Freed from Desire

They’d looked almost attractive when they left home earlier that evening. The mother, with her carrot-orange tan and her skin glowing with lotion, wore her gold chain with the dolphin charm. She looked so young nibbling at the animal with her front teeth, smiling absent-mindedly. The father smelled of soap and aftershave and was breathing heavily. He quickly put his soft packet of Marlboros in his shirt pocket – the collar was already drenched in sweat – and lit a cigarette in the early evening. He squinted in the still-bright, purplish light. He looked at the rows of vines as though he owned them.

Like at the start of every summer, Céline was revealing her indecent beauty with outfits that were too tight, her denim shorts cut so high the fold between her buttocks and thighs opened and closed with every step she took.

As for Jo, she couldn’t care less about what she was wearing; like every year since forever, she was going to a funfair feeling vaguely disgusted that she still found it somewhat exciting despite herself. So her skinny jeans dirty at the knees and black, shapeless tank top were good enough. She hung on her sister’s shoulder like dead algae. “Why can’t we take the car?”

Nobody replied. You could hear the bass thumping in the distance; it was a ten-minute walk at most.

The four of them were walking along the edge of the road together, a rare event. The girls picked up the pace to put some distance between them and their parents, the way they used to when they were little kids. Blades of dry grass penetrated their sandals and prickled their toes. They hopped on one foot and held on to each other’s shoulders to remove them. When they were in sight of the fair, walking past the stone cross, they slowed down a little so the others crowding around the rides wouldn’t think they were too impatient.

The village had been transformed: the funfair, set up for three days, altered the streets and offered contagious ecstasy and the smell of hot oil as far as the small central square right next to the church. The mother and father went up to the bar; the father’s mates and their wives were already there. There was loud, buoyant laughter. Patrick was trying to get his wife to dance but she was giggling and yelling that she didn’t feel like it and that he was already too drunk. They looked all lovey-dovey; you almost couldn’t tell any more that he’d smashed in her face the week before. She looked like a large moth, wriggling in her blue dress. The women ordered some rosé and the men pastis. They said hello to the girls, who didn’t linger.

“Better start keeping an eye on your eldest,” Patrick’s wife said with a grimace suggesting envy.

The father smiled proudly, his eyes following Céline’s small backside. Sixteen and promising. Patrick cleared his throat and ordered another drink.

The same people coming together again, like every year, gangs and families who ignore one another or blend in with the crackling and chaos of the entertainment. Once a year. Of course, there’s always St John’s Eve and the school fete. But the fair is a lot more fun. Céline, the belle of the ball, adulated by the boys – never mind from which gang – has always loved it. Even when she was younger, there were shady corners where she could rub up against a boyfriend’s body, playing at not going any further but stopping at the very edge. As for the boys, they’d dream of her pink fingernails on their erect little dicks; she would lovingly clutch large cuddly toys won in the shooting gallery, hoping for words of love. And if she had to let her breasts be clumsily fondled so she could obtain a miserable, stuttering I love you and other unimaginative derivatives, then she was up for it. She did want it, a little. Jo would be on the lookout.

But this evening, only her sister could see that Céline was pretending, opening her throat to laugh at Lucas’s nonsense, at Enzo’s half-baked jokes. She sparkled for the gallery.

They went to the Tarantula with the others. This ride first came here ten years ago, with its aluminium cars flashing red and yellow, small lights flickering to “Freed from Desire”. Vertigo, as always, and the screams when the metal structure starts and lifts the clusters of willing flyers. Even old folks find it entertaining to watch youngsters get up there to give themselves a fright. Nobody’s ever seemed to find it odd that the same dance track is played year after year, as though time had stopped in 1996, twenty years earlier.

Céline and Jo know it by heart. They’ve lost count of the number of times they’ve screamed all the way up there when the seats start turning slowly on themselves before falling down at a crazy speed then going back up as fast. But they keep coming back, for the thrill of it.

Lucas was already trying to overtake Enzo so he could get in with Céline.

She slid her hand across the nape of her neck to flick her hair back and time stood still in the eyes of the boys, between the lift and the slap as her hair cascaded down again. After that they started to breathe once more, a little less cocky but much braver than earlier, and with a slightly idiotic smile. But despite the game, despite the others, despite the pleasure of the sound being turned up to maximum – so you had to shout or glue your lips to the edge of an ear – the euphoria was just pretence. There was already this thing inside her which she was still pretending not to know about: a logical consequence, a cold logic that says trouble breeds nothing but trouble. She was still lying a little to herself, long enough for a ride, long enough to see two guys fight for the privilege of holding her tight by the waist while dizzy, absorbing her terrified screams and tangled hair as the machine descended, and hoping for more. And yet even as she turned to look at the large iron spider, her feet on the steps streaked with flashing colours, she felt sick. It was absurd: she wasn’t afraid of the void, or the speed, and she’d always loved the rides. A kind of clammy oppressiveness – perhaps primeval intuition?

