Piglettes

by Clémentine Beauvais

  Hakima’s parents, Mum and Philippe Dumont are infinitely perplexed.

  Wait a second… Who’s that lurking in the bushes? Might it be Malo, looking rather twitchy, in his silly Arsenal T-shirt? Relax, Babes, where’s your swagger now?

  Hélène Lesnout takes a picture for tomorrow’s article. Flash!

  Astrid’s mother snaps a Polaroid. Click! Whirrr. There’ll be no time for us to wait for it to dry.

  I’m in the middle, on my blue Bicycool. I turn to Astrid, on my left.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  To Hakima, on my right.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  And, finally, I call out to the Sun, in front of us.

  “Ready, Kader?”

  “Ready, bella.”

  Bella? Seems like I’m solar-powered today too. My first pedal stroke makes the earth spin beneath my wheel!

  “We’re off!”

  PART II

  The Road

  The Bresse Courier, 8th July 20XX

  A TRIP WITH “THREE LITTLE PIGLETTES”

  They were voted the ugly ducklings of their high school—now they’re flying like swans to Paris. Astrid Blomvall, Hakima Idriss and Mireille Laplanche, the winning trio of a controversial “pig pageant”, are embarking on what promises to be an epic journey to the capital… by bike! Scheduled to last from 8th to 14th July, the journey will be funded, ironically, by selling pork sausages en route.

  But why are they going to Paris? The three young ladies, for now, are keeping the goal of their journey a secret. “There’s something that links us all to each other,” confides Laplanche, “and that something can only be found in Paris on 14th July.”

  The self-proclaimed “Three Little Piglettes” will be escorted by Hakima’s older brother Kader Idriss, 26. The young man is the only survivor of the massacre of [El-Khatastrophi] in [Problemistan]. A double amputee, he will be making the journey in a wheelchair.

  H.L.

  Comments, questions? Join the conversation on TheBresseCourier.fr, where we’ll be following the “Three Little Piglettes” over the next six days.

  (“What, you mean we’re not going to be featured in the paper edition every day?”

  “Are you joking, my dear? We’ll update the website, that’s quite enough, and we’ll see how people react. Three girls on bikes—not exactly the year’s biggest scoop.”

  “Not yet.”)

  14

  The first morning is uneventful—it’s too early for potential readers of the Bresse Courier to have bought and read it, so we leave Bourg-en-Bresse with no curious glances whatsoever. We are calm, focused. My eyes switch from the road to my hands to the small GPS strapped to my handlebars. In front of me, the Sun leads the way. From where I’m sitting, I can only see the back of his head and his arms, like pistons, rhythmically pushing the wheelchair’s tyres onwards.

  Behind us, the trailer bounces over potholes, skids on gravel and grit, and groans loudly whenever we slow down. We have to be careful—if we brake too sharply, the trailer will run straight over us. We can’t go down any too-steep slopes—it’d go down faster than us and, again—splat. We knew the risks, so we’ve planned our route to avoid hills.

  We stay quiet, determined, eating up mile after mile, no rush. Three and a quarter hours later, we’ve cycled twenty-two miles. Seven miles an hour, for three little piglettes dragging a trailer—not too shabby, eh? I’d like to see you try.

  The twenty-two miles have taken us to Mâcon, where we stop for our very first sausage-selling experience.

  “How’s it going, Kader?” Astrid asks the Sun, who’s currently stretching in his chair. It baffles me that she can speak to him without turning fuchsia, without stammering, without swinging stupidly on one leg while scratching her head in an extremely awkward manner.

  “All right. How about you? Not in pain?”

  “Nope! I’m good.”

  “How about you, Mireille?”

  Mireille, the Sun’s asking you a question. Give him a cool, detached reply.

  “I’m good, thanks. Just a bit sore between the legs, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Wait, what? Just a bit sore between the legs? For God’s sake, you’ve just talked to the Sun about your groin. Nothing out of the ordinary? He’s going to think you’ve got an ugly case of gonorrhoea. To hide my horror, I rush to the trailer.

  “Right—shall we open that sausage shop?”

