The "Avengeress" on Long-Leave
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 familialand 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]</b>