Bye Bye Blondie by Virginie Despentes

Author:Virginie Despentes
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781558619289
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2016-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

THE NEXT FEW days she spent riding buses. She looked out of the windows at the city, at the people who got on, she went to sleep or jumped out to have a drink, steal a bottle of beer, or look at sweaters in some shop window. She would walk along for a few meters, catch the first bus that came along, and stay on it to the terminus, staring down the man opposite, then get off, change buses, and so on. She was in suspended animation. Those first days, she rejected the idea that he wouldn’t find a way out. Eric would be knocking at her window one night or one morning. His parents would have given up, or he’d have been able to escape. She was waiting, full of calm energy. Completely stunned, in reality.

One day, at about five in the afternoon, Gloria was struck by the obvious. She had to write to him, if only to tell him how well she was doing, that she wasn’t suffering. That she’d wait for him.

So she took a bus, this time with a destination: Eric’s parents’ house.

She pushed open the street door, and the feel of the stairwell brought a lump to her throat. A kaleidoscope of impressions, voices, whispers, memories jostling in her head as she walked up the stairs to their landing, surprised by the clarity as well as the anarchic confusion of the moments they had spent together. “Both together,” these words were waltzing in her heart, filling her with fervor. Nothing would separate them. Certainly not a few years.

His mother answered the door: severely dressed, gray suit, looking a bit like the former justice minister Simone Veil, but less distinguished. There were strands of gray in her hair, as if in accusation. Illness had aged her, she’d lost weight. Gloria had prepared her little speech. Calmly, she wanted to persuade Eric’s mother to pass on a letter, just a note if necessary. If she wouldn’t give her the address, could she at least let her communicate briefly with her exiled son? But the mother slammed the door in her face as soon as she recognized her. Calmer still, Gloria leaned on the bell. She could feel the blood hammering in her temples, with a heavy regular pulse. Pressure built up inside her. Then the father came out, furious. Gloria burst into tears, begged him to listen to her, but he didn’t want to know, he was very sure of his position: she was not to come near them again or he’d call the police. Then, without premeditation, finding it inevitable “because I had to do something,” she collapsed onto the big thick doormat on the landing, screaming and writhing like in a scene from The Exorcist. She heard the neighbors on the other floors opening their doors to see what was going on, asking each other. She heard the nearest ones, across the landing, move up to peer out through their peepholes. She found herself pathetic,

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