Betty Blue

by Philippe Djian

  She was carrying a tray, with a glass of water and pills of every conceivable color on it. She wasn’t the one I knew. She was fat, with yellow hair. She looked at me, then glanced severely at her watch.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “But I don’t believe it’s visiting hours yet…!”

  Her attention drifted to Betty. Her old sagging jaw dropped open:

  “Mother Mary, who untied her?”

  She frowned at me and started for the door, but I got there first, blocking her way with my arm. She let out a cry-a petty little whine. I scooped up the pills dancing on the tray and shoved them under her nose.

  “What is all this shit?” I asked.

  I didn’t recognize my own voice-it was an octave lower, and very hoarse. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing her by the throat.

  “I’m not the doctor!” she wailed. “Let me go!”

  I burned my eyes into hers with all my might. She bit her lip. “No… you’re going to stay with her. I’ll go,” I growled.

  Before I walked out, I turned and glanced at Betty. She had fallen over on her side.

  I shot across the hall like a rocket and went into his office without knocking. He had his back to me, he was looking at an X ray in the daylight. When he heard the door slam, he spun around in his chair. He raised his eyebrows. I let out a laugh. I walked up to his desk and threw down the handful of drugs.

  “What is all this?” I asked. “What are you giving her?”

  I couldn’t tell if I was really trembling from head to foot or just imagining it. The doctor tried to be slick. He grabbed a huge pair of scissors that had been lying on his desk and played with them.

  “Ah, young man,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you. Sit down.”

  I was strangled by a sort of crazy rage. For me, the guy represented the source of all unhappiness, of all the world’s suffering. I’d unmasked the bastard, cornered him in his hole. He was out to ruin the zest for life. He wasn’t a doctor, he was a hideous mixture of every asshole on earth. Meeting somebody like that made you cry and laugh at the same time. Still, I controlled myself-I wanted to hear what he had to tell me; and anyway, there was no way out. I sat down. I had trouble bending my legs. Looking at the color of my hands, I knew that I must have been white as death. I must not have been too frightening to look at, though. He tried to intimidate me.

  “Let’s make one thing clear,” he said. “You are neither her husband nor a member of her family. I therefore have no obligation to explain anything to you. I’m going to anyway, but because I choose to-not because I have to. Is this understood?”

  You’re a millimeter from the goal line-don’t flinch, I told myself. Take this one last whipping. I nodded my head.

  “Fine,” he said.

  He opened one of his desk drawers and dropped the scissors into it, smiling. I swear, the clown thought he was completely invulnerable-either that, or God was on my side. He folded his hands in front of him and nodded his head for a good ten seconds before getting on with it.

  “I won’t hide from you that her case is very worrisome,” he started. “Last night we had to strap her down-a horrible attack, really.”

  I imagined a gang of them jumping on her, pinning her to the bed while they buckled the straps. It was a grade-Z horror film, and I was the only one in the audience. I lowered my head a little. I shoved my hands under my thighs. He started talking again, but someone had turned off the sound. I noted in the silence that everything was going downhill.

  “… and it would be going out on a limb to say that one day she will completely regain her senses. No, we mustn’t hold out too much hope.”

  This sentence, however, I heard loud and clear. It had a particular color to it-bronze, I’d say. It writhed like a rattlesnake. It squirmed right under my skin.

  “We’ll look after her, though,” he went on. “You know, there have been some remarkable advances in chemistry. We still get fairly good results with electroshock treatment. And don’t listen to what they tell you about it-it’s perfectly safe.”

  I bent forward to lean all my weight on my hands. I fixed my eyes between my feet, on a spot on the floor.

  “I’m going to go get her,” I said. “I’m going to go get her and take her away with me.”

  I heard him laugh.

  “Look, young man, don’t be ridiculous. Maybe you haven’t completely understood. I’m telling you that the girl is insane, my friend. Strait-jacket insane.”

