She should have been chary of her curiosity. She does not need to know the truth about sins she had not committed. She does not have to answer for censurable acts that are not her own. Allah in His wisdom knows every thing we do. Shit. She would rather have sewn her eyes shut than see what she has seen.
She knows that life was difficult in France for women of the previous generation. They were blown up on their way here. Men told them they were beautiful and encouraged to expose themselves to lustful eyes. Turn away from Allah and trample their heritage. They did not realise where it would lead them. The washing machines, the well-paid jobs, the unseemly clothes and the promise of an easy life. Some of her girlfriends’ mothers dye their hair blonde, show their buttocks and hang out in bars. Aïcha was more pragmatic when it did not concern her own mother. Now she has hit the jackpot. Why is this happening to her?
Aïcha will not even kiss a boy on the cheek when saying hello. Her conduct is always modest. She shuns all closeness because she knows that, once it begins, it can quickly get out of hand.
*
She is grateful that the Hyena does not try to evade the issue. Aïcha told her what she knew. The woman said nothing for a brief moment, then she turned the night-light on again.
“You’re a pain in the arse, kid. Don’t you think you’d have been better off taking this up with your father?”
“I would never dare talk about this with my father.”
She would never dare talk about it with anyone. Not her girlfriends, not the imam. It does not touch her, it does not sully her – she keeps her distance, and that is the end of it.
What is it she finds most repulsive? Herself. Her mother. The filthy bastards she hung out with. A culture that pushes women to do such things. Not just sanctions them but actively encourages them. These are the same tarts who sneer at her for wearing the veil. What is it she finds most disgusting? Why did her mother not turn to her father for refuge when she realised she was in danger? Did she despise her own family so much? Her father would have saved her. Why did she not protect herself? Who is it speaking within Aïcha? Who is arguing? Her thoughts are fleeting, conflicting and inconclusive.
*
The Hyena is completely deranged. This makes it easier to dare to ask blunt questions.
“Your mother was a brilliant girl.”
“Brilliant girls find other kinds of jobs, don’t they?”
“You have to take these things in context . . .”
“I would kill her. If she were still alive, I would have killed her. I would have done it to avenge my father, I would have done it for myself, and for her.”
“Yeah, right. You would have hugged her, you would have adored her. Everyone adored your mother.”
Aïcha sneered at her flippancy, her cynicism. Entirely dedicated to pagan glory, to the almighty monotheistic cult of money, the woman did not realise what she was saying, she blasphemed every time she opened her mouth. But Aïcha also felt a certain pleasure at someone insisting “your mother was adorable” and refusing to budge an inch. This was something no-one had ever told her. It was unbearable and at the same time pleasant.
They talked for much of the night. Aïcha was in the top bunk. In the berth below, the Hyena would savagely kick the mattress whenever the girl said something she didn’t like. The old lesbian was stark staring mad, but she was funny. She was defiant when it came to moral considerations, and had the extravagant exuberance typical of certain heretics who call themselves hedonists and think they can take pleasure without regard for the law and without facing the consequences. But if, during this long conversation, Aïcha refused to listen to anything that might suggest her mother was a woman to be respected, she had enjoyed having someone who was prepared to stand up to her.
They were shattered by the time they rolled into the Estació de França, the sun a dazzling screen. They have not mentioned the subject since.
*
Today there is a general strike in Spain. No radio, no television all morning, they sit out on the balcony, the traffic on the street below is like a Sunday. Most of the shops are shuttered, the tobacconists, the bars, the restaurants. Only the Orxateria is open, though the metal blinds remain half-closed. Aïcha does not go to lectures, the university is not open. The Catalan students advised her to do any shopping she needed the night before, since everything would be closed. Even those traders who wanted to stay open have changed their minds, fearful of reprisals. Previous protest marches have left the city in flames – mopeds dustbins cars, everything that could burn was set ablaze.
A heavy atmosphere hangs over the streets, heightened by the leaden sky. Aïcha wants to go out for a walk. The Hyena suggests they go to the cinema, but the cinema, like everything else, is closed. At about ten o’clock, police officers take up positions at the intersections, black armoured vans roll along the street. The Hyena suggests perhaps Aïcha might use the time to do homework. “I don’t really think it’s a good idea for you to go out today, your father is counting on me to look after you.” She sits on the sofa, laptop on her knees, writing comments on the websites of Parisian restaurants and spends the rest of her time following today’s events on the homepage of La Vanguardia.
