And that is precisely Loïc’s problem. He is bitter. He’s resentful. He has no vision. Once, when he was ruinously plastered, he said to Noël: “Overthrow everything? I’m pushing forty. I know the human race too well to have any illusions. There’ll be three days partying and years of hangover. The only thing that’ll change is that four jerks who didn’t amount to shit will get cushy jobs. It’s only about replacing the ruling party, but the game will be the same. They’ll behave exactly like the people they’ve replaced. Lying, trafficking, cheating, making sure their brothers-in-law get all the privileges.” This, according to Loïc, is what politics boils down to. Nihilism. When Noël heard him say this, he realised it was over. Julien is right: there is no time for cynicism. They have to be ready to fight. And you don’t go into action armed with big talk.
*
Third beer, Noël still has all his wits about him, but he feels a wave surge through him. The Napalm is spreading its black magic through his body. A feverishness, a furious joy. A rush of energy. Loïc comes over to him. “You avoiding me?” “No. I need to get something to eat, otherwise I’ll be legless.” “Wanna go down and get a McDo?” Noël cannot see how he can refuse, and now that he’s had a drink he feels like a laugh and at least with Loïc he’s guaranteed a laugh. “You sure you haven’t been avoiding me? You’ve been really evasive. Did Julien tell you not to talk to me?” The question is caustic, like he’s saying you’re only a kid who takes orders from grown-ups. Noël is irritated, but now he is more irritated with Julien. It’s tough being caught between the two of them. But fuck it, he’s not some punk bitch. He shrugs, grabs his woolly hat, “Yo, we’re heading down for a McDo’s”, and the little group gets to its feet to follow. There is a lot of shoving and banter as they head down the stairs, that awesome early-evening buzz. They’re jostling, getting excited, high on alcohol and Napalm – they’re ready for some fun.
*
Outside, he feels good. They take up the whole pavement. With all of them, you’d have to be crazy not to step aside and let them pass. Without doing so consciously, Noël exaggerates his macho swagger, he feels nervous, it’s a blast. Strutting through Belleville, with the hipsters and the Chinks and the bougnoules, it’s good to see them step aside. This is their turf. They exist. Despite the mosques invading Kebabcity, everyone remembers and steps aside – they’re playing at home. It makes a change from being at work where they make him dress as neutrally as possible, make him wear the shit they sell. Obviously not the sort of stuff he’d choose or bring home in the evening, no, fucking faggot clothes he’s forced to wear and has to turn in at the end of his shift. He smiles at the black guy who frisks them before they leave. Fuck’s sake, like I’d want to take dreck from this place home with me . . . On that point he and Blacky Chan understand each other. The old security guard used to bring a hand up to his shoulder, do the quenelle then flash him a wink and a pathetic little smile – like: we understand each other, we’re on the same side. Yeah, right Snow White . . . but as any of your black colleagues will tell you “Respect yourself, don’t expect me to do it for you”. Relief when he was fired, it was such an embarrassing situation. Noël has nothing against the Blacks. But why can’t they look after their own countries instead of scurrying away like rats lured by French breadcrumbs.
During the day, in the shop, it’s not him slogging away. His body is present, his actions are automatic, he shuts himself down and turns off his brain. At night, on the town with his mates, they are lords of the street. No more slaving away. An easy rubbing of shoulders, the sounds of boots on paving slabs, the simplicity of being in the gang, the banter, the knowing looks. It is a sound, a common energy. The pride of being part of it, and the satisfaction that people notice them, avoid them, respect them. The nation’s future, in battle formation.
When they reach McDonald’s, J.P. slows, something on the other side of the road has caught his eye.
“Don’t tell me it’s not true! Madame Fat Arse!”
