Letter to a Child Never Born Read online

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  Forgive me. must have been drunk, out of my mind. Look at all these cigarette butts, and took at this wet handkerchief. What a crisis of imbecile fury, what a disgusting scene. Pure selfishness. How are you, Child? Better than I am, I hope. I’m exhausted. I’m so tired that I’d like to hold out for another six months, just the time needed to give birth to you, and then die. You’d take my place in the world and I’d rest. Nor would it be too soon: it seems to me that by now I’ve seen everything there was to see. And once you’re out of my body, you won’t need me any more. Any woman capable of loving you will be an excellent mother for you: the call of the blood doesn’t exist, it’s an invention. The mother isn’t the one who carries you in her womb, she’s the woman who raises you. Or the man who raises you. I could give you to your father. He came back a while ago and brought me a blue rose. He said blue is the colour for a boy. Obviously he wants you to be a boy: that would be more to his credit, a sign of superiority. Poor man. It’s not his fault; he too. has been told that God is an old man with a white beard, that Mary was an incubator, that without Joseph she wouldn’t even have found a stable, that the one to bring fire was Prometheus. I don’t despise him for this. But I still say that neither you nor I has any need for him. Nor for his blue rose. I told him to go away, to leave us alone. He swayed as though I’d hit him with a stick, started towards the door, went away without answering. We’re about to go out ourselves: to work. The boss has given me his assurances again, adding, however, that commitments have to be respected: a pregnant woman can leave her job only in the sixth month. He’s also reminded me of the trip, along with a politely veiled threat to shift the assignment to a man because certain-accidents-don’t-happen-to-a-man. It was all I could do to keep from hitting him, and I started prevaricating. The next ten days will be tough; I must make up for lost time. But I’ll tell you one thing: the thought of going back to work shakes me out of this torpor, this resignation that makes me dream of death. Thank God winter has begun: people won’t notice my swollen stomach under my overcoat. And from now on it’s going to keep swelling. This morning it’s more swollen and my dress is too tight. At fourteen weeks, do you know how long you are? At least four inches. Even the placenta, still too small to envelop the amniotic sac, is drawing aside. And you’re invading me without pity.