First explosion, a long way away. The police fire rubber bullets. A bus moves down the street and is quickly surrounded by demonstrators. In less than thirty seconds, the windscreen is plastered with stickers. Passengers stream off, grumbling blasé supportive amused uncertain. The police appear and order the bus driver to move on, the bus empty, her visibility non-existent.
A helicopter sets down to the west, over what must be the Ramblas. The whine of the rotors fills a city empty of cars. Down below, pedestrians go about their day, an elderly bald man wearing slippers and a tracksuit stands smoking his pipe and talking to himself, a couple walks a baby in a buggy. American-style police sirens hurtle past at regular intervals, yellow paramedic cars rumble up the street. A blind man walks along dragging a rolling suitcase with one hand and gripping his white stick in the other. Foreigners with wheeled suitcases search for taxis.
Aïcha says she wants to find a pharmacy, that she needs artichoke juice. The Hyena looks up from her laptop. “Artichoke juice? But didn’t you buy black radish gel capsules when we got here?” Yes, but Aïcha can feel her gall-bladder is not responding well to the oil-rich food she has been eating over the past few days. The Hyena groans. “I’ve never come across a kid so obsessed by her digestion. God knows what you’ll be like when you’re forty.”
She rubs her face with both hands as though wiping it clean. “You really want to go out, do you? You realise there’s not a soul anywhere in the city, yeah? The march is not until six this evening, everyone is having a siesta right now.” “Just to look for a pharmacy.” “I’ll go with you.”
They walk in silence. It is not a hostile silence. It is something that suits them both.
As they pass Starbucks, Aïcha stumbles as someone roughly pushes past her. Before she even realises that he has snatched her bag, she sees him being slammed into a wall and hears the dull crack as the Hyena snaps his knee with her heel. A second man charges towards the Hyena, Aïcha grabs his shoulder, spins him round and lands a punch on his jaw. He reels. The Hyena bends over the thief, growling in rapid, heavily accented Spanish. “Sorry ’bout that, you gave me a bit of a fright – can you walk?” She pats him on the back, then glances around worriedly. He grunts angrily, the Hyena turns to his friend who is still staggering. “Get him out of here quick, there are cops crawling all over the place and we’re starting to attract attention. What are you waiting for? You want to end up in hospital?” The guy who came to the rescue stares at Aïcha and spits on the ground, a passer-by asks in French “Is there a problem?” and the Hyena smiles but her jaw is so tense that the rictus grin is terrifying. “No, it’s nothing, we just bumped into each other.” “They didn’t steal anything?” “No, it was an accident, it’s all fine . . .” She turns to the man still lying on the ground wh
ose friend is heaving him roughly to his feet.
Aïcha and the Hyena walk off without waiting to find out how the story ends. Aïcha knows that she should be ashamed of what just happened. But she feels a thrill of excitement in keeping with the day, the helicopter, the sound of explosion. She whistles: “You’re pretty quick for your age, I didn’t even realise he’d snatched my bag before you’d walloped him.” The Hyena stops. “For my age? Are you looking for a smack in the mouth, Mike Tyson?” She raises an eyebrow, clicks her fingers to indicate they should move on. “Shift it, there are Feds everywhere.” “Are you worried they’ll ask to see your papers?” “No. Why d’you say that?” “Then why are we in such a rush? And why did we come by train?” “You can never tell what will happen with the cops . . . if we end up in custody, how am I going to explain that to your father? And would you care to explain where you learned to land a right hook?” “Boxing lessons.” “You took boxing lessons?” “When I was little. But later on, one of my father’s girlfriends decided it didn’t do much for my femininity. He suggested I give it up.” “Your femininity?” “Yes, when I was a kid I was pretty . . . tough. I’m more demure these days. But I’ve still got the reflexes. I saw the space open up, I took a second to think and – bam! It’s the first time I’ve raised a fist to anyone since . . . well, primary school, I think.” “Isn’t it sinful for a girl to fight?” “Absolutely not. If she’s attacked, it’s perfectly fine for a woman to defend herself. We don’t know those guys.” “Would it be different if we knew them?” “Yes, maybe, it depends whether we owed them respect. But I don’t owe them any respect, they’re thieves. It’s not my fault that his mother gave birth to a feeble little fucker, honestly, he’ll never make a career as a delinquent.” “I’m glad you’re more demure and less tough. I’d hate to see the uncensored version.”
