Vernon Subutex 2

by Virginie Despentes

  A RADIO IS PLAYING in the distant courtyard. An Alex Bleach song, “Though I’m here in your arms / it is only because / a girl who’s not you / has rejected my charms.” In the kitchen, Marie-Ange hums along as she washes the dishes. She is careful about her fingernails. She had a manicure only yesterday, and she does not want to chip them. The girl who applied the semi-permanent polish insisted that it is very resilient. It seems she was right. Semi-permanent polish is brilliant, no more waiting twenty minutes for it to dry. She had only to hold her hands under a mini dryer for ten seconds, and she was immediately able to leave, rummage in her handbag for her keys, and there was not a scratch on her nails. She loves the way the sun streams through the window, feeling its warmth on her shoulder. A car alarm starts to wail out in the street. Marie-Ange is used to making as little noise as possible in the morning. Xavier needs more sleep than she does. About two hours a day. Fourteen hours a week. Sixty hours a month. Two and a half days dozing while she is up and about, tidying the house. Then she gets herself ready and goes to work while he is still wearing his tracksuit. She knows that he spends his days doing nothing. But every evening, when she comes home, he invents activities.

  When she first realized that she was entirely responsible for the housekeeping, she had tried to talk to him. The first time, he had made her laugh, he had made his clown face and categorically declared: “You can’t expect me to use a vacuum cleaner. It’ll make me grow breasts.” It was utterly silly, but she had been charmed by the way he said it. Back then, he often caught her off guard. He played the moron, she laughed, he disarmed her. She had decided not to bother getting into a petty argument over housework, given time he would realize that it didn’t make sense—her having a full-time job, paying all the bills, and him sitting around doing nothing all day. But when she saw that it never occurred to him to pick up a sponge and clean the sink, or fold the dry bedsheets, or change the bed linen from time to time, she had aired her point of view, taking care not to be hurtful—avoiding any mention of the fact that he was not earning anything. She had talked about respect, affect, not equality but mutual support, her right to lounge on the sofa at the end of a long day … Xavier had pretended to understand. But that was all. She had tried being pedagogical: she stuck a list of chores on the door of the fridge: the dishes, the trash, the laundry, cleaning the toilet, the bath, washing the floors, the windows, tidying their daughter’s bedroom, dusting, cleaning out the fridge, the bathroom … It had worked: he put out the trash. Every time he did it, he felt he had to proudly announce: “I’ll take the trash out for you.” The phrase “for you” in that sentence could send her into a blind rage. She felt like grabbing him by the throat and shaking him, “At least get a job so we can hire a cleaner.” Because living on her salary alone is tough. She no longer finds his boyish I-don’t-take-anything-seriously patter entertaining. She feels betrayed: she is expected to take responsibility for every difficult decision. He doesn’t even seem to realize it. Whenever she mentions money or says that it might be difficult to take a vacation, she feels as though he is looking at her thinking that she is whining about nothing.

  Xavier barely earns enough to pay for the dentist, the occasional round of drinks in a bar, and métro tickets when he miraculously has a business meeting. The subject has become off-limits to such a point that he will often refuse to engage in conversation. He flies off the handle when she suggests she might take a job in the country. He says she has no respect for the work he does. But it would be much easier to live on her salary if they left Paris. If they sold the apartment, they could buy a little house with a garden. Xavier hates Stéphane Plaza, because every time she watches his TV real estate shows, she starts talking about moving.

  At first, Marie-Ange supported him—she thought it was normal for someone working in the arts to go through occasional dry spells. She listened sympathetically when he railed against the faggots who controlled the industry. He was too forthright, his ideas did not sit comfortably with the general mediocrity, the kind of filmmaking he loved got no respect in France, he didn’t come from a privileged background, there were a lot of things that tipped the scales against him. She had continued to support him when she realized he had been blacklisted—though his name was still mentioned by the occasional director who had admired his early work, producers simply shooed him away. No way. Anyone but him. Too temperamental. He was screwed, though not really for the reasons he cited. His analysis of the situation was fundamentally flawed, which made it impossible for him to make changes. But she earned enough to keep the three of them, she was convinced that he had talent, that one day she would be proud to have stood by him through the tough times. But as the years passed, her patience began to wear thin. She no longer believes that his day will come. His glory days are behind him.

