Four days later, deciding he was fully recovered from his bout of flu, Pamela had taken him up into the Vosges, to a deserted mountain cabin a few miles outside Remiremont. She had decided to leave the city. She was not planning to take two weeks’ vacation. She kept saying that it was time for a life change. She had entered a phase that might have been called manic, had there been a depressive pole to counterbalance it. But no one around her ever encouraged her to come down. Once shared with a group, madness, however raving, can become a way of life.
The Hyena had joined them. She was in hiding. She was the one who had jet-propelled the idea … Pamela has a taste for secret societies. The Hyena has a hyper-paranoid worldview. The two of them, together, with nothing else to do: dynamite. It was from this that the idea was born to set up a headquarters that would organize ceremonies. At first, they thought of it as just throwing a party “to get together.” But from the first event, in a disused not-yet-gentrified paper mill they had clandestinely commandeered, more than fifty people had shown up.
But those who wish to attend the ceremonies are required to make some effort: the day before departure, they receive a hand-delivered message, usually to meet in a bus station. But it could be a train or a car. You never know. There are specific clauses. No one is allowed to use their travel card on the day they leave, only individual tickets. Absolutely no taxis and no Vélib bicycles. A series of comparable precautions making getting to the venue highly complex. But everyone diligently plays the game. Smartphones and computers must be left at home. On arrival at their destination, guests are collected from the station. If any of them have brought their mobile phones, these are deposited in a nearby apartment. Pamela has fans even in the most remote areas of France. She knows her public: she knows the names of those who would rather rip their hearts out than break a promise to her. They provide the apartments. The whole thing is like this: highly complex and hugely improbable. It is part of the charm. And every month, there are more people. Vernon is in the DJ booth, he spends the whole night spinning records. According to word of mouth, during these ceremonies, you dance as you have never danced before. They say he deserves the credit for that. Vernon looks around. A lot of women, not many straight people. More and more fat people. Quite a few hippies. Maybe there’s a revival. A rainbow of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex … a lot of hookers. The occasional hunky guy. Some older people, too. All of them wearing flip-flops, that’s what’s really irritating.
For permanent members like him who live there full-time, it’s about going off grid. Social security bank account digital identity rent tax insurance logbooks. Walking away from the old world. It is still vague. But Pamela and the Hyena are thinking big. And it is not as though Laurent or Olga, who joined up later, is likely to stop them. With a practicality that Vernon never suspected she had, Pamela drew up a list of places where they can set up camp for a few weeks. Between one thing and another, she has scouted enough locations for them to live as nomads for at least a decade.
Within the camp, there are potential conflicts, but none has yet burst into the open. That will come. Between those who never stop working and those who want to sleep, those who like to lead and those who can’t stand being told what to do, those who only think of getting wasted and those who claim that drugs destroy groups, those who want to talk seriously and those who can only talk shit, those who want to sleep with everyone and those looking for monogamy … There will be problems involving money, egos, manipulation, betrayal … There will be every conceivable fuck-up and every opportunity for disappointment. But right now, they are preparing for the third ceremony. They are not celebrating anything. They are doing it because they can. And because something happens on these nights. It is impossible to say what the people streaming here have in common. It is when they gather together that they become a supernova—they have come to dance.
* * *
“Stop deluding yourselves. This whole world is fucked. The world we knew. All this stuff you’re talking about. it’s already over. The retards frolicking in the meadows demanding the return of the Latin Mass, the stoning of prostitutes, and the reinstatement of military service … it’s all long gone. They’re clinging to a world that has disappeared. Stop pretending that things were better yesterday and they’ll be worse tomorrow. This is the intermission. Make the most of it. Everything starts again tomorrow.”
* * *
He has gotten into the habit of listening to such conversations over breakfast. The girl speaking has a dragon tattoo that covers the back of her skull. That must really hurt, Vernon thinks. He wonders how Céleste is getting on. The Hyena says the girls are “doing great.” She gives no further information about their fate. Lydia is wearing a large straw hat that hides half of her face when she leans down, and makes him want to see her eyes. She smiles as she approaches Vernon, rolling her hips as she walks, placing a filter into the cigarette paper in the palm of her left hand. “Not working on your playlist?” she asks, but does not listen to his answer. She is watching, open-mouthed, as two shirtless guys walk across the terrace. They have astonishingly broad shoulders, the curve of their backs is perfect. She tilts her head to one side. Émilie sighs: “Mansluts, the pair of them. Jesus, they’re hunks. It’s unbelievable. Where did they spring from?” Vernon shrugs.
Charles is settled in a deck chair under a parasol, a cooler full of beer on his left, shirt half open to reveal his paunch, a pair of green and orange New Balance sneakers on his feet. He always insists on giving them some money to be part of the events. Vernon finds it touching to think that the old guy has saved up and is dipping into his nest egg to help them organize raves in the middle of nowhere … When he doesn’t even dance. And he hates flip-flops at least as much as Vernon. When Sylvie says, “I don’t see the point of these parties,” Charles invariably replies: “There is no point. That’s the beauty of the thing.”
