Don't Turn Out the Lights

by Bernard Minier

  In the pages, and weeks, that followed, Mila seemed to grow resigned to the situation, now that Sergey had died. Servaz figured that even though she didn’t say as much in her diary, she must have been counting the days until her first space flight. The way a prisoner counts the days until his release. She had also understood that Fontaine could no longer afford to beat her, because of their ever more frequent medical check-ups as D-day drew nearer. Instead, he increased his threats, barking like a rabid dog – but it went no further; they both knew he must not overstep the mark.

  31

  Grand Opera

  22 July

  Fourth day, still no period. Dear God, please don’t let it be that!

  Servaz stopped reading. With the journal open in front of him, he looked at the ceiling and again saw little Thomas sitting on his mother’s lap. The question sprang to mind: why had Mila kept the child?

  It’s my fault, I’m so exhausted, upset and on edge that I forgot to take my pill two days in a row. Dear Lord, please make it be no more than my hormones! If it’s anything else, I’ll have an abortion: no way am I going to keep a child by that dog …

  25 July

  I’m pregnant. In my pocket is the test I bought at a pharmacy in Moscow. I still can’t believe it. If the Russians find out, my place on board the ISS will be fucked. And the entire mission along with it. I don’t know what to do. I’m beginning to have the kind of symptoms that, even without the test, wouldn’t leave any doubt as to my condition. And I’ve never felt so tired.

  26 July

  Léo found the test. What an idiot! I should have thrown it out. I didn’t know he was going through my things. No doubt to find proof of my misdeeds. Bloody fucking maniac … He came in, with the test in his hand, and he said, ‘What the hell is this?’

  What do you think it is, fuckwit? A pH test for swimming pools … except that his question came with a blow that almost severed my head from my body, and his eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of his skull.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I announced.

  Another slap.

  ‘Who’s the father?’

  ‘You are, Léo.’

  ‘You’re lying!’

  He grabbed me by the hair and lifted me off my chair.

  ‘I swear, Léo! It’s your child! I – I’m sorry!’

  He held me by the hair.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you, you bloody idiot? Because of you, the mission is up shit creek. You really think they won’t notice? You did it on purpose, didn’t you? I’m going to kill that child, I’m going to kill it in your belly.’

  ‘I’m going up there, Léo. And so are you. You have no choice: if you tell anyone, our team will be taken off and replaced by our backup. I cannot possibly have an abortion before that, not with the schedule we’re on and the doctors constantly breathing down our necks.’

  ‘And what do you suggest?’

  ‘Act as if nothing has happened. Plenty of women can hide their pregnancy up to the last minute. And even if they find out, by then it will be too late.’

  ‘You are not keeping this child,’ he thundered. ‘As soon as we are back on earth, I’ll find someone to give you an abortion – no matter how late it is.’

  D-10, 15 August

  We’ve arrived in Baikonur. Hotel Cosmonaut. I managed to avoid the last sessions of tilt table and swivel chair: I said I’d had a migraine for the last few days. It’s too late to go back now, so they’ve let me off the final exercises.

  D-1, our last evening

  I’ve made my final preparations: my little lists so I don’t forget anything, my headphones, opera on mp3. Everyone around us – technicians, doctors, base personnel – is completely euphoric.

  I looked over at Léo: his face was expressionless; he’s been ignoring me. I can tell he’s worried. He’s afraid I’ll crack. But I feel stronger, more alive than ever with MY child inside me, who is going to go up there with me.

