Pretty Things. Виржини Депант
Published in 2018 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
First Feminist Press edition 2018
Copyright © 1998 by Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle
Translation copyright © 2018 by Emma Ramadan
Les jolies choses by Virginie Despentes was originally published in France by Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle in 1998.
All rights reserved.
This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.
This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing August 2018
Cover illustration by Molly Crabapple
Cover and text design by Drew Stevens
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Despentes, Virginie, 1969- author. | Ramadan, Emma, translator.
Title: Pretty things / Virginie Despentes; translated by Emma Ramadan.
Other titles: Jolies choses. English
Description: First Feminist Press edition. | New York: Feminist Press, 2018. | “Copyright (c) 1998 by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle”—ECIP galley. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017056600 (print) | LCCN 2018006832 (ebook) | ISBN 9781936932269 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sisters—Fiction. | False personation—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PQ2664.E7895 (ebook) | LCC PQ2664.E7895 J6513 2018 (print) | DDC 843/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056600
To
My parents,
Dominique, the empress Caroline,
Hacène & Emil Louis-Stéphane,
Nora Hamdi Mehdi, Varouj, Rico,
Tofick Zingo de Lunch & Vartan
CONTENTS
CHÂTEAU ROUGE. A TERRACE, ON A SIDEWALK, IN the middle of construction. They’re seated side by side. Claudine is blond, in a short pink dress that seems sensible but leaves some of her chest visible, the perfect doll, meticulously put together. Even her way of slouching, elbows on the table, legs spread out, has something refined about it. Nicolas’s eyes are very blue, he always looks like he’s laughing, about to do something mischievous.
He says, “Fuck it’s nice out.”
“Yeah, it hurts your eyes.”
She forgot her sunglasses at home, she creases her forehead and adds, “I feel weird, seriously. Like right now, it’s burning.” She touches her throat and swallows.
Indulging her, Nicolas shrugs his shoulders slightly. “If you didn’t pop antidepressants like they were candy, you’d probably feel better.”
She breathes a long sigh, raises her eyebrows.
“I don’t feel like you’re being very supportive.”
“Likewise. You could even say I feel more fucked now that I know you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He’s tempted to get angry, point out that she isn’t funny, but it stays lodged in his throat and he settles for smiling. The waiter arrives, flings down two coasters and two half-pints on top of them. Impeccable moves. The bubbles rise through the gold in straight, rapid lines. They clink glasses mechanically, exchanging a brief glance. At the next table, a kid makes noise slurping the bottom of his grenadine with a straw.
Nicolas stubs out his unfinished cigarette, really flattens it to make sure it goes out, and declares, “It’ll never work. It’s impossible to mix you two up.”
“Good one, sweetheart, we’re only twin sisters.”
“So how do you explain that I didn’t even recognize her when I went to get her at the train station?”
Claudine pouts comically, revealing she doesn’t get it either.
Nicolas insists, “She passed right under my nose, I didn’t raise an eyebrow when I saw her. It wasn’t until all the passengers cleared out and we found ourselves alone, side by side, that I saw a vague resemblance between you and her.”
“Maybe you’re kind of an idiot. Have to take that into account.”
The waiter passes by their table, Nicolas signals for him to bring two more of the same. Then, rubbing his forehead with two fingers, looks into the distance as if he were contemplating the issue. When he’s had enough of not talking, he goes off again.
“She’s nuts, your sister, totally insane.”
“She’s just grunge. Compared to the freaks Paris churns out, I find her pretty calm.”
“There’s no denying it. In the course of an afternoon, I heard her say exactly four words, and they were ‘You can fuck off.’ You call that calm?”
“Put yourself in her shoes, she’s on the defensive.”