AWorriedParent
Whos to say their not about to bomb the Champs-Élysées???!!! They say they have sausage in their trailer has anyone gone and check? terrorrists have been using children of that age for ages! It;s time government did something else than doing nothing!
MarieFrance75
fucking ugly
igor2005
18
“Right, pretty piglettes—and Kader—let’s get a move on today. We’re slightly behind schedule. We absolutely have to reach the Loire this evening. It’s going to be a hard day. Harder than planned.”
No, not harder—worse.
“Have you seen the forecast? It’s not looking good,” Adrienne warned us after breakfast, which we ate on the grass, in front of our tents in the castle’s garden.
“Oh, the weather gods wouldn’t do that to us,” I answered, merrily biting a chunk off my buttered baguette. “They’ve been so sweet so far!”
“Yeah, but that’s always how it works,” Astrid intervened, full of managerial confidence. “You think it’s going to be nice, you sow your seeds, you water your fields, the little shoots start poking through, and suddenly, whack! Hailstorm. Half of your harvest—gone. It happens all the time in Farmer IV.”
“Yes, for weirdos like you who like to make things complicated for themselves. In real life, when the sky is cornflower-blue at seven in the morning, it’s going to be lovely all day.”
Fast-forward an hour and ten minutes, and…
…we’re drowning.
It’s not just that annoying but manageable kind of rain, which bleaches the landscape and gurgles under your bike wheels. Oh, no. We turn a corner, and it feels like—we’ve just punched through the skin of a gigantic water-filled balloon.
Everything at ground level is grey-green. The charcoal-coloured cloud ceiling, as fluffy as Fluffles’s belly, is so low that the tallest trees seem to be tickling it. Hard to say if the water’s falling down from the sky, or rising up towards it. Potholes have turned into muddy marshes, which we try our best to avoid. In front of us, the Sun’s skull, shoulders and arms are drenched in water, as slick and shiny as if he were covered in oil. His T-shirt must be completely stuck to his muscular chest, I think, though that fact of course doesn’t interest me in the least.
We’re soaked: sea sponges. Hakima’s normally frizzy hair is plastered to her forehead.
“We’re going so slowly,” she complains.
“At least we’re going.”
And at last we burst out the other side of the water balloon. The countryside around us reappears; the huge black ceiling breaks up into dark-grey, kittenish little clouds, which drift lazily apart. The sun, looking a bit pale, reappears behind wispy clouds. We go on bravely—stopping only once, to go to the loo in a small village…
(They’re holes in the ground, with broken flushes; there’s a huge cone of shit between the two foot rests, around which flies are buzzing so loudly it sounds like they’re barking. We end up going in the bushes instead.)
(As formerly hypothesized, the Sun’s T-shirt is sticking to his chest. Too bad.)
(Damn, my own T-shirt also seems to be sticking to my chest, and to my belly, and to all the folds and lumps thereof.)
We leave again.
At around 1 p.m., forty-five minutes later than planned, we get to the little town of Cercy-la-Tour, and to the flowery bridge that crosses, so a sign tells us, the River Aron.
“Funny,” says Astrid, “I thought it’d be the back of beyond, but look, there must be some kind of funfair going on. There’s loads of people on the bridge…”
Loads of people, yes. A travelling circus? Pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela? A local music festival? Oh, they’re holding a banner. How convenient; we’ll know what it’s all about.
The banner’s blue, white and red, and it reads:
CERCY WELCOMES THE THREE LITTLE PIGLETTES!!!
They lead us to the banks of the Aron, and bring us…
“Champagne? Again?”
And Coke and lemonade and fruit juices, boxes of chocolates, bread, flowers and chips. The mayor of the town is there, as well as those of half a dozen neighbouring towns and villages. We’re surrounded by kids who haven’t gone away on holiday, by most of Cercy’s inhabitants, and by many people who’ve come from the surrounding area too…
…including, of course, journalists, who have driven all the way from…
“Montceau-les-Mines! We were expecting you yesterday, young ladies!”
