Vernon Subutex One

by Virginie Despentes

  It had been a shock, getting used to seeing him wearing oldman pyjamas. Watching him lose his hair was bad enough. But seeing him in those ridiculous pyjamas made Vernon’s heart bleed. Bertrand could not manage to eat, and the finest weed in the world made no difference. He had lost the stature that was his defining trait. Too prominent beneath his sallow skin, the bones became obscene. He stubbornly carried on wearing the silver skull rings that now slipped off his fingers. He could see himself wasting away, day by day, he was conscious to the end.

  Then came the constant pain, the frail body, the skeletal mask. He was always joking about the morphine pump because jokes were their only form of communication. Sometimes, Bertrand touched on the death that awaited him. He would say that he was woken in the night by fear, and he would say “The worst of it is, my brain is fine and I can feel my body falling apart and there’s nothing I can do”. Vernon could not say “Come on, you’ll be fine, just hang in there, mate”. So instead they listened to The Cramps, The Gun Club and MC5 and they drank beer while Bertrand still could. His family was furious, but honestly, what else did they have?

  Then the news of his death, one morning, a text message. At the time, Vernon, like the others, managed to remain dignified at the funeral. Dark glasses. They all had a pair at home, and a handsome black suit. It was only afterwards that the panic took hold. The panic and the loneliness. The impulse to call Bertrand, the inability to delete his last voicemails, the reluctance to believe that it had happened. After a certain age, we do not move on from the dead, we remain in their time, in their company. On the anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death, Vernon had done exactly as he would have had Bertrand been there, he listened to the Clash back catalogue and drank beer. He had never been particularly interested in them as a group. But this is what friendship means: you learn to play on other people’s home turf.

  That day in December 2002, they had been queuing up to buy smoked salmon because Bertrand was spending Christmas with a Norwegian girl he wanted to impress with his culinary sophistication. He had convinced himself that smoked salmon could be bought in this shop in the fifth arrondissement and nowhere else. Having trekked here on the Métro, they were waiting to be served. The queue snaked out onto the pavement, it would be a forty-minute wait at least. Vernon had gone off to buy cigarettes, and it was on the radio in the bar-tabac that he heard the news that Strummer was dead. He had gone back to Bertrand. No way, you’re shitting me! You think I’d joke about something like that? Bertrand had turned pale, though he still waited and bought his salmon and two bottles of vodka. They had walked back through the second arrondissement singing “Lost in the Supermarket” and remembering the time they had seen Strummer play a solo gig together. Vernon had only gone to keep Bertrand company, but once he got there, an unexpected surge of emotion made him waver, he had pressed his shoulder against his mate and felt tears well in his eyes. He had never said a word about this, but on the day Joe Strummer died, he had confessed and Bertrand had said Yeah, I know, I saw, but I didn’t want to bust your balls about it. Strummer . . . fuck! Who’s left worth talking about?

  *

  Three months later came the turn of Jean-No. Not drunk, not speeding. A trunk road, a lorry, a hairpin bend and a patch of fog. Coming back from a weekend away with his wife, he tried to change the radio station. She came away with a broken nose. The one they reconstructed for her was a lot prettier than the original. Jean-No never got to see it.

  That Sunday, Vernon was at a girlfriend’s place, sitting on a folded mattress propped against a wall and covered with an Indian throw so pockmarked by burn holes from spliffs they looked like part of the pattern. They were having an “Alien” night, the complete boxed set, with a home cinema projector. The girl in question lived in an attic room near Goncourt Métro. A stone’s throw away was one of the last remaining D.V.D. rental outlets. They had already watched “A Better Tomorrow” and “Mad Max”, “The Godfather” trilogy and “A Chinese Ghost Story”. She was a real find, this girl, totally into weed and manga. Not the kind who always wants to go out. With her, the only ball-ache was: Hey, babe, could you go down to the corner shop and get me some chocolate? Five floors, no lift. Vernon was not the kind to be a servile sweetheart. She had just brought two glasses of ice-cold Coke on a huge tray, the film was on “pause”, so when his mobile rang, Vernon took the call – something he rarely did on a Sunday. But it had been a long time since he had had a call from Emilie, so he figured it must be something important. She had just heard the news from Jean-No’s little sister. Vernon was surprised that she was the one chosen to ring round his friends. After all, Jean-No had a wife. In the hospital, in the confusion, maybe . . . but asking the mistress to put the word out? There had been a time when he and Emilie were very close, but they had lost touch and now was not the time to catch up.

