Vernon Subutex Three

by Virginie Despentes

  Charles had been a pillar of the group. If they had been a motorcycle club, he would probably have been the president. He had a surly affection for the group that did them good. He liked to take the piss out of people, without a whit of tact but with a shrewd sense of observation. He had a knack for coming up with the perfect remark at the perfect time, the little jibe that cuts the ground from under your feet and makes you realise that you’re on a slippery slope. There was no-one more grumpy, more mistrustful, more critical than Charles. But he was joyous. And happy to be a part of their adventure. He loved to see them, skipping about, dancing in the darkness, and his enthusiasm validated their collective adventure. Charles laughed a lot, he warded off fear with a highly contagious laugh.

  *

  It felt strange to be sitting in this living room with this disagreeable old lady. Vernon had drained his glass. He felt drunk. Was it the booze rushing to his head, or his brain playing one of its dirty tricks – he would never know. A series of brief hallucinations came to trouble his stream of consciousness. He saw Véro at different ages. Or at least he imagined her so well that he could see her clearly – thirty years younger, a naive girl. An unprepossessing figure, certainly not pretty, but with a charm laced with intelligence. For a few seconds, she was metamorphosing before his eyes. Véro’s manner was changing too. As she drained the bottle, she mellowed. She even started coming on to him. And he could see her – a prisoner of that ruined face, of that damaged, dolorous body – as she still was inside. She had the gestures of a diva, the wit of an intellectual – flashes of a very different period of her life appeared in this gloomy kitchen.

  Vernon drew her out. Had the old man had time to be afraid? Had he asked to see them? Had he died at home in his own bed? Charles had always refused to bring Véro to the camp. But their relationship was much more solid than he claimed. That was his way, he oversimplified: Véro was an old cow who had moved into his place and outstayed her welcome, that was that. It was as though Charles had consciously decided to avoid all nuance. To protect himself from something. He snuffed it out. With booze, with his refusal of words, with crass jokes. He switched himself off as much as possible, like switching off the lights in every room. In Charles’ mind, intelligence was a plaything for the rich. A disgusting con trick that served only to mask their fetid stench. This was not subconscious: he could expound eloquent theories on the subject. No need to ponce about using pretentious phrases and sweeping gestures: human beings were morons. You really had to be two clowns short of a circus to worship a god that could create such a shower of shits. Liars thieves poseurs and predators. That’s what they were, the whole lot of them. If you got him onto the subject, there was no shutting him up. He hated people who wanted to be decent, wanted to be pure. He hated smart-arses.

  And yet, sometimes Charles would get caught up in a discussion and forget that he was an old soak. At such times, they felt as though they were seeing his huge carcass unfurl – and the old bastard would reveal a surprising knowledge of politics, an unexpectedly analytical mind, and a tenderness, wounded but very much alive, for what the future might hold for humanity.

  Listening to Véro that night, Vernon realised that they were better suited than the old man claimed. She was whiny and manipulative like a lot of alcoholics late in their career. But she had the same ability to briefly lift the curtain, offering a glimpse of that same intelligence, marked by flashes that illuminated vast swathes of reality before the curtain fell again, as though hurting what was luminous within her was a matter of survival.

  Vernon was drunk. A little belatedly, he started to cry. Unaffectedly. Tears coursed down his cheeks as he stared at the sink spewing dirty plates and glasses. He would never again sit next to the old man, listening as he lampooned everything and everyone in the camp.

  Not having said goodbye weighed heavily on him. He couldn’t understand why Charles had not let them know. But he suspected that the old man had not wanted them to see him terrified. Because Vernon was sure that he had been afraid. He thought about the hideous Bermuda shorts Charles used to wear on sunny days, proudly flaunting his pale, hairy, bandy legs, and it brought a lump to his throat to realise that this would no longer be a part of his reality. Aloud he said, “Shit, the ridiculous fucking shoes he used to wear. You had to wonder where he dug them up. He always swore they were genuine designer kicks. Like a little kid. We didn’t believe him. Those things cost a small fortune.” Charles loved it when people mocked his appalling taste in shoes. He squirmed with pleasure when people teased him about them.

