Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  “Jessica?”

  She had not expected that he would call her by that name, but her movement was already underway. She slid the knife from her pocket and within an instant, the blade of her knife was pressed against the man’s throat. Once again she discovered an unsuspected strength and agility.

  “Jessica … wait.” His voice was frantic, but she recognized him, releasing the knife from his throat.

  He was the poet from Mexico, the man with the dominoes.

  His red eyes highlighted with kohl softened and he whispered, staring at her, “It’s me, Jessica.”

  “I remember you. You were in Mexico, playing dominoes with Death.”

  “You have a good memory.”

  “Crazy is hard to forget.”

  “You’ll call your own father crazy?”

  Sixtine’s jaw dropped and she shook her head. “Excuse me?”

  “Jessica, I’m your father.”

  17

  “One day, I saw your name in a magazine. Jessica Desroches, who’s getting married to this guy. It stirred things up. Twenty-five years I’ve been trying to forget you, you’d think I’d have experience in that area. I went a long way to get away from you. Very far away.”

  The poet looked at the bottle of Mescal, leaned his head inward as if he was discovering something new inside, his fingernails tapped the glass.

  There was no need to protest, to pretend to be surprised, to demand proof. The man’s face was so familiar it seemed to be engraved in her most intimate memory. She had never known her father, but their paths had crossed when she needed them to. Who could have arrived on her path other than the one she was supposed to know?

  She didn’t want to take him to her apartment, so empty. Maybe she was ashamed. She had nothing to show her father about her life but emptiness and questions. She had imagined a million times how she would meet him. Each time, in her imagination, she told him about her life, a real fairy tale that impressed this imaginary father.

  Instead, she had nothing but questions.

  So they moved to a bar down the street. It was warmer there anyway. She had learned his name was Michael Janvier. He was a writer and poet, and she had offered to shake his hand before deciding that it was absurd. She didn’t need to ask him, as she knew the poems in the trunk, they were all his. His mother still loved him after he left.

  “You want to know something, sweetheart? The laws of physics don’t apply to the things you run from. The further I went, the closer you were. It’s twisted, isn’t it? I realized that a little while ago, already. But it was too late, I had already gotten used to running away.”

  Sixtine let him speak. It was easier. This gave her time to collect the scattered fragments of her questions.

  “I also tried lies,” he continued. “It’s useful, lies, excuses, it helps to get up in the morning. It wasn’t my fault I was thinking. Or, it was okay, they’re better off without me. I never promised anything anyway. Or great works, they are born of freedom. Ah, the freedom trick. It worked well, this one, especially since as soon as I wrote a couple of lines a little less bad than the others, there was always a pen-pusher to agree with me. Artistic genius is effective in absolving oneself of responsibility, it has worked well, encyclopedias are full of them, of these guys. Wondering how you slept. Because at midnight, your soul, it starts laughing at all these fables, and it doesn’t change anything if your name, it’s in bold in a book.”

  He looked up and stared at her.

  “I always knew it was a beautiful piece of crap I had done to you and your mother,” he laughed. “It won’t be a consolation to anyone, but it screwed me up. Unable to love a woman properly after that, even those who were. Ah, there have been queens in my life. Thy shone so brightly that I almost believed it, turn the page, erase the sentences before, start a blank sheet of paper and believe in the promise of colors. But no, no, no. No, you can’t love it properly when you drag a secret into the bottom of your bottle. And when you drag your bottle because of the secret, too.”

  He took a sip, and his glass hit the table. Suddenly looking at Sixtine, as if an urgent idea had just come to him, he suddenly approached her and took her hand. “When I heard that your mother…” He stopped, his eyes darkening.

  Sixtine took her hand out from under his, but she was not sure he noticed. He made a gesture that didn’t mean anything, but Sixtine understood.

  She couldn’t say what happened to her mother either.

  Her heart began to swell, despite the straitjacket of anger. This silence, this guilt, that was what they had in common. His mind rebelled, but the damage was done: compassion took hold.

  “I tried to find you,” he continued. “With the Internet, it wasn’t that hard, and then the village, it hasn’t moved since I left. I was planning to write to you first. But every time I started, I thought to myself: I have to be presentable. A father must be presentable, right?”

  His eyes accentuated with kohl, glimmered, and Sixtine’s throat twisted.

  “I thought to myself, I’ll stop drinking, I’ll settle my affairs, I’ll write a little better, to show you what I’ve done with your life, that it wasn’t for nothing. Forgiveness in the making, right?”

  A tear came down suddenly, like a blade splitting through his cheek. “I had to be up to the task,” he murmured. “But every day, I wasn’t. Every day, I thought, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. But there’s one more thing we don’t teach kids in physics class. The problem with that is time accelerates. That’s the magic word. Tomorrow. And you get up the next day, and twenty-three years have passed. Twenty-three years later, and I’m still not worthy to be the father of a beautiful daughter like you.”

  The smile he gave to Sixtine was so filled with regret and sadness and truth, it remained in her mind once she had lowered her gaze. If the remnants of rage wanted to be silent for a moment, she would have felt admiration, but she had never met a man who didn’t wear a mask.

