“Have an espresso,” the Sun suggests.
A few steps away from us, a penguin man armed with an espresso machine offers guests a myriad colourful capsules, like an attentive painter in front of his easel. At random, I pick a gold one.
Down it.
The coffee sinks its fangs into my throat.
“Better?” the Sun asks.
“Better, yes.”
I am indeed feeling better. My brain is merrily mixing itself a cocktail out of all the drinks I’ve had these past twenty minutes, and I’m feeling better.
“Where’s Astrid?”
“Over there, having a ball.”
It’s undoubtedly the best day of Astrid’s whole life. Standing in her long dress, her face tomato-red, she’s chatting animatedly with an oldish, skinny gentleman with a Sonic the Hedgehog hairstyle.
“It’s the lead singer of Indochine,” the Sun explains.
“I’d guessed. Has she taken pictures with him?”
“Approximately fifty-eight. She also got him to sign her T-shirt.”
“Poor guy…”
But the poor guy doesn’t seem too annoyed that a hysterical sixteen-year-old fan has Sellotaped herself to him since the beginning of the garden party. He’s actually talking to her, and his smiles seem genuine. He’s introducing her to other people, maybe musicians from the band. And, strangely, she hasn’t spontaneously combusted yet; she says hello and keeps talking, her face entirely red like a giant raspberry, her hair straw-yellow.
If her Swedish father suddenly reappeared, I don’t think she’d give a damn.
“At least someone’s having a good time.”
“Hmm,” the Sun hmms.
“How about you? Have you spotted…”
“Yeah.”
I’m guessing he spotted him a long time ago. He’s standing over there, in full dress uniform, with his wife, next to a bush. He’s eating, drinking and chatting with other military people, and another man I recognize, a government minister perhaps. He’s glittering with medals.
“What are you going to do?” I ask the Sun.
“What am I going to do… You ask some funny questions.”
“Are you going to talk to him?”
“To say what?”
“I don’t know. Aren’t you going to… to rip off his medal, or…”
He rolls his eyes. “Rip off his medal! Bloody nonsense. Childish talk. That’s the kind of thing you can say when you’re in Bourg-en-Bresse, sulking in your living room, not in the Élysée gardens.”
I’m about to reply, but I feel a sudden stabbing in my throat as I see Klaus arriving. He mingles with the crowd, greets the guests. He joins the bunch of people around Sassin. They laugh. They laugh together. Klaus jokingly pretends to pull off Sassin’s Legion of Honour medal; Sassin puts an imaginary gun to Klaus’s temple. They’re having fun, they’re having so much fun!
“Where’s Hakima?” the Sun asks, transfixed.
We look around: no Hakima.
And suddenly she appears.
She walks over and plants herself right in front of Sassin.
“What is she doing?!” the Sun chokes.
We look on, fascinated. It’s like a silent film: little Hakima introducing herself to Klaus, then to Sassin, then to Sassin’s wife, then to the minister and to the other people in the group.
“What the hell is she doing?” the Sun repeats…
“Finishing her therapy,” I whisper…
A few minutes later, Hakima turns and points our way. We see Klaus and Sassin spot us, nod, smile—then they make their excuses to the other people in their group, before striding in our direction.
“I’m going to throw up,” I warn the Sun.
“Me first,” he says.
But the promised throwing-up fit fails to occur. Instead, I grab the Sun’s hand, and we merrily crush each other’s knuckles while Hakima, Sassin and Klaus keep walking towards us, for roughly forty days and forty nights.
Sassin’s first words: “My dear Kader! How happy I am to see you.”
“General.” Kader salutes him.
“Call me Auguste, please. Miss Laplanche,” says Sassin to me, and bows briskly.
I nod, and focus my attention onto the general’s shiny Legion of Honour medal, frozen to the core at the thought of meeting Klaus’s eyes.
“My dear Kader,” repeats Sassin. “I followed your journey in the media, you know. I’m very happy to see that you… How shall I put it? That you’re back in the game.”
