Billie (7 page)

 

He was this seducer, this kid, this aristocrat from the provinces who still bore the scent of the Parisian prostitutes, this oaf, this bastard, this brittle and delicate boy.

 

And in love . . . proud . . . a con man . . . sure of himself . . . And wounded perhaps . . .

Yes . . . fatally wounded . . .

Now that I've grown up and have and so on and so forth, it's a question I ask myself too . . .

Like Franck, Perdican must have suffered more than he was able to show . . .

 

In short, when the moment came to dream of my Malabar rather than my virginity, I mean by then, when those words that had caused him so much anguish the day before came gushing out of his heart, when he finally let it rip—that's what we say about mopeds . . . If you want to go, like, four miles an hour faster and bust your ears even more, you say, “Let it rip!”—as I was saying, when it was my turn to listen with more attention than Camille had ever done back in her day, because I knew how much it cost him to say them, yes, the moment when he fired away at me like that (excuse me in advance for the mistakes, I knew it by heart for a long time, but I've surely forgotten two or three things over the years), looking me straight in the eyes and with his hand resting on the doorknob of our classroom, he said:

“Adieu, Camille. Go back to your convent. And when they tell you hideous stories and have poisoned you, answer with this: All men are liars; fickle, deceitful, garrulous, hypocritical; arrogant or cowardly; contemptible and lascivious buggers; all women are treacherous, vain, mendacious, indiscreet, and depraved; and the whole world is nothing but a bottomless pit where the most shapeless seals slither and twist on mountains of muck; but there is in this world something holy and sublime, it's the union of two beings so imperfect and so awful . . . We are often deceived by love, often wounded and often unhappy, but we love. And when we're on the edge of death, we turn to look back and say to ourselves: I have often suffered; I was wrong sometimes, but I loved. I'm the one who has lived, and not a false being created by my pride and my boredom.”

Hey . . .

Even you fell for it, right?

So, you agree . . . the word
bugger
, it slid right out like a fart on an ice floe . . .

 

No one snickered. No one.

And no one clapped either. No one.

And do you know why?

No? C'mon, of course, you do. You can guess, right?

C'mon . . .

Okay, they didn't say anything because they were stunned, that bunch of little bastards!

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Excuse me, little star, excuse me . . . I'm embarrassed . . . It was to hear my laughter in the night . . . To give myself a little encouragement and to say bonjour to the owls . . .

Excuse me.

I'll start again:

No one clapped because they were so shocked that their idiot brains couldn't find the clap button on the remote control.

The worst was the teacher's clap button. It had completely disintegrated into the remote . . .

 

Seriously, it lasted for a long time, a long time . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . you could have counted the seconds like a boxing referee. We didn't move. We didn't know if we were allowed to go back out to change our clothes or if we should go back to our places in our costumes and then there was a little explosion in the back and, of course, all the others followed.

All of them. Insane. Unrelenting.

As though an enormous firecracker had blown up in our faces.

And . . . oh . . .

How pretty it was . . .

 

But the most beautiful part, for me, was now:

When the bell rang and they all took off for recess, the teacher came up to us while we were packing up our props and asked us if we would agree to perform the scene again in front of other classes. And even for other teachers and the principal and all that.

I didn't say anything.

I never said anything at school. I went there to rest.

I didn't say anything but I didn't want to do it. Not because I had stage fright, but because life had taught me not to ask too much of it. What we had just experienced was a gift. Now, that's it. We'd put it all out there, so enough. Leave us in peace. I didn't want to risk ruining it or wrecking it. I had so few pretty things and I loved our performance so much I no longer wanted to show it to anyone.

Madame Guillet made little Puss in Boots eyes at us, but instead of flattering me, it made me sad. Well, she was just like the others . . . she knew nothing. She saw nothing. She understood nothing. She had no idea about . . . how far we must have come, both of us, to be able to make them shut their fat mouths once and for all . . .

And now? What did she think? That we were little circus animals? . . . well, no . . . before I arrived, I was in a crypt and he was in an isolation chamber. Today, we proved to you though that we were free, so great, it's over, go home,
 
but don't count on us to come eat sugar out of your hand. Because for us it wasn't a scene, you know . . .

It wasn't theater; they weren't characters. For us, they were Camille and Perdican, two little rich kids who blathered on too much and were super egotistical, but who helped us out when we were in hell and who sent us on our way during your applause, so move on with your need for a show, move on. We're no longer performing and will never perform again for the simple and good reason that it was never a performance in the first place.

And if you haven't already understood, you'll never understand, so . . . no apologies . . .

 

“You don't want to?” she repeated, all disappointed.

Franck looked at me and I said no with a tiny shake of my head. A sign that only he could see. A code. A murmur. A sign between Indian brothers.

So he turned toward her and said, in, like, a decisive and super-cool way:

“No, thank you. Billie isn't eager to do it, and I respect her wishes.”

And that really hit me with full force.

I still have the mark on my skin and I'll never do anything to hide it.

I'm too proud of it . . .

Because his kindness, his patience, Claudine's kindness, her grenadine that had been expired since 1984, her Pépito candies, her Banga soda, her warm hands on my neck when she was arranging my dress, the silence earlier, the applause to die for, the teacher who had never reckoned that she would do anything other than humiliate me or put zeros next to my name and who was now doing contortions in front of me so she could look good in front of the principal, all that was very nice, and though I wouldn't argue, it was zilch compared to what he had just said . . .

 

Zilch.

 

“I respect her wishes.”

 

He respected my wishes.

And in front of a teacher, too!

