Second floor, at the end of the hall. Two linked rooms that look out onto the garden and, in the distance, the river. In summer, the windows are almost entirely veiled by the leaves of the fig tree. Piles of clothing, wigs, toppled stacks of books and vinyl, mismatched high-heeled shoes in every corner, flight cases. On the wall, hanging from a nail, an old black and white Gibson, gorgeous, battered. Stretched out on the carpet, Emy is smoking, offers a drag—I’d love one, yes, thanks.
—“Massacre in Paris” ran the tabloid headlines, I hadn’t gone out that night, I was on the comedown, I’d seen Hans the day before, too much withdrawal all at once. I went to bed, the sheets still smelling like weed and sweat, curled up in his scent, I switched off my mobile, swallowed pills. Over time this junk has stopped working, I woke up in the middle of the night, cramps nausea you know, but there was something else, a kind of dread, icy, lucid, jarring, making me float up very high, very much above my body. I saw it there, lying stiff under the sheets, and I wasn’t there: a massive K-hole, but without ketamine, blank, empty. A head without a body, a flowing head. I held out, without turning my mobile back on, without alcohol or pills, to calm down I imagined myself as a placid dog tracking it, pursuing its scent from town to town, then into the jungle, a beast among the beasts drinking deeply from a river. Maybe I already knew, maybe I knew at that moment. And in the morning, on waking, those loads of text messages: him, first, whole sentences for once, “I’m thinking of you. Sending you a big kiss. SMA”, a shot of pure joy, then Jim, “Just let me know you’re OK dear,” I said to myself well, the day’s off to a good start, then all the others who all through the night had been asking if I was still alive and listing the dead.
I knew but I didn’t understand, in fact I still don’t understand, I’m in an infinite loop, orbiting, hovering at the door.
The Bataclan was my home, you see, we played there what, ten times, as the opening act, then for the “Dogs and Queens” tour—ah you were there, you saw us?—I even have a picture of me with my father in the dressing rooms, he’d taken the Eurostar, bought champagne, it was just before he died, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was skimming the newspapers, I’d gone down to buy them straight away, distraught in Hanbury Street, stumbling around in ballet flats in the rain, the old guy in the drugstore called me “Love,” I nearly fell into his arms, who gives a damn about all that what was I saying, I was skimming the newspapers, I was scared of the radio, of the news channels and even turning on my computer. I didn’t want any noise, any voices, no ringing at all. I was skimming the newspapers, I couldn’t understand anything I read, I was looking at the photos, the French cops climbing ladders that merged with the bare branches of a tree, a big handsome lad in a white t-shirt flecked with red, his shoulders draped in shiny fabric, figures enveloped in the same rustling, golden material, I saw nothing but that, the red and gold, everywhere, on the Chinese façade, the security cordons, the balconies and spotlights, the shapes lying in the orchestra pit and the puddles, everywhere the blurry glimmers of red and golden, opaque, unfathomable. Surfaces, colored areas that a short-circuit, a broken string, prevented me from naming. I glided over the words as well, they were just noise, even hallway, trapdoor, bar, exit. That bar, I’d drunk entire seas there after all, that hallway I’d done everything in, even made love. I went downstairs to make myself some coffee, I’d left my mobile in the kitchen, set on silent, Hans was silent too, but Jim’s number had appeared three times in the space of a few minutes. I called him back, slow muffled ringing of long distance calls, Hans in Oran, Jim miles and miles away, what did they all have to clear off for: Not too early, babe, or actually yes, I’m in Chicago, you know what time it is here, we were playing at Double Door, I tried to reach you three times after the concert, what the hell were you doing? But of course we played, louder than ever.
His voice, his distant, sleepy voice, reconnected everything, re-established the links. Everything began to vibrate, to ring excessively, amp pushed to the maximum, on the verge of exploding. This time I was inside, and with no way out, no trapdoor or exit: in my dressing room, with Jim, Peter, Magda, and my father, for whom this would be the first and last concert, a schoolgirl’s jacquard jumper over my red minidress to hide my perforated arms, drinking my French champagne in civilized little sips, slinging at Jim, who was preparing herbal tea with honey, our stupid ritual taunts, Hey, Guitar Hero, you want your knitting, posing for Magda, cheek to cheek with my father (my tongue-tied, bewildered, proud father)—very proper, very ladylike and supremely stoned after a visit to Peter’s dressing room, whose pupils I knew, behind the dark glasses, were as dilated as mine, Peter and I in tune from afar, tied by the same invisible thread, twin balloons escaped from a child’s fist, swiftly flying off toward a leaden sky;
I was in the hallway, red wig and purple pumps, eyes fixed on the tall, stooped shape of Jim ahead of us, on his red shirt the lizard-skin strap of his Gretsch, the white and gold of big nights, standing out with stunning clarity and I hung on to it to keep from falling,
because Jim is forever the one who slows my fall,
guided, held up, I was walking straight between the pulsating, shifting walls, even though my legs were home to colonies of ants, even though my head was breaking through the ceiling, even though that fucking strap was also starting to undulate and hiss;
all four of us were behind the curtain, at once alone and profoundly connected, Magda straightening her leather bracelets as one tightens the girth on a horse, Peter brushing my thighs with the tips of his beringed fingers, Jim tense, solid, alert, scenting the audience, of whom in that moment we felt everything, the swell, the bristling nerves, the tremors and fever of a large animal—OK, let’s go, we’re on.
