History of Violence Read online

  “It all came out in the end, the way these things do. So I also know Brian would always check to make sure there wasn’t a surveillance camera or a guard or, most of all, a dog. Dogs would have been the worst. They didn’t use flashlights, only the moon. In fact they waited for nights when the moon was full (I have no idea how she knows so much about it). And once they got into the dump they’d take pretty much anything they could find—washing machines, appliances. They’d lift them up together and carry them out to the trunk and then they’d get out as fast as they came. I wish I’d been there to move them along—What are you, slow? Get the lead out! I’d have loved to see their faces, but you know how I am. They stashed it all in this big open shed behind Brian’s house, on the edge of a field. The next day—Édouard was always staying over at Brian’s, on a cot in the living room—the next day they’d take their hammers and break down whatever they’d brought back. Then they’d sell it for scrap to a guy down the road. What they were really after was the copper they use in some appliances, that’s where the money is. A coil of copper wire costs real money.

  “It would have been so easy for them to get caught. The whole thing could have ended badly, frankly I don’t know why it didn’t, it’s a miracle, especially with the noise they made, taking a dead washing machine apart with a bunch of hammers. Try taking a hammer and hitting the drum of a washer-dryer, you’ll get the idea. You could hear it up and down the street. The neighbors couldn’t figure out what was going on, they found it unusual. That’s what they told me once I’d launched my little investigation, and so to cover for them I said: Oh, it’s nothing, just a project for school, you know how school is nowadays—they make them do all kinds of crazy things. They can’t even read or count and here the teachers have them monkeying around with a bunch of microscopes and God knows what else like a bunch of Zulus.

  “But Édouard didn’t do it as much as the others. Partly because he was scared and partly because they’d already gotten into trouble once before over this other thing, this burglary they’d set up; they’d all planned the whole thing together, the same gang—oh, and that’s what they called themselves, the Gang. Édouard used to leave the house before we’d finished eating and he’d say: I’m going to meet up with the Gang at the bus stop, and I’d be thinking, the Gang, the Gang my ass, if you think anyone’s impressed by five hicks on rusty scooters covered in cow shit or some falling-apart old boat you bought off your cousin in the next village, and he felt sorry for taking your money, you’re even stupider than you look. This isn’t Chicago. No one’s impressed. And then one day they went too far.

  “They broke into the house of one of the village girls, they broke into her house and they ripped her off. They took advantage of the fact that this girl had fallen in love with one of the guys in the Gang. She’d been in love with him a long time. It wasn’t love anymore, it had actually driven her crazy, it was obsession, but the thing was she could never go up and talk to him because he was always hanging out with the guys and was never by himself and they would have made fun of her if she had come up and tried to talk to him while they were all together. They’d have gone on about lovebird this and lovebird that, Lovebird incoming. Lovebird at five o’clock. The expressions they used. They couldn’t even talk like normal people. So apparently nothing had happened between them, but all the same she was in love.

  “So that’s when they came up with their retarded idea.

  “Check this out. They said to the one she was in love with: Here’s what you do, you go over to Constance’s place and make her think you want to do the nasty, then you take her up to her bedroom. She’ll totally go for it, all you have to do is ask, she’s begging for you to pop her cherry, haven’t you seen the way she’s been staring at you all year? She’s not exactly subtle. And meanwhile, while you’re up there, we’ll slip in the front door, so be sure she leaves it unlocked, and then we’ll just walk out with whatever we can carry. And then we’ll divvy it up.

