Billie Read online

  But as he doesn’t play along (uh, no . . . ) (and yet he loved her . . . ) (uh, yes . . . ) (but without all that other blather) (uh, no . . . ) (otherwise it’s no longer love, it’s an insurance policy) (uh, yes . . . ) (and all that is in our scene), she decides to go back to her bunker and writes a letter to her roommate in which, instead of saying, “Alas, we just don’t see eye to eye, him and me. Get out my bowl and my horsehair mattress. I’m coming back,” she makes a fuss about it along the lines of “Oh, my sister . . . Oh dear . . . Oh, I refused . . . Oh, the poor boy . . . Oh, what did I do to him? . . . Oh, pray for him because . . . heh, heh, heh . . . I don’t know if he’s going to recover from it all.”

  Fine, why not? She had to say something to the gaggle of giggling nuns who would greet her upon her return, except that, bad luck, Perdican intercepts the letter, reads it (that, we agreed, was a stupid thing to do), realizes that she is lying through her teeth, and decides to punish her by taking up with Rosette, the poor little goose-girl at the castle who happened to be passing by at the worst possible moment.

  Camille sees them together, and riled up once again, realizes that she truly loves him and that she has to cut the crap, but continues it anyway, and Perdican—who’s had enough of the . . . the backside of all of her to-ing and fro-ing between him and Jesus C.—pretends/decides (a contested point between me and Franck to this day) once and for all to marry Rosette.

  So Camille loses it once and for all too and lets go of her rosary and her pride along with it.

  Ah! Super! They’re finally going to kiss after a thousand scenes in three acts, except that, bad luck again, Rosette, who was nearby, hears everything and kills herself in despair. And the rest you know.

  So . . .

  Good job, right?

  They really would have been better off fooling with love, those idiots . . .

  They had everything. Cash, beauty, health, youth, a nice daddy, feelings for each other, everything . . . and they destroyed it all, and killed someone while they were at it, on a . . . on a whim . . . out of selfishness . . . for the pleasure of beating around the bush and babbling around a fountain while batting each other on the nose with their fans.

  Disgusting.

  b) (Franck’s version) Camille loves Perdican. It was true love. She loved him more than he had ever loved her and will ever love her.

  She knows it because when it comes to love, she is more of an expert than both he and his cock, however talented, put together. Why? Because at the convent, she had encountered True Love, Great Love, Pure Love. The type that never disappoints you and that has nothing to do with the sexual escapades that keep purepeople.com and its lawyers in business.

  Yes, she had been touched by grace and she was ready to sacrifice her happiness on Earth to serve her Eternal Lover.

  So she has simply come to give her uncle a kiss and get I don’t know what. (The dough that is coming to her from her mother? I don’t remember anymore . . . ). Alas, she realizes that her cousin Didi, even if he is fickle, featherbrained, and mortal, has a real effect on her.

  Damn. Everything is turned upside down.

  Fine, it’s true, she screwed everything up in her hypocritical letter in which she pretended to be a femme fatale, but one, he didn’t have to read it, two, he should have come to see her in person instead of taking advantage of that poor Rosette to piss her off (Rosette who, it must be said in passing, is a real human being, with a heart, a soul, tears and . . . uh . . . some geese and turkeys).

  Oh how petty is this revenge . . . But there you have it, she loves him. And when she loves, she is direct. Whether with God or with a coward. When she loves, she doesn’t stop to work things out. She gives her whole self. And when she got all upset earlier, that’s to say, in our scene, with her anxiety about love, death, waning attraction, and loyalty, it wasn’t at all to bore him, but so that he would reassure her.

  Alas, it didn’t work.

  Since she’s a thousand times more mature than he is and since he’s at any rate completely controlled by his dick (how would they have said it at the time? by his halberd with tassles?), he catches none of her hints and assumes she’s a poor, exalted Ms. Freeze completely misguided by her mother abbesses.