Daniel sets a huge bag of fresh almonds on the table, he is trying to convince Xavier to write a zombie movie. “You know Karen Greenlee? The necrophiliac? She was completely unrepentant … I’m not saying it’s blockbuster material, but I’m pretty sure there’s a niche.” He does not come often. He is terrified of spiders in the bedrooms, living in communes, and chemical toilets. The hours he has spent exercising mean he is built like a tank. Sylvie takes a seat at one end of the table, she is wearing a Thee Oh Sees cutoff T-shirt. When she comes, she spends a lot of her time in the kitchen baking cakes. She says there is no point to it, this thing they’re doing, but she spends half of her life with them.
Next to them, a short-haired brunette with an Italian accent is saying to Olga:
“I see what you’re saying. As long as you’re thinking ‘defense,’ you’re still ‘prey.’ If you’re prey, you have to escape. You have to learn to run, to hide. To avoid contact with humans. Look at horses. They should never have allowed themselves to be domesticated. They could have run away, that’s what they should have done.”
And Olga disagrees:
“You’re all very sweet, with your plant-based medicine and your communicating with animals, being nomads, foraging for food, a little trance, a little meditation … but just try to imagine Subcomandante Marcos brewing herbs in a cauldron and chanting Om … You’d never have known he’d ever existed, guys. He’d be out there somewhere, in the jungle, communing with mosquitoes. You need balaclavas, guns, and rivers of blood or you’re nowhere.”
“You’re reasoning using obsolete arguments.”
“The only way to defend yourself is to be better armed than your enemy. You need an arsenal of semiautomatic weapons. All the rest is bullshit. As long as you run courses called ‘self-defense,’ you might as well be teaching silk painting … when you decide to call them ‘I’ll rip your balls off with my teeth, dickwad,’ then maybe we can talk…”
Olga has changed. She drinks less. She flies off the handle less often. She learned to chop wood. In the Vosges. With a local lumberjack, a timid stutter
er who loved his work. She left with his chain saw—Vernon doesn’t even want to imagine what kind of deal she and the guy struck in the privacy of the barn for him to give her his chain saw. She dug out a bunch of outlandish dresses at the Salvation Army in Épinal—some woman of about her size had obviously just dropped off a collection of nightgowns. Chain saw in hand, in a long print dress decorated with cornflowers and lace frills on the sleeves … When she lumbers around with her power tools, she looks like a walking statue. She makes furniture. It is almost a vocation. She cuts, saws, nails, and dovetails. She never stops jabbering. She is obsessed with violence. Pamela is obsessed with pacifism. They never argue: they wind each other up, each confirming the other in her convictions. Olga says: no terror, no salvation. Any movement that refuses to spill blood is doomed in advance. Pamela replies that the defining characteristic of the world as we know it is that all civilizations are built on violence. Olga ups the ante: You see, you agree with me. Pamela carries on—as long as we adopt the language of the master, we will adopt the behavior of the master. It is never-ending. “By its very nature violence validates and reinforces the warrior system, it cannot overturn it.” “Bullshit, complete bullshit … hugging trees and dancing naked in the forest is never going to achieve anything … You have to show your teeth. Then you have to kill. On a massive scale. Good people. Only then will they let you sit down at the negotiating table and listen to what you have to say … Do you really think the guillotine was invented because someone was bored one Sunday? No. The guillotine was invented because it was the best way of getting respect.”
Sélim loves these clashes. His favorite game plan is when Patrice joins in, and the four of them thrash out the subject. Yesterday, he choreographed a discussion late into the night between six of them: Sylvie and Xavier were also involved. He had a wonderful evening. He needs it.
He hears from his daughter from time to time. He gets letters that are passed from one person to another and posted from any country other than the one where she is living. He carefully archives his replies to her, since he has no way to send them. They haven’t communicated as well as this in years, he says. He still has not had the police show up with a search warrant. The Hyena says that this is not necessarily good news. But Sélim is the kind of depressive who has a fanatical bedrock of optimism. He is convinced that things will sort themselves out.
The Hyena would also like to be able to send letters to the girl she is thinking about. But since she cannot go and fetch her, she says she prefers to wait. Vernon asks, “Are you planning to be out of circulation for a long time?” and she is in no hurry to go back. “These things take time.” This is all he can get out of her.
After the Vosges, Laurent decided that he, too, had the soul of a carpenter. In his case, it is mostly an opportunity to strut around stripped to the waist, the guy is really well built. He would spend whole days making things and showing off his abs … But the furniture he made was shit … his approach took no account of gravity or the nature of human bodies. It was a long time before he eventually gave up. He was waiting for people to adapt to his furniture. Even with the best will in the world, a lopsided stool eventually falls apart. He left them, one morning, just before the ceremony in Brittany. He had done a lot of work preparing the abandoned train station they had taken over. He had even made hammocks. He had picked up his backpack and headed off without a word. Charles says he is living in an anarchist commune.
