Lying on my back in bed, unable to get to sleep and listening for the slightest sound, I realised: everything that L. had told me about her life, every anecdote, every story, every detail, came from a book on my shelves.
I put on a pullover and jeans, turned on all the lights in the living room and closed the curtains. Until early next morning, I proceeded methodically: I recalled L.’s confidences one by one.
And then I ran my fingers along the spines of the books, and I found them.
L. had drawn from everywhere, without a preference for particular genres, French novels or foreign ones.
What the texts that had inspired her had in common was that they were all by contemporary writers. Her mother’s death scene came without any shadow of doubt from a novel by Véronique Ovaldé. The description of her father’s personality was in large measure inspired by a Gillian Flynn novel. I found, almost word for word, the terrible visit from the neighbour in Alicia Erian’s first novel. The account of the morning when she woke up with a dry throat, unable to utter a sound, and of the return of her voice, was suspiciously close to the same experiences as described in a novel by Jennifer Johnston. As for meeting her husband on the night of the transport strike, it came straight out of a book by Emmanuèle Bernheim.
In the weeks that followed, I continued to discover the links that connected L.’s various stories to my bookcase.
The story of her imaginary friend Ziggy was an odd mixture of a short story by Salinger and a novel by Xavier Mauméjean that Paul had studied at school and that, for some unknown reason, had been shelved with my books in the bookcase in the living room.
I’d experienced a strange, familiar feeling when I heard L. talk about certain memories. They’d resonated with me, making me think we had something deeply intimate in common. Something inexplicable. An impression that came from another time. Only now did I understand the nature of that resonance.
Even today, I still don’t know why she did it. As a result of what challenge, or denial. But I’m a novelist and have entertained various theories in turn.
L. deliberately nourished herself on my reading, my books, to offer me a version of her life made up of memorable scenes, not chosen at random, but with discernment, because she thought they would work on me subconsciously: so many powerful stimuli intended to make me want to write my own story. L. began from the assumption that I’d liked those books (since I’d kept them) and therefore being reminded of them was likely to resonate with my own story, and in particular with the hidden book.
Or else L. enjoyed setting me a challenge. Fully aware of what she was doing, she determined to tell me, sometimes word for word, stories I’d read. She pushed the challenge further and further. At the risk of me discovering what she was doing, and saying: but I’ve read all this! L. filled her stories with fictional effects to see if I was capable of remembering. Perhaps she wanted to prove that these books had only left me with a diffuse, confused, fading impression. In this case, she was wrong. I remembered these books, some of them very clearly. But I’d accorded her my trust and had never doubted her word.
I also thought L. had set another sort of trap into which, this time, I had fallen with both feet. L. knew that by reviving, without my realising, the profound impression left by books I’d read, she’d make me want to write about her. I thought I’d betrayed her, but it was exactly what she wanted. To become my subject. And to lead me, in spite of myself, to plagiarise the authors I loved.
I adopted each of these theories for a few hours. But in truth none of them genuinely satisfied me.
Perhaps L. had really lived through all those scenes. Perhaps these connections between L.’s life and the books in my bookcase were just a strange coincidence. In which case, not only did reality outstrip fiction, it encompassed it, compacted it . . . In which case, reality truly ‘had the balls’, in fact, to mess around.
One morning when we were in Courseilles, François found a dead fish in the pond. All that remained of Djoba was his head and spine with a few scraps of flesh attached. Pearly scales floated on the surface. Djobi was in fine form. I asked François if Djobi had eaten Djoba and he assured me he hadn’t. But a few days later, after doing some research on the internet, he admitted it wasn’t impossible.
One day just before the summer, when I was feeling much better and had stopped waking up every night thinking about L., I spotted on a café terrace the handsome young man who had helped her move her things in. I was walking along the other side of the street. I don’t remember which detail of his features caught my eye, but I stopped dead.
I crossed the street and went over to him. He was having a drink with a girl of his own age. I interrupted them.
‘Hello. Excuse me, you came to my apartment early one morning a few months ago with a woman in her forties to help her with her things. She was moving in with me and had quite a lot of cases. Do you remember?’
The boy looked at me. He had a gentle smile.
‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t remember, madam. Where was it?’
‘In the eleventh, rue de la Folie-Méricourt. On the sixth floor; no lift. I’m sure you must remember the woman. She’s called L. Tall and blonde. She said you were the son of one of her friends.’