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  I’m not one to be frightened at the sight of blood. To be a woman is a schooling in blood: every month we pay an odious homage to it. But when I saw that tiny spot on the pillow, my eyes clouded and my legs shook. I fell into panic, then despair, and I cursed myself. I accused myself of every sort of negligence towards you, you who couldn’t protect yourself, couldn’t rebel, so small and defenceless and at the mercy of all my caprices and irresponsibility. It wasn’t even red, that spot. It was pink, a light pink. Nevertheless it was more than enough to transmit your message, to announce that perhaps you were dying. I seized the pillow and ran. The doctor was unexpectedly kind. He received me even though it was evening and told me to calm myself: you weren’t dying, you hadn’t broken loose, you had only suffered. It was only a threatening signal. Absolute rest would take care of everything, so long as it was absolute, so long as I didn’t get out of bed even to go to the bathroom, and for this reason it would be better if I went to the hospital. We’re in hospital. A sad room in this sad world. We’ve been here a week, a week I’ve spent practically always asleep, numbed by sedatives. Now they’ve suspended them, but it’s worse: I don’t know how to pass the time, which hangs so heavily. I’ve asked for the newspapers and they don’t bring them. I’ve asked for a television set and they won’t give it to me. I’ve asked for a telephone, but it doesn’t work. No sign of my friend. Nor even your father. I feel crushed and brutalized by the silence. I’m a prisoner of a female beast dressed in white who comes around every so often with a shot of lutein and scornfully injects me; I don’t succeed even in trying to transmit a little tenderness to you. But long-slumbering reflections, stifled in vain, rise to the surface of my mind to cry out things that I didn’t know I knew. Why should I have to bear this agony? In the name of what? Of a crime committed by embracing a man? Of a cell split into two cells and then into four cells and then into eight, ad infinitum, without my wanting it, without my asking? Or else in the name of life? All right, life. But what is this life by which you, who exist still incomplete, count for more than I, who exist complete already? What is this respect for you that removes respect for me? What is this right of yours to exist that takes no account of my right to exist? There’s no humanity in you. Humanity! Are you a human being, you? Are a little bubble of an egg and a sperm of five microns really enough to make a human being? The human being is myself, who can think and speak and laugh and cry and act in a world that acts to build ideas and things. You’re nothing but a little flesh doll that can’t think, can’t speak, can’t laugh, can’t cry, and can act only to build itself. What I see in you isn’t you: it’s myself! I’ve bestowed a mind on you, carried on a dialogue with you, but your mind was my mind, and our dialogue a monologue: mine! Enough of this comedy, this delirium. No one is human by natural right, before being born. We become human afterwards, when we’re born, because we stay with others, because others help us, because a mother or a woman or a man or somebody teaches us to eat, to walk, to speak, to think, to behave like humans. The only thing that joins us, my dear, is an umbilical cord. And we’re not a couple. We’re persecutor and persecuted. You the persecutor and I the persecuted. You wormed your way into me like a thief, and you carried away my womb, my blood, my breath. Now you’d like to steal my whole existence. I won’t let you. And since I’ve arrived at the point of telling you these sacred truths, do you know what I conclude? I don’t see why I should have a child. I’ve never felt at ease with children. I’ve never been able to deal with them. When I approach them with a smile, they scream as though I’d hit them. The job of a mother doesn’t suit me. I have other duties in life. I have a job that I like and I intend to go on with it. I have a future awaiting me and I don’t intend to abandon it. Those who absolve an impoverished woman who doesn’t want more children, who absolve a girl who’s been raped and doesn’t want that child, had better absolve me too. To be poor, to be raped, doesn’t constitute the only justification. I’m going to leave this hospital and take that assignment. Then let come what may. If you succeed in being born, you’ll be born. If you don’t succeed, you’ll die. I’m not going to kill you, understand: I simply refuse to help you to exercise your tyranny to the end, and …

  This wasn’t our pact, I realize. But a pact is an agreement wherein one gives to receive, and how could I know when we signed it that you’d claim everything and give me nothing? Besides you didn’t sign it at all, I was the only one to sign. That alters its validity. You didn’t sign it and I’ve never had any message of assent from you: your only message has been a pink drop of blood. I shall be cursed forever and my life shall become a perpetual lament beyond death itself, but I shall not change my decision.

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  He called me a murderess. Encased in his white jacket, no longer a doctor but a judge, he thundered that I was failing in the most fundamental duties of a mother, a woman, a citizen. He shouted that even to leave the hospital would be a crime, to get out of bed a serious act, but to undertake a trip is premeditated homicide and the law should punish me as it punishes any murderer. Then he began to beseech me, trying to persuade me with your photograph. Just take a good look, if I had any heart at all: you were now a child in all respects. Your mouth was no longer the notion of a mouth: it was a mouth. Your nose was no longer the notion of a nose: it was a nose. Your face was no longer the sketch of a face: it was a face. And the same for your body, your hands, your feet where even the toenails could be seen. You also have the beginning of hair on your well-formed little head. And I should realize your fragility, he continued. Look at your skin: so delicate, so diaphanous, that every vein, every capillary, every nerve could
be seen through it. Nor were you tiny any more: you measured at least six and a quarter inches and weighed seven ounces. If I wanted to have an abortion, I wouldn’t be able to: it was now too late. And yet I was setting out to do something worse than an abortion, he said. I listened without batting an eyelash. Then I signed a paper wherein he declined any responsibility for your life and mine, and I assumed it in his stead. I watched him leave the room in the grip of a fury that made him blue in the face. And just at that moment, you moved. You did what I had waited for, yearned for, for months. You stretched yourself, perhaps yawned, and gave me a little blow. A little kick. Your first kick … like the kick I gave my mother to tell her not to throw me away. My legs turned to marble. And for several seconds I sat there breathless, my temples throbbing. I also felt a burning in my throat, a tear that blinded my eyes. Then the tear rolled down and fell on the sheet, making a little plop. But I got out of bed all the same. I packed my suitcase all the same. Tomorrow we leave. By plane.