Céline turned to Enzo and her eyes appointed him for the first ride. Lucas was disappointed, but there would be others; they usually took ten rides a night at the funfair, and the evening was only just starting. The man with the first move didn’t necessarily win the chess game. He stepped away to roll a joint. The next ride would be his. Vanessa was clinging to Manon, unless it was the other way around. They were giggling, pushing away Antony, who was embracing them and whispering stuff in their ears they were pretending not to understand. They were shaking their heads and their hips. Their eyes were shining. The music saturated the air around them, made the ground vibrate and travelled up their legs – Want more and more, people just want more and more – even Jo’s. Her knees were vibrating slightly and she couldn’t tell exactly if she liked this kind of frenzy or hated it. Her eyes travelled from the cars, finally emptied, to her sister. “You sure you’re all right?” she said, forced to shout. Céline didn’t answer. She looked white as a sheet, eyes dilated by the hysterical lights. She nodded, kept her head down, hair over her face. “You don’t have to if you don’t feel well,” Jo continued. “It’s not like every time we have to make do with the same ride we’ve had for the past ten years.”

This managed to make Céline laugh. She bent down to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf. When she straightened up again she felt everything spinning, white dots in front of her eyes. Sweat bathed the back of her neck, already clammy with that mane of hair – she should have put it in a ponytail – and the beginning of summer. And then the crowd, the noise, the engine heat rising from the machine…

“Come on,” Jo insisted, “let’s get out of here. You look like shit.”

“OK, back off. Have you seen yourself?”

“Fuck you, Céline. Go ahead, take the ride, you’ll just throw up all over Enzo, bet he’ll love that.”

“What did you say?” Enzo shouted.

“Nothing,” they replied in unison, not looking at him.

The music started again, grafted to the spider like the call of an animal. In a loop, irreversibly stuck on repeat. It occurred to Jo that she was the only one to grasp the irony of the situation.

They stepped into the cars. Jo sat first and pulled down the safety barrier. She always preferred to take her adrenaline injections alone. The others got in two by two, in giggling pairs, fastened the straps over their bellies and handed their plastic tokens to Sauveur, the manager of the ride: it’s always been him, only now he has a tooth missing and thinner hair. He winked at Jo; he’s always been good at spotting the oddballs, and loves them like a brother.

The spider got going, lifting its legs to the sky. Jo looked down: the kids were pressing their noses to the glass tanks piled up with miniature soft toys, trying to catch a rabbit with pincers, losing it every time. Further away, the bar and its display of glasses looked like a toy tea set and her parents like little animals.

“Freed from Desire” reverberated even louder up there.

This lurch above the world was suddenly intoxicating. Jo had forgotten. She would have preferred a different soundtrack, something grandiose or coarse instead of this old-fashioned crap. Never mind; she enjoyed the spin and her legs feeling like cotton wool. It’s so fucking boring here that any strong emotion will do. At least if they shudder it means they’re not dead, stuck on repeat. Ahead, glued to Enzo, Céline was letting out little cries whenever the Tarantula gave them a jolt. Jo watched her sister, blurred by the speed: a year older, a birdbrain with the bearing of a queen. Sixteen years of thrashing in the world, glimpsing the abyss, blooming without maturing. Even prettier than the year before and a bit more stupid. Funny how it’s Céline who’s the eldest. Johanna isn’t exactly responsible, but even at fifteen she has some of that desperate weariness that sometimes stands in for maturity.

Suddenly, Céline’s head stopped bobbing about and fell onto Enzo’s shoulder. But it didn’t stay there, nestling like a girlfriend’s: she fell backwards, shaken by the speed. Enzo panicked and tried to lift her to face him. He was holding the back of her neck as though it was about to break, shouting and waving his free arm like everyone else around. Jo knew immediately that her sister had passed out, but she didn’t scream. She waited for it to be over, for the spider to complete its crazy dance; just a few minutes to go, no more. Time always feels slower when you’re perched up there but it would soon calm down, she knew it. Impossible to enjoy the dizziness at the moment. She was sure that idiot was going to be sick; it was written all over her face.

The cars slowed down and reached the ground. A kind of siren announced the end of the jolts; Enzo’s cries finally alerted everybody and people flocked to get Céline out of the chrome-plated car. Sauveur cut the music – at last, Jo had time to tell herself – and rushed out of his booth. He had a good rant at everyone so they’d get out of the way, approached Céline and gave her a big slap, the first of many. Alerted by some kids, the parents ran over, along with Patrick and his wife. When the parents reached the ride, Céline finally sat up, opened her eyes, bent double and vomited at Enzo’s feet. Jo’s snigger marked the start of real trouble.

“What’s wrong with her?” her father asked, his voice feeble and soaked in aniseed, vaguely worried.

Céline avoided her father’s eye. She must have forbidden herself to think about it, pretending for many weeks, squashing her swollen breasts in a bra that was too tight. Unless she’d known from the start and pretended, as though it could just go away if you refused to believe it. But now she finally understood, when warm bile flowed up under her tongue like it had every day for a long time, and she wasn’t the only one.

“Your daughter’s not pregnant, is she?” Patrick’s wife suddenly blurted out.