Apocalypse Baby

by Virginie Despentes

  ‘If he gets out like that, everyone will say it’s a deal, gotta be something behind it.’

  ‘Up to you. If you tell me the truth, he’ll be out in a week. I give you my word.’

  She empties her coffee cup, throwing back her head to catch the last drop. She really does act like a man.

  ‘You know perfectly well what happens to little girls all alone in the big city. It isn’t as if you were up to anything criminal. I’ve got to find her. And I need to know what she was doing in the weeks before she took off. I think you had a relationship. I want to know what she told you, the kind of things she was interested in. And don’t forget that if I don’t solve this case quickly, one of these days it’ll be the police knocking at your door. I found you through the internet, and they’ll soon turn up the same photos. All they’re interested in is getting your name down on a charge sheet, so they can say to their boss, “Right, sir, I’ve got it sorted.” The truth never got anyone promotion.’

  She’s playing superwoman now, but getting more angry, and Yacine wonders if she practises this for hours in front of the mirror because she does it very well. For a bitch. She stands up.

  ‘OK, I’ll walk to the metro with you.’

  ‘I came by car.’

  ‘All right then, I’ll walk you to the car.’

  He knows already that she’s right. It’s in his interest to talk to her. Whereas from the pigs, he can expect nothing but trouble.

  BARCELONA

  THE HYENA FOUND VALENTINE’S MOTHER’S precise address before Rafik did. The night we’ve just spent watching the tarmac flash by has hardly lessened my irritation: for once I’d had a lead to follow up. As dawn breaks, just before we reach Barcelona, we pass some enormous and intriguing white globes: a nuclear power station gleaming in the already blazing sunshine. A spaghetti junction of motorways, and we’re slipping into the city. The resounding blue of the sky, a uniform backdrop, magnifies everything it covers. I didn’t sleep much, I’m bizarrely wakeful, with the glucose from the Red Bull plus caffeine circulating in my jangled nerves, on a platform of dulled calm. Electricity on my nerve ends. The blinding light hurts my eyes. I feel well, actually, although I’m on the edge of a strange and worrying abyss. The absurd happiness of seeing the first palm trees, and the façades of the buildings covered with useless florid detail, the balconies bright with every colour of the rainbow. At the first red light, the Hyena operates the central locking.

  ‘Watch out, they have very cunning thieves here.’

  ‘Worse than in Paris?’

  ‘Much. They’re cutting-edge delinquent in this town. They can empty a car at the speed of light, very nifty, very effective.’

  She wants a coffee and stops when she finds somewhere to park. Her features are drawn with fatigue, but a joyful expression, such as I haven’t seen on her before, lights up her face. She says cheerfully, ‘Nice here, eh? Come on, we can go to a bar, have a fag, that’ll revive us.’

  For the first few hours of the drive, the Hyena gave me a long description of Yacine, his sister Nadja, and how much she liked their mother, whom she would gladly save, if she had the time, from the ‘shipwreck of heterocentrism’. Gradually we’re getting a picture of Valentine, but without yet being able to describe her clearly. The Hyena is interested in this little teenager, I think she’s touched by the way the kid bounces all the time from one side to the other, without finding her place, but without getting tired. She’s a valiant little pinball.

  When you get away from Paris, you realize what a grey, noisy, depressing and morbid city it is. As we sit on this café terrace, the wind on our skin hasn’t the same texture. We proceed slowly to our hotel.

  A tiny room, very expensive. The tap water that I splash on my face has an unpleasant smell. I check that the television works, then crash on to the bed and go to sleep. Less than half an hour later, the earth shakes, the walls vibrate, and I just have time to realize I’ve got a headache before I see from my window a whole lot of workmen, naked to the waist, attacking the façade with pneumatic drills. I lie there under the sheets, can’t get my brain in gear. A knock at my door, the Hyena bursts in, she’s beside herself. I immediately imagine the drills being confiscated – the poor men don’t know what’s coming to them.

  ‘I’m out of here. They’ve got a fucking nerve, saying they don’t have any quieter rooms. In reception, they said nobody but us complains, that people don’t come to Barcelona to spend all day in their hotel rooms. I’m off, I need my sleep. I’m going to a girlfriend’s place. Are you coming, or do you want to stay here?’

  I grab my things and follow her without thinking. On the way she works out how to get some advantage from the fiasco. ‘I’ll make out some false hotel bills, that’ll bring us out ahead.’

  ‘Whose place are we going to?

  ‘Some French women who live here. We’ll be fine over there.’

  The streets have now been invaded by scooters. Buzzing insects coming at you from all directions. Crash helmets, flipflops, summer clothes, graceful bodies on two cylinders. The city has become a vast cauldron of noise. People sound their horns all the time, while gigantic machines are digging up the roads, exposing the town’s entrails, taking the din to new levels. It seems to be a local custom.

  The blonde woman who takes us in is built like a lumberjack in exile from her forest. Solid and slightly gaunt. She has poor skin, and very fine hair receding from her forehead, her nose is prominent and her bluish-grey eyes are bulging. She serves us coffee so strong it’s practically all grounds. The Hyena monopolizes a joint as soon as she has sat down.