  D-DAY – 26 August

  This is it: the great day has arrived. I’m there. Three hours before departure, and it was time for the ritual of putting on the spacesuits. There were people all around us, filming, examining us. Then we got on the bus, there were the last words of advice, the technicians checking our spacesuits, and that knot of anxiety in my stomach. When we got off the bus, at the foot of the launch pad, a little crowd was waiting. More hugs. I felt strangely alone: no parents, no family to hug me – unlike Pavel and Léo, who had a lot of people there for them. Just the Russian authorities. It was strange how, at that moment, everything resurfaced: the taciturn child, the worried adolescent, the foster families, the schoolmates I never really got close to and who treated me as if I had some sort of shameful disease … And then the love affairs that never went anywhere, the impossible dreams – until Léo. After he kissed his family, he looked at me: a hard look full of hatred. But I didn’t care. He can’t do anything to me any more: I’m already elsewhere. I’m up here. I’ve won.

  And I felt it at last, the impression I’d always wanted, hoped for, desired – the impression of being where I belong at last.

  Servaz stopped, reached for his notebook. Jotted something down. A feeling, an impression, vague, inconsistent, but that would not go away. He highlighted it with three question marks.

  I was a bird. I was an angel.

  But first of all I was an insect.

  Confined, curled up inside its pupa. Knees bent on my seat, I tried to relax. 6-5-4-3-2-1.

  The rocket tore itself away and pushed back against its launchers in a blaze of fire, a roar of thunder. Shocks, vibrations, sparks, creaking. 118 seconds and it separated from the lateral boosters. Speed: 1,670 metres/second. 286 seconds later, a new, violent shock: the second section was jettisoned. Speed: 3,680 metres/second. It was still vibrating. More and more … 300 seconds: the third section was jettisoned. Speed: 3,809 metres/second.

  And suddenly, Soyuz was in orbit.

  Speed: 7,700 metres/second.

  The last kick in the butt expelled us in a cacophony of metallic shocks, then it was a God-like calm … Silence, weightlessness. A burst of stars after the burst of sparks. Objects floating unimpeded through the cabin. I turned my head and I saw IT: the place we came from. Earth. Majestic in its dazzling halo, cold and blue. And all around, the cosmos: black, so much black, black everywhere.

  28 August

  The docking with the ISS went well. According to the Russian tradition we shared bread and salt with the crew who were already there – one Russian and two Americans. The station is divided into two clearly distinct areas: the first consists of the pressurised American modules and the European Columbus module. The second, connected to the first by the Unity ‘knot’, is made up of the Russian modules. Pavel, Léo and I will be staying in the Russian section.

  4 September

  We’ve been on the station for a week now. I spend most of my time in Zvezda – in its work compartment, to be more exact. I’ve only been to the other part of the station once, though Léo and Pavel have already been there four times. I get the impression that they want to isolate me, keep me apart from the rest of the crew. I also get the impression that Pavel and Léo are plotting behind my back – that Léo has been secretly encouraging Pavel to behave more and more inappropriately towards me.

  12 September

  Like every morning, I had my face up against the porthole, fascinated, tears in my eyes, when suddenly I felt someone bumping awkwardly up against me in spite of the weightlessness. As I thought it was Léo, I told him to stop, but then it was Pavel’s voice echoing in my ear: ‘Léo’s gone to see the Americans. The two of us are all alone.’ His hands on my breasts through my T-shirt. ‘We could try something new: don’t you want to know what it feels like to make love in weightlessness? I do.’ I resisted but he kept trying. I slapped him hard. He gave me a surprised look and headed towards Zarya, simmering with rage.

  19 September

  Things have degenerated still further. Now s
everal times a day I have to put up with furtive groping, salacious jokes, advances … I lost my temper with Pavel and he shouted at me the way Léo himself would have done. I couldn’t believe my ears. In the end he spat in my face, unbelievably brutal: ‘You think I don’t see what you’re playing at? If ever you tell anyone else what’s going on here, you will have an accident.’

  23 September

  It’s all over. Finished. After what just happened, there’s no going back. Game over. This evening, Léo and Pavel were completely drunk. It was Pavel’s birthday. They got out several miniatures of vodka they’d hidden in various spots around the module. It isn’t the first time that cosmonauts have taken alcohol in their luggage. They drank it with straws. After a while, they made me drink. I refused, but because they insisted, I eventually had a bit of vodka to toast Pavel’s forty-third birthday.

