Vernon Subutex Three

by Virginie Despentes

  Bags of pastries and a few baguettes are set on the table already scattered with crumbs and spattered with jam. Vernon looks around for the coffee pot. It’s full. He can’t find a clean mug. There’s no hot water, and simply rinsing a stray glass he finds in the sink leaves his fingers frozen. Someone opens the windows and, within a minute, the room is filled with cold, as though it were a tangible substance. Vernon takes a seat, sets his phone on the table in front of him and avoids looking at the others. There’s a queue for the bathroom, in his approximate English he asks whether there is any hot water and the guy he asks smiles and says, “I hope so.” He’s not much younger than Vernon, and he seems likeable enough. He’s one of the gang wearing V-neck T-shirts. His is a violent green. Vernon’s English is incomprehensible, his accent is atrocious, and he insists on using sentences that are too complex for his level of fluency. Otherwise, he might try to have a conversation with the young guy whose face is half-hidden by a floppy fringe and who could be a guitarist in a pop band. He has big, childlike eyes, high cheekbones and a slightly astonished air. At the far end of the table, a girl whose temples are shaved and tattooed is reading tarot cards for another girl. They are talking in low voices. Vernon sniffs the milk carton on the table and pours some into his coffee. He needs to warn the Hyena. Max mentioned Dopalet. Something is very wrong. He turns to the guy who seems friendly and says, “My phone is out of credit and I have to send a text message may I borrow yours?” The kid understands what he wants and slides his phone across the table. “No problem. By the way, loved your set last night. I was high as a kite and you made me travel real far,” and Vernon, who hasn’t the faintest idea what has just been said, gives him a smile. He looks through his contacts for the Hyena’s emergency number, which is listed under “Potato”. He had laughed like a drain when he first entered this code name. He laughed a lot more when he was living at the camp. He doesn’t call from his own phone, because he knows that she would have a conniption. She’s completely paranoid. So paranoid, in fact, that he’d be very surprised if she wasn’t interested to hear about Max’s visit.

  AÏCHA’S CHEEKS ARE STREAKED WITH TEARS AS SHE PRAYS, and she is disgusted by her tendency towards self-pity. It was so pleasant to surrender herself, she wallowed in sin and she enjoyed it – now, as she weeps, she cannot be sure whether it is because she has strayed from the true path. She wants to punish herself. She never realised it was possible to hate oneself so much. She can’t pretend that she wasn’t warned. Between a man and a woman, there is always Shaitan.

  *

  Dawn fills the room with greyish light. On the far side of the wall, in the kitchen, Faïza is bustling about. Aïcha can hear little Yanis – who always gets up before everyone else because his school is furthest away and he has to catch an early bus – making bird calls. He imitates them brilliantly – no-one knows where he gets it from. Crouched on his chair, he chirps and rolls his head. If asked what he is doing, he says he is talking to the birds chirruping in the trees along the avenue. He speaks in German, even if the question is in French. He is her favourite of the three boys. Yanis is six and she does not feel embarrassed when she misuses the words he teaches her. On the contrary, whenever she tries to say anything complicated, it makes him laugh. It has become a private game: every time she says something unintelligible, he says, “Bist du verrückt?” The rules require her to reply, “Aber ich kenne dich, du bist ein Kartoffel!” and scoop him up into the air as he howls with laughter.

  She needs to make the most of this moment of peace because soon Abid and Jafa will come downstairs and it will be impossible to listen to birdsong . . . Abid, the bigger of the two, is grumpy when he wakes up, he sobs until he is red in the face and, if his whims are not met, he stiffens and wails even louder. Jafa is more cheerful, he is eight and still has to suck a dummy to get to sleep. Brown curls long eyelashes small sleepy head – he looks like an angel. But he quickly emerges and is transformed into a demon: cycling around the kitchen, bounding on the sofa, swinging off the light fittings . . .

