The Book of Proper Names Read online

  It wasn’t obvious at all to her teachers. But they preferred not to advertise this fact, and always gave their student their blessing to move on.

  * * *

  GENIUS OR DUNCE, the little girl had only one obsession: dancing.

  The more she grew, the more amazed the teachers were by her gifts. She had virtuosity and grace, rigor and imagination, prettiness and a sense of the tragic, precision and spirit.

  The best thing was that it was impossible not to see that she was happy dancing—prodigiously happy. You could feel her delight at handing her body over to dance. It was as though her soul had waited ten thousand years to do just that. Arabesques freed her from some mysterious inner conflict.

  She had a sense for the theatrical: the presence of an audience highlighted her talent, and the keener the focus upon her, the more intense her performance.

  There was also the miracle of her slenderness. Plectrude was, and would remain, as thin as a figure in an Egyptian relief. Her weightlessness defied the laws of gravity.

  Finally, without consulting one another, her teachers all said the same thing about her: “She has the eyes of a dancer.”

  * * *

  CLÉMENCE SOMETIMES HAD the feeling that too many fairies had leaned over the child’s cradle. She worried that Plectrude would attract the thunderbolts of the gods.

  Fortunately, her other daughters accommodated themselves to the miracle without great difficulty. Plectrude had not encroached upon the territories of her two older sisters. Nicole was top of the class in science and physical education, Béatrice had a flair for math and a knack for history. Perhaps out of an instinctive sense of diplomacy, Plectrude was hopeless in all these subjects—even in gymnastics, for which her dancing seemed to be of no help to her.

  So Denis assigned access to a third of the universe to each of his children. “Nicole is going to be a scientist and an athlete, maybe an astronaut. Béatrice will be an intellectual; her head crammed with numbers and facts, she’ll analyze historical events. And Plectrude is an artist brimming over with charisma; she’ll be a dancer or a politician, or both at once.”

  He concluded by laughing loudly, from pride rather than doubt. The children enjoyed listening to him, because his words were flattering, though the youngest couldn’t help feeling slightly perplexed, both at these predictions which struck her as vacuous and at the assurance with which her father made them.

  Despite being only ten years old, and not advanced for her age, Plectrude had nonetheless learned one important thing: that people on this earth did not receive what was their due.

  * * *

  BUT BEING TEN YEARS old is the best thing that can happen to a human being. Especially to a little dancer in full command of her art.

  Ten is the most sunlit moment of growing up. No sign of adolescence is yet visible on the horizon: nothing but mature childhood, already rich in experience, unburdened by that feeling of loss that assaults you from the first hint of puberty onward. At ten, you aren’t necessarily happy, but you are certainly alive, more alive than anyone else.

  Plectrude was a knot of the most intense vitality. She was at the summit of her reign over her dancing school, of which she was the uncontested queen. She ruled over her class, which threatened to turn into a dunceocracy in which the one most useless at math, science, history, and geography was the undisputed genius.

  She ruled over the heart of her mother, who nurtured an infinite passion for her. And she ruled over Roselyne, whose love for Plectrude matched her admiration.

  However, Plectrude’s extraordinary status did not turn her into one of those stuck-up ten-year-old madams who think they are above the laws of friendship. She was devoted to Roselyne and worshiped her friend every bit as much as her Roselyne worshiped her.

  Some obscure prescience seemed to warn her that she might topple from her throne. She remembered when she had been the laughingstock of the class.

  * * *

  ROSELYNE AND PLECTRUDE had already gotten married several times, most often to each other. On some occasions they also married a boy from their class who, in the most fabulous of ceremonies, was represented sometimes in effigy, sometimes by Roselyne or Plectrude disguised as a man—a top hat did the trick.

  The husband’s identity, in fact, was of little importance. So long as he displayed no unacceptable vices (piggishness, a squeaky voice, or a propensity to begin his sentences with, “Know what?…”), he was suitable. The purpose of the game was to create a nuptial dance, a kind of dance-play worthy of neoclassical drama, with songs whose lyrics were as tragic as humanly possible.