The night, the days that followed, it all rushed in, no more security fences or metal shutters, it came in bursts, passed through me. I was holed up in my house. I only went out to buy fish and chips, fags and vodka, as for the rest, I had what I needed. Outside the rain was relentless, drumming in furious percussion on the roof. I turned on my computer, plunged into the images, the accounts, cutting nothing, filtering nothing, calibrating nothing. Get in get out: I had these foolish words in my head, not even a title or refrain, and no rhythm accompanied them. On the right side of my screen windows popped up, I clicked I opened, I could no longer prevent myself from opening, and it entered in torrents, it poured. The videos of the first shots arrived quickly, you remember, the brash sound of the EoDM then, for a moment, the cadence of the Kalashnikov blending with that of the drums, for a moment, just a moment, you wonder which are the shots and which are the drumbeats. Bakelite, did you know that? There’s Bakelite in Kalashnikovs, sheaths, magazines, like in the first electric guitars. One night when Peter and I were really high, we tried to light a fire with the pickguard of an old Telecaster, chemistry at the time held few secrets for us, we’re going to do it, he would say, we’re going to do better than Keith Richards when he played “Start Me Up” with a hunk of phosphorus on his finger, flesh fried down to the bone, that’s how you have to play, with fire at your fingertips, nerves raw, bones white hot, veins loaded with explosives,
and that’s how we used to play, bodies loaded and highly flammable, bodies of Bakelite, phenol and formaldehyde, stroboscopic and phosphorescent, we were, in the Dogs and Queens days, triumphant and burnt to ashes, monarchs set afire, mayflies trapped by the light, and that’s what you expected of us, that combustion, that blaze,
in this game we all, you and us, were alternately masters and servants, Lords and the New Creatures,
we were playing with you, your desire, your fever, your pleasure, your anger, we were playing with the darkness inside you, underneath your skin, right on your nerves, within a few bars we would lodge there, we’d take control of your pulse which was racing at last, we’d throb in your belly, and that’s what you wanted, that immediate and total possession, that magnificent surrender,
that saturated life, excessive, and stretched to the breaking point.
But this is what I suddenly thought (this phrase resounded and drowned out all the rest)
We have no right to play with that.
That video, you know, that moment when shots and drums become confused, I couldn’t find a way out, I was going back there endlessly, a broken record, and me scratching and slipping along with it,
it only got worse when I noticed the barriers erected between the house and the stage, low but robust, you can see them well in certain videos, like the bare arms and faces of those leaning against them, lit with a childlike joy, surprisingly placid,
I hate barriers, how many times in the beginning, in the little clubs in Camden, did I see Jim leap into the house, play amongst the audience, no one would touch him, no one would come near him, the space would reform around him straight away, a magic circle, and how many times did I sing for a face, for a gaze which, without meeting it, I could tell was keyed-up, hypnotized, often that would end up at the bar, also often in bed, and then, little by little, the gap widened, we no longer had anything in front of us other than camera flashes and bouncers, I said to myself that soon they’d make us play behind bars like zoo animals, but who are they afraid of, which side are the predators on?
those barriers made me crazy, I scoured the photos of the victims that the French newspapers were starting to publish, I needed to see their faces, meet their gazes, stare at their features, I even seemed to recognize some of them, I know that’s absurd and yet they could have been there, in the hall, in the pit, ten years ago, I watched the interviews with the survivors, that dark-haired girl, very beautiful, who speaks with her eyes shut, brows furrowed, a chasm after every word, miming with her bare hands, her very slim wrists, the bodies that, she says, fell like dominos my body was squeezed against the barriers I tried to jump but I couldn’t jump and I realized my right leg was stuck and I knew it was because people were falling, I could feel people dying, she says, we don’t believe in souls and spirits, but I remember feeling, she mimes with her upturned palms stretched skyward, feeling souls leaving the bodies, yes,
and after that, right after, I listened to the recording, no picture, just sound, the shots the drums, but that, too, which I hadn’t heard at first, during the first volley, before the first shouts, that string, that string still vibrating, that guitar thrown to the floor or set hastily on a stand and continuing to resonate without anyone to play it, body without soul, soul without body,
and I knew then that I would never go on stage again,
would remain in the pit forever.
