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T.Wignesan
At first, she merely
put out tentative feelers.
The light was getting
too bright too early. The shutters she kept tightly slammed down still let in
shafts of light which she found too disrespectful of her own, self-imposed
reclusion. She would wake in the middle of the night, and that was it: she was
wide awake, and there was nothing she could do about going back to sleep. In the
early days of her leave, she tried reading, but that practice only soiled the
books: she woke up to find them under dirty bedclothes. Then, she tried
switching on the tele. There was nothing doing; sometimes, the first and second
channels ran some replays of earlier series she had already seen and was not
quite interested in taking them in for the second time. Or else she woke to the
opening signal tunes of the channels. She had invariably dozed off without
switching the TV off. A little later, she even began to hear her
school-attending daughters in the adjoining bedroom moan and groan in their
sleep and then get up to ease themselves in the lav opposite the kitchen which
was next to her room. For some time, she merely stayed awake, her fingers
finding ways to satisfy herself, but this was something she could - and would -
do at any time during the day when the girls were away in school. Besides, she
was still youngish-looking and had no need for self-gratification. In some
milieu - a rung or two lower than her social aspirations would allow her - she
still had admirers, and this was all the more reason to avoid indulging
herself.
Then, it
happened, at least, this is how it seemed it happened. When the psychoanalyst
and probation officer had gone through her dossier just before she was
awarded her long congé de
maladie, they had warned her
against her bouts with the bottle, though neither of them found the reason to
prolong her suffering. They well understood her past cyclic escapades through
some of the fashionable night-clubs, always ending in some call for an ambulance
and the inevitable paperwork necessary for her to be discharged in the company
of her minor children, one at seventeen and the other at twelve. So, they penned
a colophon note: "Understandable or pardonable erratic behaviour: the bottle
could hardly hasten her days!"
She woke as usual at
about four in the morning. Ritually, she switched on her side table lamp and
flipped through the Elle magazine. 'I'd look better in that
lingerie than that uppity pute!' she murmured to herself and
caught a glimpse of her straggly sandy hair in the almeirah mirror. She couldn't
avoid cupping her palms under her a-little-less-than-turgid breasts. She stared
at herself in the mirror for a few minutes, turning her busty profile from side
to side. Smirking at the open page advert, she brought out her legs from under
the pile of blankets and eiderdown. 'Look at these you prig', she announced and
felt a sense of achievement in her bones. Her flesh didn't quite give in the
wrong places as yet at forty-five: flabs at the sides and front of her hips,
drooping chunks at the back under her buttocks which pushed the brackets of her
thighs further out. She was twenty-five, at most twenty-eight, and that was
that, she thought or at least liked to think that. Then, as the days prolonged
to weeks, the routine of getting up on time for the office no more weighing on
her, and tiredness less and less a habit, she took to sleeping late. This only
accentuated her sleeplessness. Trying to catch up on her lost sleep became a
task she didn't much relish. For a couple of weeks, she dozed off in the
afternoon while watching the tele, and then she discovered that certain adverts
which repeated telephone numbers endlessly, suddenly got on her nerves: it took
her some time to realise that she must have been fighting and must have lost out
to the repetition of numbers in her sleep. This realisation ate away at her,
from time to time when the same advert came on the tele. She would rush for the
remote control gadget and quickly while hurling obscenities at the screen change
channels. Little by little she was wondering at herself, at her lack of control,
at her jitteriness over the slightest details that didn't quite stay in place,
like when she programmed the washing machine and found that the drum turned on
while the programme got stuck halfway, or the deep freeze pizza she placed in
the oven still remained uncooked after the prescribed time. More and more she
took to voicing her displeasure even when her children were away. And then,
their report cards drove her to yelling fits. Ever since she had had to stay
home, her daughters were performing badly in school. Remarks like "inattentive
during class", "dozing during exams", etc., multiplied. Vaguely, she knew that
it had all had to do with her getting up in the night, but the more she tried to
right it all, the more she got herself into a contorted mess.
It was then that it
happened. The Bordeaux bottle she had opened the previous evening lay unfinished
on the table she hadn't cleared. The children had retired. When she woke on the
sofa, she most automatically reached out for the bottle and took a couple of
gulps. Then, before she knew it, she was seated with her legs apart, still in
her dressing gown and slippers, with her head in her hands and the bottle empty.
She felt thirsty. She rose and dragged herself to the kitchen. She opened the
tap and stuck her head under it, her hair wetting in the faucet at the same
time. She drank the tepid water for some time before she felt a chemical taste
to it. "Damn", she said, and retrieved herself and daubed her left ear with the
sleeve of her arm. Then, she came back into the lounge and opened the glass-case
of the wall-length book-cum-cutlery case and alcohol cabinet. The one-and-a-half
litre whisky bottle was only three quarters dry. She drank directly out of the
bottle, spilling some over her lips, chin and breasts. The smell reinvigorated
her and drove the chemical taste of tepid water from her blueblackish tongue. It
must have been around five-thirty in the morning. Outside the tightly drawn
wooden shutters, sparrows and magpies which nested in the hedges of the skirting
path and vacant lot took up their chirping and complaining in chorus, especially
a lonely sweet crier in a thin repetitive plaintive note with a twang of
playfulness to it kept hammering away her call - obviously calling for her mate
- in short half-a-minute spurts. She wasn't aware of anything as much as her own
hurting eyes and forehead. She managed to drag herself to her bed next door, and
there lay slumped on the ruffled bed in her dressing gown. She was aware of her
daughters rising and flushing the lavatory-bowl, of the clink and clatter of
mugs, plates and cutlery, of the spoon stirring in the mugs. She yelled at them
from time to time and got no answer. The room was getting warmer and the sound
of traffic stirring outside made her less aware of the noises within the
building. When the front door of the flat slammed, she relaxed and little by
little lost consciousness, not so much out of tiredness as for not having
someone around to yell at.
The telephone rang
incessantly. By the time she dragged herself to the lounge and picked up the
receiver, the caller had signed off. She murmured and stuttered hoarsely into
the mouthpiece. Her eyes were tightly shut. 'Connard!' she cried and
dropped the receiver vehemently. Her own raucous voice woke her up. She peered
into her wristwatch. It was a quarter to one.
'Damn! Damn! So late,
already,' she mumbled to herself and looked about her for something to drink.
