Free Day

by Inès Cagnati

  This morning, she started in again with that nonsense about the water lilies. I hate her. The English professor, too. He talks to us endlessly about people who’ve been dead forever, instead of leaving them in peace, which they definitely deserve, or telling stories of his own. I can’t bear the whole business anymore. If only he spoke in English, then we wouldn’t understand. But no. Everything he tells us is in French. He’s completely insane.

  This morning he told the story of a girl named Ophelia, an old story. It interested me all the same because of my cousin Ophélie, my Aunt Gina’s daughter, who’s a kind of candle like her mother, but even yellower, serious and as stiff as the devil. I’d like to know what kind of life you can expect to live with a name like Ophelia.

  In the professor’s story, Ophelia doesn’t look like my cousin at all. She’s a beautiful young girl with long blond hair, sweet and fair as a water nymph. She’s very in love with a boy, Hamlet, and he’s very in love with her, too. It started well. They could have been happy if the boy hadn’t had a dead father who, instead of leaving his son in peace, came to see him every night demanding that he avenge his death. Me, I think the dead should stay in their place, and not entertain themselves by playing ghosts. The father would talk about how he was murdered by his wife, the boy’s mother, and by his brother, because the two of them were also in love and wanted to get married. Basically, the dead man is jealous of everybody else and wants to keep them from being happy. What a family. The father, after stupidly letting himself be murdered, wants his son to kill all the guilty ones. Like it’s the son’s fault, all these stories. So then, Hamlet abandons Ophelia. He kills his mother and his uncle of course, and gets killed himself. That makes four deaths in place of one. They’re really brilliant, all of them. It’s truly idiotic. Anyway, I don’t feel sorry for them. They deserved it.

  Only, there’s Ophelia. She never had anything to do with these sad family stories. When she finds herself abandoned, she feels such great sorrow that she can’t take it. So she goes crazy. Simple as that. In any case, that’s what people believe, because she roams around all day singing songs that are as sweet and sad as she is, and the others don’t believe that anyone who’s suffering that much could sing like that. In reality, that doesn’t prove anything, of course. Finally, though, everyone believes she’s crazy. One day, Ophelia walks along a river, softly singing all the while. She sees tender flowers in the water, a floral waterway. She leans over to gather them and falls into the water. And since she can’t swim, she drowns. Then she floats down the river, all spread out with her long blond hair in the flowers. Poor Ophelia. Me, I think she wanted to drown herself amid flowers. She was fed up with feeling all that pain and singing so much. She couldn’t take it anymore.

  When the bell for recess sounded, we all remained silent. The professor went out, his eyes sunk in the depths of his round glasses. Then that giant, idiot string bean Lydia spoke. As for her, her ideal was to be just like Ophelia, to love and be loved so deeply, then to die in the water lost among water lilies in bloom.

  I left without saying anything because it’s true there was nothing to say. But I can’t stand it that she goes on dreaming of such things. That’s never going to happen to her. She’s too ugly. And even if she died amid flowers the way she wants, nobody’s going to mourn her like Ophelia, because Ophelia is so beautiful and sweet, with all that long blond hair. I can’t stand any of it.

  Remembering beastly Lydia’s water lilies hurt so much that I sat down. Daisy woke up and raised her head. I said to her, “Sleep, Daisy. It’s me.”

  She gave a great big yawn and went back to sleep. I like hearing Daisy yawn. She makes a frisky, cute little noise. You’d think she was laughing, and maybe she does laugh. I felt better. I lay down and I tried to sleep, too.

  •

  I was almost asleep when I heard the voice of the little girl saying, “It’s not true, Maman! I’m dreaming! Tell me I’m dreaming, Maman!”

  That gave me quite a start. I hadn’t been thinking about the little girl anymore. With all my might, I tried to think of other things, or to fall asleep. But there was nothing to be done. The little girl came back, with that scent of gasoline and burning rubber.

