PART TWO
His shadow
13.
Wednesday, 28 January 1987
I know who Hector is, and I need to act on this without delay. It’s quite unbelievable, but it has to be him. There’s a logic to it and although I’m no Sigmund Freud, my skills in psychology are well enough honed for me to take a step back and work out why he started with all this.
I’m going to find him and take him by surprise. I have his first and last name: Pascal Vermillon. Let’s track him down.
I go to the central post office and rummage through the phone directory for Pyrénées-Orientales. There’s a very slight chance he still lives there. I left in 1948 when my father sold his chemist’s shop to buy an ironmongery in Paris. Pascal was still there at that time. I remember his father – an old fisherman from Argelès-sur-Mer. I know I remember this correctly.
Pascal Vermillon: a spectre that is decades old. I have a blinding flashback and remember that at the beginning of last year, shortly before the killing up in Lille, I thought I’d spotted him on a street in Nice. By the time I made the link, it was too late – he’d disappeared. I wasn’t even sure it was him, but now I reckon it probably was. It would explain a lot. He was just a vague silhouette on the other side of Avenue Gallieni, the shape of a head imprinted on my retinas without my being able to identify him clearly. A ghost from my childhood.
A torrent of emotions and frustrations is pulling me down into darkness. These days I’m more careful, but that wasn’t always the case. Especially not that day in 1947 when I showed Pascal my favourite hobby, believing he would follow me in my obsessions. Without realising it, I was looking for a companion to share my vices, just as I shared, albeit as a mere spectator, those of Albert. I thought he would be the friend, but it was not to be. I revealed the dark side of me that haunted my nights, and forty years later the phantom has reappeared.
I search for his name. There are several Vermillons, but none of the first names match. I have to concentrate. What was his father’s first name? Victor. It’s not there either.
I contact the town hall in Collioure, pretending to be a real estate developer looking for Victor or Pascal Vermillon. The switchboard operator is clearly an intern not local to the region. No luck. Same thing at the tourist office. Next I call the harbour master’s office at Port-Vendres and get put through to a man who won’t talk to me. He hangs up.
So . . . I have no leads. But I won’t go kicking down any doors, I’ll use a master key.
The sun shines bright on the Côte Vermeille, blinding my eyes, but it’s my memories that are truly on fire. They have a particular flavour, these moments from another time. I was so reckless in those days, although being a child when all the adults around you are trembling before the Germans is disturbing, to say the least.
I didn’t understand some things until a lot later on. I was seven years old when the war broke out and I had no idea that when my father’s shoulders shook in the evening after a hard day’s work, his back turned to me, he wasn’t simply tired, he was hiding his sobs. Danger was all around us, but my friends and I, in the carefree days of our childhood and with our lack of awareness of what was really going on, escaped all this. It was grown-up business.
I had no understanding that desperate men and women on the run would stay with us before crossing the Pyrenees. I didn’t give them a second thought. I fought the invaders in my own way: building huts in the trees, making MG42s with sticks and bits of string. I killed dozens of Germans with their own weapons in the imaginary battles I fought in the ruins behind my home. My father once caught me screaming ‘Down with the Krauts!’ as I shot at the scarecrow planted in the vegetable garden. He looked quickly at the property next door and when he noticed with relief that no one had witnessed this act of insurrection, he slapped me so hard that my neck hurt for three days. We hated the occupying army, but discretion was the watchword.
The war ended and life went more or less back to normal for the adults. Those who had not died carried on with their eventful lives. My mother disappeared three weeks before the Armistice. We never found her.
Maybe that’s when it all changed for me. I don’t remember ever harbouring morbid fantasies before that, but after six years of reading between the lines and finding out the truth about this dreadful world, what was I supposed to do? And when we all hugged and kissed in the street as we celebrated the end of the war, when praise was thrown to the four winds, bringing back a sense of hope to our wounded souls, I, the lost child, shed hot tears as I failed to comprehend why everyone else was so happy. I was a floundering teenager by now who had just lost the maternal support that should have guided him through this trying time.
In the summer of 1945, I found a stray grey kitten in a field. His mother had removed him from his brothers and sisters and abandoned him. She probably couldn’t feed the whole litter. He was starving. I killed him by crushing his head, and then with my knife drew an eye on his abdomen – I had always had a preference for solid, concrete shapes.
An eye. An eye that watched as I tore open the flesh. My mother’s eye.
Yes, maybe I should go and see a psychiatrist. I’d have some very interesting things to tell him – the story of how I became The Artist.
I spend a little time sitting on a rock looking out at the Correc d’en Baus. At this time of year, it should be under water, but strangely enough, it’s dry. It was there, in the field just behind, that I revealed myself to Pascal so long ago.
When I feel the foul humidity stinging the corner of my eyes, I extinguish my cigarette and leave.
I have a coffee in a bar that didn’t exist back then and as I walk down the magnificent cobbled streets of Collioure, I can see the Notre-Dame des Anges church perched by the shore, the glorious centrepiece of this magnificent panorama. I drink in this scenery I’ve so been missing all these years, and when I’ve had my fill of purity and harmony, I head up the main street to find my car.
