The Emperor, C'est Moi Read online

  In Soizic’s hands, scissors and comb. That’s it, spin me around! I lower my head, because I don’t want to meet Soizic’s eyes: they would make me lose control of the situation. I don’t want to meet Julien’s gaze, either. Julien, who suffers and makes me suffer. Soizic delicately lifts my head when I turn away from the mirror. I will still keep lowering my head anyway, but now it’s more to feel Soizic’s hand again, gently raising my chin, than it is to banish Julien from my sight. She reminds me of the Little Mermaid. But she’s bigger. She whirls around me, gliding on her rolling stool. Now I’m sure of it. She, too, likes to go around and around. When the waltz is over and the scissors put away, Soizic looks in the mirror at me and smiles. Her smile makes me lose control. For the first time in a long while, I’m not thinking anymore. She is beautiful and I smile back at her. I look at my reflection. I no longer recognize Julien. Thank you, Soizic, for this liberation. Without realizing it, with your blue smock, your scissors, your hands and your rings, for one brief moment you were the healer of my soul.

  Those hands that have given me so much pleasure . . . I don’t want to let them escape. I seize them and caress the blue rings. Oh, who cares about my secret plans, staying in control, betraying nothing—I have to speak to you. I look at the hands and rings. Too late: sounds come out of my mouth.

  “They are beautiful, they are blue.”

  I can’t resist anymore, I must see her eyes. Her eyes that I’ve avoided all along. I want to see them. I look up. That’s it: I’m in her eyes. She smiles at me. I hold her hand in mine. I don’t let go of it. Words come out of my mouth, again.

  “You are beautiful, too. And you seem pleased.”

  II

  ASHES AND RUINS

  How I Died at the Age of Six

  When I was six,

  Sitting on the second step of the main staircase,

  Right under my mother’s eyes,

  I killed Julien.

  I cut his throat.

  I can still see his head roll onto the first step.

  The only one made of stone.

  Tombstone.

  “Mama,” I say with formal solemnity, “Julien is dead!”

  He is buried in the black ground.

  He was not very interesting.

  I want another name.

  Mama suggests Hugo.

  I agree.

  The king is dead.

  Long live the king!

  Mama feels sorry for Julien. I don’t.

  Mama suggests re-baptizing me Julien-Hugo.

  Inside, I’m furious.

  Another compromise!

  I restrain my anger. Supreme effort.

  I know that, even dead, Julien is still and always will be a part of me. He’ll follow me to the end, never satisfied. I must simply bury him deeply and far away so that he never comes back.

  Distant memory, vanished, interred.

  Yet present forever.

  His head is chained to my foot like an iron ball.

  Anyway, the Julien-Hugo compromise will quickly fall into the pit of oblivion. Soon Hugo will be on the lips of everyone who speaks my name.

  Hugo is what they will call me.

  Julien will be mentioned in my presence only by the ignorant and the foolish. As for them, either I despise them or I crush them.

  The Emperor, C’est Moi

  I speak only to the people I love, never to the rest. At elementary school, in the prep grade, I am mute. Mama is doing her best to change that, however. I, too, feel change must come. Hugo has definitely understood this. After beheading Julien, I appointed Hugo king of my mind and body. Supreme emperor of my realm. I must create a person strong and powerful enough to meet the challenge and trample Julien’s corpse, which haunts me constantly. I must pulverize the vestiges and ruins of that world gone by, whose foundations still plague me. I must wear armor, be as dangerous and ferocious as a dragon, as majestic as a lion. Only the raging desire for victory can save me from disaster. I must accept this world that is not mine. I have no choice, or Hugo will wind up in the black ground as well. I must open my mouth. I must speak. The other children are stupid and speak poorly. I don’t want to talk to say the same nonsense they do. I don’t want to become like them. I don’t want to shout like them. Me, at school, I shout on the inside. You have no idea what a gift I’m giving you. When I scream, the earth trembles, walls crumble, birds cease singing and die. My mother knows all about this. When I wander among you, I conceal my suffering and my anger in my heart’s core. If you were to understand this fury, it might kill you.

  Hugo must be able to open his mouth without revealing all that. Hugo must learn to lie to the world’s face by hiding his pain. To speak is to lie. Well, I’ll lie, since that is what’s expected of me. Each word, each syllable that leaves my mouth represents a superhuman effort, because it is a compromise that I, Hugo, must make with others. I know that every step toward these others will make me increasingly dependent on them, and thus on you. I will have to accept being dependent on people whom I do not trust. Each word, each sound that comes out of my insides will be an abdication. Each step toward others will take me farther from my kingdom. Each word kills me. I walk on burning coals and I must learn to dance. Well, I will dance, and maybe I’ll grant you a smile from time to time. As for laughter, we’ll see later on. Above all: mustn’t lose my balance.

  Losing one’s balance means losing one’s kingdom.

  Trajectory

  “Birth, nursery school, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, lycée, university studies, work, retirement, death.”

  “Love, laughter, friendship, music, forests, mountains, ocean, meadows, hills, travel,” Mama says back to me.

  “And chocolate mousse,” she adds, caressing my cheek.

