No and Me Read online

  She never touches me any more. She doesn’t caress my hair or my cheek, or put her arm around my neck or my waist. She never hugs me.

  .

  Chapter 8

  I count one, two, three, four drops. I watch the ochre cloud dissolve in the water as the paint escapes the brush at the bottom of the glass, the colour spreads little by little, stains the liquid and disappears. I’ve been an insomniac for a long time, a word which ends like ‘maniac’ and ‘hypochondriac’. It’s one of those words that mean something’s gone off course. I take plant-extract capsules in the evening after dinner and when that doesn’t work my father gives me Rivotril, a medicine that takes you into a black hole where you don’t think about anything any more. I have to take them as infrequently as possible so that I don’t get used to them, but tonight I can’t get to sleep. I’ve been trying for hours. I’m counting everything that can be counted – sheep’s teeth, the sandman’s hair, and then his freckles and beauty spots. I’m like a heap beneath the quilt, my heart’s in my mouth. There are too many words in my head getting mixed up, all colliding in a giant pile-up. Scrambled phrases are fighting to get to the front and the sheep are baaing in unison in the background: ‘Miss Bertignac, you should factor in a section on social security’, ‘Chip, you do realise you look like Tinkerbell in that hat?’, ‘What time do you call this to come home?’, ‘No, I don’t want you to record . . .’, ‘A beer, please’, ‘Ladies, I’m going to cash up’, ‘No, I can’t tomorrow, how about the next day?’, ‘Umbrellas are pointless because I always lose them’, ‘Hey, let people get off before you get on’.

  I don’t know what made her agree in the end. I came back a few days later and she was outside the station. In front of the police branch office there was a whole camp of homeless people with tents, cardboard boxes, mattresses and stuff. She was standing talking to them. I went over to her and she introduced me to them straight away, her face dead straight and serious: ‘Roger, Momo and Michel’, then, with her hand outstretched to me: ‘Lou Bertignac, who’s come to interview me.’ Momo laughed. He didn’t have many teeth. Roger shook hands and Michel frowned. Roger and Momo wanted me to interview them too. They were laughing. Roger made his fist into a microphone and held it under Momo’s chin. ‘So, Momo, how long’s it been since you had a bath?’ I felt uncomfortable but tried not to let it show. I explained that it was for school (so that they didn’t get the idea that it was going to be on the eight o’clock news) and that the project was only about women. Roger said that it was all the fault of the idiots in the government and politicians were all crap. I nodded, because it seemed best to agree with him. He took a bit of dried sausage out of a plastic bag and cut some slices which he offered round, except to Momo (probably because he didn’t have enough teeth to eat it). I didn’t dare say no, even if I have to admit it really didn’t appeal at all, but I was too scared to risk annoying him. I swallowed it almost whole, without chewing. It tasted rancid. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything as bad as that, even in the school canteen.

  No and I went off to the café. I told her that her friends were nice, and she stopped and said, ‘On the streets you don’t have friends.’ That night when I got home I wrote that down in my notebook.

  At each meeting we arrange the next one. Sometimes she shows up and sometimes she doesn’t. I think about it all day. I can hardly wait for school to be over, and as soon as the bell rings I rush to the metro, always with this fear that I won’t see her again, the fear that something will have happened to her.

  She’s just turned eighteen. At the end of August she left an emergency hostel where she’d stayed for several months because she was still a minor. She lives on the streets, but she doesn’t like you saying that. There are some words she refuses to hear. I’m careful, because if she gets angry she stops talking – she bites her lip and looks at the ground. She doesn’t like adults, doesn’t trust them. She drinks beer, bites her nails and drags behind her a suitcase on wheels that contains her whole life. She smokes the cigarettes that people give her, roll-ups when she can buy tobacco. She closes her eyes when she wants to escape the world. She sleeps here and there, at Geneviève’s place, a friend she met at boarding school, who works on the deli counter in the Auchan superstore at Porte de Bagnolet. There’s a railway ticket inspector who takes her in from time to time, and she squats anywhere she can, depending on who she meets. She knows a boy who managed to get a tent from a charity and sleeps outside. Once or twice he’s taken her in and asks for nothing in return. She’s told me that if you go along the rue de Charenton, you can see his tent opposite number 29. That’s his spot. When she doesn’t know where she’s going to sleep she calls the social services helpline to find an emergency shelter, but it’s difficult as lots of them are closed until the winter.

