But he had forgotten nothing. Watching someone he loved suffer had been the most terrible experience of his whole life – he had asked whether, for their second kid, she was sure she didn’t want to adopt. She wouldn’t hear of it. If he gave her a slap – a little love tap – she would still be sulking six months later, here she was, having had her belly ripped in two, she was up for doing it all over again. So don’t go telling him that men and women are the same, deep down. It makes a cracking sound, the pelvis, when it opens up to let the kid out. Crack. No-one tells you this stuff, no-one mentions the crack. The second time, he stayed in the waiting room, he refused to be present for the birth. Cécile understood. It wasn’t about the shit and the blood, or the fact that when it comes out the kid is a howling monster. It was seeing her suffer. Everything else was fine, he was happy to show up to cut the cord. When the thing opens its gob and screams . . . The child is breathing, it’s all good. The midwives were knowledgeable, they talked to him like he was retarded, which was exactly what he needed. They were good with Cécile. Which was just as well. One of them had pressured her along during labour, she had felt things were going too slowly and made her toe the line, “I need you to push now, go on, go for it” while Cécile was in tears. He had almost said something but then remembered that she spent all day doing this for a living while he did not have the first clue. His wife was dying, they had conceived the child of Satan, a cloven-hooved infant, a baby whose skull was armed with fearsome horns, only that could explain why she was in such pain giving birth.
They were shattered. When he looked at the clock, it was nine o’clock and they had not slept a wink, and he realised how exhausting the experience had been. Cécile had fallen asleep, her hand in his. He loved her so much. He cannot bear to remember. How much he loved that woman. His wife. Her eyes. Something in her eyes made him surrender, he gave up the ghost and a feeling of ecstasy coursed through him from his heels to the roots of his hair. She had fallen asleep and he had gazed at Tonio. There had been a brief moment of disbelief, and then his life had changed forever. Fear. He had never understood it before. Now it wrapped itself around his entrails and refused to budge. The fear that something might happen to this tiny creature. A second had been enough to conjure the full extent of that something: illness, injury, attack, accident, infection, aggression, torture, starvation, abuse, molestation, penetration, kidnapping, disease, fire, terrorism, bombing, warfare, epidemic, tsunami, typhoon, asphyxia . . . “The apple of my eye”: the expression is a poor description of the bond between parent and newborn. His eyes could be gouged out but that would not kill him – “the marrow of my bones” might be more accurate, describing that it is something that inhabits the whole being, that this bond appears before you can even distinguish your baby from another. The child had barely been born, and already Patrice was filled with terror.
After Tonio, Patrice felt centred. Despite the fact that Cécile cried all the time. During the pregnancy, after she gave birth, when the baby took his first steps . . . he remembers only Cécile, desperate, swollen with tears, gasping and spluttering. The second time, the medical team eyed her suspiciously when the two of them arrived for the birth. A Sunday. This time he had been there to drive her. They noticed the bruises on her, he felt them looking at him askance. The tension quickly faded, they concluded that it was not what they feared, they became more friendly. Patrice has always had a way with people. He sets them at ease. It’s complicated, his relationship with Cécile. It was not just “a violent guy beating his pregnant wife”. It was more complicated than that. He loved her with all his heart, treated her like a princess. But every now and then, he flipped.
It had been a nightmare, when she had left. When she had started signing statements other people had written saying that this was how it had been between them. Spousal abuse, that sort of bullshit. She had betrayed him. Court injunctions, vile letters. She had betrayed their love. She was surrounded by prying, prissy old biddies. Not to mention her mother, her sister, her friend Mafalda, a fat retard who was only too happy to destroy a passionate relationship when she herself would never experience so much as a decent fuck. Witches who patiently bided their time and then threw him out.
It has been seven years since Cécile left him. Tonio had been three, Fabien two. It never gets easier. Sometimes he thinks it might, he does not try to stop it, he is tired of suffering like this. But then it starts up again. He thinks about it, is constantly tortured by it, even when he is with people, even when he is working, all he can think about is this. Booze doesn’t help. Staying sober is worse, because of the insomnia.
He quickly worked out that Vernon was lying when he claimed he was just back from Quebec to sort out his papers. For the past three months he’s been pissing around chatting with his French friends on Facebook, and now suddenly he lands up with a guy he barely knows who lives out in Corbeil? He’s obviously homeless. Everything about him says he’s on the streets. When Cécile left him, Patrice spent six months couch surfing. He wound up staying with people who had him do the cleaning and the shopping in exchange. Or left him to babysit their kids every night. Then there are women who can’t understand why you won’t sleep in their bed since, after all, they’re putting a roof over your head. There are those who are so filthy that eating off their plates, drinking from their glasses gives you heaves you have to hide. He was sure Cécile would change her mind, he was in no hurry to get his own apartment. It had happened once before and they had lost a fortune. For nothing. He thought she would change her mind, but after six months he could no longer stand sleeping on couches in other people’s living rooms. He knew a guy, an old friend from school, who worked at the public housing office in Corbeil. He phoned the guy, embarrassed that he was asking for a favour, for an apartment, like, now. But instead of telling him to fuck off, which is what he would have done, this guy was happy to do what he could to help. Within two months it was all arrranged. He was living in Corbeil. A pretty decent apartment. In an area that made you want to buy a shovel dig a hole and bury yourself alive so as not to have to see it. The problem isn’t the scumbags, it’s the feeling of living in a vast open prison. But once inside the apartment, everything is fine. He’s high up, trees outside the windows, he can see the sky, a patch of green, the apartment has floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s comfortable. If he weren’t so depressed, he could get to like living here. The neighbourhood is a dump but it’s mostly inhabited by old biddies and old codgers, even the local thugs can’t bring themselves to be violent. They live their lives a couple of streets away where it doesn’t feel so much like an old people’s home.
