Piglettes

by Clémentine Beauvais

  “Well, I…” Astrid stammers. “Well… any of them…”

  “Then here we go!” the emcee yells. “Hop on stage, young lady!”

  “COME ON, ASTRID!!!” screams someone, who happens to be me. “YOU’RE GONNA SMASH IT!!!”

  She gets to the stage, shaking like she’s riding her own personal earthquake, huge rings of sweat blossoming under her armpits.

  “AS-TRID! AS-TRID!” the crowd chants.

  She’s onstage!

  Terrified, petrified.

  Dumbstruck.

  And then we hear the first few chords…

  …and she picks up the mic.

  “The screen’s over there,” the emcee says. “So you can see the lyrics.”

  But Astrid answers, contemptuously:

  “I don’t need the lyrics.”

  The first riff—synthetic, electrifying. Having never listened to Indochine, or indeed to any synthetic or electrifying music, I have no idea what to expect. But she’s going to open her mouth, I can tell—she’s going to sing, in five, four, three, two…

  “Lost-his-path in the valley of hell / Our hero’s name is—Bob Morane!…”

  I turn to Hakima, who’s as wide-eyed as me. The other members of the audience are also doing pretty convincing impressions of Japanese koi carp. While I’m wondering what this absurd music is about, people around me laugh, clap, and say “Who is that girl? How weird is it that a girl her age is singing Indochine? How weird is it she’s singing Indochine so bloody well? She’s a natural, that one, a natural!”

  A natural: Astrid onstage, stealing the show from that singer whose picture is pinned everywhere on her bedroom walls, in her diary, on her T-shirts…

  “Bob Morane isn’t scared of lions… / When adventure awaits, he cuts to the chase… oh yes!”

  (Her voice goes up eight octaves and then down again.)

  The crowd is hysterical.

  The night is historical.

  The song stops much too early. I want more! We all do!

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Astrid!”

  “ASTRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID!” scream the floor-length-gowned ladies and the tuxedoed gentleman.

  “Wait a minute!” someone says. “SHE’S ONE OF THE PIGLETTES!”

  An abrupt silence, and some perplexed chuckles. A very tipsy man hauls himself up onstage, falls on his face, pulls himself up using Astrid’s dress. “Frédo! Coco!” he shouts to two of his friends in the audience. “They did it! Blondie and Gab! They smuggled in the Three Little Piglettes!”

  The emcee, slightly overwhelmed by the situation, shakes his head awkwardly. “What piglets?”

  “The other two are over there, at the back! Come onstage, girls! Come on! Don’t be shy! Blimey, guys—we’ll have to get Gab and Blondie those cases of champagne!”

  There’s no way I’m going up on stage. No way, I’m telling you: no, no, I’m not that kind of person. Yet I appear to be standing up—proudly—and soon I begin to walk mechanically forward, dragging Hakima with me. Shortly thereafter, I’m hanging from Astrid’s neck, waving to the crowd and screaming, “WHAT D’YOU SAY??? WHO’S THE BEST??? THAT’S RIGHT: THE THREE LITTLE PIGLETTES!”

  Flash, flash, flash. I can guess what those emperor penguins and pretty ladies are typing on their phones, in the light-blue and navy squares of Twitter and Facebook accounts: #3littlepiglettes at the Cluny Campus Summer Ball!

  Uh-oh, looks like security’s spotted us, too…

  “Thank you again! Grazie mille! Muchas gracias!”

  Coline, in fits of laughter: “You’re welcome! Now get out of here, quick!”

  “But the dr-dresses! They’re yours!”

  “Doesn’t matter, off with you!”

  “Won’t you be in tr-trouble because of us?”

  “Run, Mireille! Come on, off you go already!”

  Under the huge moon, tripping over our ball dresses, we clamber onto our bikes and rush off, dragging our trailer, following the Sun—whose pace is a little less energetic than usual, as if he’s already missing the ball he danced so well at…

  (At the gate of the abbey, meanwhile, security guards have formed a reception committee for the giggling Gab, Blondie and Coline.)

  The bell tower rings twelve times…

  “Disaster! The coach is gonna turn back into a pumpkin! Watch out!… One! Two!…”

  “Mireille…”

  “To Taizé and beyooooond!”