Something happens between them in that moment. They are walking towards García, passing people waving Catalan flags and others carrying yellow protest banners, small groups before the protest itself.
“You want to carry on walking or should we go back to the apartment and I’ll make you something to eat.”
“You do know that you’re a terrible cook? It takes me an age to digest the muck you serve up.”
“No-one’s ever told me I was a terrible cook. That said, I rarely cook.”
“Maybe that’s why.”
*
That evening, Aïcha is rereading her course notes and the Hyena has decided to simmer vegetables without any fat so they can drink the broth. She claims it will be good for Aïcha’s “liver function”. The Hyena approaches the table, waving for the girl to shoo: “We’re about to eat, shift that paperwork, you can go back to it later,” and when Aïcha does not immediately obey, she takes a step back and raises her foot, brandishing a tatty slipper with the sole hanging off, “Hello, I’m Ms Slipper, hurry up, I’m hungry for vegetable broth”. Aïcha bursts out laughing because it is so stupid that it’s actually funny. They sit down to eat and, after the first spoonful, they both fall about laughing. The broth is absolutely disgusting.
Afterwards, Aïcha feels self-conscious. She clears the table, checks the time, eager to say the evening prayers, to re-focus herself. She does not say a word, but the Hyena comments aloud: “Oh quit it, just because we’ve had a laugh doesn’t mean we’re suddenly B.F.F.s. What are you afraid of? Don’t worry, lesbianism isn’t contagious.” And Aïcha stares at her – can this witch read her mind? But she somehow cannot get worked up because it’s obvious that the Hyena is cool and she has no intention of brainwashing her or leading her off the strait and narrow.
PATRICE’S NOSE HAS BEEN STREAMING SNOT FOR THE PAST TWO days. The skin around his nostrils is so red raw it is painful to blow his nose. He takes magnesium chloride at €1.90 a sachet. Diluted in water it tastes revolting and instantly triggers diarrhoea, but twenty-four hours later you’re cured. He feels his intestines spasm and shudder, he finds it pleasant to evacuate despite the pain. Especially since the bog is the only nicely decorated room in his place – he has plastered the walls with posters of all kinds . . . naked girls especially, which means stepping into a cave full of tits, flat stomachs, bronzed skin, bee-stung lips. It is restful. This is where he keeps his magazines. He spends much of the day in here, especially when he is alone and can leave the door open and listen to the music in the living room.
When he wakes up, he still feels sick. Forgetting that Vernon is sleeping on the sofa bed, he nearly headed to the bog bare-arsed with his wedding tackle hanging out. Facing the toilet, he pauses for a moment, which is more pressing – throwing up or diarrhoea? He has to choose. It has often occurred to him that, in a more civilised world, it would be possible to sit and lean forward, thereby reliving yourself in both senses without having to change position. People who design toilets clearly do not drink enough, they don’t take account of crucial everyday situations.
The night before, Vernon showed up with a bottle of rum, they drank like there was no tomorrow, and now his every organ is protesting at the evils inflicted on it. The morning after a drinking binge with a dose of flu, he is out of commission. For some time now, his body has been gradually falling apart. Less than a year ago, he was admitted to accident and emergency with pyelonephritis, he showed up a raging fever, delirious and hallucinating about animals, imagining giant turtles, alligators lying on his belly, his skin felt hot and viscous, he could see huge snakes coiling around his legs. It reminded him of tripping on shrooms in Mexico. It took more than a week for the fever to break. He was in a room with an old man who moaned and ripped out his I.V. lines during the night, the old codger kept trying to run away but by the time he reached the end of the corridor he would forget his own name and the nurses would calmly escort him back, eventually they strapped him to the bed, but he kept complaining. The doctors were stunned that Patrice had waited so long before he began to worry – didn’t you realise you were ill? He said no, in the mornings, I’d just assume I had a vicious hangover, I’d have a beer and it would go away. A young doctor with pale eyes and an accent that was probably Lebanese or something like that told him he was suffering from delirium tremens, from alcohol withdrawal. He advised him to stop drinking. Why? So he would wind up in hospital later rather than sooner? So he would sleep better? The booze is destroying his liver, the cigarettes are attacking his tongue, his throat, his lungs, the greasy food is clogging his arteries – surely he can get one thing right in his life and die young.
