All the Way

by Marie Darrieussecq

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ says Bihotz. ‘You’re like the girl in The Exorcist. Are you going to start speaking backwards or what?’

  Nathalie says that if you listen to Iron Maiden backwards, you hear messages from the Devil.

  ‘Call Delphine. Invite her to afternoon tea. It’s a misunderstanding. A complete misunderstanding. Do you want me to call her? I know her mother.’

  When he was little, Monsieur d’Urbide smacked him because he was picking plums in the garden, plums that were on the ground, plums from the chateau, with Delphine’s mother…

  That’s the forty-eighth time you’ve told me that, change the record.

  He picks up the phone and he does it: he calls the chateau.

  Delphine is coming for afternoon tea. That bitch who is having a party and not inviting her. She chooses the music carefully. Jimi Hendrix, that’s cool; no one knows it, but she listened to it with him when she was little, so she arranges for Delphine’s knock at the window to occur at exactly the same time as a guitar riff, a riff that shocks fat Delphine.

  And from four until six, they finally talk properly. Obviously there’s the old reflex of showing off, so there’s a fair amount of crap in their chat, but at six o’clock Delphine has to leave and there’s been no mention of the party.

  If she mentioned it first, that would ruin everything, she understands that now: the need to respect social convention in order to respect yourself, even if Delphine is not the sort of girl you’d respect, she’s not at all a popular girl, whatever, she knows what she’s getting at. Anyway, you have to have a lot of experiences like this, have afternoon tea with lots of really different girls, you learn what people are like, you shape your identity in relation to them; that is, you learn who you are. It’s really creepy how Rose and Nathalie are so narrow-minded, it’s racism, pure and simple. They should open their eyes and look around: there are miserable people everywhere!

  Still, you’re allowed to have parties, aren’t you?

  ‘No,’ says Delphine. ‘My mother is a real bitch.’

  But the party this Saturday?

  ‘No, it’s the landlady’s daughter who’s having the party. They’re the only parties my mother lets me go to. It’s an act of charity from the d’Urbide girl. Just like my clothes: she gives me her old stuff. But she’s thinner than I am.’

  So you don’t live in the chateau?

  ‘Yes, I do, in front of it.’

  In front?

  ‘The place at the front is the concierge’s lodge.’

  Oh my God, you are such a liar!

  ‘I do live at the chateau, just in front of it.’

  All those years you carried on like you were the princess of the chateau.

  Delphine denies it, says she’s never pretended that.

  But you let people think that.

  ‘If people believed it, that’s their problem.’

  Right from kindergarten.

  ‘Yeah, like when Bidegarraï said a parachutist had landed on the roof of his house. Same thing. We were kids.’

  In her mind’s eye, she had always pictured that parachutist on the Bidegarraï house, as clearly as the church tower in the village square (there never was a parachutist?). So what, back to the party business. She should offer to go with Delphine as if it was an act of charity, to this loser girl, so weirdly dressed, so concierge (‘to the council holiday camp, with the kids of concierges?’ Sixtine had exclaimed when Rose went there). But Delphine seems strangely self-assured and gives her a look of defiance (or pity?):

  ‘Shit, Solange, do you really think there are people who still believe your father’s a pilot?’

  Her face catches fire.

  ‘Your father is a porter. Do you think I didn’t know? Rose saw him carrying her bag when she went to England.’

  Suddenly there is no more oxygen in the room. Pretend nothing has happened. Pretend to be what she has always been: the daughter of an Air Inter pilot and a shopkeeper from Clèves-le-Haut.

  The girl who’s having the party is called Lætitia, Lætitia d’Urbide; that means Happiness in Latin. There are at least fifty people, even high school kids and guys from the coast, and punch in salad bowls with ladles.

  Stand up straight, like an air hostess.

  Rose doesn’t seem surprised to see her. Nor embarrassed, or anything. Perhaps she’s already drunk a fair bit. But it’s impossible to have any contact with Rose now. To get anywhere near her, to be in the same space as her. It’s as if a river separated them: Rose and her Parisian cousins and Lætitia d’Urbide on one bank, she and Delphine on the other bank. The same bank as Peggy Salami. With the weirdos, the hicks, the concierges, the badly dressed, the perverse, the squalid, those with big chins, the families with ten kids, the outliers, the people who’ve had the same car forever and a yard full of tyres. Like at the Bihotz place. To be labelled a Bihotz.

