Читать книгу Reading Nijinsky - Hélène Rioux - Страница 8

She does not think of death, because she does not want to die. I think of death, because I do not want to die.

Nijinsky, Diary

Mirabel. Dusk, the hour tinted with blue. Flashings in the fog. Crackling in the loudspeakers, unintelligible words, sepulchral voices. I look at my watch, but not impatiently. I have plenty of time.

A sudden rumbling. The plane begins to move, taxis to the end of the runway. With what seems to be inordinate effort, it takes flight, rising, flying over the dozing city, cutting through the clouds. Very calm, almost impassive, I sit near a window in the smoking section. In the seat next to me, a woman fumbles in her purse for a candy. She is wearing a burgundy suit and taupecoloured hose. I don’t like the colour burgundy. It evokes something crushed. Like raspberries trodden upon in the grass of an underbrush, a puddle of regurgitated wine, a black and blue mark, coagulated blood. Bruised taupe. Same shade as the lacquered nails of this passenger. Everything is bruised. I hear the sound of cellophane being unwrapped, out of the corner of my eye see a candy disappear into her mouth.

I am wearing blue jeans and a mohair sweater, soft and warm, with green and white stripes. My hands are empty. I don’t feel like reading a book. My eyes are tired, my head saturated. I just want to close everything tightly, my eyes, my head, my heart. In the seat pocket in front of me a woman’s magazine, so-called because of its advertisements for cosmetics, recipes, advice columns, fashion photos. I bought it at the newspaper stand in the airport. Simply turn the pages and a whole way of life jumps out at you. I will learn how to protect my skin from cancerous ultraviolet rays, how to behave with a hyperactive child, prepare an elegant brunch for two, six, or twelve guests. But I am going away alone. The cover, featuring an impeccably made-up pouting redhead, informs me that this special issue features the results of a survey on the sexual habits of forty-year-old women.

In five years I will be forty. This doesn’t disturb me, but if they researched my sex life, I wonder what conclusions they would draw.

I look at my neighbour. She must be about forty, in the prime of life. If I asked her questions… And you, ma’am, how many lovers do you have? Do you have a preferred position? How many times a week? A month? Which method of contraception do you use? How many abortions? What kind of orgasm? Do you believe in love?

The emergency exits of the aircraft appear on the screens while a mellifluous male voice explains in Spanish and English how to inflate the life jackets should we fall into the middle of the Atlantic, how to use an oxygen mask in case of suffocation. An invisible flight attendant translates into incomprehensible French. I don’t listen. I don’t want to be saved if we fall into the ocean, or if we run out of oxygen. I don’t want to be saved.

I check the contents of my purse. Passport, traveller’s cheques, dark glasses, tube of frosted apricot lipstick, pen, toothbrush, mentholated cigarettes, lighter. Nothing in the luggage compartment. But at my feet, a red nylon bag in which I’ve packed a long cotton dress, three T-shirts, red, white, and black, tapes of Dead Can Dance and Bernard Lavilliers, my cleansing cream. Reduced to my simplest expression.

I forgot to mention the book. It’s because of the book that I’m going abroad. I want to translate it, distance myself from everything. But I didn’t forget. I simply didn’t want to think about it. Not right now.

An insipid meal arrives on a tray. Stringy strips of pollock attempt to enliven anaemic-looking lettuce leaves next to an orange-coloured dressing in a plastic container: this is all meant to be, if I am to believe the menu, a crab salad. In a rectangular plate, a mediocre chicken in tomatoey hunter sauce, buttered carrots, and fragrant rice stagnate beneath a strip of tin foil. I am also entitled to a hard roll, stone-cold, and a triangle of La Vache qui rit cheese. Dessert is too pink to be real. I eat the cheese, drink the water and the wine. I wait.

A haughty-looking flight attendant circulates, teapot in hand. I hold out my cup, ask for lemon. Later, she removes my barely touched tray. My neighbour has devoured everything on hers.

In six hours, Madrid. The film is about to start. What is it? I look at the program: a comedy, it seems. Light. We will laugh. I feel heavy. I weigh at least three tons.

My neighbour is skimming through a glossy Iberia brochure. Images of a blue Mediterranean with sunny beaches, languid bodies. Yellow and red spots dot the blue: wind-surfers on the ocean. My neighbour is about to speak, I can sense it. The silence between us has gone on too long.