  In short, the little baron isn’t playing with a full deck.

  But since this is Camille the Sublime we’re talking about, she is prepared to swallow heaps of snakes for the sake of love.

  Yes, because she is devoted to Perdican, she is even willing to be loved without any guarantees and in shuffle mode. Classy, right? Especially coming from her . . . Because Camille, that’s how she is: madness within rectitude. You think she’s frigid, but it’s totally the opposite. She’s all lava, this girl, an outpouring of lava.

  She loves crazy love and that’s what makes her vulnerable. And also beautiful . . .

  Girls like that come around once a century and generally end up badly.

  A problem of voltage, you might say.

  Since they are too intense for the sockets you find on the market, no matter how much they try to make themselves compatible, each time you turn them on, poof! Everything blows up.

  Okay, of course, the electricity comes back on afterward and everyone says “Aaaah . . . ” returning to their daily grind, but they are already dead, burnt out. You shake them a bit and since they make a gling gling sound inside, you toss them in the trash.

  So what’s the story with this Camille? Was it her true nature or did she swallow too many holy wafers?

  Was she born with a heart too large to enjoy instant happiness or will the lava freeze up again when they’re old and she sees Perdicanarian’s dirty socks, tossed aside next to her bonnet?

  You’ll be able to tell by looking at their faces on the day of their twentieth wedding anniversary, except that, game over, this moron of a daddy’s boy played too much with matches and poor Rosette—disgusted at being passed back and forth like a hot potato by these two wealthy good-for-nothings who coo at you all day but who don’t give a rat’s ass about cleaning the mud from their boots before walking over other people—kills herself off in the wings.

  Ah, shoot . . . Not only is it bad form but it’s ruining the ambiance . . . Hey! Cancel the caterer! The undertaker is taking over!

  Adieu lovers, sermons, marriages, fifes and tambourines, the play is over and everyone gets up, their heart a bit heavy.

  So here’s the upshot of Franck’s version: Whether it’s Camille’s passion or Rosette’s act of desperation, it’s the same story: Love is total or it’s not love.

  Because, you should NOT FOOL with love.

  Period.

  * * *

  I’m telling you this in >> x 64, but of course it took us hours and hours to unravel that whole mess.

  Plus Franck ended up admitting to me that the author had written this play after an unhappy love affair, like, in order to expose the girl who had dumped him, and that just reinforced the uneasy feeling that all this waste had aroused in me.

  Disguised in Musset was a vengeful little know-it-all who was making me uncomfortable. It was too much for my little brain to accept and I didn’t dwell on it, but I knew one thing for sure: this Musset fellow, he wasn’t very up-front. He used Camille for his own interests and his interests didn’t have much to do with God’s love . . .

  I didn’t dwell on it because I saw clearly that Franck was about to mock me since you’re not supposed to mix art and sex talk like that, but I . . . okay, since I wasn’t doing well in French, I zipped my lip, but meanwhile, I understood her one hundred percent, the good lady who had kicked Musset out.

  Oh yeah . . . Not very honest that poet . . .

  So there you have it . . . we argued about it vehemently and maybe we’d still be at it now if Franck hadn’t looked at his watch.

  “Darn,” he said, and he got up because he had to hurry home for d
inner. (At my house, the schedule is . . . uh . . . more flexible . . . )

  (A boy who says “darn” and who worries about throwing off his mommy’s schedule, that’s really weird . . . Everything seemed weird to me, everything . . . In reality, I was learning more than just a role in a play, I was learning . . . an entire civilization . . . ) (But upside down.) (There you had the barbarian with a bone through his nose dressed in loincloth made from a banana peel observing the Whites in secret.)

  Franck had just looked at his watch, and the important moment, the one I told you about earlier, uh well, it only starts now. It’s the conversation we had on the way from Claudine’s (aka Grandma) (but I was allowed to call her Claudine) to his house.

