Philippe Djian - Betty Blue

Without warning, I let him have it with all my might. He dodged my punch easily.

“Cut that out, little buddy…” he said.

I gave him another one. All I hit was air. I wished he’d stop moving around. I had trouble keeping my guard up-I could hardly lift my arms. Still, I laid into him with all I had, sending him a right cross that I was convinced could have killed a steer.

I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see a thing. My head exploded, as if I’d taken a dead run at a glass door. I hovered in midair for a moment, then landed on the canvas.

I did not pass out. Eddie’s face was floating beside me, a bit pale, a bit worried, a bit crumpled.

“Eddie… my man… you see any blood?”

“Shit,” he said. “It looks like you got a faucet under your nose.”

I closed my eyes. I could breathe. Not only was I not dead, but the air pocket in my throat had disappeared. It felt good to lie down.

I lost all sense of what was going on around me. I didn’t know where I was, or when, or why. I wanted to pull a sheet over me, but my arm wouldn’t move. The old guy in the sweatsuit came and took care of me, splashing water on my face and sticking cotton up my nose.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s not even broken. Joe wasn’t too tough on you, he could have hit you harder.”

Eddie helped me into the shower, calling me all sorts of names. The warm water did me good, and the cold water cleared my head a little. I dried myself off, got dressed, and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like somebody who’d been treated with cortisone. I went and joined the others, walking at a more or less normal gait. I was totally sober. Joe was wearing a suit, his little gym bag slung over his shoulder. He smiled at me as I approached.

“So, how does it feel to make an old dream come true?”

“Great,” I said. “I’m at peace now.”

I felt even better back in the convertible, cruising down the main drag with the wind in my face and a cigarette in my hand. Eddie gave me a furtive glance.

“Of course…” I said. “Not a word of this to the girls.”

He half choked. He turned the rearview mirror toward me.

“Really? And what are we going to tell them-that you got bit by a mosquito?”

“No, just that I went headfirst through a bay window.”

One morning the alarm went off at four o’clock. I turned it off quickly, then got up without a sound. Eddie was already in the kitchen. He had gotten the bags ready and was drinking his coffee. He winked at me.

“Want some? It’s still hot…”

I yawned, I wanted some. It was still dark outside. Eddie had wet his hair and combed it. He seemed to be in good shape. He stood up to rinse out his cup.

“Don’t take too long,” he said. “We have at least an hour’s drive.”

Five minutes later we were downstairs. It’s not always easy to get up early, but you never regret it. The last hours of night are the eeriest, and nothing can compare to the shivers you get from the first glow of clay. Eddie gave me the wheel. Since it was nice out, we left the top down. I buttoned my jacket all the way up. It was a jumpy little car.

Eddie knew the area like the back of his hand. He told me how to go. The roads were strewn with childhood memories. All it took was a road sign, or passing through a sleepy little village, and he was off and running, his stories flowing one after the other, drifting off into the darkness.

The trip ended on a dirt road. We parked the car under the trees. The night was slowly evaporating. We got the gear out of the trunk and started off along the stream. It had a fairly strong current, all babbles and burbles. Eddie walked ahead, talking to himself-something about when he was eighteen. We stopped at a peaceful spot, a place where the thin river got wider. There were flower-covered rocks and trees all around. Crass, leaves, buds, dragonflies-all that sort of thing. We settled in.

It was barely daybreak when Eddie slipped on his boots. His eyes were glowing. It was wonderful to see. I felt calm and relaxed. Being close to water always does that to me. He checked his equipment, then went off, bounding from rock to rock as if he was walking on water.

“You’ll see,” he said. “It’s not so mysterious. Watch me…”

Of course the main reason I’d come was to make him happy. Fishing was never my idea of exaltation. I’d brought along a book of Japanese poetry, in case I got bored.

“Hey, if you don’t watch me, you won’t know how to do it…”

“Go on, I’m all eyes.”

“Check it out, pal-it’s all in the wrist.”

He twirled the line over his head, then cast it out. It flew through the air, the reel unwinding at breakneck speed. There was a little plop.

“Hey, you see that? Got it?”

“Yeah, but don`t worry about me. I’m just going to watch for a while.”

A few minutes later a ray of sunlight slithered through the leaves. I unwrapped the sandwiches slowly, trying to make myself useful. I wanted to avoid falling asleep. Eddie had his back to me. He’d been silent for almost ten minutes. He seemed absorbed, contemplating his little nylon string. Without turning around, he suddenly started talking.

“I was wondering what’s going on with you two. I was wondering what’s wrong…”

They were ham sandwiches. Nothing is sadder than a ham sandwich, when the little edge of fat hangs overboard. I rewrapped them. They were kind of soggy, too. Since I hadn’t answered, he forged ahead.

“My God, I’m not saying this to bother you, but have you taken a good look at Betty lately? She’s white as a ghost. She spends most of her time biting her lip and staring into space. Shit, you never say anything, so how am I supposed to know if there’s anything we can do to help…?”

I watched his line drift downstream, growing taut. The water rippled over it.

“She thought she was pregnant,” I said. “But we were wrong.”

There was a fish on the end of his line. It was the first of the day, but there was no comment-his death went practically unnoticed. Eddie stuck the pole under his arm to unhook the fish.

“Yeah, but don’t be ridiculous. These things don’t work every time. It’ll come out better next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” I said. “She doesn’t even want to hear about it, and I’m not really man enough to overpower an IUD.”

He turned to me, with the sun in his wild hair.

“You see, Eddie,” I said, “she’s chasing after something that doesn’t exist. She’s like a wounded animal, you know? She gets a little weaker all the time. I think the world’s too small for her, Eddie. That’s where all her problems start.”

He cast his line out farther than he had before, his mouth set in a sort of grimace.

“Still, there ought to be something we could do…” he said.

“Yeah, sure. Make her understand that happiness doesn’t exist, that paradise doesn’t exist, that there’s nothing to win or lose, and that essentially you can’t change anything. And that if you think despair is all that’s left after that, well, you’re wrong again, because despair is an illusion, too. All you can do is go to bed at night and get up in the morning, with a smile on your lips, if possible. And you can think whatever you want-it only complicates matters and doesn’t change a thing.”

He looked up at the sky and shook his head.

“Gee, I ask him if there’s some way to pull her out of all this, and all he has to say is she’d be better off putting a bullet through her head…!”

“No, not at all. What I’m saying is, life’s not a carnival. There are no booths or Kewpie dolls to win by knocking over bottles; and if you’re crazy enough to place a bet, you’ll see that the wheel never stops turning. That’s when the suffering starts. To set goals in life is to tie yourself up in chains.”