After the sixth message on Facebook, Patrice twigged that Vernon was asking him for a place to crash and he said sure. He was still wary, Sylvie had complained about Vernon stealing stuff. Serve her right, the bourgeois bitch. She got what she deserved. But even so, he let Vernon know the minute he opened the door: I’m happy to do this, but I can’t stand being fucked over, you take anything from this place without my permission and I’ll rip out those pretty blue eyes of yours.
Patrice has the right build for this sort of speech. Though the only thing that remains of his youthful persona are the tattoos. Even when he wears a suit and a turtle neck, they show. He has stopped wearing his team colours, got rid of the motorbike, these days he listens to Coltrane and Duke Ellington. He got fed up with trying to be a Marxist Hell’s Angel. Too many contradictions to handle. He’s still a Marxist, he packed in the Angels. But he kept the look. He had no choice. However much he changes his clothes, he still looks like an ex-con. He is inked from his neck to his wrists, and not the kind of faggoty tramp stamps girls get these days. He is used to buttocks clenching when he enters a room. He has kept the long hair, the chunky rings and the collection of metal bracelets. He still has all his hair, which is now a gentlemanly white, just like Gérard Darmon’s. When life gives you a gift like that, you don’t go cutting your hair.
Vernon still has all his hair too. And t
hose blue eyes really pay off at his age. There is something about his face that is not tainted. Vernon always was a modest kind of guy, never caused any trouble, happy to help out. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, like most guys in the music business, brain the size of a pea, but he’s not the kind to stab you in the back.
Unlike everyone else, Patrice feels no nostalgia for his years as a musician. He ended up playing bass with the Nazi Whores when the original bassist left, the official reason being that his girlfriend didn’t want him touring anymore. The real reason was that he was sick of the drummer stealing his girls, including his long-term girlfriend. Patrice learned to play the three notes he needed to stand in, it was Alex’s idea. He never became a good musician. He had the vocation but not the talent, no matter how hard he practised, he never learned. But he enjoyed putting on a show when he was on stage. His apelike prancing made up for his lack of emotion. He enjoyed playing the wanker. It was his age. For two years he had a blast, touring endlessly in the G7, warming up spouting shit. They could sometimes drive 800 kilometres between two gigs, their manager was resolutely impractical and thought it would be rude to insist they eat something other than tabbouleh and sleep on some guy’s floor. It was all part of being on the road, you had to just suck it up, otherwise there would have been no scene. It was all fine by him, until he got sick of it. Minimum three rehearsals a week, rock is a serious business, with guys who had fuck-all else to do but showed up an hour late, took thirty-minute breaks and made a racket in between songs. He quickly got tired of the lack of discipline. And spending his weekends playing gigs out in the sticks or in sleazy Italian dives with a thick haze of dope and no-one coherent enough to listen to a gig . . . The first year was a buzz, the second exhausting and the third year, he quit the band. A few months before it broke up. There are three ways that a band can break up. Boredom leading to natural death, open warfare, or a traumatic incident like the death of one of its members.
In Patrice’s case, as he was heading down into the cellar to rehearse one day he realised he wasn’t enjoying it anymore. He wanted to spend Saturday nights in watching telly, find himself a regular job where he didn’t need to get time off on Fridays to drive to Bourg-en-Bresse for a gig. He announced his decision to the others. I’m done here, you’ll need to find a replacement. Alex was the one who was most upset. It simply confirmed what he already knew – that his experience was different to the others’. Alex had no choice. He had nothing else. He had no family, no j ob, no other ambitions. And he was the only one of them who had an ear, with an idea of how to write a song.
Patrice didn’t miss it. The relief he felt trumped any regrets. He was sick of the music industry, the hardcore scene, all that shit. There’s a reason it’s called a subculture. Half-wit douchebags who could spend the whole night discussing different amps, fuzz pedals or shirt collars. The real eggheads could hold forth about audio cables. Like a bunch of junior mechanics who’ve never qualified. He rebuilt his life around more adult passions, and when he ran into people he’d known back then he was always struck by how little they had changed.
Vernon might have been dumb as a sack of spanners. But he had charm. Easy going, good company. Too few neurons circulating to get worked up about anything. When he offered to put him up, Patrice hadn’t been expecting a particularly fascinating evening. He did it because he wasn’t yet bitter enough to refuse an old friend hospitality just because he would have been happier sitting on his own in front of the T.V.
