[fic] sign a new agreement with itunes - iii [france/england]
Excerpt from Francis Bonnefoy’s master thesis on Britain and France: Narcissus’ reflection in a stormy sea (re-revised title)
… In literature as in every other matter, Britain and France have been each other’s best and worst mirror image - to the point that their conflicted but fascinated relationship became a common issue to every sort of work concerning them both, and that they each became each other’s harshest and best critic. The love-hate bond they share is implicit as well as explicit in too many novels, poems and works of fiction and nonfiction to count - sometimes as exacting elements of the plot and/or characterization, sometimes as mere casual comments that denote the strong familiarity of neighbors and rivals: several examples, however, stand out in Anglo-French literary history, and are worth a mention.
London and Paris have long been compared, the one as the first city of greatest economic strength and industrial power, the other as the artistic and elegant European capital: they are portrayed as such in Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris and Paul Féval’s Mysteries of London, more famously in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, being a painting of both towns during the French Revolution. Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution remains to this day one of the main works of non-fiction ever written on the subject, and The Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel is the greatest Franco-British romance ever set in that era. Later on, Jules Verne’s Fantastic Adventures often pair up British and French characters for the sake of characterization (Phileas Fogg and Passe-Partout in Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingt Jours - ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’) or simply of comic relief (the rival-bound but inseparable journalists Alcide Jolivet and Harry Blount in Michel Strogoff). Both England and France have also been a haven for French or British exiles - Oscar Wilde came to live in Paris after his release from prison, although he was not particularly well welcomed there; Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud fled to London for their short-lived yet passionate affair.
Shakespeare has been a matter of controversy in France ever since he first wrote his plays. Voltaire despised him, although he admired England and its economic and political institutions; Shakespeare was too rough, too tasteless, not poetic enough - and therefore French translators attempted to ‘ennoble’ Shakespearean language so as to fit it to the expectations of the French audience. It isn't before the beginning of the 19th century, after the French revolution, that praise for Shakespeare begins to develop in France, thanks to Victor Hugo, who called him ‘that god of the theatre,’ and for whom Shakespeare was all the greater that he portrayed life with all its imperfections: ‘The giant oak has a twisted shape,’ he said, ‘knotted branches, dark leaves, and hard, rough bark. That is what makes it the oak.’ It was not, however, until 1904 that - for instance - King Lear was at last fully produced on a French stage.
- From Part II: Literature is in the Details
(When his mother died, Francis did not call Gilbert, who wouldn’t have known what to say or do or think, or Antonio, who would have sprouted a lot of flailing, agitated, comfortless reassurance. He called Arthur, who snapped and bit at every nurse who tried to stop him until he found Francis, gave him an aubergine bagel and a thermos of Starbucks latte, and sat with him for the rest of the night, shoulder to shoulder, in the straight hard hospital chairs. Francis did not say a word until after the funeral.
He curled, then, warped, sank into Arthur, the twine of his arms heady and familiar and sad before he buried his shaking nose in Arthur’s neck. And Arthur furled his hands round his back, bunched his fists with parched black fabric that Marianne would have hated, and said,
“I’ve got you, now.”)
Francis leaves for a week around All Saints’ Day, off across the Channel to visit his mother in the cemetery of her childhood town near Bordeaux. (The funeral was the one and only time Arthur ever went to France, and Francis looked - well, looked spectacular, really, looked dressed in ways Arthur possibly never could achieve, even though he was wearing nothing more than a starched suit and satin tie; the sleeve of the shirt underneath his jacket was just a tad too short, and the wrist underneath was white and thin, like bone.
There isn’t much he remembers from that couple of days, except that when they boarded off the Eurostar train in Waterloo Station they drove a cab home, and Francis looked out the window throughout the entire trip, fingers drumming on the thick leather of the seat between them.)
The flat is strange when he’s alone in it. He keeps forgetting to buy bread, and has to run down to the all-night store at nine in the evening to make sure he’ll have toast for breakfast. Francis leaves traces everywhere, and absence too, everywhere: his shoes are lined up in the hall by the door instead of randomly on the living-room carpet, and there’s not this week’s Vogue magazines scattered on the coffee table, and there’s only one toothbrush standing in the glass above the bathroom sink.
Arthur spends ten minutes scowling at it the first morning.
