Gaëlle had reappeared in the hallway, she was upset and a little anxious about her own fate – after all she had been the one who brought Vernon back. She slipped him a bag into which she had crammed a bottle of beer a bottle of rum a flash drive with some of his playlists a razor and shaving foam, and a new bottle of Hermès perfume that didn’t belong to him. Vernon had said to her: “Tell Marcia that I’ll wait for her to message me on Facebook I’ll sort myself out a computer” and Gaëlle had shaken her head again “She’s not going to write to you, you know. She can’t afford to be in Kiko’s bad books. But I’ll tell her. I’ll write, Vernon, let’s keep in touch, yeah?”
In the street he had asked passers-by for directions to the nearest library, no-one could tell him, until a helpful teenager looked up directions on his iPhone. When Vernon had logged on, he had been relieved that Patrice had said yes. Vernon crashed at his for a week. Marcia had not replied to any of his messages. His every breath was painful. It was difficult to drink and not burst into tears, to collapse on Patrice’s sofa and howl, curl into a foetal position and carry on sobbing and whimpering. It was hard to fall asleep though not as hard as staying asleep. He would wake up in the middle of the night to a split-second of respite during which he remembered nothing. Then it would all flood back. His situation was easily summed up. Marcia didn’t give a shit about him. He still could not believe it. How could someone give up on something like this? The worst of it was that she was right. What would a girl like her be doing with an ageing loser with no home no money no friends no job? Patrice had been an impeccable host. The guy didn’t talk too much, didn’t pry too much, he liked to chill and watch T.V. They got along well. On the eighth day Vernon realised it was time to split. An old mate who these days sold books on the banks of the Seine had told him to drop by whenever I’ll give you the keys to mine, I’m never really there. But when Vernon got to the river, he wasn’t there, his stall was closed and fastened with heavy padlocks. And this was how his first night sleeping rough came about. His friend was not there the next day either.
And so Vernon found himself on the streets. He had finally reached the destination where his path had been leading for weeks. He was only sorry that the damage wasn’t fatal.
*
Vernon finds himself a scrap of pavement. Laurent had recommended begging outside boulangeries because people pay cash and come out with small change. But most of the good pitches are already taken. Vernon settles himself in a little square, sitting with his back to the wall until a woman comes along and politely asks him to move, “It’s a school exit, you see, they’ll be coming out soon and you’ll be in the way – if you wouldn’t mind moving a little that way?” He sits a little further away, between a bookshop and a florist’s, a few metres from an organic grocer’s. He holds out his hand, arm resting on his knee, back leaning against the wall. His thoughts are racing. His cheeks itch, he is not used to having a beard. His own smell is overpowering. It is not unpleasant. The bags that parade past his nose are all different – handbags, wicker baskets, briefcases, little leather pouches – the same is true of the shoes, threadbare trainers, platform heels, creepers, leather boots . . . He watches them approach, slow down and stop, four pairs of men’s shoes that now circle him. He is paralysed with fear. He does not even dare look up. He suddenly feels the urge to cry.
“Good morning, sir, what’s your name?”
“Vernon.”
He answered too quickly, he should have given his official designation, his French name. But they do not hit him immediately. Three shaved heads, faces like inbred students, like vicious thugs, and a young blond guy, a boy who is smaller than the others, his features fine, regular, as handsome as his classmates are fearsome. Seen from below, they look like giants. It is the blond who is speaking, he kneels so that they are at the same level, stares at him attentively:
“My name’s Julien. You know, Vernon, if you were a Romanian migrant you’d have somewhere to sleep.”
Julien lays a hand on Vernon’s shoulder. The three acolytes who are still standing nod in agreement, all of them super sad that he’s not a Romanian migrant, because if he was he wouldn’t be reduced to freezing his arse off on the pavement. Vernon is bathed in sweat. Never has he been so relieved to be French – all he wants is for these three morons to be satisfied by his responses. For them to fuck off. From his bag, Julien takes a packet of biscuits and a carton of milk, hands them out and asks:
“Have you got the number for social services? Have you tried calling them today?”
“They told me they’re full. But I’m coping.”
“Too many monkeys in the shelters, yeah? Africans causing trouble, yeah? Someone beat you up?”