  “The girl, Constance, fell for it. The poor thing was in love. It was a piece of cake. So that night they let themselves into her house and it was all they could do not to burst out laughing, because to them it was all really funny. They filled up their backpacks and what do you think they took? Did they take the jewels, the valuables? No, you overestimate their intelligence—always a mistake. What they took was her DVD player and her PlayStation and the games that went with it, and they put those into their backpacks and they left without making any noise, without banging the door, while Constance was fooling around with the boy upstairs. They took off running. They went to Steven’s backyard, Édouard told me—he never told me about the scrap metal but he did tell me this—and they made a circle and danced around the stuff they’d stolen, can you imagine, they were singing and hugging each other and they were such idiots they were proud of themselves, like it was the heist of the century and they were a bunch of crime lords, like now they were men. So they partied all night long. They popped some beers and complimented each other on having stolen—not even some jewels or a girl’s bike, as I’ve said, no, but some Pokémon PlayStation or Harry Potter, or whatever the hell it was, and that’s the thing: They were leaping around over a game they would never even play, except in their case they were so stupid and immature that they actually did play those games, they’d spend all day in front of the TV doing exactly that. Like the morons they were. But then to their surprise the girl figured everything out—so the question was how on earth could she have guessed? They suspected the boy of having spilled the beans because, according to their theory, he’d actually fallen in love with her, even if he wanted to play the bad boy in front of his friends, even if he told them he only wanted to fuck her, Constance, and didn’t have any feelings for her at all. According to their theory, when she saw her things were gone, when she realized she’d been really and truly robbed, she burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying and she panicked and told him her parents were going to kill her, and so the guy, because he was in love with her, couldn’t stand to see her cry and took her in his arms and threw his buddies under the bus and told her what had actually happened but made her promise she’d never say that he was the one who told (we never confirmed it, but this does seem the most likely hypothesis).

  “So that same night she went straight to the police and gave their names and the next day they all had to go and apologize. Édouard was beyond scared. I’ve never seen anyone look so guilty. He went around like a zombie all day thinking he’d be in trouble with the law and then he’d have a criminal record and it would keep him from becoming a teacher, which was his dream.

  “But the cops were cool about it, because they knew the boys. They agreed to let it go as long as they returned everything they’d taken. Every last game. It spooked Édouard for good, and when his gang started going out at night with their hammers, he went to meet them less and less because he couldn’t get over his fear, even though he tried. It wasn’t long before he stopped going out to the toolshed. But so when he saw Reda had taken his things, for him it wasn’t such a big deal, I mean it wasn’t like he considered stealing awful or weird or unusual, he’d seen other people do it, and not just his gang of freaks, but our big brother, he used to get picked up for shoplifting, so it was nothing new to Édouard. It happened millions of times, and always the same way; the cops came knocking on our door and our mother would open up and as soon as she did, she knew why they were there. They wouldn’t know what to do with their hands and they’d look embarrassed when they took off their caps, you could just tell, because they’d known our mother all their lives. They’d grown up in the same village, they saw each other at the café and the newsstand, and they felt bad about having to bring her bad news.”