It’s strange. He scowls at a lot of things along the course of the following days, and when he catches himself he scowls at his reflection, in the mirror. What, what does he think he’s doing, and surely he’s not pining like some sixteen-year-old teenager after his heart’s desire. He’s not even certain Francis deserves the title, because Francis is a gittering git if ever one there was, and whatever sort of lingering affection Arthur may feel for him is merely the sign that he’s suffering from sleep-deprivation, surely.
But Francis calls the third evening, on October 31st, voice thin and tired from across all the miles between London and whatever little French town he’s taking a room in; Arthur cradles the phone between his shoulder and ear, cupped in his palms, and leans against the window-sill, fingers shaking a little, listening. They don’t speak much, and mostly about milk and sugar and lemon and other necessities Arthur might or might not forget to buy, and Arthur closes his eyes and listens, and he can almost see the way Francis’ hair keeps falling in his eyes.
“Be back soon,” he says, when Francis says he should go to sleep, now, much to do tomorrow.
There’s a long silence, on the other end. He can hear him breathing, in&out, like tiding waves at sea. It’s relaxing, the sound.
“Of course,” Francis murmurs, and smiles.
It’s strange.
He writes three songs that week. The first he bins after two days; the second he emails to Natalia because it’d fit her voice better. The third he titles I Want To Fuck You… Up, which is a horrible pun but who cares (Arthur doesn’t).
He realizes it’s a guitar song on the fifth night, around a mouthful of Indian takeaway, and stores out the old bass his brothers got him for his eighteenth birthday, re-teaches himself his chords, sitting cross-legged on his bed. It’s a slow, soft song, despite the title; he composes for the rest of that night and falls asleep at four-thirty in the morning, in t-shirt and slacks, music sheets dispersed all over the comforter like pigeons’ wings.
Arthur meets him, at the station. Francis carries Ladurée macaroons in a box and looks a tad rumpled from his trip (“there were four children in my compartment,” he says breathlessly, grabbing Arthur’s wrist with ice-cold fingers, “let’s get out of here, Arthur, please,” and Arthur lets himself be dragged, shaking his head, curling his palm, just there: around Francis’ fingertips.) They eat hotdogs outside the station, hot and sweet with Swedish mustard, slick with unk and greasy paper. Francis mutters a little, just out of form, because he thinks Arthur doesn’t know he secretly loves stir-fry and M&Ms - suckles on his fingers, grinning; and Arthur tries very hard not to think what that sausage looks like.
“What’re you up to, then, when I was gone?” Francis asks, on the way home, shoulder bumping against Arthur’s comfortably.
“Not much,” Arthur says.
And then. On Thursday, Arthur comes home from rehearsal with dinner in plastic bags and foil-wrapped hot buns Tino made them for his baker’s apprenticeship. The flat is silent and dim as he tosses his gloves on the coffee table and coat on the sofa, sets down the takeaway, but it’s warm, the heater dozing quietly in the kitchen, and there’s light filtering from under Francis’ door.
When Arthur opens it, he’s sitting on the desk chair in denims that are probably more fashionable than Arthur’s entire wardrobe and one of those sinfully green shirts, one knee pulled up to his chest to rest his cheek up on, reading what Arthur presumes are class notes. He’s utterly engrossed and silent, still. He doesn’t even notice him at first.
Arthur loves these evenings, when Francis is so absorbed he shucks off his usual elegance and charisma; he’ll always sit so the lamplight catches just so on his face, and he’ll always arrange, perhaps a little subconsciously, the long lines of his body to their best advantage, but he’s settled in and comfortable, softer around the edges, a little warm, a little sleepy from his day. He wears warmth and cosy light around him like a well-loved jumper, and the corners of his mouth, when he does eventually look up, will be a tad drawn and tender, from all that evening scholarliness.
Arthur wonders at it sometimes, at the thought that he’s one of the five - four, now, since Marianne is dead - who can see Francis like this, retired for the day, moving a little slow; at its familiarity, its daily routine, the easiness. It’s an absurd joy, really, and sometimes Arthur wants to squash it in a dank little corner - but now Francis is blinking up at him under lashes that look dark in the dim light, and suddenly it feels like the world can’t get any better.
Then Francis stretches and smiles and says, voice rumpled and sleepy, “Dinner, then?” and it does.