  All of a sudden I had a thought. What if, instead of stopping, I had just kept going on my old bicycle? Would the accident have happened? Instantly my heart started pounding. Sometimes my heart goes a little crazy. The car on the road might have stopped to let me pass, the car on the road would have passed me. That’s all. I tried very hard to imagine it. I was cycling without stopping in that crazy rain, accompanied by the sharp little shriek of my bicycle. The car on the road let me pass. The car on the road went calmly on its way. It never happened. It really never happened.

  But I’d stopped. It was raining so hard; it was so cold. Water was streaming from my face, from my legs, from my bicycle. I was riding down a frozen river. So when I noticed the car on the road, I stopped. I don’t know why. Because of all the water that was drowning my face and eyes. I saw nothing. All there was, a long time after, was the uproar of the sky breaking into pieces. And after that, the silence of the end of the world.

  When they brought the little girl out of the car I didn’t notice anything. One side of her face was covered in blood and the other, clean, living, and so soft. She hadn’t even lost consciousness. I thought, it’s nothing. She looked calmly from her free eye. The rain fell hard on her face and the bloody water flowed, thick, into her hair, her neck, before disappearing into the grass of the slope. I thought: My coat will get dirty. I am unforgivable.

  People came and there was a lot of noise. Someone tried to clean the little girl’s face with a can of water and a handkerchief. The mother watched, her teeth were chattering, and she was holding her face with her hands to try to stop her teeth from chattering. I looked at her because it’s sad to be unable to stop your teeth from chattering, and because she really looked like a drowned person with that rain streaming down all over her.

  All at once, her hands let go of her face. She opened her mouth, raised her face towards the sky and let out a bizarre, continuous “Ah!”—a sort of rasping gurgle. That’s when I looked at the little girl.

  She was missing one whole side of her face. The eye and the cheek. In their place was a big uneven hollow. It was funny, how half of her face had become a skeleton. The people went away and silence weighed everywhere. I wondered if the eye and the cheek had gotten stuck somewhere in the car, or fallen on the ground, maybe gotten dirty. I thought they better find them right away before they got too dirty, or too dead, or before someone stepped on them. I told myself that again and again. But I stayed there, watching that hollow of a face, with the blood filling it all over again, and the rain beating down hard on it, like into a puddle.

  The little girl shuddered. She began to say, almost calmly, “Maman, it’s not true. I’m dreaming. Tell me I’m dreaming, Maman!”

  She repeated that sentence and nobody answered. Then she said it again, shouting, very loud, louder and louder, starting to be scared, to be very scared. She shouted and nobody answered. She shouted in the rain that refilled her eye socket and her cheek with bloody water.

  I picked up my bicycle, which I’d put down on the slope, threw a leg over it and rode off. I pedaled very fast, without even sitting on the seat, in that crazy rain that drowned everything. For a long time I pedaled. Night fell. Finally I stopped. I couldn’t go on. Immediately, I felt like throwing up. I threw up in the ditch as far as possible from the slope, in order not to get it dirty. I wiped my mouth and nose with a handful of wet grass. When I had recovered a little, I went on my way again. I had to stop two more times to vomit. It was lucky it was raining so hard.

  I wanted to know. If I hadn’t stopped, would all of that have happened? Would everything have happened?

  I realized I was crying very hard for no reason.

  I thought it was ridiculous to cry like that, for no reason. So, after a moment, I made myself stop.
My face looked like it had rained. But it was winter, far from the summer storms that feel so good when you stick your head into the wind and rain. I like to recall memories of storms and wind. Only, I don’t do it too often. I don’t have many good memories, and if I go on recalling the same ones, they get used up, and they’re no good anymore. After that, there’s nothing left.

  I asked myself what I was going to do, when the time came. My father by now must have forgotten his anger and I could go back into the house quietly, as if nothing had happened. Usually that’s how it is. I had suffered for so many hours in the icy rain and my father had said to me: “Get out of here.” I didn’t know what to do anymore. I’m an indecisive person because most of the things I do don’t matter, and what I decide changes nothing. But now I’d had enough. I would head back to the high school without setting foot inside my house. Too bad. At once, I felt tremendously relieved, as relieved and free as if my father hadn’t chased me away.