  “Mireille?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you have a bit too much to drink?”

  “Enough to fuel myself all the way to Taizé! Come on, hurry up! We need to get there before night-time!”

  “It is night-time.”

  “Well, then, before, erm, three in the morning.”

  “She’s sozzled,” Astrid confirms. “Mireille, I suggest we stop and set up camp.”

  “NO! We said we were going to Taizé! That’s the plan! We can’t be late, ooooh no!”

  “Stop shouting. We’ll get arrested for disturbing the peace.”

  “What does the Sun think? Hey! The Sun! I’m talking to you! Are we going to Taizé or what?”

  The Sun, of course, doesn’t realize I’m talking to him; everyone thinks I’m attempting to disturb the peace of the whole solar system. Still wearing Gab’s costume, he’s propelling himself a few yards in front of us, on the deserted road.

  “Kader!” Hakima begs. “Tell Mireille we’re tired and we have to stop.”

  “Mireille,” the Sun laughs, “we’re tired and we have to stop.”

  So we stop, for we must obey that divine command. Sunset time.

  No campsite in sight. We set up camp on a strip of soft grass alongside a vineyard. We park the trailer, unfold the tents…

  “Look! If I spread it like that, it’s like I have wings!”

  “You’re smashed, Mireille.”

  “I belieeeeeve I can flyyyy!”

  “Mireille?”

  “Yes, Astrid darling, object of my unending adoration? Ooooh, do you want to sing us another song? Please, another song—a little lullaby.”

  “No. Go to bed.”

  “OK. You share your tent with Hakima and I’ll share mine with the Sun. I mean, with Kader.”

  “No, Hakima’s sleeping in Kader’s tent. They’re siblings, it’s only right.”

  “It’s entirely wrong, you mean! Oh, shucks! I should have called dibs!”

  I can’t quite remember slithering into my sleeping bag, but I must have managed it, since I wake up the next morning in the distinctive and peculiarly damp atmosphere of a tent, the karaoke heroine snoring tunefully at my side.

  TheBresseCourier.fr, 9th July 20XX

  THE THREE LITTLE PIGLETTES DO KARA-OINK-E AT THE CLUNY CAMPUS BALL!

  The “Three Little Piglettes”, as they are now known, were reportedly spotted at the prestigious Summer Ball at Cluny Abbey yesterday evening.

  According to witnesses, the three teenagers, wearing ball gowns, sang karaoke and drank alcohol. The students’ committee is investigating the matter. In a telephone conversation this morning, Mireille Laplanche denied being there, and insists that the “Three Little Piglettes” are currently on their way to Montceau-les-Mines after a night camping near Cluny.

  H.L.

  Piglettes on the Net: click for a slideshow of pictures taken by Cluny Ball guests.

  (“Mireille, did you illegally gatecrash the Cluny Campus Ball?”

  “Oh, Mummy! Always those big bad words.”

  “Did you drink alcohol?”

  “An infinitesimal amount!”

  “Where’s my manuscript gone?”

  “What manuscript, venerated mother?”

  “The one that was in my desk drawer. Being and Bewilderment.”

  “Has it vanished? How bewildering. Must be Philippe Dumont trying to read it. Argh, sorry, Mummy, time to go, I’m running out of battery, and we need to get a move on, we’re expected in Montceau-les-Mines and we’re just going
into a tunn…”)

  16

  I’m not even slightly hungover; not even the merest mini-migraine. Just goes to show it’s all lies and scaremongering, what they say about alcohol.

  I wake up before everyone else. All crinkly in my ball dress, a thousand hairpins digging into my scalp, I sit outside the tent on a flat stone, staring at the grapevines with their gnarls of frogspawn-like grapes. At this time of the year, they’re cheek-puckeringly sour.

  You never sleep well in a tent; you’re either too cold or too hot, and you hold your pee in for hours so your bladder swells against the hard floor and you wake up with a stomach ache. But I feel calm, rested. It’s barely six in the morning, so I’ve had barely six hours’ sleep.