  Then their jokes started to skid off the rails, and their expressions were more and more insistent. When I wanted to go to sleep, Léo said, ‘You’re right, she’s a whore, half of Star City has had her. You want to fuck her, Pavel?’ I shuddered. I wanted to leave, but Léo was holding me by the wrists. I told him to stop, that I would scream so loud they would hear me all the way to the other end of the station. So, before I could do anything, both of them pinned me down, with a hand over my mouth. I roared and wriggled, trying to get free, I was panicking, but Léo was holding me tight while we were floating freely in the atmosphere in Zvezda and Pavel was gagging my mouth with his big damp hand.

  I suppose that in a way what happened next should advance their fucking space science: haven’t these two totally drunk cosmonaut bastards just proven that rape is possible in weightlessness, provided there are at least two perpetrators?

  It’s over.

  My dream of space.

  It stopped there.

  What did I do? At the time, nothing: what could I have done, or said? At that point, nothing could have stopped them.

  I waited until they were sound asleep and then I made my way to Zarya, and went through it clinging to everything at hand. I went through the airlocks, the PMA-1 and Unity, I made it to the quarters where the Americans and Europeans were and where the other Russian, Arkady, had elected to install his sleeping bag: he doesn’t like either Pavel or Léo. They were all asleep. I woke them up. I could see the stupefaction in their eyes when they saw the state I was in; my swollen face, my torn T-shirt and pants, my bleeding lip. I asked them to call Mission Control urgently.

  It’s over. During the Control conference that followed that night, the Americans and Arkady asked for me to be repatriated urgently.

  The two Americans and Arkady were terrific when Léo and Pavel came to get me the next day. It almost degenerated, but Pavel and Léo quickly understood that they no longer had the upper hand with me; and finally it was decided that I would stay in the forward section, and Arkady and one of the Americans went to get my belongings from the rear section.

  Down on earth, they are really freaking out.

  Operations on board the station are based on a rigorous, delicate division of labour and everything is chaos here now. Besides, they must be scared to death that word will get out. But I feel safe at last, for the first time in a long time.

  32

  Boos

  7 December – Paris

  It was raining in Roissy. There was no one here to greet me. Obviously. What I was afraid of has happened. There were interrogations, then a committee of inquiry. It lasted for weeks. Finally, they said I’d made it all up, staged the whole thing. Paranoid psychosis: that was their diagnosis. According to them, Sergey’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident, and my accusations regarding what happened up there amounted to no more than ridiculous fabrication.

  The Russian police closed the case with no further investigation. Their Institute for Biomedical Problems put me through psychiatric tests. Those idiot psychiatrists looked at me as if they’d already made up their minds. The European Space Agency made it clear that there was no future for me in their space programme. Something broke inside me when I heard that. As for Léo, he still has his place, even though apparently the Russians are not particularly eager to see him again any time soon. I am devastated.

  Devastated, unemployed, without a future, and pregnant.

  Servaz closed the journal. So that was it. That was what had happened up there. Rape. In outer space. It far surpassed anything he could have imagined. Once again he wondered why Mila had kept the baby. He had an idea: when Léo had threatened to kill them, her and the baby, if she didn’t have an abortion, something must have rebelled inside her. The proof, in any event, that she was not paranoid, was that Fontaine had done it again: he had driven Célia Jablonka to commit suicide. No one had ever seen the connection between the two incidents because no criminal investigation had been carried out. And even if there had been an investigation, no investigator would have been able to link the two stories without the helping hand of fate.

  Or of someone who knew …

  Was it Mila who had sent him the key card and the photograph? She seemed genuinely surprised when he had told her about them. Moreover, she had been living as a recluse with her son ever since the affair. Even if she had heard of Célia’s suicide, it was highly unlikely she would have known about her liaison with Léonard Fontaine.

