Loyalties

by Delphine de Vigan

  Suddenly reality reasserted itself. This wasn’t a dream or a fantasy unfolding: I’d interrupted Éliane Berthelot’s class to hurl abuse at her.

  CÉCILE

  A few weeks ago I went into William’s study. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Every morning when I’m alone, I go round the apartment. I pick up things that are lying around, water the plants, check that everything is OK, that everything is as it should be. I imagine that all housewives have their little daily circuit, a way of circumscribing their territory, of knowing where the limit is between inside and outside. So this particular morning I was doing my usual round.

  I never spend long in William’s study because of the smell of stale tobacco. Generally, I limit myself to opening the curtains and the window and come back at the end of the day to close them again. William spends most of his evenings in this study and until that day I thought he was reading the papers or preparing his files. But on this morning I’d just gone into the room when I noticed a ball of crumpled paper in the bin. I don’t know why. There’s often paper in William’s bin and I had no reason to bend down to pick up this particular piece of paper or to open and read it. But that’s what I did.

  The text was in his handwriting on paper with his company’s letterhead. The paragraphs had been worked on, corrected in several places, words substituted for others, and an arrow indicated that the middle paragraph was to be moved to the end. It was the draft of something quite different from the reports William writes for work. So I read it from beginning to end. In fact I stayed like that for a few minutes, stunned, reading and rereading the sentences steeped in hate and resentment, words of extraordinary virulence. I couldn’t believe that William was capable of writing such things. It was impossible, unimaginable. Why had he copied out these repulsive lines? I tried to start up his computer. I was clinging on to the idea that I’d find this text in one form or another and for some obscure reason he’d copied out the writings of a madman. But his computer was password-protected. I left his study with the sheet of paper in my hand. I felt unsteady on my feet. I went to fetch my laptop from my bedroom and sat down on the sofa. I went through these motions without thinking, as though part of me already had the answers, as though this part of me was taking charge while the other rejected the evidence and struggled to remain in ignorance. I typed the first four words of William’s text into the Google search bar and pressed ‘Enter’. The text appeared in its entirety. It had been formatted and the corrections on the draft implemented. It was signed ‘Wilmor75’. It took me a few minutes to grasp that I was looking at a blog that William had created pseudonymously, on which he regularly posted his reactions, reflections and comment on everything.

  Next I entered this pseudonym in the search engine and found dozens of messages posted by Wilmor75 on news sites and discussion forums. Bitter, hateful, obscene, provocative comments, which had apparently gained him some notoriety on social networks. I spent several hours in front of the screen, stunned, shaking, clicking from page to page despite the nausea I felt. When I closed my laptop, my neck hurt. In fact, I hurt all over.

  Today I’m able to describe this scene – I mean, relate how I discovered the existence of William’s double. But for the first few days it was impossible for me to say anything about it at all, because there were certain words I could not utter.

  It was impossible for me to imagine that my husband – the man I’d lived with for over twenty years – could use terms like ‘homo’, ‘slut’, ‘ragheads’, ‘arsehole’, ‘bullshit’, ‘camel jockeys’ and plenty more in comments whose racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynist connotations would be hard to deny. But this murky, malignant but skilful prose was his. It took me some time to acknowledge that it was indeed William who had been writing this blog for nearly three years, and using this language to comment on the political and media news as well as the many non-stories that set the internet ablaze every day. It took me some time to be able to describe what these sentences were like without euphemism – I mean, for these words to come out of my mouth in front of Dr Felsenberg, even if only to give some illustrative examples.

  I refused to acknowledge that William was capable of conceiving and posting such horrors. And at the same time, it was as though I had always known.

  And it’s strange, the feeling of calm you get when finally it emerges, the thing you refused to see but knew was there, buried nearby; a feeling of relief when the worst is confirmed.

  THÉO

  The slight nausea suddenly gets worse. He lets his head slump into his hands. He knows he shouldn’t – he should look into the distance, fix on a point in front of him – but he’s curled up facing the cupboard and can’t move. Under the canteen stairs, in their hiding place, there’s no vanishing point to focus on. When he raises his eyes again, everything is pitching even more. He breathes slowly, steadily; he absolutely must not throw up. At that precise moment, nothing matters any more: not the fear of being noticed or of not being able to slide under the cupboard to get out. He just wants it to stop. He wants the vice crushing his skull to slacken its grip.

  This morning he took an old bottle of Martini from his dad’s that had almost a third left in it. The sugar had crusted around the neck and he had trouble getting the top off. On the metro he put his nose in his rucksack and just breathed in the smell. He’d enjoyed the smooth smell of the alcohol. He thought it would be easy to drink more than the last time.

  He ate almost nothing in the canteen to get that immediate, stronger feeling of drunkenness when his stomach is empty. He’s alone because Mathis has a Latin lesson. He waited until everyone had returned to their classes or the study room, then went to the staircase. He checked no one could see him, and slid into their hiding place.