The girls would be back in the afternoon, she thought; 'I must get the shopping
done.' They had their meals in the canteen, 'but they might want a
collation. No baguette, no quiche lorraine - especially for
Muriel. She can't do without it. She's putting on too much flesh on her buttocks
and belly. Must have a word with her. I will do, I will...' She sat on the
lavatory seat and read the previous month's Express from cover to cover,
mainly the covers and adverts, while she imagined herself in the clothes, hats,
shoes, handbags, shawls, and coats the mannequins displayed on the glossy pages.
She flung the magazine on the floor, pulled the knob and entered straight into
the shower-cabinet. The flurry of initial alternate cold and hot droplets
brought her to herself in a few seconds, but the prospect of a long drenching
under the shower didn't appeal to her. She grabbed the soap in her right hand
and let it slide along her body a couple of times and washed the thin film of
lather down her loins without so much as wetting her hair. That was it for her,
for the day. She slipped on her black slacks, her beige pullover and her stolid
high heels before she bundled herself in her red overcoat. Out on the street,
she could hardly keep her eyes open and stumbled a couple of times on the
pavements of the shopping centre. To the people who wished her, she merely
nodded or uttered an indistinct bonjour when they had already passed her
by without so much as recognising the people around her. It was mostly when she
was out on the street when her pains came into her field of recognition. It was
only among what seemed healthier people, prancing around apparently in full
vigour, that she was aware of her own tentative gait, slowness and bodily
shortcomings. Once she noticed - or rather she was noticed by - a classmate of
her elder daughter and stopped to exchange the ritual double-cheek-to-cheek
kisses. She could only think of gaining the seclusion of her flat; the flooding
brightness of the sun hurt her eyes. She passed the café and felt a need
to enter, more out of an urge to escape the painful afternoon sun, but she
checked herself on time and went on to the supermarket which was about to close.
On her way back though, she slumped into one of the white garden wooden chairs
around a vacant table in the arched passageway in front of the café as
though out of a need to take the weight off her hands and feet. By the time an
hour was out, she could hardly make an order. Her tongue betrayed her again. The
waiter helped her to her feet first, then the plastic bags crammed with the
day's shopping. All the way back to her flat she swayed and stumbled, watched by
several passers-by who seemed in two minds about coming to her aid. Some shook
their heads and conferred among themselves. Others asked who she was, but none
dared approach her. Most wanted to know who her husband was, and most knew. He
had left some years ago to make a living in New Caledonia. At first, he sent
money back regularly; then it was rumoured he had set up shop with a Polynesian
woman who was breeding fast and unfailingly. His remittances diminished, at
first; then, they were spaced out once in two or three months, and finally,
without warning, there was no more word from him. She didn't mind though. The
arrangement also gave her the opportunity to try her talents out with
bar-crawlers in the Left Bank. There were a certain number of Africans,
Antillais and Maghrebins, too, she managed to bring back home in the
early hours, but their interest in her elder daughter - then only a mere
thirteen - put an end to her escapades. Then, there was the period of cure she
had to undergo under court orders, her children being placed in her husband's
custody. She weathered that too rather well and returned to her job which was
there waiting for her, a job as an aide-comptable she managed to keep for
nineteen years and which promised a sizeable pension at fifty-five. Then, she
managed to keep clear of alcohol the moment the doctor revealed to her the
duodenal ulcer she had developed. She fought back valiantly and within a year
when the divorce papers came through, she was fit again and had custody of
Muriel and Marie-Christine. The girls had had a good time out there in the
former colony where they were looked up to and where the climate was
"douce", as they said. The real reason was the boyfriends they each
amassed and the beaches where they picnicked almost every weekend and holiday.
The supplément familial and the pension alimentaire accorded by
the court for the girls proved to be equally comforting - only she had to pay
back the cost of half the flat, which she was in the process of accomplishing
with a mortgage on the flat. Life seemed quite right; there were no great
pitfalls, no excruciating worries, no painful tasks to accomplish; everything
seemed to work for the best. She had her freedom and her girls were bound to
have theirs in a matter of years, and then, she would be free for
life.
At first, it was only
a passing phase, a mere temporary loss of consciousness, almost a fleeting loss
of sight. That was all it was, at least, that was what she thought. Then, the
swooning fits prolonged a bit and gripped her in a clutch, she felt. She
couldn't move for a few seconds. Her fingers hovered over her calculating
machine and remained poised before her eyes. They receded and disappeared. She
tended to forget these spells as soon as she was able to resume work. The
demands on accounts being prepared on deadlines kept her from consulting a
specialist. But, when the dizzy spells became more frequent, she took a day off
after making an appointment and had the shock of her life when she was told that
the echography and X-rays confirmed she had cancer. She took a week off to think
for herself, whether she should tell her daughters, whether she should declare
the fact to her employers. The pills she had to take soon righted the dizzy
spells. Finally, she declared it to her employers and kept it a secret from her
daughters. Whether it was due to her illness or whether it was due to her
thinking about her illness, it was not quite clear: she began to make more and
more mistakes with her bookkeeping, and the employers had had to spend more time
verifying and re-verifying her accounts than the time she put in. For them,
there was no other alternative; they managed to persuade her to go on
long-leave, with the promise that should things work out with treatment, she
would be reinstated in her post. She gladly accepted paid leave. It wasn't too
bad. More or less the same salary for no work at all. Almost a sort of
recompense for her suffering, she thought. But the problem remained of what she
was going to do with her waking hours, what she could do with herself with all
the time in the world. Go on a long holiday? That was not to be - for the
children were still minors. Go with the children when they went for the long
holidays to New Caledonia? The ex-husband didn't quite want her around; or
rather the Polynesian concubine didn't much relish the idea. So, she stayed put.
It was not in her style to "go gallivanting around the world just because one
had the means - as though just to show off one's fineries!"- so saying she
comforted herself.
With all the time she
had on her hands and with the spring weather warming her apartment, she took to
lounging around only in her underwear. Some prying eyes soon forced her to draw
the curtains fully. Little by little, she took to dawdling by the open window at
passers-by, and soon realised that from the distance, there were other more
inquisitive eyes behind binoculars watching her watching others. So, she simply
looked from behind curtains, mostly from the kitchen while doing her dishes or
drinking from a glass. The view never displeased her. There were not just other
windows to watch, but the entrance to three huge buildings she could survey.
