Nicolas looks at her, he’s in the shadows at the bottom of the stage doing her sound mixing. He worries that something’s going wrong but nothing’s going wrong.
It’s obvious that she’s uneasy, awkward. The majority of the people in the audience don’t even try to listen to her, they talk, wait for the real band. Some faces, in the first row, are attentive, heads moving a little. That’s a start.
Even so, that voice of hers is so fucking rousing. It’s not so much that it’s well trained, but that she knows how to unleash it.
PAULINE AND NICOLAS go back home on foot. The sidewalks between Pigalle and Barbès show no signs of emptying, storefront lights, a mass of people. Some going to the prostitutes, others to have a drink, others to a concert, to the movies, to visit someone, to eat somewhere. All kinds of people doing all kinds of things, like a big machine with everyone in their own track.
Nicolas drank quite a bit right after the concert, a backlash, the need to blow off steam. People around him, assailing him backstage, clamor of compliments, some sincere. Pauline was waiting for him, shut away in the can again. He claimed, “I don’t know where she went,” and so many people wanted to see her, puking up flattering words. Some insisted more than others, they really wanted to introduce her to so-and-so, playing the helpful middleman. He couldn’t even leave, a crop of business cards and numbers scrawled on packs of smokes. Small success. Overwhelming.
He suggested to Pauline that they go back on foot, he needed the night air, still a bit cold, the boundary between the seasons. He talks to her on the way, mechanically.
She hasn’t said a word since she walked offstage. Not one rude remark.
They turn down Boulevard Barbès, the street empties. To the right, the Goutte d’Or neighborhood like a chasm.
Fire truck sirens sound in the distance, get closer, turn into a racket.
Nicolas comments, “It sounds like they’re headed somewhere nearby, maybe someone died. Last summer a guy got stabbed right below Claudine’s window. They blocked the street, like in a Hollywood movie, and outlined the body in chalk on the ground. It was weird, you know . . . I was watching through the window, not the TV. They tinkered with two or three things, and then they removed the tape and in the blink of an eye people were on the street again. It was like life closing up over the dead guy.”
There’s a crowd at the end of rue Poulet.
“It’s on this street!”
He walks faster, excited, but also concerned. “I hope it’s not a dead body . . .”
Pauline listens to him blathering on, feels like he’s trying too hard to act like a kid from the streets for it to sound believable.
They arrive at their destination, orange-and-white plastic tape stretched between them and the door.
Nicolas lifts his head, looks for Claudine at her window.
“Oh, she’s not there. I’m surprised, with how nosy she is, this would be a jackpot for her . . .”
He signals to a guy in uniform, “Excuse me, we live here, can we go in?”
“Do you have ID?”
“No. We didn’t realize we’d need ID to get back into our apartment. But there’s someone waiting for us, who can—”
Pauline had pushed through the crowd, stopped at the tape. She turns toward Nicolas. “She won’t be able to do anything at all.”
He understands immediately, feels it in his stomach. One of the cops looks at Pauline, speculates delicately, “You’re family? My condolences.”
Stupidly, Nicolas reflects to himself that he really is the only one who doesn’t find their resemblance striking. She hesitates, should respond with the truth but, coming from a concert where she was supposed to be her sister, doesn’t know what to do. Her confusion passes for grief. The cop lifts the tape, signals for her to come through, announces, “She jumped. Some of the neighbors say they saw it happen.”
A man asks her name, she says, “I’m Claudine Leusmaurt.”
Nicolas flinches, a little belatedly, would like to intervene but she’s already ahead of him.
“I’m the one who lives here. My sister arrived yesterday, we almost never see each other. It’s a stupid thing to say but . . . I’m not all that surprised.”
The man asking the questions scribbles some things in a notebook. He’s doing what he’s seen done in a lot of movies, adopting the gestures and mannerisms that seem appropriate for the occasion. Except it’s obvious that he’s bored shitless, thinking only of the forms he has to fill out. He snorts, asks, “She was alone up there?”
“Yes, I just got back from playing a show. She didn’t like crowds, she didn’t want to come.”
She doesn’t feel any emotion, except for something like hostility—she always has to be a pain in the ass—mixed with a joyous remorse. It’s the third time she’s wished for someone to die and it ended up happening: first her mother, then her father, finally Claudine. An empty space all around her, those who had to pay have settled their debts.
It’s odd to see the living room completely filled with strangers busy with various things. Just like that, the room is transformed into a stage set, a normal place on pause, people fretting all around.
A man who must be a detective tries to get Nicolas to talk, but he’s leaning against the window, doesn’t say a word. Pauline is sitting in a chair, she intercedes, “He’s really emotional, he must be in shock.”
She gets up and takes him by the arm. “Go home.”
She takes his hand, squeezes it to the point of crushing it, and fixes her eyes on him. For the first time since her arrival, she plunges directly into him, he smells like metal. Her grip and her gaze, all authority. She asks, “Call me tomorrow?”
She waits for him to walk away.
Then, to the detective, “He didn’t know her at all, she doesn’t live in Paris. Get out of his hair and let him go.”
“You can say she didn’t live in Paris now.”