  At this I coiled like a spring and hopped up onto his desk with both feet. Before he could make a move, I kicked him in the face. That’s when I noticed he wore dentures-they flew out of his mouth like flying fish. Thank you, God, I thought. He fell over backward in his chair, spitting up a small geyser of blood. The sound of breaking glass was his feet going through the windows of his bookcase. He started screaming. I jumped on top of him, pulling like a madman on his tie. I lifted him up. I got him in a figure-four grapevine hold, or something in the same family-rolling him over backward with his one hundred sixty pounds on my legs, then letting him loose just at the moment of takeoff. The wall shook.

  I was barely back on my feet when three orderlies came in, single-file. The first one got an elbow in the kisser, the second one tackled me, and the third one sat on top of me-he was the fattest. He squeezed all the breath out of me and grabbed me by the hair. I squealed with rage. I saw the doctor getting back up on his feet, holding onto the wall. The first orderly bent over and drove his fist into my ear. I had a hot flash.

  “I’m calling the cops,” he said. “They’ll put him away.”

  The doctor sat down in a chair, a handkerchief over his mouth. He was missing one of his shoes, among other things.

  “No,” he said. “Not the police. It’s bad for public relations. Throw him outside. And he’d better not try to set foot inside this hospital again!”

  They picked me up. The one who wanted to call the cops slapped me across the face.

  “You hear that?” he said.

  My shoe found his nuts-I actually knocked him off his feet, which surprised everybody. I took advantage of the pause to get loose. I dove again at the doctor-I wanted to strangle him, obliterate him. He fell out of his chair, me on top of him.

  The orderlies all came down on me. I heard the nurses screaming. Before I could push my fingers into the doctor’s throat, I felt myself being lifted by an incalculable number of hands and thrown out of the office. They bashed me a little going down the hall, but nothing too serious-they were all pretty embarrassed; in the end I suppose they didn’t really want to kill me.

  We went through the lobby at a sprint. One of them had me in a hammerlock, another one had a handful of my hair, and an ear-this hurt most. They opened the doors and threw me down the steps.

  “If we see you around here again, you’ve had it!” one of them shouted.

  Those fuckers. They almost got me to cry. A tear fell onto the steps. It steamed like a drop of hydrochloric acid.

  So I’d struck out. Moreover, I’d gotten myself banished from the hospital forever. The next few days were the worst of my life. I couldn’t go back and see her again, and my memory of what I’d seen was intolerable. All the zen I knew came to no good-I was overcome with despair. I suffered like the most foolish of fools. Without doubt, it was during this period that I did my best writing. Later I would be referred to as an “unsung stylist.” It wasn’t my fault that I wrote well and knew it, though. During this period I filled up half a notebook.

  I probably would have written even more, but I couldn’t sit still during the day. I took many a shower, downed quantities of beer, miles of sausage, and paced hundreds of thousands of miles on the carpet. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I’d take a walk outside. I often found myself near the hospital. I knew better than to get too close-they once hit me with a beer can from fifty yards. Yes, they kept their eyes peeled. I stayed on the far side of the street and contented myself with looking at her window. On
ce in a while I’d see the curtain move.

  When night started falling, I’d go have a drink at Bob’s. It was the long slide into sundown at day’s end that was the most abominable, for a guy who’d had his baby taken away from him and isn’t sure he still knows how to swim. I’d spend about an hour with them. Bob acted like nothing had ever happened, and Annie always found some excuse to show me her pussy-it got me through the evening. Once it was dark, I could handle going home. I’d turn on the lights. I did most of my writing at night. Sometimes I even felt good-it made me feel like she was still there with me. Betty was the one thing that made me realize I was alive. Writing was tantamount to the same thing.

  One morning I took the car and drove all day, aimlessly, my arm flung over the door, my eyes squinting in the wind. Toward evening I stopped at the seaside. I had no idea where I was. All I’d seen for the whole trip were the faces of gas station attendants I bought a couple of sandwiches at a neighborhood bar and went to eat them on the beach.

