The Great Life

Abstract

Everyone calls them Pouce and Poussy, at least that's what their nicknames have been since childhood, and not many people know that their real names are Christele and Christelle. People call them Pouce and Poussy because they're just like twin sisters, and because they're not very tall. To be honest, they're actually short, quite short, and both very dark, with a strange childlike face and a button nose and nice shiny black eyes. They're not pretty, not really, because they're too small, and a bit too thin as well, with tiny arms and long legs and square shoulders. But there's something charming about them, and everyone likes them, especially when they start laughing, a funny, high-- pitched laughter that rings out like tinkling bells. They laugh quite often, almost anyplace, in the bus, in the street, in cafes, whenever they're together. And as a matter of fact, they're almost always together. When one of them is alone (which happens sometimes on account of different classes or when one of them is sick), they don't have fun. They get sad, and you don't hear their laughter. Some people say that Pouce is taller than Poussy, or that Poussy has finer features than Pouce does. That might be so. But the truth is, it's very difficult to tell them apart and surely no one ever could, especially since they dress alike, since they walk and talk alike, since they both have that same kind of laugh, a bit like sleigh bells being shaken. That's probably how they got the idea of starting out on their great adventure. At the time they were both working in a garment shop where they sewed button holes and put pockets on pants with the label Ohio, USA on the right-hand back pocket. That's what they did for eight hours a day and five days a week from nine to five with a twenty minute break to eat lunch standing by their machine. "This is like prison," Olga, a coworker, would say. But she wouldn't talk very loudly, because it was against the rules to talk during working hours. Women who talked, who came to work late, or left their post without permission, had to pay a fine to the boss, twenty, sometimes thirty or even fifty francs. There was to be no down time. The workers finished at five sharp in the afternoon, but then they had to put the tools away, and clean the machines, and carry all the fabric scraps and bits of thread to the back of the workshop and throw them in the waste bin. So in fact, they didn't really finish work till half past five. "No one stays on for long," Olga would say "I've been here for two years, because I live nearby. But I won't stay another year." The boss was a short man of around forty, with grey hair, a thick waist, and an open shirt displaying a hairy chest. He thought he was handsome. "You'll see, he's bound to make a pass at you," Olga had said to the young girls, and another girl had sneered, "The man's a womanizer, a real pig.' Pouce couldn't have cared less. The first time he came walking up to them during working hours, with his hands in his pockets and his chest puffed out in his beige acrylic sports jacket, the two friends hadn't even looked at him. And when he had spoken to them, instead of answering, they'd laughed at him with their tinkling bell-laughter, both of them, at the same time, so loud that all the girls had stopped working to see what was going on. His face had turned a deep red out of anger, or spite, and he'd left so quickly that the two sisters were still laughing even after he closed the door of the workshop. "Now he'll really be looking for trouble. He's going to hassle the shit out of you," Olga had announced. But nothing more ever came of it. The foreman, a man named Philippi, had simply supervised the rows where the two sisters worked more closely. As for the boss, he avoided coming anywhere near them again. That laugh of theirs sure was devastating. At the time, Pouce and Poussy lived in a small two-room apartment, with the woman they called Mama Janine, but who was really their adoptive mother. …