“You’re just chock-full of tact, aren’t you, asshole.”
He’s set her off, a familiar feeling, she screams, “Son of a bitch, motherfucker, my sister just jumped out the window and you’re saying shit like that? How fucked in the head do you have to be to act like such a dick?”
Finished screaming, a slight wavering. Those present seem tired, and must not like their colleague because they mostly take her side, understand where she’s coming from.
They let Nicolas go.
She thinks over it all, the things she has to pay attention to in order not to contradict herself, not to betray herself. Now that she’s become Claudine, she mustn’t make a single mistake.
HE WENT BACK home to his 195 square feet. He sat down in the armchair that he reclines to sleep in. Put on his headphones and a CD. Still shocked.
He feels in him somewhere the stupefying banality of trauma. That efficiency cutting a life in two. A few seconds suffice to sum it up in one phrase: everything has collapsed.
He hasn’t cried since he was little, he would really like to tonight. He doesn’t know what it’ll do for him, but like everything he’s deprived of he lets himself form a splendid idea of it. He remains immobile, lets the ideas pass through him. They come and go, those flaying emotions, as they like. He doesn’t have the energy to seek them out, nor to classify them, nor to shield himself from them.
He feels incredibly guilty. For not having guessed. The one time she let her true self be seen, he put off dealing with it for another day.
He feels it already, he knows he’ll be angry with himself for a long time for having enjoyed this night so much. And when they walked back, he remembers clearly, somewhere in his mind he thought about how he should act, how to tell Claudine about the concert, thought of leaving out certain things to keep from hurting her.
But above all he regrets not having taken Claudine for a walk wherever, somewhere calm where she could escape her anxiety, switch it off. Reproaches himself for not being able to say, “Come on, we’re getting on a train, we’re getting out of her
e, I think you need a break.”
There’s a thought running through his head, repugnant and thoroughly misplaced, but a thought that comes back regularly, a nauseating regret: Why didn’t she leave me a note? And: Why didn’t she wait for me, give me a chance to help? Did he not matter at all, not have any impact on her life, not make any notable difference to her despair?
He had suspected something for weeks, behind the vestiges of agitation, something barely visible. He had noticed very clearly the pain intensifying inside her. He didn’t have the courage to get involved. He thought it would ease up on its own, as often happens. The demon falls back into its slumber. He imagines a sort of bird, red and fiery, with a gold beak, ripping apart her chest, demanding that she surrender herself entirely to it that night.
Was it necessary, inscribed somewhere precisely what had to happen? Or was it nothing at all, all that was needed was a noise opposite, a phone call, a guy she likes on the TV, and the moment would have passed, would have been just like the others.
Did she have time to regret, the second after she had done it, to want to hang on, deny the evidence with all her strength and believe again in the possibility of survival? Did her life flash all at once before her, at the same time revealing and outlining who she was?
SHE SLEPT THE whole day, the noises outside mixing into her sleep. Woken up by an argument, she got up, groggy, glanced at the street. A man trying to hit a woman holding a kid in her arms, she insulted him while dodging his blows, ran away, the kid crying and extending his arms toward his father. Went back to sleep. The smell of the sheets made her vaguely nauseous. The sun struck her eyelids. The telephone in the next room rang and rang, tentacles of voices coming through the answering machine.
Then the day no longer filtered through the double curtains, she got up to eat something.
Muted and pure hostility, Claudine had always managed to piss off the world. Whatever scheme possible to attract attention. What happened that night was that she was so repulsed at not being the one under the spotlight that she preferred to go out the window. Sick with jealousy and always wanting to get herself noticed.
The whole night was tiring, a lot of strangers to deceive. In a trance, pretending she was Claudine, a sort of blind reflex. And she repeated to herself, “That cunt thought she was trapping me, but she’s actually done me a huge favor.”
Because that suited her just fine, to pass for her sister long enough to sign a record deal. That talk of an advance had been on her mind since she overheard it. She’ll get an enormous advance and barricade herself in with the spoils. It came together little by little, a terrible confidence. Her sister knew people, Pauline would use her contacts and settle the deal in a month. Before Sébastien gets out, she’ll have a fortune and they’ll go off together far away from here.
But now she’s alone like an asshole in this apartment. Alone for the very first time, with a heavy feeling, like she’d been drunk and done something really stupid.
Things left here, everywhere: open books next to the bed, pens, lipsticks, dirty glasses with alcohol hardened to the bottom, sweaters, a paper towel tube, coffee tin, empty packs of cigarettes . . .
In a corner of the living room, there’s an entire wall of Marilyn Monroe. In every pose, at every age, from every angle, the Marilyns smile, lean toward the lens, want something, we don’t know what, give the essential thing, a version of herself that doesn’t exist. Just the day before, discovering this monstrous collection of clichés of the blond flaunting herself, Pauline felt mournfully indignant toward the childishness of her skank sister, who couldn’t understand that what she was doing would only lead to disappointment.
Today, alone in the unfamiliar apartment, she thinks about tearing down all the photos, carving out some order in the pathetic chaos. But her sister is no longer there and it doesn’t make any sense. Like many other ideas that come to her spontaneously, abruptly stripped of their logic.
