Pétronille

by Amélie Nothomb

  Did she know whom she was talking to? I began to hope that she did not. It would be better to be a complete unknown where this woman was concerned than to subject oneself to such an affront.

  I behaved the way a Japanese woman would: I laughed. It seemed to me that I’d touched bottom. Even if it brings bad luck to think like that. Reality always rushes in to prove how greatly you lack imagination.

  I heard a strange scratching noise coming from the other side of the door. With her chin, Vivienne Westwood motioned to me to open the door. I did as she asked. In bounded a black poodle, trimmed according to the latest fashion, and it trotted over to the designer. Her expression changed in the most extraordinary way. Her face filled with tenderness and she cried out, “Beatrice! Oh, my darling!”

  She took the dog in her arms and covered it with kisses. Her face was streaming with love.

  I was enthralled. A person who loves animals this much cannot be all bad, I thought.

  Beatrice began yapping in a way that probably meant to say something, but I could not tell what. Miss Westwood must have understood the significance of the dog’s behavior, because she put her down and said, curtly, “It is time to walk Beatrice.”

  I nodded: when Beatrice started yapping, it meant that nature was calling.

  “It is time to walk Beatrice,” she said again, petulantly.

  I looked at the man in black, who was standing on the other side of the door, which had remained open: had he not heard the order addressed to him?

  “Don’t you understand English?” she eventually said to me, wearily.

  At last I understood. It was to me, and me alone, that she was communicating what was not a request but an order.

  I asked her for the leash. She took some sort of S&M accessory out of her bag and handed it to me. I fastened it to Beatrice’s collar and left the room. The man in black indicated the route to follow. Which wasn’t indispensable, because the dog knew the way.

  Beatrice led me to a square where she was used to going. I tried to grasp the poetry of the moment: was this not a singular way to discover London? But no matter how I tried to view the episode as positively as I could, there was nevertheless a feeling of shame that floated on the surface. I dared to examine it more closely: first Vivienne Westwood had insulted me, then she had ordered me to walk her dog. Yes, that was exactly what had happened.

  I looked around me. The square seemed as ugly as all the buildings surrounding it. People had horrible expressions on their faces. Finally, the damp chill went right to the bone. I had to face facts: I did not like London at all.

  Lost in my feelings of disgust, I had forgotten about the canine race and her majesty Beatrice, who was yapping and hopping, showing me the poop she had just produced. I wondered if English law required one to remove the turd; given my ignorance thereof, I decided not to touch it. If a policeman stopped me, I would give him the contact information for the boutique.

  For a split second a devilish flash of inspiration told me to kidnap the poodle and demand a ransom. As if to dissuade me, Beatrice began biting my calves in exasperation. It is absolutely true what people say, that dogs resemble their masters. I went back. Vivienne Westwood gave Beatrice to the man in black and then asked me: Had the little creature taken communion of both kinds? How was the poop? This was the only time she listened scrupulously to what I had to say. After that, she relapsed into her scorn and ennui.

  As I did not see any point in prolonging the ordeal I took my leave. Miss Westwood held out a limp hand without looking at me any more than upon greeting me, and she returned to the job at hand. I was out in the street, prey to an acute awareness of how far I had fallen.

  In short: I had just been treated, literally, worse than a dog, by an aging punkette disguised as Queen Elizabeth I—unless it was the other way around—in a metropolis where I knew nothing and no one. Now I was all alone on an inhospitable street, and a freezing cold drizzle was beginning to fall. In a stupor, I began to walk in what I believed was the direction of my hotel. If I had had one iota of common sense, I would have taken a taxi, but Londoners now filled me with a sort of terror, even those behind the wheel of a car, and I preferred to have nothing more to do with that strange species.

  Under normal circumstances I enjoy getting lost in strange cities, and I profess that there is no better initiation to a place. But that is not what I felt that day. Huddling for shelter under a tiny rickety umbrella, I wandered down absurd avenues lined on either side with edifices whose windows gazed out at me with Vivienne Westwood’s expression. All I could feel was a hateful chill, and I recalled the words of Victor Hugo: “London is boredom constructed.” His concise formula was still too positive, in my opinion. If the rest of England was anything like the capital, I could understand why people referred to the country as perfidious Albion, and I felt boundless empathy with my ancestors who had fled Northumberland a thousand years earlier. Every building I went by seemed to emanate something insidiously hostile.

  Eventually I had to ask my way from some natives who pretended not to understand my English, and I refrained from telling them that even their glorious old fashion designer could understand my mumbo-jumbo. After two hours of desperate drifting, I reached the hotel, where I locked myself in my room to keep the enemy at bay. I marinated for a long time in a steaming bath, then I climbed into bed. All too quickly, my appreciation for such comfort gave way to an unpleasant concession of failure. Never in my life had I so failed to appreciate a city. If it had been Maubeuge or Vierzon I might have laughed about it. But London, honestly!