  When I Daydream

  When I daydream, I see an image, I lock it in and I enter my dream. These images bump into one another, disappear, reappear. I’m afraid they will escape. So I draw them. And they exist. At school people grin when they look at me. They tell me I’m an “airhead.” They don’t know how quickly images flash through my head. Since “talking back” to the teacher is forbidden, I tell them in my thoughts that if I’m a “balloon-brain,” why don’t they let go of my string? I try to spend as much time as possible in my head, and people don’t really like that. I dream asleep, I dream awake. I am a dreamer, as they say.

  The world does not like dreamers, who must be ultra-powerful and particularly cunning if they want to find their niche. Otherwise they don’t stand a chance and will end up in the trash. That will be my fate, if I keep dreaming—or at least if it shows . . . Except that without my mental pictures and my dreaming, I’m dead. A lifeless marionette. Whose strings will be pulled by a secret manipulator busy dreaming for other people. That’s what they want: to destroy the pictures in my head so they can impose their “dream” on me. Their dark dream, and I want no part of it. Playing a role in a common, preplanned dream, that doesn’t interest me. It must do without me, and I without you.

  I know the woods well and am not afraid of ghosts. They are aware that I respect them and have not come to drive them away. Woe to those who scorn them: they will be changed into worms.

  I walk in the woods, always with a wooden sword. The world does not like dreamers. I must get ready. Ready to fight and defend myself in order to dream.

  The whistling ghost whispered an idea to me today. He called me the “little dragon.” This will be the beginning of my comic strips. They will tell the story of the little dragon. Deformed, he is rejected from birth by his clan because he cannot breathe fire. At school, the ghosts have vanished. They don’t like the place and neither do I. Places without ghosts fill me with despair. So I stay in my head with the images whirling there, images the ghosts whispered to me. In school I’m not allowed to translate these images. They are “off topic.” So I t
ell myself that being a ghost would suit me fine. Much more than being a schoolboy, in any case. I don’t want to hear the voices and shouting around me. I prefer silence. I am the school ghost.

  From Dragons to Humans to Vampires

  I’m by myself on the playground. Again. Because I want to be. It’s winter. I’m cold. I’d so much rather stay behind in the classroom. Alone, but warm. I’d like to draw in my notebook, keep working on my comic strips. The teachers don’t want to leave me in the classroom because there’s no one to keep an eye on me. And to think that I have a perfect grade in conduct . . . Good behavior gets you nowhere. It’s all rubbish. All I get for it is the obligation to go out to the playground with that stupid bunch of jerks, wait for the end of recess, return to class for more of the same exercises as usual, and learn lessons I’ll forget that very evening. I don’t gain a thing. So good grades, phooey. I can’t even be left in peace to finish my stories. I don’t want anyone to see my comics until they’re finished. Before, when I was telling stories about dragons, I used to finish them.

  Now that I’m in the prep class, I draw and write stories with humans, and ever since I began drawing them, I’ve been unable to finish my stories. So I start one over again . . . that I don’t finish. I lose interest. I can’t manage to develop them anymore. I’d like to know how to talk about humans, but my ideas no longer come together. I have the feeling that the more time I spend here, the dumber I get. My ideas bump around in my head. They get mixed up, bang into one another, each chasing the previous one away. I’m losing the images I have in my brain; I fear they’ll never return and I’ll empty out.

  At recess, all the others go racing outside, lined up two by two. They run like a herd of bellowing cows, then scatter. Dumb. I’m in no hurry to go out, so I don’t run. I walk. I always lag behind to avoid getting jostled. That has happened a few times, so now I watch out. I plan ahead. Always hang back. I’m the last one out, I sit in a corner of the playground, and I wait for recess to end. I huddle in my coat. Snot runs from my nose. It dribbles onto my collar and sometimes even gets inside my sweater. I’m gross. And I’m cold.

  Mama knows all about the cold. She told me. It’s even in her first book: La Première Habitude. That was way before she knew Papa. She didn’t even have a house. She also used to tell me sometimes that it was better to be alone than in poor company. I’m alone, so that’s nice to know. As for the cold, she told me to think very hard about a red triangle to warm up. When you’re too hot, she said, you think about a blue triangle. I think about the red one, but that doesn’t work too well. I don’t know how you do it, Mama, but I can’t manage. I’m not as strong as you are. I’m weak. I’ve had enough of being weak. I want to be strong too. But I don’t want to be a brute like some people I see. That doesn’t interest me. I want to be strong like you, or like Papa, who’s also quite strong. He’s a second-degree black belt in judo. He has won contests: he showed me an article with his picture in a newspaper from back then. He was a Champion of France, but he couldn’t go to the Olympics because a brute cheated by dislocating his shoulder to go to the games in his place. Mama signed me up for judo. I’m a yellow belt.3

  I am really tired of wasting time here with my perfect conduct. My only good grade. I’m average in everything else; “mediocre,” as they put it. Fine with me. When I do well in other things, they congratulate me, but I don’t care. I heard a story once about a guy who was also fed up and who staged his own death. A helicopter crash in the Andes. Except that he wasn’t in the helicopter. Everyone thought he was dead while he was off somewhere living happily. What luck: he could always return to life whenever he wanted and no one bothered him. No one bothers the dead. They even forget them, in the end. I want to be forgotten.