(He does not push Francis back when he looks up, does not move to straddle his thighs, knees tight on either side of his hips, on the rotating chair, so they do not go skidding across the floor, catching on the edge of the carpet. He does not hesitate, does not nudge Francis’ nose with his own, and he does not kiss him, carefully, cautiously, one hand splayed at the base of his nape, fingertips brushing thin soft wisps of hair; and Francis does not loop his arms around him all, doesn’t close his fist at the small of Arthur’s back, does not spread his other hand, large and flat and open, warm, over Arthur’s shoulderblade.)
The music store Arthur works at sits like a small, squatted animal at the corner of a secondary merchant street, square and bright and purring with Glenn Miller; there are shelves everywhere, and few costumers, now, at the end of the day. It’s unpretending, and a great favourite among those who are aware of its existence; Arthur once confided, in drunken reverie, that it was the one place in his life where things are in their boxes, certain and comforting in that certainty, knowledgeable, understandable, everywhere a safe place.
When Francis pushes the door open there’s no one in but Arthur, bent over the farthest shelves, and so totally focused that he doesn’t hear the tingle of the door; and so as Francis sneaks closer his throat goes a little dry.
Arthur isn’t the most good-looking man he knows - his features too irregular (especially the - well. The. The E-word, and Francis’ long ago learnt never to make mention of it), his hair too dusty, his mouth too long, and he’s never quite grown past the gangliness of a too-tall boy - but by god does his arse look stupendous in that position, and in those jeans his legs look absolutely endless. It’s a little too much to ask of Francis not to stare, really.
“Um,” he says, and Arthur jerks and nearly cracks his head on the edge of the nearest shelf.
He probably says something after that, a variante on Owjesusfuck and What the hell are you doing here, but Francis is barely listening: Arthur is wearing a waistcoat, of all things, a silky dark grey affair over a plain Oxford shirt, and those aren’t jeans at all, but trousers in something fitting that looks disturbingly like leather (but probably isn’t, or else Francis would be forced to shut him up in some bedroom and never let anyone touch him again.) Still. Still, he thinks. Waistcoat, he thinks. (And if he weren’t screwed before well then he would be now.)
“Ran into trouble with a date,” he says, as the explication that Arthur doubtlessly expects - one hand on one hip, both eyebrows raised. “Is that new?”
“What?” Arthur says blankly. “Oh. The - yeah, bought it yesterday,” and spins smartly on his heel to stalk toward the counter. “Didn’t know you were dating anyone these days,” he says, over his shoulder.
“I’m not, anymore,” Francis says absently, mildly fascinated by the wonderful lines of Arthur’s waist, and half-wondering where he shouldn’t give up on the subtle seduction plan and just straight-out shag Arthur in the storeroom. “Decided I wasn’t worth the while and left me standing with a dinner reservation for tonight.”
He hears Arthur mutter Stupid, busying himself by the counter, and tries very hard to refrain the minute thrill that creeps up his spine. On the other hand, there’s the whole length of the counter between them now. “Why don’t you ask somebody else, then?” Arthur says, energetically flipping through the leaves of a clipboard and without looking up. “You’ve enough of a harem who wouldn’t care about the short notice. Or being second-best,” he says, darkly.
“Actually,” Francis says negligently, leaning against the counter in a precise slouch. “Actually. I was thinking we might go together.” Arthur promptly drops the clipboard.
He dives after it, ends up under the chair, and when he speaks his voice is drawn and muffled, tired. “Ah. Why?”
“Er. I don’t know?” Francis says, sincerely taken aback. “It’s been a while since we’ve had something nice to eat, I guess.” From here he can barely see the top of Arthur’s head, wild lost strands of hair and the length of a leg, clenching in with a snap and a clang, the scattered sounds of grappling for his papers. If he closes his eyes he can imagine that he traces the shell of Arthur’s ear as he speaks, touches the dust-soft patch of skin behind his earlobe.
“A-ah -“ Arthur straightens, brushes the lapels of his waistcoat, looks at everything but Francis, for some reason. “I. Think I’d like that.”
Francis blinks his eyes closed again, and then open. “Yeah?” he says, softly, half-smiling and half-disbelieving his own luck, and a little amazed at how red Arthur’s cheeks are, from all their scuffling.
