Pétronille

by Amélie Nothomb

  “Have you read it, Maman?” I asked her sotto voce.

  “I have. I didn’t understand what it was supposed to mean, but it was very beautiful.”

  In the meantime my father, somewhat awkwardly but with dignity, was explaining to Pétronille why her book was a masterpiece. I saw that she was impressed. She had an expression on her face that I had never seen.

  Once we sat down to lunch, my mother asked her about her background.

  “I grew up in the banlieue of Paris,” she said.

  All my parents knew about France was what they saw on the news, and they gave her a horrified look. Pétronille must have realized that they thought she was a kid from the projects, and she did nothing to correct their misapprehension.

  I joined in her game: “Did you set many cars on fire?”

  “I stopped when I turned thirteen.”

  “You moved on to other things?”

  “Yeah. My gang started doing crack. That’s when I decided it was time to split, and I began reading Shakespeare.”

  My parents’ admiration for the Bard soared to incredible heights.

  On the train on our way home, I burst out laughing.

  “What on earth were you playing at?”

  “You have no idea. Your father really intimidated me. I wanted to live up to his expectations.”

  “That you did. But the naked truth shows you in an even better light, if you want my opinion.”

  “Isn’t your mother a little peculiar?”

  “Don’t worry about her. She says the title of my most famous novel is Cries and Whispers.”

  I was convinced that Pétronille’s next book would be about the desert. I was wrong: in early 2009 Love on an Empty Stomach was published. It was the tale of a fortune hunter in the American South in the early twentieth century.

  It was an adventure novel, and it was a real hit. She appeared on a literary program, and attracted the attention of Jacques Chessex. The great Swiss writer was clearly taken with this human stick of dynamite, and he sent her a stunning letter of the kind only he could write:

  Dear Pétronille Fanto,

  Your novel has confirmed what I saw with my own eyes: you are a child and you are an ogre.

  You are now one of my jesters.

  Jacques Chessex

  I was struck by the cogency of his words. The fact that this man who was an expert on ogres (had his novel The Ogre not won the Prix Goncourt?) had branded Pétronille an ogre served as a warning to me.

  “He’s right,” I said. “When I spend time with you, I feel as if I’m being devoured.”

  “You don’t seem to mind. But why did he say I was a child?”

  “Ask him.”

  It was a delicate topic. We didn’t dare tell her that at the age of thirty-four she looked eighteen.

  I don’t know if she ever asked Chessex, but their correspondence flourished. When that autumn the Swiss author died, Pétronille mourned him the way a daughter mourns a father.

  When I saw her swollen face—but swollen only on one side—I couldn’t believe she had wept all that profusely.

  “Have you had cosmetic surgery? Is that the secret of your eternal youth?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Please tell me.”

  “I’m taking part in clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies.”

  “You are? Why?”

  “To make money.”

  “Is it legal?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You’re crazy, Pétro!”

  “Believe it or not, it’s hardly my royalties that’ll pay my bills.”

  “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? You look like half of one of the Bogdanov brothers.”

  “It will go away.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It’s Bromboramase, for gastroenteritis.”

  “Just looking like that is enough to give anyone instantaneous gastroenteritis!”

  “You’re such a fussbudget. Good job you didn’t see me last week, after the Gascalgine 30H. It’s medication for improving blood circulation.”

  “And?”

  “My face was so swollen around my eyelids I couldn’t open my eyes. I’m not exaggerating: for two days I was technically blind.”

  “I hope the lab paid you overtime.”

  “As long as it’s only my body, I don’t mind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the side effects start affecting your brain it’s not so funny. A month ago I tested this thing for postpartum depression. I understood after it was over why it worked: I lost all my recent memory. Imagine, you have this mother who has just given birth, and she doesn’t even remember being pregnant. When she sees her baby, she wonders who it is.”

  “And so what happened with you?”

  “I couldn’t remember anything that had happened since I came back from the desert. The memory loss lasted several days.”

  “Pétronille, please, stop this evil work.”

  “And how am I supposed to eat?”

  “I can give you some money.”

  “Are you out of your mind? I’m a free woman.”

  Under normal circumstances, I would have found her declaration hilarious. But now it went straight to my heart: could this crazy kid be trusted to look after herself?

  “Aren’t you afraid there will be lasting consequences?” I asked.

  “I’m a very brave person.”

  “Recklessly so.”

  “And besides, I’m having fun. There’s a sorcerer’s apprentice side to it—you never know what’s going to happen.”

  “You don’t need to go playing sorcerer’s apprentice. Love on an Empty Stomach is doing well.”

  “You only get royalties after a whole year has gone by, in case you’d forgotten.”

  “Ask for an advance. Your editor will get it for you.”

  “I have my dignity.”