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  Was it really necessary to get so upset? We’re doing fine in the country we’ve come to. We did fine during the whole trip and after arrival. Never a cramp, a pain, or any nausea. Nothing that the doctor foresaw has happened: this was confirmed by the woman doctor who examined me yesterday. Nice woman. Having palpated you, she’s concluded that she sees no reason for alarm; her colleague went too far in his caution and pessimism. What’s a little drop of blood? There are women who lose blood for the entire period of their pregnancy and still give birth to healthy children. In her opinion, staying in bed is against nature and also carrying precaution too far. For instance, one of her patients, a professional ballerina, had gone on performing the pas de deux until after the fifth month. The only thing that surprised her about me was the fact that my womb is hardly swollen, but the ballerina too had a nearly flat stomach, I could even continue the medication prescribed by her colleague if I cared to, but above all I was to let nature take its course. Her only warning was not to drive the car too much. I told her I’d have to make a trip by car of at least ten days. She raised her eyebrows, somewhat bewildered, and asked if it was really necessary. I answered yes. She was silent a moment and then said never mind, the roads in this country are comfortable and smooth, the cars in this country have good springs. The important thing is not to overdo it and to allow myself a rest every two or three hours. Are you listening? I’m saying that I’ve made peace with you, that we’re friends at last! I’m saying that I’m sorry to have distrusted and mistreated you and that I’m sorrier still if you stay offended and stop giving me little kicks. You haven’t given me any, since the hospital. Sometimes when I think of it, I frown.

  But that doesn’t last long, and soon I’m calm again. Have you any idea how much I’ve changed? Since going back to my regular life, I feel like a new person: a seagull in flight. Was there really a moment when I wanted to die? Insane. Life is so beautiful, and so is light. And the trees are beautiful, and the earth and the sea. There’s a lot of sea here: does its perfume reach you, its roar? Also it’s beautiful to work if joy is quivering inside you. I was lying when I told you that work is forever tiring and humiliating. You must forgive me: rage and anxiety made me see only darkness. And speaking of darkness, my impatience to bring you forth has come over me again. And with it, the fear of having discouraged you with all my talk about freedom that doesn’t exist, about solitude’s being the only possible condition. Forget that foolishness: it’s good to be side by side. Life is a community in which we hold hands, to help and console each other. Even plants bloom better alongside each other, birds migrate in flocks, and fish swim in shoals. What would we do by ourselves? We’d feel like astronauts on the moon, stifled by fear and our impatience to go back to earth. Hurry up, Child, get these remaining months over with, lean forth with no fear of watching the sun. At first it will dazzle you, frighten you, but soon it will become such gaiety that you won’t be able to do without it. I regret having always given you the most ugly examples and never having told you about the splendour of a dawn, the sweetness of a kiss, the aroma of a meal. I regret never having made you laugh. Were you to judge me by the fairy tales I told you, you’d have every right to conclude that I’m a sort of Electra eternally dressed in black. From now on you must imagine me a Peter Pan, dressed in yellow and green and red, and ready to spread garlands of flowers on the roofs and the bell towers and on the clouds so they won’t turn into rain. We’ll be happy together because deep inside I’m a child myself. Would you believe that I like to play? Last night when I came back to the hotel, I mixed up all the shoes that had been placed outside the rooms, and the breakfast orders too. You should have heard the uproar this morning. One lady found a pair of men’s loafers and demanded her high-heeled sandals, a man found a pair of sneakers and wanted his boots, someone protested that they’d brought him only coffee when he’d ordered ham and eggs, and another complained that he didn’t want a Christmas dinner, only tea with lemon. My ear to the door, I listened and laughed, so amused that I felt as though I’d returned to my childhood, to the time when I was happy because every gesture was a game.