  I change quickly behind a tree, wash off some of my make-up with water from a bottle we’d filled in Mâcon, and unlock my bike to go on a breakfast hunt. Between the vineyards shimmer the mirage-like image of a picturesque farmhouse, in front of which two flea-sized dogs are hopping and playing. Memories of picture books from my childhood conjure up in my mind a grumpy, mustachioed farmer, who’s holding a big German shepherd by its collar when it barks as I draw near. The farmer’s wife, busy but tender-hearted, sells us six eggs in a basket lined with feathers and chicken droppings, a little pot of milk, a loaf of bread—and maybe she’ll tell us a little story about her life too…

  “What do you want?” the grumpy farmer asks as I draw near. (He is much younger than in the picture books from my childhood, and has neither a dog nor a moustache.)

  “Good morning, sir. I’m camping over there with some friends, and I’d like to buy eggs, perhaps, or bread, or butter, or milk…”

  The grumpy farmer scratches his head. His busy but tender-hearted wife turns up (also young, and wearing Converse). I reiterate my request.

  “OK, if you want…” she says. “Well, we don’t have any eggs, I don’t think, but… hang on, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  She comes back two minutes later with a bag of sliced supermarket bread, a small jar of Nutella and a bottle of pasteurized milk.

  “It’s all I could find in our cupboard.”

  Right, so they aren’t exactly farmers—they sell huge farming machines from a hanger. I decide to keep that detail quiet as I watch Astrid, Hakima and the Sun enthusiastically bite into the grumpy-farmer-and-busy-but-tender-hearted-wife-sourced Nutella sandwiches.

  “Are we still going to Montceau-les-Mines for lunch?” asks Astrid, post-food.

  “Yes. It’s only three hours from here, at a stretch. We’ll need to find a place where we can charge the mini fridge—the battery must be almost flat. It’d be good if we could avoid infecting the whole region with cholera.”

  “Mireille, were you really drunk last night, or just pretending?”

  “Just pretending, of course, Hakima.”

  “And you, Kader, were you really in love with Blondie, or just pretending?”

  “You don’t fall in love in just one evening.”

  “You were doing a good impression of it.”

  And she wolfs down another sandwich. The Sun, the shadow of a smile on his lips, hauls himself into his wheelchair and slips on his gloves. Even with their protection, though, his palms are blistered, bleeding in some places and scabbed in others.

  “We could do with a coffee machine in that trailer.”

  “Don’t tell me you need any more energy, Kader!” Astrid chuckles. “Seeing how much you danced last night… Show me? Nope, doesn’t look like you’re wasting away…”

  She squeezes his biceps.

  I repeat: Astrid squeezes the Sun’s biceps.

  Just for fun.

  As we get back onto our bikes, I ask: “Astrid, are you a lesbian?”

  “No. Well… I don’t think so. Why?”

  “You just squeezed Kader’s biceps.”

  “Yeah, as a joke. So what?”

  “So what? So you didn’t spontaneously dissolve into a pool of goo! You didn’t instantaneously jump from one state of matter to the next!”

  “Er, no.”

  “Well, QED, and cogito ergo sum.”

  “Which means?”

  “You are a lesbian.”

  As she ponders the validity of my logic, we set off (“Ready? One, two, three…”) behind the Sun, who leads us on our way.

  The road between the fields is freshly tarmacked and beautifully smooth. Back in the trailer, our dresses, pretty mementoes of yesterday’s party, are jostling for space with our sausages. Because I’m an idiot, I stuffed all my hairpins into my shorts pockets, and now they’re pecking at my thighs every time I push down on the pedals. But who cares? There’s a light breeze, the blue sky is freckled with clouds and the way ahead is flat—for now. We decided to skirt around the mountains of the Morvan, knowing we’d have a tough time of it on that terrain; so, from tomorrow, we’ll be following the banks of the River Loire. Fret not, I have no idea where all those places are either—we’re trusting our faithful GPS.

  Cars overtake us once in a while, as well as tractors and the occasional combine harvester. They drive past us slowly, no stress. It suddenly dawns on me that cycling into Paris won’t be quite as relaxing. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

  Suddenly, as we round a corner, a thousand birds dart out of a bush, and the flock flies up, then down, then up again, before getting sucked in by another bush…

  It’s bliss. Perfect bliss.

