Concerto of prisoners

Teenagers in the dark

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.

When Tanguy opens his eyes, much later, night has already fallen.  How long did he stay asleep?  Volange appears to him in the dark, sitting next to him on the bed.  He is ready to find a very pragmatic and rational explanation for his outburst.  The sedatives, yes, it was the sedatives that drove him to such an awkward act.  He regrets his gesture, which he now considers misguided.  He almost starts;  she stops him, placing her index finger on her lips.

" - Shut up.  I need to talk to you, and finish what I have to tell you before they realize I'm not in my room anymore.  "

Silent, he accepts this strange directive.  After all, the night nurse spends every ten minutes in each room to check that sleeping pills are working for patients.  Volange continues.

"- I saw your eyes, I felt your thoughts.  I'm not the one you imagine, Tanguy.  You can't help me, so don't try anymore.  Seeing you want me hurt me this morning.  You know ... There is a voice, constantly, that follows me everywhere.  She helps me not to eat, and I don't want to disobey her.  You will heal, I know it;  it's too late for me.  At best, I will die here at Les Bleuets;  at worst, i will end up in an asylum, a real asylum, not like here.  It's like that.  "

Her desire hurt her?  Tanguy is about to contradict the anorexic determined to follow a morbid speech, but now places his palm firmly on his mouth.

"- If you really love me, you stop.  It's finish.  I don't want you to speak to me anymore.  We’ll pretend we’ve never spoken.  Forget me, it's better for me, for both of us.  "

Faraway footsteps are heard in the hallway, so she gently pulls her hand away and leaves, leaving Tanguy rang.  When the night nurse passes by in each room, he will find twice a long, motionless adolescent with wide open eyes in the night.

Tanguy remains so for a long time, struck by the mourning of this aborted love.  Seeing him want her hurt.  His silent arrival at Les Bleuets, in his mother's car, scrolls before his eyes.  Reminiscences of his father's death also appear, furtively, in his mind.  And then the stretcher of Volange appears to him, with in background the signal of a flat electrocardiogram, and the final words: Forget me, it's better for me, for both of us.  He seeks to understand by what combination of circumstances he found himself here, in a psychiatric institute, falling for a tortured adolescent girl.  Maybe he is too?  Volange's voice contradicts him: You will heal, I know it;  it's too late for me.