The Reunion

by Guillaume Musso

  Death and the Maiden

  13

  La Place de la Catastrophe

  1.

  7:00 p.m.

  I left the lycée and headed back to La Fontonne Hospital. This time, I avoided the reception desk and went straight up to the cardiology unit. I had barely stepped out of the elevator when a nurse in pink scrubs called to me:

  “Hey! You’re Annabelle Degalais’s son!”

  Dark-skinned, with dreadlocks streaked with blond highlights and a thousand-watt smile, the young woman radiated joy in the bleak hospital corridor. She looked a little like Lauryn Hill when she was with the Fugees.

  “I’m Sophia,” she said. “I know your mom well. Every time she comes to see us, she talks about you!”

  “You must be confusing me with my brother Jérôme. He works for Doctors Without Borders.”

  I was used to my mother’s panegyrics about my older brother and did not doubt that Jérôme deserved them. Besides, it’s impossible to compete with someone who spends every day saving lives in war-torn countries and disaster zones.

  “No, no, you’re the one she talks about, the writer. She even got you to sign one of your books for me.”

  “I’d be very surprised.”

  But Sophia would not budge an inch.

  “I’ve got the book in the call room. Come have a look. It’s right over there.”

  Since she had piqued my curiosity, I followed her to the end of the corridor and into a long, narrow room. She showed me a copy of my most recent novel, A Few Days with You, and it was indeed inscribed For Sophia, hoping that this story will give you pleasure and make you think. Warm regards, Thomas Degalais. Except it was not my handwriting but my mother’s! A surreal image popped into my head of my mother trying to fake my signature to respond to readers’ requests.

  “Have I signed many books for people here?”

  “A dozen or so. A lot of people in the hospital read your books.”

  I was intrigued by this discovery. I was clearly missing something.

  “How long has my mother been coming here for treatment?”

  “Since Christmas last year, I’d say. The first time, I was the one looking after her—it was one of the holiday shifts. She’d had a heart attack in the middle of the night.”

  I made a mental note of this.

  “I’m here to see Fanny Brahimi.”

  “The doctor’s just left for the day,” Sophia said. “Did you want to talk to her about your mother?”

  “Not exactly. Fanny is an old friend. We’ve known each other since elementary school.”

  Sophia nodded. “Yes, she told me when I started taking care of your mother. It’s too bad you just missed her.”

  “I really need to see her. It’s important. I don’t suppose you’d have her cell phone number?”

  Sophia hesitated for a moment and then gave a regretful smile.

  “I’m really sorry, but I’m not allowed to give out staff numbers. But if I were you, I’d go take a walk around Biot.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Saturday night. She usually has dinner with Dr. Sénéca on the place des Arcades.”

  “Thierry Sénéca, the biologist?”

  “That’s right.”

  I remembered him. He had been a year or two ahead of us at Saint-Ex. Later he had set up a medical laboratory in Biot 3000, the technology park just outside the village. I knew it because my parents had their blood tests done there.

  “So Sénéca and Fanny are an item?”

  “I suppose you could say that.” Sophia nodded, a little concerned that she had said too much.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I was already at the far end of the corridor when Sophia called after me.

  “When is your next novel out?”

  I pretended not to hear and stepped into the elevator. Generally, I found the question flattering; it was a mark of affection from readers. But as the doors closed, I realized that there would not be a next novel. On Monday, the body of Alexis Clément would be found and I would spend the next fifteen to twenty years behind bars. And, more than my freedom, I would lose the only thing that made me feel alive.

  To dispel this gloomy thought, I checked my phone. I had a missed call from my father—who never called me—and a text message from Pauline Delatour, who had somehow managed to get hold of my number. Sorry about earlier, I don’t know what got into me. I do dumb stuff sometimes. PS: I’ve come up with a title for the book you will one day write about Vinca: “Night and the Maiden.”

  2.