  Vernon had insisted they carry on watching the movie. Said he didn’t really feel anything. This shocked him. He thought maybe he was becoming callous. But he and Jean-No saw each other every week, and they had become even closer after Bertrand’s death. They lunched together in the Turkish place near the gare du Nord, always ordered the same 12-euro menu washed down with cold beer. Jean-No had given up cigarettes, it had been a real bitch. If the poor bastard had known it was all for nothing, he would have set an alarm to wake him in the middle of the night just so he could smoke more. Jean-No had married a ball-buster. A lot of guys feel reassured by being kept on a tight leash.

  It was only later, during the night, that it really hit him. In that instant when sleep took hold, he felt the icy teeth sink into him. He had had to get dressed and go out – walk through the cold, be on his own, see the lights pass other bodies melt into the milling crowd and feel the ground beneath his feet. He was alive. He was struggling to breathe.

  He often went out walking at night. It was a habit he had picked up in the late eighties, when metalheads started getting into hiphop. Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys were signed to the same label as Slayer, which made the connection. In the record shop, he had become friends with a Funkadelic fan, a scabby, runty white guy who never said much, looking back he figures the guy was probably into smack but at the time he hadn’t put two and two together. The guy was a tagger, he used to spray “Zona” everywhere he went. The friendship had not lasted long, Zona was tired of working on the street, “The Métro, that’s where the real action is”, he wanted to tag the train tracks, the depots, and Vernon had no desire to follow him into this subterranean world. He never caught the bug – he struggled to take an interest in the heroic tales of legendary crews like 93MC or the MKC, in wildstyle and throw-up . . . He could see there had to be a buzz to it, but he never got it.

  His particular buzz involved risking breaking his spine climbing up onto the roof of a building and spending two hours in the silence of the spray-can, taking breaks, smoking fags, watching the people below who never thought to look up and see his shadow, a silent sentinel.

  The first night of his life without Jean-No, he walked until the soles of his feet were sore, then he kept walking. He thought about Jean-No’s kids, but he could not make sense of it. Fatherless. The word simply did not square with everything he knew about the three mindless little monkeys ceaselessly clamouring for attention, for sweets, for new toys.

  Jean-No was happy to act the arsehole. He was arrogant. He had always been one to listen to fucked-up music, in his teens he had loved Einstürzende Neubauten and Foetus, later he had got into Straight Edge hardcore punk – he was a fan of Rudimentary Peni and obsessed with Minor Threat – which was strange given that Jean-No drank like a fish. You had to really like him to spend time with him, because he could be completely scathing. When he turned forty, in an effort to seem more posh, he started getting into opera. He dressed like a Playmobil figurine in his Sunday best and he spouted right-wing bullshit ten years before it was fashionable. At the time, it was so unusual it had a certain cachet.

  Vernon now lived in a world where Ian M
acKaye could start smoking crack, and Jean-No was no longer around to comment.

  Then it had been Pedro’s turn. Scarcely eight months later. Heart attack. Pedro’s real name was Pierre, but he snorted so much coke he earned his South American name.

  Vernon had been queuing outside the Elysée-Montmartre – it hadn’t burned down yet – to see the Libertines. He was trying to hook up with an unlikely assistant/intern working on some T.V. programme with Thierry Ardisson, she could talk about nothing but the presenter who she claimed to loathe, though she was clearly fascinated. He had spotted a friend in the distance, standing outside the venue and waved to him, eager to show off the girl he was with, dark hair fringe skinny jeans fuck-me shoes of the sort the city was mass-producing in the early years of the new millennium. And seeing him come over, the friend started to sob. He was saying Pedro Pedro Pedro, unable to explain himself and Vernon had felt an immense weariness surge through him.

