That’s what surprises Solange most in the story: the attention to detail in the ending. She can imagine herself in the story, with her fireman. That could have happened to her. A close call.
And like a book that you understand better on reading it again when you’re older (the wordplay in Astérix, or the sex scenes in Barjavel’s novels) she now understands slurp better—the noise, not the girl. It teaches her about the fact that it’s normal to be wet. And about how narrow young vaginas are: what the gynaecologist said wasn’t just about her, which is on the whole reassuring, but still worrying—whatever, she knows what she’s getting at. Anyway, wasn’t the noise more likely to have been the squelching of blood?
In any case the whole operation seems difficult. Including the embarrassment of having a dumb idiot run around describing his exploits to everybody (because it’s unlikely that Slurp herself would have spread the rumour); it all has nothing to do with her, it only happens to girls like Slurp.
She has to do it, but discreetly, with style, without going too far. She has to behave just like Sixtine did when she was ‘indisposed’ but was so casual about it. She practises having that expression, that slightly wounded attitude.
Since she found out about Slurp’s story, it’s like the river has been soiled by it. On the sandy banks of this pretty river, there are more and more condoms. The pretty river where she retreated with her sensitivity.
Her mother is in the kitchen, radio on, one Monday when the shop is shut, anyway, it’s not about what the shop brings in. ‘You should know,’ she tells her (she wants to run away and block her ears), ‘you should know that your mother was not destined to run a boutique, no, your mother had other projects in life, I had to sacrifice the things that were close to my heart, any old idiot can sell trinkets. Solange, first think about yourself, about what you want. What you really want. Before you get married, Solange. Before you get married.’ Her mother always says ‘boutique’ for the shop, it’s so annoying.
Her mother will probably go away for a few days. She needs some time to herself. ‘Are you listening to me?’
Yes, she tries to be nice. It’s not easy for her mother, it’s never been easy for her mother. But she is back there, at Milord’s, where lips are touching, where hands are grabbing. It’s amazing, she can just call it up and the film runs—not the film—that moment, that time...life.
Hands. Lips. Finger. Her cunt is already hot, tight, wet, she just has to touch herself and she comes. ‘Your father and I,’ her mother is saying—and for the umpteenth time she wonders if her parents do it, this business of dick in fanny, but it seems too crazy, in this kitchen with Radio Monte-Carlo and the formica table sticky with jam. ‘Your father and I’—her father’s dick in her mother’s fanny. Of course they did it for her, at least once (and for the other one, the boy in the photo). Unless she was adopted, but the similarity between her and her father is too striking (so they say).
The disco ball at Milord’s. The fireman’s dick blinking. What a fool she is not to have got his telephone number. Perhaps she’s fallen in love? She wants to give herself to him. She could tell Rose: I fell in love and I gave myself to him. And tell Christian. He possessed her violently. And go looking for him far and wide, over hill and dale. Hopelessly.
All she has to do is ring the emergency number for a fire engine. Dial 18. Or go back to Milord’s. And—it’s a sign—the bass line of ‘Billie Jean’ starts up in the kitchen, drowning out her mother’s voice. The memory is so violent—she’s going to wake up at Milord’s with the fireman’s finger right there.
‘I like this song,’ her mother breaks off talking and taps her fingernails on the formica—Solange squeezes her legs together on the clammy boum boum.
She’s a bit cold in her sequinned T-shirt, but the weather is mild, it’s the speed that’s making her shiver. The trees rush past, misty and full of screeches, the bushes are swaying and twisting, field mice, weasels and hedgehogs, the whole forest is alive. And she’s supposed to stay locked inside. It’s so pathetic.
On the incline she pedals hard, a few cars, flashes of headlights, sprays of gravel. It’s very dark. Her father was meant to have repaired the dynamo for her bike light ages ago; she’d be better off asking Bihotz to do it. She rides on the path behind the public fountain to avoid running into people. It’s bumpy. All she can hear is her bike, like chimes in the silence. She wonders if the Boursenave boy, the weird one, gets round at night like this. (In those situations, says Nathalie, you just kick them in the balls. Don’t hesitate, the window of opportunity is narrow.)
