Ad eternum

Chapter 2

Later on, it was 1981, on a torrentially rainy November day. Mitterrand had taken office just a few days before. The Gauthier house, as large and as ashen as most of the houses of the fallen families from southern Lorraine—or anywhere in Europe—was in its usual silence. After all, François Gauthier had always been a fervent conservative and a critic of CERES and the French PSU. However, I would dare to say that the silence of that house was deeper, more abysmal than that of those whose candidate lost in the presidential elections.

It was a silence akin to that of convents where monks take vows of absolute silence, from which emanated that overwhelming sound of which nothing is heard, creating a song without bars that crossed the wet grass, mingling with the crickets that had decided to remain quiet, and climbed the ivy like a mute scream, to fill the entire house with inaudible echoes.

Suddenly, with the fall of a drop of blood, a scream was heard. It was of that dark red blood, like the kind that gushes from the throat of a condemned man in Place de la Concorde, which had fallen onto the whitish carpet of the upstairs room. A single, large drop.
Blanche was still in her nightgown.

"What's wrong?"

Her sister Ottilie, six years older, had no patience for the little one and made an effort to show it.

"Yes, Blanche, you worried us. What happened?"

That last one was Eugéne. She was thin, though much more slender than Ottilie, and had short blonde hair. The youngest pointed with a trembling finger at the stain. Ottilie tapped the floor impatiently with her foot.

"Where did that come from?"

"From me," the girl mumbled quietly. "Like I wet myself... and just like that, I bled." Blanche looked at her two sisters, who neither moved nor acted in any way, as if they had accepted this reality a long time ago. "I'm breaking. That's it, right? I'm broken inside."

"Can you stop exaggerating?" Ottilie seemed almost amused, faced with her sister's budding anger, who seemed about to burst into tears right there. "You always exaggerate everything. Blanche, if you could stop being so silly just once in your life, I promise I would leave you alone forever."

"You're mean. You're cruel, did you know that? I'm breaking, I'm sick, right? But... but you already knew, didn't you... Am I going to die, like Mom?"

Silence. Neither of the older sisters knew what to say to all of that.

"We're all going to die," replied Eugéne, looking at Ottilie with the disapproval of an older sister scolding a younger one. "But you're not going to die from this. All it means, Blanche, the only thing, is that you need some pads."

Blanche raised an eyebrow.

"What did you say I need?"

Ottilie chuckled quietly. Eugène shrugged, and after a while, there was no stain on the carpet, nor more questions about death.

I insist on saying that Blanche Gauthier was a young girl as ordinary and common as anyone. Until shortly after that time, at least.

Some time passed. From being the frail and pale girl who didn't look her twelve years, who clung too much to a father who didn't want her nearby, she became a teenager with a line of young lads almost trotting after her. Her hair seemed to forget what it was like to be in braids, and the childish dresses with embroidered designs she inherited from her sisters were left gathering dust in a trunk older than she was. Puberty brings many things, and little by little, the people of that town in Moselle, in the province of Lorraine, began to notice with a critical and curious eye. For better or worse, Blanche Gauthier was in the view and on the lips of everyone.