“Yes, Mireille. I remember. I… to be honest, I can’t see any reason why you’d want to give him a break… But…”)
21
And what would you do, dear reader, in my place?
What would you do if your ex-best friend, in whose company you used to make big playdough willies at nursery, if that former friend, after turning his back on you, after having you voted the school’s number-one Pig for two years running, and then number-three Pig the next year; after trying to sabotage the cycle trip you organized in the hope of getting back some of your dignity; what would you do if that ex-best friend, pale as sliced aubergine and shaking like a bunny rabbit, chased by the police, suddenly appeared around a street corner right in front of you as you were going to the loo, during your lunch break?
What would you do if you saw him there, holding a lame little knife, his face streaked by two greasy, grey tear tracks running from the top of his cheeks to his chin?
Montargis. 1.15 p.m. Public toilets on a deserted street.
On the square at the end of the street, the other two piglettes and the Sun are chatting with our fans and filling them up with sausages. I said “Youokkader?” and he said “Yeah I’m fine”. “And Hakima, is Hakima OK?” Hakima’s belly is aching less now—Astrid’s been feeding her ibuprofen like sweets. Astrid said: “Wow, Mireille, what’s with the caring attitude all of a sudden? You never used to care whether we were OK or not.” I said: “Let’s be very clear, Astrid, I’m only asking because I wouldn’t want us to get delayed.” Then I said I had to go to the loo.
So here I am, on that deserted street, a strong smell of piss rising from blackish stains on the asphalt; cardboard boxes piled up by a STOP sign; boarded-up windows; Malo, glaring at me.
“Malo. What are you doing here?”
“I warned you,” he hiccups. “I warned you I’d gut you if you made fun of me.”
He’s sobbing jerkily, like someone’s giving him sporadic electric shocks; his shoulders are shaking. A pearl of snot is dangling out of his nose.
“I can’t see how I’m making fun of you.”
I spread out my arms as if to say “Calm down, I’m not armed.” Survival instinct: zero per cent. If he tries to stab me, as he seems to be intending to, I won’t be able to protect myself. I might end up losing my liver or something. Unless my fat layer is thick enough to protect me. His penknife is small, after all.
“You’re [huge hiccup] making fun of me, because…”
Now he’s crying for real, wiping his nose and eyes with his sleeve; he sniffles, the pearl of snot rushes back in, and then comes out again.
He says very quickly, between two sobs, “You and the other two fucking pigs, you want to humiliate me [hiccup], I know that’s what you want, your bloody stupid mystery [hiccup], you’re going to get to Paris and say things about me, slag me off, say horrible things about me, slag me off and…”
Broken record.
Me, in a slightly shaky voice, “Malo, seriously, it’s got nothing to do with you. We wouldn’t even be thinking about you if you hadn’t slashed our tyres.”
He walks towards me, bursts into tears again. He’s so much younger than sixteen, when he’s crying, he’s barely twelve or thirteen—the voice he had before it broke comes back, the voice of the little boy who used to come over to eat Philippe Dumont’s home-made crêpes.
“The police… They’re… they’re looking for me…”
“Yeah, I know, but you kind of brought it on yourself, didn’t you? Why did you come all the way up here just to bother us like that? If you’d stayed in Bourg, you wouldn’t be in trouble.”
“Everyone [hiccup] is laughing [long, triple hiccup] at me, cos you… [end of the sobbing fit]… took that word ‘pig’ back and started using it…”
“Sorry, we didn’t realize you’d copyrighted it.”
He stumbles towards me; I step back, and suddenly, he… he tries, in a pathetic kind of way, to gut me. It’s a bit like being in a nightmare, the same blue blur—I have a lot of nightmares like that, where someone comes to try to kill me. The same thing always happens: the sudden feeling of slipping out of my body, of being a pure spirit, entirely terrified, desperately trying to protect the fat fleshy envelope I’ve been given by genetics and sugar tarts.
“Jesus! Malo, stop it!”
