and their patient commitment to its realization, Marianne Rossant: her careful reading and insightful editorial comments were true gifts, Colette and James Rossant, two steady readers, whose thoughtful suggestions and unwavering encouragement have helped in a myriad of ways, and to Rajesh Mehta, for opening my ears, and Celine, Caio and Christian for their refreshing love.

through my quick-rising voice to your quick-hearing ear, Ghen!
Mandarin
The orange’s eye watches my heartless moment of
activity.
Heartless activity condenses into pendulous
droplets underscoring an indicative but imprecise
rhythm.
The droplets collect in the day’s plateau and
assume the shape of an orange complete with peel
and sections as example.
About Face
* * *
I loved a man. We made love on the floor and fell asleep. When I woke, he was nearly dead. In a frenzy, unfamiliar with the faces of death, I tried to nurse him back, but it was too late. He met the day with a seizure; he rattled and then froze.
An ambulance arrived; I traveled with his body, still believing there was something that could bring him back alive.
Later on, when I was telling the whole story to the police, I noticed the smell.
The smell of our lovemaking had dripped out of me and had dried as a perfumed patch on his sweatpants. I had had no time to wash or to wear my own clothes.
An ethereal substance wafted up to my face each time my legs fanned open. Something rose, and caused me to falter. But most of all I so forcefully remembered the vessel, the descending path to the vessel: the vase with open mouth where his vitality still had its temporary lodging and dimensionality, and from which it was now flowing out and evaporating.
Many years later, impressionistically rendered again, I was a-stounded that I had been that bearer, that I was fitted with another’s teeming life . . . momentarily, but also undeniably formed and borne.
* * *
A corridor. At a closed door the walking stops and turns. Behind the door is a linoleum lined room with several plastic chairs, a thin table and an opening to the adjoining room. The two uniformed men following me wheeled in his body.
Before the police arrived, they assembled the box made of a light, evenly grained wood, there, in the room, from a prefabricated kit. The white kimono was slipped out of its clear plastic wrapping and they dressed him with difficulty.
Ahead is a large window framed by an edge of the room, then the ceiling, and the floor.
The readied box was set atop the table and rolled up to his body. The two men and his brother signaled their mutual preparedness and lifted and lowered his body into the box. I wailed. I protested. I refused to accept his being boxed. There was no choice and my protest had no effect on the sequence of events.
The adjoining room was fitted with a raised floor and a low centered table. After I had quieted down, we all entered the room and sat on the floor, leaving our shoes one step below. The police, his brother, uncle, aunt and I sat around the low table like family. They had questions, and their questions soon became my questions.
I told them that while at work in the office yesterday, relocating books, he fell from a ladder when a bookshelf collapsed. He told me that last night.
One of the policemen directed another to call the office. I gave them the telephone number. The phone was handed to me and I spoke to the secretary. She said she knew nothing of his fall. I told her to find out who had been there with him. I told her to ask everyone. I spoke emphatically. For a moment I was ready to accuse someone. I was even tapping through the phone.
The night before, we stood beside the sink while he told me the story. I ran my fingers through his hair and felt the small swelling. But I don’t really remember doing this. I have no recollection of the bump. I led him away from the kitchen sink to the apartment’s only room, through the doorless threshold, as if leading him away from his story, the only manifested alert, away from the inertia of my concern that would beg me to take an action to stop the onset of dread.
And I think so often about how little we know about the body on the inside: when damaged and when not, when dying and when not . . .
I spoke to them until I stopped. All of this while his body lay still and silent in the adjacent room.
To me, a coffin is only a box: to put away something, to keep the body out of sight, so the thing can’t work on you anymore. The box is a practical way to conceal a transition, one that we have judged too hard to handle. So we simply stop “handling” the body, which only hours before had some control over how it wished to be touched. In this sense, a dead body is helpless; this is exactly why it needs to be handled with extreme care and attentiveness. But our society has given up on this responsibility; consequently, a recently dead body is put in a box so it can be stored temporarily, positioned and repositioned with practical ease. When I saw the two uniformed men and his brother move towards him with intent to lift him into the box, I had to be restrained.
* * *
Hiss! Nested boxes of compressed dust coated with layers of paint are connected by openings through which the smaller, flatter boxes may be passed from one functional chamber to another. Toward the inner core is the one made of thin interlocking wood planks banged together; a firm fingernail can leave shallow traces on either type of surface.
I slide open the door of my room. His parents told me this would be my room as long as I was in their house. Its door slides open onto the living room where his coffin lies. The wood box is beside the large window and raised above the floor.
At night his mother and father, his two brothers, and his grandparents sleep in the house’s other rooms. I said goodnight several times and closed the door behind me.
I peel back the covers. The door slides open. Shoeless, I flow into the living room. I’m stopped by the wall. I open the small window on the coffin’s lid. Its entire cover can also be turned back on its hinge. I spoke with him for several hours and didn’t return to my room except to retrieve my cover. This living room had a sofa positioned at right angles to the box. Eventually I closed my eyes. I left the living room light on the entire night. I leaned in, my face close to his—exactly how or if I touched him is difficult to remember.
Does the art of touching have its limits? I’m still drawn to inscribe my caress on his many faces. Now he is all ears.
* * *
While burning we/the party of people/we, the gathered/were upstairs. There was food and discussion. It was a lively scene with talking, with references/with reference to him and ourselves. It was a modern building: mainstays of concrete and sheets of glass. He was wheeled in, still in a box. Chromed steel elevator doors opened. He was pushed in and the doors closed behind him.
* * *
Bones. I crushed his bones. We did it. But I remember what I did. His family had invited me to join in the ritual. I participated with an enthusiasm that to the others must have appeared uncanny—extreme. I was unreserved. Grandfather absent, we struck the bones with the wooden mallet until we had a small white pile of chips and flakes between us. A bit more and the chips became dust and fine gravel. The crushed bone was returned to the urn. I helped, using my hands to gather whatever I could. Across from the counter where we worked was a fountain with running water to rinse the hands. His mother led me there: she turned me and pushed me gently toward the tap. But I turned back again as if it wasn’t enough; I wasn’t yet ready to wash. I rubbed my face with dusty hands, and as I have said, I would have licked my fingers. I would have consumed him by the spoonful: edible or inedible I would have swallowed him—so ravenous was I for that intimacy. And by the way, the room in which we stood, like six actors on a stage, was small and well lit. It opened directly onto the lobby of the crematorium where the rest of the party was watching and waiting. But I couldn’t care less about any of them.
* * *
The box burst; it’s busted. The skin burnt to an inescapably fragile crisp. It traveled up with the current and floated down, twirling and dusting the ground.
It should be sung to the sound of fire—
(The ritual that failed to happen: one that has been compromised and ignored by an entire society, collectively, until the ritual is effectively outlawed.)
The site: the top of a gently sloping