Vanessa Springora - Consent: A Memoir

Fairy tales are an age-old source of wisdom. Why else have they stood the test of time so well? Cinderella ought to do all she can to leave the ball before midnight; Red Riding Hood ought be wary of the wolf and his cajoling voice; Sleeping Beauty ought to keep her finger far from the irresistible temptation of the spindle; Snow White ought to evade the hunters, and nothing on earth should tempt her to take a bite from the oh-so-red, mouthwatering apple that fate holds out to her.

So many warnings that every child would be wise to follow to the letter.

One of my very first books was the collected stories of the Brothers Grimm. I read it so often, eventually it began to fall apartthe stitches beneath the thick cardboard cover grew frayed, and then the pages began to peel away one by one. I was inconsolable at the loss. Even though these wonderful stories spoke to me of timeless legends, books themselves were earthly objects, destined for the scrap heap.

Before I could even read or write, I used to make books with whatever I had at hand: newspapers, magazines, cardboard, sticky tape, string. As solid as possible. First the object. My interest in the content came later.

Today, I view books with suspicion. A glass wall has been erected between them and me. I know they can be poison. I recognize the toxic load they can contain.

For many years I paced around my cage, my dreams filled with murder and revenge. Until the day when the solution finally presented itself to me, like something that was completely obvious: Why not ensnare the hunter in his own trap, ambush him within the pages of a book?

Our wisdom begins where the authors ends; we would like him

to give us answers, when all he can do is give us desires.

Marcel Proust, On Reading

AT THE THRESHOLD OF LIFE, UNBLEMISHED BY EXPERIENCE, my name is V., and, at the grand old age of five, I am waiting for love.

Fathers are meant to be their daughters protectors. Mine is no more than a current of air. More than his physical presence, I can summon up the scent of vetiver filling the bathroom in the morning; masculine belongings dotted the apartment: a tie, wristwatch, shirt, Dupont lighter; a way of holding his cigarette between the index and middle fingers, quite far from the filter; a perpetually ironic way of speaking, so I never know if hes joking or not. He leaves early and comes home late. Hes a busy man. Terribly elegant too. His professional activities change too rapidly for me to grasp what they are. At school, whenever I am asked what he does, I dont know what to call him, but the evidence suggestssince he is more drawn to the outside world than to family lifethat he is someone important. At least thats what I imagine. His suits are always impeccable.

My mother had me young, when she was twenty. Shes beautiful, with Scandinavian blond hair, an enchanting face, light blue eyes, a graceful, shapely figure, and a lovely voice. My worship of her has no limits; she is my sun, the source of my happiness.

My parents are so well matched, my grandmother often says, a nod to their cinematic good looks. We ought to have been happy, yet my memories of our life together, in the apartment where I briefly experienced the illusion of a family unit, are like a bad dream.

At night, buried beneath the covers, I hear my father yelling, calling my mother a whore or a slut, but I dont understand why. At the slightest provocationa detail, a glance, a single inappropriate wordhe explodes with jealousy. Out of the blue, the walls begin to shake, crockery flies, doors slam. An obsessive perfectionist, he cannot stand anything being moved without his permission. One day, he almost strangles my mother when she spills a glass of wine on a white tablecloth hes just given her. The frequency of such scenes accelerates. He is a machine propelled by an insane momentum that no one can stop. My parents spend hours flinging bitter insults at each other. Until late one evening when my mother takes refuge in my bedroom, weeping in silence as she snuggles up against me in my little cot bed, before going back to sleep alone in the marital bed. The next night too my father sleeps on the sofa in the living room.

My mother has exhausted all her defensive artillery against my fathers uncontrolled bouts of anger and childish tantrums. There is no remedy for dealing with the madness of this man people describe as temperamental. Their marriage is an ongoing battle, a carnage whose origins everyone has forgotten. The conflict will soon be settled unilaterally. Its a matter of weeks now.

Yet they must have loved each other once. At the end of an interminable corridor, screened by a bedroom door, their sexuality is like a monster crouching just beyond my field of vision: omnipresent (my fathers outbursts of jealousy are the daily evidence) but completely covert (I have no memory of the slightest embrace, the slightest kiss, the tiniest gesture of affection between my parents).

What I am trying to do more than anything, without realizing it, is to get to the bottom of the mystery that brings two people together behind a closed bedroom door, what is woven between them there. Like a fairy tale in which the supernatural suddenly bursts into the real, sexin my imagination a magical process through which babies are miraculously borncan, without any warning, make a sudden and unexpected appearance in real life, in often mystifying forms. Whether brought about intentionally or accidentally, any encounter with this unfathomable force triggers in the child that I am an irresistible, horrified curiosity.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I go to my parents bedroom and stand in the doorway crying, complaining of stomach pain, or a headache, presumably with the unconscious intention of interrupting their lovemaking. I find them with the sheets pulled up to their chins, looking foolish and strangely guilty. Of the image that precedes this, their bodies entwined, I dont recall the faintest trace. Its as if its been expunged from my memory.

One day my parents were called in by the head teacher of my elementary school. My father didnt come. It was my mother who had to listen, with deep concern, to the report of my diurnal life.

Your daughters been falling asleep in class, its like shes not sleeping at night. Ive had to set up a camp bed at the back of the classroom. Whats going on? Shes mentioned violent nocturnal fights between you and her father. Oh, and one of the lunch ladies told me that V. keeps going to the boys bathroom at recreation. I asked V. what she does there. She told me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world: Im helping David pee straight. I hold his weenie for him. Davids just been circumcised, and he does seem to have some kind of problem with his... aim. I assure you that at the age of five theres nothing unusual about these kinds of games. I just wanted to keep you informed.

One day my mother made an irrevocable decision. Taking advantage of the fact that I was away at camp, a trip she had organized as part of her covert plan to move out, she left my father, definitively. It was the summer before first grade. In the evenings, one of the camp counselors sat down on the edge of my bed and read me letters from my mother, describing our new apartment, my new bedroom, my new school, the new neighborhood, basically the new layout of our new life, once I returned to Paris. From the depths of the countryside where Id been dispatched, surrounded by the cries of children gone feral in the absence of their parents, it all seemed very abstract. The counselors eyes grew moist and her voice cracked as she read aloud my mothers letters, filled with fake cheer. After this evening ritual I was sometimes found, in the middle of the night, sleepwalking, crawling backward down the staircase to get to the front door.