“Do you know Spain well?” she asks. I answer yes.

“I’m going to Marbella,” she continues.

She informs me that she won a week-long trip by filling out an entry form in a branch of the liquor commission. She will stay in a five-star hotel frequented by movie stars and millionaires. Have use of the tennis courts, pools, sauna, workout facilities. A guided tour of the region is included, and a wine tasting.

“A trip for one? That’s unusual.” “Two,” she corrects.

Her friend was supposed to go with her, both of them were looking forward to it. But then, at the last minute, the day before yesterday, as it happened, he had a stupid accident, a fall on the ice in front of his house. He tore a ligament. She couldn’t find anyone to take his place.

“Sometimes life plays rotten tricks,” I say.

“What about you, are you also going on vacation?” she wants to know.

No, I’m going away for my work, a translation. I need peace. I’ll find an apartment somewhere, in a small city in Andalusia near the sea. Off-season, it will be easy.

“A translation?”

“A book.”

“A novel?”

I explain that I am a translator of what’s called “the Love Collection.” “Oh…”

She knows it, has read a few titles. Not many, of course, but sometimes they’re good to relax with after a hard day at work. She is a lab technician for a pharmaceutical company.

“On the beach, too, it’s good,” I remark.

She smiles. That’s true, she brought a romance novel, The Prisoner of Baghdad.I tell her I translated that too. It was before the Gulf war, when Baghdad still conjured up images of The Thousand and One Nights.Her face lights up. She asks the title of what I’m translating now, so she can read it when it comes out. I tell her that I always come up with the title last.

“And you need peace to do the work?”

“I always need peace.”

“A profession made in heaven. You’re so lucky!” “Always with love. Always on the wings of dreams.”

“On the wings of dreams. It could be a title. If I saw it in a bookstore, I’d buy it without hesitating. On the wings of dreams.”

“I’d buy it too,” I tell her.

“My name is Claudine.”

“I’m Éléonore.”

“A name out of a novel.”

“Claudine too.”

The comedy has begun. But no one in the plane is laughing.

“Let’s have a drink,” she suggests. “After all, I won a trip to Spain. A reason to celebrate. I bought a bottle of gin at the duty-free.”

We get up to fetch glasses, soda water, and ice at the flight attendant’s station.

“To Spain!” I say, raising my glass.

“I’ll drink, but my heart’s not really in it… My friend and I had planned to rent a car and tour Portugal. In fact, we decided to stay three weeks. The flight and first week were paid for. Afterwards, we’d have stayed in pensions. We wanted to see everything. And now I’m here alone…”

“There are other fish in the sea.”

“What?”

“I mean, you won’t have trouble finding other men.”

She protests, she’s a faithful woman. She assures me that flings are a part of the past. With AIDS running rampant, mass murderers on the loose, all the psychopaths on the roads… Now love has become too dangerous. She doesn’t want to end up disfigured, mutilated, hacked up. Or catch a terrible disease.

“The Spanish – how are they with women?” she asks.

“Spanish.”

She laughs.

“But really?”

“You’ll see.”

We burst out laughing together, knowingly. We fill the glasses. We drink to Spain and the Spanish.

She brings up the name of Florent, whom she left in the hospital.

“It broke my heart to see him like that,” she continues. “You know what cowards men are. And then, leaving him to go gallivanting around Spain while he… I felt… I don’t know… I felt cruel. It ruins all my pleasure before I even get there. Perhaps I should have stayed. To provide moral support.”

To get her mind off the subject, I tell her that my magazine features a survey on the sex lives of forty-year-old women. It might be fun to answer the questions.

“Question number one: is your sex life satisfactory?”

She hesitates.

“Well…”

“I’ll answer first. My answer is no.” She gives a little laugh.

“Well, mine isn’t either, not really. I mean, that’s not all there is.”

“Fortunately.”

“As you say.”

“But that is the subject of the survey.”

“Come to think of it, yes.”

“Yes what?”

“More or less satisfactory. Considering the circumstances.”

“What do you mean by circumstances?”

“Being a forty-year-old woman.”

“Extenuating.”

“Yes?”

“The circumstances,” I say.

“What do you think is extenuated?”

“Satisfaction, obviously.”

“At forty, you expect less.”

