The Guillotine | ONC 2022

Portrait

Firstly, I'll tell you my name and I demand you to remember it. That is the price I had set for allowing you to listen to my story. 

That's what we all want, isn't it? To have our name remembered, to have the world's attention. At the end of the day it's not our family, friends or job that makes us valuable, it is whether we manage to engrave our name into the minds of as many people as possible. 

And if you need to use force, doing so? If you'll be remembered as a criminal? What does that matter? Better be hated by everyone than loved by no-one. 

So hate me! Hate me, I welcome your hatred! For me it's only a proof of success. 

So feel free to curse my name, the name Héloïse Lavigne. 

Do you want to know, who is this Héloïse Lavigne you're supposed to hate? Do you want to know who I am?

I was just an ordinary Parisian woman, living her plain ordinary life, waiting for her opportunity… and, I must confess, finding pleasure in the suffering of others from time to time. 

When I was nine years old, I found the power of words for the first time.

My dear father, though very kind and caring, was never strikingly intelligent. He regretted not being able to give us the life he wanted and he blamed everyone but himself for this shortcoming. 

It's always easier to put the blame on someone else, isn't it?

And that unfortunate man who got the blame for my fathers mistakes that day was the baker living in our street. 

We, like all families, had to work till our hands bled to earn ourselves enough money to buy even that pitiful loaf of bread. Imagine my father's reaction upon the finding that the baker had no bread left that day and that we'd have to return the next morning… which of course wasn't a guarantee that there'd be any bread even the following day.

At that moment I hated my father. Yes, I hated him. He wasn't the only one who was starving, he wasn't the only one who was suffering and yet he was the only one who was allowed to whine about it. The rest of us just had to hold our tongues and pretend that everything was fine. 

And you know what? I've had just enough of it. Enough of being hungry. Enough of being poor and powerless. 

So I decided to give life to one of the many daring fantasies, dancing in my youthful mind. 

I'm sure you all have dreams of this kind once in a while. I'm sure you devoted at least a second of your time, pondering about all those means in which you could trick, humiliate or even kill your tormentors.

The difference between me and you is that I have the courage to turn these dreams into reality even at the cost of my own suffering. 

That day, seeing that the clenched fists of my father didn't need too much persuading to act upon my will, I decided to make my move. All that was needed were three words… and a proof painful enough to be true. 

I went out onto the street, found myself a loose brick in the cracking walls of our house and banged it against my own head and hands. 

It hurt. 

And now I don't mean the body. It was my soul that hurt at the sight of crimson blood dripping from my face into the dust, covering the floor of our house. 

It felt as if I was making an oath, as if I was being christened, promising myself to some ominous god of destruction that found himself a place in my mind forever. It felt as if my innocence and honesty left my veins along with the blood, replacing it with hate and a strong desire to kill. 

The rest was simple, it was just one sentence after all. What's complicated about that? What does it cost you to say, "Papa, the baker did this to me…"

Nothing. 

Words don't cost anything and yet they are so mighty. Sometimes the right word can provide you with what a whole army wouldn't have conquered in years. 

My reward that day was the sight of that stingy man, being beaten up by my father and a few precious minutes alone in the unguarded bakery. That was more than enough for me to sneak to the jar, into which the baker stashed his money every Friday, disregarding, and I must say very foolishly disregarding, the children, watching him from outside. 'What could those shabby beggar kids do to me?' He thought.

Well, dear baker, one shabby girl bought candy for your money the whole following year and condemned you to lying in bed for a month with one sole sentence. 

And that was the first money I ever earned. Yes, using the anger of my father to do so, it was barbarous, but even he gained something out of it. 

The baker, once he managed to get up from the bed where my father's beatings got him, always made sure that he saved a big fresh loaf of bread for our family. 

And that is the only thing you need to know about me. 

This is me. The little manipulating thief, the opportunist, the sweet devil. 

Since then I haven't changed at all. My life changed, but I didn't.

I married a ten years older clockmaker at the age of seventeen, gave him three children and buried two of them. 

Now, at the age of forty three, with an aging ill husband and an irresponsible twenty five year old son to take care of, I am to witness the birth of something magnificent, of something beautiful and dangerous like a captured wild beast. 

I am standing at the rise of the French republic. 

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