  “One day I read an article you were getting married to a billionaire. Ha. I could have shown up at the wedding, but the father who reappeared after twenty-three years, attracted by the smell of money and the attention of the beautiful people? Shady. I have vices, but not these anymore. Instead, I showed up at the rehab center.”

  He giggled in a hiccup, shook his head. He made a move towards his glass, but aborted his gesture. “Yeah, last chance to live up to it. Last stop before total destruction of the dream. I emptied my house, plus a bottle and a lot fewer friends. I started writing again. I mean, I pretended to be a writer, it hasn’t happened to me in years. It feels good.”

  “And you went to Mexico,” she said flatly.

  He giggled quietly, looked up briefly at Sixtine. “I noticed that my son-in-law lived in New York, and I was waiting for you. The day I thought I wasn’t ready, but maybe it didn’t matter, that’s the day I read that you disappeared on your honeymoon. That same evening I arrived in Mexico City. I knew the city, I had acquaintances, I thought I had a chance. Poor fool. You know the rest. I never found you, but instead, I reconnected with an old friend.”

  “Which one?” Sixtine asked.

  “This one.” He raised his glass, swirled the last drops of the brown liquid. “Now you’re here," he whispered. “I recognized you immediately.”

  He stared at her. A tired and yet sharp look, stripped of all pretensions, all illusions. The look of the one who asked for nothing, and had nothing to give, except for the truth.

  “I recognized you immediately.”

  The words remained suspended in the silence between them. Did he mean to say that he remembered their two meetings in Mexico City, or that he recognized those distant images that he had dragged with him all his life? Did it even matter?

  “Did you find anything about me in Mexico?”

  “Oh yes, oh believe me, I got my money’s worth.”

  He put his hand in his leather jacket pocket and pulled out a domino. Six dots on the one side and three on the other side.r />
  “I discovered a whole new dimension of humanity I had never suspected. I thought the man had nothing more to teach me. Ah! How naive. Stupidity, greed, cruelty, they have no basis. Hey. I’m looking for my missing daughter and I think the perfect son-in-law took her with him just to pay himself a nice death.”

  Sixtine’s body jolted in shock. “When did you find out about this?”

  “Two nights after I arrived.”

  “How?” Sixtine’s hands suddenly became cold and sweaty.

  “I told you, I have contacts here.”

  “What kind of contacts?”

  The poet’s gaze had hardened, and Sixtine realized that he was reacting to his own. “Plumes, poets, artists, who pay their rent by covering the murders for the local cabbage leaves. They’re not just cops on the phone. They’re on familiar terms with everyone at night at DF.”

  “Death press, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know a girl named Cybelle?”

  “Everyone at DF knows Cybelle, sweetheart.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No,” she answered absentmindedly as he inspected his domino. “But everyone knew, in the little world of the night. A secret society is impressive, especially one that is inspired by what is already there, lurking in our old beliefs as scared men. Fucking scared.”

  “And you stayed in Mexico City until last week,” Sixtine said.

  He raked his fingers through his hair and grimaced. “Once you understand things like that are possible, there is no place left for you to feel at home.”

  “How did you know I was in Mexico?” Sixtine asked with a smile.

  “Angel Fire Café. And on a rainy day, in the bar with the fresco. Poof poof, poof poof. Do you remember? We met then.”

  Her face changed before his eyes. First, misunderstanding, then timid recognition, accompanied by doubt. Finally, certainty, leading to the pure joy born of serendipity. And the wonder at the unfathomable and inviolable laws that make up the destinies on the scope of chance.

  He suddenly stood up and hugged his daughter. For several seconds, Sixtine did not dare to move. She felt the large body of this stranger holding her, but remained tense, resistant to contact. They had never gotten to know each other, and had shared nothing but absences and suffering. And yet, she knew at that moment that it was enough.

  She had a father.

  She let go and fell deeper into the poet’s arms.

  “Oh, my Jessica,” he whispered, his voice cluttered with tears.

  Sixtine let her father detach himself from her, wiping his red eyes with tears.

  “It’s Sixtine,” she corrected gently.

  He suddenly dropped it, then sat down slowly and repeated, his eyes distracted.

  “Sixtine.”

  Then he put his hand on his neck, his lips shaking, the sound of his voice lost in his throat. “There isn’t a second in my life that I haven’t thought about your sister. Oh, Sixtine – ”

  “My sister?” she asked in a strained voice.

  “Your twin sister. Sixtine. Your mother had seen the chapel on television and had chosen that name. I chose Jessica.”

  Sixtine stared at her father and opened her mouth, but no words would come out.

  Michael, his eyes still focused his daughter’s, whispered, “Your mother never told you that.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a revelation.

  “No, of course, she never told anyone. Your mother was expecting twins. We were so young, and it all happened so fast. She woke up one night, in pain, unusual pain. We rushed to the hospital. They couldn’t feel the heartbeats anymore. You were born, but it was too late for your sister. We had to decide which of the two names to give you. She chose to call you Jessica. She said Sixtine was an angel’s name.”

  Sixtine’s fingernails sank into her thighs. Her father’s voice was so weak that she had to come closer again to listen to him.

