Billie (15 page)

I nodded my head.

And I calmed down.

For him.

 

In the evening, in the shelter of the tent, he made walking sticks for the children with his lovely knife.

He is a chiseler without equal, and when he had finished he handed each of them a little jewel of a stick and their smiles were too adorable.

They each got one with their initials and a personal symbol carved in the bark. For the boy, a sword and for the girls, a star and a heart.

I threw a hissy fit so I got one too. A stick longer and fatter with an artistic
B
and the head of my dog just below it. When he presented it to me, I had exactly the same smile as the little ones, but a lot more childlike.

Then we slept like dormice.

 

The next morning, I was in a good mood again.

Take note, little star, I didn't have much choice because the scenery was really beautiful.

Nothing can resist so much beauty . . . and especially not human stupidity . . . so all was well. Since he saw that I was relaxed, Franck relaxed too and since we didn't have the right to a little donkey because we lived in sin, we went ahead of the group so the other spoilsport wouldn't irritate us.

After all, we each have to live our own lives, right?

Yes, of course . . .

Our own lives . . .

God is wise and will sort the good ones out.

Right then we ran into a huge flock of sheep. Okay, in the beginning, it was fine, but after a while, I'd had enough of them.

If you've seen one sheep, you've pretty much seen them all; there's not much difference. I was pulling Franck by the sleeve to get back on the hiking trail, but then Bam! Jesus!

My Francky was struck by lightning.

Vision. Apparition. Revelation. Fulguration. Palpitation. Consternation.

The shepherd.

S
eriously, I swear, he really looked like Jesus Christ, and he was way too sexy.

Beautiful, smiling, tanned, copper-colored, golden, slender, muscular, bearded, curly haired, cool, calm, radiant, bare chested, in a short loincloth with leather sandals and a knotted stick.

Franck was salivating like the wolf in the Tex Avery cartoons, right in the middle of a flock of sheep.

It was divine to see . . .

Hey, I was also eager to receive communion directly from God!

 

We chatted a bit . . . well . . . we tried to chat rather than stare.

Franck asked him if the solitude wasn't too unbearable (the little flirt . . . ) and I asked tons of questions about his dogs and then we saw our friends the Crewcuts and Co. off in the distance so we said good-bye to the shepherd and went to join them without really joining them, because we were afraid of getting lost.

Just before that, we asked him where he was going and he indicated a little mountain nearby.

Okay, good-bye then . . .

 

O! Lord . . . how cruel You are with Your flocks! Mass is over, but it was really too short!

 

It goes without saying that I kept on teasing Francky about it in the hours that followed.

When it came time to picnic, Mr. Crewcut asked him if he wanted some sausage.

“Only if you put it in a shepherd's pie!” I answered and that made me giggle nonstop for at least two minutes.

 

Sorry.

I apologize a thousand times.

Mrs. Crewcut started to worry and Franck told her, sighing, that I was allergic to pollen.

And that started me giggling for two minutes more.

Aaaah . . . I was beginning to really like this little outing!

 

Franck pretended to lose his patience but he was happy too . . .

We both knew where we had come from and each time we saw the other happy, we enjoyed it for the other person, we enjoyed it ourselves, and we also enjoyed it because we had triumphed over the crappy hand we were dealt.

 

To celebrate, I waited until Mr. Anti-Gay Marriage went off to take a piss and I gave an entire apple to my little Dollster.

He gulped it down right away and to thank me, he planted a kind of big warm and fuzzy kiss on my neck.

Ooooh . . . I was already beginning to miss him . . . Plus, in front of my boutique with a straw hat with two holes and baskets filled with flowers on his back, he would have looked way too classy.

 

So, there you have it, little star . . . Everything was going well and if it all went downhill, it really wasn't our fault, seeing as we had been seriously touched by grace and were walking on water.

We were transfigured.

We were adoring our trip in the Cévennes.

We were a-dor-ing it.

We were as different as we could possibly be from the little sheep we had been.

 

The picnic finished, we decided to take a break because it was really hot and the little girl had fallen asleep in her mommy's arms.

(I know, I shouldn't say it . . . there's no point . . . no point at all . . . but really . . . I felt a bit strange . . . )

I know I'll never have kids. And that's not just a silly turn of phrase. It's an absolute certainty. I don't want any. That's all. But when I saw the face of this woman who was looking at her little darling and how she arranged herself to keep the girl in the shade by wriggling her hips however she could and by scraping her butt under that tree all while being really careful not to wake her I couldn't stop from telling myself that my mother must have been really sick in the head . . . really sick . . . since I had been even smaller than that . . .

(Okay, forget it, it's not important.)

 

To stop thinking about it, I turned sideways and nodded off on my Francky's stomach.

To hell with you, Life!

I
don't know if it was because I was tired from the hike, or because of the shepherd's belly
,
or because of the scene of Mother and Child, but I slept badly that night . . .

In fact, I didn't sleep at all.

And poor Franck suffered too. Since I'm selfish and didn't want to be all alone with my insomnia, I tried to prolong the conversation. And of course, like a rat stuck in a maze, babbling in circles, I finally got to the point and muttered in the dark that I was not even four years old but only eleven months and that really, I didn't understand . . .

He was annoyed. I think he had gone off to fondle himself all night while praying to Jesus, so he pushed me away.

So I slept even less and he slept less too.

So there you have it, little star . . . You see, I'm already beginning to set the stage: when we took up the trail again that morning to go meet up with the rest of the group on the plateau whose name I no longer remember, the vacation snapshot was already a bit dog-eared . . .