  Since it’s very important and I’ve had enough of telling you everything indirectly with all those “thises” and “thats” that slow down the story, I’ll tell it to you in dialogue.

  I’ll do it the way Alfred would . . .

  Tap! Tap! Tap! (That’s the stage manager banging a stick to indicate the play is about to begin.)

  Whiiiiiiiiiirrrr (The curtain rises.)

  Rrrrrrrrrrrrreucht . . . Grrouinch . . . Frrrrrhhh (That’s the sound of old people coughing and blowing their nose.)

  La, la, li, li . . . la la (Background music.)

  A path

  Franck and Billie are chatting

  BILLIE: Actually, it’s really you who should play Camille.

  FRANCK (acting as though he’d just been bitten in the calf): Why do you say that?

  BILLIE (who couldn’t give a damn about his calf): Well, because . . . Because you respect her! So much so that you defend her to the end! I’d like to bond with her, but I just don’t get her, that girl . . . I think she gets too riled up . . . Hey, it’s not a problem learning all the stuff she babbles, okay? It’s just that I like Perdican better.

  Silence

  FRANCK (in Madame Guillet’s tone of voice): No one is asking you to be Camille, just to play her.

  BILLIE (in Billie’s tone of voice): Yes, well, if we’re playing already, let’s play! I prefer to play Perdican. I find it more entertaining to tell you that if one day we no longer love each other, we’ll each take lovers until your hair is gray and mine is white.

  Silence

  FRANCK: No.

  BILLIE: Why not?

  FRANCK: It’s not a good idea . . .

  BILLIE: Why?

  FRANCK: The teacher assigned us these roles and we’ll do it the way she said.

  BILLIE: But . . . But she doesn’t give a damn, right? It’s the scene that matters, not who plays who . . .

  Silence

  FRANCK: No . . .

  BILLIE: Why?

  FRANCK: Because I’m a boy so I play the boy’s part and you’re a girl so you play the girl’s part. It’s as simple as that.

  BILLIE (who is a zero at school but who defends herself in the real world and who senses pronto that she’s hit a sore spot so takes a playful tone to lighten the mood): No one is asking you to be Camille, my dear sir, just to play her!

  FRANCK (who says nothing . . . who smiles . . . who is having a good time with this funny girl from the Morels . . . who notices that her hair is clean for once and that she isn’t wearing track pants like every other day of the year)

  Silence

  BILLIE: Okay . . . you don’t want to?

  FRANCK: No. I don’t want to.

  BILLIE: You don’t want to say with all your heart something like “And what do you know about love, you whose knees are all worn out from having begged too much on your mistress’s carpets?”

  FRANCK (smiling): No . . .

  BILLIE: You don’t want to cry out to the whole world: “I want to love but I don’t want to suffer! I want to love with an eternal love!”

  FRANCK (laughing): No.

  BILLIE (really troubled): But for two hours you’ve said just the opposite. For two hours you’ve been trying to convince me that she’s the one who’s right . . . That he’s a loser next to her . . . That love is really super beautiful and that we shouldn’t fool with it and so forth . . .

  FRANCK (really troubled to see Billie really troubled, but speaking quickly with his arms in the air): But . . . but it’s only a play! It’s a game! It’s not like we’re before a judge or a career counselor! It’s theater, Billie! It’s . . . it’s entertainment!