  We have our usual table in the Relais d’Auvergne, a bit out of the way, and our habits and our way of being silent. She has a couple of beers, I have a hot chocolate. I know the yellowing walls like the back of my hand, the flaking paint, the polished glass wall-lamps, the frames and their outdated pictures, the grumpy waiter. I know No, her off-balance way of sitting, the way she hesitates and feels ashamed, the effort she makes to seem normal.

  We sit opposite each other. I can tell how tired she is from her face. It’s like a grey veil covering and enveloping her, and maybe protecting her too. In the end she let me take notes. At the beginning I didn’t dare ask questions, but now I launch in again and again, asking when, why, how. She doesn’t always play along, but sometimes it works, she really gets talking, her eyes lowered and her hands beneath the table. Sometimes she smiles. She tells me about the fear, the cold, the wandering around. The violence. The trips back and forth on the same metro line to kill time, the hours spent in cafés in front of an empty cup and the waiter who comes back four times to ask if Mademoiselle wants anything else, or in the launderettes because they’re warm and you can be quiet there, the or in libraries, especially Montparnasse, or in day centres, stations and parks.

  She tells me about this life, her life, the hours spent waiting, and the fear of the night.

  I leave her in the evening without knowing where she’s going to sleep. Most of the time she won’t answer. Sometimes she jumps up quickly because the hostel’s about to shut its doors and she has to rush to the other side of Paris to stand in a queue to get a number for her position in the list or a room, have a shower in a washroom that other people have made filthy and look for her bed in a dorm where the blankets are infested with fleas and lice. Sometimes she doesn’t know where she’s sleeping because she hasn’t managed to get through to the social services, whose emergency number is nearly always engaged, or because they’ve run out of places. I let her go off into the damp autumn night, her case bumping along behind her.

  Sometimes I leave her there, in front of an empty beer glass. I get up, sit down again, hang around, try to find something to comfort her. I can’t find the words. I don’t manage to go. She looks down and says nothing.

  And our silence is filled with all the world’s impotence. Our silence is like the return to the origin of things, their true state.

  .

  Chapter 9

  I had thought that she was hoping for something in return. The first time I handed her the package I’d prepared, she suddenly went all pale and said, ‘What are you thinking?’ I tried to give her my cap, my umbrella, my MP3 player and even some money. She refused them. All she’ll accept is the drinks I buy her. For a week or two I’ve been giving her the exact money when we meet so that she can wait for me in the café next time. It’s starting to get cold. Twice she spent the money before she came, but now the waiter knows us and he lets her sit down and order. I’ve told my parents that I’m preparing a presentation with Léa Germain and that I go round to her place to work on it. They’re pleased I’ve made a friend. They think it’s positive. Since I’ve got through all the birthday mo
ney my grandmother gave me (originally earmarked for the Encyclopedia Universalis on CD-Rom), I invent trips to the cinema with people from my class at eight euros a go. When I get home, I tell them about scenes from the film, with lots of made-up details, since my parents never go to the cinema anyway. And then I give my opinion, borrowed from 20 Minutes or À nous Paris, those free papers you get in the metro. I embroider and add my own little personal touches.

  We meet in the café. The station’s getting dangerous for No; she can’t stay in the same place for several days. That’s the way her life is. Settle. Move on. Avoid risks. On the streets there are rules and there are dangers. Best not to stand out. Keep your head down. Blend into the background. Don’t stray on to someone else’s turf. Don’t look people in the eye.

