The Death of Marlon Brando Read online

  “Ya dunno the difference between a mare and a stallion, do ya?”

  If you want to know if someone is going to start acting up, I’m a specialist. He always laughs a bit just before.

  He was behind me and his voice was carrying as if he were talking right in my ear. It was still a whisper, but loud. On the T.V., this would have corresponded to raising the volume without changing the channel. For him, this detail didn’t matter and he said: “Ya dunno, do ya? Ya must be too young to know these types a things.” Then, he added: “Stallions and mares, together, they do what li’l boys an’ girls do when they’re in the playground.”

  Between my teeth, I whistled something like: “I could have sworn” because I know the rules of the game: it’s always him answering the question that he’s just asked.

  As soon as we’re alone, and this is the reason that I avoid him, he starts talking about dirty things and if he doesn’t do it right away, you can be certain that he’s going to talk around it. Ah, as far as that’s concerned… he’s going to talk around it…

  It always begins with a question which seems completely harmless, something like: “Ya dunno the difference, do ya…” or something like: “Do ya know when she was young…” or even something that’s more familiar and that begins by: “Don’t be goin’ tellin’ nobody nothin’…” And he’d ramble on about something that often made hardly any sense and which often concerns people that I don’t know, but that deals with smut, no doubt about that. It’s always like this with him.

  Most of the time, I take off. Sometimes, when like today, it’s impossible, I don’t listen to him. Sometimes, I even tell him – and this is a threat that he quickly makes work of neutralizing – that I’m going to tell on him and that he doesn’t have the right to say things like that to a child, and that he can even go to prison like we heard on the radio about the kids in Mexico.

  When I say this, he groans and says I was the one who started it, and adds that he’s the one who’s going to tell on me, by saying: “I’m gonna say that ya gotta phota, with a li’l girl on it who’s goin’ pee and all…”

  His technique is to lay it on thick; so much so that in the end I don’t know how to defend myself against him. And for him to stop, even just a little bit, I’d beg him on my hands and knees. His tactic is to submerge me in it. He throws lots of things at me that make no sense, and I find myself the prisoner of a logic that tries to untangle it all. As a result, he laughs with a voice that isn’t one anymore, especially when he’s excited and gets all muddled. He stutters, especially when he’s been the strongest, you’d say. And so then again, he laughs, and his laugh is frankly nasty.

  And I’m always surprised to see how, although he’s nothing more than a mongoloid in front of others, he develops this confidence of sorts with me. He uses his authority when he’s all alone with me, but it’s always linked to the others. I think that if I were really alone with him, he wouldn’t have all this power, because it always has to do with the others. By means of suggestion is perhaps how he gets his way. And I’m a bit stunned to find someone manipulating me when I’m alone and while using other people. I’m sure that if I were to try to explain this in my next composition, I wouldn’t get ten out of ten in logic. It’s too difficult a subject. At this stage, I can only express my uneasiness or my doubt or my fear. No dictionary can come to my rescue. Not even my Petit Illustré where you can of course find the word “satyr,” but that is associated with “divinity”… And this without photos or anything.

  He said: “A mare is just like a woman. Did ya know that, you there?”

  He also said: “It’s round an’ clean…an’ it likes that, being petted. You, yer too young to understand these kinds’a things. How old are ya, huh?”

  He stayed behind my back, talking to himself all alone, wiggling, and me, I kept trying not to listen to him and didn’t answer him.

  He said: “Get down an’ then come an’ see from behind… Yer gonna see how a woman an’ a mare are the same. Come see. Ya’ve already seen pictures of women? Look at a mare an’ the way it’s made…an’ it’s always clean. Ya’d say that it has toilet paper. It’s soft…”

  The horse wiggled, and I turned around only to see him pulling on its tail from behind… [15]

  It was raining harder and harder and because I was trying not to listen to him, he wouldn’t stop talking and making gestures which, without a doubt, were obscene. Suddenly, I felt tired. He stopped talking, and all of a sudden I knew what he was doing. He kept saying: “Look…I can put my fingers in…” and me, I wouldn’t turn my head to see.