  Mâcon, in case you’ve never been, is a nice, big, red-and-ochre city, its feet dipped in the river Saône, over which a large stone bridge has been built. Many meandering streets lead to a couple of churches, giving occasional indications of the city’s tortuous history.

  All these details, I hope, are of no interest whatsoever to you, because this isn’t a travel guide. We’re here for work, I’ll have you know. I’ve been to Mâcon before, though—with my artificial daddy Philippe Dumont, who is Rotary buddies with a certain Monsieur Tanincourt, a local wine merchant.

  “You see, Mireille, that’s how you choose wine—do you notice the lighter shade at the top? It means—”

  “Philippe Dumont, you’re driving us back, remember. How many glasses have you had so far?”

  “Mimi darling! Would I bring you back to your mother in more than one piece?”

  “You will if you keep swigging down everything Monsieur Tanincourt brings you to taste.”

  “Children are such tyrants! Mireille dear, I’m trying to teach you things… important things… why do you never listen to me? I’d so like—hic—to hand down my knowledge to the next geren—gena—generation…”

  But not today. Today, on Lamartine square, near the grey-green waters of the Saône, we open up shop.

  The Sun to his sister: “Do you know about Lamartine, Hakima?”

  “Oh, yeah. Isn’t he the husband of one of the Kardashians?”

  “No, that’s Lamar Odom…”

  Back in the trailer, our expert chef Astrid is already popping open all the sauce tins. She gets out two pans, plonks them on the portable hobs, and starts heating up a bit of sunflower oil. For the first time, I start to feel sick: dry mouth, shaky fingers. What if they hate our sausages? What if they laugh at us? What if they all drop dead from food poisoning?

  “Sausages! Nice plump juicy sausages! Plain! Thyme! Vegetarian!” the Sun shouts, and Hakima echoes (more quietly) to the passers-by.

  “One sausage, one sauce, three euros!” It’s lunchtime, and the smell of frying sausages—and the sight of their warm caramel-coloured curves in the pans—should seduce all human beings in the vicinity into forcing upon us all their worldly goods, in the hope of tasting our wares.

  However, that does not happen.

  Weird.

  Half an hour ticks by. We’re all a little hungry, so we get sandwiches from a shabby cafe. We’re all a little thirsty, so we crack open a couple of Coke cans in our trailer. Stress levels begin to rise.

  Yet people are stopping; they sniff the air loaded with the smell of cooking meat and vegetables; they throw a glance at the apple compote, at the wholegrain-mustard sauce…

  …and then they see Hakima and the Sun.

  I cough. “I have a feeling you’re putting them off,” I whisper.

  “Funny that,” says the Sun. “I have exactly the same impression.”

  “Why would we be putting them off?” asks little Hakima. “Cos we’re ugly?”

  “Kader isn’t ugly!” I protest. “And, erm, you aren’t either.”

  “Is it because Kader doesn’t have any legs, then?” asks Hakima sadly.

  “Yeah, maybe,” the Sun mutters. “Listen, Hakima, let’s be the chefs, all right? Mireille and Astrid can sell the food.”

  So we swap. And miraculously, it works.

  It’s not that people are racist, you know. It’s just that they’d rather talk to two ugly white girls than to a tanned handsome man. I’ve got a hunch it’ll be the same everywhere. Wait, c
an I say a hunch when there’s a disabled man in this convoy? I’m hyper-aware of my vocabulary all of a sudden—so many things to think about.

  Anyway, ten minutes later, a sizeable crowd has gathered at our trailer.

  “Hey, wait a minute—aren’t you the girls they talked about in the paper this morning?”

  “Yes, sir! That would be us! What sauce would you like?”

  “Mustard! What are they on about, calling you pigs? You’re a lovely bunch of ladies! I’d be proud to call you my… erm…”

  “Daughters?”

  “Well, let’s say nieces. Thank you very much!”

  He runs off and shouts to his wife, “I’ve just bought sausages from those kids, you know, the three ugly girls they talked about in the paper? They’re over there!”

  Some time ago, that would have hurt, but now we’re just finding it funny, and the euros tinkle in the piggy bank.

