Elle

by Philippe Djian

  This morning, I’m having a meeting with a dozen writers. The rape victim has no qualms about crossing her legs good and high, compensating for the wan expression on her face. To make matters worse, I hardly slept. This is the first night when I’ve awakened with a start—a man on top of me, whereas I’m actually all wound up in my blanket. I bolt upright, cry out, and at that precise moment the screen on my phone lights up with a message. My heart starts beating.

  The message says, low battery. It shuts off. I plug it in. The moonlight in the garden streams through the leaves like icy blood. It’s three in the morning. The phone comes on again. I nibble on a nail, wait. I hear an owl hooting outside. Then the phone tells me there is no signal. I stifle a whimper, short of breath. Goddamn technology. I’m seething. How many phones are being shattered right at that instant, all over the world? Shattered on a stone wall or bursting through a window at jet-engine speed? I rise, lean out the window. The air is cool. I shiver. I hold the phone outside and, miraculously, I snag a signal. The message says, “Be ready, Michèle.”

  I cry out in surprise. The owl seems to answer me. Trembling, I type: “Stop this. Who are you?” I wait. No answer. I have to take something to get back to sleep.

  I call a locksmith. I double up on security. I have a solid dead bolt installed on my bedroom door. When the guy winds up suggesting I have an alarm installed for the ground floor, I say yes.

  With the exception of Richard, everyone is wondering what is going on with me. I tell them my insurance agent made me an offer because of the crime wave and I change the subject.

  The guy spends the afternoon installing his system. There are two of them, they do test runs. I can’t say if their presence is reassuring or if it actually scares the hell out of me. I wave to the couple in the house across the road. I’m telling them that I’m here and demonstrating to the two guys, there are witnesses.

  I know how stupid it is, but I can’t help it. They leave. They’ve installed a keypad that lights up near the front door. It has colored LED lights. And a video screen where you can see what’s happening on the other side of the door.

  I see Richard. I open the door for him.

  He looks over my new system and says I made the right decision, even before I tell him about the second text message. “That’s good. This is better. How are you? Have you gotten over the shock?”

  I sort of shrug. How can you explain it? Especially to a man. How can you explain what it feels like. I give up and get some cold chicken out of the fridge, ask him if he wants some.

  He says, “I’m glad it’s just the two of us because I want to talk to you.” I start to stiffen, tucking in my chin. Something inside me is screaming, Oh, no! For chrissakes! Because I know where he’s going, I know what cliff he’s leading us toward. I know that tone of voice. I know that furtive glance he has just darted at me, which he immediately repackages with his most winning grin. Richard believed for a long time that there was an actor inside him. Sort of a De Niro type, to hear him tell it. It needed to find expression and that’s why he took classes for a whole year. I am looking at the result.

  He moves away from the table, crosses his hands in his lap, hunches over, bows his head.

  “Michèle, this time I’m bringing you something really solid. Believe me. And by the way, while we’re on the subject, that time you turned me down you were totally right. You were right and I was wrong. I was too close to it and my pride got in the way. Let’s forget about it. It’s over. But thanks to you, I have come to terms with my weaknesses and I have gotten back to a piece I gave up on long ago. Which I had lost faith in. And, of course, I followed your advice. You won’t be disappointed. I really went all out, no exaggeration.”

  He leans over as he finishes his speech and brings a plastic bag out from under the table. From out of that bag, he produces his new screenplay.

  Anna doesn’t think much of it. And neither do I. Richard is a bad screenwriter because, in the end, he has contempt for film. He has contempt for television as well, but he never had any stake in TV because it doesn’t bring recognition, riches, and glory. When I say he has contempt for film, I mean he puts himself first. And all that is not born of sacrifice is vain. She agrees. We’re having a quick lunch in a café near the center, where they make very decent club sandwiches.

  She knows what this means for me and she offers to take care of it. I say thank you but no. This is mainly between Richard and me. I owe him that much. I owe him the truth. I shake my head, contemplating the enormous task ahead. One of destruction and reconstruction.

