Billie Read Online Free PDF Page A

play her music for me someday and asked me to follow him.
    â€œCome, sit on the couch . . . There . . . I’m going to read to you . . . Here, take a cushion . . . Make yourself comfortable . . . Like you’re in a movie theater . . . ”
    Since I’d never been to the movies, I preferred to sit on the floor.
    He stationed himself in front of me and began.
    First he explained to me all the characters using language I could understand:
    â€œSo, here it goes . . . There’s an old man called the Baron . . . when the play begins he’s all wound up because he’s expecting any minute now the return of his son Perdican whom he hasn’t seen in years—Perdican had left to study in Paris—and his niece Camille whom he’d raised when she was little and whom he hasn’t seen for a long time because he’d sent her to a convent . . . Don’t make that face, it was what they did at the time . . . The convent was like boarding school for the daughters of the aristocrats. They learned to sew, to embroider, to sing, to become perfect wives and also that way everyone was sure they remained virgins . . . Camille and Perdican hadn’t seen each other for ten years. They grew up under the same roof and adored each other. Like brother and sister and surely a bit more if you want my opinion . . . The education of these young people cost a pretty penny, and what the Baron wanted now was to marry them to each other. Precisely because they loved each other and also because it would allow him to recoup his costs. Oh yeah . . . 6,000 écus even . . . okay? You’re still with me? Good, I’ll continue then. Perdican and Camille each had a chaperone . . . Have you seen
Pinocchio
? So imagine a Jiminy Cricket if you prefer . . . Someone who takes care of them and keeps an eye on them forever so they stay on the right path. For Perdican, this was Blazius, his tutor, in other words, his personal teacher when he was a kid, and for Camille, this was Dame Pluche. Mâitre Blazius was a fatso who thought only about his next drink and Dame Pluche was an old bat who thought only about fondling her rosary and saying
tsk tsk
to all the men who came too close to her Camille. Dame Pluche was a mean, screwed up person, well, frankly, not screwed at all, and there was no reason to expect Camille to be any different . . . ”
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    Even when he summed it up for me that way, I couldn’t get over it. I even started to have doubts .  . . Was this really the assignment the teacher had given us? Was it really that risqué? I hadn’t gotten that impression . . . For starters, the guy’s name, Alfred de Musset, it made him sound like an old fogey in musty pince-nez and I . . . Okay, I was smiling, and since I was smiling, Franck Mumu was happy, too. He was exhilarated and turning cartwheels to keep my attention.
    Without knowing it, he was giving me my first break. The first performance of my life.
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    When he had finished presenting the characters to me, he checked that I had everything down by asking me a bunch of very specific little questions:
    â€œSorry, it’s not to trick you . . . It’s just to be sure that you’ll be able to follow the play later, you understand?”
    I said yeah, sure, but I really didn’t give a shit about the play. All I understood was that a human being was paying attention to me and speaking to me nicely. It was no longer schoolwork but science fiction.
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    Then he read me
Don’t Fool with Love
. Or rather, he acted it out for me. For each character, he used a different voice and when the chorus was speaking, he climbed on a stool.
    For the Baron, he acted like a baron; for Blazius, he acted like a fat little half-drunk grandpa; for Bridaine, a dirty little grandpa who thought about nothing but food; for Dame