  Marie-Ange leaves every morning at 7:30, takes the métro to the Ipsos Group offices, where she is a market researcher. She spends her day juggling screenings, focus groups, and bullshit while Xavier stays at home, creating. She never complains. But she no longer finds it amusing. She is sick and tired of the struggling artist. She does not feel up to being the muse to a loser. The last time he printed and bound his most recent screenplay and gave it to her like some precious gift—she was his first reader—she realized that she no longer found him funny. He had spent more than a year on the project. Ninety pages of dialogue. Eighteen months, full time. Okay, it required him to be creative. But the fucker took his own sweet time. She had felt obliged to start reading that night; she was exhausted and would have preferred to wait until Sunday, but he was like a kid stamping his feet nervously, so she had told herself that sleep could wait and read the first forty pages. She had kissed him before turning out the light, she had faked it: “I’m saving the second half for tomorrow. But it’s brilliant. Bravo, my little Vévé.” This is what she called him in private—my little Vévé. The screenplay was terrible. His previous projects had not been much better, she realizes, now that she is prepared to be honest with herself. But up until now, at least they had been funny. She had always smiled and laughed as she read what he had written. He had a spark of imagination that he has lost along the way. And he had found little to replace it. She could no longer summon the energy to lie to herself. Her husband was a mediocre writer. He strung together clichés but thought he was reinventing the wheel, the plot was weak and slapdash, the dialogue feeble, the characters inconsistent … She did not need to be a professional reader to realize this—watching the occasional movie or TV series was enough. What had most shocked her that night, while she lay curled up at the edge of the mattress, unable to sleep, was not that she did not believe in him as a screenwriter but that she lacked the courage to deal with what would come next: he would send the script to everyone he knew and wait for replies that would never come, because people would be too embarrassed to tell him that it was mediocre and they were going to pass. And Xavier would complain, dig his heels in, and she would have to console him when she stumbled home exhausted after a hard day’s work. And who was there to support her? Xavier has nothing but contempt for her job, he cannot even feign an interest. He says the opposite, but whenever she talks to him about her problems with her manager, she can sense his mind wandering.

  Her father had warned her. At twenty, she hadn’t listened because she thought the old dodderer could not understand the rapturous love she was only just discovering. But he had warned her. “For a woman, there is nothing worse than to marry beneath her station.” She had concluded that her parents did not have a clue about the world she lived in, the world in which Xavier was an untamed beast in the concrete jungle, seductively arrogant, who was going to revolutionize the film world. They were wrong to underestimate him. Now she realizes that she was the one who lacked judgment. She had bet on a lame horse. The system could have worked for her if she had only made the right choices. But in every possible sphere, with grim, meticulous care, she had made the wrong ones. She had had a diploma in her pocket when,
against her parents’ better judgment, she had decided to take a permanent post with Ipsos. True, she had come a long way since. And not in a sector seriously threatened by the financial crisis. But it would have been easier to spend another three years at university, learn a foreign language, and allow her father to guide her.

  The wrong choice … But she had made the best of the opportunities that presented themselves. She had not had the aptitude to attend one of the “Grandes Écoles”—as her parents tactfully put it, “Her intelligence isn’t academic.” Nor had she rejected a string of suitors more prestigious than the one she had married. She had fallen in love with Xavier because he was the first guy she had found exciting, the first who had seen her as a princess. He had been self-confident back then. It had been shortly after the minor success of his first film; in trendy circles, he was spoken of as the Renoir of the slum belt. He could not have guessed that the director, a childhood friend, would decide to write his second film himself. In his own way, Xavier is a complete innocent. He imagines that everyone shares his sense of chivalry. But all around him, his colleagues have matured, become pragmatic: screenwriters are expensive. So they do without. Things were good between them in the beginning. It was the first time Marie-Ange had found what she was looking for in a guy. He was assertive, he was the man, but she had him eating out if her hand, he was madly in love with her. Until that point, she had had to make do with looking on jealously as other girls flirted with guys who, from a distance, seemed perfect. Her turn had come. This thick-set brute became tender and loving as soon as she snuggled next to him. They brought out the best in each other. He came up with tailor-made compliments, noticed things in her personality that he celebrated as unique qualities. He had given her confidence. It had been a glorious time. But even then, she should have raised an eyebrow. Everything upset Xavier. Dining out, visiting a gallery, going with her to visit her parents—he criticized everything, sulked for no reason, he was so thin-skinned it made her uncomfortable. She should have noticed that he was pigheaded, even when things had been going well and he had a network of friends, when he was hanging out in what he called “his bar,” a cramped, smoky corridor in the depths of the eighteenth arrondissement. It was the sort of place where people laughed riotously between hands of cards, dipping their chubby hands into bowls of peanuts, and the people he considered “colorful characters” were just alcoholics who made him feel like a god, and called him a “gentleman of the cinema.” He liked to surround himself with people who were not on his level, because he had a desperate need to be reassured. But his bar friends were dragging him down at precisely the point when he needed to evolve. Marie-Ange has never had a fascination with what he calls “real people.” She doesn’t care how they live—she is no more interested in the daily routine of a teacher or a nurse than she is in whether these “good people” read books or go to the movies. This was her first real love. She respected Xavier. And it’s true that for several years, he gave her stability. He made it possible for her to finally think about something other than I’ll never be married, no one will ever want me. And when her father tried to caution her about “letting a man who was beneath her into her bed,” she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what she was thinking: being in bed with Xavier in the early days had been electrifying. And that meant a lot to someone like her who had experienced no thrills in that department. She and boys had never really gotten along. It was mysterious. She was a pretty girl, and she knew it. A honey blonde with delicate features and not an ounce of fat. Her legs were a little short, her waist a little pronounced, her breasts a little small. But she had big eyes, a delicate bone structure, a beautiful complexion. Men were not indifferent to her. But she did not kindle an erotic passion. Xavier had been the first to make her feel like a woman—to feel desired. He found everything about her arousing. It had been thrilling to discover this—when she undressed for him, she was like an epiphany.