  The bell rings. Suddenly an intense din fills the corridors. Above the sound of voices and laughter, like an underground lake only he is aware of, he can hear sounds with unusual clarity: streams of students crossing paths, soles rubbing on the lino, clothes brushing, the displacement of air caused by this hourly migration: a ballet that he cannot see but whose every movement he feels. A wave of heat goes to his head. He needs to hold on a bit longer without throwing up before he can get out; wait until he’s able to lie on the ground and crawl under the cupboard. But for now, he can’t.

  The corridors empty and the din dies away. He’s going to be late for English. By now, Mathis will be getting worried. He didn’t tell him he was going to their hiding place.

  A thought flashes through his mind: no one knows he’s here.

  Now that silence has returned, he falls sleep sitting upright.

  When he wakes, he has no idea what the time is. His mobile is dead, out of battery.

  He could have been asleep for ten minutes or two hours.

  What if it’s evening? What if the school’s locked up?

  He listens. In the distance he can hear a loud voice coming from a classroom. He sighs with relief.

  He’s now capable of lying down without feeling as though his head is rolling away from him. In this position he continues breathing gently to contain the nausea. He slides onto his back, manages to get himself at the correct angle and wriggles under the cupboard. He only has a few millimetres to play with. He mustn’t panic as his body passes under its bulk because there’s almost no space above him.

  He’s managed to get out. The floor pitches as he walks. It’s hard putting one foot in front of the other with this strange feeling that the ground is melting away at every step. He has to lean on the wall to make progress.

  He looks at the clock. His English class will be over soon.

  Mathis will be out shortly and will probably come looking for him.

  When he goes into the toilets the feeling of nausea suddenly returns. He pushes open a stall. A ball of aluminium has formed under his tongue and he can’t swallow it. His heart lurches, then his stomach spasms and he throws up a brown liquid into the bowl. A second, stronger jet almost makes him topple
over.

  The bell rings.

  He has just enough time to splash water on his face and rinse his mouth out. Again the corridors are filling with the buzz of students changing class.

  He grabs the washbasin to stop himself falling and his head begins to spin again.

  He hears voices and laughter getting closer.

  He goes back into the toilet cubicle. He doesn’t want to see anyone.

  He lets himself slide to the floor with his back against the wall, until he’s in a half-sitting position that he can maintain, not too far from the toilet bowl.

  When silence returns, he hears Mathis’s voice.

  Mathis is there. Mathis is looking for him. Calling for him.

  HÉLÈNE

  We were summoned by the Head – by ‘we’ I mean everyone who teaches Year 8 – to go over what happened. Mr Nemours could have made do with a face-to-face meeting with Éliane Berthelot and me, but as the altercation concerned Théo Lubin, and I’d already raised concerns about him, he decided to bring us all together.

  He was keen to point out in front of the whole team that my behaviour had been completely out of line. In a school such as ours, such a lapse was unacceptable. Éliane Berthelot, who had initially threatened to make a complaint about me to the local authorities or even the police, had eventually changed her mind. She had demanded an apology, which I repeated in front of our assembled colleagues. Her little grimace of victory was quite a sight. Even if it in no way justifies my behaviour, I nevertheless asked that the punishment she had inflicted on Théo could be mentioned: is it appropriate to humiliate a thirteen-year-old boy by asking him to run in front of his classmates in pink Barbie jogging bottoms that are too small for him? Éliane Berthelot couldn’t see any problem with that at all. Or to be more precise, she couldn’t see how it was humiliating . . . According to her, Théo’s repeated failure to bring his kit was pure provocation. He wanted to wind her up, as she put it. Frédéric spoke in my defence. His voice was firm, composed, a gentle demonstration of natural authority: there could be other explanations that were worth looking at. Especially as Théo had recently seemed tired, even disorientated, and voluntarily went to the sick bay.

  Éliane Berthelot eventually admitted she wasn’t keen on the boy, that she even felt dislike towards him. The Head, who was visibly displeased by this line of defence, pointed out that she was not required to like her students, merely teach them her subject and show fairness.

  The others had kept out of it. When Mr Nemours asked their opinion, they all agreed that they hadn’t noticed anything in particular, except that Théo Lubin was a very withdrawn student and it was hard to capture his attention. Nothing else. Éric Guibert mentioned that Théo had skipped his last class, though he’d been in school that morning. And in fact, thinking more carefully, unexplained absences in the middle of the day had happened several times. Frédéric spoke last and described seeing Théo crying one day when he played extracts from The Magic Flute to his class. Last, the nurse’s report was read out by the Head. Anyway, Mr Nemours encouraged everyone to be remain vigilant.

  When the Head asked if any of us had been in contact with the parents, I felt panic. Without thinking, I said no like the others.

  I then sensed Frédéric looking at me, incredulous. His mouth was half-open, but his eyes were fixed only on me, as if to say, Why aren’t you telling the truth, Hélène?

  The Head had looked up Théo’s information sheet and noticed that the father’s address didn’t appear in any of his paperwork. He asked Nadine Stoquier, the chief education adviser, to try to get complete details for both parents.

  The meeting ended there. No one had anything else to say.

  When we left the office, Frédéric caught up with me. For a few seconds he walked beside me in silence. Then he put his hands on my shoulders (an instant shock, a brief electrical discharge, immediately absorbed by my body) to make me stop and listen.

