Pétronille

by Amélie Nothomb

  “Bloody hell!” I exclaimed when I pulled up next to her.

  We each drank a deep draft of liquid gold.

  “Yep,” said Pétronille. “The problem is that it’s impossible to refuel in flight.”

  “Maybe it’s not entirely necessary.”

  “But hang on, we wanted to drink while skiing, no?”

  “We’re not obliged to attain absolute simultaneity. It’s like coffee and cigarettes, they go well together, but you never have the smoke and the java in your mouth at the same time.”

  “Your comparison doesn’t hold water.”

  “Drinking champagne means tilting your head back: and if you do that, you can’t see the slope anymore. That’s dangerous.”

  “Not if you drink fast.”

  “But that would be a pity!”

  “So what, it’s not Dom Pérignon, after all.”

  I stared at her, wide-eyed: I hadn’t realized she was such a snob. She seized the moment to set off again. I stopped breathing when I saw her lift her elbow and tilt her head back in the midst of her slaloming. She lifted the bottle to her lips for a second which seemed to last an hour. “And to think that I’m the one who came up with this brilliant idea!” I moaned.

  But there is a God watching over alcoholic skiers: she emerged unscathed. When she came to a halt, she looked at me and then raised her arms in a triumphant gesture.

  My fear had sobered me; I caught up with her.

  “Aren’t you going to do like me?”

  “No,” I answered. “And I beg you, please don’t repeat your exploit. I don’t feel like having your death or anyone else’s on my conscience.”

  “Go on, it’s really because I’m such a nice girl.”

  I didn’t reply. “Nice” is probably the least appropriate adjective there is on earth to describe her.

  “What shall we do now?” grumbled Pétronille, pointing to her empty bottle.

  “We’ll keep on skiing until the intoxication fades.”

  “Fine. Which means we’ll be back at the chalet five minutes from now.”

  We had to revise her forecast upwards: we kept on skiing until sunset. We laughed until we cried, took senseless risks (skiing up to bumps head-on, getting in the way of complete idiots who acted as if they were training for the Olympics), and made earth-shattering declarations (“People from Savoie are not really French!” cried Pétronille): in short, we had a smashing good time.

  In the evening, in an excellent mood, we feasted on a muddled mixture of tartiflette, hot chocolate, toasted brioche, pickles, Ovomaltine energy bars, and raw onions.

  “I think that even a rock concert of dust mites won’t be able to keep me from sleeping,” declared Pétronille, collapsing on her bed.

  I did likewise and immediately fell into a heavy drunken sleep.

  In the morning, looking distinctly green, she announced that she had not slept a wink.

  “Dust mites die hard. I’m beginning to have trouble breathing.”

  She was wheezing asthmatically.

  “Well, what will happen next?” I asked.

  “It will only get worse.”

  “Right. I’m calling a taxi, we’re going back to Paris.”

  “Wait a minute. Show me the booking contract for this shit week!”

  I handed her the papers. She examined in great detail all the fine print that no one ever reads. One hour later she cried out, “I’m going to invoke this cancellation clause!”

  She called the number printed in tiny characters and did not even need to pretend to speak in an asthmatic voice.

  “People can die from an asthma attack, it’s quite common,” I heard her say.

  When she hung up, she told me the ambulance was on its way.

  “Are you going to the hospital?” I asked.

  “No. We’re going back to Paris, you and me. You’re here to accompany me, it’s legal.”

  “We’re going back to Paris in an ambulance?”

  “Yes,” she said proudly. “Not only am I making it possible for you to save a large sum of money, but on top of it it’ll be a lot faster. Get packing.”

  It was not long before we heard the ambulance siren. According to law, Pétronille had to board the ambulance on a stretcher. Which she was only too willing to do.

  At first I thought she was acting, but once we were settled in the ambulance, with her lying down and me sitting next to her, I realized that she really was very sick. Here was someone who was even more asthmatic than I am.

  It took six hours to go from Dustin-les-Mites to Paris. Pétronille gradually began to breathe more easily and regain some color. The ambulance crew were wonderful—competent and reassuring. When we reached the twentieth arrondissement in Paris, they asked her if she wanted to go home or to the hospital. She assured them she would feel better in her apartment.

  I helped her carry her things up six flights of stairs without an elevator. Once she was settled in, she exclaimed, “No more winter sports, ever.”

  “It makes life too precarious?”

  She ignored my question and declared, “We won’t tell anyone we’ve come back, all right? I want to know what it feels like to be in Paris between the holidays when no one knows you’re here.”

  “I know you’re here.”

  “Yes. You have the right to look after me.”

  She viewed this as an authentic privilege. Since she was only just recovering from a very serious asthma attack, I treated her gently. I took her for slow walks in the gardens of the Châteaux of Versailles and Bagatelle, and in the Luxembourg Gardens. At the Salon de Thé Angelina we tasted the Mont Blanc and the hot chocolate. Such attentive behavior elicited the following expression of gratitude:

  “You’re a past master at dreaming up senior citizen activities.”

