The Transparents volum 1 The city

Partie 1 sans titre

Prologue

In the neighborhood, my name is Môô. I live with Pepe Lamorrozzo, aka Gigi Lamorrozzo. That's his nickname because Pepe hums the tune Gigi Lamorrozzo all day long. I actually do not know his real name!

Only once did he tell me about my parents. That day, I was celebrating my seventh birthday. He had just told me that my name was Martillac, Morgane Martillac, and that I was old enough to understand that he was neither my grandfather nor my father. That he had found a basket with a baby inside, on the threshold of his door with a full bottle and a post-it note saying, "Her name is Morgane Martillac, from Mathéo Martillac", my father! I never had another explanation. Today, I'm fifteen and a few months old.

chapter I

THE KIDNAPING

With each scream, Mila's veins swelled under the glistening, taut skin of her shaved skull. She was screaming. Her mother came running. She too had the skin of her head shaved, but it was painted with gold and carmine red. Only married women could have painted heads. I was happy to have hair on my head, even though I had to suffer the disgust of the Soulagne family. When the mother understood the situation, she tried to calm her daughter down. But it's hard to calm down a spoiled child like Mila. Because I was smaller, she would have rushed at me to beat me. I read it in her eyes. Yet we were the same age, but Mila imagined that she could impose her will on me simply because I was their servant. I had been hired when I was fourteen and had been working at their home for a year.

A click sounded in the antique clock of the modern living room on the ground floor. It was the only object I found that I liked in this house. The wood was warm yellow with some small holes caused by old age. Unlike the other furniture that was too bright, it did not reflect the light, but absorbed it. The dial, enamel surrounded by metal covered with gold leaves, had two beautiful finely chiselled needles that indicated Roman numerals. A voice from the bellied part of the clock's body announced that my day's work was coming to an end. Without a word, I went down the stairs, leaving the girl and her mother to argue. I took pleasure in putting my hand on the shiny ramp that I had to polish before the Soulagne family arrived. I had fun going down and up the narrow escalator next to the stairs.

I could still hear Mila screaming after her mother. She could storm as long as she wanted, I knew that the Soulagne family was satisfied with my work: the mother would never yield at the whim of her daughter, her personal comfort. And to think a food processor had created a terrible accident: a short circuit had caught fire. Baby Mila had almost lost her life. Since then, The Soulagne family and robots did not mix well.

I took my backpack from the hall closet, put my hat on my head and went away from this madhouse. But not without having recovered my weekly earnings, that the vending machine, under the dial of the old family clock, owed me.

I crossed the gate which bordered a gorgeous, uniform, artificial green lawn. Here there were no risks of weed growing. Pee on it would bleach the plastic. Brouillonne, my dog could never accompany me to these places. The wide, clean streets were straight. The houses lined up with one another, but they were different from each other, which made up a clean picture. No one was in sight! I was a rare privileged member of the neighborhood to finish my job early. Yet it was late in the afternoon.

The noisy characteristic of the traffic, above my head, barely reached me as the vehicles in the distance, in their networks, crisscrossed the sky. In these residential neighborhoods, autotunnel exits were far away. The locals were not under the stress of speed. There was public transport that would have brought me closer to home, but I always walked home to save my money. The sky was overcast and tinted the deserted avenue of a pale gray. It was hot.