  How is he going to take it this time? I’m very angry at him for bringing us here again. We both know how painful and difficult this situation is. We’ve been through it already, and it was the most tiresome period in my life.

  How could he put us through it again? How could he open those wounds right when they’ve barely healed? Damn him, really. What gets into these people? So convinced their work is wonderful and yet you would think they were perfectly sane and capable of knowing that it was trash before they’d even come to the end of the first sentence! What thick mud seals their eyes? What blindness causes their brain paralysis? What dysfunction plagues their gray matter?

  I tell him to come over. I stop working an hour before he gets there and try to relax. I go rake up some leaves in the garden and retie a rosebush. I top that off with some breathing exercises.

  He comes inside. I tell him. For a second, I think he’s going to explode, but actually he’s in shock and he walks to the first place he finds to sit down. “Wow,” he says.

  “Richard, this is not about the quality of your work. Would you like some wine, maybe something stronger?”

  “Then what is it if it’s not the quality? I’d like to know.”

  “You know what it is. It’s a business. They have particular tastes. There’s nothing you or I can do about that. You just have to conform. You won’t change anything. And you can be proud of that, in a way. Gin? Champagne?”

  “You think this is a good time to drink champagne? Are we celebrating? I can tell you fought for me like crazy.”

  “It’s not what they’re looking for, Richard. I’m paid to know that. But maybe someone else will be interested. Try Gaumont. I think they’re looking around for something new right now. You either adapt or you get swallowed up nowadays.”

  “Did you go to bat for me? Did you lift a finger?”

  I don’t answer. I hold out a gin and tonic. He stands up and, without a word, walks to the door. Vincent has the same goddamn stubborn character, it’s unbelievable.

  When the three of us were living together, they drove me crazy. I had to fix up the top floor so I could have some peace. On my dime, at Richard’s insistence, even though he made significantly more than me at the time. He didn’t want to put a penny toward my selfishness—or my whims, or my harebrained ideas, or my notions, depending.

  Tempers flared, inevitably. I felt like I was cornered, hemmed in on both sides. It was like I had to pay for everything twice, like hearing an echo.

  Now I’m speaking with Vincent and there’s a storm outside. The sky suddenly darkened and the rain started to fall. It’s cooler all of a sudden. A sweet odor of vegetable rot has filled the air. He tells me he got hired at McDonald’s and he hopes he’s going to get an advance when he signs his contract. He’s in his car. He tells me that what I’m hearing are raindrops thundering down on the roof, but I don’t hear a thing. He mixes in a thank you for the security deposit. He says it was cool of me to do that, that Josie says thank you as well.

  When he finally shuts up for a second, I say, “You hope to get an advance on your salary? Vincent, what are you telling me?”

  I build my first fire in the fireplace, nearing the end of November. I feel old and weary as I trudge inside with a few logs. Richard’s reaction is almost enough to ruin my evening—that gesture of utter contempt, that scowl. Then I finally give in to the rain and Vincent’s trouble getting together t
he money for his first month’s rent. I start to cry.

  Marty is there. The cat who stayed a few feet away as I was being raped. He sleeps on my bed. He eats with me. He follows me into the bathroom when I shower or shit, follows me when I go to bed with a man. He stops and looks at me. Seeing that I am neither screaming nor rolling around on the floor, he goes back to examining his rear paw, which he then licks a long moment. I look away.

  Richard calls me the next day and says, “Did you have to work on that role of bitch you play so well, or does it just come naturally?” I had foreseen something of that nature. Hard feelings, bitterness, anger, insults. I don’t think his work is worthless, but I know that no one will sink millions into this project and there’s nothing I can do about that.

  “No kidding! How can you say something like that? You stupid bitch. What do you know about it?”

  His voice is trembling with contained anger. It couldn’t be any other way, of course not. That’s precisely why I’m so mad at him. For having set the wheels of this dread machinery in motion, so in one way or another it can once again tear us to shreds.

  “Taking it out on me won’t make your screenplay any better, Richard.”