Every time she saw someone she knew, even by sight, she mentally proceeded to
make remarks about the person. Soon, this habit became a sort of imagined
dialogue and/or monologue with the person concerned, often degenerating into a
derisive, vituperative broadside. She never could understand why she had to look
at the darker side of things. The more she indulged in this practice of deriding
everybody she saw, the more she drank and the more she swore. It was not long
before she realised that the people in the neighbourhood who had maintained a
nodding or cheek-rubbing relationship with her tended to avoid her, or at least
pretended to be otherwise occupied when she passed them. Most of the time too
she was unkempt, and almost invariably her gait was a zigzagging balancing act.
Her clothes never varied in style: the same usual baggy pants, pullover and
jacket, or sometimes a long skirt down to her heels. However much she changed
her uniform, she wreaked of a strong doze of red wine, salami, olives and beer
or whisky. Her breath was veritably infectious. Even her children tended to
escape her frontal embrace. Weeks turned to months, and she had yet to wake on
time to get the breakfast for the girls. Soon, she took to sleeping through the
afternoons, and when the children returned from school, there weren’t even the
provisions in the larder. They took to eating out of tins or just contenting
themselves with a bowl of oats and milk. Then, when Muriel complained of being
without an appetite, Marie-Christine decided to ask for the shopping money. The
mother just threw her handbag at her and yelled:
'So, now, you too want
my money. My cooking's not good enough for the ladies from New Caledonia?
Perhaps, you should ask your pa to send you food parcels
and...'
Marie-Christine had
extracted the amount she wanted for the shopping and had left her mother's
bedroom.
'Damn you,
connasse, how many times I told you not to walk out on me?' - she yelled
after her. Then, she continued to murmur and mumble to herself as she turned on
her bed in a swath of blankets and sheets.
It was not long before
no one -whether acquaintances or friends - returned her nods and bonjours.
So, it was that she retreated more and more into her apartment, more and
more into herself, and more and more callers or the gardienne found that
she didn't answer her door. They had to waylay the girls to pass on the
information, concerning the visit for the hot-water-meter readings, the
deblocking of the rubbish-chute, etc.,etc. She was not averse to letting anyone
in, but she didn't want anyone to see her any more. When they came on "official"
business, she merely opened the door and retired into her room, and there lay
monitoring their every movement by ear. She made but one sortie during
the day, and it was usually around midday, the moment when - unfortunately for
her - the most number of people were around, that is, not only the inhabitants
of the commune but also people who came from elsewhere to work at the
place. That was the time, too, when children returned home from school for
lunch, when workers sought places for lunching, when housewives rushed to do
their shopping. So, she was open to maximum exposure, and the ordeal left her
practically lifeless once indoors. It was the moment of the day she dreaded most
and was really happy when it rained or the weather worsened. People were too
busy sheltering themselves from the elements to pay attention to her. But there
was no escaping it; she was well and properly branded by her gait which
resembled a frail woman's attempts to make way through a windy gale. It never
occurred to her to change her high stubbly-heeled shoes, for they accentuated
her wobbly gait. Soon enough, all who saw her approach made it a point of
changing course: either crossing over to the opposite side of the road, or
merely backtracking to where they came from, such as re-entering a shop they
were about to leave, but the only place where they couldn't escape her was the
queues at the cashier's in the supermarket, the bakery and the news-stand. It
was also there that she first began to hear the snide remarks about her uttered
in whispers, only to find that with time, finding no response from her, the
remarks were voiced aloud. One fine day, she could no longer find the courage to
make her daily sortie. When the girls came home, they found their mother
in a state. They wanted to call a doctor, but she managed to rise and willingly
handed her handbag to her elder daughter and begged her to do the shopping.
Marie-Christine accepted the responsibility but found that she had to answer far
too many questions about her family life to all sorts of neighbours, and she,
too, tried to avoid inquisitive questions by parrying them aside with her boyish
smile. There was something of the garçon manqué about her that made most
people pity her. The sure signs of an embarrassing moustache sketched itself. At
the post office, where she was obliged to get her mother's cheques cashed for
the shopping, there were endless stares from all the employees. The place was
not just a centre of distribution of information; it was the nerve centre of all
gossip, and Marie-Christine dreaded the task of having to go there for any
reason at all.
It was at this time,
too, Marie-Christine came back home one evening with an exotically dark
schoolmate of hers. Her mother didn't say anything when they were introduced.
She was seventeen and the boy pushing nineteen. He was tall, athletic and
spivily dressed in perfecto black leather, his front teeth flashing in a
daring smile. Marie-Christine took him into her room while her younger sister
did her homework in the kitchen. From time to time, one could hear giggles and
subdued laughter from the room, but neither mother nor younger sister showed any
overt interest. He was soon to become a regular visitor. Marie-Christine was
obviously very proud of him. Jesus Dieudonné was his name, and she never failed
to introduce him otherwise as if the name made up somehow for his colour or
origin. There were tongues in the nearby buildings which wagged about the
couple, and short unsigned notes of warning to the effect of imminent black
grandchildren appearing were deposited in their letterbox, addressed to Madame
Marie-Noëlle Lellamand. The notes were retrieved by the daughters and destroyed.
The mother spent most of her time in her bedroom - when the children were home -
or standing behind drawn curtains surveying the scene outside on the street and
the comings and goings of people to the entrances of the visible multi-storey
buildings of flats. Gradually, her surveillance from behind the curtains was
punctuated by remarks and observations which took on the nature of a dialogue -
an imagined dialogue between her and the chosen victim or victims. Sometimes,
she raged on about the neighbourhood children playing in the lawns, pavements
and in the spaces under the birches and chestnut trees. From murmurs to
mumbling, her remarks with time took on an aggressive colouring, and they
invariably ended in shouts and tirades. The daughters when they were in or when
the radio or television permitted hearing their mother brushed the yelling aside
as orders from their mother directed to them. Months of getting used to their
mother's withdrawal from all responsibility in the house made them more bold and
yet more tenacious. Oddly enough, the younger girl's studies began to pick up,
and she seemed at least inured to her surroundings. No one bothered her, least
of all the neighbours. She spent much time with a girl of her age in the same
class two doors away, leaving the room she shared with her sister more and more
to Jesus and Marie-Christine. Then, one day late in the year, it became evident.