  “When I heard your mother drowned, I knew. She never recovered from it.” He looked up at her tired eyes. “But why are you talking to me about Sixtine?”

  “When I came out of the coma, after the pyramid, my name was…” Sixtine heard the words coming out of her mouth, in a neutral voice. She felt so tired; when her eyes failed on the dominoes, her vision blurred.

  She could not say her name, stranded in her throat, along with her breath.

  She opened her eyes, stared at her father, loosened her outstretched fingers. The bar around her changed without changing. Even her lungs seemed to have stopped working, as they did at the bottom of the pool.

  Everything was clear, everything was different. Like Gigi, she finally saw.

  A few minutes later, she ran through the crowd of sidewalks, the nascent storm in her silver hair.

  It was necessary to share the secret with Thaddeus.

  18

  The surface of the river began to shake at first. Then the vibration seized Max’s legs, his rib cage. The next moment, a noisy breath shook the whole valley.

  A dozen helicopters emerged from behind the mountains. Their gigantic shadow waved over the rice fields and passed on their boat. Bian jumped into the water and began to pull the boat to shore. About 50 feet from them, a young man descended from the bulky bags of his motorcycle.

  “There, the bike!” Max shouted.

  Max got up to pull a bill out of his jeans pocket, but the boat wobbled and he fell into the water. He got up, his shirt tightening his muscles in his torso and water dripped down his long hair. Bian, blushing and having a fit of laughter, grabbed the money, then started a lively conversation with the owner of the motorcycle.

  A few seconds later, she had boarded the vehicle and started the engine. Max jumped behind them and they rushed away, spitting a cloud of dust behind them.

  The motorcycle followed the narrow path parallel to the shoreline, on the edge of the forest. Max kept his eyes on the helicopters. There was no doubt they were following the Rivière aux Eaux Roses.

  “Is there a place where they can land in the area,” Max shouted.

  “There is a place, but it really makes the pilots look like aces! And there is no entrance to the cave!”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  As an answer, Bian accelerated. The motorcycle ran into a bump and took off. Max’s stomach did an unpleasant spin, but he was too busy following the swarm of roaring aircraft above them to care. Then suddenly the helicopters changed course and left the river’s route.

  “We’re losing them!”

  “No!” Bian shouted. “Hang on!”

  She braked and made a turn that forced Max to tighten his arms around her waist and close his eyes. His body was thrown against the girl’s body without him being able to do anything about it as the bike rode down a steep hillside. Once down below, they hit rocks, and the water splashed over their calves. Max opened his eyes again, but what he saw did not reassure him: the path went up the other side into a hillside just as steep as the one they had just descended.

  “Are you kidding me?” Max asked.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that,” Bian cheered. “We just need to get some speed! When we start climbing, lean forward!”

  She accelerated. Max hugged Bian so tightly that he was afraid of suffocating her. He put his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes again. He felt the bike turn, and the engine revved. They rode along the trail, but the speed began to decrease dangerously until they stopped. He turned around and faded in front of the corner of the slope. They would fall backwards, and the weight of the bike would fall on them.

  When he felt the front wheel leaving the ground, he jumped back, managed to keep his balance to push the machine for the last few hundred feet. This required considerable pressure on his leg and he was repaid for his effort with violent pain. But they had passed the hillside and arrived on a flat road.

  Max got off the bike and waved to Bian to continue.

  They entered a courtyard su
rrounded by several houses, under the palm trees. A few chickens clucked and jumped out of the way as they passed them. An old lady squatted under one of the porches, sorting beans.

  Bian said a few words to the old woman with a wave of her hand and the old woman motioned to the sky. The two exchanged words which Max did not understand, but when Bian nodded gratefully at the woman and turned to Max, he knew it wasn’t a good conversation.

  “Just as I thought,” Bian said. “We’re going to have to walk to the end.”

  Max grimaced, but a few minutes later, they were surrounded by jungle again. Max’s feet were soaked, his shirt stuck to his skin with sweat.

  When they got there, what would they do? he wondered to himself.

  Twelve helicopters. It was something else than just an old man and his fiancée. Who else was in those helicopters?

  Max knew there were only rich people in the secret society, and that they were eccentric. And powerful.

  He remembered the archives of Vivant. Sixtine’s body in the pyramid. All these girls buried before their time. Livia, in her red bikini, with the little tattoo on her neck. He grinned, and swore when he hit his ankle against a decomposing trunk.

  “Are you all right?” Bian asked as she turned around. “We’re almost there.”

  Max’s answer was drowned out by a new racket. Above them, the breath of two helicopters irritated the canopy of the palm trees. They were heading in the opposite direction.

  “They’re changing direction again,” Bian exclaimed.

  “No,” Max said as he glanced up at the sky, “they’re leaving again. They must have dropped off their cargo. We have to go. Now!”

  He began to run, despite the pain in his leg. He had to regain his courage and kept his conviction deep in his stomach. The branches whipped against his face, his mind focused on each of his steps. Then finally, Bian motioned to him to make as little noise as possible, he heard voices.

  Bian signaled to him that the clearing was on the other side; the voices of the men were closer now. They spotted a rock a few feet away and hid behind it.