A Beast in Paradise Read online

  Since they met, Louis and Blanche had treated each other like cats occupying the same territory, polite but distant. Émilienne had never seen the young man as a third grandchild; she always said two was quite enough. Whenever she thought about her farmhand’s father, she wondered how the man, who she’d known before he became such a terror, had reached a point where he lashed out at anyone within reach. Louis never spoke about his parents. His mother’s sole visit had left a gaping emptiness inside him. He had not seen his father since the night he fled, bleeding, to Paradise. The older man hadn’t dared to come to Émilienne’s home; he considered it an evil place. Cursed by the sudden death of Émilienne’s husband. Cursed by the accident that had taken Marianne and Étienne and orphaned two children at such a young age, leaving them here on these harsh plains, amid these forests forever trying to devour the landscape and the men who lived there. Paradise was a cursed place, run by an angel with cheeks as hollow as a tin pail, her shoulders slightly stooped, her bosom too large for her compact frame.

  Émilienne looked like what the land had made of her: a sturdy tree with twisted branches. Her hands, her feet, her ears seemed to sprout from her torso, while her legs and hips and midriff were gnarled, almost nonexistent, nothing but muscle and bone. Émilienne was solid but broken; she had picked up the pieces of her own life, rising each morning at dawn and going to bed at night after Gabriel, Blanche, and Louis were already asleep, knowing that one of them would have to take over for her one day. To hold Paradise together the way you gather a litter of kittens into a damp towel. The sole focus of her existence was this place and the lives lived within it. Everything began and ended with her.

  After her husband’s death, people had murmured in the village that Émilienne had suffered more than most, that this suffering had given her added substance. After all, garbage nourished pigs and made them stronger. The repeated sorrows had given her a sort of power, a fortitude that grew ever mightier in the imaginations of those who interacted with her. Émilienne had always been an old woman. Not an elderly lady; an old woman. The kind that continue, relentlessly, to consolidate their small empires through the sheer strength of their spirits, which are so immense, so densely peopled with miracles and horrors, so monumental.

  Louis had respected her before he loved her, with the kind of love that isn’t spoken or shown. A little boy’s love.

  With Blanche, it was different. The difference in their ages; the closeness and strangeness of the ties that bound them, made them into unexpected companions. They were on the same path. Louis’s parents were still alive; sometimes in the night, the idea of going to the bungalow crossed his mind, but then he remembered five-year-old Blanche coming into his room, more curious than surprised; he remembered the little girl who had lost both of her parents at the same time, clinging to Paradise like a ravenous squirrel. Blanche was walking next to him or he next to her. Despite being so much older, despite having lived alongside her every day for nearly eight years, he still felt beaten sometimes, disjointed, crushed beneath the gaze of this young girl whom tragedy had strengthened instead of destroying. Louis would have loved to have Blanche for a sister. He would have protected her, loved her, undoubtedly grumbled a bit at her too, but their relationship would have been clear. He would have understood its limits, the lines that couldn’t be crossed, the pools into which boys weren’t to dip their toes. But instead he simply coexisted with her, not knowing what to say in her presence, or what to do to amuse her, or draw her attention.

  The summer she was thirteen, Blanche had come up the hill from the henhouse and joined her grandmother beneath the willow tree. She’d been catching the little frogs that filled the brook, knocking them hard against a stone, to be grilled on the front porch that evening beneath Émilienne’s watchful eye. She found the old woman in her usual spot. The mid-afternoon heat hung thick in the air; Blanche wore a cutoff pair of her father’s old trousers, her thin legs like two Q-tips stuck in the ground. A baggy, sleeveless light-gray shirt half-tucked into her shorts hung down over her nonexistent hips, accentuating the paleness of her skin. When she came to stand next to Émilienne, the two of them looked like figures in an old painting, frozen in the dazzling summer light. The same green eyes, the same white skin, the same dark hair. Louis was in front of the barn, smoking a cigarette.

  Blanche showed her thigh to Émilienne, who bent over her granddaughter’s leg.

  “It’s a tick.”