“Or require more. Question number two: do you have fantasies?”

“No.”

“Question number three…”

“But you haven’t answered the second!”

“Neither have you.”

“Let’s say that I have fantasies. Like everyone. But nothing really far-out. Normal ones. More like daydreams.”

“The results of the survey show that 81 percent of women admit having fantasies. Often romantic. The Love Collection.”

“Yes, that’s sort of how it is for me too.”

“They think of another man while making love.”

“It can happen.”

“The hero is strong and mysterious. Franz, Omar, Christopher. No Rogers or Maurices.”

“No Florents either,” she adds, laughing.

“This hero,” I say, “has a square jaw, and thick hair. Unruly head of hair or locks that won’t stay in place,” I specify: “And to describe the way he looks at you?”

“Like steel,” she answers without hesitation.

“Yes, like steel or like a wildcat. In any case, stress hard intensity. He certainly doesn’t wear glasses.”

“No, certainly not. Florent is farsighted. He wears them to read. What about his nose?”

“Aquiline, perhaps.”

“I prefer straight.”

“A straight nose is too ordinary.”

“Maybe, but a really straight nose is quite rare. In any case, that’s what I like.”

“But a pug-nose or a ski slope, never.”

“Perish the thought!” she exclaims.

“The haughty profile of a statue.”

“I can see you have a way with words.”

“Yes, I’m used to clichès,” I say.

I continue:

“His voice could be described as vibrant and his smile sarcastic, sometimes even sardonic. A bitter smirk etched on his tanned face.”

“With rugged features,” she adds. “This man has suffered, life hasn’t been easy for him.”

“Betrayed by a young love.”

“Ignominiously!”

“He became insensitive.”

“Poor man!”

“He has broad shoulders,” she continues. “An athletic build.”

I add: “His muscles strain beneath the effort. Drops of sweat bead at his temples.”

“Silver?”

“No, not silver, definitely not. Black as a raven’s feathers, blond like a stalk of corn beneath the sun. Our hero does not age.”

“A little more gin?”

“A drop. To keep the soda company.”

She raises her glass: “To Franz! To Christopher!”

“When his shirt collar is open,” I say, “you can see the hair on his chest.”

“Virile.”

“He drives a race car.”

“Rides a horse.”

“A thoroughbred.”

“He owns an estate, a ranch.”

“He lassoes animals beneath a burning sun.”

“Or owns vineyards, factories, oil wells. In my dreams, he’s always a rich, powerful man.”

“Do you know that this is the first time I’ve ever had the opportunity of speaking with one of my readers?”

She defends herself: that’s not all she reads. It’s only when she’s tired or restless. Otherwise she reads more serious works, literature, essays on the meaning of life. She suggests we call each other by the familiar tu instead of vous, now that we’ve opened up to each other. I offer her a cigarette. We smoke in silence. Gin and cigarettes are good for the health, for mental health, that is. Because physical health… Cancer lies in wait for us, it seems, insidiously delving its tentacles into our organs. What a tragedy, this description of my poor charred lungs. They were pink at birth, what did I do to them? My soul was white, my heart pure, and my hymen intact, that’s how I was. What did I do to everything given to me in good condition?

But I buy cigarettes low in tar and nicotine: it says so on the pack, along with the warning “cigarettes are addictive,” which comforts me greatly.

The comedy unfolds on screen. I see images of a stairway, a man tearing down it, a woman screaming at a window, a suitcase landing on the sidewalk and opening, spilling open its contents of socks with holes and flowered boxer shorts to passers-by.

“In business, the hero is fair and pitiless,” I say.

“In life, he is fearless,” she adds.

“If he feels betrayed, he may go to a whorehouse or a sordid bar and drink himself into a stupor. He is a strong man with weaknesses.”

“It’s those weaknesses that make him so appealing,” she concludes.

Each reader feels the instinct to train or reform awakening inside her, and each imagines that she will be the one to tame the beast. And at the same time, she nests, a dove at the throat of an eagle, desiring him while at the same time refusing him, pushing him away with frail arms; she wants him to force her, she wants to feel his strength, the brutal embrace. She wants the violence of waves crashing upon the shore, the fury of a hurricane uprooting trees. Every female reader is this woman. Women have the innate ability to train, convert. Their weapons: the sweetness and nobility of their feelings. Potentially, they are doves in love with predators. The same inescapable clichès have been repeated for centuries. The same seductions, the same balms on the same wounds.