Vernon says to himself that there is no danger, that these guys are racist militants who are not planning, with the steel toecaps of their perfectly polished boots, to give him a good kicking. Yet he is trembling from head to foot. He is on the ground. He is terrified that this will tempt them to lash out. He wants them to go away, to let him catch his breath. It is at this point that, in a howl of unintelligible screaming a redheaded giant appears, her arms whirling like windmills, shoves them aside and splutters:
“Go fuck yourselves you dickless little turds, leave him in peace, don’t you see you’re scaring him witless, you stupid skinhead shit-wanks?”
She clears a path, jostling and throwing punches. She is frenzied. And for the second time in as many minutes Vernon thinks why me, Lord, why me. Because she won’t be the only one who gets thrashed, he will be caught up in the mêlée.
“You fuck everyone’s heads up with your pathetic bullshit, get out of here. Go tell your skanky mothers they’d have been better off sewing up their cunts than giving birth to scum like you. You’re radioactive pollution, you bunch of moronic losers.”
Vernon remembers the woman on the old hundred-franc notes, the bare-breasted bitch waving the flag who looks like she’s four heads taller than the guys next to her scrabbling over the barricades. The redhead is wearing a long khaki parka that is much too small for her, and huge, brand-new, trainers that are fluorescent green and yellow. But Vernon is not about to criticise her fashion sense. Any more than he plans to make conversation with the four thugs she is shrieking at. The girl is probably not big enough to take on four guys single-handed, but she is certainly scaring the shit out of them. Has to be said, she’s got bottle.
The four guys are bewildered: what has this deranged harpy got against them? One of them shrugs, sniggers and turns away pretending to let it go. The giant whirls around and kicks him in the back with all her might, he stumbles forwards and falls on all fours. The cute blond guy pounces on the madwoman, but he’s so puny that, as he clings to her, he looks like a marmoset trying to climb a coconut tree. The woman dispatches her assailant with a quick jerk of her elbow. Vernon would never have thought she could keep control of the situation for so long. The four guys close ranks intending to give her a thrashing, but once again she takes them by surprise, she starts pounding her chest with both fists and screaming at the top of her lungs. Hard to tell whether she’s channelling Scarface or Tarzan, but this display leaves her adversaries stunned. It is impossible to say what has stopped them in their tracks – fear surprise disgust respect for such extraordinary energy . . . the whole neighbourhood can hear her, several people slow to see what is going on.
The boys quickly confer with furtive glances, the blond spits on the ground, “Come on, let’s leave the mad bitch to it, should be locked up the fucking lunatic”. And they walk off, heads held high, and before they reach the corner they turn around, giggling, and, from a safe distance, give her the bras d’honneur from a safe distance, one of them twirls a finger at his temple to indicate his diagnosis. Vernon watches as they disappear and thinks that it’s a bit much that they have left him here since, all things considered, he would feel safer surrounded by a group of neo-Nazis than he does under the protection of this “madwoman”.
Gasping for b
reath, the giant slumps down on the pavement next to him. Her hair is very fine, a shock of orange-auburn, probably the remnants of a dye job, her face is round and flat, her eyes set far apart, something about her features brings to mind a child with Down’s syndrome. It is impossible to guess her age.
“Someone needs to kill those fuckers. Pick them off, one by one. It’s unbelievable, we’re in fucking Belleville, what are those wankers doing here? They think they own the place. Last week, they beat up two kids who were pick-pocketing. They hang around the Red Cross and hassle the Africans who come for something to eat. What the fuck has it got to do with them, huh? Is it any of their business? Do they have to sleep on the streets? What do they think we are? Shit, that’s what they think we are. Because we’re excluded from the system they think they can come round here and lay down the law. But we’re the real tough guys, yeah? If we don’t give them a kick up the arse, then who will, huh? Who?”
She wags her finger as she says this, as though lecturing. Vernon is thinking, there you go, I wanted company, I’ve got company. Always the same with answered prayers. The woman heaves herself to her feet and announces:
“This isn’t a good spot. C’mon, let’s go sit outside Franprix. That’s my pitch.”
It is more of an order than a suggestion and Vernon, unable to imagine disagreeing with her, obeys.
“Haven’t seen you round this way before, you’re new, yeah?”
“I was evicted a while back but I managed to find a place to crash here and there. Until last week.”
“Last week? You’re a rookie, man. I thought I could still smell soap on you.”
