La Marquise can’t accept that I put off her advances, that I don’t respond when she gives me a syrupy smile or makes eyes at me. All she wants is to co-opt me, to make me join the pack she controls. La Marquise doesn’t understand that I won’t follow the piper. Although I have explained to her: the only instrument that’s ever roused me is my own, but it didn’t convince her to fucking leave me alone. As her natural charms weren’t enough to bring me into the fold, she started to bad-mouth me. It’s Oscar who told me. So, as a matter of form and just to bug her, I gathered all my rage and went to demand an explanation from her. She was sitting in one of the armchairs in the lounge, between Julie Horn and Jennifer Ness. I parked myself right in front of her.
“Apparently I have a serious effect on you, La Marquise, to the point you can’t stop talking about me. I’d like to know what you’re saying.”
Lady Snotnose immediately gags, while her two ladies-in-waiting exchange worried glances. Since the answer is slow in coming, I settle into a chair.
“Well?”
Well, I found out – what she was saying. It shot out all at once, like a cannonball, or a terrible stomach cramp, no, like diarrhea. I’m arrogant, I’m conceited, and I’m pretentious, she claims. There it is. With her two cohorts approving.
I find this funny and rather brief. No matter how much I tell them I do not take myself for the Pope, or Napoleon, or even Pythagoras, they won’t be convinced. Actually, they’re the ones who take me for someone else, who see in me someone I’m not. As for me, I’m true to myself in all things.
“If you absolutely want to see someone ’who takes himself for someone else,’ consider for a moment that blowhard, Nihil, the barbarian philosopher. Just one look and you can tell he thinks he’s superior. Dear old Nihil believes he’s the omphalos of the world, the umbilicus of philosophy. Pretty strange for a devotee of cosmology who’s forever declaring and preaching that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, that mankind is not the centre of the Earth.”
Jennifer Ness looks at me, her face tilted to one side, like a dog intrigued by a bone that’s not shaped like a bone. It’s my smile that bothers her. How can I smile after being insulted like that? There are things even the smartest dogs will never understand; dogs will always remain dogs. I see them bristling, the three of them. I’m nasty. A little revenge is in order, if only for the sake of propriety, to prove to them that I am indeed me and no one else.
They would have liked for me to be contrite, to be upset on discovering what a poor opinion they have of me. I tell them to go to hell, to go screw themselves, that it would do them good to get stuffed a bit, that it would broaden their minds. I pour it on insatiably. They’re becoming more up-tight with every passing minute, I tell them. And certain people might do well to take themselves for someone else, they could choose any model at all, it was sure to be better than the original.
“You’re nothing but little stoup tadpoles, sweethearts, frogs if you prefer, merino lambs just begging to be shorn, foul little bugs, disgusting but harmless. You fill me with only one desire: to scratch. Next time you want to incite me to confess and repent you ought to go about it differently. It occurs to me you might be more persuasive in the raw, but I doubt it.”
Jennifer Ness is crying. She imagines this’ll soften me. I’d rather convince myself that it irritates me.
“Crying will get you nowhere! You’re wasting energy and water. Think of all the deserts running over the world! You can dry your crocodile tears, they won’t work. Nematodes of your sort are deprived of lachrymal glands and the only feeling they’re apt to experience amounts to semi-comatose contentment when, like any true parasite, they find a big fat juicy intestine to gorge on.”
La Marquise and Julie Horn can’t it take any longer. They protest loudly, order me to be quiet. Not very impressive. I get up. I pity them. I leave.
Still, I didn’t feel like moving any more after that, because life was pressing down on me. At first I was quite glad to have told them where to get off, the three bitches. It does you good to know you can defend yourself. But once I was outside, going down the hill toward the ordinary world, I soon felt heavier and looked for a bench to sit down. Not that I had any regrets, but it hurt me to realize once again how truly warped the human race is.
It was five o’clock and already dark, due to the autumn’s advancing a little more every day. After an hour on the bench, I’d regained enough strength to lift the nothingness I was wrapped in, and I took the metro home. I got off at the Pie-IX station, as usual, but didn’t wait for the bus. I preferred to walk by way of the Botanical Gardens, even though it was a longer route. You kill time as best you can, otherwise time kills you.
As I arrived in front of my house, I crossed paths with the neighbour’s lover, who was going the other way. The neighbour is a small divorcée, in her prime, thirtyish and good-looking, who tops up her alimony by working as an exclusive mistress. Our two houses are only a few paces apart, and my bedroom window looks out almost directly on hers. Often, summer nights, especially during heat spells, when windows are kept open, I hear her diligently working away. She’s got rhythm, and him, he’s got quite a bit of stamina for a guy fast approaching fifty. On the other hand, he doesn’t have much of a vocabulary; all he could say was “yes, yes” over and over.
He’s a CEO, according to my taurine father, who’s made his acquaintance, having met him a few times at Chamber of Commerce luncheons and other droll events for businessmen on the lookout for contacts and adventures. He’s American. Heads the local United Motors plant – that’s where the multinational builds its engines for the fighters and bombers that pound the hell out of the Vietnamese and Cambodians. He’s quite discreet, the CEO. Always shows up in a taxi, even though he has a chauffeur, as I’ve been told by Taurus. As a rule, he leaves around twelve, never stays overnight. His wife would probably worry too much if he were to sleep away from home so often, since he comes about twice a week to have Mrs. Mistress earn her keep.
I turned on the TV as soon as I came in. The good thing about my parents being away is that I can do whatever I please. The piss-off is that I have to make my own meals and do my own laundry. When it’s only for a few days, that’s fine, but in this case I’m looking at upwards of two and a half months. Ever since Taurus decided to go into semi-retirement, my parents spend several months a year at their Florida condo. When it comes to castles in Spain, you take what you can get. I’m an only child and quite capable, it would appear, of getting by on my own. Because you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, as Taurus says about anything and everything.
I opened the fridge; I found an old slice of pizza delivered the night before and some milk. All I need. I’m eighteen and it’s been a while since I stopped growing. Besides, I’ve grown enough. Any more would be overdoing it and I’d be given an even rougher time, which really isn’t necessary.
They were presenting the news on the TV. Yet it wasn’t at the usual time. I gathered right away from the alarmist tone and appalled look of the announcer that we were being treated to a special report. I turned up the sound. A bomb, yet another, had gone off, this time in the offices of the Business Council. It had demolished everything, but, miraculously, no one had been killed, although three employees, who were not supposed to be there, had been seriously injured.
Despite my best efforts to resist, bombs thrill me, especially when it’s my city they’re exploding in, and especially when it really sends the shit flying. After all, the powers-that-be should just stop screwing people. That’s not their job.
It was the Popular Liberation Front of Quebec1 that set off this particular bomb. As well as those of the past months, for that matter. To shake up the power structure protecting the privileges of the English minority that runs everything, rather than defending the rights of the French majority that holds nothing, except its tongue.But since they, the Anglos, can never get enough, the powers-that-be even passed