  Véro gave a curious smile. “Don’t pretend you don’t know. Why else would you be here? You’re never going to convince me that you genuinely cared about that old deadbeat. You’re too young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You’ve got better things to do than come looking for Charles because he disappeared. You knew all along.”

  This was far from being the first thing she’d said that Vernon did not understand, so he simply nodded and waited for her to continue. She heaved an exasperated sigh. “Don’t kid a kidder. He didn’t leave you much. I don’t know what-all he promised you, but he was having you on. He’d frittered away most of it by himself. After the government takes its cut, I’ll have enough to pay for a headstone and that’ll be that.” She emptied her glass in a single gulp, never taking her eyes off Vernon. She was testing him, but he didn’t know what it was about. He laid his hand on hers to soothe the rage he could feel welling inside her. She clutched his hand and collapsed into a heap. “He asked me to give you half. Half! Can you imagine? Sharing doesn’t come easy. You have to feel sorry for rich people. Human beings don’t like sharing: it’s in our blood. I never understood that as clearly as I do today. We’re not built for it. But the truth is, deep down I’m scared that if I don’t respect his wishes, I’ll be haunted by remorse to the end of my days . . . like something out of Dostoevsky. I wasn’t born rich. I don’t have the effrontery of the moneyed classes. I wasn’t going to say anything to you, but I’m scared . . .”

  Vernon was beginning to realise that she was talking about some kind of inheritance. It was difficult to imagine Charles having saved any money, so he assumed it was a few hundred euros and, had Véro let him get a word in edgeways, would have immediately reassured her, “Keep the money, don’t even think about it.” But now she was in full flow, it was impossible to Vernon to interrupt.

  Kiko was right, in his madness. Vernon should devise a ritual, a gesture, a ceremony. Something to warn others that, in his presence, they run the risk of losing their head, of saying things they planned to keep secret. He is used to it. It is a slight, almost imperceptible uncoupling followed by a torrent of words. He has this effect on certain people. He opens them up.

  She poured her heart out about everything. The lottery. The old man’s last wishes. It sounded to Vernon as though she was losing her marbles, but it fitted. It was like a child’s toy, when you try to put a square peg into a square hole, it fits. The trainers. The crates of beer Charles would leave behind at the camp. The vintage wine. The Bose headphones. The fact that he never said, I can’t come visit next month, I won’t have the money. Never mentioning his rent. His bills. Vernon remembered a series of minor incidents that made it clear the old man had considerable savings for a working-class stiff. And the endless conversations he had with the porn stars about that famous B-movie he wanted to make. He pictures the old man, sitting surrounded by the girls, solemn as a pope, as they told him how much such a shoot would cost. But while Charles loved pulling people’s legs, he wasn’t the kind to convince girls that he could help them just so they’d be nice to him. He was serious.

  Exhausted from talking, Véro sat, her chin jutting, a cigarette dangling from her parted lips. She added: “I’m shocked that he didn’t go to the lawyer and leave the lot to the Society for the Protection of Animals. Just to fuck me off. He’d changed a lot, the old bastard. That was your influence. He was kinder. It was a sort of courage. Please, ta
ke me to visit this camp of yours so I can understand why he changed.”

  *

  While waiting for the anaesthetic to take effect, the dentist engages Vernon in conversation.

  “Kiko’s told me a lot about you. He says you’re a shaman of the turntable, that David Guetta had better watch his back . . . I’m not really into music and that kind of thing . . . I remembered your name because my sister was a junkie for a couple of years, that was twenty years ago, but even today she still takes Subutex. She can’t get off it. Apart from that, she’s fine . . . If you think of it, remember to thank Kiko for sending you to me: you’re a textbook case! There’s not much of the original tooth structure left . . . but it’s hanging in there . . . given your age and the state of your gums, by rights you should be wearing full dentures but . . . it’s hanging in there. Just goes to show what you can do with a bit of composite and a drill . . .”