  “Can I get a picture with you, girls?”

  “Of course!”

  Flash! Flash! For every selfie, a sausage sold. A little worried, the Sun checks his phone sporadically, making sure we’re not being slammed on social media. But no, it could be worse.

  Florent Rooster @florentrooster

  #selfie with #3littlepiglettes in Mâcon! Delicious apple/onion mix

  Retweeted by @bressecourier

  5 likes

  Hugo Nallay @gohunal

  Sausages on the banks of the Saone with my love <3

  #3littlepiglettes

  Retweeted by @sarah01

  1 like

  Jacques Creuz @jacquescreuz

  Lunch break after triathlon practice to taste sausages from

  #3littlepiglettes. They’ll be in Cluny tonight-catch them if u can

  An hour later, the Bresse Courier has already stolen the pictures taken by passers-by, and we’ve got our own little news story:

  Bresse Courier @bressecourier

  #3littlepiglettes have reached Mâcon for their very first sale http://www.bressec…

  “Don’t read the comments,” says the Sun.

  I do anyway. The first ten are all variations on the theme of WHAT FUCKING DOGS and WHOD EAT SAUSAGE THATS MADE BY THERE HANDS I SWEAR THEY DONT WASH THEMSELVES THOSE DIRTY SOWS

  I wonder what sort of people could be writing comments like that. Certainly not the same ones who are here, buying sausages from us.

  “Shouldn’t we make sure we don’t sell everything?” Hakima worries.

  “Yeah, we should be getting a move on. Another couple of sales, and let’s go. The road awaits! And Cluny this evening…”

  “Hey, Mireille, look at that statue over there!”

  “It’s Lamartine, Hakima.”

  “Oh, that’s him. What’s his story?”

  “He was a poet.”

  “What did he write?”

  “Poems.”

  “Such as?”

  “Erm… ‘O Time! Suspend thy flight!…’”

  “And then how does it go?”

  “Then, erm…”

  “‘And you, propitious hours / Suspend your course,’” the Sun whispers.

  Great. The Sun can recite French poetry from memory. It’s beginning to get a little hot, standing in his light.

  Hakima: “How do you know that, Kader?”

  “I learnt it.”

  “At school?”

  “No. I was bored last year in my bedroom. I had a book, The 100 Most Beautiful French Poems.”

  “Did you learn any others?”

  “All of them.”

  “All?”

  “I was really really bored.”

  The Sun, when he is bored, learns poems by heart. Even though I hate all romantic things and cheesy stuff like that, it’s obviously a good effort that it would be nice to encourage. So I encourage him, in a ridiculously high-pitched voice. “Oh, Kader, you’ll have to recite poems to us on the way.”

  “Bah, you know, most of them are rubbish.”

  We cycle off, and my heart is a little bit like one of those moronic moths that knock themselves out on garden lamps. Kader’s a light inside a globe, and me, I’m fluttering around it, going bump, bump, bump, against the glassy shell.

  In the afternoon, pedalling gets harder because of the heat. We’ve trained mornings and evenings, but we’ve never done so many miles under the 2 to 6 p.m. sun, a great big macho sun that tramples us underfoot. Nothing like the canary-yellow sunshine that licks your face like a friendly Labrador when you leave home at six in the morning; nothing like the anaemic sun of summer evenings, weary and sweet, ready to brush its teeth and go to bed.

  Right now, on the sinuous little roads snaking between vineyards—so many vineyards, blimey—there’s not a shadow of a shadow, and right now, as we tow that trailer, which is only lighter by barely two dozen sausages, as I watch the Sun’s arms going—up and down and up and down—and feel rivulets of sweat sliding down my spine, accumulating at the top of my shorts, right where a corkscrew of a tail would bud if I were a little piggy—right now, we get it: this trip is going to be hard.

  It’s not even that hot—20, 22 degrees…

  “I’ve got a stitch,” Astrid declares.

  “Astrid, don’t even joke about it. It’s much too soon for that.”

  “It’s not my fault if I’ve got a stitch,” she retorts weakly.

