“I ran into your mother the day before yesterday. She told me about the dog. I’m really sorry.”
Xavier, nonplussed, replies in the same tone:
“Brain tumour. We found out too late. It was very quick.”
“You lost your dog too?”
He refuses to speak to this pig. Christian charity is all well and good, but extending it to the far-flung suburbs of outer fuckwittery is out of the question. The fat female’s eyes fill with tears and he doesn’t have time to tell her to shut up before she starts:
“They stole my dog three months ago. Hurts like fuck, doesn’t it? When you’re with them, you know that you’re going to lose them someday, you know it will probably be tough . . . but that’s nothing compared to what you feel when it happens. What breed was yours?”
“French bulldog.”
“They’re so cute. There’s a lot more of them around these days, hipsters love them. Mine was a Staff, they’re bigger but it’s the same principle, they’re huge hounds. There is no body as perfect as the body of your dog. Mine had these amazing little eyelashes, I could spend all day looking at them. It’s details like that . . . my dog was a magnificent animal.”
From a distance, Xavier would have sworn that this giant communicated only in grunts. He is surprised to find her so effusive, so articulate. She’s not as drunk as he thought she was. The most surprising thing is her voice, which doesn’t fit her tubbiness or her appearance. She has a voice that deserves to be on the radio, a beautiful voice. He knows exactly what she means. Colette had beautiful eyelashes too. You have to be a true dog-owner to notice these things. He can’t tell her to fuck off after what she has just said. It’s the basic principle of owning a dog: you talk to people you wouldn’t give the time of day in ordinary circumstances. He nods.
“It must have been terrible for you.”
“The list of all the little things you used to do that you’ll never do again. I’d give anything – I can’t say everything I own, I don’t own anything, but I’d give a kidney to be able to kiss his slobbery lips. To stroke his belly. I want to see him there when I wake up. Attila-the-Fun. You know what I’m saying, yeah? I keep expecting him to turn up, wagging that big arse of his. He liked to sleep under the duvet, he’d snuggle up against my belly.”
“You named your dog Attila-the-Fun?”
The fat slob has a sense of humour. Either that or she’s psycho. If she weren’t so filthy, he’d say she belongs in the category of people where you can’t decide if they’re brilliant or barking. He crouches down next to her, never mind keeping his distance.
“Towards the end, my dog would piss all over the kitchen floor every morning, and I’d mop it up, hose it down, get out the Cif and scrub, making sure to clean between the tiles. Now every morning I get up and I see the dry floor and I remember that she’s dead and I can’t cry. I’ve got a daughter, I’ve got a wife, I’m a man for God’s sake. I can’t go crying just because my dog is dead but there’s nothing sadder in the world than making breakfast in the morning and not having her nosing around for crumbs.”
Tears trickle soundlessly down the woman’s face, and he knows she is not faking it to get him to put his hand in his pocket. She shares his grief.
“Eleven years I been living on the streets. Attila was ten – he wasn’t even a year old when I got him, his master got himself banged up leaving the dog with his mother, and she was out at work all day, she couldn’t look after him, so she gave him to me. The son did five years and even then he fucked up, ten days after he was released he was back inside I found out later. When they took Attila, I thought to myself that if I lived a normal life they’d never have taken my dog. But if I had a job, I wouldn’t have been able to spend all my time with him, we wouldn’t have been as happy . . . a dog whose master is homeless is the happiest dog in the world because he’s the only thing you’ve got, and since the homeless shelters won’t take you if you’ve got a dog, you never leave his side, you eat with him, you sleep with him. I never go to social services, they won’t let you in with a dog. So I don’t go in. You can’t leave a Staff tied up outside. And I’m not going to leave Attila-the-Fun with some wino who’s likely to lose him. Or sell him – you never know with the vermin I have to deal with . . . But I can’t help thinking that if I’d had a normal life, they wouldn’t have taken my dog. So I feel guilty, I feel guilty. I can’t stop thinking about him in that kennel, I’m sure he knew what they were going to do, I think about the vet’s steel table, and I wasn’t even there for him. Someone came to fetch him and he must have thought I’d abandoned him. I didn’t look out for him. Were you there, when your dog died?”
“Yes. She was relaxed, lying on the sofa. But if it’s any comfort, I feel guilty too. Afterwards I thought I should have killed the vet when he rang the doorbell.”
And for the first time since it happened, he knows he is about to cry. People can stare, they can think what they like, they can fuck off, the lot of them. Olga’s tears trace grime over her cheeks. Vernon listens to them, making no attempt to join in the conversation.
“I DON’T GET IT – WHO’S ‘THE STUNNER’ – HER?”
“Check the photos, check ’em: who’d want to climb on top of that? Amirite? If that sleazy crack-whore found a half-decent guy to give her a good rooting, you think she’d even say thanks?”
“I don’t know, if she asked me nicely I’d fuck her in the arse for free.”
“Fuck’s sake, is there nothing that turns you off?”
“One of these days you should give us a list of the one girl you wouldn’t bone – save time.”
*
Loïc smiles, he enjoys the pressure. Noël is sitting awkwardly. By the time he arrived, the only seat left was the skankiest armchair in the place. He is annoyed. He has assumed Loïc wasn’t coming. He doesn’t look at him.
