Real Life. Adeline Dieudonné
One evening, I couldn’t find Sam in his bedroom, or in mine, or in the garden. So I crept into the carcass room, without a sound because my father was in the living room. I found Sam in there, sitting by the hyena. He was whispering into her big ears. I didn’t hear what he was saying to her. When he noticed my presence, he gave me an odd look. I felt as if it was the hyena looking at me. What if the shock of the exploding cream siphon had opened a breach into Sam’s head? What if the hyena had taken advantage of this breach to go and live within my little brother? Or inject something evil into him? That look I saw on Sam’s face, it wasn’t him. It smacked of blood and death. It reminded me that the beast was on the prowl and that it slept inside my home. And I realized it now resided within Sam.
My parents saw nothing. My father was too busy delivering his TV commentary to my mother, and she was too busy being frightened of him.
-
I HAD TO begin building this machine to go back in time as soon as possible. I went to see Monica, certain she could help me.
Her house was still there, down in the claw mark, with the sun’s hand upon it. She opened the door, wearing one of her long dresses—all bright colors, flowers, and butterflies. Inside, there was that familiar cinnamon smell. I went in and sat down on the banquette covered with a sheepskin. It was like the ivory in the carcass room, soft with something powerful behind, as if the animal’s spirit still dwelled inside and could feel my caresses.
Monica gave me an apple juice. In her face, too, something was missing since the death of the ice-cream man. I didn’t dare tell her it was my fault, that it was I who had asked for whipped cream. Nobody must ever know that. I told her about Sam and my time-travel idea.
“In the film, you see, there’s this car and it needs a vast amount of energy. They use plutonium. And when they don’t have any plutonium, they make use of lightning. I can get hold of the car and cobble it together a bit, but I don’t know how to create lightning. Do you know if it’s possible to bring on a storm?”
She smiled slightly, her sadness wandering off outside for a while.
“Yes, I think it’s possible. It won’t be easy, far from it, it’ll take a lot of work, but I think it’s possible. I’ve already heard of it, at any rate. It’s a combination of science and magic. I’ll take care of the storm if you like. For the science part, you’ll just have to learn as you go, but you’ll get there if you really want to. It will take time, more than you think, but you’ll get there. Like Marie Curie.”
I pinched my lips together.
“Shit, you don’t know who Marie Curie is? What do they do with you at school all day? Marie Curie, for fuck’s sake! C’mon! Real name: Maria Salomea Skłodowska. She became Curie when she married Pierre Curie. First woman to receive the Nobel Prize. The one and only woman in the history of the Nobels to receive two: the Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband, in 1903, for their research on radiation; then, after Pierre died, boom! another Nobel, but in chemistry this time, in 1911, for her work on polonium and radium. It was she who discovered these two elements. Polonium she named as a homage to her country of origin. You’ve never seen a periodic table either, I bet?”
I shook my head.
“Dear me … She worked like a maniac all her life. Have you ever broken something? An arm? A leg?”
“Yes, my arm when I was seven.”
“Right. Did they x-ray you to see the fracture?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Marie Curie.”
“You think she could help me? Where does she live?”
“Ah, no. She died. From radiation. But what I mean is that if you work really hard at something, you can get there.”
“So if I cobble together a car, you’ll help me with the storm?”
“Cross my heart.”
* * *
I returned home reassured: I had a solution and I was not alone. So I started the next day. I got hold of all the documentation I could find on Marie Curie, as well as the Back to the Future trilogy. I knew it would take time, but every day Sam’s state called me to my duty.
Summer ended and the school year passed, bland and boring, as always. Every moment of my free time was spent perfecting my plan.
-
THE FOLLOWING SUMMER arrived. Sam’s state hadn’t improved. The emptiness in his eyes had gradually filled with something incandescent, pointed, and sharp-edged. Whatever was living inside the hyena had slowly migrated into my little brother’s head. A colony of wild beasts had set up residence there, feeding off slivers of his brain. This teeming army proliferated, burning the primeval forests and turning them into dark, swampy landscapes.
I loved him. And I was going to fix it all. Nothing could stop me, even if he no longer played with me, even if his laughter became as ghastly as acid rain on a field of poppies. I loved him like a mother loves a sick child. His birthday was September 26. I decided that everything should be ready by that day.
* * *
My father had just returned from a hunting trip in the Himalayas. He had brought back the head of a brown bear, which he hung on his wall of trophies—having taken down several stag antlers to make room. The bear’s pelt, he had draped over his couch and he slumped on it every night to watch TV. He had been gone three weeks and we experienced his absence as a relief.
In the weeks before he left, he had been edgy like never before. We were having dinner one evening and I knew that he was going to fly into a rage. All four of us knew it. For days he had been coming home from work and sniffing around, in every nook, as tense as a coiled spring. Sam and I hid away in our rooms, convinced he was going to explode. But he didn’t. And his edginess mounted, like pressurized propane.
So we were having dinner that evening. Everyone was eating in silence, with precise, measured movements. Nobody wanted to be responsible for the spark that would cause the explosion. The only sounds (which filled the room) came from my father: from his jaws as they chewed huge chunks of meat; and from his short, husky breaths. The beans and mash on his plate looked like two atolls lost in a bloody sea. I forced myself to eat so as not to stand out, but my stomach was all in knots. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, alert to the coming cataclysm.
He put his cutlery down. In a barely audible whisper, he said, “Is that what you call ‘bloody’?” My mother turned so pale you’d have thought all her blood had poured onto my father’s plate. She said nothing. There was no good answer to that question.
My father was insistent: “Well?”
“There’s a lot of blood on your plate,” she murmured.
“So, you’re happy with yourself?” he snarled between his teeth.
My mother closed her eyes. This was it. He picked up his plate in his two monstrous fists and smashed it against the table.
“WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!”
He grabbed my mother by her hair and squashed her face into the mashed potato and broken china.
“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU THINK YOU’RE SOMETHING? YOU’RE NOTHING! NOTHING!”
My mother whined in pain. She didn’t beg, she didn’t struggle, she knew there was no point. All I could see of her deformed face, squashed by my father’s hand, was her mouth twisted in terror. All three of us knew that this time would be worse than all the others. Sam and I remained frozen. We didn’t think to go upstairs: our father’s rages usually exploded after dinner, rather than during, so we were rarely spectators.
He pulled my mother’s head up by her hair, then slammed it several times onto the same spot on the table, into the remains of the plate. I could no longer tell if the blood was from the steak or from my mother. Then I reminded myself that none of this mattered because