" What day is it? The question has become a refrain, which amuses as much as it annoys. When it is not the day, it is the date. As elsewhere, in this small pavilion street in Bagnolet (Seine-Saint-Denis), whose morale we have been testing since the start of confinement, time has become a curiosity, paradoxically flowing as slowly as quickly, as if the grains of the hourglass were running in reverse.
"It's too long," says Sophie; "It's half", calculates Axelle; "It passes very quickly, in relation to the risk", philosopher Coco. Hayat, who was so worried last week, remained silent before confessing painful migraines.
At n ° 25, Axelle wonders
Monday evening, before watching Emmanuel Macron's speech on television, Axelle told his mother that he missed his college. "It was the first time I said it, I hadn't realized until then, because I was very busy". Between online courses, her internship in the gynecology and obstetrics department of a Parisian hospital, and her permanence on the Covidom platform, which remotely supports people affected by the virus but not hospitalized, the days of the young woman, a student in fifth year of medicine, are busy. There is also a snack break, which has been in place since the start of confinement, with his brother Nicolas and their parents. The father, a cook, is forced to stay at home while his wife, secretary of the city's early childhood service, goes to work every day.
This hypothetical date of May 11 raises many questions. “My partials were to take place from mid-May to the end of June, for the moment we haven't had an email from college, so that remains a mystery. Are we going to pass them, when, how? Likewise, the young woman must change internship on May 25. The proposals should have dropped eight days ago. But no news.
VIDEO. Schools to reopen on May 11, but not universities
In principle, Nicolas, a student in an engineering school prep, has partials next week, "they will take place at home and online," says his sister. But “he doesn't know if the final exams will take place. These are the most important, with large coefficients ”, she summarizes.
The future doctor also wonders, like her friends, about the government's deconfinement strategy. "When Emmanuel Macron said that the tests will be done on symptomatic people, I understand that we cannot test everyone, but asymptomatic people can very well transmit the virus ... He also said that the mask would be generalized but not mandatory. It is not very consistent, ”she judges.
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Another month, she sighs nonetheless, "I had hoped it would be shorter. But this date is the promise of finding a less abnormal life ”. Axelle admits: at first, she was very affected by this litany of deaths. “However, since my 2nd year, I have faced death, but it made me sad. There, I felt scared. Cut off from my friends, I thought a lot about death ”. To combat this feeling, Axelle launched into sport, and resumed her scores. Violinist, she is part of the Bagnolet orchestra. “On Zoom (Editor's note: a videoconference application) , we did a concert on Sunday with friends of medicine. It was nice. I would like to do it again, to widen my partitions a little, to work a little… ”A little more, would be fairer.
At n ° 23, Sophie more and more perplexed
A month ago, Sophie, a lonely life writer, agreed to cut herself off from her tribe of friends for the good of all. The rebel "refused to punk", considered it necessary to "stand together", complied with the instructions out of a sense of the collective. Finally, she rejoiced, some would understand the emptiness of certain consumerist reflexes, the reality of the trades and their usefulness, others would know if their happiness was well alongside this spouse or this family ...
This extra month that was announced on Monday is not the electroshock it looks like, but it has finished making her doubt. "It's too long, it does too much damage. If we only look at the figures for family violence, confinement takes a lot more victims than the disease itself, ”she worries. And she is enraged at the return to the values that, according to her, this "layoff" establishes: "We were only allowed to confine ourselves in family, this is the cardinal scheme. There is a return to nature, everyone cooks, plants vegetables, plays sports, you have to be healthy, avoid debauchery ”.
In her petrol-blue shuttered little house, "the days, very slow, pass faster than usual, and I nevertheless have the impression of being confined for six months," she says. In fact, "it swells me to be so disciplined." "This side Little house on the prairie, I can't take it anymore". So she made her first trip on Tuesday by going to a garden center with a friend. "Very hypocritically, they greet customers by saying that you should only take things that are essential." Nobody was fooled, certainly not Sophie who, out of a taste for irony, bought melon seeds, as if, at Bagnolet, they were going to grow as fast as the Cinderella carriage. She still bought a lilac, to celebrate her birthday.
Like the whole street, she watched the president on Monday evening. "He annoyed me so much, with his mouth all tanned, to try to find already justifications for the reproaches that will be made after him. I want to be collective, but I want someone to take the helm. Instead, he contradicted himself, speaking of peacetime after his ridiculous speech on war! "
Reopening schools from May 11 seems not only precocious, but "above all, once again, we consider school as a daycare, we reopen it to send parents out to work". Proof of this is the students who are at a standstill until September, "when they have the challenge of working life afterwards." They don't need anyone to keep them! Sophie believes that it would be better to do case by case for deconfinement, according to social situations much more than age. “Containment is narrowing, everyone sees their door at noon, that's normal. Fortunately, the neighborhood solidarities are there, ”she concludes.
At n ° 18, Coco takes the helm
She invited her neighbor, Sophie, to come celebrate her birthday with her. “Since the start of confinement we have crossed paths, it is a bit as if we were confining together. I think the main thing is not to change the environment, ”she says. "We will keep our distance! "
On its side of the street, things are accelerating a little. "Now that we have a resumption date, the job is starting to spike up." Artistic director in dubbing, and actress "voice" herself, Coco organizes French versions of films, series, documentaries. “There can be five actors in the studio. As it is impossible to preserve the safety distances, we plan to record them separately, it will be longer, and we will have to get this into the financial boxes ”, but the challenge seems to stimulate it more than worry. On the paperwork side, “I'm in the process of settling a five-year-old file. I advance, I advance, I advance! ", She rejoices. Intermittent, Coco has a work contract per day working. At 56, having started working in 1991, she now has "50 cm of contracts". "I think I'll put everything in a trunk in the cellar."
One more month, “we will have to overcome this idea, tell ourselves that it is like that. Personally, I do not complain: we have a little bit of garden and I am very busy. The days go by at a crazy speed "She never said to herself" well, it's been a month already that we are inside ... "
A few days earlier, the morale of the indestructible Coco however faltered. “My mother fell in her kitchen on Saturday evening, she broke her arm. She was sent to the emergency room, all alone, of course. They kept her for a day and a half because she couldn't remember how she fell. Doing everything from a distance, not having news, waiting to have it is very disturbing, she says. We felt completely helpless, even my brother and sister who are there and couldn't get close to her. ” She went home and a nurse came to help her, but the siblings were not completely reassured: by doing a chest X-ray, the doctors detected a trace resembling the virus. Four days later, the results are long overdue.
Fortunately, Coco's husband and their children are doing well. Especially Antoine, student in terminal. He made his calculations: with the new organization of the baccalaureate, "according to his average, and if he was not mistaken, he has it". But what pleases the young man is elsewhere: "his computer dropped two weeks ago. I had found a courier system to send it to a repairer, but we had to wait months to get the part, so we gave up. Through a friend of a friend, I found a repackaged opportunity, payable in four installments, which has just been delivered. He can work in his room. Today I have the happiest child. "
The other episodes of the series
# 1: "It's a bomb, a reality that falls on us"
# 2: Online aperitifs, tidying up and worries…
# 3: When the time marks disappear