Apocalypse Baby

by Virginie Despentes

  I open my backpack and bring out a photo of the kid. The Hyena hesitates to take it.

  ‘I don’t really see how I can help you…’ She glances down at the picture, and seems to think for a while as she observes it. She hesitates. I feel reassured.

  ‘And how much will you give me if I work with you?’

  ‘The five thousand euros bonus. It’ll be in cash. And if there’s no result… we’ll have to work out how to divide up my pay.’

  ‘At that kind of rate, I wouldn’t want to put myself out too much.’

  She smiles as she puts the glasses back on. I can’t tell if I amuse her or annoy her.

  She has started calling me ‘tu’ now. ‘So you let me keep the money, young Lucie, but are you going to work on it too, or do sweet FA?’

  ‘I… I’d prefer to have someone working with me, in the sense that…’

  ‘That you have absolutely no idea where to start. Well, at least that’s clear. Did you bring the file from when you tailed her?’

  ‘It’s all on my laptop.’

  I bend down to take it out, but she stops me with a click of her fingers. ‘Can you put it on a USB?’

  The Hyena has put Valentine’s photo in the middle of the table facing her. ‘Teenagers aren’t really my thing. They usually have good reasons to clear off, don’t they?’

  ‘She might have been kidnapped.’

  She puts her head on one side and seems lost in contemplation of the photo. She has beautiful hands, pale with long fingers, I notice that the nails are bitten down to the quick. She wears an enormous ring with a death’s head on it, a bit pathetic in my view, who does she think she is, the Keith Richards of the shit-stirrers? She concentrates for a moment on the portrait of Valentine, who is smiling into the camera, three-quarter angle, bright eyes, pretty dimples, glossy hair. Slightly plump. Like all girls of her age, in family photos they just look like nice kids. Then the Hyena fixes her eyes on me pensively, there’s something disquieting about the insistence of her gaze.

  ‘Little girls with puppy fat are trying to cover up for their father’s lies.’

  Brilliant. I thought I was working with James Bond, and now I’m dealing with a family therapist. I don’t know how to answer in a way that doesn’t seem disagreeable, so I opt for being pragmatic.

  ‘Teenagers go in for a lot of sugary drinks.’

  ‘And why did the family take the step of having her watched?’

  ‘I think they thought Valentine was… putting herself in danger.’

  ‘What kind of danger?’

  ‘You’d need to look at the other photos in the file, she…’

  ‘Later. So what do they think they’re going to do, to protect her?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to discuss that with them…’

  ‘But all the time you’ve been doing this job, you must have some idea what the clients want, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. I don’t have anything to do with what they get up to, once the tailing’s over.’

  ‘OK. I want the five thousand euros in exchange for the kid, you can tell the clients to get it ready. And you can also tell them that there’ll be expenses. They’re rolling in it, you said?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m in no position to bargain, because I lost sight of her…’

  ‘You lost nothing of the sort. You know exactly when she went missing and where. If she decided to make a break for it, you weren’t being paid to stop her. If she was kidnapped, you weren’t being paid to act as her bodyguard, you were simply following her. What can you possibly blame yourself for? Pull yourself together, and tell her father it’s going to cost him plenty.’

  ‘It’s the grandmother I see for everything. She’s not an easy client to deal with, very aggressive, I don’t know whether…’

  ‘Perfectly normal. She wants the job done on the cheap, we’d do exactly the same in her place. But two can play at that game: just because she has a nice try doesn’t mean to say she gets away with it. Do you want me to call her for you? What’s your last name again?’

  At once, I’d like to go and get myself a mechanical shovel, dig a hole in the ground, bury myself there and let time pass. The Hyena takes out her mobile, asks me for the personal number of the client. She looks as if she’s enjoying herself. I’m not, on the whole. Madame Galtan answers at once. The Hyena adopts a firm and suave voice.

  ‘Madame Galtan? This is Louise Bizer, lawyer at the Paris bar, I’m working with Mademoiselle Toledo, and please forgive me for troubling you so late, but we… Thanks for being so understanding. We have a little problem with the assignment, because Mademoiselle Toledo tells me that there has been no agreement about expenses… Of course, Madame Galtan, I quite see that, but you’ll understand that we can’t embark on a matter of such importance, and with such a short deadline, without running up a certain number of expenses, and it could have an unfortunate impact on the results if we had to take the metro all the time, or send you a justification ten pages long, before feeling entitled to take a plane… But Madame Galtan, I’m sorry to tell you that the contract you have with the Reldanch agency doesn’t cover a missing person search… No, I don’t know what Monsieur Deucené saw fit to assure you, but what I have in front of me is a signed and sealed contract, which only covers a report on watching your granddaughter… Yes, I have been informed about the reward, and if you are aware of the standard procedures in these cases, you will know that it’s the absolute minimum for this kind of thing… Oh yes, I assure you. No, it’s not negligible, but it’s certainly well below the usual rate…’