  “You’re hardly choking on gratitude, are you.”

  On December 31, despite all my efforts via the telephone, I could not find a single restaurant with even a corner of a table available. So I suggested a New Year’s Eve party with champagne and soft-boiled eggs at her place or mine. She did not seem very enthusiastic, then she said, “Why don’t we go to my parents’ place?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “I do! But I wouldn’t want to bother them.”

  She shrugged, and called her parents.

  “No problem,” she said. “Unless you have a problem meeting people from the section.”

  “The section?”

  “The Communist section from Antony.”

  The strangeness of the notion made me all the more eager to go. At the end of the afternoon Pétronille led the way to the RER B suburban train. In Antony we took a bus through a clean, depressing suburb. The Fanto parents lived in a little detached house her grandfather had built in the 1960s with his own hands. It was ordinary, and comfortable.

  Pierre Fanto was a tall, friendly fellow in his fifties, and he introduced me to other guests from the section, a certain Dominique and a certain Marie-Rose. Marie-Rose was an old goat of the Stalinist school, as rigid as she was terrifying. Françoise Fanto, a slim, pretty woman, served the guests at the gathering with a shyness only I seemed to find surprising.

  No matter what was said, it became apparent to me that the purpose was to obtain Marie-Rose’s approval. I did not know whether she was higher ranking than the others, but she seemed to be the guardian of truth. For example, when Dominique dared to say that North Korea did not seem to be doing too well, she immediately broke in to say, “North Korea is doing much better than South Korea, and that’s what matters.”

  Pierre described his recent trip to Berlin: he had come away concerned by the rise in prices. Marie-Rose did not let him go on:

  “All the East Germans are aware of their lost happiness.”


  “Fortunately, we still have Cuba!” said Pierre.

  I kept silent and observed Pétronille. But she was used to this and did not react; she stuffed her face with salami while her father put on some music. My lack of culture where French chansonniers were concerned was mind-boggling, and I was naïve enough to ask who we were listening to.

  “For Pete’s sake, it’s Jean Ferrat!” said Marie-Rose, indignantly.

  Pierre opened an excellent bottle of Graves: finally a shared value. The wine relaxed the atmosphere.

  “What’s for dinner?” asked Pétronille.

  “I’ve made my beef and carrot stew,” answered her father.

  “Ah, Pierre’s beef and carrot stew!” said Dominique, ecstatic.

  I was truly curious to taste this classic French dish, unknown in Belgium.

  “You’ve never had beef and carrot stew?” said Pierre, astonished.

  “So where are you from?” asked Marie-Rose.

  “Belgium,” I said cautiously, sensing that any more information than this would arouse her distrust.

  They then embarked on a furious discussion of French politics. 2002 had been a disastrous year, and 2003 did not bode well. They commented on various changes in society that irritated them to the highest degree. Every time, Pierre would conclude angrily, “It’s Mitterrand’s fault!”

  And the others agreed, loud and clear.

  By midnight the discussion was still going strong. Françoise came in with a gorgeous charlotte au chocolat that she had made herself. I ate quite a hefty portion.

  “These Belgians have a good appetite,” said the section, approvingly.

  I did not deny it. When the twelve fateful strokes rang out, we drank our champagne, a Baron Fuente.

  “The only aristocrat you’ll ever see in my house,” said Pierre.

  And the Baron held his own. In addition to its innumerable other benefits, champagne has the gift of cheering me up. And even if I don’t know why I need cheering up, the drink definitely does.

  At around two o’clock in the morning I collapsed on an old sofa and instantly fell asleep.

  Several hours later, I was back on the RER heading to Paris with Pétronille.

  “You all right? You weren’t traumatized?” she asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “The section and their pronouncements.”

  “Reality far exceeded my wildest expectations.”

  She sighed: “I’m ashamed of my father.”

  “You shouldn’t be. He’s kind, and perfectly pleasant.”

  “Didn’t you hear how he went on?”

  “It hardly matters. His remarks may have been outrageous, but they were harmless.”

  “They haven’t always been.”

  “Well they are now.”

  “All he does is rehash his father’s opinions.”

  “You see, it’s nothing more than filial allegiance. Reality isn’t important to him.”

  “Exactly. And I suffered from it. For example: since property is theft, he never locked the front door. And I don’t know how many times we were burgled. It drove me crazy, I swear.”

  “I see. And what about your mother, does she share his opinions?”

  “Who knows. She’s as timid as she is intelligent. She’s a party member but I think that in the polling booth she votes socialist.”

  “Is she afraid of your father? He doesn’t look dangerous.”

  “She doesn’t want to disappoint him. But she’s not cut from the same cloth. What my mother really loves is opera. She’s the one who chose my name.”

  “And your incredible literary culture, where did that come from?”

  “It’s a personal creation. My father only ever reads the communist press or books about the First World War, which is his passion. My mother reads things I would describe as ‘entertaining.’”

  “I see. You must have felt quite lonely!”

  “You have no idea.”

  I stared out the window of the RER B at the suburban landscape. Objectively, you could do worse than these little houses, quiet streets and well-tended gardens. Then why did this panorama inspire such suicidal longings?