  There’s a second of silence and I swallow. Then I hear his forced, sneering laughter on the other end of the line. But I can just imagine the grimace he’s really making as the pain deepens and spreads.

  This is the first time in twenty years that I’ve clearly admitted that I’m not crazy about his work. I’ve always managed to dance around it, never dealing with it straight on, because I felt the whole building might tremble at the foundations. The subject could make it all unravel. And it still can, but at this point what can we lose that hasn’t already been lost?

  It’s possible to love a man and not think he’s the best screenwriter of all time. How I strove to make that point! Of what resource haven’t I availed myself to bring him around to my view? But that was before I came to understand that I would never succeed, that he would never really accept any criticism coming from me. His very manhood was challenged if I didn’t absolutely flip over his work, I could tell. And I cared about him enough that I didn’t want to push it past the breaking point. I preserved our relationship with half-lies, half-truths, which I always wound up believing he could live with.

  I really cared about a man for the first time in my life and I wanted to remain in his protection. It’s as simple as that. My mother and I had had our share, and Richard was offering to look after us, to deliver us back to a normal life. Wasn’t that worth something? And the more because I was attracted to him physically?

  “Finally!” he says. “It took you long enough! But for once in your life you mustered a little courage! Nice going!”

  “I got another message.”

  “What?”

  “I got another message from the man who raped me.”

  “No, you’ve got to be kidding! You got what?”

  “Are you deaf, Richard?”

  I haven’t seen my father in thirty years, haven’t spoken to him. Yet he sends me a Polaroid, which my mother puts on the table. I lean over to look at it. It’s hard for me to recognize him—the quality of the Polaroid isn’t very good. I sit up straight and shrug. My mother watches me, hoping I’ll make some comment. But I have none.

  “Look how thin he is,” she says. “I didn’t lie to you about that.”

  “Let them force-feed him. Let them do their job.”

  We’re at an outdoor café by the Seine. Last night’s rain has hastened the falling of the leaves, and there are dark, seemingly empty nests clinging to the bare branches of the chestnut trees. Still, it’s a nice day. I said I would see her at lunchtime even though I’m overloaded at work and I’m supposed to meet Anna at a screening on the other side of town. I ordered a salade de gésiers and my mother got the andouillette de Troyes. Sparkling water for both of us. “You’re wasting your time, Mom. I will not go see him.” The tip of my nose is cold. It’s nice out, but the cool air has reached us.

  “He’s old now. You’re his daughter.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m his daughter. That no longer has any meaning.”

  “He would hold your hand for one minute and it would be done. You wouldn’t even have to talk to him. He’s wasting away daily now, you know?”

  “Don’t waste your breath. Eat.”

  I just don’t understand why all of a sudden she has to cushion the end of this man’s life. All those families in tears, all those angry families…has she forgotten them? And what about everything we went through for years because of him, because of what he did? Has she just wiped it from her brain?

  “I finally learned forgiveness, Michèle.”

  “Is that right? Yes, I’ve heard of it. It’s supposed to be nice. Are you happy with it? I’m so jealous of your shitty memory, you know? Shitty is the word. Really, really shitty.”

  When I meet Anna, I’m still furious. “We went through hell because of him, you know that. And all by herself she decides it’s time to wipe out the past, just like that, as if with a magic wand. You have got to be kidding. Don’t you think the old lady is going crazy?” Anna hands me a box of Chiclets. I take one. Chewing makes me feel better. Deep down, I would like to have her put in a cell. With him, if that’s what she really wants. Bye-bye, Mom. This is where we part. I would love that. I’m ashamed to have those thoughts, but I would love it.

  That dissolute life she leads—a sharp contrast to this Good Samaritan role she’s playing with my father—is fairly annoying to me. She had better not push it. She’s wrong to think she can nudge me into this last meeting. She’s got an exaggerated idea of her power.

  My boyfriend at the time, with whom I was head over heels in love, spit in my face when my father got arrested. And I know of nothing else so heartbreaking.

