Jayne Tuttle - My Sweet Guillotine

For Matt and Frankie

La brume

laisse limagination

le soin de terminer

limage

Fog

leaves the imagination

to complete

the image

Jacques Lecoq

Theres a time of day in the rue du Chteau-dEau when the low sun hits the narrow street so fiercely youre blinded and have to keep walking until the world returns to you. If you were to stop during the blind-out youd remain in a state of sightlessness and be bumped by a pram, a dog, or an older gent coming from the other direction who, oblivious to your inability to see, will huff and curse fait chier beneath his breath. When I first walked down this street and the blinding happened, the incapacity to see stopped me in my tracks. But now, delirious from a 21-hour flight, I stride into the abyss, the rays reminding my jetlagged body it is day, the smell of smoke and piss and burnt corn telling me Im back.

My heart races in the blindness. Not just for the thrill of the void but for fear of being bumped. The break has healed, the doctors say, but the terror put into me about the consequences of the slightest neck movement has stayed in my body. As my sight returns, the figures and buildings in front of me are cast in silhouette, then colour gradually seeps back, rendering the garbage trucks and cars and motos and people more crisp and bright than ever. My heartbeat slows. What is different? I am different. Nothing is different. I am not different. I turn onto the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, the street I spent almost every day on for two years. The Napolon is still there with new shiny tables, the tabac presse, the Mouton Blanc, the Chteau dEau bar with the eaus still out so the sign reads CHAT. Its like I never left. Never finished theatre school, never moved to the 20th, never got near-beheaded, never spent four months in Australia being nursed by my dad. I am always on this street. Even in Australia for those months I was always here in Boschs Garden of Earthly Delights, the mess of bodies in all their lives, busy, bored, mad, sad. When I closed my eyes I could see every shop front, every doorway. Because I walked it, perhaps. When you walk, you see.

I thought Nadine would suggest we meet elsewhere, somewhere not so familiar, so full of recent memories, but I didnt argue, theres always reason to Nadines rhyme. It does make sense to re-enter Paris from this place, I suppose, where I was happy not so long ago, far from any memory of the 20th and what happened. Where every day Id rush to school in my theatre blacks, where Nadine and I and Adrien and Kiki and Harry and our theatre school friends would eat and drink and loiter. The parties, the pigeons, the people, always people in your way. Myself right now in a street mirror, a being in shards. Someone else. So thin she looks almost Parisian, but for the pale, ex-hospital vibe. Face not on quite right. I step in closer its normal to do that here, check ones lipstick, ones hair; mirrors everywhere to remind us we exist. The chin scar is like a sucked noodle squashed into the bottom of my face I have to bring my lower lip upwards to notice it properly, but it does look like I have a permanent small piece of food stuck to my chin. The part where my teeth came through the skin below my lip is still a jagged black line for some reason it stayed black even after they removed the stitches. The pice de rsistance, the scar that lightning bolts from my ear down my cheekbone, is still very visible, though less so with my hair down like this. I pull my hair back and turn my head to one side. The sun catches the damaged cheekbone and the sides of the cuts, highlighting the crevices. Badass, I tell myself. Youre a badass scar-faced bitch. Rock that scar you badass. I cover it back up with hair.

No students outside the theatre school smoking cigarettes, leaning on bikes. Classes must be finished for the day, or, being Friday, everyone is inside watching autocours, or perhaps rehearsals for a soire, the students in blacks, the profs with their legs crossed. I walk up to the old blue door and touch the small gold plaque that reads COLE INTERNATIONALE DE THTRE JACQUES LECOQ, as though pressing it will make something happen: time turn back, a new world emerge. Nothing happens, its just a plaque. I peer through a gap in the door; no movement in the walkway. I always thought Id miss school intensely after I finished but I hadnt, not a bit. Nostalgia implies unfinished business, or something you cant have again that you want: I had left every living, breathing scrap of myself inside that Grande Salle, that Salle Verte, those sweaty, sticky halls, in front of those cutting, discerning teachers. There had been nothing to miss.

My hands tremble. Funk of plane food in my mouth, jetlag blinking me in and out of reality. Should have gone to sleep for a bit at Nadines like she said, though Kiki insists its always better on arrival day to try and see it through, at least until dark.

Nadine said to meet her at 6 as she hurried out the door after meeting me on the canal and taking me up the seven flights of stairs to her new flat if you can call it that a carpeted walkway with a shower, no kitchen and two tiny rooms with a roof so low you almost have to crawl. I said Belleville. She said Jeannette. She likes their chicken salad. I said who would eat at Jeannette with the kitchen so close to that rancid toilet, but she said its good as she pulled on her shoes, and once Nadine gets an idea in her mind theres no budging it. She set her alarm loud for 5 pm and told me sleep, but I was afraid I would never wake up and miss these precious days of homecoming.

Five days in Paris. A month in Portugal on the play. Then a months residency back here at the Rcollets, my old home, thanks to the sponsorship Marie-France secured for the play from the Ville de Paris. Enough time to find a new flat before la rentre, a little place of my own, even a chambre de bonne. I lay on Nadines mattress and took her ibuprofen and took in her world. It felt good to be back, but not quite, yet. Things of mine were scattered through the place amongst hers: my blue vase, my green fern, my red chair my throne. The thought of my things having a life in Paris without me was disconcerting. I tried not to be nostalgic about them.

Couldnt sleep. I got up, showered, put on clothes, took them off, pulled on a green dress of Nadines from a pile at the end of the bed, and wound my thick brown winter scarf around my neck until it was comfortably tight. Then I walked carefully down her slippery stairs and out along the Quai de Jemmapes, over the Bridge of Atmosphre and up past the Rcollets, thought of going in and saying hello to Chantal, decided not yet and cut down the alleys towards the boulevard, taking my time, looking up. I walked these streets for years and never looked up, you dont look up, youre in too much of a hurry, and also when you were here as an au pair at 22 you looked up so much you were seen as a tourist and men pinched your butt.

On the corner of Chteau dEau and Strasbourg I stopped at Kikis tree, the artwork she pointed out once that Id passed a thousand times without noticing. Kiki always looked up. She never graduated from tourist and was not about to let some butt-pinching dick ruin her moment. The painting is an exact replica of the tall plane tree planted into the concrete in front of it. Such a work, and so easy to miss on the crammed, polluted boulevard. As the plane tree changes through the seasons, the painted memory of itself at its leafiest endures behind it. Now summer-full, the tree and its image were in perfect symmetry. Kikis the shadow, me the tree, I thought to myself, imagining Kikis laughter if I said that out loud. Paris is still not the same without her. I stood too long and looked, I dont care, pinch my butt. Im in less danger of having my butt pinched now Im 31,