  “It’s misguided.”

  “Leave me alone, bird. Who do you think you are, telling me how to behave? You spend all your royalties on champagne!”

  “Well, given how you help me drink it, you shouldn’t complain. What’s more, is your medication compatible with alcohol?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  I started to be really worried. I began calling Pétronille every day. When it comes to people I care for, I have a mother hen side I cannot control. In the case in point, I think it was warranted. Before long, she stopped picking up when she saw my number on the screen. This did little to reassure me.

  In November, at the book fair in Brive, I thought Pétronille was behaving oddly. I told her so.

  “Have you seen the way you’re looking at me? That’s why I act strange,” she replied.

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “In what way am I behaving strangely, then?”

  “You laugh all the time, and you’re constantly eating.”

  “Yes. It’s called the book fair in Brive-la-Gaillarde.”

  Perhaps she was right. But the following month she was the one who called me one night at around midnight.

  “What proof is there that I am not you?” she said. “There is no border between human beings. Amélie, I feel physically like the champagne you drank this evening.”

  “The medication you’re testing at the moment, it wouldn’t be LSD, would it?”

  “I’m looking out at Paris through the window: did you know that the Eiffel Tower is hollow? It’s a launchpad for rockets.”

  “You’re confusing it with Kourou in French Guiana.”

  “That’s for the space shuttle. The Eiffel Tower is for private rockets. With an orbital speed of eleven kilometers per second, you can leave the Earth’s atmosphere very quickly.”

 
“Are you calling me for help?”

  “No. I just wanted to let you know that I’m coming with you. I can’t let you go into space on your own, I’ve seen the way you slice lemons. But for pity’s sake, take off those orange pajamas, the color makes me want to throw up.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Words cannot describe the anxiety I felt during the ride to her apartment. I went up the stairs four at a time and found Pétronille in the middle of frying fish.

  “You want some?” she asked, as natural as can be.

  She slid the fish from the frying pan onto her plate and started eating.

  “You eat fish at one o’clock in the morning?”

  “Sure. Don’t make such a face. It’s perfectly legal.”

  The smell was not reassuring. While she was stuffing her face, I looked around the kitchen: the mess beggared belief. A bachelor pad.

  “Don’t you ever wish you were part of a couple?”

  “Are you off your head?” she replied, indignant, with her mouth full.

  “What’s wrong with asking?”

  “You know very well that I can’t stand anyone.”

  “And that no one can stand you?”

  “That’s not my problem. I am enchanted with my freedom.”

  I noticed a blister pack of pills and reached for it: “Extrabromelanase…Is that what makes you so free that you called me at midnight?”

  “If it bothers you so much you shouldn’t pick up.”

  “But I’m worried sick about you! When I see your number, I pick up. And with what you’ve been telling me, I have every reason to panic. What is this stuff supposed to treat, anyway?”

  “It stabilizes schizophrenics.”

  “Pétronille, I forbid you from taking one more pill. You must write a report, immediately, about this medication, and specify its very grave side effects.”

  “Don’t exaggerate.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m young, I like danger, and I love the Russian roulette side of this job which, I might mention, is well-paid. So there.”

  “You could die, you know.”

  “I know. That’s why I said Russian roulette.”

  “And what about me? Have you thought about me?”

  “You can live without me.”

  “I can. But not as well. How selfish you are! And besides, even if you don’t die, you might be left with terrible irreversible aftereffects.”

  “And what do you suggest?”

  “Find another way to earn your living.”

  “I’ve tried. I’ve been a waitress, a school supervisor, an English tutor. It was all dead boring and didn’t leave me the time to write. Do you know that you are one of the rare privileged individuals who actually lives from her writing? One percent of the writers who are published actually manage to live from their trade. One percent!”

  “It’s the finest profession on earth. You cannot expect it to be easy.”

  “Well, you make it look easy. I had always dreamt of being a writer, but it was seeing you that convinced me I should go ahead and try. People figure that if you can do it, so can they.”

  “And they’re right.”

  “They’re wrong: it’s not a question of talent. I’ve watched you: I’m not saying you don’t have talent, but I am saying, because I’ve studied you for a long time, that talent is not enough. The secret is your craziness.”

  “You are a thousand times crazier than I am, with or without your medication!”

  “It’s your craziness, I said: it’s your particular way of being crazy. There are crazy people everywhere. But crazy people like you—they don’t exist. No one knows just what goes to make up your craziness. Not even you.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And that’s why it’s a scam. Because of you people become writers, but they don’t realize that they don’t have—not one of them—your fuel at their disposal.”

  “So? Do you regret it? You’ve written wonderful novels!”

  “I don’t regret a thing. But allow me to ruin my health, since that’s the price I have to pay.”