Pamela brings another pot of coffee. Her hair is piled up into a chignon, fixed by a wooden barrette, and her shoulders are broad and sinewy. She always holds herself as though she spent thirty years doing classical ballet. She has been swimming a lot ever since they came to Corsica. Her body is metamorphosing, strength suits her. She sets her stubbed-out cigarette butt on the edge of the table and refills their cups. Vernon covers his with his hand to indicate that he has had enough. He gets to his feet and stretches. He needs to prepare.
* * *
When night falls, people head for the church. It is a half-hour walk. They have a few flashlights to light the way. After that, everything takes place in darkness. It all started in the Vosges when the generator conked out just after they arrived. They had had to spend a week in almost total darkness. That had been in winter, so the sun set early. The only light was the glow from the fire, the rest of the chalet was pitch-dark. They quickly realized that it suited them. Their eyes had had too many things demanding their attention. They didn’t speak in the same way, didn’t move in the same way. Knowing no one is looking at you and that you cannot look at them changed their behavior. Refined it. Ever since, evenings in the camp are always the same—they never turn on lights.
The church is deserted. They have spent days preparing, the truck coming and going, installing the sound system. This time it was Sélim who brought the equipment. He borrowed it from an association in Bobigny, without telling them he was taking it down to Corsica. Moonlight streams through the side chapels, providing just enough illumination to make out shadows. In the half-light, the microphone is passed around. Patrice has the plan for the evening. He makes a good team leader. Those who wish to speak make themselves known during the afternoon, he draws up a schedule, chooses the place where they must stand until he brings them the mike and the tiny LED light so that they can read. Afterward, they can move around, but until they have spoken, they are easily recognized because they do not move. “We will not be solid. We will unspool. We will not be pure. We will thread our way. We will be neither decent nor upstanding. We will not be heroes. We will not be conquerors. Of the warped wood of humanity, we will not try to fashion steel. We will have neither flag nor country.” He recognizes the voice of Pénélope, Loïc’s ex-girlfriend, who arrived with Patrice. They are still not sleeping together, but they are rarely apart. The sound is pure. Some people are lying down, others are wandering aimlessly. Voices follow each other in the darkness. A boy with a surprisingly deep voice reads a poem by Lorca: “No duerme nadie por el cielo. Nadie, nadie.” Vernon can make out the figure of Xavier. He is sitting between his wife and his daughter. They arrived on the last train. The mother is tense, the kid thrilled to be at the beach. The father almost fainted when he saw that she had come. Vernon is not worried. They will get used to things tonight. He has never yet seen anyone stay on the edges of the dance floor. “We will forget. We will forgive. We will be the weak and the gentle.” It begins to unfurl. He is no longer surprised when he feels his vessel about to take off. He still cannot control his flights, but he no longer tries to resist. On the contrary, he allows himself to be tamed by the waves of madness. And he knows that he can depend on them on nights like this. “We are the defeated—and we are thousands. We are searching for a way.” Vernon does not think it matters, what is said, it is happening on a different level. He can feel it in his chest.
Then, later, a long silence. He fires up Alex’s alpha waves. He takes his time. With the reverb in the church, everyone immediately gets to their feet. Still in the darkness, in the purity of sound. Bootsy Collins, “I’d Rather Be with You.” Shapes peel away and form fleeting groups. The Hyena is almost motionless when she dances, except for a slight sway in her hips. A lot of people are still lying down. His eyes meet Pamela’s. He makes contact with those who are absent. Mentally he feels his way along the shifting walls—the secret passages through time and the solidness of things. Whorls of moonlight open up between people. And as often in the darkness, he sees the lank silhouette of Alex, a giant among the scattered seedling stars, bending down and watching them, breathing gently on the ground, smiling. All around the living the dead and the invisible dance, shadows merge and eyes close. All around him, the movement has been triggered. It is beginning. He is making them all dance.
ALSO BY VIRGINIE DESPENTES
Baise-Moi
Pretty Things
Bye Bye Blondie
King Kong Theory
Apocalypse Baby
Vernon Subutex 1
A
NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is a writer and filmmaker. She worked in an independent record store in the early ’90s, was a sex worker, and published her first novel, Baise-Moi, when she was twenty-three. She adapted the novel for the screen in 2000, codirecting with the porn star Coralie Trinh Thi. Upon release, it became the first film to be banned in France in twenty-eight years. Despentes is the author of more than fifteen other works, including Apocalypse Baby, Bye Bye Blondie, Pretty Things, and the essay King Kong Theory. You can sign up for email updates here.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
FRANK WYNNE has translated the work of many authors, including Michel Houellebecq, Boualem Sansal, Frédéric Beigbeder, and the late Ivoirian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma. He won the International IMPAC Literary Award with Houellebecq for The Elementary Particles. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Characters who Appeared in Vernon Subutex 1
Begin Reading
Also by Virginie Despentes
A Note About the Author and Translator
Vernon Subutex 2 Page 31
