All gangling limbs, Tony Boujon looks out at me through his too-long bangs: a young man whose story is easy to guess. From neglectful parents to keeping bad company, the natural faults of childhood confirmed by the pressure of toxic influences, he has developed the character of a little creep and inspires no sympathy. In the spring he followed a girl for several weeks before accosting her with a knife one day outside her school, but the intended victim just stared at him with her big round eyes until he backed down and put away his knife, all ardor squelched. He got three months in jail, a suspended sentence of two years, plus mandatory psychiatric treatment.
I called out to him at the Gare de l’Est at 8:31 a.m. as he was getting off the commuter train on his way home from his job. Tony Boujon works in a printing plant in Lagny-Thorigny. His shift begins at midnight and ends at dawn. In the pale light sifting down from the glass canopy of the train station, I could immediately pick out his skinny form among the other passengers. I stepped in front of him with a big smile and said you’re Tony Boujon.
He gaped at me like a carp.
I repeated you’re Tony Boujon, I saw your photo in the newspaper, I think I can help you.
Help me with what, he snapped, I didn’t do anything, and who are you anyway, I already talked to the police.
How about some coffee? I suggested while leading him gently toward an exit.
We chose a rather dark place on Boulevard de Strasbourg.
Tony chews on his ink-blackened nails while I stroke my glossy manicured fingertips.
My name is Élisabeth I begin, without getting him to look up. He makes a show of yawning, begins fiddling studiously with the seams of one of his sneakers and I press on saying I know, yes, I know that you were one of the doctor’s patients.
The boy looks up in spite of himself.
He wasn’t much help, was he? I add with a complicitous wink, and in passing I graze his knee with mine under the table. Tony straightens up like a shot in his seat, his long bangs flopping limply down on his forehead furrowed with dismay. I say sorry, it’s a reflex: we nurses are so used to touching people we don’t even notice anymore. So he relaxes, his lips almost ready to crack a smile. A nurse, he’s fine with that. He knows there’s no reason to be offended by these kind and professionally maternal women: if they like you, it’s from vocational bias.
After that, it’s easy. I listen to him tell me all sorts of things I already know, he knows that I know them because I just told him I was the doctor’s patient too, but he doesn’t care. He tells me about his experience with the big zero, that’s what he calls him, who swallowed his bullshit whole; what a sight the guy was, going all sympathetic and trying to catch him with gentleness when Tony respects only fists and cold steel.
The boy isn’t used to having a friendly audience. He irritates me but I keep smiling and listening, and when he starts over on the same story for the third time, I interrupt him saying why don’t we go to your place? He’s startled, hesitates. Is going to refuse but changes his mind. I pay for our coffees, we walk to the métro station and take line 8 in the opposite direction from most commuters heading west to their office buildings. We get off at Montgallet, down in the southeast corner of Paris.
Tony still lives with his parents but they’ve left for work, and I learn that they’re pharmacists. This surprises me because given his hangdog persona, I’d imagined his parents as drunks or incurably unemployed. Then I remember the facts I’ve read about crime, statistics in the newspapers showing that although parental maltreatment is more prevalent in the disadvantaged social classes, it can crop up anywhere.
Their home meets my expectations. The parquet floor in the hall is littered with pitfalls, craters between the loose slats and thickets of splinters at all the joints. I can see a living room and a master bedroom, furnished in mismatched functional things smacking of legacies from postwar houses in what were then modern suburbs. But you, where’s your room? I ask Tony and he points down the hall to a door I’d assumed hid a closet. I set my lips in an expression of tender pity and observe you really don’t get any breaks, do you.
Tony shoots me a nasty look then shrugs and leads me to the kitchen where he starts making coffee. I check out the sink with its reddish-brown crusts of crud and the shelves coated with greasy dust. Your parents, I remark, they don’t seem to pay much attention to you, do they?
He clenches his fists; I twist the knife, adding it’s obvious, one can see right away that you didn’t get enough love, otherwise you’d never have done what you did in June outside the Lycée Paul-Valéry. The paper said poor girl, but right away I thought poor boy.
