“You think I’m gonna die, sweetie?” asks Mama, whose tiny body can barely be made out under the sheets. Only her arms, thin and dry like cut branches, her shoulders, narrow and bony, and her head, no more than a skull—sunken eye sockets, protruding cheekbones, chiseled jaw under her tight skin—are visible. “What do you say, honey? Can you give Mama a cigarette?”
Tristan lights a Dunhill Red without inhaling the smoke, which makes him nauseated, and brings it up to his mother’s chapped lips. She sucks fearlessly. She no longer has the strength to eat or drink, only to draw on the filter. Tristan is sitting on the nightstand. His healthy, slender, muscular body and his soft, smooth bronze skin disgust him. He finds his body cumbersome; he would prefer to be a wisp of straw, like his mother, to drift along with her down the weakening stream of life. He closes his eyes. Shakes the ashes into the ashtray. Puts the cigarette between her eager lips once more.
“Shit, I’m gonna die,” Mama murmurs in one breath. She starts coughing. The blood gushes from her mouth, her nose, as if her veins don’t know how to contain it anymore, as if she were pierced with thousands of holes. Tristan dips a handkerchief into the bowl of water at the foot of the bed. He skims it over his mother’s face, his fingers light as feathers, but she screams.
“You’re hurting me! Don’t press like that.”
As he cleans her, she cries and says, “My big boy. Fifteen years old. How can you be fifteen? I was fifteen once. I was a knockout. You know that. Everyone does. A knockout, with her life ahead of her and men at her feet. Free, free, free. No one to put a leash on me. What fun I could have. People don’t have fun like that today. Do you have fun? You’re too serious. You only think about school. Did you already take the baccalauréat? No, it’s too soon. Fifteen, that’s young to take the bac exam. See, I never took it, so I have nothing to say. Oh, the fire! Can you see the big flames? I’m gonna go straight to hell. On a slide. Off I go, feetfirst. And you, you go and take your bac. Always so good. Too good. Always judging me. But with me, see, it was different. Teachers? Sons of bitches. Grades? Bitches. The system? A bitch. I wouldn’t have it. But you, you do what you’re supposed to. I never knew boys like you. Do boys like you even exist? Are there other ones like you at your school? I mean, exactly like you, who take the bac at fifteen, do the shopping, the cleaning, the laundry, and wipe their mothers. Ah, yes, that’s true, it’s not the same, it’s not shit, it’s blood, it doesn’t come from the same place. It’s more respectable. But now everything’s the same for me. Up, down. Mouth, ass—same thing. That’s the difference when you’re dead. Hey, honey, I just made a big discovery. The difference when you’re dead is that there are no more differences. So I’m dead. Am I dead, Tristan? Or not yet. Tell me not yet. You want to play a game of French tarot? Ah, no, shit, you can’t do it with only two people. It’s crazy how little you can do with two, don’t you think? There’s never been enough of us in this house. That’s the problem. I should’ve done things totally different. But I wouldn’t have wanted more children. Didn’t want to be the mom with brats pulling on her skirt, the mom with her breasts hanging down. No. Something more like Snow White or Goldilocks. A girl—me—and seven dwarfs, or three bears. Some life, in fact. You don’t add any life to this place. Since you were a baby, nothing. You never cried. Are you crying? You’re crying because I’m gonna die. Shit, I’m gonna die. Five minutes ago, I was fifteen. Five minutes ago, I was a knockout.”