Virginie Despentes
VERNON SUBUTEX 3
Translated from the French by
Frank Wynne
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Praise for the Vernon Subutex Trilogy
About the Author
Dedication
Index of the Main Characters who Appeared in the Two Previous Volumes
Vernon Subutex 3
A New Library from MacLehose Press
First published as Vernon Subutex 3
by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, Paris, in 2017
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
MacLehose Press
An imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Virginie Despentes et les Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2017
English translation copyright © 2020 by Frank Wynne
The moral right of Virginie Despentes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Frank Wynne asserts his moral right to be identified as the translator of the work.
This book is supported by the Institut français (Royaume-Uni) as part of the Burgess programme.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
EBOOK ISBN 978 0 85705 981 9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.maclehosepress.com
PRAISE FOR THE VERNON SUBUTEX TRILOGY
VERNON SUBUTEX I
“Disturbing and compelling . . . Relentlessly brilliant. Reading it was like being on a runaway train – you know it will probably end in disaster, but you might as well enjoy the thrill of the ride”
VICTORIA HISLOP
“Bold and sophisticated, this thrilling, magnificently audacious picaresque is about France and is also about all of us; how loudly we shout, how badly we hurt. It is the story of now”
EILEEN BATTERSBY, Irish Times
“An energetic, diverting romp . . . Brimming with sex, violence and deviant behaviour”
DAVID MILLS, Sunday Times
“With Vernon Subutex, a sprawling, scintillating panorama of contemporary Paris, [Despentes] has produced a bona fide magnum opus . . . doing for Paris what Joyce did for Dublin”
SAM SACKS, Wall Street Journal
[Despentes and Wynne’s] prose is so powerful, and so perfect, that we forget we’re even reading. Opening up Vernon Subutex I is more like stepping inside a thrilling, pulsing party and getting instantly mesmerized by the whirling couple at the center of the crowd”
JENNIFER CROFT, Los Angeles Review of Books
“A vast mural of the world today. We all knew Despentes could write, but we were not expecting this”
FRÉDÉRIC BEIGBEDER
VERNON SUBUTEX II
“Vernon Subutex II presents Paris in all its glory and its grime. Sharply translated by Frank Wynne, this is the best multi-volume fiction series since Elena Ferrante”
FIAMETTA ROCCO, 1843
“Virginie Despentes continues her picaresque tour de force with the same driving energy sustained by vicious wit, exasperation, stark insight and compelling empathy . . . In her seething Paris of messed-up losers and relentless operators, Despentes exposes a universal society gone mad on greed, fear and ruthlessness”
EILEEN BATTERSBY, Irish Times
VERNON SUBUTEX III
“Three addictive, intelligent volumes. Comedy, a way with words, and the collision of registers of language all combine to make Vernon irresistible”
RAPHAËLLE LEYRIS, Le Monde
“Reflecting our chaotic times, Vernon Subutex III is a powerful, shocking, captivating work. Despentes completes her epic with a rare mastery. Where will she take us next?”
BRUNO CORTY, Figaro
“A zigzagging novel that likes to let the intrigue wander, all the better to tug it back by the hair a few pages later”
CLAIRE DEVARRIEUX, Libération
“A final volume even more explosive than the previous ones”
NELLY KAPRIÈLIAN, Les Inrockuptibles
“One of the most striking literary epics of the early 21st century”
MARIANNE PAYOT, Express
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is a writer and filmmaker. Her first novel, Baise-Moi was published in 1992 and adapted for film in 2000. Her fiction includes Apocalypse Baby (2010) and Bye Bye Blondie (2004), and the autobiographical work, King Kong Theory (2006). She won the Prix de Flore in 1998 for Les Jolies Choses, the 2010 Prix Renaudot for Apocalypse Baby and Vernon Subutex I won the Prix Anaïs Nin, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
FRANK WYNNE is a translator from French and Spanish. His previous translations include works by Pierre Lemaitre, Javier Cercas and Michel Houellebecq. He has been awarded the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán, and his translation of Windows on the World by Frédéric Beigbeder won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2005. His translation of Vernon Subutex I was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
In memoriam Sven Polhammer
Index of the Main Characters who Appeared in the Two Previous Volumes
Charles: A regular in parc des Buttes-Chaumont and the neighbouring cafés and bars, he encounters Vernon at the beginning of Volume 2, when he finds him slumped on a bench, ill and running a temperature. Charles takes care of him and the two become friends. A long time ago, he won the national lottery, but decided never to tell anyone.