I stare at the Sun, my heart balanced on the tip of my tongue. It’s now or never! He has to say it. You can keep your praise. You killed my friends and sliced off my legs. Where were you when. Why didn’t you. You must have known. How did you fail to predict. It’s murder under another name. Where were you, Sassin, where were you when.
In the end, though, the Sun just nods. “I had some help from those three young women.”
“May I conclude,” asks Sassin hurriedly, “may I conclude that you are at last accepting my offer, and that of the president?”
The Sun lowers his head.
Klaus turns to Sassin and asks, “What offer?”
“Well, for a whole year we’ve been trying to convince this young man to accept the Legion of Honour. No one deserves it more than he does. I assume you will be talking to the president tod—”
“No,” the Sun chokes, “no, that’s not why I’m here. I’m just here to accompany my sister. I’m here to be with Hakima.”
Hakima, like me, is very still, utter stupefaction locking her jaw into place.
“For heaven’s sake, Kader!” the general cries. “It’s time to move on and accept what happened. You were heroic that day, everyone told you so.” He explains to Klaus: “As he was lying there, his legs riddled with bullets, he managed to send radio messages to all the other troops that were out that day, telling them they were heading straight into a trap. Without him, we would have lost dozens of men.”
“We lost ten,” says the Sun darkly.
“Yes,” says Sassin. “And they all got the posthumous honours they deserved. You haven’t, Kader. I understand you’ve needed a bit of time, but now…”
“I’m waiting for the results of the inquiry,” the Sun croaks, very pale.
“The inquiry will show that you acted impeccably. Responsibility for those deaths lies elsewhere. I am to a very large degree guilty, and, as you know, not a day goes by when I don’t think about it.”
“It wasn’t your fault, General,” says Kader, raising a face drained of all blood, his eyes shiny. “You couldn’t have known.”
“But I should have anticipated it. Kader, as you know, I only want to see you accept the honours that you are owed. You’ve received my many letters. You know my position. That day, that tragic day, you did exactly what you should have done.”
Noticing the Sun’s stony face, he takes his arm. “Come. Let us talk about it together.”
They go off. Hakima, astounded, sticks around for a few seconds. Then she realizes she’s in the middle of a potential father-daughter duel, and says, “Oh, sorry, I’ll just leave you to it,” and scuttles away like a little mouse.
The president’s husband, one hand in his pocket, the other curled around a glass of champagne, gives me a kind smile. “Miss Laplanche. Mireille, am I right?”
I nod.
“You look confused.”
“No, I… I’m just surprised, because… because we all thought that the Sun, I mean Kader, had been the victim of… well, we didn’t know at all that Barack Ob… that your wife had offered him the Legion of Honour. We thought the general was… well, a… well, I’m just surprised.”
He nods and sips his champagne, looking around, probably for some excuse to stop talking to me.
“Laplanche,” he ponders. “Any relation to the philosopher?”
My ears are ringing. “What philosopher?”
“Jean Laplanche. A great thinker, psychoanalyst, philosopher.
You’re not related to him, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Pity.”
My brain’s shouting to my mouth, “Come on, open, say something, come on, what use are you if you don’t speak?” and Klaus is looking around again, he’ll leave if I don’t hold him back. “Come on, damn it, think of something to say!”
“Apparently,” I cry out in desperation, “apparently I do look like a philosopher…”
“Oh yes? Who?”
He’s staring at me.
You, you idiot.
“Jean-Paul Sartre.”
That tickles Klaus. A lot. “Jean-Paul Sartre! Why not Socrates, while we’re at it? What cruel person told you such a thing?”
“Friends.”
“You should make other friends, young lady. I have heard that you like to call yourselves, erm… ‘piglettes’, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re perfectly graceful and charming, and—”
“You know my mother. I’m sorry to interrupt. You know my mother.”
“Do I? It’s quite possible. Who is your mother?”
“Patricia Laplanche.”
A tiny sign. Something. His eyes widening, almost imperceptibly. Starbursts of wrinkles around them, stretching.