“Nevers. I’m a reporter for the local radio…”
“Might you answer a few questions for Ouest-France? I came from Nantes this morning…”
“And we came from Paris, can you imagine! So, Miss Laplanche, you really need to answer our questions…”
“Does the Bresse Courier have exclusive access to you?”
“What are you going to do in Paris on 14th July?”
(“Shose shaushages are sho good!”)
“What do your parents think of this strange adventure?”
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” the mayor of Cercy booms. “Leave these young ladies alone!”
Actually, these young ladies don’t mind the attention. Astrid dishes out sauce like an expert dinner lady; Hakima takes orders, leaping this way and that to grab cardboard plates and plastic cutlery—and meanwhile, I watch the sausages, which give off a satisfying sizzle as they fry.
Then we allow ourselves a break to eat something, on the riverbank.
They want us to try everything, and everything’s delicious. Even the Coke in a plastic cup is delicious. The buttered bread is delicious. The dry saucisson with hazelnuts; those tiny barbecued fish from the river; the huge salad that someone brought along—lentils, tomatoes, grated carrots, sunflower seeds, all energetically tossed together; the olive oil—oh God! It’s scented with truffles!—drizzled over hungrily torn hunks of bread; those shiny little mounds of yoghurt that seem to be bleeding raspberry coulis; those baskets of gleaming chocolates and pralines, already beginning to melt…
“Are you sure you don’t want a glass of champagne?”
“No, thanks—we’ve still got a lot of cycling to do, you know…”
“And we were supposed to feed you, not the other way around!” Astrid protests, her mouth full of tapenade.
“It’s our pleasure!”
We’ve also attracted a small group of—for want of a better word—fans. One of them seems very proud to be able to tell us that he knows the person who created the Facebook group “Where are the Three Little Piglettes?”, which attempts to map our journey. The others are equally keen to take part in the Quest, and enthusiastically speculate as to why and how we’ve undertaken our fascinating trip. There are about a dozen of them, aged from twenty to forty, huddled in a corner and looking awkward.
“Course, as I’m sure you can guess, we all have our theories,” a young man tells us, avoiding our eyes. “Personally, I think you’re trying to warn the president about the Bresse chickens.”
“About the Bresse chickens?”
“Yes.” (Talking in a very low voice now.) “As soon as I heard you were from Bourg-en-Bresse, I knew. Gamma rays in poultry. Health scandal. Irradiated chickens, a rise in cases of cancer among consumers. You know the truth, and you’re going to tell the president.”
“What gamma rays? What cancer?”
“Sshh,” the weird guy whispers. “Don’t say it too loudly just yet.”
He pats our backs, murmuring, “You’re very brave.”
Then we sign autographs.
I repeat: we sign autographs.
“But I don’t have a signature!” Hakima panics. “I’ve never had one!”
People are mostly getting us to sign newspaper articles, and that’s when we start to realize how big we’ve become. At least eight different national newspapers have written about us today. We’re on the front page of Aujourd’hui en France.
“Urgh, it’s the grossest photo in the world
!” Astrid complains. “You’re lucky, Mireille, at least your head is tilted down.”
The four of us, seen from the front, on the road: the Sun, divinely handsome, looking like a modern Ben-Hur; behind him, the Three Little Piglettes, whose physical efforts aren’t quite as graceful.
“Who took that picture? How come we didn’t see them?”
According to the credit below the photo, it was taken by a certain René Hogue. The article it accompanies is… suspiciously precise. They know that my mother is a philosophy teacher in Bourg. They know Astrid is half-Swedish. They know—oh, how interesting—they know that Kader Idriss is currently at the heart of an internal army inquest…
In fact, the Sun, is attracting more attention today than before, at least from the shrewder journalists.