  BILLIE (who doesn’t answer right away; who tries to find the right words; who guesses without really understanding that her role, the only true role she had to play, was the one she was playing now, and everything else [Camille, Rosette, Perdican, God, Musset, Madame Guillet, romanticism, the romantic life, romantic theater, the idiots in class, the stinky graffiti, the mean whispers, the groups of girls who move away when she approaches them, the insults, the rumors, the gobs of spit that fizzle out in the wind, the groups of boys that approach him when he tries to move away, the problems with the art teacher last year, the words that disgust everyone and that no one ever forgets, the junior high diploma, the end of junior high, the factory job, the stores all shut up, the houses for sale, the future with no prospects, the future with no hope, the welfare application already filled out, the TV already on, and so on] is, well, real easy compared to what was bothering her now; who therefore says nothing; who gathers together everything her shitty life had given her till then, everything she’s seen, lived, suffered, and heard in and around the Morels, everything it has taught her about humanity, those people without faith, without law, without pride, without morals, without anything; those violent people, stupid, alcoholic, and mean, who keep churning out babies, whom they couldn’t give a fuck about, kids whom they show how to piss in barely consumed beer cans, to shoot a rifle at barely born kittens or to wipe their asses with barely read letters from city hall, who have smoked in their faces nonstop since they were little, who let ashes fall on their kids’ school notebooks, who slap them just for the hell of it and who make them sleep alone and in the trailer without heat when they want to chill out or fuck each other to make more children whom they don’t give a fuck about, and so on . . . )

  FRANCK (worried): You’ve stopped talking. Are you angry?

  BILLIE (who is not entirely focused but too bad, who goes for it anyway and will do it the way she always does it, off the cuff): No, but it’s just, I . . . I don’t understand you . . . And I don’t speak for you, actually . . . I say “you” but it’s not you, it’s . . . it’s beyond you . . . It holds for everyone . . . There are many occasions in life where you can say what you think and say it properly . . . say it with words that already exist . . . to use a character invented by someone else to smuggle in things that you too find precious . . . to say who you are . . . or who you would like to be . . . and to say it better than you would ever be able to say it if you didn’t already have close at hand sentences that were already so beautiful . . .

  FRANCK (?!?!?): . . .

  BILLIE: But . . . uh . . . don’t make that face! You see that I don’t have the words! So don’t purposely act as dumb as me! It’s what I’m trying to tell you, it’s that when you have a thing in you that can help you live . . . to truly live . . . something, like, to aspire to and to inspire you until you die . . . because it was there before you and will still be there after you . . . Yes, a thing that will speak about you when you no longer exist and without ever betraying you, and that . . . uh . . . uh, well . . . why do you give a fuck about one’s genital apparatus?

  FRANCK: Excuse me?

  BILLIE: Yes, you understood me correctly . . . What do you want me to say instead? Prick? Cunt? Tit?

  FRANCK (???): ???

  BILLIE: Oh . . . Are you following me or not? You don’t understand what I’m trying to say or is it just that you don’t want to? Girl or boy, it matters, like, when picking the color of a baby’s room, for clothes, for toys, for the price of a haircut, for the k
inds of films you want to see or the sports you want to play or the . . . beats me . . . things where being a girl or a boy makes a difference . . . But in this case . . . feelings . . . the things you feel and come directly from your gut before you think of them . . . the things your life is going to depend on after, like, how you see your relations with others, who you love, to the point that you are ready to be wounded, to pardon, to fight, to suffer, and everything, frankly, but what does . . . uh . . . your anatomical form have to do with it, I ask myself . . . and I ask you too, for that matter . . . If Camille’s your teammate, what the fuck does it matter if you’re a boy in order to play her? And plus it’s not even at the Académie Française but in a stinkin’ junior high class in a stinkin’ town . . . Okay? Why does it matter to you? To say Camille’s words out loud, it’s the opposite of risky. She’s tough, that girl! She can take it! She’s even ready to fuck up her life in order to follow her principles. Have you met many others like her? Me, zero . . . So you don’t fool with love, okay, but in exchange, assure me, you at least have the right to fool with the rest, don’t you? Or, if not, we all should just go to a convent right away, it’ll be simpler! Nah, but it’s true. It drives me nuts, all that! The whole mess drives me nuts, all the time! Drives me nuts! And your excuse about a girl and a boy, that . . . I’ll tell you right now, it’s crap. That doesn’t hold water for a second. You’ll have to do better.