  One afternoon after school, I suggest to Mama that I do the same thing. I don’t have a helicopter, so I invent a different plan: instead of going to school every morning, I could stay inside a coffin all day and come out only at night to rejoin my loved ones. Dead by day, to avoid the daily circus; alive by night to celebrate until dawn being reunited with my family. I could live nocturnally like the vampire Nosferatu. We recorded Murnau’s film at home and I’ve watched it several times. Here is my new vocation: I want to become a vampire. I train hard for this: I stay in the shade by day to avoid the sun, and when I’m in bed, I’m always on my back, sleeping with my hands clasped, as stiff as a statue lying on a tomb.

  Mama doesn’t like the idea of my being dead by day and alive by night at all. I’m disappointed. Too bad. I’m going to become a vampire whether she likes it or not. But a very dangerous vampire, who moves around during the day.

  Note:

  3Yellow and black belts: In judo, indicators of the wearers’ ranking according to their level of skill and knowledge of the sport. The grading system varies depending on the country; in France, the colors go from white, red, yellow, orange, green, blue, and brown to black, the rank of a highly skilled judoka.

  Hugo Versus Julien

  How long the years are.

  And the days even longer.

  And the hours, interminable.

  Julien is buried in the black earth, but from time to time his hand suddenly shoots out. It grabs hold of my foot.

  Julien doesn’t want to die.

  Leave me alone! Go away!

  How many times will I have to cut it off, this hand that keeps coming back out?

  I’ll open your grave and kill you again. Or will I have to saw off my foot? My foot that turns blue at your touch.

  Once I heard a story about wolves and their severed paws found pinned in the teeth of traps. The survival instinct: they gnaw themselves to the bone to escape certain death. Life, limping on three paws, but life!

  Is that what you want of me? A sacrifice? Part of my body? Then you’ll leave me alone? No! It’s a trap and I know it! You won’t get a thing! If I leave you my foot, you’ll eat it, and afterward you’ll want something else, until you’ve eaten me all up. Slowly. Slowly because you, you have plenty of time. You’re dead, so you have all eternity before you. I, I am alive, so I’m in a hurry! You’re wasting my time!

  Julien! Now you’ve got both hands sticking out of the black earth, gripping my ankles.

  You’re dragging me into your grave.

  You’re dragging me along in your fall.

  I’m heavy and getting bogged down in this swamp.

  You’re keeping me from moving on.

  You’re forbidding me to fly.

  I am as unmoving as you are. As death is.

  You are holding me back.

  I can no longer take off.

  I have nowhere to cling to.

  I’m alone with you in this accursed cemetery.

  Around us loom the tombstones of empty graves, dark and shrouded in a night of dead stars.

  Nothing moves.

  You’re sucking me down after you into the black earth.

  With your mouth breathing only feeble cries of despair.

  My feet are blue! They must be cut off!

  No!

  It’s your hands I’m going to cut off!

  I will slice them off over and over, until they never come back from the black earth!

  I don’t want to see this cemetery anymore! I don’t want to see you anymore! Ever!

  I want to get out of this labyrinth that is my childhood.

  I’ll go all the way to hell to kill you again and again.

  You’ve no idea what I can do!

  I’ll confront all the demons that will bar my way, I’ll cut off their limbs, I’ll decapitate them the way I did you, and I’ll stick their heads on stakes.

  The sight will be so horrifying that the survivors won’t dare challenge me again and will beat a retreat! The cowards!

  And when I get to you, I’ll pierce your lungs, I’ll rip out your heart and eat it, still b
eating.

  I’m telling you again: you have no idea what I can do.

  Julien, you have no idea what Hugo can do.

  The Little Girl, the Tyranny of Impulse, and Me

  I was rather late in learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. It happened all at once. I clearly remember the intoxicating feeling of taking off that I experienced in launching myself for the first time without my feet touching the ground. And so I flew along until I crashed into the rear bumper of a car parked on the sidewalk.

  Careful: what follows is an experiment you must under no circumstances attempt to reproduce at home or outdoors. I will therefore ask that sensitive souls or the highly impressionable skip directly to the next chapter or else close this book immediately. My mother often took my little sister and me to the Parc de la Colombière, in Dijon. Now that I know how to balance on my bike, I ride a few dozen yards out in front. I’m beginning to master speed. I zip along like a madman, avoiding obstacles at the last moment. Not far away, a little girl and her mother are coming toward me. She is blonde, seems a cheerful tyke, and is skipping with glee. Aside from them, the path is deserted.

  I am ten yards away: I don’t know why but at that moment, my brain abruptly begins thinking on its own. I am an automaton.

  Nine yards: Everything is going smoothly. I can stay on track or derail.

  Eight yards: It’s easy to turn away, to jump the track on purpose. I shouldn’t be doing this. It won’t get me anything, but I can do it. Without any reason. Without wanting to. It’s gratuitous. It’s stupid.