Apocalypse Baby

by Virginie Despentes

  The brunette takes up the story again. ‘Say you go out in the evening with a few guys, well honestly, you feel ashamed for her. When she drinks, she’ll do anything with anyone. But I think in the school she was in before, the girls were all like that. Or so she said.’

  ‘So you got fed up going out with her, that it?’

  ‘Yeah… and she can be pretty wild too. She comes out with really mega awful stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh anything, if it can upset someone. If you’re a blonde, it’s something bad about dumb blondes, if you’re Jewish, it’s anti-Israel, if you’re black, she’ll talk about banana trees, if you’re gay it’s about AIDS, and so on. Valentine’s always got an insult for everyone. And in the end you can’t take it any more, you just want a quiet evening.’

  There are few reactions round the table. Their apathy hasn’t been disturbed. A girl who was kind of OK, not too many problems. Nothing out of the ordinary. The more I see of this generation, the more I imagine how they’ll be as adults and the less I want to make old bones.

  ‘Still, she isn’t the local clown. When she’s sober, she’s even rather quiet… And she’s good at lessons. When she got here, we were well impressed by her level.’

  ‘She’s good at everything, she reads books and all. But she’s good at maths too. And chemistry. Yeah, everything really.’

  ‘The teachers like her fine. But she misses too much school. That’s why she was sent here. She’s been chucked out of all her other schools.’

  ‘She bunks off school.’

  ‘Valentine doesn’t care about grades, her dad’s this writer. When she wants to work, he’ll pull strings for her, that’s all, that’s how it goes.’

  Three of them are doing the talking, the brunette and the two boys. The two other girls are holding back, laughing at the right moments, but saying nothing for now. The Hyena asks, ‘But the boys she was interested in, where did they come from, then?’

  ‘When we were still friends, she liked heavy metal. She didn’t miss any concert by PUY, she was very in with them… Well, you know what I mean… she was a groupie. I didn’t want to go with her to see them, it was around the time she was giving me too much grief with all this acting like a slapper.’

  ‘PUY?’ The Hyena gets out her notebook.

  Amandine confirms: ‘Panic Up Yours, hard rock, heavy metal. I don’t know, it’s not my scene really.’

  ‘I think I’ll remember the name.’

  ‘I don’t know if she was still hanging round them, because she changed, Valentine did, over the year.’

  ‘Did she talk about her parents? Her home, at all?’

  ‘Not a lot, no.’

  ‘I know she adores her father.’

  ‘But the stepmother not so much, normal, isn’t it? She doesn’t have to sleep with her.’

  ‘What did you think, when you heard the news she’d disappeared?’

  ‘We flipped, we were worried for her.’

  A blonde girl, with a nose so tiny that you wondered how she got enough oxygen, dressed like a Roma but every garment must have cost a fortune in the Marais, speaks up for the first time. ‘We thought something horrible had happened, of course. When a girl goes missing, you’re always afraid they’re going to find her dead in a ditch, beaten up.’

  ‘None of you thought she might have run away?’

  This option shocks them more than the dead-in-a-ditch version. ‘Run away?’ Leaving behind the PlayStation3, the fridge full of food, the domestic help, Daddy’s credit card…

  ‘Yeah. Could be, of course. She’d changed a lot lately. She changed the way she looked, she wasn’t so much fun, more distant… She could have been planning something. You could tell, couldn’t you?’

  The girl who said this was drop-dead gorgeous: all the time we’ve been sitting in the bar her face has been so radiant that it’s as if the sunlight was falling only on her. She has the look we used to call BCBG when I was a kid, bon chic bon genre, rich girl, good home, blue, white and beige, which she wears just the kind of casual way that makes her look fantastic. She’s tall and slender, elegant figure, the perfect image of the kind of bitch the aristocracy turns out best. This femme fatale speaks incredibly slowly, she must have been smoking joints all day. The Hyena gives her an odd look.

  ‘And you talked about it with her, when you thought she’d changed?’

  ‘No. We weren’t friends, actually. But I could tell by looking at her. She looked different.’

  ‘Yeah, it was obvious that she’d let her appearance go, these last months.’

  ‘Perhaps she was depressed, heading for a breakdown? She wore a lot of black, but like Noir Kennedy, vintage gear, sort of I’m-giving-up-on-life black.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, she stopped wearing designer stuff. But before, she used to like it fine.’

  ‘Yeah, before, she liked to dress cool.’

  ‘Then after a bit, not to be bitchy, but she had a bit of a punky look, like when you listen to Manu Chao?’