The industrial estate. Warehouses. Gym Tonic. The red sign of the Cheap Carpet outlet. Milord’s is in sight, the car following can’t make up its mind to pass her, she pedals in its headlights, surfing her huge dual shadow, two pedalling Solanges crossing and criss-crossing, the blinding white road, the pink and green neon lights, a corner—she accelerates, her shadow wheels spinning figures of eight and infinity signs, the car is still behind her, the noise of the motor completely drowning out the fields, a bullbar in her mudguard—she’d better stop, deal with it, can’t see a thing, thank goodness she’s not in a skirt, it passes her, a white Peugeot J7 van, and she hears:
‘How far do you think you’ll get with that?’
Shit. Bihotz.
Leave me alone, Monsieur Bihotz.
He looks like a madman.
Leave me alone!
But he snatches up her bike as if it’s a toy and throws it, bang, in the back of the van. He grabs her bag. Her miniskirt and stick of mascara fall out.
LEAVEMEALONELEAVEMEALONEFUCKOFF!
Scruffy, ragged, like a giant smoking flare in the red of the van’s warning lights, he lifts her up by an arm and throws her forward, an enormous fist, metallic, a mechanical digger. She’s a little package, bendable and compactable.
‘What am I going to say to your parents when we find you run over in the middle of the night, what am I going to say to them when you get yourself kidnapped by a lunatic?’
Her heart is banging inside her chest. To the green and pink rhythm of the Milord neon sign. Switching the screaming face on and off. She shows him her arm, where he has shaken her: I’m the one who’s going to say to my parents, take a look at that mark, there.
He drives very fast. He doesn’t head home. He goes straight ahead, the green and red lights disappearing behind them, the dreadful night closing in, and she’s being carried off, not the slightest opening in the darkness.
She’s in her tracksuit pants—the pants she put on ostensibly to wear to bed.
‘Are they more practical for sneaking out? More practical for bike-riding? And that skirt up to your pussy, where do you slip into that—in the car park?’
He’s completely ridiculous, there’s no way she’s going naked in Milord’s car park, she already has her sequinned T-shirt on (she shows him), and she was going to put on the skirt first then take off her tracksuit pants underneath.
‘Bloody hell!’ He’s shouting in a flat monotone. Sentences as long as the road. He’s really sorry to have such sharp hearing and to have his antenna tuned to her every movement. He’s upset about the number of sleeping pills her mother takes. He disapproves of her father’s busy job. Her father must be flying to Paris now, isn’t that right? He starts talking in that way she hates: as if he didn’t need to breathe anymore, as if he had another body, another voice. ‘You are so irresponsible!’ he shouts.
She sees the tiny radius in which they move around, from the bottom of the village to Milord’s, from the hill to the lake. Seen from up there, seen from an aeroplane, they are the only things moving on these sleepy roads.
‘Fuck!’ he shouts.
She’s pretty sure he’s going overboard with all this. Like the time he caught her watching the porn movie on TV. Just the thought of it. Even with the scrambled signal and the grey zigzagging images. The voices, the cries, over the buzzing of the broadcast. Just the thought of it.
Like I�
�m the first person in the whole world to sneak out.
Apparently Delphine, from the chateau, sneaks out (and you’d have to really want to, what with those spikes on all the railings).
He swears one day they’ll find her in the cornfield with her throat slit. And what will he say to her parents? Her sweet little body. The ripped T-shirt, scattered sequins, traces of the struggle, and her whore’s skirt hitched up to her belly. Her incredibly precious fifty kilos. Does she really have to get around like that, as if there was some connection, between her moving around on the Earth’s crust, and… what in the end? What’s the difference between that and the same thing that gets under Lulu’s skin twice a year and makes her scratch at the fence and end up digging tunnels?
‘What’s the difference?’ he yells.
He gets out of the J7 and stands in front of the black water, surveying the emptiness—and he smokes, just like her father, making the wisps of tobacco snap like her own small bones.