Lying on his side, Vernon is snoring. Coming back to reality isn’t going to be easy for him either. Patrice fills a bottle with water, his temples are pounding as though there is major demolition work going on in his cortex. Shit, when they were young, they’d be skipping around the morning after a booze-up.
Patrice flicks on the radio and turns on his computer. This is what he does every morning. He knows it drives him mad. Back in the eighties, when he started buying newspapers and listening to the radio, things were different. There were moments when he got angry, but there were also journalists he enjoyed reading, correspondents he liked to listen to. There were artists he was happy to see become politically engaged. Relationships with the media were not entirely defined by defiance and hostility. The moronic comments about the fall of the Berlin Wall, about Tiananmen Square or Scorsese filming “The Last Temptation of Christ” were heard over the bar – between people who were physically present, could see each other, respond to each other, get confused. People didn’t just spout gibberish, anonymous and angry, condemned to come out with highly polished turds only to be met by the deadening silence of their own powerlessness. Today, he feels like tidying up but he does not have the strength. He visits the websites of newspapers he would never have bought when he was young. Poisonous tentacles insinuate themselves into his brain prompting no deliberation, only rage. The urge to fight, anything and anyone, a morbid sickness. He does not want to add his voice to the throng, he does not want to start a blog to pour out his bile, h
e does not want to add his pathetic little turd to the torrent of shit. But he cannot bring himself to look away. Every morning, he has the feeling that he is staring out of the window, watching the world go to hell. And no-one among the governing elites seems to realise that they urgently need to backpedal. On the contrary, the only thing they seem to care about is heading for rock bottom as fast as possible.
He reads the story of little Adam who burst into an American elementary school and shot twenty kids and a dozen adults. He wishes he had the balls to do something like that. Not in a school – his generation doesn’t go around killing toddlers, it lacks a certain level of nihilism. Or senselessness. When it happened, like any parent he pictured the school his children attended. His two kids go to the same school. If anyone so much as touched a hair on their heads . . . last night on television, one of the American fathers was saying that he had already forgiven the killer. It was simultaneously heartrending and revolting.
The day Patrice became a father was not the best in his life. It was the most terrifying. He was temping at the time, working night shifts in Rungis, Cécile sent him a text message to say she was on her way to the clinic. She was in too much pain to phone. Text messages were a new thing at the time, this was one of the first he ever received.
The foreman was a pathetic Portuguese guy who walked with his toes turned in, he was a bastard but, being a father himself, for once he was decent and allowed Patrice to leave without busting his balls. No-one tells you what it’s like, a woman giving birth. No-one ever talks about it, it’s only when it happens that you realise you don’t know shit – and thank fuck for that. When he got to the clinic, there were howls coming from the delivery rooms. It was a full moon. The midwives said this with a knowing smile. There was screaming from room to room and every woman was saying the same thing: I don’t think I can do this. And: for God’s sake help me I’m dying here. Cécile was just like the others. He arrived two hours after he got the text, traffic on the périphérique was already choc-a-bloc. No sign of the kid’s head yet. Nothing but his wife who could no longer hear him, she was streaming with sweat, her feet, which had swollen up like bruised balloons three days earlier, hanging in the stirrups, she no longer had the strength to push, she had been through too much pain. She had already shat herself copiously. And this was just the beginning. Her labour lasted five hours. The medical team decided it had gone well. Luckily people don’t know anything about giving birth. Afterwards, women are fine: they forget. Not men. Before going at it again, men seriously wonder – is it really a good idea? A year after their first kid, Cécile was already talking about the next one. She had erased the memory of five hours of hell, of the grisly bloodbath; she remembered only a single image: when the baby was laid on her belly and, in her own words, she “understood for the first time the meaning of the Other”.
Vernon Subutex One Page 21