The way he whistles, smiling maliciously. Loïc moves closer to him – what has he seen? J.P. drones something by Napalm Death in a voice from beyond the grave as he stifles a snigger. Then he explains, this morning, with Julien, the kicking he got, the mad bitch, that fat filthy slag whose only claim to being female is having a cunt, how what that thing deserves is to be gutted alive. The world has no business tolerating a piece of shit like her. And she’s aggressive to boot. So she likes a good fight, does she? Sniggers here and there. Noël remembers Julien’s advice to them. It’s important to support the destitute, to do what the French state refuses to do: our own people come first. First feed our own, then we’ll talk about the plight of those who didn’t love their own country enough to stay there and fight together to climb out of the shit. But it also means you don’t go looking for trouble with the defenceless – it’s an image thing – especially not if they speak our language. It winds Julien up, posts on websites in shoddily spelled French. It’s called a mother tongue for a reason, it’s what makes us a nation. Noël makes a lot of mistakes. He never leaves a comment on a site unless he can check the spelling. It drives him mad, seeing the typos and the epic fails some guys come out with. Even he can tell that they’re riddled with mistakes. It’s just not good enough.
Tonight, in this moment, it is mostly the beer and the Napalm talking, the lithe movement of the gang as they slope over to this girl who screwed with their mates – just to give her a piece of their mind. Let’s face it, even blind drunk, they’re not going to gang-rape an ugly slag like her. And even if it was a pretty blonde, they wouldn’t do it, it’s not their style. Julien doesn’t need to worry – it’s just a bit of fun. A little walk-past, let her know they’re in the area. Maybe ask her, just to make sure: who’s the boss round here? Who do you take orders from?
The woman’s eyes are red and swollen, the old guy next to her looks shitfaced drunk and panics when he sees them coming. With these two, it’s going to be a formality. The problem is the two-bit thug chatting to them. A local hipster buying himself a clear conscience, he’s crouched down next to the tramps to show he respects them, but don’t worry, he’ll be sleeping in a warm bed tonight and they can go fuck themselves. Go on, papa, go home. You know you’re not up for this. But instead of realistically assessing the situation, showing them some respect and heading home without causing a scene, this mad bastard stands up and faces them, hands in his pockets, jutting his chin. This dumb fuck has no street smarts, one more idiot who hasn’t had his share of beatings, so when he sees a herd of bulls bearing down, he waggles his lilywhite arse and tries to lecture them:
“You got a problem?”
“You sad fuck, you’ve been watching too many action movies.”
“Yeah, dickwad, you a cop? No? Then fuck off, we want a word with your girlfriend.”
“Outta the way, we’ve got a score to settle with your woman here.”
“Get lost, boys. Go play somewhere else. I’m sure you’ll find someone your own size to pick on. Move along!”
“Did she think about it, this fat slag, before going apeshit on us this morning? Thing is, bro, there has to be law and order in a city. We just came by to tell her that: there has to be order.”
Usually, when Loïc gets like this, with his psycho scowl right up in some guy’s face, they don’t argue the toss. They just want it to stop. If the hipster wants to play hero, it’s going to end badly for him.
“Go sleep off your beer somewhere else, you’re getting on my tits.”
Noël glances around him, makes eye contact with his mates, a big grin on his face. They know it doesn’t look good for this guy. He’s been working on his leg muscles so much he can climb five flights of stairs and not even feel it – it’s like he’s being carried. He wouldn’t like to be the guy who takes the results of his T.R.X. reps in the face.
“Do I look drunk to you, you bourgeois faggot?”
A quick slap, a love tap. If the guy had a flicker of common sense, he would
consider himself warned. He’d let the fat slag take the abuse and the beating she deserves, it would all be over, they’d move on to McDonald’s and the rest of their evening. If they have to fight, they prefer to go up against big black gangstas – it’s tough to big it up later if it’s six of you against two pussies and a psycho bitch, so it would be better to get this over fast.
And then this guy spits in Loïc’s face, staring him right in the eyes.
It’s not Queensbury rules, it’s Cage Warrior rules. Noël knows his kick is lethal, he gives three kicks, head belly head. In that order. Textbook, perfect reflexes, every shot right on target. “That’ll teach you to shut your big mouth you fucking bourgeois bastard. Hey, hobos, tell him from me: next time you bow your head and beat it. Let this be a lesson to him.”