Kiko: Former stock market trader, coke addict, he lives in the eighth arrondissement in Paris. Believing Vernon to be a genius turntablist, he gave him a place to stay, chucked him out, then patched things up with him.
Alex Bleach: Rock star, died of an overdose in a hotel room at the beginning of Volume 1. An old friend of Vernon’s, he left behind a couple of video cassettes on which he recounts his life story, particularly his falling out with Dopalet, whom he accuses of killing Vodka Satana, with whom Alex was deeply in love.
Véro: Appears briefly in Volume 2 as Charles’ partner. She has always given Subutex’s group a wide berth.
Pamela Kant: Ex-porn star, geek. She was a friend of Vodka Satana. She took part in the search for Vernon in Volume 2, and ultimately became friends with him.
Marcia: Trans woman, originally from Brazil, she lives in Paris where she works as a stylist at fashion shoots. In Volume 1, she was living in Kiko’s apartment. After Vernon fell hopelessly in love with her, she disappeared.
Laurent Dopalet: Fifty-something film producer, father of Antoine. In Volume 1, he hires the Hyena to track down the compromising videos left by Alex Bleach. At the end of Volume 2, he is assaulted in his home by Aïcha and Céleste, in revenge for the murder of Vodka Satana.
The Hyena: A dodgy private detective, she initially worked for Dopalet but betrayed him and joined the group that has formed around Vernon.
Olga: A homeless woman who first appears in Volume 1. She is volatile and explosive. She becomes infatuated with Vernon, who she met when he was living on the streets.
Xavier: A screenwriter who ha
s spent twenty years failing to carve out a career, married to Marie-Ange, he has a daughter, he loves dogs, and he has joined the group that has gathered around Vernon.
Marie-Ange: Xavier’s wife, with whom he has a daughter.
Sylvie: One of Alex Bleach’s former lovers. In Volume 1 she offered Vernon a place to stay, had a brief affair with him, then furiously stalked him when he disappeared without explanation. She joined the group that has gathered around him at the Buttes-Chaumont. Sylvie is the mother of Lancelot, who left the family home at the start of Volume 1 to move in with his girlfriend.
Emilie: A childhood friend of Vernon, she used to play bass in a band, but has since cut all ties with the music industry. She briefly gave Vernon a place to crash, and was involved in the search for him before joining the Buttes-Chaumont group.
Laurent: Vernon first met him when he found himself living on the streets. Laurent had been homeless for many years, and taught Vernon the rudiments of living a precarious life.
Patrice: Works as a temp, lives in the suburbs, is tattooed, surly and sometimes violent. At the end of Volume 2, he falls in love with Pénélope and joins the group gathered around Vernon in the park.
Antoine: Exhibition curator, the son of Dopalet. He keeps the group informed about the machinations of his father.
Sélim: University professor, atheist, he fathered Aïcha with Vodka Satana. He never told his daughter that her mother was a hardcore porn star. She finds out early in Volume 2. He is part of the Buttes-Chaumont group.
Aïcha: Law student, practising Muslim, she discovered the truth about the death of her mother listening to Alex Bleach’s tapes. She took revenge, assaulting Dopalet in his home. At the end of Volume 2, she was sent away by the Hyena to lie low in order to avoid any reprisals.
Vodka Satana: Mother of Aïcha and former partner of Sélim. Was engaged to Alex Bleach. She worked in the porn industry, was a friend of Pamela and David. Died of an overdose at the age of thirty. According to Alex Bleach’s confession, she was murdered by Dopalet, who was afraid that she might go public about their relationship.