Port-Vendres is next on my list. I arrive late and there aren’t many people around. I get a hotel room in a pretty establishment in the centre of the port and spend a sleepless night there.
At dawn the next day, before the sun comes up, I head down to the quayside. The place is full of dockers fiddling with their equipment. I’m told that the first boats will arrive soon. I walk away, have a cup of coffee in a bistro and watch the horizon through the window.
The boats appear and I go out to wait for them. The air smells of iodine – my lungs feast on the scent of it.
I wait a further half an hour while three boats dock. Traditionally – or at least when I lived here – most of the fishing is destined for the cooperative or for restaurants that will come down to pick up their supplies a little later in the day, although the fishermen will sometimes still agree to sell a small part of their catch to a passer-by.
I walk over to two men who seem in a hurry: a short, older, stocky man with tanned, leathery skin, and a young, thin, blond guy, who must be seven foot tall.
‘Hello,’ I say in my warmest tone.
‘Hello,’ replies the old man.
‘Could I possibly buy some fish from you?’
He looks around. They all make sales, but it’s done on the quiet. ‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t know. What do you have?’
‘It’s early in the season, you know. We’re not catching much yet. We have a few sardines, but they’re not very oily. Squid? Bass? Anchovies?’
‘Squid, and a few anchovies.’
‘Wait there.’
He enters the cabin and returns about thirty seconds later with a plastic bag. He picks up a handful of squid from a crate in the middle of the deck and then grabs a handful of anchovies from another container.
‘Is that good?’
‘Perfect.’
I take the bag and a hundred-franc bill appears as if by magic between the fingers of my right hand. The old man smiles.
‘Been a fisherman for long?’ I
ask.
‘You could say that. Since the beginning of time – I started out when I was ten years old.’
‘Are you from around here?’
‘Yes. My mother was from the Costa Brava, but we moved here when I was a kid. Do you know the area?’
‘Yes, I lived here when I was a child. I left in 1948.’
‘You left? That’s too bad!’
I lower my head. My emotions are about to get the better of me. This man was probably working down here when I used to come as a kid to watch the fishing boats come in.
‘I had a very good friend down here. Pascal Vermillon. His father worked at the port. Does that name ring a bell?’
‘Vermillon? Yeah. Victor – that was the father’s name. He was a fisherman.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘Oh, no. He died. There’s no more Vermillons here.’
‘What about Pascal? Is he still alive?’
‘The little ’un? I don’t know, but some of Victor’s old crew will be down here later. They’re still around. They’re out fishing at the moment though.’
I nod, pretending to look thoughtful. ‘You know what,’ I say, ‘I’ll wait for you at the bar over there, and when Victor’s friends turn up, I’ll buy you all a few drinks. How does that sound?’
‘Great! I rarely turn down the offer of a drink!’
‘See you in a while then.’
‘See you, kid.’
I sidle off with a smile. To be called a ‘kid’ when you’re in your fifties is a total delight.
I only have to wait an hour before three old sea dogs enter the bar. My new fisherman friend points to me and they come over and sit at my table.
‘What’s your name then?’
‘Achilles, and you?’
‘I’m Pierrot. This is Henri and this is Alfonso. Alfonso was friends with Victor Vermillon.’
I turn to Alfonso and smile at him.
‘What will you all have to drink?’
‘A little snifter of white wine will be fine.’
It’s not even ten in the morning yet, but these men have been working hard since the night before. I order a bottle of muscadet and four glasses. The fine bubbles fizz a little and I enjoy the sensation on my tongue.
‘So how well did you know Victor Vermillon?’
‘He was a good friend,’ Alfonso replies.
‘And he died?’
‘Yeah. A good five, six years ago.’
‘I was very close to his son, Pascal. We were inseparable as kids.’
‘You lived here then?’
‘Yes. We lived in Collioure.’
‘Ah! Was your father a real Colliourenc?’
‘No, he came from Paris. We went back to Paris in ’forty-eight, in fact.’
‘Ah! A Parigot!’
I fill their glasses.
‘So, do you know if Pascal’s still alive?’
‘Afraid not. I’ve no idea where he landed up. When his father died, I never heard from him again. Victor used to talk about him a fair bit.’
‘And you don’t know where he is?’
‘Well, I do know he was in Morocco . . . with the Arabs.’
‘Morocco?’
‘Yeah. He worked in construction as a site manager. Not exactly that, but something like that. He went over to make sure everyone was doing their jobs.’
‘Some kind of foreman? A supervisor?’
‘Yeah, I think so. When his father died, he’d been there for at least ten years. Maybe he’s still over there.’
‘Do you know where exactly?’
‘Oh, I did know . . . but the names of these Arab places escape me . . . I know it wasn’t a port . . .’
‘Casablanca? Marrakech?’
‘Marrakech! That’s it!’
Pierrot finishes the bottle and I signal to the waiter to bring another.
‘So, no more news over the last five or six years, right?’
‘Yeah, but if you were his best friend, how come you don’t know about him? That kid wasn’t right . . .’
‘What?’
‘He had a screw loose, that one.’
‘Really? What do you mean by that?’