  I petted Daisy’s soft head. Not every animal is as welcoming as she is. I owe my best memories to her, to her and the dog we had before her. Milan. My father hanged him because he was old. He wasn’t sick or anything. Just old. Dogs can get very tired, sometimes, like people, but you can’t hang people when they’re no longer good for anything. You can do anything you like to animals, hang them when they get old and tired. Milan had understood that he was no longer wanted at the house. He hid, walked with his head low, hardly barked at all anymore. I searched for him everywhere to feed him, but he didn’t want to come near the house. He still wanted to live. On Christmas night, I told the dog to come back with us, nobody would do anything to him because it was Christmas. And then, the next day, the dog was hanging from the big beam of the shed, rigid, his long purple tongue dangling. I was still little, but I understood. I began to scream and scream. In the end my father beat me to make me shut up. I don’t think I was able to make myself stop. My mother shut me in the bedroom, and I stayed there all day. The next summer, when the drought came and the first stream had almost dried up, I found a skull in the mud. I buried it under bunches of wild hazel branches. One day, Daisy would be too old and weary, she would hide, and my father would hang her in the shed. Nothing could be done to stop it.

  I was sad, in the face of all the sad things that had already happened, and all the others still to come. When I start thinking about that, I’m as relentless as death. There was also my mother’s shopping bag. When I left, I would leave it in the shed. I couldn’t take the stolen things back to the high school, that would have been stupid. My mother would find them and surely they would make her happy, in spite of everything. I took them for her. I don’t tell her, but I take them for her. For nobody else in the world would I do that. It’s too hard to steal and I’m so afraid. You can’t have any idea how afraid I am. If anyone found me out, I’d be expelled from the high school. There’s no place for thieves at the high school. The headmistress told us that at the beginning of the year. And it’s true that there are no thieves at the high school, despite what everyone thinks. The objects that disappear, and there are lots of them, are things that I myself take. It’s fun. So many things go missing that everyone thinks that everyone else is either a thief or a future thief. And I know that nobody steals.

  When I bring things home, Maman doesn’t ask me where I got them. She takes them, puts them any old place, and then she forgets them. Later, she finds them, or one of the sisters finds them, and they put them to use. Often, this irritates me. It’s so hard for me to steal, because of this foolish fear that’s always with me. But I know very well that at our house that’s the way it is, so I don’t say anything. It must be because of these marshes. Because we live in the heart of a land choked with wild waters, where strange, mute flowers grow, and ghost birds live that we only know by the cries we hear on the murkiest nights, and then there are those crazy mists into which the trees and our hills vanish; and, because we live in the middle of these watery lands without ever meeting anyone, I believe we no longer have any idea what life is like elsewhere, or if people and towns even exist elsewhere. When I come home with these stolen things, Maman doesn’t ask me anything because she doesn’t think I could go anywhere apart from the high school, beyond the marshes. She’s gotten so used to my bringing her something whenever I come back that I might have to come home empty-handed to make her notice for once. But it’s hardly certain. Maybe she simply wouldn’t notice.