Marie-Christine was pregnant, but Jesus was no more in sight. He had as a matter
of fact made himself scarce for some time before that. When the baby girl was
born in a nearby clinic, nobody came to see her, apart from her younger sister
and the assistante sociale. Soon after, she moved with her baby to
another department in the Parisian region, took a shop-assistant job in a huge
commercial centre, and nobody quite saw her again, even though, from time to
time, she brought the baby down for weekends to her mother's place. The baby was
brownish in complexion but had blondish curly hair and wide nostrils. She named
her Marie-Noëlle after her mother, but that didn't seem to help the
relationship. Marie-Noëlle, the mother, seemed only aware of her children's
existence during short periods of her rare lucidity. She had hit the bottle with
a vengeance ever since the baby was born. Throughout all these happenings Muriel
survived and even somewhat flourished. She managed better now, having
recuperated her room. She even enjoyed the responsibility she had with money,
the cooking and the housework. Somehow or other she found the time to do her
homework, and things seemed to look up for her.
She was fifteen, and
she obtained either an A or a B in all the subjects at the final troisième
examination at the local collège. Her mother, however, was not too
aware of her talents and intelligence, but she left her alone, never so much as
shouting at her. They never came in each other's way. The neighbour classmate of
hers visited her instead, and together, they passed many moments every day in
relative playfulness while doing their homework.
Then, the mother began
her night sorties. It was during late autumn and winter, returning late, or
sometimes not even until the next day when Muriel was in school. These sorties
she kept to herself. No one knew where she went or what she did, and it was
difficult to say whether she was more drunk before leaving than on her return.
The neighbours sometimes complained to the gardienne about the unruly
noises they heard at such and such a time of night in the landing. But there was
nothing any one could do about it as there were no
eye-witnesses.
One night she had a
drinking session with some policemen in a bar around the Prefecture and along
the Seine's Right Bank. She had never been over this ground. A fiftyish
policeman-brigadier, a former karate instructor, took an interest in her, for he
found her language of some particular interest. At first, he thought
Marie-Noëlle was a Marseillaise, but soon realised that it was the drink
speaking and not her: short, pungent swear-words punctuating her every remark -
not that women from Marseille spoke like her, but that her inability to
pronounce any word correctly after nine in the evening made her sound rather
attractive. The moustachioed brigadier was married with three children, all
grown up, especially the wife gone obese with varicose veins showing all over
her legs. He preferred the company of his younger police friends and the
bar-circuit after duty. Meeting up with Marie-Noëlle didn't quite shake him up,
but Marie-Noëlle liked the idea of a karate expert around her. It made her think
of all the people in her commune who shunned
her.
Ideas kept creeping
into her head. What if she walked down the main shopping centre in her part of
the world with François on her arm? But that was alas! not to be. He didn't mind
her company until closing time and the ensuing relief he experienced with her,
fully clothed, in some shaded passageway, but, spending a night with her? That
he was not prepared to go through. He liked being with her though and listening
to her comments about everything and everybody and what she would do to change
the world and right the people in it. She kept ending all her comments with the
wish that ' if only I were a man?'
One night François
took her into a favourite bar of his, for there were a few video-games machines.
He liked testing his reflexes with the monstres, as he was used to
saying. That was the first moment when things began to concoct themselves in
Marie-Noëlle's highly coiffured head. She sat or stood beside her police
brigadier friend almost as if she had been reborn, her eyes fixed
unblinkingly at the screens of several machines. She was mesmerised by the
colourful armour and/or attire of the computerised figures: huge beastly heads
on dreadful frames of muscles, cavorting forth and back, up and down, armed with
magic axes, lances or ray guns. In the few minutes that the games lasted,
Marie-Noëlle lived through aeons; she was beside herself with secret,
irrepressible joy. A twinkle crept into her eyes and stayed there for good. It
was as if she was seeing with her eyes for the first time. Then, it
happened!
Over a screen,
entitled Lightning, she saw a tall, blond Amazon of a girl give battle to
a horde of armoured He-men with her bare hands and slay them, then and there.
She yelled out in triumph, and the entire bar shut up for an instant as though
at that moment a new star was born in a cataclysmic explosion. Her mind was made
up. She noted the warrior-girl's dress: an open jacket and jeans torn at the
knees, armlets and wristlets of leather, a pair of heavy tennis or jogging
canvass shoes and the thick, long flowing hair tied crosswise over the sides and
back of the head. She memorised word for word the write-up: the mayor of the
town in full council voted the engaging of three heroic professionals to clean
up the town on account of the growing incidents of hooliganism and mugging that
gave the town a bad name, thus robbing it of its lucrative tourist trade - one a
former karate champ who accidentally killed someone with his bare hands during
an attack on a bank under siege to release hostages, another a former rugby
international banned from the sport for having accidentally crushed half a dozen
valiant defenders, and the third, the blond Amazonian, the only woman
pole-vaulter to have broken the men's world record.
The very next day, she
was up early and took the bus to the nearest suburban railway, and as soon as
she got off the metro at Clignancourt, she made straight for the flea
market where she spent the rest of the morning and the whole of the afternoon to
fit herself out. She took a taxi home from the RER. Muriel wasn't yet back from
school or the gym. She tried and tried out her new-found accoutrement in front
of the almeirah mirror and walked about the house and tried an entrechat
but fell rather lamentably and rolled in pain on the floor. She was up after a
while and found that she was none the worse for the experience. She got hold of
a pair of scissors and deliberately cut through the thick jeans at the knees.
Her knees were a bruised red in colour and the flesh of her thighs descended in
a fold over them. She pulled the jeans down a bit to cover the flesh and looked
satisfyingly at herself in the mirror. Then, she took them all off in a hurry
and stashed the clothes away in the wardrobe under other less
adventurous-looking wear. She got into her dressing-gown, lit a cigarette and
boldly opened a window and leaned out to take in the scene. People who walked
past noted her presence, but didn't expect her to greet them with the
familiarity with which she hailed them. Most merely accelerated their pace. When
she had flicked the stub of her cigarette onto the well-mowed lawn, she went in,
turned an FM station on full blast and reappeared with a glass of whisky in her
hand, which she sipped as she glared at other windows and at people getting in
or out of their parked cars. Some wives chided their husbands eyeing her busts
that showed through the loosely drawn dressing-gown of flowered cotton print.
Marie-Noëlle waved at the husbands and drank to their health, loudly. She was at
it for nearly all the evening up to about seven-thirty when it got quite dark.
She only stopped her show when Muriel came in.
The next morning she
was up even before Muriel and prepared breakfast for her: hot chocolate,
croissants, a plate full of langues de chat and some orange juice. Muriel
appeared aghast but didn't say much, just that she should stay in bed. She, too,
had come to the conclusion that if her mother was on long sick leave, it was
probably very serious. She didn't know though that her mother was not given much
hope by the doctors for any sort of recovery. They had even made it plain that
it was only a question of time. How much time? They just couldn't say.