  London, where Shakespeare had written and staged his greatest masterpieces, where European honor had been saved during the last war, where all sorts of avant-garde movements were flourishing. I was the one who was being punished for having failed to appreciate the city. To be sure, Vivienne Westwood was a blow dealt by fate, but it was totally unfair on my part to blame the entire city! Was I really, at the age of thirty-four, about to order a club sandwich from room service and bolt myself in my room, despite the fact that this was my first night in England?

  Instinctively I reached for the telephone.

  “Hello, Pétronille. Would you like to come and spend the evening with me?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I’m in London.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, that changes things.”

  “I’ll give you the money for the train. If you don’t mind, you can share my suite, which is as big as Buckingham Palace.”

  I gave her the address of the hotel.

  “I’m on my way.”

  At nine o’clock there was a knock on my door. To see a friendly face there before me on that hostile shore filled me with joy. I began pouring my heart out, but she interrupted me:

  “I’m hungry. Let’s go have dinner. You’ll tell me your story on the way.”

  I followed her through the dark streets, describing my calamitous encounter with Vivienne Westwood. Pétronille laughed wholeheartedly.

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “Yes. I suppose it wasn’t so funny in reality. The business with the poodle!”

  “What would you have done in my shoes?”

  “I would have gotten out my repertory of Scottish insults and flung them at the old cow.”

  “That’s my problem. I don’t know any Scottish insults.”

  “Go on. Even if you had known a few, you wouldn’t have said anything. I read your book, Fear and Trembling.”

  She was right. Coarse behavior in others has no effect on me, other than to petrify me. In the meantime, we were standing outside a greasy spoon that gave off enticing odors.

  “What do you say to some Indian food? Unless you really want a meat pie.”

  In no time their excellent food had cheered me up. Then Pétronille took me to a pub where she ordered two pints of Guinness straight off. A pioneerin
g rock band was playing some weird music they called “dubstep.”

  “You mustn’t drink the foam on its own,” said Pétronille when she saw me lapping it up. “Guinness is good when you drink it through the foam. Not to mention the fact that you look idiotic when you lap up the foam.”

  “I like this music. It sounds as if they’re putting the bass through a curling iron.”

  “And to think that if I hadn’t come you wouldn’t have left the hotel room.”

  “I was traumatized. I thought you were the only one who might give me the nerve to go out.”

  “Stop making such a fuss, you’ve seen worse—all that for a bigheaded harpy.”

  Late that night, Pétronille led me to a narrow street of the more cutthroat variety. She stood in a very particular place and said, extremely solemnly, “There. I am standing in the exact spot where Christopher Marlowe was murdered.”

  I was surprised to feel a shiver go through me.

  “You bear a frightening resemblance to Christopher Marlowe,” I said.

  “You have no idea what he looked like,” she shot back.

  “No, indeed I don’t. But your bad-boy side does give you some striking similarities to Shakespeare’s contemporaries.”

  “The things you come out with sometimes!”

  Later, I had the opportunity to see a portrait of Christopher Marlowe. My intuition proved correct: there was a strange resemblance to Pétronille. If you shaved off Marlowe’s goatee and mustache, you would get Pétronille, with her chubby face and her juvenile, mischievous air.

  It must have been one o’clock in the morning when we went back to the hotel room. When I woke up three hours later to write, I saw that Pétronille was asleep on the far side of the colossal bed. It looked as if she hadn’t gotten undressed.

  I went into the living room of the suite to write, refusing to let the Victorian furnishings intimidate me. As on every other day of my life, the phenomenon kept me in its grip for roughly four hours, then deserted me. Through the window I saw what must have been the equivalent of a sunrise on this side of the Channel: a slight attenuation of the darkness.

  Pétronille had never seen me in my writing outfit (a pair of what you might describe as Japanese antinuclear pajamas) and I was determined not to traumatize her. I was tiptoeing through the bedroom toward the bathroom when I heard, “What on earth is that?”

  “It’s me.”

  A silence, followed by, “Right. It’s worse than I thought.”

  “I’ll get changed, if you want.”

  “No, no. If I turn on the light, will it catch fire?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  She switched on the light and looked at me once again.

  “Oh, it was worth the trip just for the color. How would you describe it?”

  “Kaki.”

  “No. Khaki is green and you’re dark orange.”

  “Yes, the color of the kaki, the Japanese persimmon fruit. This is my writing outfit.”

  “And does it yield good results?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

  She laughed and got up. It was my turn to be surprised.

  “You didn’t get undressed before going to bed, not even your shoes!”

  “I’m a real cowboy. That way, if someone attacks us in the night, I’m ready.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “No, I was exhausted.”

  “I’ll order breakfast. What would you like?”

  “Anything but their bloody sausages, porridge, and kidneys. Coffee, toast, and jam.”

  While I was calling room service, she went to take a shower. Breakfast was served in the dining room. Like my Lord and Lady, we sat at either end of a very long table.

  “This is really practical for passing the sugar,” said Pétronille.

  “I like it.”

  “Have you seen how unflappable these people are? The breakfast lady didn’t bat an eyelash when you opened the door in your orange pajamas.”