A tic in his cheek.
He stays silent for a while, and then takes a sip of champagne.
“Patricia, of course,” he whispers. “I hadn’t made the connection. I—yes, I supervised her excellent thesis on the concept of time in Nicolas Grimaldi’s philosophy. It was many years ago, I can’t remember exactly—”
“Fifteen and a half years ago.”
“That sounds about right, yes. Patricia. Of course.”
He finishes his champagne.
“And, so, what is your… your mother up to these days? I don’t think I ever bumped into her again after her doctoral defence. We… wrote to each other two or three times, and then we lost touch.”
“She’s a philosophy teacher in Bourg-en-Bresse.”
“Teacher? At a university?”
“No, high school.”
“Is she? Very good,” he murmurs, sounding like he doesn’t think it’s very good. “She was very talented, very creative and rigorous. She had potential as a philosopher. Do you have any… any brothers and sisters?”
“Not yet, but she’s expecting another kid. A boy.”
“I see. Very good.”
He scratches his earhole, which doubles up as a vase for a little bouquet of grey hairs.
“There’s going to be quite a gap between the two of you. How old are you?”
“Fifteen and a half,” I answer, imploringly.
“Ah. Very good.”
No use. It’s not computing. He’s not a mathematician, he’s a philosopher.
So he launches into his favourite topic. “How about you, young lady? Do you like philosophy?”
My espressoed brain espresses me to say yes, of course I like philosophy, it must run in the family, with the two of you as parents, but instead I reply, “Yes, I do. I’ve read all your books.”
“You’ve what?” He raises an eyebrow, surprised. “What do you mean, you’ve read my books? All of them?”
“Yes. My mother buys them and I read them too.”
“Crikey. And you understand what they’re about?”
“Some of the references I don’t understand, but I haven’t read all of Kant and Hegel, you see.”
He laughs and slips his hand through what’s left of his hair. “Good Lord, you’re an unusual teenager. I’d love my boys to read my books, but they’d rather read comics.”
“I like comics too.”
“Very good. Very good.”
“I wrote to you,” I breathe. “Several times. Three times. I wrote to you three times. Didn’t you get my letters?”
“I don’t believe so. Where did you send them?”
“To the Sorbonne first, several years ago. Then to the Élysée.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t recall ever seeing them. Here at the Élysée the mail gets read by secretaries anyway—we hardly see any. So many people write to us. What did those letters say?”
“They said…”
I wish my head could stop spinning.
“They said I like your books.”
“Did they? That’s very kind of you. I would have liked to receive those letters.”
He swings his head back to drink up an imaginary last drop of champagne.
“And your… well—your, ahem, your father, then—what does he do?”
I stare at him. Has he really not made the connection? His grey, impassive gaze meets mine calmly. Did he really never receive my letters?
Noticing I’m taking a long time to reply, he goes, “I’m sorry, perhaps that’s too personal a question.”
“No, not at all. My father is… my father is a solicitor. He’s called Philippe. He’s a solicitor in Bourg-en-Bresse.”
“A solicitor? Oh. I see. Very well. And does he also like philosophy?”
“No,” I say, a ping-pong ball in my throat. “It’s not his thing.”
“There must be other things he’s good at,” Klaus suggests.
“Yeah, there are. He… he makes very good crêpes.”
Klaus smiles. “That’s an important thing, being able to make very good crêpes.”
I smile too, a real smile. “It is. And he helps me do my homework, without getting annoyed, unlike my mother. He takes me to see exhibitions and walks with me in the forest. He takes me wine-tasting. He’s the one who taught me how to make lasagne. And since Mum’s job isn’t very flexible, he was always the one looking after me when I was sick in primary school. He loses at tennis on purpose even though he’s better than me. He takes me to the cinema. He repainted my bedroom last year. We went to Ikea and he let me have the lamp with all the multicoloured balls. When I was six, he gave me a kitten, who’s now a big fat cat called Fluffles. He took me to the swimming pool every Saturday for a year so I could learn to swim all the different strokes. He didn’t tell me off the time I dropped my chocolate ice cream on the new seats of his BMW when I was nine.”