“We were speaking of Florent,” I say.

“Oh! Florent… well, to tell the truth, Florent has a flabby stomach, prudently drives a metallic grey Honda Civic and belongs to a bowling league. I also have a flabby stomach, cellulite, don’t have a car, and go bowling with Florent on Saturday nights. Our lives are not spectacular, but I do love him, have learned to love him. We’ve been together six years. I read romance novels when I’m alone and sad. I enter contests to win trips. And when, for the first time in my life, I win one, I have to go away alone… I hope at least the weather will be good.”

“The weather’s always good. Almost always.”

“At least if I can get some sun, it won’t be a total loss. This is my only vacation this year. At the same time, it’s funny, but I have the feeling that if I have a good time, I’ll feel guilty.”

“We always feel guilty, right? The next question?”

“First you have to talk about your own fantasies.”

“The same ones, probably.”

“Translating them, don’t they become banal?”

“They’re always banal.”

I close my eyes for a moment.

“Sometimes the images are violent,” I say.

“Violent?”

“I see myself dominated, bound, chained, subjugated.”

“We’re not responsible for images that come into our heads.”

“They come, in spite of us. Although according to the survey, 7 percent of women admit indulging in this kind of fantasy.”

“I wonder what percentage of men would admit to it… But personally, bound and defenceless, I’d be scared.”

“I’d be scared too, in reality.”

“Florent and I are very traditional when we make love.”

“Men have a singular lack of initiative.” “In bed.”

“Of course, in bed. With them it always has to happen in a bed.”

“Yes, very comfortable,” she concedes. “Afterwards they start snoring.”

“Or else quickly get dressed to go home to their legitimate wife.”

“Who’s waiting in their bed.”

“Personally,” I say, “I like it outdoors. If I close my eyes I see a dark alley, a moon above.”

“When you said outside, it wasn’t an alley I’d imagined. My concept of a romantic fantasy is different. I’d choose a beach at sunset. Alone in the world. Lost in the universe.”

“A beach, okay, but not alone in the world. I’d need people looking on.”

“Oh, really – an exhibitionist?” “We’re talking about fantasy.” She fills our glasses.

“So let’s drink to fantasy. Let’s drink to phantoms.”

“I’ll continue,” I say. “The beach at twilight. Our shapes are blurred, but our gestures defined. We undress each other standing up, face to face.”

“Yes.”

“No. The image isn’t exciting enough. Too realistic.”

“It was a good start, though.”

“It’s only a start.”

Not long ago I lived with a man, but I wasn’t in love. Philippe. I mean that our lives drifted apart, with no feeling of togetherness, in a quiet apartment, prettily decorated. I close my eyes to remember. Here’s what comes to me: a tiny kitchen and his angular, bony body, his white chef’s hat, his large apron. At the same time, aromas fill my memory: poached fish, white butter sauce. I remember chilly mornings, curled up in the big bed, him leaving for work, a tie, never the same, around his neck. Ties, his weakness. I made fun of his outdated elegance. Distinguished apparel, he corrected. When he came home, his briefcase would be overflowing with files. Urgent, as he’d say. Urgent, darling, my love. Swamped. Completely insane this week. And you, my love, did you have a good day? Me?

He was one of those people who mutter Israeli-Arab conflict, or inflation, price wars, corruption, sighing heavily, sadly nodding their heads. The weight of the world lay on his shoulders, immensely heavy. Sometimes he stooped. “Everything is political,” he stated, “we can’t do anything about it.” “I don’t want everything to be political.” Seeing me burst into tears rendered him helpless. “Why cry?” he asked. How to know why? “We are comfortable,” he continued. “We have everything to be happy for. Why are you crying?” “I have too many tears.” “Too many tears? Come on!” “My novel is too sad.” “They always finish happily, your novels.” “That’s what’s so sad.” “I don’t understand you,” he sighed. “Me neither.”