  It was deserted. The sun had gone down below the horizon. It was so beautiful that I dropped a pickle in the sand. The sound of the waves, the same for millions of years, relaxed me-encouraged me, reassured me, stunned me. My little blue planet, O my little blue planet. May God bless you, goddamn it.

  I sat there for a while, getting to know solitude again, meditating on my pain. I rose. So did the moon. I took my shoes off and started walking along the shore, thinking of nothing. The sand was still warm-the perfect temperature for an apple pie.

  Along my way I came across a big fish, washed up on the sand. All that was left of it was a decomposed carcass, yet enough remained to see what a magnificent fish it must have been once- nothing less than a silver lightning bolt with a pearl belly, a sort of moving diamond. All that was over now. Beauty had taken a hard kick in the teeth. There were scarcely any scales left to glimmer in the moonlight-two or three hopeless little scales. To find yourself rotting away like that, after having once been the equal of the stars-wasn’t this the worst thing that could happen to you? Wouldn’t you rather just swim away into the darkness with a final flick of your tail to the sun? If it were me, I wouldn’t have to think twice.

  Since no one was around to see, I buried the fish. I dug the hole with my hands. I felt a little ridiculous, but if I hadn’t done it, I couldn’t have lived with myself, and now was not the moment for that.

  So that’s how it came to me. I thought it over and over and over-I tossed and turned all night, trying to get the idea out of my head, but by dawn I knew it was the only thing to do. All right, fine, I told myself. It was a Sunday. There would be too many people on Sunday. I put it off till the next day. All day long I dragged my ass. It looked like it was going to storm. Impossible to write-no use kidding myself. Impossible to do anything. Days like that are shittier than anything.

  I woke up rather late the next day, around noon. Without thinking, I’d made a huge mess of the house. I started putting things away. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of a full-scale cleanup. I don’t know what came over me, I even dusted the curtains. After that I showered, shaved, and ate. While I was doing the dishes I noticed a few flashes of lightning. The thunder started to rumble. The sky was as dry as powdered milk. Clouds gathered in the burning air.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in front of the TV, my legs stretched out on the couch, a pitcher of water in my hand. I relaxed. The house was so clean it was a pleasure to see; from time to time it does you good to know everything is in its place.

  At around five o’clock, I put my makeup on, then charged out onto the street, disguised as Josephine. The storm that had been coming since the night before still hadn’t come-the sky was holding its breath. Through my glasses it all looked even darker, nearly apocalyptic. I walked fast. The wise thing to do would have been to take the car, but I turned a deaf ear to it, leaving it behind to sulk by itself. As a finishing touch I’d taken one of Betty’s purses. I held it close to me-it kept my boobs from slipping. I walked with my eyes riveted to the sidewalk, paying no attention to the catcalls that the bums throw at every single girl who passes by-I couldn’t waste my time. I tried not to think of anything.

  When I got to the hospital, I hid behind a tree and exhaled two or three times, like wind howling through the branches. Then I walked toward the entrance with my purse under my arm-no hesitation, head high, with the poise of a gal who’s used to ruling an empire. I felt nothing at all as I went through the door-not the tiniest bit of uneasiness. For once I wasn’t carrying an electrified fence on my shoulders, no blood poisoning, no spontaneous combustion or lateral paralysis. I almost looked back to see what I was missing, but I was already on the stairway.

  On the second floor, I ran into a group of orderlies. Though I’d just touched up my makeup, all they ogled were my breasts. They were too big, I knew it, and now every last one of them was undressing me with his eyes. To escape, I ducked into the first room I came to.

  There was a guy in bed, a tube in his arm and a tube up his nose. He was not in great shape. He opened his eyes when I came in, waiting for the orderlies to pass by. We looked at each other-we obviously didn’t have a lot to talk about, but we looked at each other. For a fraction of a second, I wanted to unplug him. Though I didn’t make a move, the guy started shaking his head no. I gave up on the idea. I cracked the door open to make sure the coast was clear.