Vernon had showed up with a bottle of rum, he looked like shit and seemed determined to get hammered as fast as possible. They settled down to watch “Koh-Lanta”, each with a packet of crisps in his lap, and Vernon turned out to be the perfect foil when watching reality T.V. On the island, the arrival of the “survivors” played out as it did every season: badly for the minority group. Patrice and Vernon vented their bile on the various contestants. Around the camp, all the men were hunting for the Hidden Immunity Idol. The girls stayed around the fire, making food.
“I’d be only too happy to be a feminist. But can you explain to me why they don’t even try to save themselves? Have you seen much of ‘Koh-Lanta’? Have you ever seen one of the girls find the Hidden Immunity Idol?”
“I know, I’ve watched the programme. Have you ever seen the guys gang up against other guys in the tribal councils?”
“No.”
“Cards on table, if you were a girl, would you trust the guys to make a deal? I know I wouldn’t.”
“Says it all, really.”
*
And “Who Wants to Marry My Son?” which came on just after “Koh-Lanta” did little to radically change their atavistic views on the female of the species. They came to the same conclusions: in theory, they are prepared to accept sexual equality. But they cannot help but notice that girls don’t seem in any hurry to develop a little dignity.
*
If Cécile had been there to listen to their maunderings, she would have wrinkled her nose, that hamster-like twitch that sent them into helpless giggles, she would have called them “foremen”. Among working-class children, this is an insult that means what it says.
Patrice has always knocked his girlfriends about. Every one of them. He can pick up a girl, have a one-night stand without feeling the need to hit her, but as soon as it becomes a relationship, the first slap looms on the horizon. Obviously, it hurts him more than it hurts her, that first slap; the girl doesn’t yet realise that it has started. Even when they’ve been in a dozen relationships where they’ve been abused a dozen times, girls refuse to admit that they know how it works. They need to believe that it’s an accident. Love will prevail over brutality and turn their boyfriend into an attentive partner. People look for their identity in these relationships, they look, and they find themselves. Patrice isn’t a kid any longer. Whenever he meets someone new, he hears himself open the floodgates to big promises, to gifts and compliments. He dupes himself and she allows herself to be duped. This time it’s different, he has changed. He need only wait. The first slap. A pair of eyes, wide with fear, tell him he cannot succeed, but he manages to convince himself otherwise. Anger has shown up uninvited. She knows the routine, she can come back when she likes. He will discipline her. She will believe him when he swears it will never happen again. He will be sincere. He will back her into a corner, beat her, break her down until eventually she leaves him. And if she does not leave, he will kill her. And every time he says that he is sorry, he is telling the truth. He is frantically looking for the switch, something that will allow him to control himself.
With Cécile, the first slap came after they had been together ten months and he was convinced that he had finally found the right girl, the one for him. With her, things were different. The love he felt for her was a mixture of trust and excitement, tranquillity and intensity – she calmed him without boring him. He didn’t see it coming. Even though he recognised the pattern. It begins in the morning with angry tirades about everything Cécile does wrong, in their relationship, in life in general. Ludicrous arguments that seem justified at the time. Things that go round and round in his head until he is convinced he is being conned. One day, it all comes out, she breaks down and cries. She is shocked that a man who spends his time telling her he adores her can harbour such resentment. She sobs and he apologises. Because when he sees her in tears the very reasons for his fury no longer seem valid, he no longer remembers believing they were true. But something has been set in motion, a pattern of negative thinking that he can see no way of stopping.
One night, when he came home, he suggested they order in pizza and Cécile started going on at him, oh sure, why not go out and have Vietnamese, yeah, he said, why not, and she said we could have sushi delivered, it’s more expensive but if you really fancy it why not, if it comes to that why not go down to the Japanese restaurant, still she kept on and on, he was right, pizza would be fine but if they really wanted to save money she could heat up some pasta, she had the makings
of a sauce, maybe but if they had Bún bò Huê there would be no washing up or anything, and he fancied Vietnamese. This was something she often did, take a simple possibility and turn it into an unintelligible muddle. It was something that had always bothered Patrice, but had never made him lose his cool. That night, he had let her blether on for ten minutes, then barked, “Give it a rest, you’re doing my head in. Order a couple of pizzas and shut your hole.” Cécile, unintimidated, because she did not really know him, flew into a rage, “Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice, no-one talks to me like that do you even realise how aggressive you are towards me?” And at that point, bang, wallop. Not a slap with the flat of his hand, no, his fist clenched, aiming for her temple. And another one before she had time to realise what was happening, to make it quite clear that this was not the start of a discussion. People who never lash out don’t understand how it works. It is a beast crouching in the belly, it moves faster than thought. And once unleashed, it is like a wave: all the good will in the world cannot stop it from breaking. It has to come crashing down. The crucial moment comes earlier, this he has realised – he needs to listen for the rumble of the wave, learn to deflect it before it swells. But by the time he feels himself getting angry, it is already too late. He doesn’t have time – as pissant do-gooders suggest – to put on his trainers and go walk it off – it would be like asking a volcano to postpone an eruption . . . He must carry on, must go all the way. The other person must shut up. Must capitulate.
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