  She stands up, takes her empty glass to the counter, and signs to Cro-Mag to get her another Coke. An amused smile playing round her lips, she winks at me from a distance. The old bat must be putting up sturdy opposition, but the Hyena looks as blissful as if she’s pulling on a really good joint. After a further ten minutes’ argument, she ends the call and comes back to me looking highly pleased.

  ‘A good sort in the end, our Jacqueline. She’s agreed, she’ll cover any expenses. And she’s given way on the ridiculous deadline of a fortnight. We need to take a bit of time over this, or we’ll look like total idiots.’

  ‘I’d never have believed she could be persuaded…’

  ‘Don’t bother, the magic word was lawyer. Rich people always try to get away without shelling out, but at heart they believe you have to pay serious money, otherwise you’ll only get poor service, and vice versa. Why wasn’t it the father who asked to have the girl followed?’

  ‘Monsieur Galtan wasn’t too keen on the idea. I gather that it’s the grandmother who’s mostly been concerned with the kid.’

  ‘You don’t take a whole lot of interest in what you do, eh?’

  ‘I’m not used to working on this kind of case.’

  ‘In future, try and listen to the client when they come to tell you about their case. For one thing it makes them trust you, if they get the impression you’re interested. But above all, if you listen properly, eight times out of ten, it’ll tell you where to start. This truth they’ve come looking for, if it didn’t hurt them so much in the first place, they wouldn’t need our services to hear it. And you’ll see, when you bring along your conclusions, even with photos under their noses, people will refuse to admit what they’re seeing.’

  I can see this is going to be a whole lot of fun: if she’s going to lecture me like this the first evening, what’ll it be like in a week’s time? She takes a USB from her pocket.

  ‘Put everything you’ve got on here, OK? And when you’ve finished, come and find me at the counter. I need to see someone.’

  I’ve had my fifteen minutes. She dumps me there and then, not without patting my shoulder as she goes past. Looking round discreetly, I see that it’s a girl, a little brunette with short hair and thick glasses, nothing special to look at, who now has all her attention. The Hyena has her Ray-Bans back on, and she’s listening without moving a muscle. Once the memory stick has loaded up, I go over
to give it her, and she barely registers me. Even through the dark glasses, you can tell she’s eating up this girl with her eyes. I thank Cro-Mag and get away as soon as I can. At the door, I turn round and see the Hyena lean slowly towards the girl, interrupting her in mid-sentence to kiss her. It’s just her head that’s moved closer to the other woman’s, her arms and hands haven’t budged. Then she returns to her initial position. She still isn’t smiling, it doesn’t seem to be part of her repertoire.

  FRANÇOIS

  SHOWER. SHAMPOO. MOISTURIZER. IN HIS bathroom, standing in front of the mirror over the basin, he practises breathing through his nose, slowly. He regrets having agreed to this interview, his diary’s already overbooked. There are dark circles under his eyes, he’s drunk too much these last few days. He thinks his complexion looks greenish. The sleeping pills probably. He can’t get used to greying at the temples. At least he’s not losing his hair, it could be worse. But seeing himself in the mirror is still an unpleasant shock. He can’t get used to being this middle-aged man. On the radio, a minister is talking about locking up paedophiles who might reoffend. Three psychiatrists have been invited along with him, to oppose the decision. François is irritated at their cautious tone. Are they afraid the paedophile might get bored in the end? The previous day, François recorded a TV broadcast at 9 a.m., with the minister of labour, who had just finished doing a radio show. He arrived accompanied by a team of four advisers. You wouldn’t have thought he was so well-briefed though, seeing him on set. While they were doing the makeup, someone came to tell François Galtan that he must never reply directly to the minister, he must address all his comments through the presenter. It was a bit annoying, as if they were afraid he wouldn’t know how to behave. In any case, he could have jumped on the minister’s lap and given him a kiss and it wouldn’t have mattered, nobody watches the show. The places he gets asked when he’s just published a novel have about as much public exposure as the sandpit down in the garden. Le Figaro has still not published anything about his latest book. He calls his press agent, a bimbo who thinks she’s charming. She has big thighs and thick ankles, he can’t think where she gets her confidence from. She’s not there, of course. No doubt accompanying some author who’s further up the best-seller list. He asks her to call back, knowing full well she’ll forget to. He can’t get used to the polite indifference that greets his books when they come out – three vaguely favourable reviews, two minor TV shows, three provincial radio stations, and that’s it. He can’t complain about being besieged by autograph hunters. Yet he believes in the book sincerely every time. A huge success, his comeback on the literary scene. He affects a dignified indifference to the pointlessness of his efforts, but in a few weeks he realizes it’s true, his novel has made no impact. Once more, he feels he’s going through hell.