  She had been happy. For a long time. It hadn’t bothered her that, after a year, she had had to start faking it in bed. She had assumed the feeling would return. When she was less tired, less preoccupied. But in fact, it had simply got worse. She had to force herself, and it became more and more tiresome. She had not talked about it with anyone. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, men like sex and women could just as easily do without. This was the least she owed him. She had not wanted him to look elsewhere. Only after the caesarean did she finally give up. She no longer wanted to pretend.

  Being pregnant had not been a mystical revelation to her. The latter months had been difficult. She had not experienced the famous hormone rush that might have made being infirm feel wonderful. Nor had she felt at ease in the months after Clara was born. She knew she was the mother of this little creature, but all this made her feel was blind panic. She had left the maternity unit shocked that no one seemed alarmed that she had had none of the skills required to look after a baby. And it was not as though her own mother—who had jetted off to the Caribbean three days after the birth—was likely to step in and help out. Xavier had been amazing. He had had an answer for everything. He had found an online forum for first-time fathers and he knew everything there was to know, from the correct temperature for a baby’s bottle to the best brand of diapers. His daughter filled him with wonder. He had cobbled together a way for the three of them to be happy. Spending leisurely mornings lying in bed, kissing her tiny feet, doing Indian dances to make her laugh, spending hours in children’s bookshops looking for collections of fairy tales, smiling every time she took a shit, “Magnificent, these feces are magnificent.” And, in a sense, Maria-Ange had only to climb aboard a family life she had always dreamed of. She had relaxed. She loved the father that Xavier had become. She no longer loved the man who still desired her.

  Socially, on the other hand, motherhood has been a disappointment. All the other mothers she knows have competitive children. In the early years, Marie-Ange had been innocent, she had assumed that, once she had given birth, she would be a paid-up member of the sisterhood of first-time mothers, she too would take out her iPhone and show them pictures of her child. But it is not so straightforward. The other mothers made her depressed. “My daughter was walking at six months, we were flabbergasted when we saw her toddling across the living room.” “Mine was bilingual by the time she was two.” “Mine taught himself to read when he was three.” “Mine was moved into the upper stream in kindergarten because of his soccer skills.” “I opened a savings account for mine, someone asked me if I wanted her to do a fashion shoot, I wasn’t keen on it, but she loves it, and ever since, she’s been in demand everywhere.” Let me just show you this video of my child turning cartwheels on a beam, rebuilding a computer blindfolded, singing an operatic aria … Clara is an angel, but when it comes to showing off, she is useless. She probably gets it from her mother. She has not the slightest talent that might make her stand out. When she dances to Maître Gims, she looks like Goldorak trying to keep warm. Marie-Ange adores her daughter. But a teacher has never called her back after class to share her astonishment—did you realize you have a gifted child? Never. This year, for Carnival, her father gave her the dress Elsa wears in Frozen. A princess costume that had looked spectacular in the packaging. But when she put it on, she looked more like Shrek than anything else. Marie-Ange took lots of pictures, she does not want her daughter to feel offended. But she does not post them on Facebook. She is clear-sighted. The only time her daughter was a hit in her office was doing a zombie walk. She was wearing an orange wig and black and white striped leggings like Emily the Strange. A friend of Xavier’s who works in special effects had come over to create a huge fake wound that made it look like her cheek was slashed open to reveal her teeth … Clara had a ball, crawling around the place de la République foaming at the mouth. It was the first time in her life strangers had stopped to take her picture. And Marie-Ange has noticed that she is not invited to other girls’ birthday parties. She is not popular. When she tries to talk to Xavier a
bout it, he growls: “You’re not the one who has to pick her up from school, you’ve no idea, but everyone in her class is a fucking idiot.”

  Another child. She often thinks about it. It is sad for Clara to have to grow up on her own. And besides, couples who only have one child are weird. It says something about the relationship that Marie-Ange doesn’t like. She doesn’t feel happy with her life as it is, so she certainly doesn’t need to start shouting from the rooftops: we’ve only had one kid because we’re a dysfunctional couple. It’s nobody’s business. More and more often, she brings up the subject of trying for a second child with Xavier. He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry. Though he’s got nothing going on his life except raising his daughter. He’s hardly likely to burn out if she has a little brother …