Read Online Bye Bye Blondie by Virginie Despentes - Free Book Online
Authors: Virginie Despentes
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their innocence and their inability to grow up. Nothing to do with her. But she kept going back there with unhealthy curiosity. And anyway, otherwise it was so boring.
Sheâd made friends, soon after her arrival, with Isabelle, a little brunette who was a real laugh. She seemed just like a kid. For a few days, life seemed to have returned, they visited each otherâs rooms, exchanged T-shirts, and shared cigarettes. The first question anyone asked in this place was, âWhy are you here?â Gloria always answered, âI havenât the faintest idea,â and Isabelle had burst out in giggles, âSame here!â Her hair was dead straight, shiny, reaching halfway down her back. She laughed at everything.
Before Isabelle was transferred to another psychiatric unit, some well-intentioned people took Gloria asideâpeople who hadnât even given her the time of day the week beforeâand made it their business to fill her in: Isabelle was here because she had tortured her little girl, with cigarette burns and putting her hand on an electric hot plate. Gloria had looked each of these Good Samaritans in the eye and said, âYes, I know,â to show them she didnât care. But she did care. It freaked her out, in fact, that someone who was so cute, sweet, funny, etc., etc., could at the same time be capable of taking her little girlâs hand and pressing it down on a hot plate to punish her.
Sheâd set about loving Isabelle even more, a sort of emotional contortion, but eventually the other girl had had to leave.
Life reverted to normal, and since she had to get used to this , sheâd get used to it. At least from her room she could look out of the window, through the bars. She could see a parking lot, people getting in and out of cars.
If she went too far from the end of her corridor, a nurse would come running after her. It was impossible, for instance, to go down to the lower floor to buy a newspaper. Her father had to be with her for that. He came in from Nancy every two days. She saw her mother less often, since she found it too upsetting to come.
The spinal column of every day was the telephone. When it rang in the supervisorâs office, everyone with a room on the corridor froze, all the doors opened, waiting for a name to be called. Someone from outside, from the real world, the world of people free to live without trying, people who didnât roll on the ground, didnât hear voices, and werenât possessed by evil spirits. In a comic and pathetic ballet, every time the phone rang in that little office, the doors opened in a sinister kind of synchronized movement, heads popped out, the lucky inmate walked along beaming and delighted, while all the others returned disappointed to their rooms or to the TV lounge.
There was a smell everywhere of old people and piss. One little old lady came trotting along whenever she saw Gloria, right up to her, and slapped her face. She had wicked eyes. She only reached up to Gloriaâs chest, which made her easy to deal with. Sordid, like everything else.
When Eric arrived there, he was sufficiently different for her to spot him at once. A funny guy, because there he was, blond and bourgeois, squeaky clean, and convinced his name was Karim. Well, it could have been, perhaps, but the address he gave seemed to rule it out. And he had this very odd way of talking in the slang of the housing estates. The beurs , second-generation young Arabs living in France, werenât fashionable yet, but they already existed. Still, they didnât talk in the really weird way Eric did. When he began to explain to the doctors, in a tone of confidentiality, that people on the radio spoke to him directly to warn him about an earthquake, he lost all credibility. The victim of some chemical imbalance, evidently, he was living in a parallel universe, and wearing expensive clothes. When Gloria had glimpsed him between two corridors, he had on a
Sheâd made friends, soon after her arrival, with Isabelle, a little brunette who was a real laugh. She seemed just like a kid. For a few days, life seemed to have returned, they visited each otherâs rooms, exchanged T-shirts, and shared cigarettes. The first question anyone asked in this place was, âWhy are you here?â Gloria always answered, âI havenât the faintest idea,â and Isabelle had burst out in giggles, âSame here!â Her hair was dead straight, shiny, reaching halfway down her back. She laughed at everything.
Before Isabelle was transferred to another psychiatric unit, some well-intentioned people took Gloria asideâpeople who hadnât even given her the time of day the week beforeâand made it their business to fill her in: Isabelle was here because she had tortured her little girl, with cigarette burns and putting her hand on an electric hot plate. Gloria had looked each of these Good Samaritans in the eye and said, âYes, I know,â to show them she didnât care. But she did care. It freaked her out, in fact, that someone who was so cute, sweet, funny, etc., etc., could at the same time be capable of taking her little girlâs hand and pressing it down on a hot plate to punish her.
Sheâd set about loving Isabelle even more, a sort of emotional contortion, but eventually the other girl had had to leave.
Life reverted to normal, and since she had to get used to this , sheâd get used to it. At least from her room she could look out of the window, through the bars. She could see a parking lot, people getting in and out of cars.
If she went too far from the end of her corridor, a nurse would come running after her. It was impossible, for instance, to go down to the lower floor to buy a newspaper. Her father had to be with her for that. He came in from Nancy every two days. She saw her mother less often, since she found it too upsetting to come.
The spinal column of every day was the telephone. When it rang in the supervisorâs office, everyone with a room on the corridor froze, all the doors opened, waiting for a name to be called. Someone from outside, from the real world, the world of people free to live without trying, people who didnât roll on the ground, didnât hear voices, and werenât possessed by evil spirits. In a comic and pathetic ballet, every time the phone rang in that little office, the doors opened in a sinister kind of synchronized movement, heads popped out, the lucky inmate walked along beaming and delighted, while all the others returned disappointed to their rooms or to the TV lounge.
There was a smell everywhere of old people and piss. One little old lady came trotting along whenever she saw Gloria, right up to her, and slapped her face. She had wicked eyes. She only reached up to Gloriaâs chest, which made her easy to deal with. Sordid, like everything else.
When Eric arrived there, he was sufficiently different for her to spot him at once. A funny guy, because there he was, blond and bourgeois, squeaky clean, and convinced his name was Karim. Well, it could have been, perhaps, but the address he gave seemed to rule it out. And he had this very odd way of talking in the slang of the housing estates. The beurs , second-generation young Arabs living in France, werenât fashionable yet, but they already existed. Still, they didnât talk in the really weird way Eric did. When he began to explain to the doctors, in a tone of confidentiality, that people on the radio spoke to him directly to warn him about an earthquake, he lost all credibility. The victim of some chemical imbalance, evidently, he was living in a parallel universe, and wearing expensive clothes. When Gloria had glimpsed him between two corridors, he had on a
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