Thankfully, I don’t have much trouble keeping him at bay. He’s not at all as keen on gutting me as he claimed in his little speech; he just scrapes my arm a little bit, and then he tries to aim for my shoulder, but I push him away.
Sobbing, staggering like a new-born foal on his long, crane-like legs, Malo steps back, squeezing his knife in his fist.
“Malo, where’s your cousin Félix?”
“Félix’s gone… He got scared… He left… me… alone…”
“Right, listen—just go to the police, OK? It’s the best thing you could do. Whatever happens, you’re too young to go to prison.”
“I’m scared…”
“Come on, I’ll testify in your favour. If you want, I’ll even say it wasn’t your fault, that I’d pushed you over the edge. We could just say… I know: we could say, for instance, that I stole something really precious from you when we were in Year 7, and that’s why you hate me so much. So you see, that way, it’s also my fault. We’ll tell the police that, and they’ll be more understanding.”
He fixes me, his face frothy with snot and tears, his features deformed. He’s really ugly, actually. He sits down on the ground, legs crossed.
“No-o, Mireille, stop it, for God’s sake, stop it…”
“Stop what?”
He drops his knife, which I quickly pick up—I’m not crazy—then I crouch down next to him. He’s sobbing very hard, his head between his hands, and starts telling me off (I’m summarizing all this for you) for being much too nice to him even though he’s been a bastard for all these years, and for not punching him in the face right now to punish him (no thanks, I like to keep my knuckles intact).
Struck by divine inspiration and a very strong need to pee, I tell him: “Listen, Malo, I’m not a psychologist, but I feel like you’re displacing onto me your own feelings of guilt for having become a little macho dickhead, who chose to signal his entry into adolescence by publicly humiliating his best friend from childhood, and who’s now been sucked into a downward spiral where he has to keep up the act of being a tough guy even though the girls he tried to destroy don’t give a toss about him, and instead of cowering in fear are in fact ignoring him, cycling across half of France and becoming popular without his permission. Am I right?”
He nods, still sitting, his head between his hands, his polo shirt wet with various lachrymal liquids, and keeps repeating something along the lines of, “I hate you, you fat whore, you ugly bitch.”
“I know.”
“No! You shouldn’t be saying that, you should be saying, ‘How can you do this to me when I’ve supported you through [hiccups] hard times?’”
“Why should I say that?”
“Because it would only be [hiccup] FAIR, damn it! Why aren’t you telling me that?”
“Well, because, Malo, I… I don’t know. I dealt with all that a long time ago, I guess. I don’t care now that we used to be close. I don’t care that I spent hours with you when your mum died. I don’t even care any more that I lent you my parachuting Action Man and you lost it like a moron by throwing it off a cliff in Brittany.”
“But you don’t think [hiccup] that it’s unfair, what I did?”
“Sure. But I won’t punish you for it. You’d be too happy.”
I leave him there, and go for a pee. When I come out again, he’s gone. Everyone’s been looking for me—where’s Mireille, have you seen Mireille? Ah, here she is, at last! Mireille, where were you? Are you OK? Smiles. Mireille, can we ask you a few questions, it’s for the eight o’clock news…
That afternoon, I learn via an excited phone call from Hélène Lesnout that Malo has given himself in to the pol
ice.
Looks like the weather forecast wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Do they think it’s funny to film us like that?!” Astrid yells.
Apparently, the journalists do indeed think it’s funny. We’re surrounded by three cars and a bunch of smelly, noisy motorbikes, all with cameras pointing straight at us, and only pride is keeping us going forward. The rain is horizontal, scratching our cheeks—the wind pushes us back, when it doesn’t suddenly blow us to the sides of the road. But that’s nothing, really, when you consider the spectacular thunder and lightning all around us, adding a touch of apocalyptic excitement to the journey.
“Are we nearly there yet, Mireille?”
“Nope, Hakima, not yet…”
On the GPS, our “current location” remains stubbornly static, because we’re going three times slower than usual. The little black-and-white chequered flag marking today’s destination, the forest of Fontainebleau, isn’t even in sight on the screen yet. My arms and legs have become bags of needles.