  He kept on, saying: “Look. I’m puttin’ my thumb in…the big finger on the edge…” but I wouldn’t turn my head to look.

  I knew he did this type of thing sometimes, especially in the summer. I still remember that he kept telling me that the other farmers around – and he would give their names – would do the same thing sometimes. He kept saying that it’s good, naming a whole bunch of respectable men who, according to him, would play this game with cows because, and he was the one who said this, “sometimes it’s better than a woman.”

  Sometimes the mare would make an abrupt movement and sometimes she would stay still and stiff, undergoing what I supposed was a humiliation.

  In my composition, I didn’t write:

  It’s strange. It’s the monster, himself, telling me to watch my back. He says that others do dirty things, that they wouldn’t hesitate to slit my throat, and has once again no problem telling me their names. He says: so and so, and so and so…

  It’s funny. It’s been quite a while now, but I’m still stunned to see that the monster prefers to put me on my guard.

  I got down from the horse and then, without speaking and without looking back, I moved towards the door while trying not to listen, either. It was pouring rain. Without a doubt, the rain would continue for a long time and we’d have to go down on foot, abandoning an already dead horse in the barn. A whole morning wasted…with rain all around and pouring down on the roof of a rotten barn in a field at the beginning of autumn. Without us really being able to do anything about it.

  Seeing the speed at which he caught up with me, I noticed that what I had understood at first had not really happened or, better still, that he had only made the first moves.

  All I can say about this is that I was surprised to see him so quick and to find him instantly at the barn door and a little bit behind my back, making as if he were interested in the rain, as if he had to present the weather on the television.

  He was talking about the miry paths and saying:

  “Yers isn’t much bigger than that…” and added “that we couldn’t get back to the house in time to eat.” He kept saying while looking at the water fall, “gurgle, gurgle,” and then: “Do ya want some candies?…” then: “If I could only drown myself” while sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes…and saying, too: “There ain’t no summer hereabouts.”

  It was very muddled and I must say I felt lost faced with this bombardment of words that weren’t linked to one other.

  His tactic is to lay it on thick. One of his fighting strategies is to submerge you in words in order to create a breach and get in.

  He said: “Yer so young, yer so li’l…” He added: “Yer handsome for a boy. It’s rare to see that, such regular features. Ya got a pushed-up nose an’ it suits you, I find. In a year or two, it’s gonna change, yer nose.” I said: “Why?” and as soon as I fired off the question, I regretted it. It wasn’t the thing to do. I make an effort not to talk to him since I know full well that he’s just waiting for a chance like this one to start up again and bring up what interests him the most. And, this, I don’t get wrong.

  For my “why” fired off a little earlier, I was entitled to all kinds of precise explanations on what the ungrateful years are – this was his own expression – and what this time of life brought about in terms of bodily transformations. He didn’t hold back any details, you can believe me…
and the problems that are related to this period. He enumerated them for me in a direct and clear fashion. Methodically. I’ve already said that beneath his innocent exterior he knows how to make connections when it interests him. At these moments, he’s a biologist coupled with a psychologist. Heavens!… To listen to him, men go through hell during adolescence.

  After, I looked at the rain and noticed “it wouldn’t be much longer now…” and he said, while adopting a detached tone of voice: “Show me yers. I’m gonna tell ya what’s gonna happen in two years. It’s easy to explain when ya see it.” He said:

  “Show, let’s see…there’s supposed to be like a li’l piece a skin. How old are ya?” he ended up saying. And this was one of the questions that he’d ask non-stop, as if my age was so important or as if something sacred depended on it.

  He once again said: “Show it to me… It’s not to hurt ya that I’m askin’. Sometimes, it has like a li’l piece a skin an’ if it isn’t off, it can end up bein’ dangerous.” And he continued to talk, all by himself for the most part…being used to it, as he’d developed the habit of long monologues that nothing could change due to his contact with animals.

  Him, the monster: all alone and knowledgeable.