The whole situation is a pain. If he’d known, he would have gone straight home. He’s shattered. He’s been on his feet for three days straight, without a glimpse of daylight, putting hangers back on rails, re-folding jumpers and rushing around various departments tidying away the clothes abandoned by customers in the fitting rooms. Saturdays are a full-scale riot. All the emos, queers, hipsters, niggas, fashion-fags, losers, students, ragheads, posers and pretty boys in Paris pile in through the glass doors to try on the latest swag – the shit made by kids in the third world that Jew bankers are trying to flog – and these douchebags pay to wear this stuff. Before he worked here, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to think of buying a jumper or a pair of jeans in a place like this. Certainly not on a Saturday. Someone should lock the doors with everyone a couple of times a day and gas the fuckers. Seriously. The freaks that hang out in this shithole. You should see the girls spending all day posing like hookers in front of the mirrors, you’d never imagine how a bunch of ugly hoes preen and pout when they see themselves in here. Fat slags who haven’t exactly been blessed by nature, but here they are squeezing themselves into bush-league brands – and yakking non-stop about “The Bachelorette”. The guys are not much better. They should try spending their Saturdays off pumping iron, the puny little fuckers. They’ve got all the musculature of earthworms. They’re twenty years old and they’ve got love handles that look like rubber rings under their trendy T-shirts. Why don’t you do a few ab crunches before you start thinking about what to wear, you tub of lard. You’ve got your Saturday free, you could be hanging with your mates, having sex with your girlfriend, seeing a movie or just vegging in front of the T.V. with a nice cool beer, but no . . . You have to come here. And the idiot who has to clear up after you is yours truly. Noël. A dozen times a day, the department manager whispers in his ear – smile, please. There’s crappy muzak blaring from the speakers all day long. Smile, please. Sure thing, boss. The shop is swarming with people. They elbow Noël in the ribs, stamp on his feet, barge into him and never apologise – everyone knows shop assistants are there to be trampled.
*
He s
hould have gone home as soon as he finished work. A ready-meal in front of “The Voice”, a little trolling on Twitter, a couple of hours playing “No-Man’s Land” and then bed. Would have done him good, a quiet night in. He needs to find himself a girlfriend. How long has he been single – six months, more? Well, there’s no danger of meeting anyone tonight, there’s never any girls round J.P.’s place. When they’re not talking sex, they’re talking football – it’s hardly likely to bring in the babes. Besides, these days his luck is shot to shit, every time a girl is into him she turns out to be sweet but not beddable.
Loïc is constantly trying to suck up to him. Making jokes, looking over at him, taking a beer and offering him one. It’s making Noël uncomfortable. Last night he and Julien had a long conversation about Loïc. Julien is right. You have to decide where your loyalties lie. Noël is generally the sort to live and let live. Loïc is a funny guy, gotta give him that. Okay he’s a cocky bastard and a real shit-stirrer, but when he’s not there, their evenings are a lot less fun. Julien is hacked off with him. It’s been brewing for a while now. He can’t stand Loïc’s sarcasm. He’s not wrong. It’s getting to the point where it’s embarrassing. When Noël showed up tonight, Loïc was taking the piss out of the dweebs who designed the flags for Génération identitaire, because they look like party banners from an M.J.C. rally in Fontainebleau in the early eighties and then he started mocking the website guys for publishing photos of members of Projet Apache with long hair to prove that the lefty feminazis were lying when they called them skinheads. The post on the site was pretty funny, it was ironic, there was no reason to trash-talk the guy who wrote it. But Loïc would sell his own mother for a decent one-liner, and by now everyone was pissing themselves laughing so he wasn’t about to stop. It’s funny. But it’s snide. You can’t sign up to a cause and then snigger at everything it stands for. The problem with Loïc is he thinks that talking smack about everything proves he’s astute, when actually he’s showing his weakness by refusing to take the cause seriously. If you want to be in politics, you have to learn self-discipline. You never know what Loïc really thinks. On the important issues, he’s systematically evasive. He always needs to prove he’s the smartest, that you can’t get one over on him. Julien has him sussed: he’s winging it. He tried recommending stuff for him to read, tried to help him improve his mind. But Loïc just pulls a face. He’s got no conviction, no insight. Action doesn’t preclude a sense of humour, but you can’t do what he does, spend your time mocking everyone and everything. One of the values they are sworn to defend is solidarity. No mercy for the enemy. It was mimicking poor Soral, sitting on the sofa in his apartment in the Marais filming himself babbling non-stop bullshit about his heritage as a good rouge-brun Marxist sensitive to the complexities of patrimony and private property, that Loïc first made Julien laugh and they became friends. The take-off was enough to make you piss yourself. Everyone knows Soral is a joke, it goes without saying. But you don’t say that to your friends on the internet. This is about propaganda, it’s important to have strategic alliances otherwise the enemy gets to watch us tear each other apart and laps it up. “The Association of Former Faggots Converted to Catholicism” is hilarious. But it adds nothing to the debate – quite the opposite. His imitations of Frigide Barjot would have you rolling on the floor – “Is the junkie jezebel turned papist poodle going to the dogs?” But the problem is Loïc has no boundaries, he’s capable of doing his impressions in front of anyone. And being a militant is a serious business, not an ego trip.