I know, I feel, I sense Astrid and Hakima’s pain, too. I know them so well, now—I know so well their rhythms, their breathing patterns, the tempo of their tiredness—that I can feel, as if it were mine, by the minutest shifts in pedalling strength, that cramp in Hakima’s left calf, that stiffness in Astrid’s ankle. Their ragged breathing and exhausted coughing fits are mine, too.
How can the Sun keep propelling himself forward in that deluge, only using the strength of his arms? His body must be on fire from all the rain and sweat.
“We’re going to get struck by lightning!” Hakima cries.
She’s right.
We get struck by lightning.
That’ll be a good video for BFM TV’s website: lightning strikes the Three Little Piglettes’ trailer! I bet the solar charger’s dead, now. And the fridge, uh-oh, I hope the fridge’s still working… We’re OK, yes, thank you. We’ve got rubber tyres, so we were protected. Safe and sound. We’re not the kind to get struck down like that, no sir. Nothing can stop us.
It’s almost midnight when we reach Fontainebleau, much too late to sell sausages, much too late to answer journalists’ questions. I fall off my bike, drenched, drag myself to the barely unfolded tent, and then…
…I can’t sleep.
I can’t sleep, because my legs are still rehearsing today’s endless pedalling; motionless, I pedal, pedal, pedal; I fall asleep for two minutes and dream that I’m pedalling; I awake with a start, turn to Astrid…
“Are you dreaming you’re pedalling too?”
“God, tell me about it, I just can’t stop pedalling in my head.”
The Bresse Courier, 13th July 20XX
BIG BAD WEATHER HUFFS AND PUFFS BUT THREE PIGLETTES PEDAL ON
After a stormy afternoon that Mireille Laplanche called “nightmarish”, and during which the convoy was struck by lightning, the three teens and their companion Kader Idriss will be leaving the forest of Fontainebleau this morning to reach Choisy-le-Roi by the evening, where they will be spending the night. The young cyclists and their now-famous trailer will follow the winding course of the River Seine and have not specified where they will be stopping for lunch. The mayor of Choisy-le-Roi has already announced that Laplanche, Blomvall and the two Idrisses will be invited to stay at a hotel in the town. Speculations continue to abound as to the purpose of the three young girls’ journey—that purpose should be revealed tomorrow, 14th July, when they get to the centre of Paris.
H.L.
Le Point @lepoint
Breaking: #3littlepiglettes Nevers sabotage: bike-slasher revealed
to be organizer of Pig Pageant http://…
L’Express @lexpress
“I thought they wanted to make fun of me”: Malo, 16, surrenders to
police after #3littlepiglettes bike sabotage http://…
Le Figaro @lefigaro
#3littlepiglettes are the symptom of a deep crisis in the French
school system: analysis by educational specialist Nathalie
Polonais http://…
Metro @metro
Inspired by brave #3littlepiglettes, other “ugly” teenagers speak
up about school bullying http://…
Grazia @grazia
Our summer #beauty tips: how not to be elected #pig of the
school! http://…
22
This morning Astrid has a cold.
“It bust be because of the storb yesterday,” she moans, wearing the saddest face in the world. “I’b pretty sure it’s todsillitis.”
“Tonsillitis! Why not leprosy, while you’re at it? It’s just a cold.”
Her ears and throat are inflamed—the back of her mouth, when she goes aaaah, is bright red; the little dangly thing at the top of her throat looks like a big strawberry. I try my best to be very compassionate and sympathetic, but I can’t help it: I hate people sniffling.
“Astrid, I beg you, blow your nose instead of sniffling.”
“I’b like to see you try to blow your dose while cyclig!”
“Well, try to do it with one hand! Listen, it’s pure horror—every time you sniffle, I have this vision of a slug of snot climbing up your nostrils and diving into your stomach.”
“It’s dot by fault if your ibagidation is hyperactib!”