  Evening falls as I get home. Now I only get out of the car holding the can of pepper spray and an army-issue flashlight, the weight and size of which is supposed to provide a decisive edge over my attacker. At least that’s what the gun store guy said as he smacked the thing against the palm of his hand. I quickly scan a part of the one hundred fifty or so feet between my garage and my front door. The neighbor across the road mimes a friendly hello, then silently asks if everything’s all right. I answer with an energetic nod.

  A dark-colored car is parked near my house, a little down the block, partially hidden by a mass of persistent leaves. This is the second night I’ve seen it. Yesterday I either didn’t have the courage or I was putting it off. Tonight I’m ready. Before, when it was parking, it was toward evening and I was standing at the window, rinsing rice. I straightened up.

  There’s no longer enough daylight to make out anything at all inside the car. I can’t even really identify it now, with only a pale quarter-moon reddening a thin veil of high clouds, but I know he’s there, at the wheel, that his thoughts are about me, that they’re struggling mightily to reach me.

  I am calm. Concentrating and tense. I am not afraid. Several times, I’ve had occasion to note that fear falls away when there is no longer any turning back, and I am in that situation now. I am determined. I wait. Let him come to me. I have set up in the darkness, waiting for him to come out. I am ready for him. Ready to spray him, to make him pay. It’s hardly ten o’clock but there’s no one outside around here in November, not after nightfall. The coast is clear for him.

  Suddenly, I can’t believe it, I see the glow of a cigarette lighter. “He’s got to be kidding,” I blurt out loud, truly stunned.

  At eleven o’clock, he lights a third cigarette. I want to scream in rage, but I hold it in. I can’t stand this anymore. Throwing caution to the wind, along with any safety considerations, I decide to go to him since he’s not coming to me. Squatting on my heels, I pull the door open a crack. I bite my lip and slip outside. I walk around the house so I can sneak up from behind. My breath is short, my legs wobbly, my jaw set tight. I’ve got my flashlight and my spray ca
n as weapons, as well as my irrepressible will to get this over with.

  A slight burning sensation is now my only souvenir of him, that and a few fading bruises. But it’s no longer about what I feel physically. Like I said, I have had some experiences that I consider worse from the standpoint of penetration, strictly speaking. What’s important is how I feel in my head. What’s important is what he took from me by force and what at this instant I wield in my arm.

  I have to use the element of surprise, just as he did. I was still in a state of shock when he pinned me to the ground. My heart hadn’t even started beating again when he tore my underpants. I hadn’t even figured out what was happening when he forced his way into me and took me.

  I catch my breath. I gather my strength. I think about turning back, twisting my mouth up in silence, then my arm and the army flashlight form a semicircle and the passenger side window is blown apart.

  I hear someone cry out but I’m already spraying the inside of the car, reaching through the shattered window. And really, so close to orgasm for one second, as I empty that can toward the shape now convulsing on the seat. I don’t recognize poor Richard right away. He seems like he’s on the verge of blacking out, but he manages to get the passenger door open and falls onto the pavement, moaning.

  I’ve forgotten that Richard is also that man, worried about my safety despite our harsh exchanges. And I feel sorry about hurting his feelings with respect to his work, even if it was necessary. His eyes look terrible—red, swollen, bloodshot. I take him home because there’s no way he can drive.

  There’s a woman in his life. This is when I find out. The car with the window I smashed belongs to her.

  Not that I’m jealous. Richard and I have been separated for almost three years and I quickly put a few women in his path, to make the ordeal of divorce as painless as possible. I’m not jealous, but I’m not indifferent either. There are a lot of women in this business. They’re drawn to the scene. And there were always a few who figured that a screenwriter with a couple of successes under his belt, who knew a lot of people, who wasn’t half bad physically, might be worthy of a closer look. I didn’t want them to be too intelligent either, or capable of devouring a man to the bone, or plotting and scheming. I was leery of the ones with big breasts, but also the ones who had read Sherwood Anderson or Virginia Woolf and would’ve chewed him up and spit him out.