  Inevitably, after all too brief a marriage, the husband got turned into a bird or a toad, and the wife locked up once more in a high tower with some impossible task to perform.

  “Why is the ending always so sad?” Roselyne asked one day.

  “Because it’s much nicer that way,” Plectrude assured her.

  * * *

  THAT WINTER, PLECTRUDE invented a sublimely heroic game. It involved allowing yourself to be buried in snow, not moving, and not putting up the slightest resistance.

  “Making a snowman is too easy,” she had decreed. “You have to become a snowman, or else lie down in a garden under the snow.”

  Roselyne looked at her with skeptical admiration.

  “You be the snowman and I’ll be the one who lies down,” Plectrude went on.

  Her friend didn’t dare voice her qualms. The two girls found themselves beneath the snow, one lying on the ground, the other standing up. The one standing up soon ceased to see the fun in all this. Her feet were cold, she wanted to move, she had no desire to become a living monument. On top of that she was bored because, apart from being statues, the two little girls had agreed to remain silent.

  The recumbent figure was exultant. It had kept its eyes open, as corpses do before others intervene. It had relinquished its body, parting company with the sensation of freezing, and from the physical fear of leaving its skin. All that remained was a face open to the forces of the sky.

  Plectrude’s girlish ten-year-old frame was not present, not that it would have been much of a burden. The recumbent figure had preserved only the very minimum of itself, in order to put up as little resistance as possible to the pale curtain of snowflakes.

  Eyes wide-open contemplated the most fascinating spectacle in the world: descending white death, sent down by the universe as a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, of some single vast mystery.

  Sometimes the eyes studied the body, which was covered before the face was, because the clothes acted as insulation. Then the eyes returned to the clouds again, and gradually the warmth faded from the cheeks, and soon the shroud was complete and the recumbent figure stopped smiling so as not to spoil its elegance.

  * * *

  A BILLION SNOWFLAKES later, the thin silhouette of the recumbent figure was already almost indiscernible, barely a lump in the white amalgam of the garden.

  The only cheating lay in its blinking from time to time, sometimes reflexively. This meant that the eyes had retained their access to the sky, and were still able to observe the slow, deadly cascade.

  Air passed through the layer of ice that now enveloped the figure, so it did not suffocate. It was engag-ed in a tremendous, superhuman struggle with some unknown force, some unidentifiable angel—was it with the snow, or with the recumbent figure?—but also felt a serenity that came of the most profound acceptance.

  * * *

  AS FAR AS THE SNOWMAN was concerned, on the other hand, things weren’t quite so peachy. Undisciplined, and unconvinced of the pertinence of the experiment, it couldn’t stop moving. Besides, the upright posture was less conducive to burial and even less to submission.

  Roselyne looked at the recumbent figure, wondering what she should do. She knew her friend was the kind to take things to their conclusion, and knew that she would forbid her to intervene on her behalf.

  She had been instructed to remain silent, but decided to be disobedi
ent: “Plectrude, can you hear me?”

  There was no reply.

  It was probable that Plectrude, in her fury at the snowman’s interference, had decided to punish him with silence. Such would have been entirely in line with her character.

  But it could also mean something very different.

  A storm raged in Roselyne’s skull.

  * * *

  THE SNOW LAY SO thick on the face of the recumbent figure that it wouldn’t be shaken off, even by blinking. The eyes were closed over.

  At first, daylight had still managed to pass through the veil, and the figure had the sublime vision of a dome of crystals a few millimeters away from its pupils, lovely as a trove of gemstones.

  Now the shroud had grown opaque. The figure found itself in darkness and the darkness was fascinating: how incredible that such darkness reigned beneath such whiteness.

