With “Alarm in the Eye”, Thierry Luterbacher tells the story of the love that develops between Misère, a strong street fighter, and a young gypsy girl whom he saves from a fight. Through this story, the Biel writer describes the chaos in a city plagued by riots.
Misère is a formidable puncher who subscribes to fighting, a fight addict. When night comes, the street becomes its ring. A neighborhood boss who looks at him, a henchman who dares to threaten him and Misère, in a few sure, quick and efficient gestures, takes them down. Raised by a whore single, friend of the “non-locals” and of the ostracized poor as well as the humiliated in the playground, Misère has acquired respect with his fists since childhood.
A mediocre student, but cultivated because he took refuge in books from his adolescence, he chose to love the idea of love, but not love, after a first breakup.
I had undergone an ablation of love. Some limped on one leg. Me, I had a limp.
The meeting that will change everything
One night of wandering, without necessarily looking for prey to destroy, but just because he enjoys dangerous nocturnal walks, Misère, at the bend of a dead end, saves Manouche from rape and his brother from death. He warns that he is not a vigilante quick to save the widow and the orphan, but when he encounters attackers, he cannot resist the idea of laying down these “assholes”, as he says.
Lately, neither the police nor the army have been able to stem the tsunami of violence that is engulfing the city. Gypsies, fascist bikers, Fatum warriors and other scum clash, pillage, sow death. Caught in the middle of bloody riots, Misère surprises himself in love. Manouche, like a mute, discreet cat, who follows and chases him, moves in with him without permission. Poverty tolerates it. Free, she comes and goes as she pleases. When Manouche disappears for good, Misère promises God to stop the fight if she returns to live with him and goes looking for him.
As in this fable by La Fontaine where a dove and an ant save each other from death, the French-speaking author Thierry Luterbacher develops in “Alarme à l’oeil” a platonic romantic relationship between two different beings who protect each other. other in a world where social violence fuels barbarism. Of course the style differs. The author sometimes even favors a vocabulary of yesteryear that a certain Audiard would not have disowned, minus the humor, because Thierry Luterbacher is not here to joke.
The riot had ratified the city center, cluttered with cops and soldiers all in harness, which gave the city the martial air decreed by law. Much more frightening than dilapidation! The security ulterior motive distilled the idea: to live safely, live under the boot!
The strength of sincere love
The writer from Bienne takes an uncompromisingly dark look at a society that has broken the wall by rushing into it. Nothing is going well anymore, the game is over, with overwhelmed public authorities and violence as the only response to a hypothetical return to normal. Even the only glimmer of hope, the utopia of L’An 01 dear to Gébé, who created the concept in 1971 in Charlie Hebdo and taken up here by a community which advocates starting everything from scratch on healthy bases, is corrupted by a moldy humanity.
There remains, in the midst of this despair, sincere love, so powerful that it can knock out a man that nothing and no one had ever been able to defeat until then. Love thus appears to be the only way out for a rediscovered peace.
Philippe Congiusti
Thierry Luterbacher, “Alarm in the eye”, Bernard Campiche editor, November 2024.
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