  Émilienne motioned to Louis. “Go and get me some vinegar. And be careful with your cigarette. If that catches fire”—she gestured to the barn—“you’ll be the first to burn.”

  Louis obeyed. He ran to the kitchen, putting out his cigarette by running the butt under cold water, and hurried back, the bottle in one hand and a pair of tweezers in the other.

  “You thought of everything,” said Blanche, laughing.

  “That’s my job, isn’t it?” Louis retorted.

  Émilienne poured a few drops into her hand and shoved the cuff of Blanche’s shorts up her thigh. Louis was hit by the smell of vinegar in the heat. Blanche’s bare foot, resting in Émilienne’s lap, seemed like nothing but a clumsy arrangement of bones. Her ankle stuck out like a hinge, the tracery of veins clearly visible beneath the white skin, the whole leg up to her thigh mottled with darker spots, like raisins in cake batter.

  He had never seen Blanche’s body so close up, positioned so that the curve of her buttock swelled like a little hill just above Émilienne’s hand. Louis imagined the texture of her skin beneath his rough hands, imagined what he would do if he were in Émilienne’s place, and a bolt of jealousy, as surprising as it was violent, shot through him. He resented Émilienne for having that body in her hands. The girl was watching her grandmother remove the parasite from her thigh, but something—instinct, surely—made her look up, and when she noticed Louis a few meters away, his gaze riveted to her leg, she nearly yanked her foot off Émilienne’s lap. But she stopped herself and stared defiantly back at the farmhand, who vanished, trembling, into the trees in the direction of the pigpen.

  “Don’t be angry at him,” murmured Émilienne, pulling out the tick with a single twisting motion. “He won’t hurt you.”

  “What if I hurt him?”

  Émilienne patted her foot. “Don’t toy with him. Go and put away the vinegar.”

  Blanche grabbed the bottle, her heels thumping on the porch steps. The house was cool, and a shiver ran through her. As she washed the tweezers in the sink, she let the cold water run over her fingers, wondering if a boy’s touch would be like this, refreshing on a hot summer’s day.

  KILLING

  Louis became strange.

  Blanche began locking the bathroom door and avoiding the barn when he was working in it. At mealtimes, she took Gabriel’s place, sitting next to him, never across from him. From the head of the table, Émilienne watched Blanche growing up. Her granddaughter was finally realizing that Louis, at twenty-three, was neither her brother nor simply an employee. Perhaps desire would get the best of Blanche one day, propelling her into Louis’s arms. Émilienne had considered the possibility. They would make a handsome couple, she thought, but the girl had met him too early. He wasn’t a family member, or a friend. Louis held no charm for the Émards’ daughter, no erotic power; he was like a household pet, intelligent and docile. She loved him in that way, but that was all. Gradually registering the effect her young body was having on him, Blanche patiently set traps along the path that led to her—but Louis never fell into them. It wasn’t that he was ashamed by his reaction; he was embarrassed, yes, embarrassed that she had caught on so quickly, had known even before he had, maybe, anticipating his movements and his looks to the point of locking herself away, in a single afternoon. Louis refused to believe that he had become that sort of man, too invested in the land, too close to Émilienne to upset her equilibrium. But there it was: he had looked at Blanche.

  Blanche was al
ways watching, planning each move before her opponent could make his. She was angry at Louis: through his eyes she had become aware of her own transformation. Very early on, her grandmother had explained to her that women’s bodies were “cities” and men’s bodies were “villages.” Women’s forms were constantly changing, evolving, blossoming beneath the gazes of others, their surfaces filling out in some places and curving inward in others. Men’s bodies, on the other hand, once adolescence had passed, kept the same size and appearance. Age and alcohol might cause them to soften and bulge, but they did not transform. Blanche would have to prepare herself for great changes, her grandmother had said. Her little city would become larger, fuller, more desirable. Louis was no predatory raptor circling the carcass of childhood, but still, as she sat next to him and he kept his eyes fixed on his plate, Blanche had to stop herself from slapping him, screaming at him that it wasn’t her fault that her buttocks had grown round. She tugged on her T-shirt, flattening the curves of her breasts, raking her sun-bleached hair across her face like a curtain. She tried to make herself invisible, and despite her rage, she resolved not to be nasty to Louis. Years ago, she had learned, in the worst possible way, how her own anger could backfire on her. She had only been eight years old.

