O by Steven Carroll

Author:Steven Carroll [Carroll, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 4th Estate
Published: 2020-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

16.

Over the following weeks Dominique writes whenever she can, staying up until dawn, this strange tale pouring from her, this story of O. She has no idea why she called her protagonist O – O for what? Sometimes she watches her hand moving over the pages as if she herself is waiting to see what comes next.

Occasionally she hears her parents in the next room, a conversation in the dark, a cough, or her father snoring, and she can’t help but wonder what they would think if they knew. Jean is adamant that the book, and she never really thought of it as a book until he started treating it like one, must be published. She cares and she doesn’t, but it is his, after all; she wrote it for him, a gift, and part of her concludes that he can do what he wants with it.

At the same time the prospect of publication is deeply troubling. She always imagines she is writing for an audience of one, and this releases her, frees her to write whatever she chooses, even if she can’t be sure where it comes from or what it all means. But however hideous this progeny of hers may be, she knows it’s true: true of her, true to her. In its heart, in its essence, the truest thing she has ever done. As true as a dream. Not that she could lie. As a writer you can’t lie, even when you try. Whenever you put words on a page, she tells herself, you are always laying yourself bare. And this strange tale, this proud, defiled figure of O, which comes from some deep-seated part of Dominique that even she doesn’t really know, some mystery that’s lain inside her through one birthday and another, waiting for its moment of release, has been liberated from her by the thought of an audience of one.

But once a book, any book, is published it goes out into the world, where strangers will read it irrespective of whom it was written for. They will make it their own, snigger and snort. She rests from her writing at a point where this young woman called O, who is her and not her, who could be anybody, has just been branded, like an animal, with Sir Stephen’s mark. Or, she wonders, is it more like the man with Molly tattooed on his chest? But O’s brand is on her buttock and all who bear witness to it will know that she is Sir Stephen’s possession and that she has consented to be. How could she let this go public? She has stopped thinking about her story and is contemplating the word itself: public. And suddenly there is something vulgar in being published, undignified and unsettling, like those dreams of finding yourself naked in a public place. She thought she was writing for one person only and has revealed herself in such a way that only lovers do for each other. In this sense

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