Klaus nods. “Well, you’re a lucky girl. Your father sounds like a good man.”
“Yes, I am. Yes. He is.”
He nods again, still looking pensive.
“All right, young lady, I should probably be rejoining my wife—”
“Wait…”
My hand’s clutching his arm.
“Wait, please. Just a moment. There’s something I’d like to tell you.”
“Oh, sure, please do! Do tell, do tell.”
His smile is frank, friendly. He does not know. He really hasn’t clocked anything. I’m sure of it now; he doesn’t know. He doesn’t suspect a thing.
“I… I am…”
“Yes? No need to be shy.”
“I… I’ve got the manuscript of a philosophy book my mother’s written.”
“Have you?”
“I know I’m not a philosopher like you, but she is. I’ve got it here. I’ve read it, honestly, it’s really cool. Well, I mean, not cool, but I don’t know the right philosophical terms to describe it. Can I leave it with you? Please, do read it.”
“Of course I will. I’m sure it’s excellent. Let me see—Being and Bewilderment: Towards a Philosophy of the Unexpect…”
He grins, and a moment later I think his eyes are blurry.
“I believe I know what’s in there,” he says fondly. “Yes, I remember… We used to talk about it a lot.”
He flicks through the book, looks at the dedication. To my daughter Mireille.
Klaus stares at me.
“I was very—I mean, how can I put it?… I was very close to your mother.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He coughs into a handkerchief. His face, when it contracts, looks older, more tired.
“It’s rare, you know, when… when you find a student who’s really able—not just to agree with you, but also to challenge you intell
igently, to…”
He peers at the first few pages.
“That’s right,” he says. “Everything changes, unpredictably, and we must always react to the unexpected. I remember.”
He keeps nodding, keeps smiling, looking a little silly, lost in his memories.
“I’m looking forward to reading it. Very much.”
He fixes me, and behind him I spot Barack Obamette walking, very professionally, towards a group of guests. Louie’s sitting on the floor, looking extremely bored. Huey and Dewey have found two tall blondes to flirt with.
Klaus lays his wrinkly hand on my shoulder. “It’s a funny thing, life. I wasn’t… I wasn’t expecting at all to see this part of my existence re-emerge, today, at this tiresome social gathering. But I guess Patricia was always where I expected her least. It’s a pleasant thing, sometimes, to be surprised.”
He nods at his wife, who’s just beckoned him over. He throws me one last look.
“She’s right, you know, your mother—nothing can be entirely planned for. And she may be right, too, about it making us who we are. Certainly, I… yes, certainly, I’m suddenly feeling a little bit… more human.”
He pats my shoulder, perplexedly, clumsily.
And then he goes his way and I go mine.
The Bresse Courier, 15th July 20XX
HAPPILY EVER AFTER: THREE LITTLE PIGLETTES TURN FAIRY GODMOTHERS
Mireille Laplanche, Astrid Blomvall and Hakima Idriss have at last explained, as promised, why they embarked on their sausage-selling journey across France. “The aim,” Laplanche stated, “was to collect money for charities that matter to us.”
All the money they earned selling sausages will be donated to charity, split between a war veterans’ charity, a charity campaigning against school bullying and another promoting women’s sports. Their notorious sausage trailer will be sold on eBay for the same purpose; it is expected to fetch upwards of €1,000. Since the Three Little Piglettes’ endorsement of these charities, they have all reported a rise in donations.
The explanation was the cause of some surprise—indeed perhaps some disappointment—among Internet users, who were, it seems, hoping for a more spectacular justification. Feminist blogger Simone Suffragette, however, who has been supporting the Three Little Piglettes since 8th July, praised their initiative, underlining that the expectation surrounding the three teenagers’ revelation had “achieved something that is no mean feat in a society obsessed by individualism and show business—they celebrated the values of solidarity, generosity and hope.”
Piglettes Page 19