All the Way (3 page)

Was it
sexual
? Did it affect people who, like her, thought constantly about things that others didn't seem to think about?

Concepción, pretty now, a ponytail bouncing on her shoulders, was playing elastics with Rose and Nathalie. She imagined her tripping as she jumped and falling with her gob wide open onto a spoon that busted her brain.
Crack
.

There is also a photo in the living room. It is there just like the curtains and the pewter trinkets, and a whole pile of things that don't have a name precisely because they are just there, there from before, before her, Solange. The little boy belongs to the photo like the object hanging next to it belongs to the wall, and another object belongs to the mantelpiece. When people ask, they're told that the object on the wall is a
warming pan
; it was used in the past when there was no heating. The thing was filled up with live embers and, thanks to the long handle, the beds were
warmed.
The object on the mantelpiece is a telescope, it belonged to a great-grandfather who was a sailor.

‘Go to the carnival all by yourself ? At your age? All by yourself. With so many idiot drivers zooming round those bends. And
which
dress? Well, we'll see about that. The red dogs. At ten o'clock at night. Do you know what happens to girls who go to the carnival all by themselves in a dress with red dogs on it at ten o'clock at night? No, I was not sleeping. Why didn't your parents telephone me? They didn't think twice all the other times.'

Monsieur Bihotz is red, huge and swaying on his feet, but as soon as he gets too close to that topic, to her parents, he backs off. His muzzle has brushed the electric fence. He calms down.

‘Come over here.' He hugs her very hard and, bending down, rests his big head on her neck. He's got that ‘mystical' look, that's Rose's word for when people get that look she finds ridiculous, like they're on another planet, unhinged from ‘real life'. And he looks at the garden in silence, as if they were the only survivors on Earth. As if all that remained in the village was their house, and all that was left of humanity was the two of them.

What was worse, to go or not to go to the carnival, to risk it, hoping they all have other fish to fry, rather than stay in her room, in the shafts of the setting sun, with the blare of the brass band muffled behind the shutters, at ten o'clock at night in the month of June?

She tries to keep a diary, like Rose. Rose even gave her a Hallmark notebook for her birthday. But it's fiddly. Life is boring. Nevertheless, says Rose, we mustn't forget our youth, mustn't forget what we used to be and become old farts.

Perhaps she should tape herself. She uses the same tape recorder her father used when he tried to learn English.

She presses Record:

I was allowed to go to the carnival. It was ten o'clock at night
and it was hot. I put on my dress with the red dogs. I went on the
dodgem cars with Rose and Christian. Rose is my best friend. Christian
and I are in love. No one knows except Rose. Lots of kids from school
were there but no one

She's not sure about saying ‘pissed me off '.

annoyed me. I've decided to keep this diary every day from now on. Signed Solange. Top secret.

She presses Pause. The tape emits a tiny sound, as if it was groaning with the effort. She releases the Pause button.

Get stuffed anyone who listens to this.

She presses Rewind. Then Play. The tape turns with a slight
chchch
.

‘It was ten o'clock at night and it was hot.' A plaintive, mannered voice. Like her mother's. Not her own voice. Rose told her that the skull is like a sound box and that the voice in your head is not the voice others hear. Oddly enough that seems to make sense to her.

In her father's car there are magazines, copies of
Jours de
France
and of
Lui
. Parked in front of a house at the end of a road, as the leaves of the poplars go
poc poc
on the hood of the car, she enters into a forest of naked women. They've all got the same slit between their legs, except that it has a different effect on her than seeing Peggy Salami's slit. The women look at her straight in the eye, their fingers in their furrow, their legs spread wide. Some of them have pubic hair, some don't (like her), or almost none (like her). She grasps a few words,
panting and arched over
, a bit unusual but immediately effective. The women's gaze, and their fingers, and what else—the surprise, the need to wee from the moment she got in the car, the company of all these women, women just like her, she is just like these women, she plunges her hand inside her jeans and rubs, fast, it's a bit dry, the women are looking at her and she's
panting and arched over
and the relief is immediate, and something moist gets in her fingers, that's odd, she didn't actually wet her pants.

The Russians have invaded Afghanistan. Her mother buys kilos of sugar and flour, and bulk containers of water. ‘Here we go again, just like in sixty-two,' says Georges, who's come to sample more rosé. ‘The Bay of Pigs?' asks her mother. ‘No, what a dimwit,' says her father, ‘the Missile Crisis, but you bought sugar both times.'

She looks out at the terrace, and beyond, to Monsieur Bihotz's, his shed, the chickens and further beyond to the wooded area. In its place, she imagines an obsidian valley. She read about it in a science-fiction book. It's like black glass. Obsidian covers the whole landscape: the houses, the shed, and the crater of the dried-up pond, and the petrified tree trunks. The path up to the village is made of obsidian, and the church tower, and the people too, all in obsidian.

The missiles leave the Soviet Union and right now are heading towards the village. Georges and her father are drinking rosé and her mother is clearing up, uptight and upset as usual. Monsieur Bihotz must be watching television and all the others are tucked away in their houses too, the nine Lavinasse sons, and the six Boursenave children, and Raphaël Bidegarraï, and Rose and her family, tucked away in Rose's house. And everything is going to vitrify. And by the time the Americans send their own missiles, they will be destroyed in turn, and the Russians will no longer exist but their missiles will still be cruising, like those vanished stars that still sparkle in the sky. And, just like the village, the entire Earth will have melted under lava that has cooled and formed into black glass. And if an extraterrestrial turns up, it will take him a while to recognise inside the glass whatever used to be alive—it will look like minuscule bees in amber, smaller than all that matter in which it is trapped.