  His first novel had been well reviewed by François Nourissier. His enthusiasm hadn’t surprised Galtan, he considered recognition no more than he deserved. You didn’t write novels like his without people noticing. He’d been invited on to the TV book show Apostrophes when the second one had come out: Rain. It had meant something in those days. You didn’t get on TV as easily as all that, and certainly not to do some chitchat about anything other than your writings. Some good reviews, a reputation for brilliance. Even Pierre Frank, in a short paragraph at the end of one of his articles, had mentioned François’s book. He’d had a few successes, nothing vulgar, nothing over the top. He’d been noticed, but he hadn’t won any prizes. He was still under thirty then, and convinced that one day he’d get the Prix Goncourt. He didn’t have any doubts. And he didn’t suspect anything. He counted the potential jury votes as he wrote his books. He had a prominent publisher, Le Seuil, and he’d been shortlisted three times. Never won, though. Always an also-ran. People told him it wasn’t good to get it too young. He took it nonchalantly. He didn’t know that he’d already had his moment of glory, that this was it. A promising beginning. Followed by not very much. He didn’t have the right contacts, he wasn’t well-enough connected. No hook to make an impression. Nothing but his books. A bit late in the day, he’d discovered this wasn’t going to be enough. He would have liked to be able to console himself by concentrating on posterity, on the generations of young Japanese readers who would be moved to tears when they discovered him too late, and who’d write many biographies, indignant at the vulgar indifference that had greeted his publications during his lifetime. But the more years went by, the less likely that seemed. He didn’t lose confidence in his work, but he had his doubts about the world of the future. He’d published the early novels convinced that one day there’d be a Pléiade edition of his collected works, that his oeuvre would be looked at as a whole: readers would admire its coherence, its stability of purpose, with its clear progression, its willingness to take risks and its striking intuitions. He hadn’t imagined what would happen in the early 1990s. That was the first sign of decline. The scruffy, uneducated, journalistic writers who’d become the best-sellers for their generation. He was ashamed, in retrospect, that he hadn’t anticipated what publishing would turn into: an industry as stupid as any other. A resentful and antiquated streetwalker. Mincing about in tattered robes. Dependent on television and trendy magazines. Enemies whose nuisance value he hadn’t spotted. Neither left- nor right-wing. Neither classic nor modern. TV personalities. Celebrities of the day. Pitching a line, always on the lookout for fresh flesh, greedy for readership figures. At first, he had decided to laugh them off. And he wasn’t the only one. He remembers, with bitterness today, a dinner party at which an eloquent publisher had kept them in stitches talking about the current best-sellers, forecasting that the way things were going one day people would want to read novels by young girls going into detail about their haemorrhoids. How they had laughed. No, he hadn’t seen it coming. Authors who wrote about their eating disorders, or getting raped by their fathers, writers who were illiterate sluts, writers who boasted of screwing teenage girls in Thailand, or of being high on coke. He hadn’t seen it coming at all. Not to mention that the 1990s, compared with what followed, were in the end quite tame. He could have adjusted. But then along came the internet. Nowadays, he had to make a constant effort not to spend all day long searching the web, haggard and depressed. Reading the comments. The anonymous load of crap. The litany of non-stop insults delivered by the incompetent. As soon as he discovered them, he realized he had entered the tenth circle of hell. Parallel little comments, deaf to each other, all in the same format, laconic and sickeningly hostile. Mediocrity had found its voice. The comments on the internet. He wasn’t even being insulted. He would have liked to be able to rage and complain about the way he was treated. But he wasn’t even interesting enough for these sick fashionistas to launch campaigns against him. He was reduced to writing under a pseudonym, a few words of subtly critical praise for himself on the literary forums and blogs. He did have a few loyal readers, but they didn’t feel any pressing need to discuss his work on the internet. Still, he didn’t throw in the towel. For his latest novel, The Great Paris Pyramid, he’d tried to adapt. Without betraying himself. People were talking about the return of the great French novel; he thought his moment had come at last. Times had changed but he wouldn’t. This might finally do the trick. A bit of Egyptian history, which he was knowledgeable about, a romantic plot, young characters who listened to music on their mobiles and talked about sex with no holds barred. But it didn’t seem to be taking off. And yet writing it had been a real pleasure, such as he hadn’t felt for a long time. He’d taken it for a sign. He’d been drafting the first few pages while suffering with terrible toothache. The dentist had prescribed Solupred pills, which would reduce the abscess enough for the tooth to be extracted. Never having taken them before, he didn’t realize he was particularly sensitive to the effects of cortisone. He finished the packet, after the tooth had been pulled, and asked a doctor friend to prescribe some more, then more again, and so on until the book was finished. He wrote for twelve hours at