  It’s when he said: “If ya don’t have it look’d after right away, maybe ya’ll never be a man” that he sowed the seeds of doubt, breaking down the resistance I’d built up to defend myself against his words, creating a breach that his beady eyes quickly sought out. He followed up, saying:

  “There are certainly some guys that can’t marry today because they didn’t have it look’d after when they was young. Gotta be careful. It’s like a li’l piece a skin… Show me, just to see. I’m gonna tell ya if it’s normal or if ya need an operation. Gotta go to the doctor, but it seems it don’t even hurt. In the end, ain’t nothing but a li’l bit a skin.” He kept saying: “Don’t be goin’ tellin’ nobody nothin’.” He kept saying: “So and so, and so and so…” and there he kept giving me names that didn’t mean a thing for the most part, but which, according to him, were men who had to go one day or another to the doctor because of this.

  He said: “There’s a name for that there thingamajig, but I don’t remember it.”

  He said: “The Jews do it.”

  He also said: “Seems like for them there, it was a sign of being rich. Hitler didn’t have it when he was young an’ so that’s why that he was jealous of the Jews. Do ya know who Hitler is? Ya know Hitler?…” and on this, he went into stories that were more and more macabre, but that he swore to me were real facts and true. I’ve already said it: because of his innocent appearance we were always surprised to learn how much he was able to retain certain things. He might not have gone to school, but he knew how to listen to others, you can be sure of that.

  As usual, he concluded what he was saying by: “Ya can ask yer father if ya don’t believe me… Ya ask’im what Hitler did to them Jews, just to see… Ya never believe me. I told ya that it’d stay wet for a long time.”

  And then, he stopped talking about Hitler.

  Now, he was behind me, like he had been behind the horse earlier. I could hear him breathing and felt that he was near, as he often happens to be behind my back. As it often happens, too, he wasn’t speaking, but was moving and making noise like the animals when they want something, hay for example, or water.

  His accomplice the rain was weaving nets where the clouds were moving about as if agitated, flying high sometimes and then sliding down even with the earth, which had become muddy. And this, because it had been raining hard for some time. And because of a missing tile, you could see the water coming down through a hole in the roofing, making a waterfall. Here, even inside. Here, even where we thought we were protected.

  I’ve already said that he mostly didn’t say anything. But when he opened his mouth, it was to try to worry me, tell me that because of a growth – he still hadn’t found the name for it and, me, I didn’t say it – I might not ever be able to marry and become a man.

  He said: “Show me just a li’l…just to see… I’m gonna tell ya right away if it’s carrect or not.” During this time I didn’t say anything and tried not to listen to him, but he kept insisting: “Don’t be afraid…”

  He was stuttering: “I won’t even touch, if ya don’t want. I swear that I won’t touch… Ya got nothin’ to do but take it out a li’l an’ I’m gonna tell ya right away. It’s not a big deal when ya don’t touch.”

  He didn’t want to stop and I said: “Stop talking to me about that.”

  I said again: “You could go to prison if anyone knew. You don’t have the right to say things like that to a child. I’m not sure that Father would pay to get you out… It must cost an awful lot to get someone out of prison who does things like this to kids. You’d be in prison for maybe a year or maybe more. I’m sure nobody would go see you. Then, the ones that are disgusting with kids, they’re looked down on by other prisoners. You know that. They get beaten; you’re aware of that. They talk about it on the radio. Most of the time you find them dead on the cement, in a corner…with rats around them, licking up the blood pouring out of them. Maybe that would be fun for you, as you never take a vacation?…” He laughed, moved his feet, made noise and didn’t want to let this affect him.

  What I remember is that I know how to be nasty with him.

  And sometimes, I’m like the Ornithorhynchus and I use his technique, which is to lay it on thick without counting. Most often, sentences like that have the effect of frightening him a little: at other times, you’d say that he doesn’t believe me and that he has answers ready to throw back at me, in any case.

  He lowered his head, kept laughing his dumb little laugh, which was a little dirty, too. And that’s when you could see his badly washed dentures, uncovered by his upper lip. He kept ferociously counter-attacking too, not hesitating to lie and use others as his witnesses. I’ve already said that when he does this, I remain completely powerless.