But . . . for me, certain evenings, it was a struggle just to have something to eat! There were mornings, I didn't even know if my . . . no, nothing . . . the word “respect” was so devoid of meaning that I didn't even understand why it was invented! I thought it was a dumb thing you concluded a letter with, like—“Respectfully yours, Mr. President”—with your signature underneath and all that . . . and this guy, this little Franck Mumu who must have weighed 110 pounds completely wet, what did he do? He made the teacher nervous in front of me and forced her to look at me in a pleading way.

 

Oh my God. It was a big deal.

It was something . . .

Excuse me? What, you fools? You
still
want to get on our case? Oh, well, no. No, thank you. It seems that Billie really doesn't want to and that someone respects her wishes.

Oh . . .

I was born at that moment . . .

Besides, as soon as Madame Guillet turned on her heels, I who never opened my mouth in class, I screamed. I screamed like a wild beast. Ostensibly to blow off steam, but really, I realize only now, it wasn't at all about stress that was subsiding or pressure that had to be released, it was the cry of a newborn . . .

I screamed, I laughed, I lived.

 

So, you know, little star, I'm really going to do everything to try to convince you to help us one more time, but if you don't want to, don't worry, I'll save Francky myself.

If necessary, I'll carry him on my back; I'll grit my teeth and go to the end of the world. Yes, if necessary, I'll drag him to the moon and we'll end up in the emergency room on planet Mars, but meanwhile, no worries, you and all the others, you can count on the fact that my will shall be done.

I
admit, I've been drawing out the pleasure but don't worry, the rest will go faster. Note that I don't have much choice, since the nights are short at the moment and I'd better get a move on if I want to finish telling you the whole story before you disappear.

But then, you understand, it's important because it's the show's first season. Like, the one that sets up everything to follow. Afterward there will just be more or less well-constructed episodes that come one after the other until we get to you.

Plus, you know them already . . .

You were there . . .

Yes . . .

You were there . . .

Okay, sometimes, it's true, you were distracted, but I know you were with us. I know.

 

In the first episode, I made a real effort because I just can't hold back when telling the story of how we met. Those scenes contain the heart of our friendship. Besides everything is there, everything . . . Our way of being, of not being, of chatting, of gossiping, of helping ourselves or loving ourselves. As I said to Francky one day, we're communicating vessels but with mud on the inside, so yes, it was important for me to do a good job recounting how we started out in life.

And that's okay, right? There are plenty of people who produce six-volume works about their childhood and then four more on the first time they used a condom, whereas I've given it to you in one scene. That's the right way to do it, admit it.

 

* * *

 

I won't say that everything was easy after that, but there were two of us, so actually yes, I'll say it: everything was easier after that. By recess on that same day, everyone was already calling us Camille and Perdican. Hey, that really put us on a pedestal, don't you think?

Precisely because we didn't want to repeat it, our performance became a sort of mythic thing, and anyone who was absent that day because they were sick or something, according to the others, it was as though they had missed an Olympic competition in which France took the gold.

The miles of ridiculously ornamental sentences that bratty girl from the trailer park just barely managed to perform, Franck Mumu's anger when he explained in a killer voice how a woman tears you apart with love, and our super beautiful made-to-order costumes: it became a big deal. I didn't get better grades for all that, nor did Franck make more friends, but okay, instead of insulting us, now everyone ignored us. So, thank you, Alfred de Musset, thank you.

(Though I insist, you didn't need to do in little Rosette to help your cause.) (If all men who were cheated on did the same thing, there wouldn't be many people left on this planet . . . )

 

* * *

 

Franck and I didn't become inseparable—too much still separated us: his really screwed-up father who had transformed his long-term unemployment into a crisis of extreme paranoia and spent all his time on the Internet exchanging top-secret information with his legionnaire friends from Christendom; his mother who swallowed kilos of Médoc to forget that she was living with such a nutcase; my own father who didn't need a computer to have the impression that he was a type of legionnaire on an official assignment; and my drunk of a stepmother with her pack of male rats, female rats, and baby rats who did nothing but howl all day long. No matter how hard we tried to rise above it, all that shit weighed us down.

Please excuse my vulgarity. In other words, all that misfortune clipped our wings. We were like little birds, dumped in bad nests . . .

Plus, because I was weaker than he, I always tried to join groups and get others to like me, while he was a loner. He was the hero of Jean-Jacques Goldman's song: the one about the guy who walked alone without a witness, without anyone, with his steps that ring out and the night that forgives him and all that.

His solitude was his crutch; mine was my gang of lousy girls.

Once or twice, at the beginning, I had tried to go talk to him during recess or to sit next to him in the cafeteria but even if he was nice to me, I sensed that I was upsetting him a little bit
 
so I stopped trying.

 

We spoke only on Wednesday afternoons because he went to have lunch at Claudine's house and because, as a result, I didn't take the bus in order to walk a little way with him.

At first, she invited me to stay, but since I always said no, she finally stopped asking.

I don't know why I refused. Always this story about a gift that was too precious to mess with, I think . . . I was afraid that if I went back to that house I would ruin things. Easter break was my only beautiful memory and I wasn't yet ready to remove it from the display case.

You might not realize it because I'm the only one speaking now since Francky is comatose and since, in the meantime, I've learned to express myself but back then, I was very nervous.

Very, very nervous . . .

 

It wasn't as though I had been really physically abused during my childhood, to the point of, like, my ending up on page one of
Détective
magazine or something, but I was always slapped around
just a little bit
.

All the time, all the time, all the time . . .

A little slap here, a little slap there, a blow from below, a little kick in the legs when I was in the way, or when I wasn't, hands always raised to make like, wait, I'm going to give you a smack and all that, and that made me . . . how can I put it?