  I’ll leave the shopping bag at the front door of the house. Maman will find it more quickly than if I leave it in the shed. I dug around in it and pulled out my green blouse. I gave it a sniff. It didn’t smell good. Of course, it was filthy. Usually I wash it as soon as I get home, spreading it out on a chair near the fire so it dries quickly, and the next day, I iron it. This time, I’ll have to take it back to high school dirty. It’s the only one I have, and I hate it for being so green. Totally green. At the high school, you’re supposed to wear blouses with pink and black checks. It’s required. So me, with my blouse in such a blatant shade of green, I’m a blot that clashes amid all that pink. I would have liked very much to have a pink blouse. But my dead aunt didn’t have any pink clothes, and how could she have foreseen the need? I made my school smock out of cloth from my dead aunt’s prettiest summer dress, of green cloth with a little shine to it. The only thing I could make out of it was a kitchen apron. To improve it, I sewed an eyelet border on it, which gave me a lot of trouble. It might have looked impressive on a chef, my apron, but at the high school, no. At the high school, what counts is the color, and the green of my blouse, which is quite green, looks even greener when it’s the only thing that’s green. It produces a weird effect. I understand that it’s unpleasant for everyone. Maybe people thought I was trying to stir up trouble by wearing such an attention-getting smock. At the beginning, when I saw everyone looking at it with revulsion, I was horrified myself. And then, soon after, I mostly felt bad for the thing. It isn’t its fault. I almost began to hate it in a friendly way. And then, well, we’ve gone through a lot together, there’s no denying that. At the start of every week, the school supervisor would say, “You will get detention on Sunday.”

  This was because of the rules and the pink blouses. The supervisor doesn’t have her job for nothing. When she told me that, because of my green blouse, I’d get detention every Sunday, until I had a pink blouse like everyone else, I thought for a moment. Then I went to see her and I said, “If I get detention, I won’t ever be able to go home to get a pink blouse.”

  This was so obvious that I didn’t get detention. But of course I was lying. Even if I did go home, I wouldn’t have a pink blouse. It was already more than enough that I had a green one. But the supervisor couldn’t know that, and I didn’t explain it to her. It would have taken too long. I would have had to tell her how I’d gotten it, and my other clothes, and that these were my dead aunt’s clothes. On the one hand, I was happy to have them. On the other, it’s an odd sensation, putting on a dead person’s clothes. Moreover, Maria hadn’t wanted them. At first, I couldn’t get used to it. I always thought about my dead aunt. I liked her very much, my aunt. She was beautiful and sweet. Very beautiful and very sweet. My other aunts, the ones who look like a row of candles in mourning, hated her. That makes sense, they’re unbearable to look at. Now my aunt is dead. When I wear her clothes, I think of the worms that eat dead people. Where do they begin? How much time does it take them? It seems to me that, if I’m going to be eaten, I’d like it to be done quickly. When you’re dead, maybe you no longer feel like defending yourself from worms. Maybe it makes no difference to you, being eaten or not. I’d like to know.

  Nobody knows, of course, that my smock belonged to my dead aunt, and all the same, everyone hates it just as much as if they sensed it. One day I was called green cretin. That was a terrible day. What consoles me, when I think about it, is that that was the very day that Fanny brought me the licorice. It was like a long ribbon of licorice rolled up on itself. We would unroll a
little and eat it during class. We ate so much of it, Fanny and me, that our mouths were all black and bitter. We laughed when we looked at each other and saw that our teeth were all black too. Then we laughed again and got punished by the math professor, who’s a stupid, pompous man that all the girls are in love with. He struts, he talks about things that have nothing to do with math, windmilling his arms and twiddling his long pointy fingers. How stupid he is. The day he called me a green cretin, he said other foolish things, too. I remember he said that, once when they were in revolt, students had spontaneously adopted the customs of their Gallic ancestors, using trash can lids as shields. He made a lot of gestures, imitating them. Then I raised my hand and asked how they managed to find the lids to the trash cans afterwards, I meant the lid that belonged to each trash can. The professor flushed, made a sweeping gesture with both arms and said, “You are a little green cretin.”

  Everyone laughed because of my smock. Me, I started to think of the frogs back home, in the green slime of the little ponds. The professor added, “If what is said here does not interest you, there’s nothing preventing you from leaving, obviously.”

  So I got up and went out in silence. Fanny got up too, and went out with me. That’s how we became friends. We went to hide at the bottom of the courtyard, in a shed full of old logs that nobody ever uses, which smells of wood shavings, dust, and spiderwebs. We kept sucking the rest of the licorice ribbons until I felt sick to my stomach. That’s when I told the story about all my sisters dying one beautiful stormy night, when lightning struck our house.