Self Read Free Page A

entire cycles I would watch this kinder, broader-stroked Jackson Pollock feverishly at work in his studio. Dashes of red succeeded swaths of green. Eruptions of white overwhelmed spots of purple. Five intertwined colours danced together before vanishing to blue. The drama was generous and open, truly ecumenical. When the washing cycle was over, the holy water would retreat through the pores of the washing machine’s barrel. I would behold a cavernous sculpture, hell empty. The laundry would begin to spin. I could feel the water seeping away, oozing out of me. Suddenly a torrential tropical storm would whip at me. Was this temptation? And after that another storm! But this one too I would weather. A final click and it would be over. I would call my mother. Shirts, skirts, blouses, underwear, pants, socks and I came out of the machine renewed, remitted of our sins, damp with vitality, shimmering like Christ rising on the third day. And the coin at the back of the lid was mine!
    Do children look into mirrors? Do they look at themselves, beyond checking that their unruly hair has that degree oftidiness demanded by a parent? I didn’t. Of what interest was a mirror to me? It reflected me, a child — so what? I was not in the least bit self-conscious. The world was far too vast a playground to waste any time looking at part of it reflected, except perhaps to make funny faces, two fingers pulling down the lower eyelids, one pushing up the nose.
    Childhood, like wisdom, is an emotion. Feelings are what register deeply of one’s early years. What the eye catches, the visual aspects of these feelings, is secondary. So it is that I have no memories of mirrors, no memories of clothes, of skin, of limbs, of body, of my own physical self as a child. As if, paradoxically, I were then nothing but a huge eager eye, an emotional eye, looking out, always looking out, unaware of itself.
    It would be impossible to talk of my childhood without mentioning television (religion never played an important role in my life and here, early on, is as good a spot as any to deal with it. I first met the notion of God in a song, a comptine , my parents sang to me. It went:
 
 
Il était un petit navire
There was once a little ship
Qui n’avait jamais navigué
That had never sailed to sea
Ohé ohé!
Ahoy ahoy!
 
Il entreprit un long voyage
It set sail on a long trip
Sur la mer Méditerranée
On the Mediterranean Sea
Ahoy ahoy!
Ohé ohé!
 
Au bout de cinq à six semaines
After five or six long weeks
Les vivres vinrent à manquer
There was no food left at all
Ohé ohé!
Ahoy ahoy!
 
On tira à la courte paille
They decided to draw straws
Pour savoir qui serait mangé
To see who they would eat
Ahoy ahoy!
Ohé ohé!
 
Le sort tomba sur le plus Jeune
Fate fell upon the youngest mate
C’est donc lui qui sera mangé
It was he that they would eat
Ohé ohé!
Ahoy ahoy!
 
O Sainte Mère, O ma patronne
Oh Holy Mother, O my patron
Empêche-les de me manger
Stop them from eating me
Ohé ohé!
Ahoy ahoy!
    Thus ended the song. When I came to understand it, when I actually listened to it, it was not the cheery chorus of cannibal sailors that took me aback, but the inexplicable and suspended plea at the end. To whom was it addressed? Who was this holy patron? And was the plea answered? Was the young sailor savioured or savoured? Before religion came to mean nothing to me, this is what it meant: a possibility of salvation at a crucial moment. When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite. I am a natural atheist); indeed, I think it would be impossible to talk of my generation without mentioning television.
    I met the beast shortly after we moved to Costa Rica. I believe I had just turned five. It was not my parents’ set, but one lent to them by the