Betty Blue

by Philippe Djian

  “Oh gosh, did I do that?”

  “No,” I said. “I threw my drink in my own face just to see what would happen.”

  The girl was nice. She sat me down in a corner and ran off to get some napkins. This latest cruel twist of fate laid me low once more. I waited for her to come back, my head hanging. There are no limits, however, to endurable pain-I no longer felt anything. Nobody paid any attention to me.

  She showed up with a roll of paper towels and I let her do her thing. When she stood in front of me to dry my hair, my entire field of vision became her pants. Without closing my eyes it was difficult to look anywhere else but between her legs-the bulges, the creases; her pants were at most one millimeter thick. I thought of sun-ripened fruit-a sliced orange, easily separated with one finger. It was quite a show, but I managed to contain myself. One girl was plenty for me. Be content to watch them dance, I told myself. Don’t stop in front of store windows where there’s a line waiting to get in.

  I left the girl and went up to the apartment. I told myself that with a little luck I’d find myself a quiet place where I could finally have a drink in peace. Alcohol is not the answer any more than anything else, but it does let you catch your breath-avoid blowing your fuses. It’s life that makes you crazy, not booze. There were so many people upstairs that I almost ran back down, but what good would that have done? There was a large group in front of the television, arguing about whether to tune in the tennis finals or the landing of the first solo transatlantic flight. Just as it was being put to a vote, I spied a bottle. Without thinking, I went and picked it up. The result of the poll was five to live, with some abstentions. In the relative silence I poured myself a drink. Then this guy with an exaggerated smile got up and came over to me. He had one lock of hair over his eye and nothing on the sides. I held my glass behind my back. He grabbed me around the neck as if we’d known each other for a long time. I don’t like people touching me. I stiffened.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “As you can see, we have a little problem here, and I think everyone agrees that you’re the one to set things straight.”

  I put my head down to slide out from under his elbow. He pushed his hair back.

  “Okay, man,” he said. “Go ahead… we’re all ears…”

  They awaited my words with bated breath, as if what I had to say could save mankind. I didn’t have the heart to make them wait too long.

  “Personally, I came up here to watch the Jimmy Cagney movie,” I said.

  I disappeared with my drink before I could see their reaction. One mustn’t tarry when rejected from all sides at once-one must look straight ahead and continue one’s journey alone. I found myself in the kitchen. There was another big group sitting around the table, deep in conversation. Betty was among them. She saw me and reached out her arm.

  “There he is!” she said. “Now that’s what I call a writer-one of only a handful alive today…”

  I was swift as lightning, sly as a fox, slippery as an eel or a bar of olive-oil soap.

  “Don’t move,” I said. “I’ll be right back…”

  By the time they had stood to shower me with accolades, I was already back in the yard. I did not bask in the spotlight. I kept away from the windows. I had spilled most of my drink along the way. I had only enough left to wet my whistle. My writer’s ass was safe. This wasn’t saying much. I thought it was time to throw in the towel. The night was no longer young. I felt like I was stuck in some train station with all the ticket windows closed.

  While no one was looking, I backed up to the bow of the ship, straddled the rail, and slid silently into the bottom of a lifeboat. I snipped the rope with one hand and, before the news had spread through the house, melted away into the night.

  Back at the apartment, I was greeted with a delicious silence. I sat down in the kitchen and stayed there in the dark. There was a bluish glow coming through the window. I kicked open the refrigerator door, and a square of light spilled onto my lap. I laughed for a second, then got myself a beer. If I don’t rhapsodize on the beauty of a beer can to him who wonders what anything’s worth in the end, then who will? I refused to go to bed until I’d come up with two or three solid answers to the question. I closed the fridge a sneeze.

  22

  The little cable car whined as if it were at the limits of its strength, its cabin swinging to and fro in the breeze, two yards off the ground. The only other people in the car were an old couple, so there was lots of room. Still, Betty squeezed herself against me.

