Concerto of prisoners

The encounter of Volange

Ah! Tanguy, you have arrived. We will be able to continue the presentations.

What presentations? Tanguy watches around him. Volange. They presented Volange. The few reminiscences of his bad experience evaporate and give way little by little to a new feeling which is diffused in each of its members. The teenager had arrived in the service a week before, late in the evening. She was then lying on a stretcher: her extremely thin body protruding from the bones that almost asked to get out. The caregivers had assigned Volange the next room, coming in regularly to talk to him, to encourage him to eat. Through the wall he had heard, whispered, muffled words.

It therefore took several days for Volange to gather enough forces to get out of his tower. Saddened by the pale complexion, the livid look and the hollow cheeks of the young girl, Tanguy lingers on his skeletal arms, revealing thick purple veins. As this almost-woman yet so violent towards her own body releases a gentle aura, disturbing even, he thinks. What happened to you, Volange? This name with French overtones contrasts with a face with Near Eastern features, like coming from a tale of a Thousand and One Nights, and on which come to fall in cascade of long jet black hair. Sensitive to the suffering strangeness of Levantine, he knows, however, that he should not dwell on it too long: he is here to heal, after all. But Volange smiled at him. A little taken aback, he gives her a modest smile.

Leaving Tanguy no time to regroup, the director of Les Bleuets stood up and suggested that the young people go to the dining room. For the first time, Volange is invited to lunch with the others. It takes place not far from Tanguy in the small room serving as a canteen. On the table in the back room are already the trays carrying the usual pittance: bread, a square of butter and orange juice. Sitting at a nearby table, the caregivers chat with each other in the air, but keep a discreet eye on Volange.

Tanguy grabs his piece of bread and decides to focus his gaze from time to time on the one who intrigues him. She is already having a conversation with another resident, the two seem very admiring of a fashionable pop singer. Volange imitates her neighbor, and grinds her piece of bread, cuts it out, spreads out her square of butter with a heavy hand. As she opens her mouth to lead the food there, she seems to be crossed by a new idea. She questions her friend: what series are she watching? The nurses, used to this kind of parade, hide their concern less and less. Volange, like a doe trapped in a wolf's jaws, suddenly breaks the flow of his conversation and looks desperately towards his tray.

Tanguy recognizes that if the discussion around this table is only rarely animated, the arrival of Volange transformed it into a heavy silence. The eyes of others are now like guns, all aimed at the girl whose feint no longer deceives anyone. She swallows a bite. Tanguy told himself that he could nestle the levantine in his protective arms; thus warmed by her body, she would no longer suffer. A second bite arrives, more difficult this time. She swallows. It is burning to rescue him; to face, like a white knight, the demons that haunt the object of his desire. As the third bite enters his lips with a trembling hand, Tanguy thinks that he could fall in love for good. When Volange begins to ingest, she is moved by a noisy gag. She seems to be out of power and burst into tears. Eyes lowered, in a loud but trembling voice, she becomes apologetic, says she did not want to bring attention to herself, says she is pathetic. The caregivers get up. She is escorted back to her room.

The sudden birth of the boy's feelings is interrupted by the arrival of a weighty reality, a clinical triviality which is imposed on his mind like a blow from the club. Volange is, like all the residents of the Bleuets, sick. The girl's ills are literally opposed to Tanguy's desire: she suffers from anorexia nervosa. Obviously, the last thing she would need to heal was a jaded teenager still haunted by his father's suicide. Tanguy will never be the white knight delivering the beautiful oriental princess: simply because he is also captive.

Brutally brought back to his own condition, he feels a funny contracture at the bottom of his abdomen, which quickly turns into terrible discomfort deep inside his womb. There is no doubt about it: the demons had decided to put him on his stomach. He is no longer hungry at all, but forces himself to swallow every bite of his meal, suddenly inhabited in his flesh by the same evil as Volange. His tacit torture over, and as the institute gradually begins to rock all around him, he goes back to his room, too.

The hospital is tormented by the girl's excruciating and torn cries. She screams, hiccups, sobs, sniffs loudly. Heavy sounds spread in each of the rooms and the boarders, overwhelmed in spite of themselves, helpless, remain silent. Tanguy remains motionless, as if paralyzed on his bed. His mattress has become a boat, a miserable boat that totters, turns, then capsizes in a sea of ​​surging tears. He tries hard, but none of his members respond to him now. He roams, and ultimately drowns.

The screams stop. A few seconds, a few minutes, a few tens of minutes elapse so that an idea, a desire, an irrepressible need comes to Tanguy. He succeeds in overcoming his torpor, and moved by this sudden impulse, gets up. He has to find a way to help Volange, right now, at any cost. Without really knowing where it will take him, he reaches into his pocket, grabs a treat from it, and opens the packaging.

"Two madmen want to escape from an asylum. They say to themselves: - If the gate is high, we pass below. If it is low we pass over it. One of them goes to see and comes back: - Sorry, we can't escape, there is no gate! "

He believes his idea is ridiculous. But the urge does not stop, grows, becomes monstrous, impossible to reason, as if a puppeteer up there enjoined him to achieve it. He rushes into his chair. Taken with a fulgurance unknown until then, he wrote, more to himself than to Volange, in large letters on paper: "The worst barriers are those that one imposes on oneself. I can help you. Join me in the great hall in three hours. ". No longer truly in control of his actions, he folds the message, places the small crumpled rectangle in it, leaves his room and bends his thin silhouette to slide the bill under the next door.

As his body straightens, Tanguy falls. He did make fun of himself. Brutally guilty of the awkwardness of his gesture, he returns to his room, ashamed. He must have made the situation worse. Nothing is rocking around him; no desire torments him now. Arrived near his cold metallic bed, he collapses there.