Vernon Subutex Three

by Virginie Despentes

  *

  Vernon immediately remembered Marcia’s voice. He thought he was dreaming. He did not often dream. Then he recognised her perfume. And he realised that Marcia was actually there, kneeling beside him, and it did not make him happy. Her presence unsettled him. She was wearing a skin-tight denim outfit straight out of the 1980s, and her hair was different from how he remembered it – pulled back and ironed smooth. It was Marcia, but it didn’t look like her. She had helped him to his feet, got him onto the métro, she stood bolt upright, arrogantly staring people down since everyone in the carriage was looking around to find the source of the stench. They moved away, pressing handkerchiefs to their noses, they shifted seats. And Marcia puffed out her chest and held her head high, defying anyone to complain. Vernon had said nothing. But a flicker of consciousness began to unfurl. He thought about “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, a T.V. series by Luigi Comencini he used to watch as a little boy. It had terrified him. The creepy lady with the purple hair and hat with the veil. Marcia wasn’t wearing a hat with a veil, but in his memory she is. She had become that lady.

  *

  She is here, and he misses her. She does not fill his need for her. It is Marcia. These are her gestures, her clothes, her voice. But her presence does not snuff out her absence. Vernon no longer feels things. He is capable only of missing them. It is not even an absence. Simply an emptiness. What has been ripped away. That is all there is.

  He can speak. A little. He can say, you make coffee exactly the way I like it. And he sees the smile. He feels bored for her. It is enough for her to make him happy, she is happy every time he says something. For the first few days, he simply lay there, unmoving. But now, he folds away the sofa bed he sleeps on, puts back the cushions, folds the sheets and puts them in the dresser in the hall. He wants to be as little trouble as possible. Marcia says he is making great progress. But what is he progressing towards? She says he needs to let time takes its course. But what time? What is she expecting?

  *

  When Marcia leaves the apartment, he sweeps the small living room, the kitchen, the balcony. He keeps an eye on the time, and throws open the windows just before she gets back because he knows she likes the place to smell fresh, she talks about the flow of chi. So, he does his best to help the chi to flow, he is afraid that he stinks. His smell has changed. Marcia says no, you’re imagining things, you smell like a guy, all guys smell like that . . . even when they’re clean . . . His sweat is not the same: it reeks of mingled fear and morbid sadness. His smell bothers him. He has become a block of misery. That’s another reason he airs the apartment. He needs to do things. His thoughts have resumed their usual course, there are gaps, but things are coming back. A series of words, of conclusions, of lists.

  He does not feel anything. He does not make any effort. He does not want to get over it. Though he feels sorry, given everything that Marcia has done for him. And she still worries when he can’t manage to eat. He cannot get it down. Just eating half an apple takes superhuman effort. He finds it reassuring, feeling his body waste away. He doesn’t like her to worry, this is the most intense emotion that he feels. He doesn’t want to eat. He enjoys being like a bird. Weightless. Almost absent.

  He has learned to keep out complex thoughts. They inexorably lead him to an excruciating furnace. He never utters the name of the attacker. Never mentions the tragedy. Or the date. He does not want to know. This is a vast area into which he dares not venture.

  His nights are restless. He does not want to wake Marcia, but if he falls asleep, he can’t control his screams. Marcia gets up, takes him in her arms and rocks him. She never complains. Sometimes, at night, she manages to give him a brief sense of security. The moment he pulls away from her, he is afraid to sleep. He feels it is dangerous to let go. When he has nightmares, she wraps her legs and arms around him and falls asleep next to him. He says nothing, but he wonders what it is all in aid of. Where are they headed? Why go to so much trouble? He has no intention of getting better. It would be inappropriate.

  *

  He complicates her life with all manner of injunctions. He can’t bear to watch television. Marcia doesn’t turn it on anymore. The only show they can watch, on the computer, without him risking a panic attack is “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. Marcia knows every season by heart, the names of all the contestants, the backstage scandals. Vernon pays no attention to what’s happening. But it doesn’t bother him. And she likes to sit next to him, nibbling roasted sunflower seeds and commenting on the action. She sometimes even manages to elicit a smile from him.

  But when it comes to television or the internet, he simply can’t. Several times, he has unthinkingly switched on the T.V. To have something to pit against the silence. Every time he stumbles on scenes of terrible violence. Every time. Gallons of blood, torture, screaming, death, fire. Fictional footage, images from Aleppo – it doesn’t matter to him whether it is real or not. He doesn’t want to know. They want it to start all over again. It drives him insane. He has paranoid delusions – this is the only thing they’re interested in: mass graves, corpses, mountains of bodies, misery and the tears of the survivors.