  The amalgam was increasingly dense. The recumbent figure noted that air no longer filtered through. It wanted to get up, to free itself of its gag, but the layer of ice was frozen solid, forming an igloo in the exact proportions of its body, and it now knew that it was imprisoned. This would be its tomb.

  Then the living behaved like the living: it screamed. Its cries were muffled by the snow. All that emerged was a barely audible moan. Finally, Roselyne heard the sound, and hurled herself on her friend, dragging her from beneath her snowflake tomb, using her hands like a mechanical digger. The girl’s blue face appeared, spectral in its beauty.

  “It was magnificent!”

  “Why didn’t you get up? You were dying!”

  “Because I was trapped. The snow had frozen.”

  “No it hadn’t! I was able to pull you out with my hands!”

  “Really? Then the cold must have made me too weak to move.”

  She said this in such an offhand manner that Roselyne, perplexed, wondered whether she was pretending. But her friend really was blue. And you can’t pretend to die.

  Plectrude stood up and looked at the sky.

  “What just happened to me was fantastic!”

  “You’re crazy. I don’t know if you realize that you wouldn’t be alive without me.”

  “Yes, you’ve saved my life. That makes everything even more beautiful.”

  “What’s so beautiful about it?”

  “Everything!”

  The elated girl went home and suffered only a bad cold.

  Roselyne thought she had gotten off lightly. Her admiration for Plectrude didn’t stop Roselyne from thinking her friend was losing her marbles. She always had to be center stage, she had to surround herself with grandeur, to seek out dangers where there were none, and then to miraculously emerge from them.

  Roselyne could never shake off her suspicion that Plectrude had remained trapped beneath her snowy shroud on purpose. She knew her friend would have thought the whole story much less heroic if she had gotten out by herself. She had chosen to wait to be saved to conform to her aesthetic values. Plectrude might even have been capable of allowing herself to die rather than bend the heroic rules her character imposed upon her.

  Yet Roselyne could never confirm any of this. Sometimes she even thought the opposite was true: After all, she did call me for help. If she had really been insane, she wouldn’t have done that.

  But other troubling things happened. Intriguing things. When they were waiting together for the bus, Plectrude would often stand in the road and stay there even when cars came toward her. Roselyne would tug her bossily back onto the sidewalk, then see that her friend’s face had an utterly rapturous expression.

  That annoyed her a little.

  One day, she resolved not to intervene, just to see.

  A truck was heading straight for Plectrude. She must have known it was coming, yet she didn’t move. Roselyne realized that her friend was gazing straight into her eyes. I won’t save her, I won’t save her, she kept repeating.

  The truck was getting dangerously close and blowing its horn.

  “Look out!” yelled Roselyne.

  Plectrude stood motionless, staring into her friend’s eyes.

  At the very last second, Roselyne furiously grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the road.

  Plectrude’s mouth was contorted with delight.

  “You saved me,” she said with a sigh of ecstasy.

  “You’re completely crazy! That truck could have crushed us both. Would you have wanted me to die for you?”

  “No,” Plectrude replied, astonished, apparently never having considered that possibility.

  “So never do it again!”

  * * *

  PLECTRUDE RAN THROUGH the scene in the snow a thousand times in her own mind.

  Her version was very different from Roselyne’s.

  She was so much the dancer that she lived out every last scene of her life as though it were in a ballet. Her choreographies were designed for tragedy to appear at every turn: what would have been weird in everyday life wasn’t weird on stage, particularly in a dance.

  I gave myself to the snow in the garden. I lay down and it built a cathedral around me. I saw it slowly raising the walls, then the vaults. I was the recumbent figure, with the whole cathedral all to myself. Then the doors closed and death came in search of me, white and gentle at first, then black and violent. It was going to take me away but my guardian angel saved me at the very last second.

  It was best if being saved happened at the very last second. Anything less would have been a failure of taste.

  Roselyne didn’t know she was playing the part of guardian angel.