  “Oh God, oh God… I’m scared…” she said.

  I was not exactly at ease myself, but I told her, You must be kidding-this fucking cable car isn’t about to snap TODAY! Millions of people have ridden in it safely. Maybe it’ll crash in ten years, maybe five even-a week from now, perhaps-but NOT NOW, NOT JUST LIKE THAT!! In the end, reason won out. I gave Betty a wink.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s a lot safer than riding in a car…”

  The old man nodded his head and smiled.

  “It’s true,” he said. “There hasn’t been an accident here since the end of the Second World War.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Betty. “We’re overdue…”

  “DON’T SAY THAT!!” I roared. “Why don’t you just look at the scenery like everybody else?”

  Whi-i-i-ine…

  I got out my vitamin C and gave her one. She grimaced. On the bottle it said eight tablets a day. I rounded that out to twelve, which meant one every hour. They weren’t bad, either… orange flavored. I insisted.

  “I can’t take it anymore!” she complained. “I’ve had that taste in my mouth for two days now…”

  I didn’t give in. I shoved a yellow tablet into her mouth. I had calculated that at bedtime she would swallow the last tablet in the bottle. According to the label, it was just what the doctor ordered. Add to that a few days in the mountains and a balanced diet, and what more could you ask for to put a little color back in her face. I had given my word to Lisa on the day they left. We were saying good-bye. She begged me to see that Betty didn’t get sick. She said she was worried about her.

  Whine… whi-i-i-i-i-ine… If you ask me, they purposely didn’t grease the thing. Taking it up, and taking it down, day after day, year after year, over and over-those people probably had cable cars coming out their ears. The maintenance mechanics probably loosened the bolts once in a while to keep from getting bored-a quarter-turn once a month, a whole turn on days when life seemed too hard. I’m all for facing one’s death, but let’s not go overboard.

  “They should relieve those guys every two weeks,” I said. “And keep one in the cabin at all times.”

  “Who are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Those guys who hold life and death in their hands.”

  “Hey, look at all the little sheep down there!”

  “Shit, where?”

  “Don’t you see those little white dots?”

  “OH JESUS!”

  ***

  There was a guy waiting to open the door for us when we arrived. He had a cap on his head, and a newspaper folded in his pocket. Despite his gentle air, he had the face of an ax-murderer. A few people were waiting to go back down. Not young people with the rage to live, but oldsters, with hats on their heads and big cars waiting for them down below. It gave the place a feeling of wilting flowers. Who cared, though-we weren’t there to have fun.

  I took a look at the schedule. The coffin would be back up in an hour. Perfect-just enough time to get some fresh air, before dying of boredom. I turned around, taking advantage of the scenic panorama. It really was beautiful. There were no words for it. I whistled through my teeth. I don’t remember anymore what the place’s claim to fame was, but one thing was sure-it didn’t draw crowds. Except for the sadist who greeted the cable car, there was only the old couple and us.

  I set my sack down on a sort of concrete table with compass points on it and pulled up the zipper of my coat. I called Betty over to dri
nk her tomato juice.

  “And you…?” she said.

  “Listen, Betty, don’t be ridiculous…”

  She made like she was going to put her glass down, so I poured myself one, too. It was torture for me. I hate it-I always feel like I’m drinking a glass of blood, but Betty would drink hers only if I drank mine. Though it was a cheap shot, I paid the blackmail-it was just one of those little deaths that we live through every day.

  My efforts seemed to be reaping results, though-her face was getting some color back into it, her cheeks were less sunken. For the last three days, the weather had been fabulous. We’d crisscrossed the whole area on foot, breathing the fresh air and sleeping twelve hours a night. We were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was sure that if Lisa had been there to see her just then, lovely as the day is long, sipping her tomato juice in the sun, she would have called it a miracle. I myself had to be content with that. I still had a disquieting feeling when I looked at her closely. I felt like I had lost something important that I could never get back, but I didn’t know what. I wondered if I was just imagining things.