“I would like to have been a Carmelite nun,” I say. “You, a Carmelite nun? Hard to imagine…” “I would have sung hymns in a pure voice, carried candles, worn a cowl, with only my soul for beauty. I would have loved Jesus to madness. Or I’d have liked to be a courtesan.” “Maria Magdalena, now.” “Covered with men and jewels. Jesus loved her. She will be greatly forgiven because she loved a great deal.” “His last temptation.” “Lost in the world or outside it. A lost woman. Burned, burning, to the very end of my flame.” “You’re talking nonsense. Aren’t you happy?” “And you?”

I lived in limbo, mechanically translating insipid novels. Nothing resembled life, yet it was life. Nothing resembled love in the least. Love, it seemed to me, should be a generous feeling. As so often happens, we failed to give enough. Yet sometimes there were tender words, considerate gestures, flowers on the table. Books lying about on the arms of chairs, music playing in the house.

Days go by, hair whitens, hands age, veins appear, sad wrinkles set in around the lips. The back begins to ache, teeth become loose. The voice acquires a hoarseness some find charming. The body becomes dry and brittle, like a bare tree in winter. One day the body no longer responds. I dread that day. Betrayal, sinking. Everything will have passed me by, I won’t know how to have hung onto it. Balance: zero. I could have spent my life next to him without anything ever happening to us. I would have had an eventless life, a lifeless event. Sometimes sadness, sly and insidious, would creep into my chest, like a needle probing my ribs. I wasn’t happy and yet I wasn’t looking for happiness.

“How does the idea of aging strike you?”

“That’s in the survey?” She is surprised.

“No.”

“I’m scared of it, of course.”

“And death?”

“I don’t think about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to die.”

“I think about it all the time,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to die.”

“We can’t escape it.”

“That’s why I think about it.”

“It doesn’t help.”

“I don’t think of why, but of how. I worry about the way I’ll die. I think of suffering.”

“I’d like to go quickly,” she declares. “I hope to feel nothing.”

“I’m mostly scared of violence. I’m scared I’ll be murdered.”

“Oh. But why? Do you lead such a dangerous life?” “All lives are dangerous. I’m scared of the violence of life.”

“And you travel alone!”

“Violence is everywhere. Who can protect us?”

“Stop! I’ll start to get scared too!”

“I want to die in a bed all in white, old and venerable, surrounded by love. I want my children and grandchildren to bend over to capture my last words.”

“I don’t want to die of AIDS,” she says.

“Or burn to death.”

“Or drown.”

“Or die in an earthquake or an explosion. Or buried under rubble.”

“Nor of hunger or thirst,” she continues.

“Not in war. Not in a concentration camp.”

“Not of cold.”

“Not in a plane crash.”

“Don’t even mention it! You’re asking for trouble.”

“Not devoured by a lion, or squeezed to death and swallowed by a boa.”

“How awful!”

“Not tortured, mutilated, my body hacked to pieces, buried in the woods, thrown in a green plastic bag at the end of a dead-end street.”

These images would come to me when I watched the news on television. Philippe said: “You’re obsessed with morbidity, poor darling.” I protested: “What do you think? I do it on purpose? You heard the news, the same as I, you read the newspaper, right? You spend your life reading the newspaper. Does it leave you indifferent?” He exploded: “What’s gotten into you? I’m not the one assassinating children!” He explained: “Whether I’m indifferent, as you say, or whether I cry doesn’t change the facts.” He went on: “It’s as if you’re making me responsible.” And I answered yes, we are all responsible. But I didn’t know in what way.

When he’d see me get depressed as I read about atrocities, he’d shake his head, dejected. He’d put his arm around my shoulders. To console me, he also told me it’s always like that, as well you know, always the same thing, in every century, in every country of the world, no one is safe, it’s always war in the twisted brains of some people. You just have to go on living. “As if nothing happened?” No, his words didn’t console me. He continued: “You’re too sensitive, poor darling. You have to take care of yourself.” “To shield me, you mean?” “I mean don’t let yourself get dragged down by morbidity.” But I kept falling into it like mad, losing my footing, sliding downward. He turned off the television, took the paper out of my hands. “Come now, come to bed. You’re falling over in exhaustion. Your nerves are shot.” The next morning, bouquet in hand, and that apologetic smile. He felt he had caused me pain. More than anything he wanted to avoid making me suffer. My despair spilled onto him. He took me to a vegetarian restaurant. I put flowers on the table. We stopped talking about it.