  “In that case, don’t expect me to be your witness. Don’t call me at midnight to tell me that the Eiffel Tower is a launchpad for private rockets.”

  “I did that?”

  “Why do you think I’m here? We have a problem, Pétronille. To leave you in that state is tantamount to a failure to render assistance to a person in danger. Come and stay at my place.”

  “Stay at your place? Hell on earth.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “I promise I won’t call you at midnight anymore. You can go now.”

  In early January, 2010, I got a call from the Cochin hospital:

  “We have a patient here, Peronilla Fanto, who has assured us that you would be willing to put her up for a while.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “It’s a mystery. She has developed allergies to… all sorts of things. She can’t stay on her own at the moment.”

  Thus, a major trauma victim came to stay with me.

  “There you go, getting yourself another ride in an ambulance,” I said.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “You’re right. You’re not going to test any more drugs?”

  “Never again.”

  She didn’t want to tell me what had happened. It seemed to have reached unthinkable proportions.

  Our cohabitation and lasted nearly three months. She turned out to be difficult. Pétronille could not stand dust, or the color orange, or the smell of cheese, or my dried flowers, or my music (“God they’re awful, your Gothic hymns!”), or my lifestyle (“I thought you were Belgian, but you’re German!”—I never found out what she meant by that).

  Personally, I found she had changed. Her intolerance toward that unknown drug had left her in a state of shock: she had become a hypochondriac, ultrasensitive to noise and to the oddest things, like M&Ms, or my painting of sunflowers in the snow, my deodorant, the chandelier in the kitchen (“I don’t believe it, a chandelier in the kitchen!”). And finally, she didn’t get along with my cacti. Even drinking champagne with her was not as pleasant as it used to be. She seemed constantly on edge, and abnormally vulnerable. We often argued for the most incomprehensible reasons.

  One day I made the mistake of cursing the pill that had changed her. It lit the powder keg: Pétronille left and took her belongings with her. I knew I must never bring up that subject again.

  Nothing new under the sun: just because you adore someone doesn’t mean you can necessarily live with them. As usual, for weeks Pétronille gave no sign of life. But our friendship had known many such periods of silence. During this one, I thought of her with a warlike pride. Pétronille was like a glorious soldier who had not tried to protect herself and who, when she came back from combat battered and victorious, went straight back to the front of literature.

  In this era of pretentious young women, where the word “violence” is bandied left and right, here was a young novelist who had exposed her body to a real danger in order to continue writing. In a very singular way she had illustrated the book by Michel Leiris, On Literature as a Form of Bullfighting, associating the act of writing with authentic danger, thus endowing it with laurels that had previously become irrelevant.

  When Pétronille was in one of her moods, I left the initiative to her. She contacted me several months later to tell me she had a novel coming out with Flammarion, and that she was now working as a literary critic for a major weekly publication in Luxembourg. I was completely taken aback by this last piece of news.

  “What’s the connection between you and Luxembourg? Do you have a secret bank account there?”

  “You know very well I have no money.”

  True enough. I knew no one who was so
broke. One day I saw her with holes in her socks, and I suggested we go buy some new ones; she answered that all she had to do was layer several pairs. “Socks never get holes in the same place,” she said philosophically.

  “But how did you land such a prestigious position?” I pressed her.

  “It’s too complicated to explain.”

  Pétronille’s life was awash with mystery. This adventurer in the world of writing was not without savoir-faire. Before long her literary column was being read by a good number of French people, who were impressed by the independence of her opinions and the elegance of her style. She became a respected authority.

  There is the danger, in such a position, of it becoming stultifyingly routine. Many people would have taken advantage of the situation to play the literary luminary. Her novel The Distribution of Shadows won a prestigious literary prize—as did her previous novel—and this was something any other writer would have boasted about ad nauseam. Pétronille didn’t even seem to notice.

  It was the following year, I think, that it began. It’s hard to describe a phenomenon you know practically nothing about.

  It seemed that Pétronille had fallen in love. But I cannot be sure.

  In love with whom? That I know even less. And was it going well? I have no idea.

  As she was once again my drinking companion, when she was as drunk as I was I would grill her, but to no avail. The champagne made her open up about a great number of subjects, but not that one.

  It did not stop her from writing, for all that. Love is not known for causing inspiration to dry up.

  In 2012, she published the finest apocalyptic novel I know, The Immediate. Then she came out with a fantasy fiction about tattoos, The Blood of Sorrow. Although it wasn’t patently obvious, each of these books, in its way, was a love story.

  Pétronille went traveling. She left for Budapest. She disappeared to New York. She said that, like Frédéric Moreau in Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, she wanted to become acquainted with “the melancholy of ocean liners.”

  “You went to New York on an ocean liner?” I asked, astonished.