  Aïcha enjoys the children’s company. At first, when she found out there were three boys, she was afraid that she might not know how to look after them. She speaks to them in French, they answer in German, which she struggles to understand. The first time she saw Jafa dangling from a bungee cord he had hooked onto the wardrobe while Abid was shitting himself and stamping his feet and Yanis was throwing his Playmobil figures around the room making noises like a tail-gunner, she thought, I’m going back to France, I’d rather be stabbed to death get run over by a car or be thrown in jail for no reason, I’d still be better off at home than with this pack of Gremlins. She hadn’t known which way to turn. Those first few days, she simply did her best to ensure no-one died. And then one day, Yanis – whom Aïcha suspected of making the most of the fact that she spoke no German to insult her in order to make his brother laugh – had said, “Shut up, bitch,” and she had given him a slap. She was ashamed of what she had done. Her own father had never raised a hand to her. She couldn’t understand what had got into her. To her great surprise, when the parents came home that evening, Yanis had not rushed into their arms to tell tales, in fact none of the three boys had said anything. The incident was never mentioned again, but from that day Yanis had kept his nose clean. Aïcha no longer loses her cool. Though there is no shortage of opportunities.

  Aïcha immerses herself in the games, their mealtimes, the baths, their childlike babble. They wear her out and leave her little time to brood. In time, she managed to tame them. They squirm but allow themselves to be kissed, she calls them my little brioche buns, they wrap their tiny arms around her neck and, at their touch, she feels restored. She recognises these instinctive, affectionate gestures: they are the same gestures her father used to make. Which she had forgotten. She considers how much she was cared for, encouraged and educated. Recently, all she has thought about the education she received is that it was too lax. Now, she realises it was nothing less than a feat, to raise a girl without ever raising a hand to her. More than indulgent, her father had been present. She had been loved. She had been treated with consideration. Her talents had been encouraged, her efforts applauded.

  Usually, by this hour, Aïcha has already slipped out of her room and turned on the coffee maker. In this, too, she is imitating what her father used to do for her. She knows how pleasant it is to be welcomed by the aroma of hot coffee. Faïza appreciates the gesture. But today, she cannot bring herself to go through this farce. She needs to leave. Her decision is made. Even though she is scared. She is revolted by her concerns for her own comfort. She despises her hypocritical remorse. She knows that it is not fear of the unknown that is keeping her here. It is sin.

  Aïcha ended up here not long after the incident with Dopalet. She had been driven to Lyon during the night. She had asked no questions. The Hyena had told her to lie low, that she was in danger. She had said that, with a little luck, the producer would not go to the police, since he wouldn’t want to have to explain the reasons for the assault on him. But he would try to find some other way to get his revenge. Aïcha said she was prepared to stand trial for what she had done, but the Hyena had said, “Are you kidding me? All Dopalet needs is a half-decent lawyer for you to be charged with terrorism – you study law, do you realise what that would mean?” And this had been before the terrorist attacks . . .

  Aïcha had balked: she was worried that, if she ran away, the producer might take it out on her father, but the Hyena had reassured her. “Dopalet’s not like that, he’s more primal. He’s not going to go after your family, you’re the one he wants to punish, believe me, I know him . . .” This was serious. She was going to miss a year of her studies. While it seemed to her logical that she should have to pay for what she had done, she realised that there had been no excuse for forcing Céleste to go on the run. Here, too, the Hyena had been reassuring – don’t worry, she said, the time will fly by, you’ll see each other again. It’s just a little break. A cou
ple of months, max . . . She would spend the time working as an au pair for a couple in Germany. She had promised to do nothing under her real name. No driving licence, no gym membership, no paid employment, no applications for grants or university courses. And, especially, no social media and no mobile phone. She disappeared, leaving her passport with her father.