  *

  Vernon tries to get his head around the fact that, with what Charles has left them, they could go to the dentist every day, have every tooth in their heads replaced with gold if they wanted . . . He can’t understand why the old man never said anything. It makes him sad. He would have loved to clap old Charles on the back and say, so are you really planning this zombie Z-movie of theirs? Shit. The old soak had been serious when he sat there taking notes, the length of the shooting schedule, the cost of the fake blood, et cetera, and Vernon never took the trouble to talk to him seriously. Then again, the old man never wanted anyone to talk to him seriously.

  *

  Vernon said nothing about the inheritance to Mariana, who was in bed, glued to her smartphone as though making up for lost time when he got back from Véro’s place. She had just downloaded a dozen new apps recommended by her girlfriends and was studying a map of the planes currently flying above their head in the Paris sky. She was checking where the planes were headed, what time they took off. She found it exciting that she could track such things.

  Vernon said, Charles is dead, then lay down. Mariana never really knew the old man. She hadn’t been at the camp long enough. And in her eyes, he was just a dirty old man everyone was infatuated with. But she snuggled close to him and laid the palm of her hand on his solar plexus without saying a word. And he felt the connection – she soothes his pain.

  *

  He didn’t talk to Kiko about the money, that morning, as they were having coffee. They shared a man-hug. Kiko used to have interminable conversations with Charles – the trader explaining why, according to him, the struggle of the working class would never succeed now: “It’s all over, that era when people cared about abolishing slavery and the Front Populaire. These days, no-one wants to get rid of poverty. If we needed labour, we were forced to negotiate with you, the workers. We had no choice. But now, with automation, we don’t give a shit about the working classes. We’ll kill you. I’m not talking about opening fire on protests and demonstrations, we’ve always done that. No, we’ll exterminate you en masse. You serve no purpose. That’s where you’re behind the times. You’re still reasoning like you did when Papa Marx was alive – when the proletariat was essential so that people like me could make a profit. Maybe, as science improves, we’ll breed a small number of sturdy proles, so we can transfuse your blood, transplant your organs, graft sections of your skin, get you to carry our children so that our wives don’t have to do the work . . . but, frankly, given the future of bioprinting organs and hi-tech incubators, we won’t need you. We’ll eliminate you. It’s common sense. You cause far too much trouble for the little you actually contribute. That’s why it’s inevitable: the poorer classes will be wiped off the map.” These arguments seemed completely logical to old Charles, who gave as good as he got, delighted to have finally found someone sincere and clear-sighted with whom to argue. “Are you suggesting we should take the initiative and wheel out the old guillotine?” Kiko shook his head. “If you could, you’d have done it long ago. But you respect alpha males. Just look at the way the poor worship Putin. I’m not saying it’s in your D.N.A., but it’s been handed down for generations. It’s like a culture coding, you’ll never manage to emancipate yourselves in time. We’ve taught you to love the boss man.”

  They could carry on like this for hours at a time. Kiko immediately asked whether anyone had thought to pay for Charles’ funeral and Vernon became evasive. He said nothing about the inheritance. The idea of so much money scares him. It is too big a change. He thinks about the camp as he left it, about the life they have been leading these past few months and he wishes he could enfold time. It’s too early for such a massive upheaval.

  *

  The sound, fucking hell, he’d completely forgotten the sound of a root canal being wrenched from the gum – he cannot feel anything except the dentist’s huge paws tugging at the tooth. But he can hear. Everything. The repulsive squelch of the gum being probed. The tooth does not come out in one piece. This is something he has experienced before, in other chairs, in other dental surgeries . . . God, the number of dentists he’s visited in his time . . . No-one in his family has healthy teeth. And, in his case, a lifetime of excess hasn’t helped. He takes a deep breath, but, given the situation, it’s difficult to relax.