  On that day, Blanche had gone upstairs for something and was just on her way back down when her brother, usually so calm, burst out of his room with a piece of paper in his hand. In trying to push past her on the staircase he had bumped her ankle and she’d tumbled head-over-heels the rest of the way down. Landing in a heap, it had taken her a moment to untangle her limbs. Her elbows and knees were skinned and scraped. Gabriel had frozen at the top of the stairs watching his sister fall, wide-eyed at the spectacle he had accidentally caused, holding the piece of paper in front of his mouth, and when Blanche had recovered herself somewhat, she ordered him to come down.

  Gabriel took a step back. His sister, tense, hunched, lips trembling, gestured with her hand and repeated:

  “Get down here. Now.”

  Gabriel sighed and started down with dragging steps, the stairs creaking beneath his feet. He now held the piece of paper pressed to one thigh, his eyes locked on his sister’s. She stood motionless. For a brief moment, he imagined that an enormous dog was poised there, waiting for him, that there was no way to edge past before it leapt on him.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose, Blanche, I swear.”

  She sniffed. Gabriel thought she was going to spit on the floor, but she only breathed heavily in and out. He wasn’t moving quickly enough for her, and his slowness only made her angrier; her cheeks, already pinkened by fear and the abrasive wood of the stairs, grew even more flushed.

  As soon as he set foot on the rug his sister grabbed his arm, the drawing still hanging limply from his hand. With shocking violence, she slapped him with all her strength near the corner of his eye, putting the whole weight of her body into the blow. Just as she lifted her arm to backhand him on the other temple, Émilienne came out of the dining room.

  “What’s going on here?”

  She took in Blanche’s bloody elbows, her furious face, the fingers gripping Gabriel’s arm. The boy was weeping soundlessly so as not to anger his sister any further; her free hand, still suspended above his head, seemed disproportionately large and heavy.

  “Let him go.”

  Émilienne set her basket down in the doorway. Blanche let go of her brother’s arm and he fled into the kitchen.

  “Come outside,” the old lady grunted, seizing Blanche by the back of the neck as if she were a dog who had shit on the floor.

  She took her out to the front porch and pointed to the henhouse.

  “Go and fetch Louloute.”

  She released Blanche, who grasped her grandmother’s hand.

  “He pushed me on the stairs, and I was angry.”

  “Go and fetch Louloute, I said.”

  Tears filled Blanche’s eyes. She knew her grandmother; begging would only delay the moment when she, Blanche, would suffer even more than she had in falling down the stairs.

  Hanging her head, resigned, she headed toward the slope where a fat brown hen was busily pecking the ground. The chicken, accustomed to the girl’s caresses, allowed itself to be picked up. Each of the children had a favorite chicken. Louloute, with her feathers smelling of mud and manure, was Blanche’s. As the child was returning to where Émilienne stood waiting, she whispered to Louloute:

  “I’m sorry. Gabriel pushed me on the stairs. I’m sorry.”

  The chicken struggled to get away, but Blanche clutched her more tightly. Reaching the porch, she looked beseechingly at her grandmother one last time. The old lady ignored her, seized the bird by its head, and broke its neck with a twist. The little girl gave a strangled cry. Something in her died at the same moment. She wanted to fling herself on the ground, to weep over this broken heap of feathers, but Émilienne took her by the shoulders before she could move, looking directly into her eyes, murmuring:

  “Don’t you ever hit your brother again. Do you hear me? Never again.”

  Blanche hated Émilienne right then.

  “Never hurt anyone smaller than you. Never. Or you’ll suffer much, much worse in return.”

  Then she left the girl to her dead chicken.

  In the dining room, Louis had heard everything. He was struck by Émilienne’s cruelty. At the sound of bone snapping he had, for a few seconds, imagined himself in Blanche’s place, trying to absorb some of her pain, her grief, for the animal that had been sacrificed for a lesson he thought foolish and misguided.