What if she got out really quietly and started running—but he’s turning round already, What’s the Time Mr Wolf ? Statues, except that’s all over, the games, having fun.
‘What?’ he asks like a thug, as if he was the one who was surprised, in the wrong, and furious.
The lake spreads out like an oil slick, hardly moving, a thick layer over the stupid little beach. She feels her chin puckering and her mouth twisting, the lake inhales her and liquefies her, she bursts into tears—such a defeat—You won’t say anything to my parents? She argues her case, she wrestles with him. She grabs him, she pleads with him, she drenches him with her tears, she’s on the verge of confessing to everything, including the fireman at Milord’s, or of pretending that Rose and Nathalie are waiting for her, but he extricates himself and—?—he takes off his runners, his overalls and his T-shirt, and he enters the water: legs, buttocks, belly, arms, his big white body cuts through the surface like a pair of scissors, his head like a hairy button moves forward in the blackness, he swims.
Because you’re allowed to do that, but not go to Milord’s?
She could run away, but here he is coming back again, splashes of white on the fantastically black water, he powers towards her, his arms stirring up the night, a heavy, invisible substance, as he freestyles the emptiness.
And then he sits there, dripping in the seat, blowing his nose over the steering wheel. He’s making bubbles like a crab. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ She’s the one who should be crying. He’s shivering, sopping wet.
She’d like to say something, but no, she’s not forgiving him, she doesn’t see how she can forgive him for stopping her—right there on the road, and using force—from doing what she wants. And anyway, as if it had anything to do with forgiving, when he’s just doing what a father would, or a brother if she had one, or even Terry or the fireman or any man really?
Monsieur Bihotz. It’s okay. Stop. Stop it.
She puts her hand on his shoulder, clumsily. He leans over and lies down on her, grasping her hard by the hips, his heavy head buried in her thighs as he hiccups. Tiny little kisses sputtering on her wet tracksuit. Underneath she’s wearing one of her mother’s G-strings so she squirms: he mustn’t see it or feel it, and the kisses are going all over her belly (what has he done with the bag that has her miniskirt in it?) and she can see quite clearly that his dick is doing that thing again, pointing at her, some supersized finger huge with reproach, whore’s skirt, trollop. ‘Little tart,’ he said to her one day when she was at the public fountain with Christian even though she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Is he asking forgiveness for that as well, for when he talks too much (but no more than her father or even her mother, if she thinks about it), for the mark on her arm (which has already disappeared), for the fright he gave her, for the stink of his sweat, his dick, his fat belly, or what exactly is he sorry for?—later on she’ll work out the meaning of this apology—he squeezes her too hard, ‘Solange, my Solange, my sunshine, my only angel,’ sorry for that, for precisely what he’s in the middle of saying, and sorry for squeezing her too hard, sorry for crying, sorry for saying sorry. She taps his head and murmurs sounds, shhh, it’s okay, come on, let’s go, if she could take the wheel, she would drive him home, home, Monsieur Bihotz.
He rings the doorbell, she’s barely awake, he rings again and wants to see her mother and she’s not going to let that happen, If you have something to say to her you can just say it to me, he pushes her aside, she moves ahead, she runs, Coffee, Maman?, she selects the beans one by one, use the ground coffee, darling, I’ve got a bad headache.
‘Can you leave the room,’ asks Monsieur Bihotz, it’s more like a command—in her own home, you’ve got to be kidding. But her mother is at that point between sleeping tablets and her third coffee where even the thought of loud voices, of a fight—‘I can’t look after her anymore,’ announces Bihotz, he’s going to spill the beans.
‘Who?’ Her mother looks surprised.
For a split second, she and Monsieur Bihotz are standing opposite this woman who seems to think that he’s referring to the dog, Lulu. Then the triangle realigns itself. ‘Solange’—her name spills out like a packet of flour.
‘I can’t do without you, Monsieur Bihotz!’ Her mother screams the truth. He replies that he has to find a real job. ‘Out of the question, Monsieur Bihotz, what with the financial crisis, especially around here.’