  Marcia patiently mops his brow. “Who are ‘they’?”

  He doesn’t want to think about it. Every time he has tried to watch something on T.V. or something online, he has seen a head being severed a grenade being thrown a house exploding an eye being ripped out a passer-by eviscerated a blood-smeared woman pleading for her child to be spared. He can no longer turn on the television without seeing death. He knows that he will finally be better when the day comes that he can enjoy it, like everyone else. Gorge on it. So, Marcia sets the laptop down on the coffee table and she says, “You can trust RuPaul, there’s never any blood. You’ll get to meet Alaska Thunderfuck, I just adore Alaska.” There is something contagious about her excitement at sharing the show with him. But when he forgets his grief, he feels uncomfortable. He does not want to move on. Like a child who refuses to get out of the swimming pool.

  Music bothers him. Now. He makes an effort. He doesn’t complain. He has made Marcia’s life difficult enough – she can never invite people round, never turn on the radio, has to hide in her room to use the internet, she never brings home a newspaper – he doesn’t want her to feel that she cannot put on a record. All he hears is a series of notes. He cannot hear the connection. He prefers the nothingness of time passing. The nothingness of hours.

  *

  She blocked the rear exit doors. Vernon was looking elsewhere. Nobody saw her, there were no screams before it happened, because no-one saw it coming. She lobbed three grenades. When the first one exploded, everyone knew what was happening. There had already been so many terrorist attacks, so many stories of mass killers – instantly, the people standing around looked at each other in horror, at the second explosion, they threw themselves on the ground, no-one could see where the shots were coming from, the room filled with smoke, people were coughing, running, stumbling – stumbling over corpses. Vernon could just make out her silhouette. She was wearing a gas mask to protect her from the smoke. She aimed for the head, then the heart, two bullets per body. She raked a high-powered flashlight over the scene, to see if anything moved in the smoke. Like a video game. The following morning, the police counted more than three hundred spent cartridges.

  *

  If Vernon allows a thought to unfurl – he sees things. The grenades the AK-47 the bullets. Manufactured objects. Which were not deflected from their proper purpose. They are churned out in factories for precisely this purpose. To kill dismember slash burn. There are no accidents. There are high-performance objects. We know what they will be used for. What purpose they serve. There is no uncertainty. People are shocked. Despite the fact that it is hardly likely that a grenade will be used as a paperweight. A grenade does exactly what it is supposed to do. Like an AK-47. Like the gun. The only variant in the equation is: did you know the people before they became corpses?

  He blocks out thes
e thoughts. They serve no purpose. He is not used to them. He will make no effort to get used to them. He will not recover.

  Céleste was pirouetting, eyes closed, palms slowly raised, delicately placing her high heels on the floor, she seemed at peace.

  Her body traced a backward curve. A perfect curve. At the first explosion.

  She was the first that Vernon saw fall.

  He did not see everyone. He tripped on someone’s shoulder, Xavier collapsed on top of him – then someone he didn’t know. He didn’t play dead in order to protect himself. Olga screamed and stepped backwards, then fell on top of them. Vernon couldn’t move. He could see. He should have screamed. Told her not to forget him. He did not see Mariana fall; but her name was on the list. Every name was on that list.

  *

  Marcia looks after him. Unhesitating, uncomplaining, expecting nothing in return. For months, she has been running towels under the cold tap, leaving them in the freezer for a few minutes, then pressing them against his temples. She says he’s burning up.

  Vernon does jigsaw puzzles. He is not trying to keep himself busy, but he feels it is less awkward for her if she sees him doing something. Someone had given her a thousand-piece jigsaw of birds of the world. An old-fashioned drawing, brightly coloured, realistic. She had left it in its box, thinking, what fucking idiot gives someone a shitty present like this? Vernon set to work with extraordinary precision. When he had finished, Marcia ordered another puzzle, just to see. Five hundred pieces this time, a picture of a tiger in the snow. That’s a lot of shades of white. Vernon can spend hours sorting the pieces, staring at the cover, looking for some movement, some shadow that allows him to get his bearings.

  Vernon is the only survivor. For a long time, he hoped he might hear that someone else had survived. Not anymore. Long after she had left, long after the gunfire outside stopped, he struggled to crawl out from beneath the bodies. Around him, everyone looked like they were asleep. The bodies were connected by a pool of blood that slowly spread. It was the only movement in the room.

  This is what weapons are made for. They had served their purpose.

  *

  In the darkness, Vernon witnessed a distant scene framed by the open factory doors – the figure of a man firing a bullet into the back of the girl’s head. He recognised Max. He saw him walk away. He knew now what had happened. It seemed completely insane. But he knew. Dopalet had had his revenge. He doesn’t mention this to Marcia. It is meaningless now.