Céleste: Tattoo artist and waitress at Rosa Bonheur. Her father, a police officer, used to be a regular at Vernon’s record shop. When she bumps into Vernon, she recognises him. In Volume 2, she becomes friends with Aïcha, and takes part in her revenge attack on Dopalet. She is sent into hiding by the Hyena, who is trying to protect her from Dopalet’s reprisals.
Lydia Bazooka: Rock critic, and uber-fan of Alex Bleach. She briefly gave Vernon a place to stay and later joined the search for him. She is obsessed with the idea of writing an exhaustive biography of Alex Bleach.
Daniel: Close friend of Pamela Kant. Trans man. Susceptible to the charms of Céleste, who has never responded to his advances.
THE TRAIN STATION IN BORDEAUX IS BEING RENOVATED, ITS belly filled with a forest of scaffolding poles. On the platform, a boy is pacing up and down chain-smoking cigarettes, he’s wearing trainers with no socks, and breaks the heels as though they were espadrilles. He shoots hostile glances through the windows of the train. He looks as though he’s just waiting for someone to look at him sideways before jumping aboard the train and beating the shit out of him. The ticket inspectors have spotted him and are posted by the doors to stop him getting on at the last minute. The four notes of the S.N.C.F. jingle echo through the carriages, followed by the shrill klaxon announcing the departure. The boy is left on the platform, Vernon catches his eye and is startled by the ferocity of his hatred. As though it were directed at him personally. It goes beyond the urge to kill, the desire to annihilate – this is a fury that longs to reach back through time, across seven generations, and rip out his guts.
Vernon slides back in his seat and stretches out his legs. He had forgotten how much he loves taking the train. He feels a calm euphoria sweep over him. He watches as the flashing landscape picks up speed. There is a particular atmosphere to train journeys, a collective resignation not to be disturbed for several hours, a tranquil shift between two states. Jumbled memories come of days before Christmas, going on holidays, travelling with groups to festivals or on his own to meet up with a girlfriend in the provinces. The images flicker past, and one by one are carried away by a nostalgia he would describe as feeble. His memory is filled with eddying fragments with no particular chronology. Everything about his former life has become tarnished with an otherness, melted into a shapeless, distant chaos. He cannot put this confusion down to drugs: he has not taken any in months. It happened of its own accord. As soon as he got stoned, he started to get bored waiting for it to wear off, wondering what he could ever have found fun about this debilitating disruption. Drugs are designed to alleviate boredom, they make everything seem interesting, like a dash of Tabasco on a dish that is a little bland. But Vernon no longer fears boredom, or loneliness, or silence, or obscurity. He has changed a lot. Drugs are no longer of any use to him.
*
In the past few days, however, while suffering from a vicious toothache, he has been popping handfuls of an opium-based analgesic that makes him feel agreeably stoned, and the feeling of moving through cotton wool is not unpleasant. He is bathed in a muted light that envelops him, adapting to the contours of his body wherever he goes. It has been a shitty couple of days. Usually, he would wait until a toothache stopped him sleeping before he visited a dentist. But this one was the worst he had ever experienced. Whenever the decayed tooth touched the tooth below, it was a knife cutting through him, the pain lifted him bodily and threw him onto the ground. He howled uncontrollably. Olga recommended gargling with grain alcohol and, having nothing to lose, Vernon swilled vodka around his mouth, it anaesthetised the pain for a time, but then he collapsed, dead drunk. The following morning, a hangover, accompanied by a searing pain from the abscess, left him in sheer agony. He crawled into a corner like a wounded animal and curled up, delirious from the pain.
Someone phoned Kiko. Because he has more money than the others, Kiko seems the most adult of the gang. Kiko immediately said, I’ve got a good mate who’s a dentist, I’ll call him right now. The doc faxed a prescription to the nearest pharmacy, Pamela took the car and went to fetch the antibiotics and the painkillers. It was the first time that an emergency had compelled them to make contact with the outside world.