  ‘Good thing you’re here… when they started to knock down the hotel wall, I was on the point of murdering one of them.’

  ‘Touch a hair of their heads? Building workers in Barcelona? Don’t even think about it. It’s their religion here. Barcelona’s the noisiest city in Europe. They’re always knocking everything down all the time. You see them working on building sites at midnight on Saturdays. Nothing stops them. Cranes – they’re the opium of the masses for the Catalans. They dig up the pavements just to see what’s underneath. You wouldn’t believe. They’d kill their father and mother, just to be able to put up a new building.’

  These two are old friends. I don’t dare say that I want to go to bed. I drop off on the couch. When the noise around me forces me to come out of it, the heat is stifling in the room, and the curtains aren’t effective enough to filter the blinding sunlight. The house has filled with people, and I’ve had a lot of painful dreams that I can’t quite remember. There are a dozen or so girls scattered throughout the rooms. Hoarse voices. The blonde, now with a cigarette in her mouth, is hanging up some black garments.

  ‘Sleep OK? Want anything? A coffee? Or I can show you your room.’

  ‘A coffee, yes, I’d love one. Where’s the Hyena?’

  ‘Telephoning out on the terrace.’

  She drops the clothes she’s hanging up and leaves them there on the ground, not bothering to come back to them. She goes off to make me a coffee, but forgets me on the way, to take a draw on a joint passed to her by a little blonde punkette in a shiny skirt, Fairy Tinkerbell in the city. I’m sorry now I didn’t stay at the hotel. Going on to the terrace, I pass a girl with a red Mohican, naked to the waist, tattooed, with a leather skirt and big boots, snorting a line from the wall. It’s like a scene from Mad Max.

  I find the Hyena sitting cross-legged on a battered wicker armchair. She’s changed into shorts and is speaking in Spanish to a dark androgynous girl with a shaved head. She doesn’t sound the same when she speaks another language. She’s being remarkably amiable.

  ‘Have they shown you where you’re sleeping?’

  Just then another blonde flings herself at the Hyena with a great shout. She’s wearing a shabby evening dress, held together down the back by a row of safety pins. I don’t know what to do with myself. I wonder whether all these women are lesbians. What a weird idea, to assemble together by sexual or
ientation.

  Leaning against a wall, a girl in combats and and a man’s white tank top is is also standing back, and looks at me with a smile. ‘You don’t speak Spanish?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you don’t know anyone here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come along, I’ll show you your room.’

  This flat is arranged either side of a long corridor. She opens the door of a tiny boxroom without a window. There’s just enough space for a bed and a wardrobe. I fall asleep immediately.

  When I wake up, I’ve no idea of the time, but I’m so hungry it must be late. Coming out of the bedroom, I see that night has fallen. The flat has now been invaded by fauna of both sexes. Party noise, exactly what I hate most. People have been drinking, and they’re talking loudly. I don’t mind at all that I can’t understand a word they’re shouting. In the living room, a group is dancing in semi-darkness. I recognize the Hyena among them. I wouldn’t have thought she liked dancing. She’s moving her body slowly, eyes shut. She’s graceful. Doesn’t seem like herself. She looks very young at that moment. I don’t dare interrupt her. I try my luck in the kitchen where the girl in combats and tank top is toasting bread and sprinkling it liberally with olive oil, lemon and coarse salt.

  ‘Want some?’

  I take the plate she holds out to me and lean against the sink.

  ‘So what brings you to Barcelona?’

  ‘Work. You speak good French.’

  ‘I lived in Paris for five years. You from there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The French think they’re so great, don’t they? Can’t see why. Nothing interesting’s happened there for twenty years. But I like Parisian women. They’re good to look at. Want a Coke or some beer?’

  She opens the fridge, acting as if she’s at home here. A thick leather bracelet round her wrist accentuates the delicacy of her joints. When she smiles, it reveals a gap between her front teeth. Two parallel lines frame her lips. She has delicate skin. She conveys an impression of fragility combined with great capacity for endurance.

  ‘And you and your friend the Hyena are going to squat here, are you?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend, we’re working together.’

  She smiles, tipping her head back to swallow the beer. ‘Don’t worry, anyone can tell right away that you’re not one of us.’

  ‘Oh really? How can you tell?’

  I don’t say to her that it would never cross my mind to say to a woman who likes other women that ‘anyone can tell’. She might take it badly and I’d understand if she did. In the next room, someone has turned up the sound and the surrounding noise gets louder. She says her name is Zoska, and disappears. I sit down next to the fridge, on my own amid all the noise, smoking the joint she left me and hoping it’ll help me to go back to sleep. I get up to go and tell the Hyena I’m going to bed, although I don’t get the feeling she’s bothered about me.

  In the living room, at first I think I must be seeing things. A mass of naked bodies, scattered in groups, is writhing about all over the room. On the floor, on the couch, under the table. The spectacle is so startling that I find it hard to work out what it consists of. One girl on all fours, clad only in her big boots and her little round red-lensed glasses, with an axe tattooed on her back, is being had by another girl who has short hair and a muscular body. This one is pinning the first girl’s neck to the ground, while her hand and part of her arm has vanished inside her.