  The drop-dead beauty shrugs. ‘Yeah, I think she wanted to be distinctive.’

  These kids round the table, are actually pretty easy-going, compared to the ones I usually meet. They tease each other, they josh each other, but they’re not aggressive. There’s no obvious tyrant among them, and they haven’t got that arrogant manner you generally find in rich little Parisians. When they talk about Valentine, I find they sound quite calm. Still, that kind of sex-mad girl isn’t usually so popular nowadays. These kids are resigned to never really being part of the elite. They’ve all dropped out. They don’t have that juvenile effervescence that their equivalents in a swanky suburb like Neuilly would have. They’ve already tasted failure. They have all seen in their parents’ eyes the disappointment at having to enrol them in a private school for children who are not making the grade.

  We go back to the car. The Hyena is concentrating on one precise point. ‘The pretty girl, back there, I couldn’t work out if she was a baby dyke, or whether I just found her so stunning I mistook my desires for realities.’

  ‘Is that all you really care about? Come back to earth, she’s way too pretty to be a dyke.’

  I regret saying this the minute it’s out of my mouth, because it seems particularly insulting, but she just stares at me for a couple of moments, then bursts out laughing.

  ‘You know, your mind is like Jurassic Park live.’

  ‘Well anyway, she’s sixteen at the outside. You’re interested in her?’

  ‘I’m interested in all girls. That’s simple, easy to remember, even you can do that. Right, now I’m off to see Antonella, the woman I sent to see the father. Are you coming, or do you want me to drop you off?’

  ‘Whatever you like. Perhaps you want to keep your contact confidential.’

  ‘Keep my what what? You really are weird. Lucky for you you met me, because on your own, where would you be?’

  The Hyena slows down at a pedestrian crossing and with a nod of her head lets a pregnant woman go by.

  ‘See that one’s face? Don’t tell me she couldn’t have given it a bit of thought before reproducing… some people, nothing stops them.’

  ‘Do you ever, when you’re on a case like this, do you ever feel frightened, I mean of what you’re going to find?’

  ‘Yes. It’s happened to me before.’

  ‘And that doesn’t upset you? You don’t imagine that Valentine could be in the grip of some sadist who’s torturing her? Or who’s even killed her. And yet here we are, taking our time.’

  ‘No, frankly, I think she’s gone to see her mother. I think we’re going to spend a few days messing about in Paris so we can say we did, then we go straight for the mother. Don’t you think? If your mother had abandoned you, you’d want to go and see her, wouldn’t you, see what she’s like?’

  ‘I don’t know, mine didn’t abandon me, on the contrary she calls me up all the time.’

  ‘Well, anyway, OK, tomorrow when you go and s
ee the parents, do me a favour and observe the father’s reactions when you mention her real mother. And the stepmother’s reactions too. The stepmother, a priori we’re suspicious of her, right?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Basic principle. All stepmothers are suspect. Don’t you know your fairy tales?’

  I burst out laughing, and she looks at me sideways. It must be the first time I’ve laughed at one of her jokes. I ask, ‘But why don’t we just go straight to the mother right away?’

  ‘Because we’re allowing some time for Rafik to find out where she is.’

  ‘Oh. You know Rafik?’

  Rafik is the cornerstone of the Reldanch agency, the guy who runs our IT systems. Everything goes through him, so much so that it’s difficult to ask him anything.

  ‘Of course I know Rafik. How would I survive without Rafik?’

  In the Buttes-Chaumont park in north Paris, there’s a little sunshine and a lot of dogs. We wait, sitting on a bench, for the famous Antonella to arrive. She’s a good twenty minutes late. The Hyena is in a chatty mood.

  ‘Antonella is wicked, but funny. Everyone who met her when she first got to Paris knows she’s only a shadow of her former self. She was a diva. She was working for the newspapers, Italian correspondent. In those days, if you were a journalist at that level, your address book filled up quickly, and if anything happened in town, it wasn’t hard to get to the spot. I don’t know when she started being an informer, I guess she had some relationship with a politician – her speciality was culture, but the two worlds often met. When I met her, she was consulted all the time and very protected. With all the internal in-fighting in the main parties, there was a huge demand for information for a few years. Antonella was in her element. But times change, the media empire collapsed, her protectors fell into disgrace. Now she does this and that. Same as everyone else, more or less, you’ll say. She comes pretty expensive though. The other journalists will trade information, but Antonella has no problem about sources, she only wants cash. I asked her to get hold of the contents of all the computers in the apartment, she’s got a sidekick who’s good at that. Her own interest is that it allows her to peep around. You never know, she might pick up some interesting titbit of information, just by chance…’

  ‘How did she manage to get into his apartment so easily?’