Marie-Noëlle however had recovered her morale. It was for certain, she
didn't feel like abandoning her drinking habits, but the thought that sooner or
later, probably sooner, according to her, she would have to go for good didn't
bother her any more. On the contrary, a certain sense of bravado overtook
her ever since she saw the Amazonian in action in the video-game. The woman in
the video machine who captured her imagination was called Man-Eater
M'mselle, and she wondered at the resemblance to her own name. She even felt
that it was some kind of call from the other side of things, an
extra-dimensional message to her, a call to arms, a religious edict to clean up
the world, or, at least, her own commune and from there, who knows! her
fame might spread and other communes, nay, other countries, might have
need of her services. She only felt this way when she was quite tight, late in
the evening, especially when she had supped to her heart's content. At other
times, she was only bent on taking the hell out of the people who shunned her,
the people who suddenly began to think they were one-up on her. She couldn't
give a damn otherwise. What they thought of her then and what they could think
of her when she was gone couldn't much make a difference either then or after,
she thought. She had then made up her mind to test them all, why try them all in
an open court and see how they react. She didn't have to wait very
long.
The weather was
warming up late May. At first, she dressed in flowery cotton tights, white
T-shirt and carmine cardigan, with the same stout high-heeled leather boots.
Then, she changed only the colour and design of her tights - a leopard-spotted
yellow, black and brown tights. She was standing in a queue - no one left for
she was now well-showered, powdered and scented - at the local news-stand when
she clearly heard two women jabbing away about her looking out of her window.
She left her place in the queue, moved up to one of the women, tugged at her
elbow and said:
'You screwy lump of a
pute, whom are you talking about?' She looked the two women in the eye
and smirked in defiance. Both the women were abruptly taken aback and caught in
an act in public where they knew not how to react. 'Looking at you, eh? Who's
looking at whom? How do you know that I'm looking at you? Eh? Eh, YOU! It's you
and you I'm addressing. How do you know I'm looking at you if you don't look at
ME? You shit! I look down at the street. My windows open into the street. I can
look anywhere from my windows. But, you, YOU, you look where? You look at my
window. Who gave you the right to look at my windows? Eh? Eh?' And she gave a
push with her palm at one of the women. The middle-aged women were so clearly
put out that they left in a huff, preferring to make it plain to the news vendor
that they would not be caught dead in the same queue with the likes of her.
Lucien, the news
vendor, was not particularly pleased with what had happened. He looked hard at
Marie-Noëlle who was right then glaring at all the men on the queue, and she was
quite clearly spoiling for a fight, just as she had seen the Man-Eater
M'mselle do. One older man who worked in the motor-pool of the Mairie
ventured an opinion.
'Why do you bother to
tick those two off? They are not worth the effort.'
'Who the damn hell
asked you for your opinion.' Marie-Noëlle stormed at him. 'It's none of your
onions, not that yours have any kick in them!' The wizened-looking man rubbed
his hands together and turned to the others in the queue for help. All the men
and women and children in the queue wilfully averted the burning, seething eyes
of Marie-Noëlle who stood arms akimbo glaring at every one. The news vendor then
intervened.
'Uh! Madame,
do, please, leave my clients alone. Nobody wants you any harm, I'm
sure.'
'Look, who's talking.
Selling all this muck to all the kids and pretending to be clean!' She looked at
all present in a general way and took a threatening martial stance, not quite a
karate stance, but something she imagined her new-found heroine would affect:
legs apart, handbag in left hand thrust forward like a shield and right hand
ready to strike to smithereens anyone who so much as dared lift a
finger.
'Madame
Lellamand, if you don't stop this ruckus' pleaded the news vendor when he
was suddenly confronted by the fire-breathing Marie-Noëlle with arms poised for
an onslaught.
'Why, is not my money
as good as theirs? Eiy?'
'Okay, okay, is this
what you want?' Lucien held up a copy of the Elle and beckoned to her.
Marie-Noëlle advanced the five steps towards his counter while the others
automatically made way for her. When she was within reaching distance, she
commanded Lucien to place the magazine on a Le Monde pile beside the
counter.
'Make one false move
and...' she brought her right hand down like a chopper cleaving a leg of ham.
She opened her handbag, took out some change, slapped the coins down on the
counter and virtually plucked the magazine from the pile, spilling a few top
copies in the act. Then, as she glanced furiously at everybody around, she
backed out of the shop, but as she neared the door, some children came charging
in, and she toppled over herself sideways. Luckily for those present, no one
dared laugh, not at least until she had picked herself up and yelled some
obscenities at the children and had disappeared round the
corner.
At home, over a glass
of whisky on the rocks, she tried to cool herself off while reviewing the
incident. She wasn't quite satisfied. Yes, she was to a certain extent, in that
no one dared oppose her. That was enough prove to her that she was being taken
seriously, although she came to the conclusion that she had overdone it. The
incident at the news vendor's however made the rounds, and she was the talk of
the commune. The next day, Muriel's schoolteacher asked her a couple of
questions about her mother not being at work, and some girls during recess
pulled her leg about it. Since that incident, every time her classmates saw
Muriel, they chopped the air in sheer fury. Muriel was embarrassed, but she
didn't dare bring it up with her mother. It was enough that her neighbour friend
kept her company. She wasn't overtly bothered about what people said about her
mother or sister. She had either built a self-protective shell around her or was
quite resigned to her fate. She had her friend, her school and her new-found
housework, and she didn't much care what happened to the world, so long as she
was able to have these - in that order. Her friend who came from a
well-established family from Bordeaux enjoyed all the security and affection her
huge family could shower on her. Both her parents were journalists, and often,
they had to be away on assignment, sometimes even - one or the other - being
absent for relatively long periods, overseas. When that happened, the eldest
girl who was a medical student took charge of the household. Muriel was so much
a part of her friend's household that, perhaps, it was in that knowledge that
she found the strength to withstand the worsening situation in her home front.
Besides, the Bretons - the family name of her classmate - had always reassured
her that she could rely on them, in case things got worse, though they
themselves never pried into Muriel's mother's affairs and were not much amused
when they received a call that Friday night from a woman Maire-Adjointe
on the subject of Marie-Noëlle's show of strength at the news
vendor's.
'What do you want me
to say?' rejoined Mrs.Breton.'We weren't there when whatever you say happened.
Besides, this is the first intimation I have of the incident.' Her husband took
the free ear-piece and listened hovering above her. 'You know more about it than
I am in a position to find out.'