  At the bus station in Lyon, she had paid for her ticket to Berlin in cash. She had removed her hijab for the journey so as not to attract attention. It was a long bus ride. She was not afraid of what might await her. She had been met by a young man. He was like a secret agent from a movie, not because of the way he looked, but because of the way he managed to reel off a vast amount of information while pretending to be casual. He was about thirty and, although he kept a safe distance from her, she had noted the regret in his voice when he talked about the capital and she assumed that he, too, was in hiding and would have preferred to be at home. Since then, she has met a lot of immigrants working in Germany and this changed her mind – they all wished they could have stayed in their home countries. No-one moves to Frankfurt for the balmy weather, the striking architecture or an easy life. Especially not foreigners. The city is ugly and Germans are boring. No-one wants to live among them. But everyone has to eat.

  The young man had hailed a taxi and taken her to the train station – she was heading to Frankfurt. There, she would be an au pair with a family who thought they were hiring an unemployed French girl determined to learn German so she could find work.

  At Frankfurt station, she was met by the mother of the family. To her relief, they were Muslim. Aïcha could say her daily prayers without looking as though she was planning a coup d’état. It would be a change from life at home. In Paris, her father sometimes wept when he saw her performing her ablutions. She looked at the little hand of Fatima that hung from the rear-view mirror swinging to and fro, and it was a joyous gesture – like a sign of welcome. On the back seat, there was a Kiki doll – a stuffed animal that sucks its thumb. The car was a disaster area, and though Faïza blamed it on the children, the fact is that she’s completely disorganised. She trails clutter and mess in her wake – she’s a cyclone, if the house is spick and span, it takes less than ten minutes for her to turn it upside down, Aïcha cannot help but wonder how she physically manages to take out and scatter so many things in such a short space of time – if you watch her, you never see her opening drawers and furiously strewing the contents everywhere. She has a gift for chaos.

  From the first, Faïza welcomed her. She is garrulous, cheerful and a little eccentric – but in all things she is decent and pious. She doesn’t flaunt her religion constantly to prove that she has read the Qur’an more attentively than her neighbour or that she is the most devout, the most respectable woman in the neighbourhood. She doesn’t make a fuss. But she never does anything that might be considered haram. She never parades her religion, she is a believer, not an exhibitionist.

  Faïza has no time for hypocrisy: she envies her neighbours, she is materialistic, she doesn’t like other people’s children, and she makes no attempt to hide the fact. She doesn’t pretend to be other than who she is. She is not a gossip, even if she sometimes harbours evil thoughts. She is modest, does not draw attention to herself, and would not dare to speak to a man in anything other than a serious tone – everything about her is flawless, considered, gently and discreetly feminine.

  In the car, that first day, she asked no embarrassing questions. She is an old friend of the Hyena and owes her a favour. She genuinely believes that Aïcha has come to look for work in Germany and needs a job to tide her over until she has mastered the language. Faïza does not ask many questions because she is not particularly curious. She spends too much time talking about herself to be inquisitive. She needs help at home, since she has three young children and cannot give up her work at the hospital where she is a nursing aide because her husband has just lost his job at Amazon and the household now relies entirely on her salary. She did not tell Aïcha all this to justify having her work full time in exchange for room and board – that does not seem unfair. It’s quid pro quo.

  As she set her bag down in the middle of the living room, Aïcha had been shocked: it was bright, colourful, full of amusing objects, but mostly it was a complete pigsty. It wasn’t dirty – just a complete shambles. There was a towel hanging over the back of a kitchen chair, a toy truck on the living-room table, a pile of D.V.D.s in the hall, three newspapers on top of the fridge . . . Aïcha had thought about the childhood home her father had kept so neat and tidy, and it was at that precise moment that she realised that she would never go back there. And that she would always miss it.

  *

  For the first few days, the Hyena called her on the landline every morning, as though even from afar she was familiar with Aïcha’s timetable and knew that she would be alone. She never gave her name and never addressed Aïcha by her first name, she would simply say, I just wanted to let you know that everything’s fine here, that everyone is well – and the word “everyone” was a comfort, meaning that her father was well and that Céleste was managing to fend for herself. Aïcha felt terribly homesick. She would often use the family computer to listen to France Inter or France Culture – the sound of home, the radio stations her father listened to in his apartment.