AN ICY DRIZZLE SOAKS HIS BACK. THE TOUCH OF THE CITY. VERNON simply trudges on, without thinking. He passes a cinema with its lights out, there are few cars at this time of night, he crosses place Gambetta without stopping at the edge of the pavement, he wouldn’t mind feeling the brutal impact of the bodywork shattering his bones. He cannot remember ever feeling such an emptiness inside. The signal is detected, and triggers nothing. He sees the closed shutter of the florist’s, the three drunk kids are staggering along, a figure sprawled on the bench at a bus stop. The events of the previous night unreel inside his skull without producing the slightest reaction. He has turned himself off. He is a spectator, a fare dodger in his own life, a stowaway. It has finally happened: the void has engulfed him.
The worst of it was the minutes when Xavier was lying on his side, motionless, eyes half-closed, a thin stream of blood trickling from his nose, a red line that stopped in the groove above his lips, seemed to hesitate then followed the curve of his mouth and flowed towards his chin. When Vernon looked up to ask someone to call an ambulance, none of the passers-by would meet his eye. They rushed in and out of the supermarket oblivious to the scene. Though several people had watched the brawl from the other side of the street. Then Olga had pressed herself against Vernon’s back, tugged at his sleeve, a childlike gesture, clumsy and insistent: “We can’t stay here, big guy. The police are coming, we can’t stay here”, in a gentle stubborn whisper, never letting go of his arm. Vernon was calling out “Someone needs to call an ambulance”, but, as in a nightmare, he had become invisible. It cannot have lasted more than a minute, but he plunged into that moment, it was almost as though he slipped inside and disappeared, his mind, at least, was swallowed up. Then the bouncer at Franprix appeared and took out his mobile phone. Vernon had noticed the guy looking daggers at them all day, as though they were contaminating the entrance to his place of work, and he had found the guy’s ugly mug all the more unsettling because it radiated an exceptional stupidity. As it turned out, despite looking like a first-class moron, the guy had a decent knowledge of first aid, he manoeuvred the body confidently, rolling Xavier onto his side, bringing one leg up, cautiously lifting the head, and the paramedics showed up quickly, in a wail of sirens that seems surreal when it directly concerns you.
In the meantime, Olga had disappeared. A police car parked across the street next to the paramedic van. They asked Vernon a few questions, distractedly at first, as though any information he might give was already known to the police, then their manner abruptly changed when they realised this was not a couple of drunks settling old scores. The man on the ground had an address and a credit card. From being friendly and easy-going, the men in uniform were suddenly transformed into busy, anxious professionals. Vernon had to go with them to the station to make a statement. He was insisting on going in the ambulance with Xavier but this was out of the question. “You know him?” in an insolent tone as though they suspected Vernon of trying to cadge a free meal from the emergency services. Vernon said yes I’ve known him for years, he gave the name, the address, but no, I don’t have his wife’s number so you can let her know. “Only family members are allowed to accompany the victim.” The unconscious body was loaded onto a stretcher, Vernon asked again to go with him but the request went unheard. There was no hostility. Now that he spent his days sitting outside the supermarket, he was less real than he had been before.
Then suddenly there was a new development, Pamela Kant stepped out of a taxi. Vernon recognised her immediately. He saw her hesitate, scan the street, look in his direction. When she marched straight over to him, he did not react. He did not know that what interested her about this scene was him. He was not the only one to spot her. He noticed the paramedics elbowing each other, still going about their business, whispering to each other, and two of the cops literally froze, an incredulous smile on their lips.
“Vernon Subutex? I’ve been looking for you for a week . . . What’s going on? Are you in trouble?”
The circumstances did not lend themselves to joy. Reeling from the shock, Vernon was unable to savour the moment . . . He remained silent. Wild thoughts hurtled towards him like blazing meteorites, and frankly he had no idea whence they came, nor what he was supposed to do with this hot mess. But Pamela was waiting for an answer, and finally he offered one:
“A friend of mine just got beaten up in a brawl. He’s lost consciousness.”