'That's precisely it,
you're a journalist'
'What's being a
journalist got to do with it? What happened yesterday evening at the local
news-stand between my neighbour and your worker is not news, even if it happened
at a news-stand, you'll agree.'
'Certainly, you must
be right, but...but I thought, perhaps, it was only right to warn you: your
daughter is a close...'
'My daughter,
Madame la Maire-Adjointe, is a grown girl who does what she wants
with our permission. If there was something that bothered my daughter, we would
be the first to know. So, if you don't mind, I have other more important "news"
to worry about; so, if you'll excuse me, good-bye, and thank you for your call.'
She put the phone down and looked at her husband. He gave her a pat on the
shoulder, and they both resumed the discussion of a professional matter they
were in the process of confronting before they were interrupted by the call.
The little township
had divided itself since the incident at the news-stand Friday evening into two
camps: one, for the two women who were abused by Marie-Noëlle and the other, for
the municipal worker whose cause was taken up by the leftist party in power. As
for Marie-Noëlle, there was absolutely no one who was for her, but that sort of
situation only put steel into her resolve to carry out to the end her plan of
action, and she meant no mean business about it all: to the bitter end, she had
resolved. All Saturday evening, while Muriel was over at the Bretons,
Marie-Noëlle tried on her new Avengeress' uniform and looked at herself
longingly in the mirror. Then, she washed and shampooed her hair in anticipation
of her great debut for the next day, Sunday, when most - even those who had left
for the countryside Friday afternoon would be back - of the township's
inhabitants would be around, walking about with their dogs or children and
chatting away under trees, on street corners, on queues at the baker's and at
church. Marie-Noëlle planned to time her debut well; she would come out striding
at five in the afternoon when she would be able to catch the homecoming
weekend-vacationers as well.
Right on the dot at
five when the church clock tower resounded over the voices of children screaming
after a rubber ball in the vacant lot and over the blaring TV sets and which
sent the milk-white pigeon pair nesting in a nearby attic to swoop away, and up
and down the township, Marie-Noëlle made her appearance. In the building itself
the corridors and stairways were unlighted to elicit any sudden interest.
Besides, to her great surprise, nobody recognised her, nobody that is barring
the gardienne who was used to following the footsteps of her building
lodgers by ear. She knew that Marie-Noëlle had passed her entrance window and
was just too busy at that moment to pay any attention to her. The
gardienne, a stubby Mediterranean formless lump with small beady eyes,
stuck like buttons in her cheeks, never let anybody pass her without a comment
to somebody else and took it upon herself - beyond the call of duty - to
exercise the greatest vigilance over the slightest disorderliness on the part of
the lodgers, as if she herself was the proprietor. She would never fail, given
half a chance, to stick up notices all over the place - in the lifts, in the
stairwells, over the letterboxes, etc. - calling the lodgers all sorts of names,
such as, locataires dégoutants, the moment she found a piece of paper or
even a trace of water anywhere in the lifts or common walking space, threatening
them with expulsion. The lodgers of course did nothing to pull her up for a
dressing down. Marie-Noëlle was in a way thankful that she didn't have to talk
to the gardienne. Once out in the street, she strode with such elegance
and composure, no one, absolutely no-one recognised her, most probably thinking
that some woman from some other district or departement was leaving the
premises after having spent the night in some flat. But she couldn't fool
everybody though. A well-trimmed poodle, an ageing dachshund and a frisky
spaniel spotted her all right, and for some reason known only to them, they took
to barking at her in unison. This, if anything, attracted the attention of the
dog-owners. A tall young and athletic-looking man, with greying hair, the
parader of the poodle, was the first to make her out. So, she stopped to return
his "salut" and apologies. His older daughter had been on the swimming
team with Marie-Christine, and he thought it would only be right to ask after
Marie-Noëlle's daughter.
'So, you, too, eh? Why
the shit you want to know where she is? You want to jump on her, too?' The
rather serious-looking young man looked plainly perturbed. Marie-Noëlle had
raised her voice in anger or possibly mock-anger. Most people within hearing
distance, including a good many looking out of windows, concentrated on the
scene.
'No, I...I was just
asking. My daughter only the other day thought she saw
her...'
'So, what the hec I
care if your daughter - what she called?...'
'Irène.'
'...saw her. A
pute's a pute whatever's her name.'
'Hey! Who're you
calling a pute? Don't you think you're overdoing it a bit, Madame
Lellamand?' As a matter of fact, Irène was involved in a scandal that came
to light with the cracking of a criminal circuit for photographing teenagers or
nymphets naked and then selling the erotic pictures overseas.
'It's not I who is
overdoing it, I'm only giving you the facts as revealed in the papers as if you
didn't know.' Some who were listening knew the facts, and Irène's father was
quite clearly put out. He had no way of defending himself. Just then, a
neighbour housewife, a Eurasian, passed by, and as Irène's father was obviously
looking for some help, their eyes crossed, and they wished each other cordially.
Hardly had the Eurasian lady taken a few strides past them, when Marie-Noëlle
got virtually into a fit.
'So, who're you
wishing: Madame? That lump of shit with a face like a
cul...'
'Oh, for Heaven's
sake, stop it. Can't you see she can hear you?' he
whispered.
'What do I care, with
a face like an arsehole, who's going to give a damn for her! I pity her husband
who has to look at her face every day while making love. Thank goodness, I'm not
her husband, or I'll simply go mad or jump out of the window.
'
'Look, you're maligning a very decent
woman.'
'Oh, to hell with
decency!'
'What's a face got to
do with decency? Besides, she's a very nice person.'
'Of course, she's a
nice person. That's why she opens the door for you. Don't you think I don't know
you've been sleeping with her? Eh? Eh?'
'What are you talking about? She's a
very kind and decent person...'
'Yeah, so kind she
doesn't have much difficulty accommodating you while her husband's at work, eh?'
The "guilty parties" apparently did not know how to react in public. The
Eurasian woman accelerated her pace, while the man with premature greying hair
looked stunned. Luckily for him, his poodle took it upon herself to attack
Marie-Noëlle. She tugged at her bootstrap and got Marie-Noëlle in a veritable
jig. The people who were listening, both men and women, on a hazy Sunday
afternoon with nothing as much as an international match on the tele found
Marie-Noëlle's antics a sufficiently equal attraction for a warm spring day. So,
some of them laughed, some though, as soon as they heard Marie-Noëlle wag her
tongue on the flourishing practice of adultery, retreated into their homes and
only dared follow the scene from behind impenetrable
curtains.
