Apocalypse Baby. Виржини Депант

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СКАЧАТЬ I’d like you to be there, you never know . . .”

      “As your assistant? Great.”

      “Look, kid, chill out, can’t you? You haven’t got the slightest idea how to run an inquiry, so just be a good girl, follow my lead, and do what I say. If you don’t like it, you can get out right now, and deal with your own problems. Okay? This cheapskate inquiry of yours, all right, I’ll do it. But if you’ve got self-esteem issues, just sort them out yourself.”

      She says all this without getting angry. I think she’s even hiding a smile by the end, seeing the look on my face. We’re blocked by a delivery truck that’s created a small traffic jam. I sulk and look out of the window. Some morons are hooting their horns behind us. Three young girls cross the road. Parisian style on the cheap. Slim, long-legged, fashionable little furry boots, big busts, and big tote bags with fringes. Cut-price copies of authentically rich sluts from the Marais, the kind who put on a tarty look but make you think of ads for perfume, not of little working-class girls from the projects.

      The Hyena leans out of her window. She gives an admiring wolf whistle. The girls turn around, looking blasé, but they can’t conceal a movement of surprise—or shock—when they see it comes from our car. The Hyena gives them a thumbs up, to show she thinks they look good, and also sees fit to insist, yelling, “Hiya girls! Love the look!”

      They hurry on and don’t burst into nervous giggles until they’re about a hundred feet away. The Hyena adjusts her dark glasses in the mirror, shrugs, and notes, with magnanimity, “They weren’t that marvelous, but hey, it cheers them up, doesn’t it?”

      “They were very young, that’s what struck me.”

      As if that was the problem.

      “I like girls. I like girls too much. Of course I prefer dykes, but I like all girls.”

      “Don’t you think they might feel insulted getting whistled at in the street?

      “Insulted? No, they’re hets, they’re used to being treated like dogs, they think it’s normal. But it’s a nice change to hear it from a superb specimen like me. Even if they don’t realize it, it lights up a tiny utopian candle in their poor little heads, after being smothered by heterocentrist macho awfulness.”

      “How do you know they’re straight? Is it written on their faces or what?”

      “Of course. I can spot a dyke from behind at five hundred feet. I’ve got radar. We all do. How do you think we’d ever find someone to have sex with if we didn’t have a sixth sense to spot each other?”

      “Sorry. I didn’t know you needed a sixth sense for sexual orientation.”

      Finally, we get past the delivery van, and she glances rapidly at me before pronouncing, still with a smile, “Jeez, it must be really tough being you.”

      THE MINUTE YOU get inside the door of Valentine’s posh school, you’re suffocated by that typical atmosphere of factories for turning out kids. A mixture of boredom and rebelliousness. I’ve gotten used to waiting outside school gates, but I’ve never before had occasion to go inside. The headmistress comes to fetch us, and we go along the main corridor, where the classroom doors are still open. The sight of all the tables lined up, the blackboards, and the maps hanging on the walls suddenly makes me want to cry. The only memory I have of my school is looking at my watch. How long till the end of the lesson, how long till the end of the day. Even my work, which often bores me, has never made me feel so cooped up. And yet I’m pierced with nostalgia, with that sadistic and seductive pull that is so typical of it. I’d be hard put to find a rational explanation: there’s nothing about my high school years that I miss. I was an average student, I didn’t have any close friendships, I didn’t have a crush on any teacher. Blank years of deep boredom. So who knows why tears come to my eyes when I see that they’re still writing in chalk on a big blackboard.

      The headmistress is obese, affable, and competent. She’s wearing a black-and-orange outfit and makes the fabric ripple every time she moves. The Hyena has put on a denim jacket to cover up the tattoos on her arms, but doesn’t take off her dark glasses during the interview. She has introduced herself as my assistant, which doesn’t stop the headmistress from addressing all remarks to her. She’s taller, thinner, more beautiful, and more confident: so she’s the one people want to talk to. I generally inspire a slight revulsion in people, I think it’s because I’m so ill at ease that they prefer not to look me in the face if they can avoid it. I’m fascinated by the vast size of the headmistress. She really takes up a lot of room. The Hyena has sat down as usual, legs apart, chin up, and is asking a series of precise questions, taking down notes on a little pad, in her tiny close-packed writing. I wonder what this lady thinks about the huge skull rings.

      “. . . yes, often absent, which is a real problem for us. Apart from the last two weeks, when she’s attended all her lessons, we’ve had trouble getting her to come regularly. She doesn’t turn up for detentions either . . . I discussed her a lot with her teachers before the police came. She didn’t confide in any of them in particular. She had good grade averages on the whole. This is a private school, and we specialize in helping students who haven’t performed well elsewhere. That’s not exactly her problem. Valentine wasn’t outstanding, but she didn’t have any trouble with her school work.”

      “Was she good at any subjects in particular?”

      I ask myself what criteria the Hyena has in the questions she asks. As if the head is going to tell us that she was good at math and, eureka, we’d go and look for her in a chess tournament. The thing is, she puts her questions with such aplomb, and this ingratiating air of being serious and concerned, that the person facing her offers answers without realizing the absurdity of the conversation.

      “No, there are some assignments she hands in, and gets reasonable grades for”—the head is turning over the records so that the Hyena can see them, she’s completely eliminated me from her field of vision—“and there are some tests or assignments she doesn’t deign to do at all. That’s why her average has gone down, you see: she has zeroes in every subject somewhere, but the grades she does get are around ten out of twenty. Which is quite good, for these students.”

      The Hyena has more shock questions up her sleeve. If she carries on like this we’ll be here all afternoon. I try not to fall asleep.

      “And how did she get along with her classmates?”

      “Well, again, I asked her teachers, before talking to the police . . . but I didn’t gather much, I’m afraid. She’s never been scolded for mouthing off or fighting, she wasn’t a chatterbox. I saw her apparently getting along with the other students when she was here, but I’ve never noticed her making particular friends with any group or individual. Let’s say that she mostly turned up because she’d been told to, and we do insist on that, and because her grandmother kept tabs on her, but we never sensed any enthusiasm. The possibility of expelling her had come up several times, because we can’t accept a child who makes the others think school is optional, but we never took that step, because it’s equally hard to expel a child who has never caused any discipline problems.”

      Blah blah blah, I’ve already noted the fees: at three thousand five hundred euros a term, I imagine that students who are expelled from this school must at the very least have tried to massacre the others with a chainsaw.

      The head accompanies us to the main door, repeating to the Hyena that no, the police don’t seem to know at all what’s happened. I wait for her to go back in.

      “Lucky we came, eh? Fantastically interesting. СКАЧАТЬ