  ‘All artists like to give interviews to the press.’

  You can’t miss her when she does turn up: she’s wearing enormous fuchsia-pink après-ski boots. I suppose they must be the in thing, something which never ceases to surprise me. Without apologizing for being late, she throws a large envelope into the Hyena’s bag. She has an attractive husky voice which doesn’t fit her look of an ethereal slut.

  ‘Wow, he comes on strong, your client. Still at his age, they’re all more or less nymphomaniac.’

  ‘Don’t fish for compliments, Antonella, you know you just knock them out.’

  ‘Ah, don’t talk about the past. How are you?’

  She hasn’t said hello to me, not even a glance. Humiliating but I’m starting to get used to it. It’s like when you’re a teenager and you go out with the school prom queen, after a while being in the shadows is restful. We all start walking towards the park gates and the Hyena asks, ‘Do you know the stuff he writes?’

  ‘Domestic dramas among the bourgeoisie. Catholic, right-wing, but in a traditional way, not aggressive or racist or antisemitic. So nobody much is interested in him. He’d do better to write a blockbuster about the camps, if he wants to be taken seriously, that would make a change…’

  ‘Is he successful?’

  ‘Not so much now. He still has a bit of a profile. A little TV, state radio, does a few signing sessions in bookshops. He publishes a lot of articles here and there, wherever they’ll let him, he’s the right age and CV to get on the jury for literary prizes, and I couldn’t quite see why he’s so isolated. He’s not very aggressive, that always reduces your credibility. Publishers have fallen into the habit of looking after him, I’ve been told he gets an advance of fifteen thousand per book. He doesn’t sell more than five thousand. So you can see why he writes a lot.’

  ‘He’ll be disappointed when he sees there’s no article.’

  ‘No, it’s OK, I really was asked to put together a file for a book by this journalist on The Times who discovers every year that French culture doesn’t have any international influence any more. Big deal, eh? I’ll pick up on this one malicious and well-aimed remark he made about Sollers and his importance, and that’ll do the trick. He’ll be cross at having chatted to me for a couple of hours, making eyes at me all the time, and finding I’ve only included that one little jab, but basically he’ll be glad he’s quoted at all. If it wasn’t for you, he wouldn’t even get that.’

  Antonella is flirting outrageously with the Hyena. I wonder whether they’ve slept together.

  ‘Did he mention his daughter at all?’

  ‘No. His father, yes, his mother a bit, his daughter not at all.’

  ‘Protecting his privacy?’

  ‘Men his age don’t often talk about their children. They are their parents’ children, but nobody’s parents. Unless there’s some drama, children aren’t very good subjects for novels, at least for men. If his kid were to die, then yes, there might be a novel in it… then again, a father’s grief isn’t bestseller material. But if she comes back home now and slags him off for being an old fusspot, what’s he going to do? He prefers to think of something else.’

  CLAIRE

  WHEN CLAIRE LETS HERSELF SLIDE BACK IN THE bath, plunging her head under the warm water, she can hear sounds from the flat below. As so often, the neighbours are having a row. Amplified by the water, the sounds become strange, muffled, low. Often, the husband is violent. Claire hears the woman yelp two or three words, then she hears him retorting from another room, before he finally goes striding through the flat, and that’s when he hits her. She screams and protests, sometimes trying to run away from him. Then the scene is punctuated by some louder sounds than the others, hard to identify, not necessarily blows. Followed by silence. The first few times, Claire was afraid he’d killed her, but in time she realized that it was the calm after the row. You wouldn’t think, to look at them, that they were that kind of couple. Him, she often sees in the lift, he’s an examining magistrate. Reddish face, rather puffy, a nose swollen by alcohol, but always well-dressed, polite, and smelling of aftershave. He was probably good-looking in his youth. He still acts the gentleman towards women. He has two children, a boy and a girl, two years apart. When Claire moved in with François, she used to see them often, playing with the concierge’s little girl on the pavement out in front. They’re big now, no more scooters and marbles until they have children of their own. She never hears them intervene when their father raises his hand against their mother. Like all people this kind of thing doesn’t happen to, Claire is sure, or so she thinks every time she meets someone from that family in the lift, that she would never have put up with what the woman downstairs endures. If only for her two daughters’ sake, she’d have found the courage to leave, to pack her bags, whatever it cost, she’d have protected them from a violent father. Christophe had never laid a finger on Claire, nor on his daughters, come to that.