  She serves herself a ladle of punch, drinks it in one go and starts to sway her hips. Let’s Dance. She knows the lyrics by heart; she learned them off the record sleeve, at Rose’s, as it happens. ‘That girl is gifted,’ Rose’s mother had said.

  She will never go to Rose’s again. Never again.

  Rose’s father is a teacher and her mother is a sort of assistant art teacher. Sure, they don’t live in a chateau but their house is definitely cool and so, what’s the word, welcoming.

  She wants to cry.

  Let’s Dance.

  Her skirt is falling down, it’s so awkward. First she had put on her shiny gym leggings, and thrown together a very short skirt and a white jersey hooded top, with just a narrow band showing under her V-neck pullover, which she’d worn back to front, and a fake leather belt that sits perfectly on her hips, very Madonna, and some pink spray in her hair and her fake Dockside shoes. And then she took the whole thing off (just as well she’d got started early); she borrowed her mother’s Prince of Wales check skirt, her father’s black Polo shirt, and it ends up being a really fantastic outfit that looks neat, New Wave, with her imitation Docksides and big white clips in her hair to liven up the effect, and black mascara, and she’s teased her hair to give it lots of volume. But in no time it’s all hanging flat again. And the skirt is slipping.

  She bought some Kool menthol cigarettes and managed to get hold of some Get 27 liqueur; they go well together. Perhaps she shouldn’t have drunk it on top of the punch because she’s starting to freak out. Which is bad when you want to have a good time at a party and go really crazy.

  She heads to the toilet so she can hitch the skirt up a bit higher. She is too fat. She makes a solemn resolution, on the spot, to replace a meal a day with cigarettes.

  The d’Urbide parents don’t seem to be at the chateau. They really are called d’Urbide, with an apostrophe—‘fucking toffs,’ says Delphine, who is disgustingly vulgar, a real fishwife. The only adult in the vicinity is Delphine’s mother, who hangs round the whole time, cleaning up glasses. Right now, in fact, she is wiping the floor. Can Delphine do anything she wants in front of her fucking bitch of a mother? It must be difficult. Like when Rose’s father was Rose’s teacher.

  She says hello to Delphine’s mother so as not to appear a snob. Someone has put on Sade, the soft voice that envelops everything; it’s nice and some of the bad vibe of the evening dissipates.

  ‘I feel pretty shit,’ says Delphine, who has turned red, and looks fatter than Solange has ever noticed. ‘Do you want to go for a walk?’

  Right now I’m dancing.

  ‘Come on, my boyfriend gave me some dope.’

  This is the moment to absorb the fact that Delphine smokes, and that she has a boyfriend. The moment to observe Delphine rolling a joint. On the terrace opposite the rose garden and the tennis courts. Under the dazzling white moon. Using a cassette case to mix and cut the tobacco.

  You’re so introverted. But we had a good talk last time, didn’t we. I told you everything. (That she was going out with a fireman.)

  Delphine seems bored. ‘Food a
nd sex are two things that shouldn’t exist,’ she declares.

  Right, so she’s already done it. The concierge’s daughter smokes and has already done it.

  ‘What do you think I’ve got to look forward to?’

  Delphine asks her, passing her the joint.

  What should she say? Is it a real question, like in a horoscope? Or just a statement: nothing? She takes a drag and it’s good, better than her Kools, and the effect is a bit stronger.

  ‘Like even you,’ Delphine continues, ‘you’ll have more than I will. You can tell straight away. The proof is, like, you don’t even know what I mean.’

  And from this perspective, in the evening light, in front of this fabulous garden, Delphine is almost beautiful, deep, unusual (if you ignore the ‘like even you’ and the ‘like, you don’t even’, in fact if you ignore what comes out of her mouth).