“Yeah,” Arthur murmurs, and then looks up and doesn’t say another word till closing time, which is twenty minutes away but Francis spends them there anyway, reading magazines and skimming CD titles and puzzling out the crimson that lingers on Arthur’s cheeks.
They don't call it a date, either.
But the restaurant’s one of the best in town and Francis is dressed up at his nicest, and Arthur looks delectable (waistcoat!) (Francis tries to be subtle, really he does, but it’s getting increasingly difficult when Arthur looks fit enough to be eaten - and was there ever a time when he said how convenient it was to have Arthur for a roommate because of how impossible it was to want him? but he must have been deaf and blind to everything good) and, really. Really - every other person at every other table must think they’re a couple, and doesn’t that feel good.
Arthur’s ankle keeps knocking against his, at dessert. Francis catches it there, between brush and brush of foot, with a frown and a mutter, inconvenience in the middle of a restaurant dinner; but he doesn’t let it slip, then, he doesn’t let it go.
The electricity goes out, sometime around eleven, that night, and they haven’t enough blankets between them to rough down the cold (or so they claim), so they huddle on the sofa together, with a small, purring battery-run heater and lamp. Arthur’s changed from the waistcoat and Oxfords, which is only slightly regrettable, considering: to be fair Francis loves it just as well when he’s all drowned up in his grandma’s jumper, toes curling in, with his hair in his eyes and knees drawn up to his chest, smiling a little from all the hot food.
“You look well-shagged,” Francis murmurs, and doesn’t even mind the heel sharply connecting with his shin.
“Shut up,” Arthur grins, and then, “wanker.”
“Not on the sofa,” Francis says, and Arthur looks scandalized for all of a second before he knocks his foot under Francis’ and pulls, just not enough to topple him off the sofa, just close enough to curl his big toe under the hem of his jeans leg.
Sprawled all over the sofa with a well-fed Englishman who he just happens to fancy six ways to Tuesday, Francis wonders about physicality. Arthur may look fantastic in any sort of clothing, but he’s got rather formidable eyebrows that might ruin the whole effect. He curls on the cushions like a sulky child, with green eyes that must be startling in the middle of night, waking up on a shared pillow, with long legs that must tangle and twine until they can’t sort out whose is whose, anymore. (They’re the same height, even though Arthur will always be a little wiry, a little skinner than he is, but what does that matter, with their feet bare and touching, under the blankets.) There are worlds to look for, in all the slight places where they touch, awareness in every nerve ending with every touch and brush of skin with skin.
(He’s rather too British, Francis thinks, looking at Arthur’s face in the lamplight, the way it softens his forehead, the creases between his eyes, the corners of his mouth, like blond smoke. He drinks six cuppas every day and is utterly impossible if he downs so much as a shot of liquor (but he gulps down beer like nothing else.) He can’t cook to save his life, prefers rugby to soccer; he had a glam rock phase for all of six weeks, three years ago, and Francis found purple eyeliner and brittle glitter in their shared college room for months afterwards. He could probably live off of jammy dodgers, even though he’ll always pretend that he hasn’t started buying them since one evening watching Doctor Who, last spring:
“That hardly looks like a - that’s a jammy dodger.” And collapsed laughing, crazy wonderful man.)
Also: he jiggles his leg.
Francis clamps his hand down on his ankle, grazing the sharp curve of bone, and Arthur starts, looks absolutely outraged, forced out of his slight doze in the comfortable little circle of warmth and light they’ve brought up. Then. (And Francis does not think, doesn’t even blink, when somehow the world dissolves and restructures, in the shift of Arthur’s limbs on the cushions.) Then - he stretches his leg, shuffling millimetres closer, and reaches out, palm cupping Francis’ knee firmly, as if in retaliation. Francis’ breath hitches.
There are times when he wishes he could take pictures, outside himself. This is one of these times - Arthur snuggled on his side, sharing the sofa with him, and himself with his knees brought up against the back of the couch, staring: with their hands on each other, touching, Arthur’s wrist coiling around the curve of his knee and his own pressed to the side of Arthur’s ankle. And maybe this is what it’s like to be suspended in space: floating, breathless, with distance in every inch between them, and so warm.
(November 5th, 2010: silly boys in love.)
un. | deux. | trois. | quatre. | cinq.