  He left her just before the older girl’s sixth birthday. Claire had loved him unreservedly and obstinately for ten years. He’d come into her life when she was twenty-two, one New Year’s Eve at a friend’s house. She’d felt his eyes on her, trying to locate her wherever she was in the room, and then his large figure had kept appearing within a few feet from her, following her round from group to group. A mild form of stalking, which he hadn’t tried to conceal. He wanted her. It attracted Claire. She waited. That evening he was wearing a black sweater and three-day stubble, which suited him. She was young, still unsurprised that life revolved round her, pursuing her and offering her the choicest gifts. After spending a few nights with him, she’d begged him to shave. Claire’s face w
as burning, her fine skin irritated and painful. He was her first serious boyfriend. She had met Christophe the same year her mother had marched her off to a dietician – and it had worked, she had lost weight, had to buy new clothes, and had become attractive again. She managed to stay slim for two years, but after the birth of the older girl, Mathilde, she’d put on five kilos and never succeeeded in losing them. It was distressing, but it hadn’t dragged her down into the depths of depression, as it would have done before she had given birth. Something had happened to her with motherhood, it had given her calm and confidence. The presence of this baby in her life had transformed the way she looked at things.

  Before Mathilde, there had been holidays abroad: Egypt, New York, Ireland, Sweden, friends, dinner parties, evenings at the cinema, their first flat, family parties, and plenty of long mornings in bed. Then there’d been the enchantment of declaring her pregnancy, decisions to take together, the nursery to be furnished, the first scan, thinking of a name. Her parents had completely changed their attitude when she’d told them the news. Claire had a sister three years younger, who had always been her mother’s favourite. Claire had been the child who was a bit too fat, a bit too placid, never managing to engage her parents’ attention. When they divorced, she had been twelve years old, and once more, her mother had devoted herself to her little sister, everything revolved round her. Claire didn’t get up to any pranks, she didn’t worry her mother. And she wasn’t as pretty. She couldn’t do anything without attracting blame. Nobody around her had taken the trouble to notice that she had been deeply upset by the divorce. It’s true that she hadn’t done anything outrageous to alert anyone. She had just started putting on a few kilos, slowly, and become more withdrawn. In her childhood bedroom, for years she had secretly pinned the holiday postcards sent by her mother next to the ones from her father, so that the blue hills of the Vosges were up against the mountains of Peru, the Mediterranean jostled the Pacific. With a little Sellotape to stick them together. That was back when the children of divorced parents used to have to explain to their school-friends what it was like to have two homes, in the days when that was still unusual. Her sister Aline hadn’t needed a year’s mourning in order to start boasting in the playground of two lots of Christmas and birthday presents and all the special permissions to be absent or to extract more pocket money through parental guilt or bargaining: ‘Mummy said yes,’ or ‘Daddy promised me.’ Claire often wished she could strangle her sister. But once she was pregnant with Mathilde, everything changed. Both parents got into the habit of calling her up all the time, and she had to schedule their visits so that they didn’t coincide too often. The day of the birth, they had both been with her in her hospital room, without their new partners, and she had seen the joy on their faces: shared emotion, the first grandchild. And it had lasted until the birth of the second daughter, Elisabeth. Then, wouldn’t you know, Aline had become pregnant just afterwards, from some one-night stand, not that that made the coming child less welcome. On the contrary, as usual, she had managed to spoil everything, demanding the maximum of attention. One day, Aline had turned up at her mother’s house, declaring firmly that she couldn’t go through with it, she wanted an abortion at six months. Next day she turned up at her father’s, saying she would have the baby but give it up for adoption, she couldn’t take care of a child on her own. A week later, heavily pregnant, she was snivelling in her mother’s kitchen, drinking her fifth beer and chain-smoking, claiming that she was sure the baby would be stillborn, and of course that she would never get over it. Poor little dead baby, she spent the whole evening torturing her mother. And it worked. She got all their attention. The parents started telephoning each other every day, telling each other what they’d had to endure from her, and making frantic efforts to rescue their daughter from the brink of madness. Aline had always done whatever she liked, and her tactics were spectacularly successful. She had given birth to her son. It would be a son, of course. For three months, she’d gone into ecstasies over the bliss of motherhood, then her figure had come back, she’d put on a dress, left the baby with her mother, and continued her life as before: plenty of affairs, too much alcohol, and hefty overdrafts.