 

It was the first time in my life that I had been confronted with a mommy in action, and a nice one too, and that had a bad effect on me. I said nothing and continued to act as ditzy as before, but I felt something deep inside me that was beginning to send out distress signals.

Instead of looking at the sky, the sun, the clouds, the beautiful scenery, the butterflies, the flowers, and the stone cottages, I was obsessed with that woman.

I listened to the sound of her voice, I looked at where she put her hands on the body of her children (always the sweetest spots: the neck, the hair, the cheeks, the chubby part of the little calves), what she fed them, how she answered their questions, how she never made a mistake with their names, and that way she had of always discreetly checking on them out of the corner of one eye . . . it was killing me.

All that tenderness was killing me . . . All that injustice . . . That enormous hollow lack that jumped into my mouth each time I turned my head toward her . . .

So I clung to Franck like a leech but since I got the sense I was bothering him, I banished myself to a corner of the tent.

 

After lunch, since I was still feeling down, I asked if I could lead the little Donkster.

So that I might get over at least
one
of my anxieties . . .

 

Sergeant Crewcut let me take over, firing off a thousand ridiculous warnings (like he was entrusting me with a pitbull on amphetamines who had not eaten anything for a week, and so on) and to take my mind off things, I threw myself into a diabolical seduction plan.

I whispered in Donkster's big ear that rattled with pleasure: “Are you sure you don't want to come to Paris with me? I'll slip you all my faded roses to munch on and I'll take you to flirt with the little female donkeys in the Luxembourg Gardens . . . Plus I'll pick up your droppings, I'll put them in way too cute little jute canvas bags and I'll sell them for a fortune to all the losers who make lousy vegetable gardens on their balconies.

“Go on, say yes . . . you're not sick of carrying our stuff? You don't want to live a beautiful life? I'll dye your mane blue lavender and we'll go drink mojitos on the Champs Élysées.

“Because I noticed that you really like mint leaves, right, my little friend?

“Go on, my Dollster . . . Don't be stubborn . . . ”

His big sweet eyes looked at me gently. He didn't look opposed to the idea and rubbed himself on my arm from time to time to drive off the flies and to force me to continue to make him bray again a little with all my foolishness.

So I felt better.

I felt better and didn't pay any attention to Mommy Crewcut's sweetness and to her husband's phenomenal stupidity.

 

You see, little star, it wasn't premeditated at all. The day before, I had swallowed that dirty little piece of the Morels that had stopped me from living, and there was no hatred left in me.

I hope you believe me.

You have to believe me.

I always tell the truth to you and Franck.

 

* * *

 

Okay, you're ready?

Okay. I'll tell you everything then . . .

 

At one point, the little boy who had dreamed about it for days and nights, again asked if he could lead the little donkey, too.

His father said no and I said yes.

Exactly at the same time.

And then came a big lull in the conversation.

 

“It's okay,” I said, “he's completely calm and totally gentle . . . Look, I was super afraid and then everything went fine . . . If you want, I'll stay right behind your son in case there's a problem, okay?”

Mr. Crewcut was really pissed but he had to give in because everyone was saying I was right, that our donkey was not a donkey but a lamb and that he should trust the children and all that.

HeilHitler finally relented, but we had the feeling he was placing his kid in the sights of his pump-action shotgun so it wasn't in the little one's interest to screw up.

Lovely.

 

The kid was so happy. Like, Ben-Hur at the steering wheel of his Lamborghini, you might say.

As promised, I kept behind him, and like his mommy, sometimes, I discreetly touched his hair.

Just like that.

To see . . .

And, since everything was going well, we finally all relaxed.

About a half hour later, he announced that he'd had enough of leading Donkster and wanted to return him to me so he could go back to looking for fossils.

“No way,” his father retorted, only too happy to be able to regain his authority in the eyes of the group. “You wanted to lead him, well, now you have to carry through. You need to learn that we make choices in life, my dear Antoine. You decided to be responsible for this animal, very well, so now you be quiet and lead him until we get to the camp, got it?”

 

This bullshit again?

Oh, oh . . . I was really going to have to get mixed up in this conversation.

Oh, oh . . . where are you, my Francky?

Don't stay too far behind, sweetie, because I'm getting the feeling my shirt is about to burst . . .

And I look a little green about the gills, don't you think?

 

So this little Antoine, who was super cute, a super good walker, super happy, super brave, super easygoing, super affectionate, and super sweet with his little sisters, began to whimper, calling for his mother.

And then his father gave him a mean little slap behind the head to teach him a lesson.

 

Oh, fuck . . .

Oh, I recognized it . . .

I recognized it because I know it by heart.

It was the worst.

The weakest of the weak.

The most vicious.

The most painful.

The kind that doesn't leave a mark but detaches you from your cerebellum in a second.

The kind that gives you whiplash inside.

The kind that no one ever suspects and that so shakes your cranium, making you unable to think for a moment, and that rattles you for the rest of your life.

 

Oh, fuck . . .

My little Proustian madeleine . . .

Fine, I didn't think about all that at the time, of course. Besides, I didn't think about it at all since it was tattooed into my skin.

Plus I didn't have time to think because I was making a big arc behind my back with my Francky's walking stick, which was as beautiful as a piece of Van Cleef jewelry, and which I smashed to pieces with a direct hit the face of this gentleman with a crewcut who had just raised a hand against a child.

A direct hit.

Face smashed.

Nose gone.

Mouth gone.

Everything.

 

Only blood, between his fingers and all over his face.

And squeals.

Pig squeals, of course.

 

Oh what a mess . . .

Plus, because of my brusque gesture and my raised stick, the donkey got scared and took off at a triple gallop for Kathmandu with all our provisions on his back.

Oh what a mess . . .