‘Sandwich short of a picnic. His dad didn’t like to talk about it too much, but I heard he was hard work. He had a lot of issues, that Pascal, ever since high school. Victor even wanted to take him to some sort of brain doctor, you know?’
What I do know is that Pascal Vermillon and Hector are one and the same man, and if Pascal really does have a screw loose, then that’s probably down to me.
I pay the bill and leave the bar. It’s time to take a closer look at those dark memories of mine.
14.
Sunday, 31 August 1947
The tears fall from my eyes as I start to look into my past. When I was six or seven years old, it felt as though I had become the victim of some sort of curse. I would often fall heavily, trip, stumble . . . and blood would pour from my knees. It always seemed as though the bleeding would never stop.
At the end of that particular summer, I was fifteen years old. I had just fallen on the shingle, running along the beach to join a group of classmates who weren’t expecting me. Everyone laughed when they saw me trip. Although I was used to being the laughing stock of the kids in the neighbourhood, this new level of humiliation took me by surprise.
I got up dazed, and wiped the blood pouring down my shin, and then rather than sit with the others, I turned back. I felt ashamed.
As soon as I was out of sight, I sat down on a low wall. The August grass was dry and looked as though it would burn easily. I felt cut off from the rest of the world. My mother had been dead for two years and my father was sinking into some sort of red-wine-induced depression.
I had no real friends, except for Pascal, who was a midget, a lame duck rejected by other boys my age – just like me. I was too skinny and mournful. I would never be accepted. Nobodies like us were exiled far from the sorts of places young people our age would gather to talk, have fun and share the prettiest girls. There were the leaders, and then there were the banished, the nerds, the lowlifes and the outcasts.
At home, my dad was moping about the reform granting French citizenship to all Algerian subjects, irrespective of their Muslim faith. This was quite beyond my own area of interest. I loved drawing and I looked for my dead mother in the eyes of the kids in my class. And I killed animals.
Since the kitten episode two years before, I had practised on two other cats, a dog, a dozen rats and a kind of badger I had found dead at the side of the road. The most complicated thing was to remove all the fur so the skin was smooth. My achievements were becoming more precise and complex on each occasion. I didn’t know why I had to slay these animals. They hadn’t done anything to me, but I really loved it. That’s the top and bottom of it – I really loved it.
My lack of confidence was such that I behaved with those weaker than myself in the same way that my own tormentors behaved towards me. I knew there was something wrong with that, but what can I say? There didn’t seem any real alternative . . . I felt as though the curse upon me was forcing my hand. Haggard and distressed, I walked up the road, kicking the stones strewn across the asphalt, staring down at my feet.
I lived in my own little world, never opening its doors to another soul. When I felt really lonely, I would sometimes go to see Pascal. It didn’t make me feel any better exactly, but it was better than nothing.
On this one particular day, I was heading towards the farmhouse where he lived with his father, Victor, who as a fisherman worked at night and slept until noon. His mother was so shy and retiring that I very rarely saw her.
I picked up a small pebble and threw it at the upstairs window – Pascal’s room. I heard the noise as it hit the glass and instinctively took refuge behind a honeysuckle bush. His small round head appeared in the window and I beckoned him to come down. After a few minutes, he appeared on the back doorstep.
‘Hey, Pascal! What you
up to?’
‘Nothing much. My mum told me I had to read a book for school, but I don’t understand it. Shit! What happened to your knees?’
‘Nothing much. I fell over.’
‘They’re really bleeding. I bet that hurts.’
‘No, I’m fine, honest. Shall we go to the creek?’
Pascal accepted without much enthusiasm. We’d found a small, almost deserted cove on the other side of the creek at Le Racou. To get there, you had to cross a thorny wood and descend a rather dangerous rocky incline. We used to go quite a lot because we knew nobody would bother us. The gangs to which we wanted to belong – those who automatically placed us in the category of losers and therefore punchbags – didn’t know of this place so we were free to skim flat stones across the surface of the water and try to beat the record without being laughed at.
It took us about fifteen minutes to get there. ‘Your knees are still bleeding.’
‘I said it’s fine.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt?’
‘No, it’s just blood.’
‘And it really doesn’t hurt?’
‘No, it’s just blood. Blood is good. It’s not the first time you’ve seen it, is it?’
‘No,’ said Pascal, ‘but I don’t see it a lot.’
‘You’re too young to remember the war.’
These peremptory words made no sense in actual fact. Pascal was only two years younger than me, and although I remember overhearing discussions about unexplained disappearances during the German occupation, I’d never seen much blood either.
‘You’re afraid of blood, aren’t you?’
‘I am not!’ exclaimed Pascal, pushing out his chest. ‘That’s total rubbish – I’m no scaredy-cat. Who do you think I am?’
‘I think you’re still a kid.’
‘You’re only two years older than me, so if I’m a kid then so are you.’
‘Forget it. And you’re still a virgin . . . You wouldn’t understand.’
This was followed by a debate as childish as it was futile, in which a virgin teenager – Pascal – defended himself about being a virgin against another virgin teenager – me – who was growing up behind a facade of cynicism.
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