  *

  He could decide not to say anything to anyone. Decide not to go back and see Véro again. Or leave the cash sitting in a bank account, like Charles did, use it only for small purchases, so it’s there in case of an emergency. That’s what a real leader would do. But, as Kiko says, Vernon hasn’t got what it takes to be a leader.

  *

  At the camp, they are kept informed about what is going on in the outside world via the stories told them by visitors. They know what is happening in Greece, for example. What Vernon finds surprising is not the brutal way in which Europe is pushing the country to the brink of ruin, but the silence of the elected representatives. Why is it that, as soon as they come to power, people stop telling the truth? Why don’t they sit down in front of a microphone and say, simply: “This is how it happened. This is how I championed an idea I thought was right and just and this is how I was persuaded to lead my country to the slaughter”? There has to be a reason. Did someone rape your wife before your eyes while you were forced to listen to your four-year-old son being tortured? Tell us, what’s happening? It must be because they feel too humiliated. They’re ashamed to say what was done to them. How they were compelled. How badly they were crushed. People in power never tell the truth. Never. He should take a leaf out of their book. Go back to the camp and say nothing about what happened. People in power never tell the truth because it allows them to make decisions on the quiet. They hold private discussions above the heads of the people. They do their own thing. But Vernon is not a man of power. He doesn’t feel able to lie to those around him. It would leave a bad taste in his mouth – even he would stop believing that their adventure is worthwhile.

  The dentist straightens up, pushes away the lamp and turns it off. “All done. You’re a free man.” He hands Vernon a little paper cup filled with pink liquid to rinse his mouth. Vernon sits up, his head is spinning. He cannot bring himself to run his tongue over the neatly stitched gum.

  THE TAXI IS WAITING OUTSIDE THE DOOR. SEEING DOPALET struggle to cross the road, the driver gets out to open the car door for him. It’s amazing how much the G7 taxi service has improved since it got a kick up the arse from Uber. It just goes to show that the stick is still the best strategy for bringing about change.

  The producer gingerly settles himself on the back seat with the prudence of a major burns victim. He sits with his body tilted forward. If his back should inadvertently touch the back of the seat, he would howl in pain. Each session is more painful than the last. He finds it difficult to believe that some people undergo this needle torture of their own volition. If he had the choice, he would never submit himself to such agony.

  He gave up on the idea of coming by scooter – after three hours’ tattooing, he is too nauseous to drive. His torso is trus
sed up in cling film, he looks like a rotisserie chicken. The skin is burned. Beneath the cling film, he can feel the sticky blood mingled with ink macerating his flayed body. It has got worse and worse, and it is far from over. This time, at least he remembered to take a muscle relaxant, a couple of painkillers and a Lexomil. The tattooist smeared his back with anaesthetic cream. But to no avail. The moment he hears the needle whirr, his body tenses and he clenches his teeth. He’s shelling out two hundred euros an hour for this butchery. In cash. When he thinks how he hounded his children to stay in school – when they could just as easily have earned a living by buying a colouring book and a tattoo machine . . . Two hundred euros an hour – that’s more than a shrink. And the tattooist claims he’s giving him a discount because it’s a large piece . . . He’s got Dopalet by the balls. And he knows it. Every forty-five minutes, he takes a break to smoke a cigarette and check his text messages. And why not? The breaks are not deducted from the hourly rate . . . Dopalet does not protest. He has to get this thing on his back sorted. And this tattoo parlour has the advantage of being open early in the evening when he is the only client. He has no desire to accidentally bump into god-knows-who and have to explain what he is doing there. Once a fortnight, the film producer summons a taxi and, with iron in his soul, he heads to the northern zone of Paris. To an area he never visits, near Crimée. A neighbourhood of staggering ugliness dotted with drab businesses, murky bars and dubious shops.