“Monsieur Idriss, there are a lot of theories surrounding your participation in this trip. Some people are speculating that the ‘Three Little Piglettes’ might be a red herring, and that you’re the real reason for this odyssey. Are you intending to disturb the Bastille Day military parade in order to defend your version of what happened when your unit was ambushed?”
The Sun, brightly, haughtily: “I’m here to be with my young sister and to look after her and her friends. It’s also a physical challenge for me, to get used to my new body. I have no intention whatsoever of doing anything that would stain the honour of the French Army, in which I would still be a soldier if it were up to me. That will be all, thank you.”
We hop back on our saddles having eaten way too much, our eyes prickling with sleepiness.
“Right. Focus. We’ve still got a long way to go. A long way.”
The journalists’ motorbikes tail us. Some of the geeks are following us by car (I hope the nuclear-Bresse-chicken conspiracy theorist isn’t among them). The weather is still good, but it’s starting to smell like rain…
“My belly’s hurting,” Hakima says. “It’s like it’s full of gravel… scraping and scratching everything inside.”
“It’s clots,” I explain. “Big blobs of blood.”
“I want to cry,” Hakima says.
“It’s really painful, we know,” says Astrid, “we feel for you, love. Have you taken another ibuprofen?”
“No, I don’t want to get used to it or else it won’t work any more.”
“Of course it’ll work, it’s not like antibiotics!”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure! I’ve been taking ibuprofen for years, I had precocious puberty.”
“You had precocious puberty, Astrid?”
“Yeah, I was eight and a half.”
“Christ! Eight and a half?”
“Yes, I already had boobs and hips and periods… it was horrible, I couldn’t go to the swimming pool.”
“Oh wow, that’s awful—poor you!”
“It was awful. I’d lock myself up in my bedroom and listen to Indochine on a loop. You know, Hakima, you should take some ibuprofen. You’ll take ibuprofen your whole life anyway, because of periods, or migraines, or something—you’ll almost always be aching somewhere, it’s flipping annoying being a girl.”
The Sun, gentleman that he is, pretends not to hear.
The road is so, so, so, so long…
…but we finally get to Nevers, under a cool, thin rain, exhausted, shattered, drained, and of course there’s a welcoming committee; I’m probably going to throw up, or maybe even die, who knows? Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, what kind of sausage would you like? No, no, we’re not doing any interviews until later, sir. Let us sell our sausages.
19
In Nevers, the night is cold and Astrid is snoring.
Despite being tired, I can’t sleep. I stare straight up at the ceiling of the tent and the two bits of string that dangle in the middle of it (what are those bits of string for, anyway?). Light from the moon, or perhaps, more plausibly, from a lamp, daubs the fabric white. Through it, I can see the dancing silhouettes of dozens of little mosquitoes and an occasional clumsy moth.
I slip out of the tent silently. The campsite is dark, but it’s only midnight and some tents are still lit, looking like big Chinese lanterns on the black grass. You can see the shadows of the people inside, including a couple looking very much like they’re in the middle of doing it. You’d really have to be a bit of a flasher to do that, or stupid enough not to realize that people outside can see everything, right down to the turned-up nose and half-open mouth of the girl who’s sitting on top of the guy. Surely that must hurt your knees a bit? Of course, it depends how long it’s going to last, but can you imagine the state of your kneecaps after just five minutes of that posi—
“Everything OK, Mireille?”
I jump and turn around to face the Sun, in his chariot, on the gravel path that leads to the building at the centre of the campsite. His face is lit up from below by the white glow of his iPhone; it looks exhausted, almost like a death mask.
“Hey! Kader! What’s up? Yep, all good, perfect, great!”
“You looked puzzled.”
“No, no, I was just wondering something about a thing.”
“Can I help?”
“Ha! No. Not at all. It’s absolutely zero per cent important. It’s about…” (SOS. Don’t say anything about any sexual position whatsoever.) “It’s about that little string that dangles at the top of the tent. What’s that thing for, anyway?”