  * * *

  PLECTRUDE TURNED TWELVE. It was the first time that a birthday had given her a vague twinge in the heart. Another year had always seemed like a good thing, a proud heroic step toward a future that was bound to be beautiful. Twelve was like a boundary: the last innocent birthday.

  She refused to even think about thirteen. The world of teenagers left her cold. Thirteen was sure to be full of breakups, illness, gloom, acne, first periods, bras, and other horrors.

  Twelve was the last birthday when she could feel sheltered from the calamities of adolescence. With delight she stroked her flat torso.

  The dancer went and snuggled in her mother’s arms. Her mother happily fussed over her, cosseted her, said loving little words to her, rubbed her back and her arms—lavishing on her that ecstatic affection that the very best mothers give to their daughters.

  Plectrude closed her eyes with pleasure. No love could give her as much satisfaction as her mother’s did. The idea of being in a boy’s arms didn’t fire her imagination. Being in the arms of Clémence was the absolute. Would her mother still love her as much when she was a pimply adolescent? The idea terrified her. She didn’t dare ask.

  * * *

  FROM THAT POINT ON, Plectrude cultivated her childhood. She was like a landowner who had an enormous estate at his disposal for many years but, following some disaster, was left with only a little plot. Making a virtue of a necessity, she lavished care upon her patch of land, pampering those flowers of childhood that still survived.

  She wore her hair in braids or pigtails, she dressed only in jeans, she walked around clutching a teddy bear, and sat on the ground to lace up her boots.

  She didn’t have to pretend to behave like a child; she just drifted to the side of herself that she liked best, aware that she wouldn’t be able to do so much longer.

  Such rules might seem strange, but they aren’t strange to pre-teen children, who minutely observe which of their playmates are moving ahead and which are lagging behind. Their admiration is as paradoxical as their contempt. Those who play up either their precocity or their late development earn opprobrium, punishment, and ridicule, or, though far more rarely, a heroic reputation.

  Ask any girl in the seventh or eighth grade which of her classmates are already wearing bras and you will be astonished by the exactitude of the reply.

  In Plectrude’s class—she was already in the eighth grade—the
re were some who mocked her pigtails, but these were the girls who were advanced in terms of bra-wearing, which brought them more teasing than praise, and their mockery was a form of compensation for their jealousy over the dancer’s flat torso.

  As for the boys, their attitude toward the bra-wearers was ambiguous: they ogled them and at the same time said horrible things about them. That, incidentally, is a habit that the members of the male sex keep throughout their lives. They make a point of slandering the very things that haunt their masturbatory obsessions.

  The first manifestations of sexuality were appearing on the horizon. Plectrude saw that she must arm herself with an emphatic form of innocence. She could not put her fear into words. She knew only that if some of her classmates were already prepared for strange things, she was not. Unconsciously she began warning the others of this, by forcefully reinforcing her childhood state.

  * * *

  IN NOVEMBER, A NEW arrival was announced.

  Plectrude liked new pupils. Would Roselyne have become her best friend if she hadn’t been a new girl, five years before? The little dancer was forever linking up with strangers, to their varying degrees of alarm.

  Most of the children showed no mercy toward the newcomer: the slightest differences (peeling an orange with a knife, or saying “crap!” instead of “shit!”) provoked whoops of derision.

  Plectrude was delighted by odd behavior. She felt the enthusiasm an ethnologist feels when being introduced to the customs of an exotic tribe. (“The way he peels his orange is amazing!” or, “Saying ‘crap’ is very cool!”) She greeted newcomers like a Tahitian welcoming European sailors, brandishing her smile rather than a garland of hibiscus flowers.

  The arrival of a new pupil was particularly poignant when it happened in the middle of the school year instead of September.

  This was the case with the new boy. The little dancer was already extremely well disposed toward him by the time he walked into the classroom. Plectrude’s face froze in a mixture of horror and admiration.