  * * *

  SHE WOULD KNOW WHY they were there before they’d said a word. Already she’d be beside herself: “Don’t tell me, what’s he done now, oh dear Lord, as if I didn’t have enough to worry about, he won’t stop till I’m dead from a nervous breakdown, oh
God, I’ve had more than my share,” and then the police would say, as expected, “It’s about your son,” or not “your son,” they’d call him by name because they’d known him since he was a newborn baby, since he’d taken his first steps in the village streets and their children had grown up with him, they’d been schoolmates, first in grade school then in high school, until he dropped out, while their children stayed on a little longer because they were the children of police, and often they went on to join the force themselves; it was as if they’d all been given a single choice, either to steal and be arrested by their schoolmates, or else to become police and do the arresting. “Your son,” they’d tell her, “was arrested with a bag full of stolen merchandise, mostly liquor, at the Carrefour supermarket,” and in her devastation my mother would say, “I know, I know it’s not the first time and I’m afraid it won’t be the last, I’ll be in a wooden box and six feet under and he’ll keep at it all the same, oh, what a curse, but listen, he’ll pay for this and that’s all there is to it, what can I do, I’m so ashamed. I don’t know what to do anymore, it’s such a shame.” And finally, because in the end she couldn’t control him, and because she knew she had no power over my brother and knew that he would indeed do it again, and that all the same she would forgive him, treating each new act of delinquency as if it were the last, as if he were on the verge of pulling himself together, as if he were on the verge of some total and radical rehabilitation, she’d decide she might as well laugh. Before the laughter began, when it was still time to be serious, everyone would tell her she shouldn’t stand for it anymore, my big brother’s behavior, that she shouldn’t put up with his stealing and all the rest of it; they told her not to keep giving him money—the money he demanded, money she didn’t have but always found a way to scrape together. “What do you want,” she’d say, “he’s my kid, I can’t let him starve,” even when they warned her that he was spending it on liquor, that if he had liquor he’d get drunk and be out of control, and that because he was drunk more or less all the time, he would keep on going into supermarkets and stealing liquor. And then it would start all over again. But each time she’d say no, this time was the last. She’d say her son had changed, she’d say he wasn’t the same man; she’d say, “He’s finished with the booze, that’s behind him, he’s changed.” He never changed. He’d only start again. And again she’d say, “That was it, from now on he’s done, he swore he was going to quit and this time he means it, I can tell, I know him, he’s my son.” And again, he’d start again. I don’t know whether she herself believed what she was saying, whether she actually thought that one day he’d quit. In the end she had to laugh, once the anger had passed. “What’s done is done, you might as well laugh, it beats crying,” and so she’d laugh, and she’d mention that he’d been so drunk at the Carrefour he completely ignored the security guards. He took his time, methodically packing the bottles into his knapsack, “The idiot didn’t even take the good stuff, just that rotgut he drinks, you can hardly call it whiskey.” She’d make light of it. “He gave the cameras plenty of time to get it all on film,” and she told us how when he left the Carrefour, where the alarm sensors were out of date and you could just walk out with stolen merchandise, “he’d stuck so many bottles in his bag, it was like he was bent over backward, like the hook on a crowbar, like the handle on an umbrella,” his bag was that heavy, and she told us it went clink clink clink because the bottles kept knocking around inside the bag; every time he tried to shoplift, or almost every time, he was stopped by the guards for some equally cartoonish reason.

  “Which is why I think he should have explained all that to Reda, to reassure him. Then Reda would have known how it was and who he was dealing with. Maybe things would have gone another way. He would have seen that Édouard wasn’t so different from him, because I’ll tell you why he came up to Édouard on the square—well, not the whole reason why, but mainly, it’s the way he carries himself, Édouard, I mean, the way he carries himself now but didn’t use to. Life is so ironic, when you think about it. It’s actually kind of funny. Édouard goes around in that mask of his, and he plays the part so well that in the end guys like him attack him, they think he’s from the other side of the tracks. If he’d told Reda these same stories I’m telling you now, of course it would have reassured him, and things wouldn’t have gone the way they did, they didn’t need to (I agree with her. I agree, but doesn’t this undermine her theory that the whole thing was planned in advance and immutable—because I know that isn’t the case. I have another memory to prove it, namely the look on Reda’s face when I took the iPad out of his coat, the face that replaced his face; I can’t remember it in detail, I couldn’t draw you a picture, but I do remember the way his face looked, and it was nothing like the determined face he had later on, it was nothing like the face of cold-blooded destruction, because I’ve seen that face several times in my life, it’s a face I know. When I took my iPad away from him, what I saw on his face was surprise, fear, even stupidity—but it was no use explaining this to Clara, a face doesn’t prove anything to anyone, not to Clara and not to the police). But Édouard didn’t say anything. All he had to do was explain in simple language, and for fuck’s sake it’s not exactly hard to understand. If I had been there I would have taken him in my hands. I would have shaken him, I’d have said: Fess up, tell him you’ve stolen things too and it’s no big deal, if that’s what you really think. If that’s what you really think. So what if I don’t see it your way, if that’s what you really think, then tell him. Tell him about the scrap metal. But the trouble is he’d need to say it right away, and sometimes Édouard can be so slow. He wasn’t exactly conceived in the winner’s circle. He doesn’t say a thing.