  The woman who was wearing the evening gown has pulled it up to the waist and the demonic Fairy Tinkerbell is leaning over her. A string of saliva leads from her lips to the blonde’s face. Her hand is moving between her thighs. The evening-dress girl lifts her pelvis and cries out: from her shaved pubis flows a transparent stream that doesn’t look like urine, then they roll around together saying things that make them both scream with laughter. Two fully dressed girls are standing near them, talking, and one of them plants a hearty slap on Fairy Tinkerbell’s buttock, without interrupting her conversation.

  One girl standing up, whom I can only see in profile, is pulling on white latex gloves and putting some gel on them. With the other hand, she’s holding the shoulder of a slight brunette, and with her knees is pushing her legs apart. Behind her, a dark girl pulls her head back by the hair. Across the room, I recognize Zoska, with her back to me, leaning over a bare-chested man who has muscular shoulders and taut abdominals, with chicano tattoos on his arms. A swallow on his chest. He has large, almond-shaped eyes and cupid-bow lips. She slowly traces a line on the top of his shoulder. A thick red scratch mark appears. He turns his face towards her, with a faraway ecstatic expression. He reaches up with his mouth, she kisses him voluptuously, then raises herself up and traces another line under the first. Another boy watches, glass in hand. Zoska looks up, turns to him and beckons. The blonde whose flat it is joins them, she’s holding hands with a dark-haired girl with pale skin, and gives her a long lingering kiss, then stands back and gives her a loud slap on the face, then another. Suddenly the Hyena is by my side. I’m relieved to find she’s still fully dressed, before I realize that she too has a latex glove on her hand.

  ‘Maybe you’d be more comfortable in your room, Lucie.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry about me, I’m not ten years old, you know. I’ve been around.’

  She looks at me disbelievingly, then shrugs and plunges back into the middle of the scene. The woman with the orange Mohican says something to her and gets her to kneel down.

  I turn round abruptly and leave the room. In my bedroom, I shut the door firmly behind me and try, like people do in films, to block it with a chair. I can’t work out exactly whether I’m angry, disgusted or terrorized. I’m still holding the joint in my hand; it’s gone out. I light it again and lie on the bed. I’m furious because I feel I’ve been forced to witness something that has nothing to do with me. But not so disturbed as not to admit that at the same time I’m fascinated. Nothing will persuade me to come out of the room I’ve barricaded myself into, but there’s nothing either to stop me contemplating in the quiet of my room the images I’ve just registered.

  VANESSA

  VANESSA WAKES UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE night. On her pillow is a bundle of feathers, a tiny hooked claw, a beak, and some round white internal organs. It takes a moment to realize that Bel-Ami, the cat, has just vomited there. A pestilential smell makes itself felt. Vanessa opens the window before pulling off the pillowslip and putting it in the washing machine. From a chair, Bel-Ami watches her movements with suspicion. She takes him on her knees, and strokes him under his chin, something she knows he can’t resist. Wide awake now, she knows she’ll find it hard to get back to sleep. Too many things are chasing round in her head and disturbing her, she lies down again, hoping at least to be able to close her eyes before dawn.

  The sun is beating down on the Plaza Real; they’re on a restaurant terrace. White cloths on the tables, waiters in black aprons. Two young Romanian girls go from table to table, less than five minutes later a tourist notices that his wallet’s gone, he shouts and jumps up, but it’s too late. The staff will pretend to sympathize, directing him to the nearest police station, where tourists are queuing up to report thefts. Vanessa, dark glasses, chin in hand, is talking, without looking at her interlocutor, about a well-known young French actress.

  ‘She sleeps with all my exes. The lot. But some of them, you know, I wonder what I ever saw in them. Nothing puts her off. Funny.’

  Sitting back in his chair, he widens his eyes, but tries to look cool. He’s calculating that once he’s slept with her, he’ll just have to let the actress know, and she’ll throw herself at him like a starving castaway. The prospect of this double hit makes him feel dizzy.

  Vanessa looks at him out of the corner of her eye. What string of circumstances has brought her to this point? Into this situation which she would still like to think ambiguous, yet in this little man’s eyes she can read that he’s perfectly sure of himself, and alread
y plucking up the courage to hold her hand. As a precautionary measure, she puts one hand under the table, while the other is occupied by a cigarette, and out of danger. Whenever did she think it a good idea to have a date with this guy? She must have been bored out of her skull. If a woman’s pulling power is measured by the quality of her would-be lovers, she’s in trouble. He punctuates his speeches with a strident and unattractive little laugh. He hasn’t stopped talking since he got here. About himself. Without giving away anything personal – he must be afraid of letting drop something about his wife and children. He’s a French musician, who’s had some recent success, but he hasn’t often had much chance to play away. Now he’s explaining the difference between modern art and contemporary art, kindly assuming from the start that she’s an imbecile. He’s telling her about his tours, and every five minutes he assures her that he isn’t impressed by all this sudden fame, but that’s all he talks about. He claims he couldn’t care less about meeting celebrities, but he’s constantly name-dropping.