The boy told me he’d worked for a domestic services company for a while. He did DIY, moved furniture, cleared cellars. He vaguely recalled a job that had been a bit of a nightmare, on the sixth floor with no lift, but nothing else. He was sorry, but he really didn’t remember me or L. The company had been set up by a friend of his and had gone under quite quickly.
56
A few months ago, I watched the cult 1990s film The Usual Suspects again with Paul; I’d wanted him to see it for ages. When the closing credits came up, I realised why it was so important. The famous final scene had an odd resonance.
The plot is built around a police interview with Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint, the sole survivor of a bloody massacre that took place the day before. The simple-minded Kint, played by Kevin Spacey, is a limping invalid with a twisted arm. After several hours of interrogation, it seems that he’s just a small-time accomplice, himself the victim of a plot he doesn’t understand. As bail has been posted, he’s released. He collects his personal effects and leaves the police station. After he goes, Agent Kujan lingers for a while in the office (which is someone else’s). His eyes automatically scan the noticeboard on the wall where wanted notices, information sheets, photos and newspaper clippings are pinned. This is when he notices that all the names and details mentioned by Kint during his interview appear on this board, which Kint had been facing. And that the name of the so-called accomplice provided by Kint is the crockery manufacturer written on the bottom of his coffee cup. At the same moment, the identikit portrait of Keyser Söze, a criminal of legendary cruelty whom no one has seen, comes through on the fax . . . He looks like Roger Kint.
Intercut with this, we see Kevin Spacey walking down the street. His arm returns to normal and he stops limping. His pace quickens. He lights a cigarette.
That is exactly what had happened to me the day when, standing by my bookcase, remembering the haunting poetry L. liked to recite, I realised she’d invented it all. I was like Agent Kujan, who realises too late that he’s been had.
Now, when I think about L., it is that image above all that comes back to me: Roger Kint’s legs filmed in close-up, the transition from limping to walking normally, and then the swift, assured gait that takes him to a waiting car.
I know that L. is out there somewhere, not too far away. She’s keeping her distance.
I know that one day she’ll be back.
One day, at the back of a café, in the gloom of a cinema, in the middle of a little group of readers who’ve come to see me, I’ll recognise her eyes, I’ll see them gleam, like the big black marbles I dreamt of winning in the primary school playground at Yerres. L. will content herself with a little wave, of peace or complicity, but she will have that smile of victory, which will pierce m
y stomach.
I eventually found the book that inspired each of her confidences. Only one still lacks its model, though she recounted it in detail. Perhaps it comes from a book I haven’t read. There are some of those in my bookcase. Ones I bought or was given. I need some in reserve.
One day, perhaps I’ll come across this scene when I open one of those books.
L. is fourteen. She’s at secondary school in a town in the suburbs of Paris. The day before, her father criticised her long into the night. That won’t do, it’s all wrong, there’s something not right about you. She doesn’t stand properly, she’s hunched, too timorous, she’s not feminine, she’s always sulking. He suspects she’s up to something, she’s not being straight, that’s all. Also, everyone can see it (he repeats ‘everyone’, insists, as though he were in touch with the whole world), the chemist and the guy at the Groupama office told him exactly the same thing: your daughter’s weird. She’s not like other people. Other people are at least happy, joyful, they’re at ease in their own skin. They’re pleasant.
In the morning when she gets to school, she hangs back. She knows her eyes are red; there’s a risk she’ll be asked questions.
Sometimes she dreams of running away. Or of someone coming to take her away. Sometimes she tells herself that in spite of everything, she may become a woman. A woman people look at, find beautiful. Whose wounds don’t show.
After French class, the teacher tells her to stay behind. When the other students have left, he asks if she’s OK. If she has problems at home. He doesn’t want to pry, just to know if she’s OK.
The teacher is standing in front of her, staring at her. He’s looking for some sign. She lowers her eyes.
He tells her that if she can’t speak, then perhaps she should write. For herself. She likes writing, doesn’t she? She doesn’t say anything. She’s thinking, very intently, the words she cannot say, she’s thinking as intently as she can so that he will hear: Am I so ugly, so ridiculous, so different, so hunched, with such bad hair, such a bad person? I’m scared of going mad. I’m scared and I don’t know if this fear is real, if it has a name.
