All the Way Read Free Page B

object belongs to the mantelpiece. When people ask, they’re told that the object on the wall is a warming pan ; it was used in the past when there was no heating. The thing was filled up with live embers and, thanks to the long handle, the beds were warmed. The object on the mantelpiece is a telescope, it belonged to a great-grandfather who was a sailor.
    â€˜Go to the carnival all by yourself ? At your age? All by yourself. With so many idiot drivers zooming round those bends. And which dress? Well, we’ll see about that. The red dogs. At ten o’clock at night. Do you know what happens to girls who go to the carnival all by themselves in a dress with red dogs on it at ten o’clock at night? No, I was not sleeping. Why didn’t your parents telephone me? They didn’t think twice all the other times.’
    Monsieur Bihotz is red, huge and swaying on his feet, but as soon as he gets too close to that topic, to her parents, he backs off. His muzzle has brushed the electric fence. He calms down.
    â€˜Come over here.’ He hugs her very hard and, bending down, rests his big head on her neck. He’s got that ‘mystical’ look, that’s Rose’s word for when people get that look she finds ridiculous, like they’re on another planet, unhinged from ‘real life’. And he looks at the garden in silence, as if they were the only survivors on Earth. As if all that remained in the village was their house, and all that was left of humanity was the two of them.
    What was worse, to go or not to go to the carnival, to risk it, hoping they all have other fish to fry, rather than stay in her room, in the shafts of the setting sun, with the blare of the brass band muffled behind the shutters, at ten o’clock at night in the month of June?
    She tries to keep a diary, like Rose. Rose even gave her a Hallmark notebook for her birthday. But it’s fiddly. Life is boring. Nevertheless, says Rose, we mustn’t forget our youth, mustn’t forget what we used to be and become old farts.
    Perhaps she should tape herself. She uses the same tape recorder her father used when he tried to learn English.
    She presses Record:
    I was allowed to go to the carnival. It was ten o’clock at night and it was hot. I put on my dress with the red dogs. I went on the dodgem cars with Rose and Christian. Rose is my best friend. Christian and I are in love. No one knows except Rose. Lots of kids from school were there but no one
    She’s not sure about saying ‘pissed me off ’.
    annoyed me. I’ve decided to keep this diary every day from now on. Signed Solange. Top secret.
    She presses Pause. The tape emits a tiny sound, as if it was groaning with the effort. She releases the Pause button.
    Get stuffed anyone who listens to this.
    She presses Rewind. Then Play. The tape turns with a slight chchch .
    â€˜It was ten o’clock at night and it was hot.’ A plaintive, mannered voice. Like her mother’s. Not her own voice. Rose told her that the skull is like a sound box and that the voice in your head is not the voice others hear. Oddly enough that seems to make sense to her.
    In her father’s car there are magazines, copies of Jours de France and of Lui . Parked in front of a house at the end of a road, as the leaves of the poplars go poc poc on the hood of the car, she enters into a forest of naked women. They’ve all got the same slit between their legs, except that it has a different effect on her than seeing Peggy Salami’s slit. The women look at her straight in the eye, their fingers in their furrow, their legs spread wide. Some of them have pubic hair, some don’t (like her), or almost none (like her). She grasps a few words, panting and arched over , a bit unusual but immediately effective. The women’s gaze, and their fingers, and what else—the surprise, the need to wee from the moment she got in the car, the company of all these women,