‘One of the most important writers of his generation’ Guardian
Escapes ÉDOUARD LOUIS Monique
MONIQUE ESCAPES
Also by Édouard Louis
The End of Eddy History of Violence
Who Killed My Father
A Woman’s Battles and Transformations
Change
Édouard Louis
MONIQUE ESCAPES
Translated from the French by John Lambert
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First published by Harvill in 2026
First published with the title Monique s’évade in France by Éditions du Seuil in 2024
Copyright © Édouard Louis 2024
English translation copyright © John Lambert 2026
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‘It is thus the New Life which I see.’
Hélène Cixous, Eve Escapes
She called me in the middle of the evening. She was crying. I was twenty-eight at the time of the call and it was only the third, maybe the fourth time since I was born that I’d heard her cry.
She told me on the phone that the man she’d met after her break-up with my father and with whom she was now staying in a caretaker’s flat in the centre of Paris was putting her through the same things, repeating the same behaviour that my father had inflicted on her for twenty years, only worse; he drank, a lot, when the sun went down he poured himself glass after glass of whisky in old mustard jars that now served as drinking glasses, and once he’d had a drink he’d start insulting her, calling her a slut, a whore, a cunt,
I could hear him behind her as she spoke, that evening in February, he insulted her even as she was talking to me on the phone, I was witness to it, I could hear this man telling her that she was nothing but a slut, a whore, that her son – me – was nothing but a faggot, that her other sons – my brothers – were just plain losers and now she couldn’t stop, she couldn’t hold back her tears, she told me, I freed myself from your father, I thought this would be a new life for me and now it’s starting all over, everything’s starting all over again, she said, her words interspersed with sobs, I don’t know why I have such a shitty life, why I only meet men who stop me from being happy I mean I don’t deserve to suffer this much, did I do something bad?
I started crying too.
Her crying made me cry.
I struggled to catch my breath. I sat down on the sofa behind me and said: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find a solution’ – words dictated by the circumstances, heard no doubt hundreds of times in films or on TV; it’s always in the most dramatic situations that our reactions are the most conformist.
I tried to think as fast as I could: ‘Okay, I know what we’re going to do. You’re going to put some clothes in a bag and leave now. You’re going to go to my place.’
She could take refuge in my flat; I didn’t want her
staying with a man who was aggressive with her and made her suffer, she had to leave without delay, a friend in Paris who had the key to my flat would come and let her in, of course I hadn’t told my friend yet but I knew he would, I knew he’d help me out – help her out. I explained to my mother that I’d been out of the country for several weeks and would be away for another two because of professional commitments, that I couldn’t come back to France at the drop of a hat but would do my best from a distance.
She answered:
‘I don’t think I have the strength to leave now anyhow. I’ll leave tomorrow.’
I insisted: we couldn’t know how things would develop if this man she was living with was so aggressive that evening. What if he became physically violent? What if he tried to hit her? Or if he suddenly threw himself at her? That’s not so rare, I told her, you remember how my sister came home with bruises on her face made by a man, Loïc the football player I found so handsome, you remember that my brother hit a woman until she ended up calling the police, all my life and especially in our family I’ve seen men who hit women, and I don’t want that to happen to you, I told her, I don’t want that to happen to you, you’ve got to leave, you’ve got to leave, and all the time I was trying my best to convince her, the man
behind her kept bawling, Why’re you looking at me like that, you think I’m going to be scared just because you’re whining about me to your son, you bitch, you cunt, you think I’m going to be scared of your fucking son, and hearing him insult her like that, I said to her, You see, listen to how he talks to you, I can hear everything, you’ve got to get out of there, my friend Didier will come help you, please listen to me Mum, just take some clothes and your dog and leave, please just leave, but she answered with all the fatigue of a wounded animal in her voice, she didn’t speak, she breathed, No, no, I can’t leave just like that, I’ve got documents I can’t leave here, important papers, I’ll wait until he’s asleep and then pack them up, he knows he’s got me because all my things are at his place.
I begged her: Documents are nothing, you can renew them, we’ll renew them, I promise, you can declare them lost and we’ll get them renewed, just go, go, I said: If you called me it’s because you felt you were in danger, otherwise you wouldn’t have done it, you have to leave tonight, but all my begging was useless, she wasn’t going to change her mind, I even got the feeling I was insisting too much, and all of a sudden I was afraid, afraid of making an already suffocating situation more difficult, I started to feel bad, and I stopped trying to bring her round.