“For hanging things from. Like a lamp, for example.”
“Oh! Of course! Yes! Makes complete sense!” I slam my hand on my forehead, rather forcefully. “It’d been nagging at me for a while. You aren’t asleep?”
“No, I was just going to take a walk. Well, you get my meaning.”
I walk up to him (it’s dark—I can get away with blushing, as long as he can’t feel the heat from my burning ears).
I realize that he’s breathing quickly and shallowly.
“So… you’re just, erm, taking a walk in the middle of the night?”
He propels himself forward slightly, and I can tell he’s stifling a groan. “Yeah, why? What’s the problem?”
“Nothing.”
“Right. See you tomorrow then. Goodnight.”
He starts off again, sighs deeply, wipes his brow. In the light from his phone I see a necklace of sweat across his collarbones. I crouch down closer to him to see his face better—it’s as waxy and creviced as the surface of the moon.
“You OK, Kader?”
“Fine. But you—you’re going to catch a cold. Goodnight.”
He scratches my head like I’m his cat or his daughter (I suddenly remember I haven’t washed my hair in two days and have a horrifying vision of the oil from my skull accumulating under his nails). He wheels himself forward a few yards. Something falls off the wheelchair; he doesn’t notice—he keeps dragging himself along the path.
I call out to him: “Hey, Kader, you dropped your—your washbag.”
He turns his head towards me and his eyes—two white discs in a face liquid with sweat—scare me a little. I stammer, “Are you going to have a shower? I’ll come with you, if you want.”
Oh, perfect. I have just proposed to the Sun that I take a shower with him. I burst out into a frantic cackle. “But not to have a shower myself, right! I’ve already had a shower! I’m not going to have two showers in one evening! That would be completely absurd! And a total waste of water when thousands of polar bears are dropping dead every minute!”
(Darling, if you keep bleating like that, you’ll wake up the whole campsite.)
“But I could… I don’t know, help you. If you need help, that is. I’ll cover my ears and my eyes.”
That makes him laugh, and clench his teeth, and groan, and I wonder if the moonlight is going to make the Sun turn into a muscly werewolf right in front of me; but at last he says, “OK. Thanks.”
It’s one of those moments where your existence, which until now has been wandering aimlessly, suddenly slams back into itself with an elastic slap. Reality yells int
o my ears: He wants me to help him. He wants me to push his wheelchair along the path towards the main building of the campsite, a huge, ugly cube, swarming with tiny flies.
The neon lamps in the showers fizzle and tinkle when I flick them on, and the harsh light wakes up the resident fauna. Small slugs are slogging up the walls. Gigantic mosquitoes, puppet-clumsy, bounce against the taps and fall to their gooey deaths into puddles of soap. There’s a hedgehog in one of the showers. A hedgehog.
Camping rule number one: never have a shower in the middle of the night. It’s no time for humans. In the slippery light reflected by the dirty mirrors, I watch myself pushing the Sun’s chariot. We both look wilted, pasty.
“Shouldn’t you have gone sooner?”
“I don’t like it when there’s—gnnnn—people around.”
“Blimey, Kader, are you sure you’re OK?”
“Yeah—can you park me in the furthest shower, please?”
It’s the disabled shower. I swing the door open and push the chair near the whitish wall, which is spattered with icky soap streaks. In one swift move, the Sun pops out of his chair, catches the bar, sits down on the little stool, and takes his T-shirt off. There’s time for me to notice his contracting triceps, his tile-like abs, his pecs like twin tortoise shells. But in this setting, the shower walls covered in grimy tiles, the plughole furry with human hair, there’s nothing at all electrifying about this muscle show.
A moment later, and he’s taken off his trousers. No, not taken off—ripped off. No need to close your eyes, Mireille—he’s wearing underpants. You’ve seen men like that at the swimming pool. No need to close your eyes.
Piglettes Page 13