  *

  It was perhaps the most extraordinary convergence they had held. The reverberation was exceptional, the girls from Bordeaux excelled themselves, the sound seemed to pour from the walls and envelop the dancers.

  He told none of this to Marcia. Telling things is futile. What’s done is done. What happened next doesn’t interest him. The newspaper articles the social networks the comments left by people the tributes and the conspiracy theories. His lips feel as though they weigh a ton. His tongue is heavy. It feels huge inside his mouth. It disgusts him.

  *

  He is aware that Marcia has become unusually attentive. At first he thought that she was frustrated by the pity she felt for him, so was being more solicitous than usual. But one night she sat down next to him. She didn’t suggest that they watch RuPaul.

  “Look. I’m not sure if I should mention this. I don’t even know if you’d be interested . . . but I can’t bear to see you every day and not know what you would think about it . . . and I’m afraid you’ll hate me if you find out from somewhere else. It’s a series. A T.V. producer came up with the idea of turning your story into a series. It’s the father of Antoine, one of the guys who was there that night. The poor man . . . losing his son like that . . . Anyway, to try and get through the ordeal, he’s written a treatment for a television series, at first he was just trying to make sense of it, to survive. But it’s become a huge success. The music is amazing, and the production is brilliant – nothing like those meathead action series, it’s a completely different vibe, it’s totally addictive . . . I’ve been watching it – I didn’t say anything, but I’ve been watching it – the whole world is watching it. I don’t think it’s particularly realistic, it’s pretty much based on the story of Christ . . . so, your character, I’m sorry to have to tell you, you’re Jesus, and Alex Bleach is sort of John the Baptist . . . and then there are all the disciples . . . So, since it’s been a mega hit, they haven’t wasted any time – there’s a manga version now. Your character is amazing. He looks exactly like you. And, I don’t know where they dug it out, but they’ve found some book written by Lydia Bazooka, they’ve published speeches by Olga . . . It’s crazy, anything and everything about Subutex is big business. I never talked to you about it, but actually, after the tragedy . . . the stuff people were saying online was pretty grim – you remember what it’s like, when it’s not trolls it’s your friendly local neo-Nazis, so a lot of what was being said was really ugly. But now . . . Vernon, because of the manga, everyone knows your face. And it’s been a hit everywhere from Poland to Sydney via Berlin, Tokyo and New York. Dopalet and Max, the two guys who came up with it, are amazing, the business double act of the year . . . I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, Vernon. Do you understand? Do you want to see what it’s like?”

  *

  No. Vernon didn’t want to see. Marcia had to broach the subject several times before she managed to elicit a little interest. Dopalet, clearly, was perfectly adapted to the world in which he lived. He ordered a massacre. Then he turned it into a T.V. series. Vernon feels no anger at this. It is of no interest. Factories churn out grenades, Dopalet churns out history.

  *

  On the table, Marcia’s mobile vibrates. She checks the screen and sighs.

  “Roger’s owner is downstairs. I’ll go and gather up the stuff the vet gave me, the prescription, the flea powder, so she can take it with her . . .”

  “Aren’t you going to ask her to come up?”

  “What if she sees you? What if she recognises you?”

  “I can put on a hoodie. I can stay in the bathroom.”

  “Everyone thinks you’re dead, Vernon.”

  “You say that all the time. It doesn’t bother me if people believe that.”

  VERNON SUBUTEX DIED AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-TWO, OF pneumonia. He was never again homeless. He spent his last days with Aïcha and her daughter Sabra, on the island of Hydra. The circumstances in which they met up again are unclear. Subutex never showed the slightest interest in the convergences that began to occur all over Europe in the years that followed the massacre.

  Shortly before his death, Sabra published a series of blog posts recounting her teenage years with Subutex. There were accusations that the texts were fictional, but numerous holidaymakers who visited the island confirmed that there was a man whose physical resemblance to the hero of the Vernon Subutex manga was unsettling. It was sometime around 2077 that people first began to talk about the resurrection of the prophet. The legend did much to promote the convergences.

  In 2085, music was banned from all civilisations administering the Great Territories. The three monotheistic megalopolises, the post-Marxist continent and the indigenous continent of America censored all forms of music in compliance with laws that, though contradictory, agreed on one point: music was a symptom of moral decline, and was seen as a danger to social cohesion. To some, it inflamed profane sexual desires, to others, it posed an obstacle to the rigorous worship of God, while, to others still, it represented the paradigmatic prop of ultra-liberal pleasure.