THE END *
A Note on the Author
Delphine de Vigan is the author of bestselling No and Me, it was awarded the Prix des Libraires in France, in Britain it was a Richard & Judy selection. Her other novels include Nothing Holds Back the Night which won the Prix FNAC and the Grand Prix des Lectrices de ELLE. Underground Time was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt in 2009. D’après une histoire vraie is a French bestseller and has won both the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. It is being adapted for a screenplay by Roman Polanski and Olivier Assayas. Delphine lives in Paris.
A Note on the Translator
George Miller is the translator of Nothing Holds Back the Night, No and Me and Underground Time. He is also a regular translator for Le Monde diplomatique’s English-language edition, and the translator of Conversations with my Gardener by Henri Cueco and Disordered World by Amin Maalouf.
Also available by Delphine de Vigan
Underground Time
‘One of those books that grabs you and demands to be read’ Clare Morrall
Every day Mathilde takes the Metro to the office of a large multinational, where she works in the marketing department. And every day Thibault, a paramedic, drives to the addresses he receives from his controller. Mathilde is unhappy at work, frozen out of office life by her moody boss. Meanwhile, Thibault is unhappy in love and all too aware that he may be the only human being many of the people he visits will see for the entire day. Mathilde and Thibault seem to be just two anonymous figures in a crowded city, pushed and shoved and pressured continuously by the isolating urban world. But surely these two complementary souls, travelling their separate tracks, must meet?
‘Delphine de Vigan is a sensation’ Observer
‘What’s most startling about this novel is how de Vigan makes the mundane come alive. She’s an expert in detail, charging even the most ordinary situation with emotion, which makes for a massively affecting read’ **** Psychologies
‘Sympathetic, compelling, enjoyable’ Guardian
Click here to order
No and Me
‘This novel is a thing of poetic beauty’ The Times
Thirteen-year-old Lou Bertignac’s has an IQ of 160, a mother who barely speaks and hasn’t left the house in years, and a father who is struggling to keep his family together. But then she meets and gradually befriends No, a homeless girl a few years older than herself. As the two girls learn to trust each other, Lou resolves to help her new friend build a stable life for herself, unaware that No’s sudden presence will soon change her family forever.
‘Moments of tenderness and truth about family and home’ Independent on Sunday
‘Well-structured, with moments of tenderness and truth about family and home, inadequate parents and neglected children’ Independent
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Nothing Holds Back the Night
‘Irresistible’ Irish Times, Books of the Year
In this moving autobiographical novel, the narrator’s mother, Lucile, raises her two daughters largely alone. A former child model from a large Bohemian family, Lucile is younger and more glamorous than the other mothers: always in lipstick and stylishly dressed, wayward and wonderful. But as the years pass her occasional sadness gives way to overwhelming despair and delusion. …
This is a story of luminous beauty and rambunctious joy, of dark secrets and silences, revelations and, ultimately, the unknowability of even those closest to us. And in the face of the unknowable, personal history becomes fiction. Nothing Holds Back the Night is universally recognisable and singularly heartbreaking.
‘Thrilling, tender … A genuinely shocking, incandescent read’ Janice Galloway, Scotland on Sunday
‘Compassionate and powerful, as well as painful and shocking’ Ursula le Guin, Guardian
Click here to order
First published in Great Britain 2017
This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © by JC Lattès 2015
English language translation © George Miller, 2017
Delphine de Vigan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
This book is supported by the Institut français (Royaume-Uni) as part of the Burgess programme.
Grateful acknowledgement is given for permission to publish excerpts from the following copyrighted material. here and here, MISERY by Stephen King, copyright © 1987, used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton. Reprinted with the permission of Gallery, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from MISERY by Stephen King. Copyright © 1987 by Stephen King, Tabitha King and Arthur B. Greene, Trustee. All rights reserved. here, THE DARK HALF by Stephen King, copyright © 1989, used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton. Reprinted with the permission of Gallery, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from THE DARK HALF by Stephen King. Copyright © 1989 by Stephen King. All rights reserved. Translation of excerpt from Robert Desnos’s poem ‘J’ai tant rêvé de toi’ / ‘I’ve dreamed of you so much’ here © 1972 by William Kulik; published by Sheep Meadow Press, Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY, 2004.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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Based on a True Story Page 25