  Until Hakima moans, “I’m… I’m really sorry, girls, but I’ve got a really, really, really bad stomach ache.”

  Astrid throws me a worried glance, probably concerned I might behead little Hakima with one mighty blow of my bike pump. In order to ascertain whether that will be necessary, however, I first ask, “How big are we talking?”

  “Like yesterday, but worse.”

  “You had a bellyache yesterday? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I didn’t want to be a bother…”

  “Well, that’s silly, we could have got you some medicine in Cluny. Is it like diarrhoea pain?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her face flaming up. “A bit, but it’s lower down… I don’t know, it’s so weird. I’ve never had it before.”

  And she carries on moaning. The Sun turns his head towards us, seems to want to say something, and then doesn’t. I tell Hakima, “It’d better not be gallstones, I’m warning you! We’re in the middle of nowhere here. You get internal bleeding, we’re dumping you into a ditch.”

  “Stop it, Mireille, you’re not funny,” Astrid frowns. “Hakima, shall we take a break?”

  “Nnno… I don’t want to make us late…” Hakima moans again.

  That moan (the third one) breaks my little heart. I’m like that deep-down, really, a sensitive soul. “Of course we’ll take a break. Don’t worry. The GPS says there’s a campsite not too far away, near a lake. We’ll just go slightly off-route, set up shop there, charge the fridge batteries, sell our sausages to the campers, and then cycle off again when you’re feeling better—OK?”

  “But Montceau-les-Mines…”

  “We won’t go to Montceau-les-Mines. We’ll cut straight to the next stop. The lady in the GPS will recalculate our journey; she does that very well. All right?”

  Hakima breathes an all right through nostrils clogged with tears and snot. I suddenly remember she only started high school last year and I feel like hugging her very tight. Well, not right now—we’ve still got a twenty-minute cycle to the campsite.

  “Do you really think it’s flintstones?” Hakima asks shyly.

  “Gallstones. Course not. It must be a minor case of food poisoning. Don’t worry, Hakima. We won’t dump you in a ditch. It was just a funny joke of the highest order. Come on, we’ll get there soon, and you won’t have to sell any sausages.”

  As we’re pedalling, the Sun turns to me, nods and mouths a thank you.

  LAKE ROUSSET CAMPSITE **

  The lake that looked tiny on the GPS screen turns out
to be vast, fringed with trees, reeds and wandering families, with laughing, sun-baked children running all over the place playing tag. Fishermen’s boats and clouds’ reflections slide across the shiny surface of the water, which is as smooth and green as a shard from a wine bottle.

  The owner of the campsite is chewing mauve bubble gum and wearing a Tweety and Sylvester T-shirt. Our first attempts to convince her to let us have a spot for just a few hours are met with a mighty sulk. But suddenly—amazingly—she recognizes us.

  “You’re the Piglettes!”

  “Oh, do you read the Bresse Courier website?”

  “No. They were talking about you on TV.”

  On TV? Which channel? The lady can’t remember; she keeps flicking between them all. Maybe it was BFM TV. Or maybe i>Télé, or maybe France 3 but it could have been LCI, too, or perhaps… Anyway, it was this morning and there were pictures of us leaving Bourgen-Bresse.

  I look at my phone while Hakima goes to the loo. I’ve got seven missed calls: two from Hélène Lesnout, one from Mum, and four from unknown numbers.

  Six voicemails:

  HÉLÈNE LESNOUT: “Hi, Mireille. As you can tell, people are getting interested in your little adventure. I just wanted to, well, I guess, make sure that I still had exclusive access to you and the girls? Right—I’m happy to drive up to wherever you are, just let me know where that is. Is that OK? Anyway—call me back, all right?”

  MUM: “Mireille! Where are you all? Listen—this is getting completely out of hand. Call me back at once. Don’t talk to the press. Hakima and Kader’s parents are very worried. I hope Hakima hasn’t read the comments under that BFM TV Web article.”

  SHE VOICE: “Oh, hello, Miss Laplanche, this is Marc Gammoneau, I’m a journalist at BFM TV… I’d like to know if perhaps I could have a little chat with you when you get to Montceau-les-Mines this evening?… Call me back on…”