  He said: “If ya don’t let me look, I’m gonna tell everybody.”

  I said: “Which everybody?”

  He responded: “So and so, and then so and so…”

  He said: “I’m gonna tell everybody yer not normal an’ that ya won’t be able to get married.”

  I said: “That’s not true.”

  He said: “So, let’s see then… Ya don’t wanna, huh. Yer afraid, huh, huh?” because that’s what he did when he didn’t have any words left. I have to say that his vocabulary wasn’t exactly extensive. I also have to say that he’s a beast and that sometimes he started saying “huh, huh” and that this could mean that he was happy or angry. It depends. He kept stuttering and added: “Yer gonna get yerself laughed at, at school when the others are gonna find out about it.”

  He also said: “I’m gonna tell li’l Louis about it. Him, he’s not embarrassed. He can then talk to yer schoolteacher about it, too”…and he began saying “huh, huh”…which was a sort of a laugh, I think. And if I tried to say that I was going to tell on him, he wouldn’t even listen anymore, that’s for sure.

  Him, he was going to tell on me.

  Him, he’d tell the others…

  Who? My father, my mother, my brothers and sisters…my friends at school and then the teacher and this one and that one…how bad I was.

  “Yer a li’l devil…” he kept saying. “A li’l devil.” That was his word. [16]

  I heard our tractor and I shouted. The rain was drumming on the roof and there was the wind in the trees. And I shouted, as it seemed I should do.

  Because they were coming back from spreading the manure and especially because they didn’t want to get stuck in a drenched, dirt road, they carried on by. Very quickly.

  The tractor added to the noise of the water on the roof…and they were now far away. I’ve already said it: the Shadows are of no help to me. In my composition I could have not included them.

  Where was I again?

  When did it all begin? Eight, nine or te
n months ago…or just a few days ago or a few hours as I sometimes happen to think. Maybe the alcohol incident in the winter has nothing to do with it, no more than the difference in cleanliness between men and women concerns me. How can you tell or know? And how do you deal with issues which to this day, as far as I know, shouldn’t have anything to do with me. At school, at home, they’re quick to use the tut-tut…and I get nowhere.

  One thing is for sure. When it comes to these things, my dictionary is useless to me. Maybe I should look elsewhere, but first I’d have to have leads and I don’t have any. The Abandoner has no books, and if the Shadows read, it’s newspapers, magazines, or even things that are so dumb it leads me to believe, sometimes, that I’m the most mature in this family. Me…the one that they call the Cake Eater. And the one they find funny and odd when I ask questions.

  Can we hold the weather outside – let’s say the rain – responsible for what happens to us or, on the contrary, do we have to believe that we should have been saved by it? I don’t know the answer to this either. What’s for sure is that a sign can be deceiving, as was the case with my rubber boots, and points of reference aren’t often worth much.

  I look and I watch, and I know that I’m looking and watching. I ask questions and I read. I compose… But I know that it does nothing because I’m the only one interested in it. In fact, I’ve become like the monster when he does his soliloquy with the animals. I almost don’t laugh anymore, and if I speak, it’s less and less…because my real fear is to start using words like bacul or like caltron…and my real fear is to forget my composition one day and to begin looking or acting like the monster, the Abandoner or the Shadows…like them.

  I don’t know if it’s because of the rainstorm that grew stronger and that turned the spring into a muddy stream. I don’t know if it’s because of the dark, which also – was it already nighttime? – grew denser and changed quickly. When I turned around, I felt in the presence of a beast and it was too late at that moment. There was a struggle, very little, and there was a time when I had straw in my mouth. I shouted out, but it didn’t prevent him from doing something that he’d never done before. He was on my back. I know that the little horse was watching us, because it was my witness. I saw her eyes shining in what had become the darkness of a day without sunlight when she didn’t move, no doubt believing herself avenged for a humiliation that she had been subject to. That’s the way it was. Just the way that I’m describing it. Like that. And I realize once again that there were two.