a stretch, smiling over his keyboard. He’d completed it in five weeks, a record for him, since usually every page called for scrupulous rereading, second thoughts, and searching criticism. Fear of being untrue to himself had surfaced briefly, but the siren hopes of making a huge literary comeback were growing inside him, the warm welcome he’d get when he visited his publisher’s office, the endless invitations to prestigious dinners, the voicemail full of requests for interviews. It would be worth cheating on his talent if it succeeded. He went on taking cortisone while reading the proofs, and the effects didn’t wear off. When he wasn’t writing, he was talking, talking to anyone and everyone, he who was usually so reserved. It had been a sparkling season. He would probably never have stopped if he hadn’t one evening watched the transmission of a pre-recorded music programme made in the ministry of culture, in which he’d taken part alongside the minister. He’d spoken well, brightly and incisively in the short interview he’d had, so he wasn’t worried as he waited to see himself. On the wide TV screen, he’d wondered with amusement who that great fat whale was in his tight grey suit, fidgeting nervously alongside the other guests. And then he’d recognized himself. His wife and daughter, the first gently, the second rudely, had pointed out to him that he’d been putting on weight these last few weeks. But seeing himself every day in the mirror, carried along on a wave of euphoria and creative energy, he hadn’t realized it. Until that evening, watching TV, he hadn’t taken in how much he’d changed. And then he had seen himself, flopping about, sweating like a pig, his red face reduced to a pair of obscenely joyous cheeks, and talking non-stop, nobody being able to curb his logorrhoea. That very night, the packets of cortisone, hitherto carefully kept in the bathroom, went into the bin. Thereafter, he was to regret not having listened to the advice of the doctor friend who had warned him, as he bent over the precription pad, that he was renewing the pills for the seventh time in three months, and that he should be aware of the risk of stopping them suddenly. He hadn’t taken him by the scruff of the neck, put him up against a wall and shouted ‘Watch out what happens if you stop taking the meds,’ which would at least have been clear. The doctor friend, whom he called Dr Drug during his season on Solupred, was rather easy-going, and like many in his profession, insensitive to other people’s pain. He had merely said in a gloomy tone, ‘You’ll have to come off these sometime, so let me know before you do and I’ll tell you how to handle it.’ But when François had seen himself looking so grotesque, he had felt he should give up the pills at once. He regarded himself proudly as a strong-willed character, his book was written, that was enough, no more foolishness. The first day, he’d thought it an interesting experience, if he’d had the strength he’d have taken notes, since he had never suffered so much pain. No corner of his anatomy escaped the disaster. By the end of the first week, he told himself he wanted to die, that he was an imposter, his friends were useless, his wife old and ugly, his daughter a fat little fool, he’d never have any literary reputation, his books wouldn’t survive him, everyone despised him, he’d never written a good sentence in his life. These moments of lucidity exhausted him. He came to think that suicide was the only strategy that would validate his work. Tortured by fearful hunger and early-morning cramps in all his muscles, he began the second week in a state of complete collapse. It was at that point that Claire had packed him off to see her osteopath, a woman of immense strength who had set about trying to break every bone in his body before putting him on to a vitamin diet of such complexity that simply adhering to it had monopolized all his energy: Spirulin, fermented beetroot juice and fresh almonds… he endured such delights as these, plus an hour’s jogging every day. By the eighth day of this regime, which he followed religiously, the depression began to lift and leave him in peace; he no longer had the strength to feel any emotion. Progressively, he was regaining something like the physical appearance he’d had before the cortisone, and the mental capacity to pass a whole day without looking up at the ceiling of every room planning where to fix the sheets he intended to hang himself with. But just as he had kept a bit of a paunch, he had retained a vague sensation of unease. And a solid addiction to vitamin B6. And then, four weeks after the publication of the novel of which she knew he was expecting so much, his daughter Valentine had disappeared.