  Out there she’s nothing but prey.

  Today she’s telling me about how time seems suspended, stopped, the hours spent walking to keep your body from getting cold, the stops in Monoprix or department stores, wandering from one department to another, the strategies to avoid being noticed, getting chucked out by the security men. She describes the invisible places she’s learned to spot – cellars, car parks, warehouses, storage units, abandoned building sites, hangars. She doesn’t like talking about herself. The way she does it is by talking about other people’s lives – the people she meets, the ones she hangs around with. She tells me about how they drift and sometimes their violence. She talks about the women. She’s clear that they’re not tramps, not nuts. She says, ‘Make a careful note of that, Lou, you with your words.’ They’re normal women who’ve lost their jobs or run away from home. Women who’ve been beaten or thrown out, who stay in emergency shelters or live in their cars. Women you pass without noticing, without realising, who live in fleapit hotels, who queue up every day to feed their families and in winter wait for the soup kitchens to open.

  Another time she tells me about this guy who followed her for a whole day. She didn’t know how to get rid of him. He sat down beside her on a bench near the canal Saint-Martin. When she got up he stayed close behind her. She jumped the turnstile on the metro, slipped through the door and he did the same. She said, ‘You could tell that he had fuck-all else to do, he was a real thug. I see thousands like him, I can tell you.’ She ended up insulting him in the middle of the street; she screamed so loud that he took off. She’s always on the move, on the lookout. She can’t bear people looking at her. It’s the same in the café. If someone turns round she instantly gives them an earful: ‘Do you want a photo or something?’ or ‘What do you think you’re looking at?’ There’s something about her that makes an impression, forces respect. In general people get up and go off grumbling. Once a man muttered ‘poor girl’ or something. No got up and spat on the floor at his feet. There was such a look of violence in her eye that the guy went off without waiting for his change.

  Another time she tells me about a women who sleeps every night down the end of rue Oberkampf. She doesn’t want to be taken away. She settles herself down there every night in front of the florist’s with six or seven plastic bags. She gets out her quilt, positions her bags carefully around her and sleeps in the open every night. I ask how old she is. No doesn’t know. Well into her fifties, she reckons. She saw her the other day at the Little Brothers of the Poor centre. The woman was coming out with her feet all swollen. She was having trouble walking. She was bent double, completely hunched over, taking tiny little steps. No helped her to carry her bags to her spot. The woman said ‘how very kind of you’ and No adds, ‘You should hear the way she talks. Like a TV presenter or something.’

  Yesterday she was at the Saint-Eustache soup kitchen. There was a fight between two women over a fag end that was lying on the ground. The cigarette had only been half-smoked. It was as if they were fighting to the death. After they’d been separated, the younger one had a fistful of hair in her hand and the other one had blood in her mouth. For the first time No’s voice cracks. She stops talking. She has those images in her head and I can see they’re disturbing her. She says, ‘So that’s what you turn into. Animals. Fucking animals.’

  She describes her days to me, the things she sees and hears. I’m all ears – I hardly dare breathe. I’m sure she’s giving me a gift, her sort of gift, along with her frequent pouts, her look of disgust, and the harsh things she sometimes says – ‘leave me alone’ or ‘give me a fucking break’ or ‘so what do you believe?’ (It’s not really a question, but it comes up often as if she was saying to me: ‘what do you believe? What do you believe in? Do you believe in God?’) It’s a priceless gift, but one of such weight that I’m afraid I’m unworthy of it. It’s a gift that changes the world’s colours and calls all theories into question.

  .