The three of them got along well initially. With Loïc as court jester and footy expert and Julien with his gift of the gab, his culture and his intelligence, the two of them galvanised the troops. But for a while now, Julien has been distancing himself from his acolyte whose limitations he can keenly sense. Recently, he went up to Rennes for Génération identitaire’s first charitable initiative. He militates on the ground. He passes on information, makes speeches, he gets involved. If it comes to choosing a camp, Noël would rather side with those who dare to commit themselves.
Noël has less ego than the other two. That’s the reason they like his company so much. He’s got enough personality to be a good mate, but he doesn’t have a pressing need to monopolise the conversation. He is a comrade, you can count on him, he has only one loyalty. But he knows he doesn’t have the makings of a leader. His thing is bodybuilding. Ever since he got his T.R.X., he’s been bodyweight training and following a strict high-protein diet, he has managed to develop his lower body. Something he was having trouble doing. He hates guys who only work on upper body strength – because it’s easier and not as painful. But he’s working to develop his hamstrings. Tonight, he brought along a little cargo of Napalm, an adreno-muscular stimulant that will give them some pep. He’s already giggling to himself at the thought of seeing his friends flush red, pretty soon they’ll be all hot and scratching themselves and straight after they’ll feel wide awake. Napalm is like drinking molten lava straight from the volcano.
*
His mother worked at a checkout. Noël watched her slave and get fucked over her whole life. She votes socialist. Even now. She does it but she’s got no illusions. When Le Nouvel Obs runs headlines about the former director of the I.M.F. paying for whores, they’re spitting in his mother’s face: it’s just us, we can do what the fuck we like, just make sure the money doesn’t leave the room. And these people, when it comes to allocating H.L.M. apartments in the housing projects, they’re open-handed and they give it to immigrants rather than his mother, to foreigners and friends with long arms. For people like him, it’s always come back tomorrow. When the middle classes have had their pound of flesh and there’s nothing left for anyone else, and still they come on like they’re good Samaritans and great minds at the expense of the dumb bastards who really work and no-one ever gives a stuff about. Health insurance that costs an arm and a leg. Commuter trains that break down every other day, but you’ve still got to pay. You have to pay for everything. Disgusting meat that you thought tasted off because it was halal but it turns out it’s horsemeat from some old nag hopped up on hormones, or chicken that’s got rabies, just shut up and eat, you fucking pleb, and before you go home after your forty-five hours slaving in some scuzzy shopping centre remember to donate some of your money to the Romanian meat industry. And remember to save up for when you have cancer, you fucking prole, the public hospitals are overrun by illegals from all over the planet who know France is the place to be. When it’s not North Africans being used to drive down working-class salaries, it’s factories moving abroad to countries where people are starving. And why wouldn’t they? What’s the downside? Who has ever told them that lack of patriotism is a crime? Meanwhile, the country is being sold off to the Russians, the Qataris and the Chinks. The mother country flogged off to the highest bidder like some tenth-rate whore, open to anyone with the money to pay for a hole. And they’re supposed to just accept this shit? The Jews run the banks and all they care about is how much they can make off other people, and the masons have politics sewn up and all they do is give each other cushy jobs. Spending public money, that’s all they’re there for. And meanwhile the middle classes get all politically correct because a couple of Romanians get insulted. You can tell they don’t live near a gypsy camp. No, they shell out on organic meat, certified organic French meat because they have to protect their spoiled rich bodies from disease. Tough shit for the proles and losers. And when they have to send their kids to school, they move house because they don’t want their little blonde angel being called “chalk-face” by jealous hordes. When a Jewish banker rapes a hotel maid he just gets out his chequebook and every whore in the République lines up to impale themselves on his prodigious prick. Women love bastards. All those parasitical bastards who hold their nose when the proles vote and think that by lying in newspapers, on T.V., in magazine articles, they’ll get to fuck them over again. They’ve forgotten the Paris Commune. The people care more about the state t
han its leaders. The difference is honour. Viva la muerte. The people are prepared to die because they’re desperate, because they’ve got nothing to lose, but because they can see the future. We are the state. The future of France depends on our determination. One people, one language, one future. Contrary to the bullshit they’re constantly being fed, the people are not condemned to be powerless. He is trembling with excitement at the thought of abolishing the impunity that protects the great and the good of this world. They would cut their children’s throats without a second thought, stick them on a pikestaff and parade them through the town. He will die in a hail of bullets if need be to defend his country. He will stop at nothing. He refuses to let his native country fall apart and just sit worrying about how he is going to pay his taxes. In interview after interview, the pillars of society claim that only Muslims are motivated enough to die for a cause. Demoralising the people. They plan to prove otherwise. They are ready. They are preparing for war. Honour, homeland. He feels it echo in his chest, feels it surge through him, drag him in its wake. The vision it stirs is a powerful steed he joyfully saddles. Together, they are invincible. They will overthrow everything.
Vernon Subutex One Page 29