  Crossing the room, Émilienne paused in front of the fireplace.

  “Go with Blanche to bury the chicken.”

  Louis got up, measuring his words, weighing each gesture, and ventured:

  “That might not have been necessary.”

  Silence. Eyes burning, Émilienne jabbed at a log with the poker.

  “Nothing good happens when one person hits another,” she said without turning around, “as you should know better than anyone.”

  Then, without another word, quickly, abruptly, she dismissed him.

  Huddled over the body of the chicken, the little girl buried her hands in its feathers, muttering hateful words. Louis couldn’t tell whom they were directed at: Émilienne, Gabriel; her parents, maybe? He didn’t know, but he had never seen Blanche like this, wholly given over to grief, her childhood lying in pieces around her.

  “We’ll bury her,” he murmured.

  Blanche stood up suddenly, annoyed by Louis’s presence. When she looked toward the house, she saw Gabriel. He froze, not daring to take another step, and set the piece of paper down on the front porch. Louis went and picked it up; it was damp with tears, and he recognized the tree and the yard, drawn in black pencil. Gabriel had drawn the view from his bedroom and, just beneath the bench, which his childish hand had depicted as being much wider than the trunk against which it leaned, he had written: “For Blanche.” Louis held the drawing out to the little girl, whose eyes widened with shock at seeing her name in the misshapen letters of a hand still learning to write. Cradling the dead bird in her arms, she took the paper in her fingertips and walked ahead of Louis over the footbridge leading to the henhouse. There, she asked him to dig a grave like the ones made for humans, and in this gaping hole she wanted to place both Louloute and her brother’s drawing. Louis dug a small, circular pit just slightly bigger than the chicken and knelt to place the body in it himself. But Blanche stepped forward, dropping to her knees the way you would next to a brook, and laid Louloute in her final resting place. She ran her fingers gently through the feathers, smoothing them, and then nestled Gabriel’s drawing between them.

  “He didn’t do it on purpose,” she whispered, turning to Louis.

  The young man nodded. He wanted to say something about Émilienne too, something nasty and scathing, but he bit back the
impulse, the old lady’s words echoing in his ears.

  They went back up to Paradise in silence, Louis walking ahead of Blanche. Halfway up the hill, he held out his hand to help her climb more quickly, but she ignored the gesture and overtook him, suddenly emboldened, resolute. Louis understood, then, that death was a family matter here; that you managed it as a matter of course, the way you fold away a clean sheet.

  COMING INTO EXISTENCE

  Alexandre lived in a sterile, soulless little house in the middle of a lonely road narrower than a street, lined with homes crammed closely together. His father worked forty kilometers away as a ticket agent at a railway station. His mother, a cleaner at the town hall, dropped her husband off at work each morning and picked him up in the evening, driving a hundred and sixty kilometers every day, both before and after scrubbing public buildings beneath the eyes of patrons who casually sidestepped the hunched figure bent over the overly broad, glaringly white staircases of the mayor’s offices. They filed past this body that might almost have been kneeling in prayer, their eyes lingering without shame on what had, before her marriage, been a superb backside, rounded and firm; the kind of bottom you don’t see in the movies, only in real life.

  His parents had always been worn out; his mother by work and the never-ending daily drives, his father by boredom, and the frustration of being able to provide nothing for his family but the house. The only unexpected thing in their lives was that they had brought such a beautiful boy into the world. From whom Alexandre had inherited his large eyes and high cheekbones, they had no idea. The more people gushed about his looks, the more confidence he gained. Alexandre did not sink into the melancholy that had stricken his parents at an early age. He grew up thinking that nothing could be worse than the endless silences, the evenings whose agonizing quiet was broken only by the rumble of cars passing the front door. His room, at the end of the hallway next to the bathroom, overlooked the meadow behind the house, which didn’t even belong to his parents; a green expanse where cows chewed at the grass, swishing their tails at this boy who had only one desire: to duck under their heavy, rounded bellies and climb onto their broad, comfortable backs, to gain a bit of height, to get some perspective.