  Chapter 10

  It’s a December day. The sky’s low and heavy, like in poetry. The café windows are steamed up and outside the rain’s bucketing down. My presentation’s in two days. I’ve filled a whole exercise book. I’m writing at top speed, afraid that this will be the last time. I’m afraid of the moment when I leave her. I’ve a feeling that something is missing, something important. I don’t know anything about her family or her parents. Every time I’ve tried she’s pretended not to hear or to be too tired, or she’s got up and had to go. The only thing I’ve managed to find out is that her mother lives in Ivry. She’s never taken care of her. No was put in a foster family when she was twelve. She’s seen her three or four times since, but that was ages ago. Her mother seems to have a son. She made a fresh start.

  This evening it’s too late, it’s too late for everything, that’s what I think. That’s what keeps coming into my head – it’s too late for her – and I’m going to go home.

  At what point is it too late? From what moment? The first time I met her? Six months ago, two years, five years? Can you get out of a fix like that? How do you find yourself at the age of eighteen out on the streets with nothing and no one? Are we so small, so very small, that the world continues to turn, immensely large, and couldn’t care less where we sleep? These are the questions I was claiming to answer. My notebook is full, I’ve done additional research on the Internet, I’ve collected articles, discovered reports, synthesised figures, statistics, trends, but none of it makes any sense, none of it is comprehensible, even if I had the highest IQ in the world. Here I am, my heart in bits, with nothing to say to her face. I have no answer. Here I am, paralysed, when all it would take would be to grasp her hand and tell her to come home with me.

  I note two or three things on the last page, just to try to appear composed.

  She’s silent. It’s six o’clock. Maybe this is the last time. She has nothing ahead of her, nothing more, no plan, no path, no way out. She doesn’t even know where she’s going to sleep tonight. I can see she’s thinking about it too, but she doesn’t say anything. Eventually I get up.

  ‘OK, well, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Are you staying here?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll stay for a bit.’

  ‘Do you want to order something else?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Will you . . . will you still be at the station . . . sometimes?’

  ‘Maybe. I dunno.’

  ‘We could meet on Tuesday. At the usual time? That way I could tell you about how my presentation went.’

  ‘Yeah, if you like.’

  I go down into the metro and I feel dizzy. It’s a much bigger fear than a presentation in front of the class, a fear that goes beyond what I’d feel if I was condemned to give a presentation every week till the end of my life, a fear that has no name.

  .

  Chapter 11

  ‘. . . There’s this invisible city within the city. The woman who sleeps in the same place every night with her quilt and her bags on the pavement. The men under the bridges, in the stations, the people lying on cardboard or huddled
on a bench. One day you begin to notice them. In the street or on the metro. Not just the ones who’re begging. The ones who’re hiding. You notice the way they walk, their baggy jackets, the pullovers with holes. One day you latch on to one of these silhouettes, to a person. You ask questions, try to find reasons and explanations. And then you begin to count. The others, the thousands. Like the symptom of our sick world. Things are what they are. But I believe we’ve got to keep our eyes wide open. That’s just the start.’

  That’s the conclusion. A glance at my watch. I haven’t gone over time. I must be about as red as my pullover. I keep my head down and don’t look at Mr Marin. I tidy my papers that are spread out on the desk. I have to get back to my own desk. I’m not sure I’ve got the strength – when I feel overwhelmed my legs turn to jelly. Why aren’t they saying anything? Why’s there silence all of a sudden? Have they all died? Are they laughing and I can’t hear it? Have I gone stone deaf? I don’t dare look up. If only I was fitted with an instant ten-minutes-into-the-future teleporter, that would be convenient.

  They’re clapping. It’s not a dream. I can really hear it. So I look. I’m facing the whole class and they’re applauding, even Léa Germain and Axelle Vernoux. Mr Marin’s smiling.

  Back at my desk I’m so tired I could fall asleep right here and now, as if I’d used a whole year’s energy in a single hour, as if I had given it everything and have nothing left, not a single spark, not even the strength to get me home. Mr Marin’s given me 18 out of 20. He ends the lesson by giving us some definitions and we take notes: social security benefit, free health care, income support (only for over-25s), the underclass, eviction . . .