  ‘Why didn’t you say you saw the mother?’

  I didn’t have an answer. Except that in the past few weeks, everyone around that table or outside of school, everyone I pass in the street, on the metro, or outside my building has become the enemy. Something inside me has woken up, that mixture of fear and anger that has lain dormant for years under the effect of an anaesthetic that resembles a mild drowsiness, whose dosage I’ve controlled myself, administered at regular intervals.

  I’ve never experienced this feeling in such a brutal, invasive form, and the rage that I’m struggling to contain is stopping me sleeping.

  No, I didn’t say that I’d summoned the mother, though I’m risking the Head finding out soon and reprimanding me for lying to him; I’m risking him concluding, rightly, that I’m much too involved in this whole thing. It’s true.

  Frédéric’s worried. He’s afraid that the mother will come and complain about what I said. From her point of view, I summoned her without cause and alarmed her irrationally.

  I wanted him to hug me. Let me rest the weight of my body against his for a few minutes. Lean on him. Breathe his smell, feel my back and shoulder muscles relax. Not, of course, for long.

  When I left school I had no desire to go home. I walked aimlessly, dragged along by my own momentum, crossing the street now and then to avoid stopping. My anger had not diminished. It throbbed beneath my skin, in every part of my body. As long as I didn’t detect any signs of exhaustion, I was unable to turn towards home.

  I got back late and collapsed on my bed fully clothed.

  CÉCILE

  The other day Mathis surprised me in the kitchen. I hadn’t heard him come in. He came up behind me.

  ‘Are you talking to yourself, Mum?’

  I was caught off guard.

  ‘No, darling, I’m talking to the woman from downstairs, who’s here but you can’t see her.’

  He puzzled for a moment, then laughed. Mathis has his father’s sense of humour – when his father still had a sense of humour, that is. He opened some cupboards, looking for a snack, but he didn’t seem to know what.

  A little later, after some beating about the bush, he asked if he could invite Théo for a sleepover next weekend. I didn’t know how to respond because on Saturday evening William and I have been invited out to dinner with friends and it would trouble me leaving the two of them alone. I said I’d think about it and talk to his father. I often say that: ‘I’ll talk to your father’, but today the full absurdity of this phrase resonated. What is a thirteen-year-old boy to make of such a stupid statement? That I’m a wife who is subject to the wisdom of her husband? That masculine trumps feminine? That William decides everything? That I hide behind this authority, real or fictional, to avoid responsibility for my own decisions? That his father and I share everything? I felt pitiful.

  Anyone who is or has been part of a couple knows that the other person is a mystery. I know it too. Yes, some part of the other escapes us, decisively, because the other is a mysterious being who guards his own secrets and dark, fragile soul. The other conceals about himself some remnant of childhood, his secret wounds; he tries to repress his confused emotions and obscure feelings. The other must, as we all must, learn to become himself and devote himself to a sort of self-optimisation. The unknown other cultivates his little secret garden. But of course I’ve known that for a long time; I wasn’t born yesterday. I read books and women’s magazines. Empty words, supreme platitudes that provide no consolation. Because I’ve never read that the unknown other – even the very one you live, sleep, eat and make love with; even the very one you believe you agree with, are in sync, even in harmony with – can turn out to be a stranger who harbours the vilest thoughts and utters words that spatter you with shame. What do you do when you discover that this part of the other who emerges from the void seems to have made a pact with the devil? What do you do when you realise that the back of your stage set is in fact immersed in a marsh that stinks like a sewer?

  I shouldn’t have picked up that ball of crumpled paper. I
know that. I should have stayed in my gentle, blind ignorance, and kept talking to myself – for lack of alternative – to reassure, congratulate, calm myself.

  But for how long?

  The time of innocence is well and truly over. I can’t stop myself going to look. Every morning, as soon as Mathis goes off to school and William to the office, I hurry to the computer. I start with his blog where he posts irregularly and then I make a tour of the sites and forums on which, by contrast, he posts comments almost daily. Sometimes even several times a day, when a discussion gets going and, in a vain display of competitive aggression, he reacts to others. On the web, Wilmor75 spreads his contempt and spews poison. In order to evade criticism, he uses contorted metaphors and clever insinuations. He knows how to tailor his words to suit the site he’s on and doesn’t ever seem to have been investigated.

  I don’t know the man who writes these words.

  My husband isn’t like that. My husband doesn’t use that kind of language. My husband can’t have within him the kind of stinking muck these lines exude. He’s well brought up. He comes from a well-off, educated background. My husband doesn’t spend his evenings spewing out torrents of filth to wallow in. My husband isn’t the sort of man for mocking, yelling and vomiting on everything. My husband has better things to do. My husband isn’t the man who shuts himself away almost every evening to let the fetid pus ooze from his wound.

  My husband was funny, clever and handsome. I loved his composure and gift for repartee. He was a fine speaker. My husband was a flamboyant, generous man. My husband would tell me lots of stories, large and small. My husband was interested in other people’s lives, including mine.