Equilibrium needs to be restored. It was constructed opposite her sister, a force exerted on another. She has a clear image in her mind: two little women in a bubble, each pushing with her forehead against the other’s. If one of the two little women is removed, the other immediately topples over, falls into the other’s domain. A blank space, a void is created in her; in one night everything has shifted.
Noise outside, she stands at the window. The street lures her every ten minutes, the omnipresence of the outside. A kid runs, zigzagging through people, two cops run after him. Gendarmes and thieves. Passersby freeze, watching the action. Then the trio returns, going the opposite direction, handcuffs on wrists, flanked.
The day they arrested Sébastien, did they parade him around like that, in the middle of everyone, captured?
It’s not just her at the window; all along the road, people lean out to observe and no one intervenes, no matter what.
To keep herself occupied, she puts on music and dances. She’s always done that, danced just for herself. Sweat appears slowly, first on her shoulder, then her back, finally her thighs are moist; breath, heels, hips, and arms embody the music, all that she understands of it, she begins to sing at the same time, disorderly chorus, routine trance.
The telephone rings again, all the voices conveying the same badly feigned nonchalance. Her own cuts off.
“It’s Nicolas. Pick up?”
She hurries to the telephone, picks up. “Hello?” with a strong echo because the answering machine is still on, she looks for the stop button, feedback. Pauline yells for him to call her back, hangs up hoping he heard her. The telephone rings again, it’s him. He says, “So?”
“I was with them until six in the morning. Everything went well.”
“What went well?”
“Becoming Claudine.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Reflex.”
He says, plainly exasperated, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Can you come over?”
“What for?”
“We need to talk.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I know you shouldn’t be doing it.”
“Ring quickly four times so I know it’s you?”
He agrees. As she suspected he would. As he will agree to all the rest. He’s that kind of guy, always incapable of doing the right thing, attracted to bad choices and fascinated by chaos. She understands perfectly what he’s like, what he can be used for.
She hangs up, looks at the things lying near the telephone: flyer for a special offer on delivery pizza, tube of aspirin, makeup artist’s business card, journalist’s business card, electric bill, an old Pariscope thoroughly underlined with blue and red—the things Claudine wanted to see—her phone book, a number scrawled on an empty pack of cigarettes, and a planner plastered with Post-its.
All these things, a mess from another life. Pauline feels an incredible contempt rising up in her; jumping out the window really is a fitting end for a life lived in discord. Weak bitch.
A videotape without a label, a validated train ticket for Bordeaux, an art-house cinema’s program, Pauline smiles. I really can’t imagine you going to see Swedish films, you must have had someone important to impress. A little book that cost ten bucks, keys to who knows where, a nearly empty checkbook.
She pushes the video into the VCR, hits Play. Then she takes the pack of cigarettes, dials the number, and asks for Jacques. “Hi, hello, it’s Claudine, I hope I’m not bothering you?”
On the screen a music video is playing, really young guys in suits, the famous Jacques is quite moved. “I didn’t think you would call me back. No, of course you’re not bothering me.”
Claudine appears on the screen, quick close-ups of her ass, she’s not really dancing so much as grinding like a half-wit, something that’s supposed to be sensual but there’s nothing convincing about it. She looks more like a crazy person. Terribly high heels, gold, with a strap around each ankle.
“Are you all right, my dear?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah, I’m great, just a little drained.”
“Did you celebrate after your concert? You blew everyone away, I keep hearing people talk about it.”
He has the voice of a young guy playing at being a man. Like a protector, a cuddler. Pauline asks, “And you, your work, everything going well?” hoping that he’ll talk about himself. She has to start somewhere. On the screen, Claudine has reappeared, same outfit, but she’s on all fours, she moves her arms, probably trying to communicate I’m a cat. Pauline wonders if at some point she’ll eat pâté out of a bowl.
The famous Jacques lists the many things he has to do, as well as TV reports for cable channels she’s never heard of and a cinema dossier for a magazine that just came out.
She listens to him a bit distantly, makes little agreeable sounds, trying to get it through her skull that he’s talking to a girl that he watches on all fours, and filmed from behind doing things like pretending to be a cat, whenever he wants.
He stops listing all the things he’s working on. Pauline has a hard time understanding how anyone does so many things at the same time, and why a journalist as in demand as he must be—very, very important—is talking to Claudine like this. He asks, “And what about you, Jérôme told me there were a lot of important people at the concert. It seems they were all looking for you but you had disappeared.”
“I was tired.”
“Come on, you can’t fool me. What kind of naughty business did you get up to?”
She doesn’t respond. He doesn’t take offense, he’s all excited. “Just hearing your voice I’m hard. If you were here I’d shove it all the way up your pretty little ass.”
“I’m not alone right now. I’ll call you back.”
Claudine is on the screen again. End of the song, she throws a wink at the camera that’s supposed to be mischievous. In reality, she looks like a fat cow that would rather be grazing.
Pauline sighs. Out loud, “Cunt through and through . . . and this you don’t show me before asking me to pretend to be you. All those pigs that night thought they had seen my ass, and you didn’t think to tell me.”
Pretty Things Page 4