  As we sped by I suddenly thought I could see, through the window of a dwelling, Pétronille’s adolescence—the actual suffering of a little girl with absurdly aristocratic taste, who had embraced the ideals of the far left, but was at odds with the proletarian aesthetic—all those unabashedly ugly tchotchkes, and the shockingly stupid things they read.

  I looked again at Pétronille. She was so much better than some cultured young lady. Her bad boy look, her fiery gaze, her nervous and muscular little body like that of a convict on the lam—and the strange softness of her face, which she shared with Christopher Marlowe. Like Marlowe, she could take as her motto: Quod me nutrit, me destruit: that which nourishes me destroys me. Great literature, which had gone to make up the bulk of her nourishment, was also what separated her from her loved ones, creating a gulf between them all the more impassable in that her tribe did not understand it.

  Her parents loved her, and yet they were afraid of her. Françoise, who had a delicate soul, admired her daughter’s novels and sometimes understood them. Pierre didn’t understand a thing about them and couldn’t see why her prose should outclass his personal diary.

  I felt a powerful surge of admiration for Pétronille and I told her so.

  “Thank you, bird,” she replied.

  Although I’d never made any overt references to birds in her presence, here she was decreeing that I belonged to the avian species. Her instinctive choice of words was spot-on: since the age of eleven, I have been obsessed with the winged race to the point of no return. I have spent so much time observing birds that I must have been infected by certain aspects of this animal kingdom. But what, exactly? I doubt whether language can help express it.

  Some might say that the age of eleven is already quite late. True enough, but before that, as far back as I can recall, I was obsessed with eggs, and I still am. You cannot deny the coherence of such fixations. Those eleven years must have coincided with my incubation period. And when I turned eleven, I became a bird. Which one? Hard to say. An odd mixture of Arctic tern, cormorant, swallow and moorhen, with a touch of the common buzzard. My books are like the eggs I lay.

  Among the astonishing examples of barbaric behavior displayed by the avian species, I should like to point out this one in particular: birds love to eat eggs. It is one of their favorite foods. And that is also true for me. But they prefer to eat other birds’ eggs. And I can confirm that once my books no longer need my care, I prefer to read other authors’.

  In 2003, Pétronille published a magnificent novel, The Apocalypse According to Ecuador. It was a story about a little girl who was an incarnation of evil. Ecuador was diabolical in her own extraordinary way. Readers and critics rejoiced: while with her two previous books they could hardly have accused her of writing autobiographically, with this one they could. “Ecuador is who you were as a child, isn’t she?” She would dismiss their theory with an amiable agility that only served to irritate them.

  Journalists did not particularly care for this novelist who gave them no purchase on her life. To make up for this, other writers liked her a great deal. They appreciated her deeply literary temperament and her careful reading of their own works. I know something about it and I am far from being the only one who does. Pétronille established close friendships with a number of writers, including Carole Zalberg, Alain Mabanckou, Pia Petersen, and Pierrette Fleutiaux.

  About her love life she revealed little. This pretty urchin broke any number of hearts, but I never found out whose. I noticed that her book signings were always attended by quite a few ravishing young women, but that by no means excluded handsome young men. Her sexual ambiguity was fascinating. The funniest thing was that several young wo
men came and asked me for advice. These lovely things aroused my compassion. My status as drinking companion was already hard enough; I could not imagine the existential difficulty faced by these women who had fallen in love with Pétronille. So I said, “You know, Mademoiselle Fanto is not an exact science.”

  Although my response was cautious, I suppose it was still too daring. Because word got back to me that after a certain number of predictable disasters—affairs that were short-lived, dismissal from one day to the next—those repudiated women placed the blame on me, and held me responsible for their disappointments.

  I beg to take umbrage. If there is one thing I despise more than jealousy, it is indiscretion. The attitude of these jilted demoiselles followed a certain logic—their pride suffered less if they imagined they had been the victims of some perverse manipulation, rather than admitting that they themselves might be a disappointment—but I found their logic perfectly inconceivable. I had enough difficulty as it was understanding my own matters of the heart; I was hardly about to go delving into other people’s.

  And besides, judging from the little I knew about Pétronille’s morals, her behavior was not at all surprising. She herself admitted that she owed her explosive temperament to her Andorran origins. If she had been in possession of the switchblade she dreamt of, undoubtedly she would have made ample use of it. The least little thing and she flew into a rage. When I saw her lose her temper for reasons that escaped me, I tried humor to calm her down, and sometimes I succeeded. One of my methods was to say, “It’s amazing how much you look like Robert De Niro in front of his mirror in Taxi Driver!”

  When it worked, she instantly turned into Robert De Niro and said, “You talking to me?” with the appropriate accent. But when it didn’t work, she was like some gang leader throwing endless tantrums.

  “Have you quite finished pretending to be Lino Ventura in Crooks in Clover?” This was my final rejoinder: the name Lino Ventura was my trump card.

  “Papa!” she exclaimed.