In the days, I would spend long hours walking through the streets; I’d slink into the metro, emerge somewhere in the city and walk again, repeating to myself that no, I couldn’t go on like this, translating sentimental novels, when life is so dark and children are being murdered, could not go on holding up a macho man ideal, smiling sardonically to readers while macho men beat and strangle their women, stab and shoot them, abandon their tortured bodies in the underbrush. It’s there, in the newspaper every day an item appears that journalists call another family drama, the thirteenth of the year in the urban community. In describing macho men, I became an accomplice; this was how I became responsible. I passed in front of anonymous dwellings, tall apartment buildings that rose, all alike, along the sidewalks, and told myself it was perhaps behind one of those innocuous-looking facades that the horror was hidden. The city is full of those places that appear to be oases and are really pockets of despair.

“Why talk about it?” Claudine asks in an alarmed voice.

“You’re right, why? Let’s talk about love instead. Let’s talk about Spain. About the sea.”

“I’ve only been to the Atlantic,” she says. “The eastern coast of the United States, the Maritimes. And the Caribbean.”

“So turquoise, the Caribbean. The Mediterranean is mostly blue. It suggests something more… maternal. It always moves me. It’s so old.”

“I thought all seas were the same age.”

“The age of the planet. But it’s as if the Mediterranean has cradled humanity for a longer time than the others. Spain is old, too.”

“Even the name makes me dream.”

“The music, the matadors, the flamboyant colours. As a child I liked to imagine myself as Spanish.”

“I was more ordinary. I dreamed I’d meet Prince Charming, that we’d get married and have a flock of children.”

“And?”

“And no prince, I had to reconcile myself. But a part of my dream came true: I have a daughter.”

I avert my eyes. They are filled with tears. Too much gin.

“She’s twenty-one,” she continues. “I would have liked her to come with me. But she couldn’t miss three weeks of university classes… She’s doing her Master’s in psychology. Had we been able to predict Florent’s accident, I would have settled for the week they pay for and taken her away with me.”

“What’s her name?”

“Julie. Do you have children?”

“A daughter too,” I say.

“How old is she?”

“She isn’t any age. She’s dead. Had she lived, she’d be twenty-one, like yours. Perhaps they’d have gone to the same university, the same nightclubs.”

Silence. This kind of revelation is always followed by silence. Silence, the only likely response. Someone tells you: “I lost my whole family in Auschwitz.” You maintain a dismayed silence. You would rather have been deaf. You don’t know where to look. Certainly not in this person’s eyes, certainly not. More likely at the tips of your toes. A woman confides in a quavering voice: “My children all died in the same accident.” A man tells you, his eyes filled with tears: “My wife has brain cancer. She’s entered the terminal stage.” All these are good reasons for remaining silent. But Claudine places her hand on my arm.

“Was it long ago?” she asks.

And I answer:

“Eighteen years.”

“You never forget, do you?”

And I answer:

“Never.”

Years pass and the scar is still raw. Never healed. Her hand remains on my arm. She asks, but her voice is sad:

“How did it happen?” And I answer: “An accident.”

Because the death of a child is always an accident. It cannot have been wanted, planned. Nothing can justify it, this gratuitous suffering. No explanation. No consolation.

She pours a bit more gin into our glasses.

“I don’t think I could have survived,” she says.

“I didn’t really survive.”

But that’s not true. I did survive. I travelled, ate, read books, smoked cigarettes, loved men, walked through the streets, stayed in bars till closing, I swam in the sea, I screamed, I threw up after drinking too much, caught cold, laughed till I cried, petted cats. I put on makeup, I took bubble baths. I bought dresses and jewellery, I cooked, I made love. And I translated for the Love Collection. Survived.

The comedy is over. The screens go blank. In the plane, very little movement. A few lights remain on here and there: insomniacs reading or doing crossword puzzles. Claudine asks me if I’m tired. I’m not, but all this gin is making my head spin. I tell her I’m going to try to rest.

Complete silence. Just a lulling kind of humming, black night beyond the airplane window. That feeling that is always so reassuring of floating above the earth.

Small white pillow for my head. I huddle up, cramped, uncomfortable. What’s the difference? To sleep for a few hours in this womb, like an anachronistic embryo. With the multitude of embryos, murmurs of sleep. Sleep.

Headphones on ears, inoffensive music with a civilizing influence. I close my eyes. My companion and I doze together, a blanket over our knees.