She settles herself outside the supermarket and says to the first person going in:
“Monsieur, monsieur, could you buy me a Coke, please?”
And then, patting her belly, she adds “It’s for the baby”, and turns to Vernon “What do you want?” then she calls back the guy as he is pushing open the supermarket door and he turns, wryly amused, and takes her order “And a beer, please, for my friend”.
“You pregnant?”
“No, ugh! But my public like the idea. I’m starving, I haven’t had lunch yet.”
She hails another shopper, an elegant woman in a hurry, “Hello madame, could you bring me out some crisps please? It’s for the baby.” When she is talking to strangers, she becomes sweet and childlike. Vernon notices that her voice, when she is calm, has a pleasant huskiness. She smiles innocently at passers-by, rubbing her big belly, she has a face like a clown, round as the moon.
“Do any of them actually bring you what you ask for?”
“Often. It doesn’t cost them much to give me something to eat, I only ever ask for peanuts, crisps, Coke . . . chocolate sometimes . . . Obviously, since I’m here every day, a lot of them know me, they’re used to bringing me stuff. They’re happy to help. After all, they are human, you know.”
She pauses. A young man heads into the supermarket with a baby strapped in a sling over his chest, she tilts her head to one side, “I love fathers, it’s so nice seeing a papa with his baby”, then calls after him, “Hey, m’sieur, can you get me a bar of chocolate? It’s for the baby”.
As he comes out, another man hands her a Coke and a beer, she smiles and passes the beer to Vernon.
“If there’s anything you particularly want, let me know and I’ll ask.”
SALTED PEANUTS AND DARK COOKING CHOCOLATE IS OLGA’S preferred diet. She is wary of alcohol. If they weren’t bladdered all the time, her fellow vagrants might make for better company. She might even be able to turn them into respectable revolutionaries. But these idiots keep knocking it back until they can’t stay upright. You’re in the middle of talking to someone and suddenly everything stinks of piss, the guy has just wet himself. Or they turn to you, glassy-eyed, you think they’re about to say something and they puke all over you. I’m no hygiene freak but, seriously, that really sucks. It’s impossible to hang out with them after dark anyway, when they’re not snoring they’re spoiling for a fight, or something worse. You have to be wary of the shit they come out with when they’re hammered. They’ll fuck you up the arse like a goat and then swear blind they can’t remember a thing. If you beat them up, they bleat about it, a bunch of them will go at you and then call you a lying bitch. When guys are together, they close ranks. This is why Olga likes rookies, they’ve still got basic manners. This one is really handsome, he’s tall, super thin, the sort of guy she’s always fancied. His hands are still white, unblemished. They’ll be disfigured before long. Everything gets disfigured on the streets.
She had spotted him last night, talking to Georges, one of the fat winos camped outside the church. She and Georges aren’t exactly on good terms, she kept her distance. At first, Georges comes across as a laid-back kind of guy, but pretty quickly you find out what he’s really like: a tyrant and a manipulator. If you don’t do what he asks, he flies into a black rage, he’s given her a few beatings in his time and, old as he is, the guy has the viciousness and the tenacity of a jackal.
