Eve Out of Her Ruins (10 page)

But if I become a saint, maybe I might have to become a priest when I get out. And if I become a priest, I won't be able to fall in love again. So, it's better if I don't change too much. Besides, I just have to look at the warden's mug to know that I haven't changed all that much: I still want to murder him.

It's dark. I have to try to sleep. My thoughts are like those swarms of killer bees or cockroaches in a horror movie. As soon as I shut my eyes, they come out from every hole and climb all over me. They jump on me and begin nibbling at me everywhere. I shake them off, I scream, I throw my arms around enough to scare the other prisoners, but I can't get rid of them.

If I get out,
I'll fuck the first woman I see. Well, if she's not too ugly. And not if she's my mother, what kind of person do you think I am?

EVE

The inspector finally agreed to take me to the morgue. I don't know how he did it, but he managed to get me in. He must have connections. That, and he feels sad for me. I don't care how he did it, I just care that I'll get to see Savita.

In the morgue, both the light and smell are greenish. I thought the movies would have prepared me for this. But movies have nothing to do with reality. It's totally different here. The filth in the corners. The ceiling blooming with mold. Chemical smells coming from the walls.

My whole body goes weak. The place is heavy with their presence. Everybody who came through here has left traces. On the walls, on the ground, on the ceiling, in the air. Like invisible lips sealed to their silence. Nobody ever leaves completely.

The inspector holds me by my arm and says, you don't have to.

No, I've never had to.

I shake my arm free. I don't want to turn back. After what she's gone through, I can go through everything. And then, in my head, I saw her a thousand times like this. I keep seeing her, in that envelope of death. And now I actually do see her.

Unmoving and pale. Her face glazed, rigid, solid. The bruises still on her neck from the murderer's fingers. I know her, yet she is wholly unrecognizable. Her youthfulness, I think. When death comes to someone so young, it makes her unrecognizable. And there's a bluish, almost purplish tint to her skin. I reel from the strangeness of it all.

But I do recognize her mouth. I hold on to that. That mouth
with its darkened edges is her mouth, Savita's mouth, I'm happy to see it again in all its perfection at last, yes, I haven't started to forget her features like I'd feared a second ago, I haven't betrayed her, I still have that memory of her mouth in me as something so precious that, for the rest of my life, all my senses will bring it back to me.

I explain to her that I was by the stream, and that was the reason I didn't hear anything. I tell her that for me, it's life that's distorting my features and making me unrecognizable.

My hand touches her cheek. I lean in, but the inspector holds me back. No, he says.

He takes me to a small café where the flies are more plentiful than the diners. I want for him to tell me something, for him to ask for something in exchange for the service he's rendered. He doesn't ask for anything. But he asks me questions. By the dirty window, I see the world going by. Yes, there's a world, over there, out there, that doesn't know Savita and where lives haven't stopped along with hers. I tell him everything, without really knowing why. How old I was when I began, where I went. I describe these places he knows so well. His questions take me further and further. My actions are getting crazier, I can tell. That's what he thinks: this girl is crazy.

He looks at me as if he can't believe me:

And you're still alive? he says.

What was the use of it all? he asks, again. His big hands on the table are trembling and fiddling with a paper napkin to the point that there aren't anything but shreds left. I wouldn't like to be a criminal he'd arrested. There isn't
any skin that would resist those hands.

I finally answer his question:

To slip through the cracks. To…

To what?

To go on.

The next question had to be, go on to where, but he doesn't ask it. His eyes are tired and my thoughts are completely blank. I was thinking about buying myself a life. But I don't know which one.

He asks me if I have any health problems. I know what he's talking about, but I pretend not to understand. I show him the blue bruise on my cheek, which has turned yellow: these sorts of problems, yes, every day, I say.

He isn't looking at me anymore, I think he's trying to imagine what they did to me, what they made me do, what they'll make me do again, in the mirror behind the bar I see us and I know I look young, too young, a bit of string, a little burned thing, and I know he'd like to keep me from slipping further down, but he doesn't know anything at all.

Suddenly, he gets angry:

What if I shoved you in prison for a bit of time, you'd have to stop, that'd make you get better, wouldn't it?

I get up to leave. The conversation's over. There's nothing else to say.

It's hard to keep believing, he says quietly. But you have to defend yourself. I want you to stay alive.

He takes me back to Troumaron. In the car I don't say anything. But I remember something he said: Savita wasn't raped. I think
he said that to reassure me. But then why was she killed? There was no anger there, no sexual violence. For the fun of it? Or to shut her up?

We pull up in front of the buildings. The sky is low. Here, there's always something watching. Some spirit that's vibrating, living, malignant.

He comes and opens the door of the jeep for me. I'm not used to that. Before I step down, he slips something into my bag.

Only use it to protect yourself, understand? he says very quietly.

I look down. I don't know why he did that. I didn't give him anything.

He holds me by the shoulders as I step down, and rubs them a bit.

He's talking in English. Be good, he says.

I shrug. It's too late to be good.

It's only once he's gone that I realize that we were right in the middle of all the buildings. Every window's facing us. Everybody saw me come back to Troumaron in a police car, everybody saw the inspector whispering in my ear. I colluded with the enemy. As usual, I'd done what I shouldn't have. I can almost hear through these windows what everybody must be thinking furiously: this time she went too far.

The ground starts to give way beneath my feet and caves in just as I walk into my apartment building.

But, after all, there was never any ground under my feet.

A light touch. Was there one?
Maybe. Maybe not. The scene could have played out a thousand ways:

coming to open the jeep door, he picked you up like some straw, like a stalk, his big hands wrapping around your waist, he set you on the ground like something breakable

coming to open the door, he hid your half-naked body under his police vest, you had blue bruises on your arms

coming to open the door, he leaned in toward you and listened to the secrets unfurling like a pale mist from your mouth

coming to open the door, he laughed a little, knowingly, as if to say that we just have to behave ourselves, and you, too, laughed a little.