*
After that, Vernon swallowed everything he was given without a murmur. He was convinced that no drug could be powerful enough to alleviate his ordeal. But, half an hour later, he was too off his face to feel any pain. He saw the world from a distance. The only thing better than these painkillers, he thought, would be a morphine pump. He felt great confidence in this dentist, capable of prescribing such an effective medication. Vernon was so relieved that he could no longer feel his tooth that he crashed out for three days straight, letting the antibiotics do their work, while the painkillers carried him away into slo-mo dreams.
*
During this time, those around him were busy planning his trip to Paris. Vernon likes to be managed. Things progress, whether he gets involved or not. He does not need to be ill to be indolent. If you allow yourself to be carried by the current, life in a group assumes you should always be doing “something” – there’s always a tyre to be changed, bags to be unloaded, vegetables to be washed, a chair to be mended. Vernon says, “I look over my playlists,” and he lies down on his bed. The most amazing thing is that noone argues the toss. On the contrary, they all like the notion that they are helping him, being kind to him, doing him a favour. So, he lay down on his side, relieved that he was no longer in pain, and, when he woke, he was told which train station they had chosen for his journey, the departure time, the name of the dentist, and the keycodes to get into Kiko’s apartment, where he would be staying.
He leaves the camp for the first time in more than a year. The others – or most of them – come and go between the camp and civilian life. But Vernon has no bills to pay, no family to visit, no work to turn in . . . So he no longer sets foot in tow
ns and cities. There is nothing to be done. When they told him he would be going to Paris to get treated, he was happy at the thought of seeing the capital. But he feels more out of touch than he expected.
Sitting opposite him is a slim woman with long straight hair coloured bourgeois-blonde. Her raincoat is cinched at the waist, she is wearing high-heeled boots. She has beautiful, magnetic-blue eyes. She must be at least sixty. The wrinkles may have been filled in, but her hands betray her age. She is wearing a solitaire diamond, perhaps an engagement ring. There is something poignant about her. Vernon gives the woman little smiles to which she responds gracefully. He wants her. Something about her skin attracts him. He feels like suggesting that they get off at the next station and find the nearest hotel.
He is no longer in the habit of seeing women who are not wild about him. At the camp, even the girls who have no intention of sleeping with him flirt and flatter. He has a particular position; he is treated like a guru. It has changed his relationship with the female sex – these days all girls are his friends. They all want him, and he is obliging by nature.
*
He will never know whether the blonde woman would have responded favourably to his advances. She will never grace him with that famous post-coital expression of gratitude. He will not sleep with her: he is being accompanied on the journey by Mariana. She has been his girlfriend now for several weeks, which is something of a record. He has trouble settling down: he is too much in demand. He gets along well with a girl, it may last, and then another comes along, makes him doubt, throws him off balance, and he transfers his affections. Young people call it polyamory. From what he can work out, this means sleeping with whoever he likes without worrying what the last girl might think. But Mariana has stopped him in his tracks. She has set herself up as his steady girlfriend with a disconcerting artlessness for someone so shy. He doesn’t protest, because she reassures him more than she suffocates him. He finds her sexy. He first desired her when he saw her imitating Axl Rose, flailing like a demon and brandishing an invisible mic. He fell half in love when she danced to Tina Turner, whose dance moves she performs with terrifying brio. He knew his days as a lothario were over when she performed a choreographed routine to Missy Elliott. She’s even got moves for Madball and for Korn – there is no musical register whose codes she doesn’t innately understand with a very individual magic. Between her body and the sound there is a harmony that stems from an extensive knowledge that is surprising in a woman her age. Mariana hasn’t yet turned thirty. She knows AC/DC as well as she knows M.I.A. She listens to things Vernon has heard of but never really paid attention to, and she knows precisely which song to play to get him into them. They spend their time listening to music and Vernon feels as though he has gained a friend as well as a lover who seems like a mermaid when she fucks – her whole body undulates, seduces, profits and provokes. She pours into sex and into dance everything she cannot put into words.
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