This morning, when she saw him surrounded by skinheads, she decided to go get him. She wants him as a friend. Now, she is sharing her food with him. He eats hungrily, it’s a pleasure to behold. She can teach him lots of things, where to go for a shower, the best days to go to the Secours populaire for decent clothes, she can give him advice on homeless shelters. He doesn’t have a dog, so that makes it easier. She likes taking care of other people. When they let her. She tries to get him to laugh. That’s how she makes friends. She makes them laugh, and she listens. When she was younger, she saw a doctor who advised her to drink less, he told her she had no self-respect, that she was a trash can of confidences. You’d have to be a doctor to be dumb enough to sneer at empathy. She asks a passing kid to bring them a packet of Curly and the boy tells her to piss off “Get yourself a fucking job, you fat sow”. She curses him, giving him the evil eye “for ten long years you will suffer for what you just said”, she knows they don’t like that, they don’t know whether she’s really a gypsy, she might be a powerful witch. Vernon giggles. She likes his name. She would like them to hang out all the time. They could be a team. It’s been a long time since anyone wanted to hang with her. She says:
“That’s the way it is . . . They all serve the interests of big money and they’re surprised that we flake out and don’t want to be part of their bullshit system. Just look around you – in this neighbourhood, whenever a shop closes a bank opens. Or an optician, I’ve never understood why there are so many shops selling glasses. My father was a communist. So when I read the newspapers, I get the message: praise be to big business. Woe betide those who do not submit unconditionally. Never has a dogma been so well observed. It’s a stroke of genius, their invention – debt . . . like whores who’ve been trafficked they’ll spend their lives slaving to pay back what they owed at birth. Oh, when it comes to work, they work . . . you know why they tolerate us in the city? They’ve ripped out the benches, they’ve fitted shop fronts with spikes to make sure we can’t sit down, but they haven’t started rounding us up and sending us to camps yet, and it’s not because it would be too expensive, no . . . it’s because we are a foil. People need to see us so they remember to unquestioningly obey. I worked – ten years I worked. Developing photos in a lab. All day hunched over developing tanks with skimpy little gloves for protection, I ended up with eczema. They said it had nothing to do with the chemicals and they fired me. I don’t regret it. I had a shit life. My whole salary went on the rent and the car, I had to check the price of everything I put in my shopping trolley. They make me laugh, the whole lot of them. Marxists these days make me laugh as much as the rest – the worker and his factory, creating employment and all that shit . . . Me, what I want is not to work anymore.”
“But I thought your father was a communist?”
“Yep. I’m like the daughter of Zeus. If you’d known my papa . . . now there was a real man. When he was angry, the ground trembled. He wasn’t a pathe
tic domestic tyrant screaming at his dumb wife and terrorising her. I’m talking about righteous anger. When I was little, we couldn’t go into town with my father without him raining down justice. He didn’t often do the shopping, but when he did – I’ve seen him empty supermarkets without anyone paying at the checkout because they were understaffed on a Saturday, it took him five minutes, he’d march out with the security guards, the checkout girls, the other shoppers, fists raised. I saw him rip down parking barriers because we had been waiting too long for a space. Longwy, let me tell you about Longwy – my father could trigger a factory walkout with nothing but his big mouth. He would take on the riot police, the C.R.S., try to persuade them to make common cause. He knew the enemy was never going to be minimum-wage workers. Terror, he imposed a reign of terror wherever he went. My father’s wrath, I swear, that was something to see . . . And you should have seen him with women. He wasn’t a ladykiller, he wasn’t some lounge lizard squirming like an eel to seduce some hot babe, but he had a way with women, they flocked to him, they were so smitten they used to faint. He couldn’t help it, poor bastard. It was his character. And when you’ve got a father like that and you hear someone say of other people’s fathers “They’re men too”, I swear you have to hide your face and laugh. You think, have you seen that thing you call papa who spends his whole life doing what he was told . . . weaklings, cowards, pussies, nonentities, invertebrates, incompetents . . . that’s men in general. But my father, yeah, one look at him and you know what a ‘man’ is. Looks at other men’s wives – they spend their time bitching, they don’t get what they need, it’s obvious. Poor bitches marry some moron when they’re twenty and two kids later they finally figure out they’re playing nursemaid to a complete loser. It’s not men they’ve married, it’s rags full of shit. They’re Diet Coke men, like in the billboard ads when we were kids, they roar like the real thing, they stink like the real thing, but all they know is how to knuckle under and take orders. Their wives are furious. That’s why they turn out little fascists like the ones you ran into earlier. These are kids who never had a father. They grew up seeing their mother not getting any and bitching all day long, and it broke their hearts. Par for the course. So they try to imagine the kind of man who’d be able to make his wife come. But they can google all they like, the formula isn’t on the internet. It’s in the genes. If you’d seen my mother: radiant, chic, satisfied, always happy. When they’re well fucked, I swear, women are so different. All those fatherless wimps born from a pussy by a flaccid dick that stinks of piss. They search all over the place for father figures, they can hardly see a beard without blubbing papa, they get themselves adopted by losers . . . poor fuckers don’t know what it is to be a man. They churn out the same shit – they knock up pathetic little girls, leave them unsatisfied and breed more arseholes who don’t know how to stand up straight. A limp dick in a fusty cunt, that’s the problem, mark my words . . . what can you expect of a nation of sexually frustrated flunkeys.”
Vernon Subutex One Page 27