  Who, then? Someone, in any case, was guilty. And that was all that mattered for the time being. Now that he had read Mila’s diary, he was perfectly aware that it would be difficult or even impossible to bring Fontaine to justice: the Russian committee of inquiry had cleared him. And a guy like Fontaine was not born yesterday. He was not likely to be easily taken in.

  Servaz would have to be wilier. As wily as the devil. Because that was what his adversary was, to the highest degree. He put the journal back on the blanket and rested his head on the pillow. His thoughts were keeping him awake. He felt he was back, he felt he was alive. At last he had something to fight for. He could not wait until morning to start the fight. He looked through the window at the smiling moon, the unquiet night – and he knew he would not find sleep.

  ACT II

  Oh, you hurt me so much,

  so much, so very much!

  It’s nothing, nothing! I thought I was going to die,

  but it soon passes like

  clouds over the sea …

  Madame Butterfly

  33

  Queen of the Night

  She opened her eyes. It was dark.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Hush!’

  ‘Madeleine, is that you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you doing in my bed?’

  ‘Hush … you don’t mind if I sleep here tonight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank you, little sister. I love you, you know. Give me a kiss. You can go back to sleep, now.’

  ‘Why do you want to sleep here? Is it because of Papa?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Is it because of him that you’re sleeping here?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You don’t want him to find you, is that it?’

  ‘Chris—’

  ‘I saw him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The other night.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw him go in your room.’

  ‘Chris, who else did you tell?’

  ‘No one!’

  ‘Chris, listen carefully: you mustn’t tell Maman, do you hear me? Ever!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Stop asking questions! And promise me, please.’

  ‘I promise, Maddie.’

  ‘Papa was sleeping with me because I had a nightmare, that’s all.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You’re crying.’

  ‘No I’m not!’

  ‘So, if I have a nightmare, can I ask Papa to sleep in my bed, too?’

  ‘Chris, for heaven’s sake.
Never, do you hear me? He must never sleep in your bed. Promise me.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Promise!’

  ‘Okay, okay, I promise, Maddie.’

  ‘If you have a nightmare, you come and see me, all right?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Night night.’

  ‘Night, Maddie.’

  * * *

  She opened her eyes. For real, this time. She wasn’t thirteen years old, but thirty-two. Daylight was filtering through the curtains, and all the lamps in the hotel room were lit. The sound of traffic came through the windowpanes. She yawned. Her head was splitting and she had a terrible stomach ache. In fact, she was aching all over. She looked at the ceiling for a moment, then she looked down.

  34

  Drame Lyrique

  It … it can’t be … they couldn’t have … couldn’t have done that …

  What…?

  * * *

  Wait, Chris, wait. Don’t look. Don’t look at it. Otherwise it will scorch your eyes and you’ll never be able to forget.

  But she did. She looked. And her mind buzzed and crackled like a phone gone haywire. A direct connection to the switchboard of insanity. Because that was the only word to describe what she was seeing. Dementia. Aberration.

  One step closer to her own lunacy. Because that’s what they wanted, wasn’t it? It was obvious they had no lack of imagination when it came to attaining their ends; they had constructed a hell around her that only she could see, a subtle nightmare. As she emerged from her medicinal sleep, she remembered having a dreadful dream. But now, seeing the hard yellow stains on the sheets, she knew her nightmare was as real as could be. Her gaze ventured further and she felt as if her skull was splitting in two. She did not cry out, and she did not weep. She could not make a single sound. But inside, she was screaming. Iggy’s body … He was lying between her legs. His eyes closed, without his collar; he looked asleep, but the wound to his neck left no hope.

  Around Iggy, the sheets were covered with a mountain of tiny bottles of alcohol that had been opened and abandoned in the sheets, along with peanuts, empty beer cans, crisps … everything a minibar contained as well as the contents of a bathroom waste bin: cotton buds, paper tissues, clumps of hair … The wave of disgusting rubbish spilled over her own toes. Abruptly, she pulled her feet away.