CHAPTER 45
I heard the shattering of the glass first in the living room, and only a second later in the kitchen, and understood there were several assailants. This was not the time for courage and confrontation, no longer a matter of rude words at the WC or letters in a newspaper. It was an attack. I thought for a few moments, as more stones came and the shouting started. Whoreson. Cocksucker. Pervert. There were the voices of several men, but there were women, too, and I thought I heard the voice of a child. I had to run, but they were clearly all around, so I seized my wireless telephone and a kitchen knife and ran up my stairs as they began to strike at the door.

“Where are you, Laplace, you piece of cunt?”

That had to be Forgeron, and he started to laugh at that insult, and another voice shouted “Yes, he has got a piece of a cunt now, not so?”

I made it to the small store room beside the bathroom, squeezing in past the boxes and cleaning materials, and rearranged it as well as I could. There was an odd calm on me as I fortified my retreat as much as was possible, and I entered the emergency number to my telephone.

“Police, please hurry! They are breaking down my door!”

I gave address, and name, and I stayed with the operator for as long as she could wait, but…

“I am sorry, Sophie, but everyone is at the fire. I am calling everywhere and everyone, but I do not know when they can arrive”

“I will keep this line connected, then, and ring my brother”

As I have written that, it sounds as if everything was taking place in a calm and controlled fashion, but it was not so. I flinched at the sound of each blow on my door, and as the cries and abuse mounted, my calmness fled, drained away through the soles of my feet. With the operator still to my left ear, I entered Maggie’s number on my mobile telephone.

“Sophie…?”

“They are breaking down the door, Maggie! There are no police, no neighbours! They will be in soon! You must find help!”

“Rollo is waking, sister, Rollo will be there. Hold fast! How many are there?”

“I do not know, but they were at all sides of the house. He cannot do this alone”

“Stay with me, Sophie”

She called away from the phone, obviously to my brother. “There is a gang, my love, they are breaking down her door”

I heard his voice, thinly. “Whore of a…Maggie, ring the office, beg them, tell them to fuck the tourists, get there, no?”

“She says there are many of them”

“Then it will be baton and arm of fucking service, my darling. I come, tell her that”

“Who are you fucking talking to you little cocksucking son of a bitch-whore?”

The voice was right outside the door. It had to be Forgeron…and that other voice, oh Dear Saviour.

“You found him, Papa?”

“Yes, my little sweet one. Now we shall show him what filthy arsebandits deserve”

There were fainter voices, and Forgeron laughed again, and I realised he was very, very drunk.

“Alain, you have right! He does have a cunt now, and I will try that out, but he always enjoyed it in the arse, so why waste a hole?”

That other voice. “He’s got three holes now, no? One for each of us!”

I am ashamed to say that I was so afraid at that point that I lost control of my bladder, and Forgeron must have been able to smell it. He began to scratch at the door, as Tiffanie giggled, and I do not know how many others laughed.

“Smell that? He has wet his knickers! Laplace, open the door, we just want some fun, you’ll like it….”

He scratched a few more times, and then there was an impact on the door.

“OPEN, YOU PIECE OF A CUNT!”

I sat against the back wall, bracing my feet against the wooden box I had placed against the door to hold it shut. There was nothing but the strength of my thighs to protect me further, that and the knife I held. The operator was still with me.

“Can you hear what they are doing?”

“Courage, my child, they come. I am recording the events”

I realised Maggie was shouting from the other phone as my mind was taken by the fear.

“Maggie?”

“They come, Sophie, Rollo is on his way, his colleagues also. Courage, my sweet, we love you!”

She was sobbing, and in one small moment of clarity I realised that I was hearing tears in the voice of the operator. The door quivered again, and then there was shouting, much foul language, and suddenly one very loud bang. Sirens…

Silence, just for a second, then the screams of a child, and a metronomic sound, thump, thump, thump. Marck’s voice.

“Rollo, stop now!”

“I will kill him, Marck, it will be a service”

“No, Roland, stop now. Sophie…we are here, they are fled. You may emerge”

These are the events that Marck and Roland recounted to me later, after I had opened the door to my refuge, after I had washed away the urine from my private region and changed my clothing, after Marck had prepared a pot of coffee somehow in the wreckage of my kitchen.

Roland had left his house in the first clothes he could pull on, and driven illegally fast to the sunflower house, as Maggie sobbed by the telephone. She had called his office to beg for help as the operator had put out an appeal for any officer to fly to my address. Marck, of course, had responded, leaving his duties controlling traffic after a short but severe argument with his superior. He had arrived only a few minutes after my brother, and ten minutes later two cars filled with PAF had followed.

Roland had found some twenty or so people standing laughing outside the house, and five or six inside, and he had not paused. He had simply shouted to them to “Fuck off! Now!” and when they laughed, he had fired one round from his service arm, into the air, and that had served to encourage their departure.

Two men had met him at the front door, and his baton had met them, just as Marck had arrived. Rollo had gone straight ahead, past the two men, and as they rose to attack him from behind, Marck had struck them again and again until they had, in his words, thought of a better thing to do.

“Sophie, it was dreadful. The mess, the damage…and that piece of a cunt brought his child along to watch?”

She had been beside her father, whom Rollo stood astride as Marck reached the head of the staircase, and…

“Rollo, you had no life in your eyes, my friend. I had to stop you, you know this to be true, no?”

Astride Forgeron, swinging. Forehand, backhand, forehand, teeth and blood flown everywhere. The ambulance arrived as they finished their tale, and three men left us, one to the hospital, two to the police station, and then, as the other PAF men crowded around, my brother shuddered, as if awaking, and then began to weep. All was so confused, and then I had to wonder, how it was that it was I who held and comforted my rescuer. Marck sat with us, silent, holding a hand of each of us, until my sweet brother was the man he showed the world again.

“Rollo, take her to your house. I will finish my duty here, and then I shall sleep, if that is acceptable. We shall keep the house safe, and then, well, we have some work to do. I will make my calls. Take her home, my brother. But call Maggie now, no?”

I could give more description of how the night continued, of my sister’s tears, of the interview by the other policemen to whom I told the story, of how Forgeron survived, of the arraignment for the attack and his conviction, with two friends, of attempted rape, for the operator had caught many of their words, but no. To tell it once is agony, and to relive it torture. I stayed with Maggie, her belly swollen with the life to come, and I felt that I had reached an ending of sorts, and one day, perhaps two weeks after the assault, I returned to the sunflower house, the place of my rebirth, its windows still covered with boards, and I stood in the kitchen, in the darkness.

It was over. I had dreamt, and struggled, and my best work, even with the help of my wonderful family, my friends, it was insufficient. Forgeron and his friends were essentially right in what they said. I was a fraud.

I opened the drawer where I kept my knives.