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  I’ve bought you a cradle. Then, when I had bought it, it occurred to me that, according to some, owning a cradle before the child is born brings bad luck, like flowers on the bed. But superstitions don’t bother me any more. It’s an Indian cradle, the kind you carry like a knapsack on the back. It’s yellow and green and red like Peter Pan. I’ll load you on my back, I’ll carry you everywhere, and people will smile and say: Look at those two crazy kids. I’ve also bought you a wardrobe: little shirts, overalls, and a beautiful carillon. It plays a merry waltz. When I told my friend about it on the telephone, she commented that I’m completely out of my mind. But her voice was happy, freed of the anxiety that gripped her the day we left: And-what-if-you-lose-it-on-the-plane? She who in the beginning advised me to get rid of you! She’s really a good woman. In fact, I’ve never been able to reproach her for the day she sent your father. And as for him, any man understanding enough to put up with me the night I kicked him out is not a man to be discarded. Later he wrote me a letter, and I was moved. I’m a coward, he admitted, because I am a man; yet I must be absolved because I am a man. An atavistic instinct, I suppose, drives him to want you. We’ll see what to do with him: sometimes a piece of furniture we don’t need turns out to be useful, and certainly I have no desire to be his enemy. Everyone is included in this truce with the ant heap: your father, the doctors, the boss. If you’d only seen my boss when I announced our departure. He kept saying, ‘Now that’s good news! Good girl, you won’t regret it!’

  I won’t regret it. It’s only by respecting herself that a woman can demand respect from others. It’s only by believing in herself that she can be believed in by others. Good-night, Child, tomorrow we start our trip by car. I’d like to write you a poem that would tell of my relief, my rediscovered faith, this wish to spread garlands of flowers on the roofs, the bell towers, the clouds, this sensation of flying like a seagull in the blue, far from all the filth and melancholy, over a sea that always looks clean from on high. Actually courage is optimism, I wasn’t optimistic because I wasn’t courageous.

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  The roads of this country are comfortable and smooth, the cars in this country have good springs: lady doctor, you too lie. And I am not a seagull. Now what do I do, Child? Shall I keep going? Shall I go back? If I go back, it’s worse: I’ll have to go over the same impossible route. If instead I go forward, there’s hope it may improve. Had the courage of rhetoric, I could say I’m driving along a road that’s just like my life: all holes and stones and snags. I once knew a writer who liked to say that everybody gets the kind of life he deserves. Like saying a poor man deserves to be poor, a blind man deserves to be blind. He was a stupid man, though he was an intelligent writer. The thread that divides intelligence from stupidity is very thin, as you’ll find out. Once it breaks, the two things merge together like love an
d hate, life and death, whether you’re a man or a woman. I keep wondering whether you will be a man or a woman, and now I’d like you to be a man. So you wouldn’t have the monthly lesson of blood, and you wouldn’t feel guilty one day for driving along a road full of holes and stones. You wouldn’t suffer as I do at this moment and you could free yourself to fly in the blue much more seriously than I can. My efforts to fly never go beyond the flutter of a turkey. Perhaps the women who burn their bras are right. Or are they? Not one of them has discovered a system whereby the world wouldn’t end if they didn’t give birth to their children. And children are born of women. Know a science-fiction story that takes place on a planet where in order to procreate you must belong to a group of seven people. But it’s very difficult to get seven people together, and still more difficult for them to come to an agreement, because not only conception but pregnancy as well involves all seven. Therefore the race-becomes extinct and the planet empty. There is another story in which all the hero needs is an alkaline solution, a glass of water with salt. He jumps into it and bang! He becomes two. It’s just a normal cellular division, and at the moment the hero splits, he ceases to be himself: he commits a kind of suicide of his ego. But he doesn’t die and doesn’t suffer nine months of hell, Of hell? For some woman, they’re nine months of glory. The best way is still what I told you in the beginning. You take the embryo from the mother’s womb and put it in the womb of another woman who’s ready to shelter it, a mother more patient than I, more generous than I … I think I’m getting a fever. The cramps have started again. I must ignore them. But how? By thinking about other things, I guess. I could tell you a fairy tale. I haven’t told you one in a long time.