  Pedro had easily snorted three houses, two Ferraris, every lover, every friendship, every glimpse of a career, his looks and every last tooth in his head. He did not do it shamefacedly, claiming that he did not have a problem, no, his shtick was narcissism, exhilarating hysteria, a passion he had completely come to terms with. He rubbed coke on his gums, got it all over his jacket, he knew every toilet in every bar in Paris and selected his watering hole based on the practicality of the toilet. He would show up at Vernon’s place trailing snow drifts everywhere and disappear two days later leaving Vernon in a state of coma. Pedro was into Marvin Gaye, Bohannon, Diana Ross and the Temptations. Vernon loved being invited round to Pedro’s place, the sound system was amazing, the sofas comfortable, the whiskies intercontinental – they would take turns being mobsters, gumshoes and English dandies.

  Vernon had managed to dig out a photo of the four of them together. Him and three dead men. They were clustered around him, posing on his thirty-fifth birthday. A nice photo, the sort people used to take with an old-fashioned camera and make copies for their friends. Four boys in a blurry past, but thin, with full heads of hair, bright eyes and smiles not tinged with bitterness. They were raising a glass, Vernon had been depressed that night, traumatised at the thought of turning thirty-five. Four handsome lads, happy to be morons, knowing nothing about anything, and most importantly not knowing that they were living the best that life had in store for them. They had spent most of the night listening to Smokey Robinson.

  After he buried Pedro, Vernon had stopped going out, stopped returning phone calls. He thought it was a phase, that it would pass. After the deaths of several close friends, it did not seem inappropriate to need to withdraw into himself.

  It was around this time that his cash-flow problems really began to bite, which exacerbated his tendency to cut himself off. The prospect of going round to someone’s house for dinner when he did not have the money to bring a bottle discouraged him from accepting invitations. He was too depressed to go out in case someone suggested clubbing together to buy a gram. Depressed about the price of Métro tickets. Depressed to be wearing trainers with the soles falling off. Freaking out about details he had never noticed before, brooding about them obsessively.

  He stayed home. He was grateful for the times he lived in. He binged on music, on T.V. boxed sets, on movies. Gradually he stopped listening to the radio. Since the age of twenty, his first reflex when he woke up in the morning was to turn it on. Now, he found it disturbing without being interesting. He had got out of the habit of listening to the news. He had stopped watching television almost without realising. He was too busy on the internet. He would glance at the headlines. But he spent most of his time on porn sites. He doesn’t want to think about the crisis, about Islam, climate change, fracking, ill-treated orang-utans, about Roma-nians getting chucked off buses. His little bubble is snug. He can survive if he holds his breath. He reduces every gesture to a bare minimum. He eats less. He has made a start by streamlining dinner. Chinese instant noodles from a packet. He has stopped buying meat – protein is for athletes. Mostly, he eats rice. He buys it in five-kilo bags from Tang Frères. He is cutting down on cigarettes – delaying his first smoke of the day, waiting longer before the second, and after his morning coffee wondering whether he really wants a third. He saves the butts so there is no wastage. He knows all the local office doorways where workers huddle for a quick cancer stick during the day, and sometimes as he walks past he slows, picks out the longest stubs. He feels like a spent coal, like an ember quickened now and then by a gust of wind, but never quite enough to set the kindling ablaze. A dying fire.

  Sometimes he gets a caffeine burst. He logs on to LinkedIn and makes lists of guys who still seem to have jobs, guys he used to know, promising himself he will get in touch. He imagines his spiel, it would start off with some story about a girl. His reputation as a pickup artist makes men more well disposed to relaxed conversations. So this is what he will say – I haven’t been in Paris, I’ve been fucking some little Hungarian who dragged me off to Budapest, or some beautiful American who’s forever jetting around the world – the nationality isn’t important, what matters is giving the impression he has been having a wild time – anyway, I’m back in town and I’m looking for a bit of work, anything at all really, you got something you could put my way? He’ll play it a bit cool, a bit laid-back, not edgy and uptight. On the money side, he can hardly bullshit, it’s blindingly obvious he hasn’t got a cent. Then again, he was never exactly rolling in it. It added to his street-cred back in the day. That was long before the 2000s when people head off to gigs, casual as fuck, sporting expensive designer shoes, this season’s watch on their wrist, a pair of jeans cut so you know they were bought this year. Being flat broke has lost its poetic charm since Zadig & Voltaire started exploiting thrift store chic – whereas for decades it was the trademark of the true artist, of someone who refused to sell his soul. These days it’s death to losers, even in the rock industry.