And her mother is shouting for her to come and help her clear up, but if she stops visualising the obsidian garden it will actually happen. And they will all die, her parents, Monsieur Bihotz, Rose and Raphaël and everyone—statues of black glass.

Coupling
n. The action of coupling or engaging in mating. || The coming together of two individuals of the same animal species, necessary for reproduction. (See
encycl.
) || Device used to connect two or more pieces of a machine. encycl.
Coupling
has not been identified in most marine animals (sea urchins, bony fish) but it is essential to all species that reproduce outside water (insects, advanced vertebrates). It can even be found occurring among hermaphrodites (snails, earthworms).

This is in the first section of the
Nouveau Larousse
universel
—just after
come
v. (
to come clean about her crimes
); (
to
come the grande dame
)—and before
courage
n. (
it takes courage
to stand up for your rights
). This dictionary dates from a year before she was born, as if her parents, too, needed to resort to an entry on zoological cycles in order to understand something about the distinctions between things: water/ land, vegetable/animal, man/woman, dead/alive.

Sex
[seks] n. (lat.
sexus
, from
secare
, to cut). Each of the two complementary adult divisions of a species, the union of which guarantees reproduction. (See chart reproduction and
encycl.
) || The organ of biological generation. ||
The weaker sex, the fair sex
, women. ||
The stronger sex
, men. encycl. The difference between the sexes can be almost negligible (mushrooms, algae, sea urchins, various fish, pigeons) or enhanced by
secondary sexual characteristics
more or less accentuated (deer's antlers, cock's spur, stag beetle's mandible). Sometimes the female retains a larval characteristic (glow-worm) or, conversely, it may be the male that is the diminutive member (
ceratias
fish). A great diversity of appearance can be found among butterflies in particular. In hermaphrodite species (snails, earthworms) each individual creature is both male and female. The organ that develops the fertilising gamete (testicle in animals, stamen in plants) is called ‘male'. The organ that develops the fertilised gamete (ovary in animals, pistil in plants) is called ‘female'.)

The
REPRODUCTION
chart, opposite the coloured plate of
REPTILES
, shows, in black and white, a couple of fish, a colony of aphids, algae, and an interesting-looking fleshy cap, fat and shiny, full of folds opening around a swollen knot: a
coupling
(slugs). In one corner there is a label
AUTOFERTILISATION
(‘very rare: Barberry plant, tapeworm').

There's no entry for
faggot
—just then her mother opens the bedroom door to bring in her clean washing.

Barberry
n. Bush with thorns, yellow flowers and red berries (of the Berberidaceae family).

As for
tapeworm
, it's totally disgusting.

Her mother leaves the room.

Between
peninsula
and
penitent
is ‘
penis
n. Male mating organ', which cross-references ‘
rod
[rod] n. A thin straight metal bar || A silver-tipped staff, or wand, insignia of vergers. || A stick or bundle of sticks used for punishment. || Male organ of copulation (rod, cylindrical, ending in the glans, where the urinary meatus opens). [Syn. penis.] ||
Nau
. The straight bar of an anchor, at one end of which is another transverse rod, at right angle to the arms or claws of the anchor.'

There's nothing for dick except ‘
Spotted dick
n. a British steamed suet pudding containing dried fruit (usually currants) commonly served with custard. And
glans
only says it's Latin for ‘acorn', or beechmast, brown nuts, pairs of which are enclosed in a prickly case.

All was not lost. There were still some people who didn't think she was a complete weirdo. Before her father's dick burst onto the scene, the carnival had been more or less fun. Rose had taken her over to climb in behind Christian in his dodgem car. Music, lights, throbbing and spinning, their bodies tossed every which way. Rose, sitting up front, toppled onto Christian and the lights were blinding and Solange's heart was pounding and in her belly it felt very hot and everything was spinning. ‘Keep your hands inside!' yelled Rose.

Then she followed them to the shooting gallery. You have to be twelve or over to shoot but Rose looks older, she's already got boobs. A little white ball quivers in a wire cage. It looks like a terrified ghost. There's an ear-splitting explosion and the ball disappears.

Then they each buy some fairy floss and they have two francs, forty-five centimes left, and then her father flashes his dick.

She runs down the slope towards her street. The music fades. She has a pain in her belly but her legs are running by themselves, running faster than her. It's dark, the moon shines a white spotlight. There's no wind, the trees are still, stencilled shadows, and thousands of eyes are looking at her.

Someone is sitting on the terrace. It's Georges' girlfriend. She's asleep, tipped backwards in her chair. A camembert has melted all over the table and a big drip of it is hanging above her knees. It's really freaky. The hot air is like a perfectly adjusted volume control. Chairs, table, bottles of wine and Georges' girlfriend, trees, house, street: there's no more variation possible. Solange is the only one able to move, slowly, to activate her thorax in order to catch her breath.

All the doors are open. In her parents' bedroom, a bedside lamp has fallen over. It's hot, a yellow, murky heat. Her mother is on the bed, fully clothed, her face buried in the pillow. Obviously she's not asleep because her head turns beneath her hair and she says, ‘Have you seen your father?'

Yes.

‘Who was he with?'

With Georges.

Her mother's face is red and puffy. ‘Only Georges? No one else?'

Yes.

Her mother reaches out her hand. ‘What have you done to your hair? Have you cut your hair?' She pulls on a strand, like she's lengthening it. ‘And your dress? Look at your dress!'