  Christian and Rose are kissing on a couch. It’s disgusting. Being jealous would be really humiliating. A total waste of time, for a feeling that is just not worth it, that is completely degrading.

  Look nonchalant. Like an air hostess.

  A degrading feeling, quite simply degrading.

  Lætitia is kissing a guy too. She’s wearing a dress. The girl’s wearing a dress. Full and flowing, with a belt made of big gold chains. She (Solange) would look like a grandmother if she wore it, but Lætitia looks amazingly hot in it. So weird. Her legs are as thin as her arms, and she’s wearing opaque stockings, they’re perfect, and the guy’s arm is going up and down them. You can’t tell if his hand is at the top, at the bottom, in front, behind, it’s winding around, it’s grazing the bare part of her thigh. The music (someone has put Sade back on) is coming out of those fingers playing on those stockings. Stockings, the girl’s wearing stockings, which are staying up by themselves, a black band on a white thigh under a black dress, appearing, disappearing, white, black, thigh, dress, the hand moves onto the band of lace, the girl gets up followed by the guy with his wandering fingers and wild eyes, they disappear into the rolling shadows.

  ‘They’re going to fuck,’ someone says in her ear. A guy who drags on a joint and passes it to her. ‘Every party she goes upstairs with someone. There are so many bedrooms up there.’

  He’s older than her. More like Year Ten or Eleven. Black eyelashes and green eyes. She takes a drag of the joint and steps back a bit (nonchalantly). The glow of the dress is still floating in the shadows, the flash of the chains on the big belt, the hand of the suitor tracing curves and crowning her, Lætitia, the happy one, the princess upstairs who devours them all with kisses.

  ‘Do you know what they call her?’

  Lætitia d’Urbide?

  ‘Yeah…’ He inhales deeply on the joint and holds his breath, like you’re supposed to.

  I don’t know. Læti?

  He laughs. He laughs with his mouth open, without a sound, for a long time. As if she’s said something cute. ‘Cheap Carpet.’ He expels it with the smoke. It’s like there’s a shifting meaning in what he’s saying: not so much the nickname, which is striking, as the inventiveness of the village kids, these hicks with such funny ways of behaving.

  She can see the carpet outlet next to Milord’s. She wants to be back there. Under the flashing light. No. Actually, no. She wants to be where she is. With the guy collapsed on this couch.

  Why Cheap Carpet?

  The boy lets out a groan which is in fact a concentrated laugh, the sort of laugh that would emerge if he became detached from his body (she imagines, surprised by her own thought process).

  Then she has the revolting thought that you can get it on the cheap with Lætitia. Cheap Læti. Or that the boys are using her as a doormat. As carpet. Lying on her, walking on her, crushing her, delousing themselves on her like monkeys.

  ‘She’s got hairs on her breasts,’ says the boy. ‘Cheap Carpet does.’ His mouth open in silent laughter, as if he was holding up the nickname like a museum relic, a scalp or something.

  She pictures her own breasts. She had never thought about this problem—no, phew, she does not have hairy breasts. At least she’s avoided this defect. She laughs.

  He takes the joint back from her and their fingers touch.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  Time is behaving strangely. It speeds up and then slows down. Lætitia and the guy have just left the room, but she (Solange) has had time (eternity or fixed time) to have more thoughts than during her whole life so far, time to think that she has thought more things.

  From the coast.

  ‘That’s weird, I’ve never seen you there. What’s your name?’ He passes the joint back to her, moistened with his saliva.

  She is about to say Charlotte. Or Sandra. Or Jennifer.

  Solange. What’s yours?

  His name is Arnaud. He’s from the coast too.

  Time loops again. Or pauses. Or rewinds. Let’s Dance, that song again.

  ‘I’m right into those freaky states where your mind is either really sharp, or completely spacey…’ says the boy. ‘I don’t know which I prefer,’ he continues, squashed up against her. ‘A sharp mind is cool because all your senses are on total alert. But it kills you, it’s so tiring. When you’re high, a bit sleepy, it’s good too, and you kind of experience things differently, I don’t know, that’s always when I’m able to really see things, problems, political problems, you totally understand them because you see the big picture, like from above, like the perspective aliens would have, you’re outside everything and totally calm, as if nothing affected you; like a meeting of the student council but you wouldn’t be at high school anymore, you would have passed your final year ages ago and you would understand everything, all the ins and outs. It diffuses everything, absolutely everything. It diffuses problems. And it’s more interesting than alcohol. And you feel a lot less alone.’