  But he never makes a call to ask for help. He cannot put his finger on precisely what is stopping him. He has had time to think about it. It remains an enigma. He scoured the internet in search of advice for pathological procrastinators. He drew up lists of what he had to lose, what he would be risking, and what he had to gain. It made no difference. He calls no-one.

  *

  Alexandre Bleach is dead. Seeing his name plastered all over Facebook, Vernon does not immediately grasp the significance. He was found, dead, in a hotel room.

  Who is going to pay his back rent? This is the first thing Vernon thinks. He’s had no reply to the emails and text messages he has been sending these past few weeks. His cries for help. He was used to Alex being slow on the uptake. Vernon was counting on him. Like every other time he was in deep shit. Alexandre always bailed him out.

  Vernon is sitting at his laptop – emotions that are contradictory or alien to each other are clawing at his chest like a bunch of cats tossed into a bag by a deft and ruthless hand. The news spreads across the internet like leprosy. For a long time now, Alexandre has belonged to everyone. Vernon thought he was used to it. Whenever Alexandre released a record or went on tour, he was impossible to avoid. Not an hour of the day passed without seeing him on display, writhing somewhere, crooning some mindless rubbish in that beautiful, deep drug-addled voice of his. Alexandre was touched by success the way someone might be hit by a truck: he never gave the impression that he had come through it unscathed. His problem was not arrogance, but a savage despair that exhausted those closest to him. It is hard to watch someone get what everyone dreams of, and then have to console them for it.

  No photos of the stiff in the hotel room yet. But it’s only a matter of time. Alex drowned. In a bathtub. A champagne-and-prescription-meds co-production; he fell asleep. God knows what he was doing alone in a bath in a hotel room in the middle of the afternoon. Then again, God knows what made the guy so desperately miserable. Alex even managed to fuck up his own death. A hotel is too prosaic to be fantasy but not bleak enough to be exotic. H
e often booked into a hotel for a few days, he only had to think he had seen a paparazzo outside his place and he would go and sleep somewhere else. Alex liked living in hotels. He was forty-six. Who waits for the onset of the menopause, male or female, to die of an overdose? Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston . . . maybe it’s a black thing.

  Bleach liked to hook up with his old friends. It was like the need to piss, but it happened regularly. There would be no news from him for a year, maybe two, then he would be calling like a crazed stalker, bombarding you with emails, he was even capable of showing up at someone’s house unannounced. It was impossible to drink with him in a bar. Conversation was interrupted every five minutes by some fan, and fans can be aggressive. Or completely psycho. In general, the sort of fan who butts in on a conversation is a pain in the arse. When Alexandre decided he wanted to see Vernon, he would call and invite himself over. They would drink beer and pretend that nothing had changed. What a joke. With one song, Alexandre earned more than a guy like Vernon in twenty years running the shop. How could this minor detail not affect their relationship?

  Alex had made himself a lot of friends on the V.I.P. circuit. But he was convinced that his “real life” had ended when he became successful. Vernon had often tried to explain this was just a theoretical notion: somewhere around the age of thirty, life starts to lose its lustre: McJob or megastar, things don’t get any better for anyone. The difference is that for those who don’t get to ride the train to fame, there is no compensation. Just because your youth is fading does not mean you get to fly around the world first class, to fuck the prettiest girls, hang out with cool dealers and start investing in Harley-Davidsons. But Alex would not listen. In fact, he really did seem so unhappy that it was difficult to get him to see how lucky he was.