had liked her right from the start, when he had found her on Harry’s rug swimming among piles of Pif, Pionniers de l’Espérance and Rahan magazines. A thick cloud of dust had risen around her, making all the other boys seek refuge in the hall and leaving her to rule over the magazines, the pages of which were covered in a layer of slime mould mixed with dust and the grease left by the tips of fingers that had once turned them over.
Emi had been waving a pair of scissors above her head and looked like an Amazon determined to decimate her subjects, hacking their faces and limbs to pieces and cutting off the roots that kept them alive in their intergalactic environment. Thanga the R roller, the fair Maud, Tsin-Lu with her slanting eyes and the handsome Rodion lay at her feet. She had abandoned Mr Wright and Tom, for their lives had been shortened from the beginning anyway. The girls’ images, she had cut out carelessly, while she had preserved every millimetre of suit and every hair on the images of boys. Disaster lay all around her, but nobody knew; she had been left alone because she had promised to dust the magazines, to wipe them clean and put them in chronological order – and they, the boys, were now peacefully relaxing around a full can of elderflower fizz in the kitchen, all chatting at the same time, boastful and impatient.
He stopped in the doorway, pop-eyed. The warrior girl grinned at him, exposing the gap between teeth and gums, and wiped her lower lip with the pointed tip of her tongue. She continued to manipulate the scissors, plunging them into the paper without seeming to mind the newcomer, while he, instead of leaving, remained still, watching her and wishing he could find inside himself the courage to stop her, to snatch the torture tools from her hands and to expose her, shame her, humiliate her.
He came closer and stopped right next to her, stepping on the precious scraps of paper that lay on the floor. He heard neither protests nor sighs. Like a little robot, she had returned to her snipping, and he stood still for a long time, waiting for her to reach for the pages beneath his feet, looking forward to her asking him to set her loot free.
When she touched the tips of his toes, she looked up, languorously and all feline; he saw her imaginary tail twirling and coiling up his ankles like poison ivy, her eyes beseeching without a word. But he didn’t yield. He knew her – he had seen her wandering around the neighbourhood – and he had also heard various boys making passes at her; he had heard of their escapades and the cheerful hormones that made their eyes bulge. They had gone soft and tearful, and they had exiled him from the centre of the group to the margin; they had shown him what real loneliness meant, how different it was from the imaginary kind he hypocritically liked to cultivate.
He had found himself watching her moves and waiting, in horror, to find her one day at the centre of the gang, a merciless ruler. He expected her to execute him in a trice, ignoring him and thus teaching the others a lesson: they needn’t stand gaping at his stories, listening to him piously and even believing him, for they could do perfectly well without him – they could even feel freer and happier, for they would discover by themselves what he once gave them for nothing, enslaving them by his omniscience.
And now, as he stealthily entered the room, sniffing her scent from the doorway (for her skin had the stench of hell and of terrible banishment), he was facing the end and had decided to confront it with woe and helplessness. This was an unexpected decision that had thrust its claw in his head and now held him as a light bulb, strenuously screwing him into a smaller and smaller socket as it increased its urgency: to conquer her, as he had done with the rest of the gang, to subdue her and then to annihilate her with their boyish weapons.
‘Do you need any help?’
She put on a wry smile; pushing out her lower lip slightly and making it tremble. He was enjoying the moment and would have died to be able to capture it, to stick her dumbfounded face on a poster and to put it at the head of his bed next to the hairy rock stars – to remember, a long time from now, that instant of ephemeral glory, and to show it to anyone who might doubt him and his leadership qualities.
He knelt and handed her the magazines; she took them, half cautious. She hesitated before opening them but, because his humble attitude could have tricked the most skilled double agent, she opened them and went on hacking. With her nose in the cloud of dust, she uttered a stifled ‘Thanks!’
Sal rose to his feet and sat down on the couch, right in front of her. The slender body and the sharp shoulders supported a round head on which a round mouth, two round eyes and a small nose with a pinkish tip were drawn. The black hair, cropped short, made her look like a tomboy. Only the thick, long and beautifully curved eyelashes gave her away for what she was: a girl infiltrating the sterile and safe environment of the trouser-wearers. His daydream was interrupted by a grumble that sounded more like a noise in the beginning.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Are you angry at me?’ she asked in a loud, authoritative voice that suggested the answer.
Sam was sure now that she had done it on purpose. ‘No,’ he answered idly.
‘I have the impression that you are enraged… because of me.’
‘Nonsense. I don’t even know you!’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s strange. I know you. I know you well. I have seen you several times on my street.’
‘On your street?’ he exclaimed, emphasising the words. ‘A friend of mine happens to live on your street. Maybe that’s why you saw me, if you did see me.’
An ardent smile had bloomed on Emi’s face. She had no need to say anything else; he could say it himself, he could blurt it out before she opened her mouth to mumble who knows what nasty thing.
‘So,’ she drawled, slowly and clearly, ‘you know where I live, which proves that you also know me, just as I supposed and said before.’
The only noise remaining was the drill of the scissors advancing, this time through his flesh. He wanted to leave, but the very thought of the effort it would take to rise from the couch and to walk all the way to the door, across the carpet of paper scraps, followed by her eyes, exhausted him. There was no way for him to win her over now, because the girl had bared her teeth and, in an ambiguous yet significant way, had declared war, making him understand that she was not willing to leave the battlefield very soon – at any rate, not before a few drops of blood had fallen on the carpet.
He was hurt by the unspectacular defeat. Of course, it was a matter of time to allow for the intruder’s thin-skinned image to wear out, but was he really powerful enough to last that long under the soft, fluffy slippers that burned the crown of his head?
In the midst of this thought, he felt the couch slip from underneath him and, before managing to come back to his senses, he realised that the girl, having turned around like a whirligig, had already seized his calves with her arms and was now pulling him, with an unbelievable strength, off the couch and down beside her. He fell on his hands with all his weight.
He let himself down on his behind, shaking his head a few times uncomprehendingly. It was only after seeing the tiny beads of blood flowering through the pores on the soft skin of his hand, as if through blotting paper, that he started to feel the smarting pain. And over the pain, burning like acid on flesh, lay the shame.
Emi was frozen in a funny position, in full assault, but seeing that Sal was struggling not to whimper or release the whines that would have eased his pain and calmed his scare, she started to laugh doltishly. Then she settled down and looked him up and down with eyes in which he could see the mad sparkle of victory.
‘It hurts; say that it hurts! A chicken would be braver than you!’ she concluded, turning her back on him and muttering away in her sleeve. She grabbed the scissors and bent over the magazines, as if, in the same instant, she had already forgotten he was there.
He was angry, but at the same time he realised that much of their encounter – and of his defeat in their confrontation – was his fault, the outcome of carelessness and weakness and of the confidence with which he had entered the room, underestimating his opponent. His tailbone and his palms hurt and, while standing up, he felt the ground slipping under his feet. He staggered