  “I’m sure she’s seen worse in her life.”

  “I haven’t.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “What do you want to do this morning?”

  “What seems interesting to you, here?” I asked.

  “Well, the fact the museums are free, that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Indisputably.”

  “Let’s go to the British Museum.”

  Which is what we did. Not to lose each other, we arranged to meet in Mesopotamia at noon. It’s not every day you can schedule a meeting in such a place.

  When I am in an edifice like this, I appreciate the ensemble even more than the details. I like to wander around, but I obey no other logic than my own pleasure, from ancient Egypt to Galapagos by way of Sumer. To stuff myself with the entirety of Assyriology would leave me nauseated, whereas nibbling a few cuneiform characters as an aperitif, some runes for the starter, the Rosetta stone for the main course and a few prehistoric negative hand prints for dessert really fires up my taste buds.

  What I cannot abide in museums is the ponderous pace people feel duty-bound to respect. I am the sort who goes through at a brisk pace, incorporating whole vast prospects with my gaze: whether it is archaeology or Impressionist painting, I have tested the advantages of my method. The first is that I am spared the atrocious “guidebook effect”: “Admire the good-natured aspect of Sheikh al-Balad: don’t you feel you met him at the market only yesterday?” Or: “Litigation is opposing Greece and the United Kingdom over the Elgin marbles.” The second advantage is concomitant with the first: it makes it impossible to chat about what you’ve seen on leaving the museum. Any modern-day Bouvard and Pécuchet would have the wind taken right out of their sails. The third advantage, and not the least important as far as I’m concerned, is that a brisk pace prevents the onset of the dreaded museum backache.

  At around noon I realized that I was lost. I went up to a museum official and said:

  “Mesopotamia, please.”

  “Third floor, and turn left,” he answered as simply as could be.

  Which just goes to show that you would be wrong to think that Mesopotamia is so inaccessible. True to our arrangement, Pétronille was there waiting for me. I appreciated the fact that she spared me a digested version of her tour. Instead, she suggested we go for fish and chips.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes. It’s something you have to try when you’re in the UK. Well worth it. I know a good place in Soho.”

  In the designated hole in the wall, she wasted no time in splattering my plate with a generous amount of vinegar. Thanks to which I had to concede it was very tasty.

  “Shall we say tu to each other?” she suggested, taking a sip of beer.

  “Why should we?”

  “We’ve slept in the same bed, I’ve seen you in your orange pajamas, and now we’re eating fish and chips together. It seems strange to go on saying vous.”

  “For me, the only question is this: what would we gain by saying tu?”

  “Never mind, you’re against it.”

  “Ten times out of ten, I must confess.”

  “It’s your upbringing.”

  “On the contrary. In my family, we say tu as often as possible. No, it’s visceral: I like saying vous to people.”

  “I see.”

  “Wait, there are two of us here.”

  “Which voids the vote altogether: one for, one against.”

  “Yes. But why should my vote be the one to carry it? That’s not fair.”

  “Well, we’re not about to toss a coin, are we?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what we’ll do. Chance is a form of justice worthy of the name.”

  Pétronille took a penny from her pocket and said, “Heads, it’s vous, tails it’s tu.”

 
She flicked the coin into the air with her thumb. Never had I so fervently hoped to see the Queen’s face.

  “Tails!” she cried.

  “This will be tough.”

  “Just say the word and we’ll keep using vous.”

  “No, no. I’ll get it wrong a lot of the time, but I’ll get there eventually.”

  After lunch, we walked past a vintage boutique selling secondhand Doc Martens. I saw some royal blue ones, with straps, in fairly good condition. Pétronille decreed that they suited me to a T.

  “They’ll make a nice change from your loony bin standard issue.”

  “And why do my shoes deserve so much sarcasm?”

  “If you were normal, you would understand.”

  “You see that saying tu to me is not without consequence. Look at how you’re suddenly referring to me.”

  “It’s not sudden. Last night I called you idiotic.”

  My serenity absurdly restored, I bought the Doc Martens with the straps. I still wear them, to this day.

  On our way to the station we passed an individual walking a corgi. We both went into raptures.

  “I am crazy about those dogs!” cried Pétronille.

  “Me too. They’re my favorite dog. And the Queen’s, as well.”

  “Now that you mention it, you look like a cross between a corgi and Queen Elizabeth II. Half and half.”

  She wouldn’t give up.

  On the Eurostar, Pétronille asked me for my verdict about London.

  “Until you got there, I thought it was purgatory.”

  “And once I got there?”

  “Hellacious.”

  She let out a boisterous laugh.

  “You’re right, we had a good time.”

  It is true that thanks to her, I did get something out of my lightning visit. Nevertheless, when we got to the Gare du Nord, and I found myself in that neighborhood that is hardly what you’d call charming, I suddenly understood why people say “gay Paree”:

  “What a joyful, lighthearted city!”

  “Shall we go drink some champagne?” suggested Pétronille.