I got off at Barbas station. As last time, men waited grouped at the foot of the elevated metro. People advanced on the sidewalk with pink bags of his dog “Tati” in their hands. I turned to Avenue Magenta, I recognized the “Billy” store, with teddy bear coats hanging over its entrance. A woman came towards me, wearing black tights decorated with large decorations that wrapped around firm legs. Ambroise-Fah street was almost deserted up to the outskirts of the hospital. I walked down the long covered corridor in the Elysee wing. The first time I was here I didn’t notice a music booth in the courtyard beyond the corridor windows. I asked myself how all this would look to me later, on the way out. I pushed door number 15 and went up the two floors. At the reception desk of the early detection department I handed over a note with my number. The woman searched in the filing cabinet and took out a folder of papers. I held out my hand but she didn’t give it to me. She put it on the table and told me to sit, I will be called.
The waiting room is separated into two adjacent compartments. I chose the one closest to the doctor’s door, which was also more crowded. I started correcting works that I had brought with me. Right after me came a very young girl, blonde with long hair, who handed out her number. I made sure that they didn’t give her the folder either and that they would call her too. A man in his thirties in fashionable clothes with the beginnings of baldness, a young black man with a Walkman and a man in his fifties with a plowed face, sunk in his chair, were already sitting there waiting, far from each other. After the blonde girl came a fourth man, sat down decisively and took out a book from his draw. Then a couple: she in sweatpants and a pregnant woman’s belly, he in a suit and tie.
There were no magazines on the table, only some leaflets explaining how important it is to eat dairy products and “how to live with the AIDS virus”. The woman spoke to her partner, got up, wrapped her arms around him, caressed him. He sat motionless, silent, his hands holding the umbrella. The blonde girl sat with a downcast look, her eyes almost closed, her leather jacket folded over her knees, she looked petrified. At her feet were a large travel bag and a small backpack. I wondered if she had more cause for concern than others. Maybe she came to pick up results before she leaves for the weekend or before she returns to her parents in the field city. The doctor came out of her office, a young and thin woman, energetic, in a pink skirt and black tights. She read a number. No one moved. It was someone from the next cabin, a young man who passed us quickly, I only saw glasses and a ponytail.
Called the young black man, then the people from the next cell. No one spoke, no one moved, except for the woman who came with her partner. Everyone just looked up when the doctor appeared at the door of her office or when someone left, following him with their eyes. The phone rang several times, making an appointment or questions about the reception hours. On one occasion the receptionist went to call a lab worker to answer a question from someone who had called. He said, and repeated, that “No, it’s a normal dose, completely normal.” It echoed quietly. The person on the other side of the line must have been infected with the virus.
I finished fixing the works. I saw again and again in my mind’s eye the same situation, blurred, Saturday and Sunday in July, the gesture of love, the ejaculation. Because of that status, which was forgotten about me for months, I was here. The rolling of the naked bodies and their movements now resembled a dance of death. It seemed to me that this man, whom I reluctantly agreed to meet again, had come from Italy only to infect me with AIDS. And despite that, I couldn’t connect it, between the movements, the warmth of the skin, of the sperm, with the fact that I was here. I never imagined that sex would be related to anything else.
The writer Annie Arnaud in Paris, 1984 (Photo: Pierre GUILLAUD / AFP)The doctor gave my number. Even before I entered her office she gave me a big smile. I took it as a good sign. As she closed the door she quickly said, “It’s negative.” I burst out laughing. What she said next didn’t interest me anymore. She seemed cheerful and sharing in my joy.
I went down the stairs at top speed, made my way back in the opposite direction without looking at a thing. I told myself that I was saved again. I wanted to know if the blonde girl was saved too. The crammed people at Barbas station stood facing each other on the platforms, with a few pink spots of “tati” bags here and there.
I suddenly realized that I had experienced this moment in Larriboisier hospital and the waiting for Dr. N.’s sentence in 1963 in the same way, with the same terror and the same lack of certainty. My life is therefore stretched between the Augino method, condoms in francs from machines. This is a good way to measure, even safer than others.
In October 1963, in Rouen, I waited more than a week for my period. It was a warm and sunny month. I felt heavy and damp in a coat that was taken out of the closet too soon, especially in the big department stores I wandered into when I bought tights, waiting for the start of the school year. Every time I went back to my room, in the student dormitories on A’bouville Street, I hoped to see a stain on my underwear. I started writing every night in my diary, in block letters with a line underneath: nothing. At night I would wake up, I knew immediately that there was “nothing”. Last year, at the same time, I started writing a novel, it seemed very far away to me, as if it had never happened.
One afternoon I went to the cinema to see an Italian film in black and white, Posto Il [“המִשרה”]. It was a slow and sad film, the life of a young man in his first job, an office position. The hall was almost completely empty. As I looked at the frail figure of the little hired man, clad in a raincoat, in his humiliations, against the hopeless bleakness of the film, I knew I would not get my period.
One evening I let the girls from the dormitory drag me to the theater, they had an extra ticket. They presented “Bead’s Closed Doors” and until then I had not yet seen a contemporary play. The hall was full to capacity. I saw the stage in the distance, illuminated by a bright light, and I kept thinking about not having my period. I only remember the figure of Estelle, blonde in a blue dress, and that of Garcin who was dressed as a servant, with red eyes without lids. I wrote in my diary “Wonderful. If only I didn’t have this reality in my body.”
End of October, I stopped believing that I would get my period. I made an appointment with a gynecologist, Dr. N., on November 8.
At the weekend of Halloween I returned as usual to my parents’ house. I was afraid that mom would question me about my tardiness. I was sure she checked my underwear every month while she sorted the dirty laundry I brought with me.
On Monday I woke up with a churning stomach and a strange taste in my mouth. At the pharmacy they gave me Hepatum, a thick liquid that increases the nausea even more.
