Pretty Things. Виржини Депант
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to the detective, “He didn’t know her at all, she doesn’t live in Paris. Get out of his hair and let him go.”
“You can say she didn’t live in Paris now.”
“You’re just chock-full of tact, aren’t you, asshole.”
He’s set her off, a familiar feeling, she screams, “Son of a bitch, motherfucker, my sister just jumped out the window and you’re saying shit like that? How fucked in the head do you have to be to act like such a dick?”
Finished screaming, a slight wavering. Those present seem tired, and must not like their colleague because they mostly take her side, understand where she’s coming from.
They let Nicolas go.
She thinks over it all, the things she has to pay attention to in order not to contradict herself, not to betray herself. Now that she’s become Claudine, she mustn’t make a single mistake.
HE WENT BACK home to his 195 square feet. He sat down in the armchair that he reclines to sleep in. Put on his headphones and a CD. Still shocked.
He feels in him somewhere the stupefying banality of trauma. That efficiency cutting a life in two. A few seconds suffice to sum it up in one phrase: everything has collapsed.
He hasn’t cried since he was little, he would really like to tonight. He doesn’t know what it’ll do for him, but like everything he’s deprived of he lets himself form a splendid idea of it. He remains immobile, lets the ideas pass through him. They come and go, those flaying emotions, as they like. He doesn’t have the energy to seek them out, nor to classify them, nor to shield himself from them.
He feels incredibly guilty. For not having guessed. The one time she let her true self be seen, he put off dealing with it for another day.
He feels it already, he knows he’ll be angry with himself for a long time for having enjoyed this night so much. And when they walked back, he remembers clearly, somewhere in his mind he thought about how he should act, how to tell Claudine about the concert, thought of leaving out certain things to keep from hurting her.
But above all he regrets not having taken Claudine for a walk wherever, somewhere calm where she could escape her anxiety, switch it off. Reproaches himself for not being able to say, “Come on, we’re getting on a train, we’re getting out of here, I think you need a break.”
There’s a thought running through his head, repugnant and thoroughly misplaced, but a thought that comes back regularly, a nauseating regret: Why didn’t she leave me a note? And: Why didn’t she wait for me, give me a chance to help? Did he not matter at all, not have any impact on her life, not make any notable difference to her despair?
He had suspected something for weeks, behind the vestiges of agitation, something barely visible. He had noticed very clearly the pain intensifying inside her. He didn’t have the courage to get involved. He thought it would ease up on its own, as often happens. The demon falls back into its slumber. He imagines a sort of bird, red and fiery, with a gold beak, ripping apart her chest, demanding that she surrender herself entirely to it that night.
Was it necessary, inscribed somewhere precisely what had to happen? Or was it nothing at all, all that was needed was a noise opposite, a phone call, a guy she likes on the TV, and the moment would have passed, would have been just like the others.
Did she have time to regret, the second after she had done it, to want to hang on, deny the evidence with all her strength and believe again in the possibility of survival? Did her life flash all at once before her, at the same time revealing and outlining who she was?
SHE SLEPT THE whole day, the noises outside mixing into her sleep. Woken up by an argument, she got up, groggy, glanced at the street. A man trying to hit a woman holding a kid in her arms, she insulted him while dodging his blows, ran away, the kid crying and extending his arms toward his father. Went back to sleep. The smell of the sheets made her vaguely nauseous. The sun struck her eyelids. The telephone in the next room rang and rang, tentacles of voices coming through the answering machine.
Then the day no longer filtered through the double curtains, she got up to eat something.
Muted and pure hostility, Claudine had always managed to piss off the world. Whatever scheme possible to attract attention. What happened that night was that she was so repulsed at not being the one under the spotlight that she preferred to go out the window. Sick with jealousy and always wanting to get herself noticed.
The whole night was tiring, a lot of strangers to deceive. In a trance, pretending she was Claudine, a sort of blind reflex. And she repeated to herself, “That cunt thought she was trapping me, but she’s actually done me a huge favor.”
Because that suited her just fine, to pass for her sister long enough to sign a record deal. That talk of an advance had been on her mind since she overheard it. She’ll get an enormous advance and barricade herself in with the spoils. It came together little by little, a terrible confidence. Her sister knew people, Pauline would use her contacts and settle the deal in a month. Before Sébastien gets out, she’ll have a fortune and they’ll go off together far away from here.
But now she’s alone like an asshole in this apartment. Alone for the very first time, with a heavy feeling, like she’d been drunk and done something really stupid.
Things left here, everywhere: open books next to the bed, pens, lipsticks, dirty glasses with alcohol hardened to the bottom, sweaters, a paper towel tube, coffee tin, empty packs of cigarettes . . .
In a corner of the living room, there’s an entire wall of Marilyn Monroe. In every pose, at every age, from every angle, the Marilyns smile, lean toward the lens, want something, we don’t know what, give the essential thing, a version of herself that doesn’t exist. Just the day before, discovering this monstrous collection of clichés of the blond flaunting herself, Pauline felt mournfully indignant toward the childishness of her skank sister, who couldn’t understand that what she was doing would only lead to disappointment.
Today, alone in the unfamiliar apartment, she thinks about tearing down all the photos, carving out some order in the pathetic chaos. But her sister is no longer there and it doesn’t make any sense. Like many other ideas that come to her spontaneously, abruptly stripped of their logic.
Equilibrium needs to be restored. It was constructed opposite her sister, a force exerted on another. She has a clear image in her mind: two little women in a bubble, each pushing with her forehead against the other’s. If one of the two little women is removed, the other immediately topples over, falls into the other’s domain. A blank space, a void is created in her; in one night everything has shifted.
Noise outside, she stands at the window. The street lures her every ten minutes, the omnipresence of the outside. A kid runs, zigzagging through people, two cops run after him. Gendarmes and thieves. Passersby freeze, watching the action. Then the trio returns, going the opposite direction, handcuffs on wrists, flanked.
The day they arrested Sébastien, did they parade him around like that, in the middle of everyone, captured?
It’s not just her at the window; all along the road, people lean out to observe and no one intervenes, no matter what.
To keep herself occupied, she puts on music and dances. She’s always done that, danced just for herself. Sweat appears slowly, first on her shoulder, then her back, finally her thighs are moist; breath, heels, hips, and arms embody the music, all that she understands of it, she begins to sing at the same time, disorderly chorus, routine trance.
The telephone rings again, all the voices conveying the same badly feigned nonchalance. Her own cuts off.
“It’s Nicolas. Pick up?”
She hurries to the telephone, picks up. “Hello?” with a strong echo because the answering machine is still on, she looks for the stop button, feedback. Pauline yells for him to call her back, hangs up hoping he heard her. The telephone rings again, it’s him. He says, “So?”
“I was with them until six in the morning.