  “Oh wow! Come here quick-take a look at this…!”

  She was looking into a viewer-one of those big jobs on a pedestal that magnifies, the kind you have to keep shoving coins into every two seconds. It was aimed at a neighboring mountain top. I went over to see.

  “Incredible!” she said. “I see eagles! Geez, there are two of them, perched on a nest…!”

  “Right, it’s a daddy and a mommy.”

  “Shit, it’s beautiful…”

  “Really?”

  She stepped back to let me take a look, but just as I bent over to see, the thing stopped working-all I saw was black. We rummaged through our pockets but we didn’t have any change left. I took out my little nail tile. I tinkered with the slot. But no dice. It was hot. I started to get irked. To be so close to Heaven, and still have to put up with mechanical bullshit-I couldn’t believe it.

  The little old lady tapped me gently on the shoulder. Her face sagged, but her eyes were bright-you could see that she’d preserved the essential. She put her hand out to me. There were three coins in it.

  “This is all I have,” she said. “Take it…”

  “I only need one,” I said. “You keep the rest.”

  Her laughter was a tiny stream of water, flowing through foamy lace.

  “No, I can’t use them,” she said. “My vision isn’t as good as yours.”

  I hesitated for a moment, then took the coins. I looked at the eagles. I told her a little bit about what I saw, then turned the thing back over to Betty. I thought she could describe it better than I could. Though there wasn’t any snow, mountains for me have always been synonymous with avalanches. I had brought a little flask of rum with me. I went over to the sack and took a few swigs. The old man was there, sitting on the table, smiling in the sun, scraping the mud off his shoes, the little white hairs trembling on his neck. I offered him the bottle, but he refused. He motioned to his wife with his chin.

  “I promised her when we met that if we lived together more than ten years I’d never touch another drink.”

  “And I bet she’s never forgotten that,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “You know, you might think it’s silly, but I’ve lived with that woman for fifty years now, and I’d do it all over again tomorrow.”

  “That’s not silly. I’m kind of old-fashioned myself. I’d like to be able to do the same someday.”

  “Yep, it’s tough to go it alone…”

  There was enough in my bag to feed a whole family, all delicacies-almond paste, marshmallows, dried apricots, health crackers, those little crunchy things made out of roasted sesame seeds, and a bunch of organic bananas. I put it all out on the table and invited the old couple to eat with us. It was beautiful out. The silence was lovely. I watched the old man busily chewing a cracker. It made me feel optimistic. Maybe I’ll be like that fifty years from now, I told myself… well, let’s say thirty-five to be on the safe side-it seemed less far away than I thought.

  We talked easily, waiting for the cable car to come. It arrived, whining. I bent forward a bit and looked down the dizzying descent of the cable. I shouldn’t have looked. I pushed a finger against my throat, pressing on the point of my anxiety. Two women followed a colony of children out of the cable car. One of them looked scared to death, her pupils dilated. As she walked past me, our eyes met.

  “If that miracle of modern technology hasn’t come back an hour from now, you’ll know that it was your lucky day and not mine.”

  Whereas the trip up had proved to be quite frightening, the trip down was fear itself. The brakes were likely to snap any second-you could distinctly hear them grinding. I was sure they were going to burn up. With all that rubbing there was no doubt in my mind; the car was too heavy. I considered throwing all unnecessary objects-the seats and all accessories, for example-overboard. According to my calculations, the car must have weighed one ton. Once the brakes failed, we would eventually reach a cruising speed of 750 miles per hour. Just behind the finish line, there was a huge buffer made of fortified concrete. Result: impossible to identify the bodies.

  I started eyeing the emergency brake, as if it were the forbidden fruit. Betty pinched my arm, laughing:

  “Hey, you okay? Take it easy!”

  “It’s not a sin to be prepared,” I explained.

