The Songs of Loss, book one : Armanth

Chapter 2- Hell

At 13, Lisa Beaufort watched her parents' coffins sink into a fresh grave, surrounded by so few people after all. Were they really mourning the couple's death in a car accident? The crowds attending Gilles and Kyoko Beaufort's funeral were merely fulfilling an unpleasant and tedious duty, which always left that bitter taste we can only hope to forget: that of the proximity of death. They were work colleagues, friends and relatives, almost anonymous cousins; others were classmates or sports club mates; all attended the funeral with bored restraint and hushed whispers; trivialities to restore death to its most desired place: that of an event which for the most part concerned them, but which they wished only to evacuate from their lives as quickly as possible.

Did those closest to them and affected by the tragedy also weep for the two children, now without family? No aunts, uncles or grandparents had been able or willing to take them in.

Above the hole - what was it Nietzsche said? "When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you?" - a single gaze did not stare at the grave with feigned or clumsy devotion, poorly concealing boredom and the whirlwind of the most superficial worries. Elena Beaufort, the elder of the two children, shed no tears. She had already dried up the flow.

Her bright brown eyes, the eyes of a seventeen-year-old teenager who had become the eldest child in an amputated family, were turned skyward. If it could have been sentient, if God could have existed, if life could simply have been something other than an absurd, meaningless flow from birth to death, she would have set the heavens ablaze with her gaze. Then she too would surely have contemplated the gates of paradise ablaze, declaiming like Nero:

"Ut se diceret quasi hominem tandem habitare coepisse".

"And one day, I'll be able to live, at last, like a human being".

Beside her, her youngest daughter was shedding hot tears, her red hair bursting in the August sun, fluttering in the crisp, warm air. Only in the movies does the sky cry with sad children.

At 14, Lisa was learning to make sense of words she'd never expressed, her mute mourning transformed into drawings, watercolors and prints. Like her elder sister, she was gifted with a prodigious memory; above all, she had a real talent for the arts, and found comfort in them. All this time, Elena had been fighting to gain her emancipation: to finally have the right to look after her sister and escape the waltz of DDASS centers and foster homes; a battle won. She thought, almost without daring to believe it, that life could finally begin again. She hoped to turn her passion for dance into a profession.

One evening, in a college backyard, and that vague à l'âme that had never left Lisa. Who could speak of naiveté or a choice never assumed, who could say which mistake was the first and why? With the syringe on the floor, the ecstasy begins. Heroin is a sweet cocoon of pleasure that annihilates and reduces all pain and regret to nothing under its chemical signals. Artificial peace and more: pure bliss by injection. She had just opened the door to hell.

At 15, Lisa was trying everything to stop. She'd tried to hide it from everyone for as long as possible, but such secrecy doesn't last very long when a hunger more devouring than the cruelest forced fast devoured her guts and relentlessly chewed up her every thought. No one can claim to stop such a drug by sheer willpower and choice.

Elena soon learns about detox centers, social services and psychologists; and about guilt. Shouldn't she have played the role she pretended to play? Wasn't it her fault that her sister was shooting up and caught stealing? No matter how hard she gritted her teeth, the more she fought for her youngest daughter, the more her heart knotted, crossing out her own dreams of a peaceful life at last. Every month that passed was dictated by a single objective, always deferred to the future: getting Lisa out of this hell.