  Betty. Room number seven. I slid in silently and closed the door behind me. It was dark. Clouds, or simply nightfall, it was hard to tell. There was a tiny light above her bed, so pallid it made my blood run cold. A nightlight when it’s not yet night is like a crippled child. I wedged the door closed with a chair. I ripped off my wig and took off my glasses. I sat down on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t sleeping.

  “Want some gum?” I said.

  It did no good to search my memory-I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard her voice. Or the last words we’d exchanged. Probably something like:

  “Hey, who do you have to fuck to get some sugar around here?”

  “Have you tried looking in the bottom drawer?”

  I wrapped my tutti-frutti back up-it turned out I didn’t want any either. I grabbed the pitcher of water off the nightstand and downed half of it.

  “Want some?” I asked.

  They hadn’t tied her down. The straps hung on the floor, like chocolate bars left out in the sun. I acted like she wasn’t gone, like she was still there. I needed to talk.

  “The hardest thing is going to be getting you dressed,” I said. “Especially if you don’t help…”

  I took my glove off and ran my hand under her nightgown, caressing her breasts. An elephant’s memory is nothing compared to mine. I could remember every square millimeter of her skin. Give me her cells, all jumbled up, and I’ll put them back together for you in perfect order. I teased her belly, her arms, her legs. Finally, I closed my hand over her furry patch-nothing had changed. I felt real joy at that precise moment-a simple pleasure, almost animal. I put my glove back on. Of course the pleasure would have been a thousand times greater had she reacted. But then again, where could you ever find the kind of happiness that would have been-in commercials? At the bottom of Santa Claus’s sack? On the top floor of the Tower of Babel?

  “All right, we’d better hurry. We have to go…”

  I took her chin and put my lips to hers. She never unclenched her teeth. It was still wonderful. I managed to get a little of her saliva on my lower lip. Her mouth-I ate it ever so gently. I slid my hand behind her neck and pulled her to me, my nose grazing in her hair. If this goes on, it’s me who’ll go nuts, I thought, me who’ll come apart at the seams. I took out a Kleenex and wiped her lips-I’d gotten lipstick all over them.

  “We still have a long way to go,” I said.

  A doll, docile and silent. They’d filled her to the gills with drugs. They’d already thrown the first shovel of dirt over her. The right thing to do would have been to ambush them all and sl
it their throats for being what they were-doctors, nurses, pharmacists, the whole clique; not to mention everyone who’d pushed her to that point, slave drivers, people who crush you under their thumbs, those who offend you, lie to you, use you; people who don’t give a shit if you’re one of a kind, people who glow brighter in the bullshit, stand taller on hills of crap, who weigh you down like a ball and chain. It wouldn’t have made me feel any better, though. Wading through the rivers of their blood, I wouldn’t be much better off. Like it or not, what’s done is done, as they say-and though I’m not the kind of guy who gives up hope at the drop of a hat, I understood that sometimes the world seems like the worst of all possible Hells. It depends on how you look at it. May God strike me dead: sitting on that bed in that room, for the longest minute of my life, I’d never seen anything so odious or black. Above us, the storm broke loose. I shook.

  “I need you to make one last effort,” I sighed.

  The first drops splattered against the window, like insects on a windshield. I bent over her delicately and took hold of one of the straps. I put the tip of it through the buckle and pulled tight. One for her legs. She didn’t move.

  “You okay? It doesn’t hurt, does it?” I asked.

  Outside was the deluge. It was like being inside the Nautilus. I picked up another strap and put it around her arms and chest, just under her breasts. I pulled it tight. She stared at the ceiling with her one eye. Nothing I did interested her. The moment had come to test my strength.

  “I have to tell you something…” I started.

  I took one of the pillows from beneath her head, one with blue stripes. I wasn’t shaking-for her I could do anything without shaking, I’d already proven that-I was just a little warmer was all.