In the meantime,
someone had informed the gardienne. Thinking that such an incident, too,
taking place in the street came under her surveillance, she opened wide her
ground-floor flat window and called out to Marie-Noëlle. The latter however had
been waiting for an opportunity to have it out with her, and no moment seemed to
her more appropriate than that afternoon.
'Who the devil are you
calling? Your dog? You pig's bottom of a hairy painted excuse of a face. You
want me to punch your guele to smithereens, eh? Eh? Like this.' She
rammed her right fist through the air several times. It hurt her. Her own face
twitched with pain, but she didn't mind, considering the pleasure she got at
last from bombarding the "bitch", as she was in the habit of referring to
her.
'Hey, what right have
you to call me names? You, yourself, a drunken
slut...'
'What? What's that you
say, you shitty bitch!' She looked around for something to throw at her, but
found nothing. She pretended to pick up something and flung it at the
gardienne. The latter quickly retrieved her head and torso sticking out
of the window, slammed the window shut, and after a few moments, appeared with
her husband, a pot-bellied middle-aged gardener on the premises, on the terrace
which was on a level with the road on which Marie-Noëlle was practically
"holding court". The gardener stood beside his wife as though he were on a
witness- stand, only willing to react if he were asked a question. His wife
however seemed to like the role of defence counsel. So, she held on to the
reinforced concrete bars of the terrace as though at a moment's notice she would
catapult herself on to the road to do battle with the "she-devil" of a
prosecutor-cum-judge. More and more of the neighbours peeped or leaned out of
their windows to take in the scene. Marie-Noëlle didn't count on this
development, that is, a full audience for her tirades. The stage was
set.
'Why don't you go back
to where you came from? Here, apart from this silly bugger, no one will poke a
pig like you.'
'What right you have
calling me names? You know I left my country because you country and me country
have contract, have understanding. Otherwise I no come. There I teacher, I teach
English, I have cousin minister in government.'
'Yeah, you big big
shot in your country. Here you are a pig, collector of shit, and you got a mouth
full of shit. Whom are you trying to bluff - teacher of English, huh! Okay, tell
me what this means: "Ma baby's got a yen fer me!" Okay, you pig-shit, what's
that?' The gardienne looked totally stumped. The husband fixed his eyes
on her, for fear of looking Marie-Noëlle in the face, that terrible face which
beamed with joy through all the mascara, lipstick and rouge all over her
cheeks. Someone leaning from a window some floors up above,
yelled:
'Okay, tell her what
that means.' The gardienne then felt like a beast in a cage. Her husband
tried to urge her on, but he, too, it seemed wanted to know if she really was an
English teacher before he met her, a fact or fib which always made him look up
to her. Now, at last, she was cornered.
'Listen, I have
diploma, I tell you. I teacher before marry me husband. I come here
because...because...because...'
'Because you are a
lump of shit. That's why you came here to live in a grand place like this,
without paying rent. No?' Marie-Noëlle never thought she would get a better
opportunity to put the woman down. Here, at last, she was in the box, her only
salvation was retreat indoors and defeat. All the years this gardienne
lorded it over all the inmates of the building, calling everybody who didn't
totally fall in love with her utter idiots and miscreants, putting up notices
all over the place deriding and chastising the gentlefolk who didn't so much as
lift a finger in their defence out of perhaps a false sense of courtesy or
modesty, thinking the gardienne was probably an aristocrat, descendant of
a long line of great artistes, were now at an end, or at least Marie-Noëlle was
determined to put an end to it all.
'So, you curse me. Now
see...see...your daughter. Where she now? Where go make baby?' Marie-Noëlle
suddenly took a militant stance, legs apart, left hand with handbag raised, eyes
narrowing down to mean slits in an iron mask.
'Shit!' she yelled. It
was like a laser shot that was meant to strike the gardienne and reduce
her to ashes. It must be said, the gardienne really looked all shaken up,
her usually threatening flabs of fat now soft as a baby's. 'So, you think you're
a big shot, eh? Your cousin you say was a minister. Minister in what where? You
mean, he was a thug, a fascist thug in your dictator's rubbish-dump of a
country? Eh? Eh? Now, come on, let's have your answer in English.' The
gardienne rolled her beady eyes and screwed them up. Many in the building
muttered things to themselves.
'I call police, I tell
you,' she warned.
'OK. call the police
and I'll see that they take you lot away from here for good. I know how you use
everybody's phones, when the people are not in, to make calls to your country.
You want to call the police, okay, call.' The gardienne looked so
shocked, she couldn't move. Her husband who tried to pull her indoors stood
half-heartedly with one foot out on the terrace. Voices were raised somewhat.
People leaning out of windows talked to one another openly across buildings and
flats.
'And me thinking my
daughters were on the phone all the time,' said one
mother.
'That's right, I, too,
must check on the phone bill. It's been going up and up,' said
another.
'She gets the keys
from us to let in the hot-water meter reader, and now I see what she's been
doing, the bitch,' joined yet another and shrieked: 'Yes, call the police and
let's get this foreign uppity bitch out of this country for good.'
With that the gardener
husband yelled at his wife in a foreign tongue. Suddenly, some children looking
over the balconies started to clap and shout out their applause. Marie-Noëlle
lost no opportunity to curtsey and thank everybody with her hands joined above
her head. But the applause died down just as soon as it had begun. Many men,
many husbands were not too happy with the way things were going. Marie-Noëlle
seemed to know too much, and, perhaps, it might be their turn next. So, they
ushered in their womenfolk and children and left Marie-Noëlle with an empty
victory, with no encores.
The news of
Marie-Noëlle's latest adventure and feat was all over the town in a matter of
minutes, with one or two details distorted and/or exaggerated. By the time she
reached the Place de la Mairie, everybody looked out of his or her window
to catch a glimpse of her. Other encounters took place, other reputations were
destroyed by the time she had traversed the park and reappeared in the market
place which was empty except for a bar which stayed open for visitors from the
provinces with their weekly produce, visitors who put up at the rickety and
reeking Hotel des voyageurs. There she set herself the task of convincing
the customers of the need for forming a vigilante group, a force to wipe out all
traces of corruption in the township. The customers - traders and peasants -
were far too concerned with the arithmetic of their day's earnings to bother
about Marie-Noëlle's proposition, except when it became time to knock off for
the night. Six hefty peasants threw coins to decide who was to lay her for the
night, and in the end got to lay her one after the other. When Marie-Noëlle
returned home late in the afternoon the next day, she was a woman
"comblée", as she herself put it, crying out from her bathroom window,
half-naked. People who heard or saw her shook their heads, some in approval, and
others in dismay.