“Xavier Fardin?”
“You know each other?”
“Of course, I watched “Ma seule étoile”, like, a hundred times when I was a kid . . .”
*
The appearance of Pamela Kant in itself was pretty implausible, but Pamela Kant talking about Xavier’s film as though it were a classic, surrounded by dumbfounded cops and paramedics – Vernon thought, wake up Xavier, for fuck’s sake, you can’t miss this shit.
And so Pamela took matters in hand with disconcerting ease, as though the role of gang leader was hers by right – she insisted on going with Vernon, fine, she needed to talk to him, a statement, of course, could she leave her mobile number with the paramedics so they could let her know where she could reach Xavier once she and Vernon had finished at the police station? Nothing now posed any problem for anyone. If she had asked them to turn on the lights and sirens and take her window shopping at a department store the boys would have said sure, do you want us to fire in the air while we’re driving? The most annoying thing about the whole incident was witnessing this exaggerated display of male solidarity and finding himself completely excluded. It was something that had never happened to him – but a homeless guy, even one who personally knows Pamela Kant, remains a curio in the eyes of working men, Vernon was no longer a real man, he was a creature apart, and when his eyes encountered those of a paramedic there was no sense of complicity, just a puzzled curiosity. So Pamela Kant’s little kink was getting screwed by a tramp?
No-one asked his opinion, but he had no particular desire to go and make a statement. Once in the police car, it was all about Pamela Kant, who played the role of the slut with zeal. She gently insulted the men, they were utterly charmed. He left her feeling completely at home at the police station reception desk and followed a young officer into a bleak cubicle.
“White guys, young? Did they mention the name of a faction?”
“No. We didn’t talk much . . . I wouldn’t have recognised them, I’m not even sure that it’s exactly the same group of guys we ran into this morning. To be honest, I didn’t get a good look at them.”
“And they had some grudge against this woman?”
“I don’t really know her. I was only evicted recently, I’m still in shock . . .”
“I understand. I’m sorry.”
The police station was in such an advanced state of disrepair that it felt ironic for someone who spent his life working here to feel sorry for someone living on the streets. Like a hospital pitying a charity.
The cop was just a kid, he can’t have been more than twenty-five, which heightened the sense of unreality engulfing Vernon that was growing increasingly unsettling. He answered randomly, not quite knowing what it was prudent to hide or reveal. Fairly quickly, the man sitting opposite him dro
pped the mask of wary suspicion that characterised the beginning of the interview. There was nothing shady about Vernon. In fifteen minutes, the statement was done – all that interested the inspector was the race of the assailants, once this was established he had a slim dossier of photographs of far-right militants for Vernon to look at, no, none of the faces were familiar. Before letting him go, the officer wrote on a Post-It note, in a clumsy, careful scrawl, the phone numbers of various emergency shelters and the addresses where he could go to ask to have his case assessed. He was sorry, times are tough huh, what did you work at before, a record dealer, wow, shit, can’t be easy to find a new job. No, here in the police things are fine for the moment, but my brother’s in the state school system, I don’t think he’ll make it to retirement . . . Did you see, in Greece they just shut down the state broadcasting service? And you know who gets sent in to do stuff like that? Us, the police . . . and you know why nobody is talking about it in France? Because the same thing is going to happen here, it’s inevitable. We don’t like to boast, but the police is about the only thing that’s not likely to be privatised any time soon.
Then he had had to wait for Pamela in the waiting room, men gathered round her as though she were a blaze of joy, none of them did anything inappropriate, but they were like kids in hospital when a princess comes to visit, lots of autographs and selfies. Pamela was firing on all cylinders and, watching her, it occurred to Vernon that you had to be very beautiful to carry off a hideous tracksuit, a hoodie and a pair of Eskimo boots that looked like carpet slippers. But Pamela Kant could pull it off, it was her eyes, her slim, impeccably proportioned body, but mostly the way she radiated. He had had to wait for ten minutes in a crowd of cops who took no notice of him, because the commissaire wanted to speak to Pamela Kant in private.
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