Annie Arno (Photo: EPA)O., a girl from the dormitory, offered me to teach French lessons in her place at the school of the Convent of Saint-Dominique. It was a good opportunity to earn some money on top of my scholarship. The mother in charge received me with Lagarde’s book and remains from the 16th century. I told her that I had never taught and that it scared me. It is perfectly understandable, she herself, for two years, could not enter the classroom where she taught philosophy except with a lowered head, eyes on the ground. Sitting in a chair in front of me she exemplified this memory. I only saw the top of her covered head. When I went out with the book she lent me and imagined myself standing under the gaze of 10th grade girls, I wanted to throw up.
The next day I called the mother in charge to tell her that I would not start teaching. She dryly asked me to return the textbook.
On Friday, November 8th, just as I was turning towards the Town Hall Square to take a bus to Dr. N., on Lafayette Street, I met Jacques S., a literature student, the son of a factory manager in the area. He wanted to know what I had to look for on the Left Bank . I answered him that I had a stomachache and that I was going to the nephrologist. He corrected me sharply: a nephrologist does not treat stomachaches but kidney infections. I was afraid that he would suspect something because of my failure and would want to accompany me to the doctor’s door, so I said goodbye to him abruptly when the bus arrived.
Just as I got off the table and my big green sweater fell on my thighs, the gynecologist informed me that there was no doubt that I was pregnant. The stomach ache I felt was actually nausea. He gave me a referral for injections that are supposed to restart the cycle, but he doesn’t seem to believe that they will have any effect. On the doorstep he smiled cheerfully, “The children of love are the most beautiful of children.” That was a terrible sentence.
I walked back to the dormitory. In the diary it is written: “I am pregnant. What a horror”.
At the beginning of October I slept several times with P., a political science student whom I met during the vacation and went to visit him in Bordeaux. I knew I was at risk according to the Ogino birth control chart, but I didn’t believe it could strike a “root” inside me. In everything related to love and pleasure I did not feel that I had a body that was fundamentally different from that of men.
All the pictures from my visit to Bordeaux – the room on rue Coeur Pasteur and the incessant noise of the cars, the narrow bed, the balcony of the “Montaigne” cafe, the cinema where we watched the movie “The Kidnapping of the Sabines” have only one meaning left: I was there and I didn’t know I was getting pregnant.
The student union nurse gave me an injection already that evening, without any unnecessary talk, and another one the next morning. It was the weekend of November 11th. I went back to see my parents. At one point, a quick, short stream of pinkish blood oozed out. I placed the stained underwear and knickers on the pile of dirty clothes, where they would be visible (diary: “A single leak. Enough to fool mom”). On my return to Rouen, I called Dr. N., who confirmed my condition and announced that he would send me the pregnancy tracking card. I received it the next day. Mademoiselle Annie Duchene, estimated date of birth: July 8, 1964. I saw summer and sunshine. I tore it up.
I wrote to P that I was pregnant and that I wanted to end it. We parted uncertainly about the continuation of our relationship and I felt satisfied that his peace would be disturbed, although I had no doubt that my decision to abort would bring him immense relief.
A week later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. But it was no longer something that could interest me.
The following months are bathed in ghostly light. I see myself in the streets, walking and walking. Every time I thought about this period, literary phrases like: “The Journey Out”, “Beyond Good and Evil” or “Journey to the End of the Night” came to mind. It always seems to me to fit what I experienced and felt then, something that cannot be expressed in words, with a certain beauty.
I have been revolving around this event in my life for years. Reading a novel about abortion gives me a shock without images or thoughts, as if the words are immediately replaced by a violent sensation. In the same way, when I happen to hear “The Greek Dance” or “My memory is fading” or any other song that accompanied me at that time, I permeate again.
A week ago I started writing this story, not being at all sure if I would continue. I just wanted to check the extent of my desire to write about the subject, a desire that regularly filled me every time I was busy writing the book I’ve been working on for two years. I resisted without being able to stop thinking about it. Surrendering to this desire seemed terrifying to me. But I also told myself that I could die without doing anything about this event. And if there is an injustice in this, it would indeed be an injustice not to put it on the record. One night I dreamed that I was holding in my hand a book I had written about my abortion, but it cannot be found in bookstores and it does not appear in any catalog. At the bottom of the cover, in large letters, appeared the word “out of stock”. I don’t know if the dream meant that I had to write the book or if there is no point in doing so.
Author Annie Arno (Photo: Julie SEBADELHA /AFP)Time started to move with this story, and it drags me against my will. I know now that I will go to the end, no matter what, with the same determination that gripped me then, at the age of twenty-three, when I tore up the pregnancy tracking card.
I want to immerse myself in that period of my life again and know what is in it. This careful examination will take the form of a story, which alone can revive an event that was only time inside and outside of me. An organizer and a personal diary that I kept during these months will serve as anchor points and a basis for the facts. I will try above all to get to the bottom of each image, until I get a physical feeling of “merging” with it. Until words come up that I can say “this is this”. Until I can hear again each of the indelible sentences inside me, or alternatively, the comforters, that when I think about them today, fill me with disgust or sweetness.
The fact that the illegality of my abortion experience has already passed from the world does not mean at all that the experience should be left buried in the layers of time, even if the contradiction of a just law lies in the fact that it forces the victims of the past to remain silent in the name of “all-it-is-over”, So much so that silence like the one that prevailed then still covers what happened. Precisely because no prohibition applies to abortions anymore, I can deal with that unforgettable event in its natural size, and leave aside the collective meaning and the necessarily abstract formulas imposed by the struggle of the seventies (“violence against women”, etc.).
“The Event”, Annie Arno, translation: Nora Bona, Resling Publishing, 107 pages.