And Solange is watching out for the words that will determine the outcome, sneak out, that night Solange, sequinned T-shirt and whore’s skirt. Oddly enough, there’s a look of hesitation on Monsieur Bihotz’s face, in his eyes and on his lips. He doesn’t seem to believe what her mother is saying.
‘Money shouldn’t be a problem between us, Monsieur Bihotz’—‘Perhaps she’s old enough to look after herself’—‘Old enough, out of the question’—‘Solange, go to your room!’
She starts climbing the stairs and they unfold around her; she has this vision of herself climbing the stairs that are unfolding around her, and it keeps going, her hand on the banister, her body turning, her eyes looking at her hand on the banister; something is vibrating between her and the walls as if she no longer knows where her body belongs; she is here, from now on she will remain here, without being able to touch, feel, or be in any particular place—in this body that’s like a lifejacket—she picks up a piece of Playmobil, places it in the palm of her hand, click, nothing happens, it lasts forever, the gesture, her hand, as if she was watching the film of herself watching herself.
She hears a voice begging, whispering, ‘This child and me, all alone, you understand, Monsieur Bihotz.’ She leans over the banister and sees a strange body, two shapeless heads, several arms, her mother leaning against Monsieur Bihotz, speaking into his navel, repeating ‘my husband’, sobbing, disgraceful, sloppy and spilling over—she should sneak out forever but she has to stay, she still has to stay here.
There’s a party on at the chateau, up there, at Delphine’s. Next Saturday. She’s not invited. Of course she’s not invited. She hardly knows Delphine. But Rose is, invited, and even the cousins, Sixtine and Meredith (not Alma, who is doing a Baroque singing internship somewhere in the Ardèche).
Her suffering is almost unbearable. By herself in her bedroom, she falls to bits. Without people looking at her, without a witness to her existence, her atoms abandon her. Dust motes floating to the window panes, a fine cloud, a veil punctured by beams of light.
Riding her bike along the river, she sees the chateau up there, suspended in the air, like a transfer or a sticker. As if it wasn’t real. She can’t even bear dogs anymore. The way Lulu jumps up on her as soon as she arrives; whereas she (Solange) doesn’t know what to do with herself anymore, go into the house, not go in, eat, not eat, go out, sleep, die.
The Tour de France and Bihotz in front of his TV.
‘What’s the matter?’ Bihotz asks. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
She’s started calling him Bihotz and it drives him mad.
‘D
elphine? The Peyreborde girl, from up there? She’ll call you. She’s just forgotten. My mother did the cleaning there, at the chateau, and she used to take you with her. You used to say there were ghosts there. During August they had white sheets draped over all the armchairs.’
So she’s compelled to reminisce along with him, and the memories come back. And she talks to him and he makes her feel better, this hick, this metalhead who listens to Iron Maiden.
The white shapes, the windows open onto a sky of dense, leafy green trees, the colour and the slant of those hazy days. There was a swimming pool. She was absolutely forbidden to go near it.
She’s sharing all this with him and it’s so annoying. This guy who has nothing to do with any of it. This anomaly (these days she’s learning new words).
‘But the Peyreborde girl is not from the chateau,’ he says. ‘The d’Urbide family lives in the chateau. The Peyreborde family lives in the concierge’s lodge.’
He’s carrying on as if he knows her girlfriends better than she does. And probably her whole life while he’s at it. (No, no one will ever understand her, not the real her.)
‘But what’s the matter with you?’ wails Bihotz. ‘You weren’t like this before. You don’t have to act all grown up. No one’s looking at us.’
It infuriates her how he makes a scene about everything, while she just deals with it. When she remembers how Nathalie told her that Rose thought that she (Solange) was perverse, supposedly because she was worried about her, but how happy she (Rose) must have been showing off with perverse! (She looked it up in the dictionary, it means almost neurotic. Perverse, what a joke. Rose has just got a really big head, that’s all, she’s so full of herself, she uses those words to make herself seem interesting, like she’s the centre of the world.)
All the Way Page 7