  “Instead he takes the iPad out from Reda’s jacket. As if it were nothing. He takes the iPad and puts it on his desk. He does this not saying a word, mind you. Not a word. He tells me: In the moment I hoped Reda would suddenly burst out laughing, that he’d laugh and tell me it was all a joke and I’d gotten scared over nothing. I kept waiting for him to laugh. I was waiting, he tells me, and all the while thinking, Go on and laugh, Reda, laugh. What would it hurt you to laugh? But he didn’t laugh.

  “So what does he do? He asks if Reda had happened to see his phone. He didn’t say: You’ve taken my phone, no, the exact words he remembers saying are: You didn’t happen to see my phone, did you? You didn’t see me put it down somewhere, by any chance, it was right there in my pocket, I saw it there five minutes ago. I was using it before I got into the shower and now it’s not in my pocket, I’m such a klutz, I know I had it but I can’t think where I put it (every day I’m less sure about that sentence, maybe I actually did say, Do you have my phone, which would have meant I was accusing him before I had proof; just because I’d found the tablet in his coat, that didn’t mean he had the phone in his pocket. I don’t have the courage to tell Clara this may have been what I said). And so the guy gets mad (no, he wasn’t angry yet, that was exactly the moment when he hesitated and stuttered, she’s forgetting), he asks if Édouard is trying to insult him, if Édouard is calling him a thief, and Édouard answered: No, but why are you getting so angry? And it’s true that getting angry wasn’t very bright of him, it wasn’t exactly the smartest way to react. It was like an admission of guilt. It wouldn’t hurt if it wasn’t true. So Édouard said, If you’ve got it you can give it back and we’ll forget it, no big deal, we’ll forget it ever happened; he said all he wanted was his phone back. It’s just my vacation photos with my two friends Didier and Geoffroy. Because all of a sudden he was fixated on these vacation photos, these souvenirs, the same way he was fixated on getting back home when he ran into Reda on the place de la République.

  “So he told himself: I need to get my photos. And at the same time, he was trying as hard as he could to calm the other guy down; he smiled, he made soothing gestures; and now he was starting to actually worry, but still he was nice and polite. It didn’t matter. The guy was furious. I mean furious. You
couldn’t just ask him to dial it down, not like that anyway, he was too far gone. And so what does Édouard do? Does he drop it? Does he give up? Does he let the guy go? Does he open the door so the guy can leave? No, he starts begging (hearing her say it makes it even more humiliating, how ridiculously I behaved), and meanwhile Reda’s shouting, he’s getting up in his face, and Édouard’s begging—but he’s not begging the guy to go, or even to let him leave, even though it’s clear that if they start fighting, the guy’s going to kick his ass, Édouard’s such a fool, and here he is begging the guy: If you’ve got my phone, I don’t care, I understand—but it’s too late for that, it’s obviously much too late; Édouard has a quick mind but sometimes he needs everything explained to him, and so what does he do? He talks, and talks, he tells him: So you took the phone, I get it, I would have done the same thing, I totally understand, it was the whatever, the excitement or the adrenaline of stealing, or maybe you need the money, that’s completely fine—and he doesn’t stop, he doesn’t stop, he keeps talking—I just want you to give it back and we’ll forget all about it, we’ll get together tomorrow the way we said, we’ll get something to eat, just the two of us and we won’t discuss this and then we’ll see each other the next day and we won’t discuss it then either, and Édouard tells him: We’ll forget all about it, and then we’ll forget that we’ve forgotten—really, that’s how he talks, even in front of this guy, he can’t help it with the vocabulary, he talks like some kind of politician, it’s out of his control, and it must have made the guy even madder, and still he says: If you like, we can pretend it never happened, it’s nothing. We’ll forget it.”