The Sun intervenes. “We’re not late, Mireille. We could take a break for a whole day and we’d still be on time tomorrow for the party.”
“Absolutely niet. We’re already going at tortoise speed because of Astrid’s faulty immune system. I’d like to remind you all that hotel beds are awaiting our beautiful bodies in Choisy! And we must keep going—if we slow down now, they’ll all say we’re wimps and softies.”
“Whatever we do, Astrid can’t sell sausages in that state,” Hakima says. “She’ll give everyone tonsillitis.”
“It’s not tonsillitis, it’s a cold. Come on, focus.”
The banks of the Seine aren’t as wild as those of the Loire. Fields have been replaced by promenades, herons by pigeons, cyclists by pram-pushing parents. We slip from suburban town to suburban town, and to me it all feels very new, that grey river fringed with tower blocks, small shops, teens sitting on the ground, smoking and catcalling. I’m used to villages and provincial towns, not to stretches of cement with the occasional friendly tree.
It doesn’t smell of anything any more. I know some people say Paris stinks of smoke or piss or pollution, but what strikes me as we get closer to the capital isn’t the smell, it’s the absence of smell. I close my eyes while cycling and sniff the air, but I can no longer catch the dusty whiffs of cereal fields, the tart tang of stagnant water or the fresh, fatherly scent of thick-rooted oaks. Above all, the odours aren’t blended together any more—smells here come one after the other: dog turd; pizzeria; dustbin; women’s perfume; exhaust pipe. They don’t mingle, they keep to themselves.
Hakima: “Why do so many people live here when there’s so much space in the forest of Fontainebleau? And it’s much prettier.”
“Yeah, but it’s further away…”
“Further away from what?”
(Snapshot from this morning, as we left the forest of Fontainebleau. We had to keep still for ten minutes, waiting for a great big stag to get up from the middle of the road, where he’d sat down.
“It’s like id Safari Park IV,” Astrid sniffled. “You always have to stop to let the adibals go through, they’re always getting id your way.”
I’d never seen a stag so close up. He was as thick across the chest as a horse, with the same swollen belly, but such long, thin legs, and velvety skin, stretched like hosiery over each muscle, each bone. He stood up clumsily, his head swinging, and went away calmly to nibble at lichens on a tree.)
“Further away from Paris,” the Sun said, answering Hakima.
“But what’s in Paris that people like so much?”
“You’ll see… Paris is amazing.”
“How do you know, Mireille? I thought you’d only been
there when you were a baby.”
“Yeah, but I’ve visited almost all of it on Google Street View.”
Damn: the GPS won’t switch on. Since that lightning bolt speared our solar panel, I haven’t been able to charge our precious travelling companion.
“Darling piglettes, we’ve lost our compass. We’ll have to keep following the river and hope for the best.”
The courageous convoy isn’t in the happiest of moods today. The Sun is seriously starting to tire. This morning, I said, “Youokkader?” and he said, “Hmm, apart from some soreness in my arms and shoulders,” and, knowing him, it must be much worse than he says. Of course, he probably didn’t manage to take care of his stumps in Fontainebleau… I would gladly have helped him put out the daily fire, but he didn’t ask, and I can’t just force my budding firefighter skills on him. Meanwhile, the abominable Astrid is still sniffling and sneezing, and Hakima, instead of pedalling hard, is wasting a lot of energy saying “Poor Astrid, it must be awful, Mireille, honestly, we should stop, poor Astrid.” I’m the only one still waving to the passers-by who recognize us.
Bridge after bridge, town after town, under a tin sky, along the tortuous river—let’s just say it’s not the best day of the journey.
When we finally decide to stop, we don’t get a lot of customers; no one’s brought us any dishes of cheese or chocolate. Hélène Lesnout had warned us: “You can’t expect journalists to pay much attention to you today. They’re all preparing 14th July features for tomorrow’s news. All the underpaid interns who’d been following you hoping for a quirky story have been sent to military bases or aircraft carriers, or are interviewing the organizers of the Eiffel Tower firework display.”
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