For days after that
Sunday, most people tried to keep out of her way, but not with much success. She
invariably turned up at the wrong time, just when several ladies were gathered
together for a gossip session at some street corner after having deposited their
children at the primary or secondary school, or when single or married men
roamed the streets in search of some young adolescent girls, under the pretext
of going to get the papers or some cigarettes. Marie-Noëlle had stored in her
memory the innumerable adventures of all her neighbours: who slept with whose
wife or daughter, and who did what he or she should not do in his or her home.
She knew that everybody knew everything that was taking place around the
neighbourhood, but she was aware that no one dared voice it aloud.
There were a few
cuckolded husbands who sent her bouquets out of gratitude, though there were
some who would have much liked to have sent her brickbats. As Marie-Noëlle went
on the rampage day after day, the township suddenly came alive. Everybody was
talking to everybody, and most were talking about Marie-Noëlle and all got to
know everything about her. Several hurt husbands and wives tried to threaten her
with exposure on the phone, and as a reaction, she came out into the street and
hurled her gauntlet down - a leather wrist strap studded with shiny brass
buttons, and dared them pick it up after calling out their names several times
for all to hear and repeating their threats.
During all this time,
Muriel went through all sorts of sensations, from sheer anguish to thrill and
exhilaration. She just couldn't avoid being untouched by the events. At school,
she became a sort of instant celebrity, but she didn't much like the way she
acquired this sudden limelight. So, unknown even to her bosom friend, she
gradually became morose, and for the first time, her exam results suffered. She
couldn't understand it herself. She knew the subjects well, but she just
couldn't get anything right anymore on paper. Days passed and then, before she
realised it, weeks and the end of the academic year in July brought the biggest
surprise of all. She had failed and was asked to redo the year. Her class
teacher penned a stiff note to Marie-Noëlle, but the latter ignored the warning,
for, as she said, she was far too gone in "public service to turn back
now."
By that time, however,
Marie-Noëlle's attempts at cleaning up the township were waning. She didn't so
much as make the impact she had had when she was sober, which was at the
beginning of her campaign in spring. Now, school holidays had arrived. People
had other plans to make: where to go, what to do, how to spend the extra June
pay. Besides, Marie-Noëlle hit the bottle hard after a hard day's work
chastising the public and keeping private morals within bounds. Her gait became
wobbly again. In the meantime, there had been general elections. Her cleaning up
fervour even extended to political party corruption. Grudges were nursed. The
change of government gave a few a veritable opportunity to nail her.
She was at it again at
five in the afternoon on a Sunday. The sun was quite unbearable. Her Avengeress'
uniform had faded to a stained nicotine colour in various joints. The
ventilation slats she had originally cut at the knees, now drooped down to the
shinbones and made her look less menacing, and even rather comic. Children and
adolescent girls who followed her around at first and in the weeks that followed
in growing numbers, almost taking her for a heroine, now tended to laugh at her
whenever she was rebuffed by those she attacked. Her wobbly gait accentuated,
and that was enough to make the children giggle and point at her. This time she
had taken on a young girl who was flirting around.
'Why don't you mind
your own business,' rebuked the strapping young girl of nineteen, who had just
returned from a jaunt of two months with some foreigners she met casually at the
airport. It was rumoured that she was raped by some rather very influential
people at sixteen. Some said that it was a gang rape; others that it was her
father who started it all. She was so delectably made that hardly anyone could
refuse her and apparently she had asked for it, or was asking for it for quite a
while. Soon after, she had amassed a whole chain of friends, close bosom friends
among the police, the freemasons and the anciens
combatants.
'Where...where you've
been? I'll tell you where you've been. You've been everywhere where they breed
the aids and herpes germs. Now, you've come back to pollute our innocent
ville,' rejoined Marie-Noëlle. They were having it out in a public garden
not far away from the local police station.
'As if you need me to
pollute this filthy town,' she blurted out, her bobby tail of straight flaxen
hair flipping with her every word.
'How dare you call our
town filthy, you filthy shitty bitch!' yelled Marie-Noëlle in mock righteous
anger. In the earlier days, this retort of hers would have earned her a round of
applause, but... It was plain, she was herself losing touch with the audience.
The mothers with prams and children playing in the garden were only somewhat
interested in the goings-on between the two harpies. Some older men approached
the warring couple. Obscene language became the mode for a while. Encouraged by
the people gathering around her, Marie-Noëlle slung out a string of invective to
make any body's stomach turn, except, as she was to find out, the
nineteen-year-olds.
'You are the sinner of
sinners, the shitter of shitters, the thug of thugs, the rapist of rapers, the
conne of connes, the cunt of cunts,' she rolled out and was just
about to continue when the young girl struck Marie-Noëlle in the face with her
loaded leather handbag. Marie-Noëlle lay dumb struck in the pebbly dirt track,
her mouth and nose ringed by a developing line of blood that eddied in the folds
of her neck. A couple of policemen who were standing in the queue at the baker's
with their black-and-white van parked virtually in the road responded quickly to
the young girl's signal to them.
Within minutes, with
Marie-Noëlle yelling and shrieking and tearing at the young girl's fashionable
oriental wear - which gave way to her claws revealing much turgid flesh - the
police managed to bundle her into the van, and that was the last most people saw
of Marie-Noëlle.
Mothers once again began chatting
freely on street corners and in gardens. Life sort of returned to "normal" in
the commune. There was a newly elected party in power in the
Mairie, and nothing else appeared different, except that mothers
complained of the language their children used since the winter.
At court, Marie-Noëlle
was stunned to see that most of the people who came for the case were the young
girl's friends. Marie-Noëlle was sentenced to a three month prison term with a
pardon for a first offence, but the court ordered a psychiatric and social
examination.
For months after that,
the people of the township spoke of nothing but the results of the
examination.
Marie-Noëlle was back
at her job some weeks after the case. Muriel's studies continued to deteriorate.
The
medico-psychological report to the court discovered that Marie-Noëlle was well
and truly well. She had no cancer. Just that her original medical file got mixed
up with that of a cancer patient who had since died and been buried years before
the Man-Eater M'mselle story was even thought of.
© T.Wignesan, March 23rd. 1993
[from the collection: mere deaths
and the mostly dead, 1993]