Читать книгу Real Life - Adeline Dieudonné - Страница 13

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I WENT BACK up to my room.

“Sam, the babies have come.” Those words, the first I had uttered since ordering my ice cream with whipped cream, sounded quite odd, as if they had come from a vanished world. Sam didn’t react.

I went to wake my mother, who came downstairs, quite beside herself. I don’t know how to describe an overexcited amoeba; it’s all messy and clumsy, and it talks fast and loud, dashing all over the place: “Warm water, camphor-alcohol, Betadine, towels, a wheelbarrow, straw …”

I pulled Sam out of my bed so he could come see. By the time we got down there, two little hooves had already appeared. Then a muzzle. Nutmeg pushed, bleated, pushed, bleated, pushed. It looked painful. And hard too. Then, all of a sudden, the kid slid out of her body. Nutmeg began pushing again, and bleating, pushing, bleating, pushing. There was a strange smell. A warm smell of body and guts. A second baby appeared. Nutmeg got up and, while she was licking her kids, a large brownish slimy mass spurted out of her and splatted on the ground. Nutmeg turned and began to eat the brownish mass. The warm smell had grown stronger. It seemed to emanate from Nutmeg’s belly to fill the whole of the earth’s atmosphere. I wondered how such a small goat could contain so much smell.

My mother got down on all fours and began to hug and kiss the baby goats. Two males. She rubbed her face all over their sticky little bodies. Then, still on all fours, she turned to us, her face smeared with residue from the amniotic sac.

“They will be called Cumin and Paprika.”

* * *

It was hot the following days. White sun pouring from an empty sky.

My father was on edge. He came home from work with furrowed brows. I had noticed before that he was like that when he hadn’t been hunting for a long while. He slammed the front door, chucked down his keys and briefcase, then began to search for a reason to spew all his rage. He went from room to room, scrutinizing everything in the house, the floor, the furniture, my mother, Coco, Sam, me. Sniffing out a scent. Times like those, we knew it was best to vanish to our bedrooms. My mother couldn’t, she had to prepare the meal. Sometimes he settled for merely grumbling before going to sit in front of the TV. This could go on for several days. Brewing. And then, as always, he finally found it.

“What’s that?”

He asked the question quite gently, and very quietly. My mother knew that whatever she said it wouldn’t go well. But she answered anyway.

“Macaroni with ham and cheese.”

“I know it’s macaroni with ham and cheese.”

He was still speaking very softly.

“Why did you make macaroni with ham and cheese?”

And the longer he spoke in this gentle voice, the more dreadful his building rage would be. This was the scariest moment for my mother, I think, when she knew it was going to come, that he was examining her, savoring her fear, taking his time. He acted as if it all depended on her answer. This was the game. But she lost every time.

“Well, everyone likes macaroni with—”

“EVERYONE? WHO IS THIS ‘EVERYONE’?”

And so it began. The best she could hope for was that my father’s anger would be expended in the yelling—which was in fact more like a roar. His voice detonated from his throat to devour my mother, ripping her to shreds, annihilating her. And my mother was OK with that. Annihilation. If the roaring didn’t suffice, his fists were ready to help out, until my father’s rage was totally spent. My mother always ended up on the floor, motionless. Like an empty pillowcase. After that, we knew we had a few weeks of calm ahead.

* * *

I don’t think my father liked his job. He was an accountant at the amusement park that had made the little zoo go bust. “The big eat the small,” he would say. It seemed to amuse him. “The big eat the small.” Personally, I thought it was amazing to work in an amusement park. When I set off for school each morning, I said to myself: “My father’s going to spend his day at the amusement park.”

My mother didn’t work. She looked after her goats, her garden, Coco, and us. She couldn’t care less about having her own money, as long as her credit card worked. Emptiness never seemed to bother my mother. Nor the absence of love.

The ice-cream man’s truck remained parked in front of our house for several days. I asked myself all sorts of questions. Who’s going to clean it? And once it’s been cleaned, what happens to the bucket full of water, soap, blood, bone fragments, and bits of brain? Will they pour it on the old man’s grave so that all the pieces of him stay together? Has the ice cream in the fridges melted? And if it hasn’t melted, will someone eat it? Can the police put someone in prison for asking for whipped cream? Will they tell my father?

At home, we never talked about the death of the old ice-cream man. Maybe my parents considered that the best response was to act as if nothing had happened. Or maybe they told themselves that the birth of the baby goats had made us forget the mincemeat face. But in fact, I think they had simply not given it any thought.

Sam remained silent for three whole days. I didn’t dare look in his big green eyes because I was sure that in them I would see, projected on a continuous loop, the film of that exploding face. He didn’t eat anything either. His fish and mashed potato grew cold on the plate. I tried to entertain him. He followed me around like a docile robot, but he was dead inside.

We went to see Monica. Something quivered beneath the skin on her neck when she learned what had happened to the ice-cream man. She looked at Sam. I hoped she’d do something for him, that she’d take out a cauldron, a magic wand, or an old spell book. But she just stroked his cheek.