  One night at the hotel, I woke up suddenly. There was no explainable reason for this-we’d spent the day taking a ten-mile hike, stopping only to drink our tomato juice, and I was beat. It was three o’clock in the morning. The bed was empty beside me. I saw light coming from under the bathroom door. Now it happens that even girls get up during the night to pee-it was something that I’d been able to verify on several occasions-but three o’clock in the morning seemed a bit unusual. Anyway, so what, I yawned. I stayed there stretched out in the dark, waiting for her to come back, or for sleep to overtake me again. But nothing happened. I couldn’t hear anything. After a while I rubbed my eyes and got up.

  I pushed open the bathroom door. She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, her hands clasped behind her neck, elbows in the air, staring at the ceiling. There was nothing to see on the ceiling-nothing, just white. She didn’t look at me-she just rocked lightly back and forth. I didn’t like it.

  “You know, sweetheart, if we’re going to make it to the much talked-about glacier tomorrow, we’d better get some sleep…”

  She looked right through me. I could see right away that all my work was out the window. She was horrifyingly pale-her lips were gray. I felt the bamboo slivers go under my fingernails as she flung her arms around my neck.

  “Oh my God, tell me it’s not true!!” she said. “I HEAR VOICESI!”

  I held her head against my shoulder, pricked up my ears. I thought I heard something. I breathed easier.

  “I know what it is,” I said. “It’s the radio! The news. There’s always some nut in every hotel who has to know what’s going on in the world at three o’clock in the morning…”

  She burst into tears. I felt her stiffen in my arms-nothing was more fatal to me than this, nothing more killing.

  “No, God, no… I hear them inside my head. THEY’RE INSIDE MY HEAD!!”

  Everything suddenly turned cold-abnormally cold. I cleared my throat, like a jerk.

  “Come on, calm down now…” I whispered. “Come tell me all about it…”

  I picked her up and carried her to the bed. I switched a lamp on. She turned the other way, poised like a hair trigger, her fist shoved in her mouth. I ran and got a washcloth-I was incredibly efficient-and folded it over on her forehead. I kneeled down beside her. I kissed her. I held her fist to my lips.

  “And now do you still hear them?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Don’t be afraid, it’ll be all right,” I said.

  But what did I know? Dumb-ass that I was, what was I supposed to
tell her? What could I promise her? Did I hear them in my head, those goddamn voices? I bit my lips fiercely. Next thing you know, I’d be singing her a lullaby, or offering her a cup of poppy-flower tea. So I stayed close, tense and silent, about as useful as a refrigerator at the North Pole. Long after she’d gone to sleep and I’d turned off the light, I was still there, eyes wide open in the dark, waiting for a tribe of banshees to come screaming out of the night. I’m sure I wouldn’t have known what to do.

  We came home two days later and I immediately made an appointment for myself with the doctor. I felt tired, and my tongue was covered with bumps. He made me sit down between his legs. He was wearing a karate outfit, with a small light bulb strapped to his forehead. I opened my mouth, death ringing in my soul. It took three seconds.

  “Vitamin overdose,” he said.

  I coughed delicately into my fist while he filled out some forms.

  “Uh, doctor, I wanted to tell you… there’s something else bothering me…”

  “Huh?”

  “Sometimes I hear voices…”

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  He leaned over his desk and handed me the prescription. His eyes became two tiny black slits, and his mouth twisted into a kind of smile.

  “Listen to me, young man,” he snickered. “Hearing voices, or punching a clock for forty years of your life, or marching behind a flag, or reading the stock market returns, or tanning yourself under a sunlamp… what’s the difference, really? Believe me-don’t worry about it. We all have our little quirks.”

  -

  After a few days my bumps went away. Time seemed to have gone haywire. It wasn’t yet summer, but the days were already warm, white sunlight sprinkling the streets from dawn till dusk. Delivering pianos in such weather was like pulling teeth, but things had gotten back to normal. The pianos were starting to get to me, though-it sometimes felt like I was selling coffins.