He drops the coffeepot that lands on the tiles like clashing cymbals
opens his fists
takes a step forward
I look at him
he looks at me
tensing up his silly-little-tough-guy muscles
he’s so funny
he makes me laugh
so that I almost dislocate my jaw
then I’ve no idea what starts expanding inside me
I charge.
Lips on his trembling lips, impatience, edginess, bites, a swerve up to the ear, teeth attacking its outer shell, tongue against lobe, hands under the T-shirt, gooseflesh. Fingers that pinch, climb up the collar, grab the jawbone, and what a jawbone, so delicate, as if cut from crystal. Hand on the back of the neck, prey immobilized, completely pinned, tight grip. See what’s happening down below, if it’s up, if it’s sparking, gauge its potential, adjust aim. Strong turbulence in seismic zone. Flanking movement, pants in way, obstacle belt, buckle-fumbling fingers, new obstacle arises. Obstacle promising. Hands on hands, beneath layers of material, tips erect, redoubled vigor of obstacle. Pullovers tossed to floor, pants to follow, stuck on shoes, get shoes off, uncertain movements, counterproductive haste, shoes stuck worse but getting there, getting there. Majestic obstacle against white lace. Harpoon obstacle, insert. Obstacle quivers, fights for survival. But rout, retreat, useless struggle, enemy in flight, victory too easy, absence of peril, triumph without glory.* New strategy. Rekindle the battle. Hands everywhere, flying fingers, introduced, flicker turns to flame, going to work, going to work. Another flop. Find something else. Imagination, imagination. On your knees, Élisabeth. Open wide, back in business. Prey sighs, relaxes, coasting along boulevard, gliding on alone. Rabbit in tunnel, run over. Gets up, gets stuffed. Rabbit up in arms. Lasso, whoosh, obstacle under control. Obstacle furious, roars, spends everything, spent. Obstacle drowsy.
So, says Tony, you came to wait for me in the Gare de l’Est just to do me a little favor.
We’re lying on his parents’ bed having a cigarette. Men’s and women’s clothes are strewn all around us. Ours are still lying on the kitchen floor.
I have a thing for tabloid news, I say without compromising myself.
Maybe, replies Tony with a trace of a smile, but you must not be getting nearly enough love. And since I wait for the follow-up he says at your age, I hope I won’t still be consulting doctors, then he comes closer and I instinctively recoil.
What, he says with his naked savage smile, don’t want to play anymore?
I’m out of bed in one bound but he follows me out of the bedroom, grabs my wrist and I realize I’m losing the match. I try to think but everything gets mixed up in my head and I can’t figure out what attitude to adopt so I automatically defend myself, slapping him with my free hand. Tony lowers his head and rams into my stomach. I collapse against the wall, he comes on again, I straighten up and rain slaps on him that he deflects with his fists. When he grabs me by the forearms I drive my knee between his thighs then run toward the kitchen to get my things, but he catches me by the hair, tearing out a whole handful. I fall to the floor, dragging him down after me; we scratch each other with our nails, punch each other’s bellies, and I close my eyes tightly, thrusting deep into his scrawny flesh while he grabs fistfuls of my skin, twisting and biting it. Crawling over the tiles, I steel myself against his blows as I concentrate on recovering a minimum of my clothing and getting out.
This takes perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. I give up everything I can. I let him take possession of this body that I inhabit so briefly and intermittently, and at the same time I collect my things behind my back while still only inching my way along to allay his suspicions. Finally we’re at the foot of the front door, I no longer know what he’s doing to me but I raise a hand toward the doorknob as if from underwater. Calling on my strength, benumbed during all those minutes that have drowned in a parallel dimension of my memory, I shove him violently back to get out onto the landing where he doesn’t dare follow me. I dress hastily, run down the stairs. At two on the dot I ring the babysitter’s doorbell.
* À vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire. (To vanquish without peril brings a triumph without glory.) Pierre Corneille, Le Cid, act 2, scene 2.—Trans.