From window to window, fury flits around like a wild bird and bangs against the window panes to the point of breaking them.

The man is your fate and your death.

Coming to open the door, he put Troumaron's fate into your hands.

All around, the doors shut with the violence of a maimed laugh.

SAAD

That's the
inspector we met together. She went to see him again. She came back with him. Eve, Eve, will you ever stop? Did you even manage to see Savita? What difference did it make, to have seen her body? She wasn't there, in the body, was she? What you saw was something else: a mask that could just as well have been your own.

I turn around in my cage. I spew my dark musings on the walls.

Maybe you wanted to make it up to her because she always waited for you after school and walked home with you? She thought she was protecting you, but you put her at far greater risk. She had nothing to do with your doings.

I mentally follow their path. I see them going home, both of them, afterward. After Eve was with the other guy. It's dark. Who follows them? Who waits for them and then follows Savita and not Eve? Why Savita? Why not Eve? Was it just chance? What was the difference between them? What did they have in common?

The clock's ticking. I can't sleep. I have to understand.

And then I realize I know. Like Eve, I know.

The gang's waiting for me. I miss our nighttime drives on motorbikes and mopeds. The night unfurls its fringes and we drink in the sharp scent of the neighborhood and our hot bodies are red-blooded shrieks of energy. It's a primal moment. A minute that explodes, that makes us all believe in living. For a minute, for an instant: living like a note drawn from a guitar, out of tune, but heard at a distance. Not disappearing. Not refusing to be.

But I don't go with them, because I know what they're talking
about right now. There aren't that many possibilities. I saw how angry they got when she came back with this cop. How could she have been so stupid? Coming back here in a police car. She didn't even think. She only thinks about whatever's got her upset. Other people don't even cross her thoughts. I know her too well, this girl I dreamed up.

She wants her time, her actions, her decisions, her body to herself. She refuses to be worthless. But none of that belongs to her. And that's what we all are, anyway: worthless.

Somewhere in the abandoned factory, something's brewing. A red light bathes the buildings, sweeps the sky, streaks the façades. As always, like zombies in a horror movie, something that could be from an entrail, or a cave, or a drainage hole, or a basement window, comes out. These are the monsters we made, broken bottles in their hands, ready to devour, ready to disembowel. Life, in an instant, takes on this enemy's face.

But when the enemy gives way, we come back together, hungry, wild-eyed.

They think about Clélio in prison. They think about Savita dead. They think about Eve with the cop. The equation is too obvious. She has to submit.

My Eve, who believes herself born with steel in her heart, doesn't know it's the shine and warmth of gold living in her, that she will never stop melting and fleeing, and that this molten girl will soon be nothing more than a shapeless, faceless puddle.

In the abandoned factory, they get together to decide on a plan of action. Troumaron should be barricaded, one of them says. No, we have to attack whoever's threatening Troumaron, say some others. Let's set fire to the police headquarters. Let's smash some factory windows. Flip over some cars. Show them who they're dealing with. They don't get to make Clélio a scapegoat. We'll force them to release him, otherwise they'll kill him in prison, it's easier than waiting for a trial. We've seen all this before. They'll do the same thing to us. After that they'll tell us we're all the same, we're all killers, all any of us deserve is a wall around the neighborhood, a wall all the way around with no openings. They'll turn Troumaron into our prison, our ghetto.

The joints and booze help, everybody's ready to fight against being imprisoned. In the glimmer of gas lights, unaware of the danger, they begin making Molotov cocktails. Cigarettes in their mouths, they soak rags in gas and stuff them in bottle necks. The energy of violence floods them.

But first, they say, but first we have to find her. She's the one who started it all.

Now all their fury is aimed at one thing.

I write on the walls of my room with permanent marker as fast as I can, as if ill, as if insane, filled with an urge to tell everything before I'm forgotten. It's a broken-up, shaky story, rooted in bitterness and rage, but it's the only one I know. The lives of guys like me, so simple that they break apart before even coming together, so indistinct that they fade away before having achieved anything. Their hopes scatter every morning like the dust on their feet. Their deaths don't aspire to brighten stars and only call to mind the bare space of a grave. And so a wall is there the minute they look at you.

Whoever comes into my room will contend with another mystery. But, at least, I've said
what I had to say. Eve, you have to flee. I have to help you flee.

EVE

It's like
someone committed suicide with an exhaust pipe in this room. As soon as I locked myself inside, I smoked everything I could reach. But the pain is still here. And I'm still here.

Once again, my hair is practically torn out of my scalp. But this time, he used it to bang my head against the wall. I don't know where I hurt anymore. I don't know where I've been hit or what I've been hit against. Everywhere.

I crush a thousandth cigarette on the linoleum dotted with holes and undress. I almost have to peel the clothes off my skin. I look at myself in the mirror. I'm shocked at my appearance: even with all this pain, I hadn't realized how much damage had been done. I slump down on the bed, looking in the mirror, I don't know what I look like. Like nothing, nothing at all. Is there still anything to recognize?

My skin is so many colors: yellows, blues, purples, blacks, reds. If I didn't hurt so much, I'd have laughed. I'm covered in all Harlequin's colors. I didn't know that I could have so many different complexions. But when I try to smile, it hurts. A small crack gapes in the corner of my mouth. Then inside. And then, suddenly, a hundred cracks burst open. I'm cracking apart.

I take a pair of scissors out of a drawer.

This is how my mother finds me: curled up, locked in solitude, holding scissors in my right hand.

For once, she's calm. She kneels in front of me and tries to loosen my fingers around the scissors, but she's not able to do it. My hands are clenched and hers quiver too much.