  “Breathe. Stitches happen when your muscles are deprived of oxygen and produce too much lactic acid. Just breathe and it’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, thank you so much for telling me that, Mireille, because I’d been holding my breath for two hours just to see how long I can last.”

  The Sun: “Calm down, everyone. Let’s slow down, if you like. No need to rush. We’ve got a shortish journey, today.”

  “It feels exactly like I’m being stabbed,” Astrid moans. Me: “I doubt it, but if you like we could stop and compare.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Stop talking!” the Sun shouts. “It messes with your breathing. That’s why you get stitches.”

  The Sun is right, of course: I’ve barely said three sentences and I’ve got a stitch. Bloody lactic acid! It feels exactly like… I’m being stabbed.

  We keep pedalling, sulking.

  “Ouchy-ouch.”

  “Shush, Astrid.”

  That said, I’m secretly hoping she might beg us to stop so I can have a legitimate excuse to rest, since that bloody lactic acid is starting to nibble its way up under my ribcage.

  “Ouch!”

  “For God’s sake, shut up, Astrid! What if you were a caveman being chased by a cyber-toothed tiger? Would you be hopping around going ‘Ouch, ow, ouch, I’ve got a stitch’?”

  “Sabre-toothed,” says Hakima.

  “Shall we stop?” says the Sun.

  “No way. We keep going.”

  “Mireille…”

  “OH! LOOK!” Hakima exclaims. “The Rock of Solutré!” We look.

  “It’s amazing!” Hakima goes, jumping up and down with happiness. “I’ve always wanted to see it!”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “We learnt about it in Year 5.”

  Ah yes: she was in Year 5 only a few years ago. Thinking of tiny little Year 5 Hakima makes me go all mushy like a sweet little grandma. “Why have you always wanted to see it?”

  “Just look at it! Look!”

  We look, still pedalling along the road.

  The Rock of Solutré is what the big rock in The Lion King would look like if it had landed at the heart of Burgundy, between the yellow and purple vineyards streaked with white paths. It’s huge, like a block of earth pushed up by the elbow of a buried giant in his sleep. It’s white, this afternoon, under the sun; clusters of little bushes make it look like a scabby knee. It hovers above the valley like the prow of a gigantic ship, which any second now will emerge from the earth, sail across the fields and take off, crumbling a little, sweeping the ground with a trail of ivy, climbing all the way to the bobble-like clouds above o
ur heads…

  “Oww-ouch,” Astrid growls.

  I oww-ouch silently too, with similar energy. Just bugger off, lactic acid!

  “We learnt about it in Year 5, the Rock of Solutré,” Hakima repeats. “You know the thing about the horses? The thing about the horses is that prehistoric men used to chase wild horses all the way to the top of the rock, so they were like, running, running, running, with lances and guns and everything, and the horses were so scared they were like, galloping, galloping, galloping, cos they were so scared, so they were galloping to the top of the rock, and the men would push them, and the horses would fall down, and tumble to the bottom, crash! and they’d burst into bits. So the men would eat them because they were dead.”

  “Very good, Hakima,” says the Sun, “except they didn’t have guns at the time.”

  Astrid and I stare at the rock, and maybe it’s the heat, or the lactic acid, but it seems to me that I can see it all: brown horses, galloping like mad, neighing with anger and fear, chased by scruffy cavemen—the horses losing their footing and hoofing the air, opening wide, white eyes, and—crash!—as Hakima says—shattering into pieces at the bottom…

  “Like Mufasa,” Hakima sighs respectfully.

  “That was very clever, when you think about it,” Astrid remarks. “Nice geostrategy.”

  “Nice geostrategy?”

  She nods. “Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of thing you need to think about. For instance, in Survival Now III, when you’re stuck on the desert island, in order get off it you’ve got to optimize the island’s resources, flora and fauna, and the solution’s not obvious, oh no, believe me, you’ve got to find it out by your—”

  “Astrid?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your stitch has gone, then?”

  “Oh! Yes, apparently.”

  “Mine too. Hakima, please keep some stories ready for the next lactic-acid attack.”

  15