  I feel alone, too.

  ‘At your age it’s normal. I used to be such an egomaniac, I was less mellow than I am now. Because you can only define yourself in relation to others. In the beginning you have no consciousness, so no defined character, nothing about you is determined. Sartre said that. When you think about it, it’s pretty amazing, totally amazing…’

  That means that when I was tormenting myself, worrying who I was (she begins, surprised to know that she was tormenting herself), and believing that I alone knew who I was, I mean alone in my head, in fact that was all stupid…

  ‘You can only define yourself in relation to others. That’s the bottom line. Sartre said it. It’s a fundamentally political thing.’

  It’s natural. It’s the instinctive approach.

  ‘I don’t believe in instinct at all. What do your parents do?’

  They died in an aeroplane crash.

  ‘Listen, just be yourself. That’s the best thing. Be yourself, in relation to others. Actually, it’s your best bet anyhow, even in relation to others. We’re always making choices, whatever happens. You can always choose, you are completely free. Everything that happens involves choices.’

  I’d like to go to the USA. The Clèves Rotary Club is offering a one-year scholarship, all expenses paid, except the price of the trip. I’ve given it some serious thought. But right now I’m in a daze. I’m off my face. We always react in the same way to particular situations, don’t we? I mean each one of us does. It’s natural, right? Freedom is so fantastic.

  ‘Actually it can backfire. Like, you always need an audience when you put on your own show, but needing an audience is not just for show, it’s real. Otherwise you get crushed by despair. Someone, Hegel, said that there are two parameters in consciousness: time—chronology—and space—got it? space—and twelve squares, twelve categories in which you can put ideas, and that’s how we gain access to knowledge.’

  That really doesn’t suit me (she argues, her head full of arcs and squares). That’s old school. It’s too restrictive. For me the mind is completely limitless.

  ‘No way. The mind has limitations. But you have to lea
rn to use it one hundred per cent. It’s fantastic. When you think about it. That means that telepathy…I mean, if we used our minds one hundred per cent, we could even speak to each other without words. Total comprehension. From one to one. It’d be perfect. We are awfully limited. Awfully limited. It’s awful.’

  Perhaps that’s true, but it’s probably false. How is it limited?

  ‘Well, for example, right now, you think you’re talking to me, but perhaps you’re not. Perhaps you imagine that you’re talking to me, but in reality I’m not listening to you. Whereas we could be talking directly, one to one. You see, it’s better to experience the other, even if it makes you miserable, than to stay in your own personal safety zone. The main thing is to have flaws. Not just a clean and cosy little conscience.’

  Definitely.

  ‘Most people are drama queens, egomaniacs, but you just have to get through that stage and in the end it teaches you a good lesson. When people tell you, “Stop being a fuckwit,” you might feel worse, but it does you good. In the long run. My father said it to me, stop being a fuckwit, and it was the best thing he could have done for me. Because all of a sudden you feel like an idiot. A few slaps—to say, “get over it, you don’t have any real problems”—it does you good. Even if you don’t have any parents, like you.’ (She’d forgotten her parents were dead.)

  ‘You can never go back to what you were before. You can’t regret experiences. You want to stay yourself, sure, but you can’t go backwards. An experience is an experience. For good. You can’t forget that you have learned things, not so much what you have learned but the very fact that you have learned. A girl like Cheap Carpet knows nothing about otherness…You can’t go back to square one. Forget your little ego and face up to life, well, you know what I mean. You can’t dis-evolve. Really.’

  She has never spoken so well with anyone.

  They climb a staircase with landings the size of whole rooms, the size of her bedroom (her two bedrooms: the one at her house and the one at Bihotz’s house) (she’s like a kid with divorced parents) (it’s absolutely the first time she’s thought that).