  But after the terrorist attacks, it had gradually become impossible to listen to these programmes without hearing discussions about Islam. The French intelligentsia were leafing through the Qur’an and getting it to say what suited them. They were doing their utmost to force the words of the Prophet to justify the bloodbath devastating the country. As though the terrorists had just invented politically motivated murder and had done so at the behest of Allah. As though the ignorant men who had perpetrated these crimes had not been primarily inspired by Hollywood movies and video games . . . Let them seek out the roots of violence where it grows, not in her prayers. None of the murderers was a practising Muslim. Not one. Not that this seemed to puzzle the pundits on the radio stations her father listened to. They frantically consulted the Qur’an as though it required only a Western eye to unearth the truth. To get it to spew out its violence. They never thought to examine their own propaganda. It was not hard to see that since 9/11 the killers invariably chose to speak the language of the West: graphic, spectacular violence. The aesthetics of slaughter are decided in Hollywood.

  *

  She wondered what her father thought about all this. Was he duped? Was he demoralised? She had to manage in silence. She was confident. Dopalet would forget. Rich people have their whims, he would move on to something else. She would go back to her father. She would go back to her studies, maybe go to university in England. This thought kept her going. As the days passed, she got her bearings in the household. Faïza did not treat her like a servant, but rather like a younger cousin helping out in exchange for her upkeep. She was relieved that Aïcha was there and was effusive in her gratitude. If she brought back cakes, there was always one for “la petite”. As was only right, Aïcha kept her distance from Walid, the father of the boys. Islam forbids fraternising. She could not be alone in the presence of a non-mahram. They both knew this, and did not need to talk about it. She refrained from going into a room if she knew that he was alone in there. He did likewise.

  Aïcha did not eat with the couple, she had her dinner earlier, with the children. But sometimes, over the weekend, she would have coffee and dessert with them. Faïza is obsessed with food – she can talk about it for hours, she is capable of making a thirty-minute detour to buy a cake she loves. Walid is as taciturn as his wife is voluble, but he enjoys talking about France. They would sometimes exchange a few words. Mostly, they met when she was playing with the children in the park opposite the house and he came to take Yanis cycling, or to play football with Jafa. Walid did not say anything, but he made it clear that he understood how difficult it was to look after three boys under ten. She respected Walid, he was devout and reserved. Though not an
educated man, he had a mathematical intelligence – logical and agile. She liked his common sense, his natural authority and his stillness. She did not worry about him. She was too focused on her own thoughts and the three boys monopolised her attention.

  *

  With Faïza, on the other hand, a friendship blossomed. The nurse had to spend all day speaking German, a language she hated and spoke badly. In the evening, she was happy to be able to sit with Aïcha and chat. More often than not, Walid would go out. He would go to the shisha bar to meet up with French Muslim friends, immigrants like himself, and would come home late. Meanwhile, the two women would binge on T.V. box sets. After two episodes, Faïza would turn to Aïcha – shall we watch another one? I can sleep in the next life. And Aïcha would giggle and settle back on the sofa. After the third episode, if the cliffhanger was particularly tantalising, they would sometimes look at each other and burst out laughing. “We can’t just leave it at that, shall we watch one more?” It was often Walid who sent them off to bed when he got home: “Are you gone in the head the two of you? Do you realise you’ve been watching this rubbish for four hours?” and they would laugh at their own foolishness and clear the coffee table of the pyramids of gold wrappers from the Ferrero Rochers they devoured by the kilo, and the empty cups from the herbal teas they made between episodes. All in all, it was a nice life. Just monotonous enough and lonely enough for Aïcha to feel exiled, yet cosy enough for her not to get depressed. One evening, Walid joined them. But there were too many scenes of fornication in “Game of Thrones” for Aïcha to watch it with a man in the room. She had got up to leave but Faïza had said, “It’s alright, we’re watching “Sherlock” tonight – stay.”