Billie by Anna Gavalda

Author:Anna Gavalda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2015-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

I’ve stopped crushing his hand—I need to move; I may want to die in the next minute, but I’ve had enough of having a sore arm for the next second, and just as I’m rolling onto my back, he starts squeezing me in turn.

“Franck? Is that you? Are you there? Are you sleeping? Have you passed out or what? Do you hear me?”

I’ve stuck my ear against his mouth just in case he is too weak to answer me clearly and also to act the way they do in the movies, like, when a dying old man murmurs with his last little breath where he’s hidden his treasure, and so on.

But no . . . his lips aren’t moving . . . his hand, however, is still squeezing mine . . . Not a lot. Just barely. A weak grip. But for him it must be a humongous effort.

His hand is too weak and doesn’t really squeeze at all, but he is pressing me a little with his comatose fingers. His fingers, in a last little burst of movement, are saying to me: “But you don’t see that your treasure is there, you big dope! C’mon, stop crying! Do you realize you’re starting to bore us with your miserable childhood? Do you want me to talk about mine a little? Do you want me to tell you the effect it had, growing up with a mother on antidepressants and a father on “anti-the-whole-world”? Do you want me to tell you what it’s like to live with constant hatred? Do you want me to tell you what it’s like being the son of Jean-Bernard Muller and to realize at eight years old that you would only ever love boys? Is that what you want?

“Do you want me to tell you again all about the bloody war that was waged? The resulting carnage? The domestic terror? So, stop for two minutes, please. Stop. And can we give up on your bogus star there? . . . There is no little star. There is no sky. There is no God. There is no one other than us on this fucking planet; I’ve already told you a thousand times: it’s just us, us, us, and us again. So stop always digging into your shitty memories and inventing your own cosmogony when it suits you. I hate it when you do that. I hate it when you wallow in that type of easy complacency. Anybody can anathematize others’ flaws in place of his own, you know? And I hate to see you like everyone else . . . not you . . . not her . . . Not my Billie . . . The world is nothing but a bottomless pit where the most shapeless families slither and twist on mountains of muck, but there is for us something holy and sublime that they don’t have and that they will never take away from us: courage. Courage, Billie . . . The courage to not be like them .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.