  Back in the car, I headed toward the village of Biot. I found it difficult to concentrate on the road. My mind was still buzzing about the photograph I had seen in the school paper. In her red wig, Fanny—who was a blonde—looked unsettlingly like Vinca. It was not just her hair color; it was her manner, her facial expression, the way she held her head. This twinship made me think of the improv exercises my mother used to have students in the drama club do, lively scenarios that the kids loved to perform. The basic idea was for them to play real characters they had met in the street, at a bus stop, in a gallery. They called it the Chameleon Game, and Fanny was a natural.

  A theory began to form in my mind. What if Fanny and Vinca had switched places? What if, on that famous Sunday morning, it was Fanny who caught the train to Paris? It seemed far-fetched, but it was not impossible. I could still remember the statements gathered during the various investigations. What exactly had they said, the school caretaker, the garbage collectors, the passengers on the TGV, the porter at the hotel? That they had seen a young red-haired girl, a pretty redhead, a girl with pale blue eyes and rust-colored hair. Descriptions that were vague enough to fit my theory. Perhaps I had finally found the lead I’d been searching for all these years. It meant there was a real possibility that Vinca was still alive. All the way to Biot, I mentally played out this scenario in order to make it real. For some reason I did not know, Fanny had faked Vinca and her lover’s elopement. Everyone was looking for Vinca in Paris, but she had probably never even caught that train.

  As I arrived in Biot, the sun was dipping below the horizon. The public parking lot was full, and a stream of cars, hazard lights blinking, were double-parked, all of them waiting for someone to leave. Having driven around the village twice without finding a spot, I gave up and coasted down the chemin des Vachettes toward the valley of Combes. I finally found a parking place some eight hundred meters downhill, next to the tennis courts. I had to trudge back up the steep gradient, which was agony on the legs and brutal on the lungs. I had almost reached the summit when my father phoned again.

  “I’m worried, Thomas. Your mother still isn’t home. I don’t understand. She only popped out to do some shopping.”

  “I assume you’ve tried calling her.”

  “That’s the thing—she left her cell phone here. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. Are you sure you’re not getting worked up over nothing?”

  I was more surprised by my father’s reaction than by the notion that my mother was off gallivanting somewhere. In the early 2000s, she had been involved with an NGO that was teaching young girls in Africa and she was often away from home, something that had never seemed to bother her husband.

  “No,” Richard said. “We have guests coming over for dinner. She’d never leave me in the lurch like this.”

  “If you’re really worried, you could start by calling the hospitals.”

  “All right,” he grumbled.

  By the time I hung up, I had finally reached the pedestrian area. The village of Biot was even more picturesque than I remembered. Although there were still vestiges of the Knights Templar here, the architecture owed more to people who had come from northern Italy. At this time of day, the ocher glow of the façades warmed the cobbled streets, giving the casual visitor the impression that he was strolling through an alleyway in Savona or Genoa.

  The main street was lined with shops selling the usua
l wares of Provence (soaps, perfumes, handicrafts made from olive wood), but there were also galleries exhibiting the work of local glassblowers, painters, and sculptors. Outside a wine bar, a girl with a guitar was murdering the Cranberries’ back catalog, but she was surrounded by people clapping along, adding to the easy atmosphere of early evening.

  And yet, in my mind, Biot was linked to a very specific memory. In sixth grade, when I was about twelve, I had done my very first presentation on a piece of local history that had always fascinated me. In the late nineteenth century, a huge building in the village had suddenly collapsed. The tragedy had occurred one evening when all the inhabitants were gathered there for a meal to celebrate a child’s First Communion. Within seconds, they were all crushed and buried. Rescuers had pulled almost thirty corpses from the rubble. It was an incident that had left a lasting impression on the town and that, even a century later, was still evident, since no one had ever built over the ruins. Obdurately desolate, the site was now known as la place de la Catastrophe.

  When I reached the place des Arcades, I was stunned to find that it was exactly as I had last seen it, twenty-five years earlier. The long, narrow plaza extended as far as the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine and was flanked by twin arcades of colorful two- and three-story buildings.

  It did not take long to find Thierry Sénéca. Sitting on the terrace of the Café Les Arcades, he beckoned me over, as though it was me rather than Fanny he was waiting for. Sénéca had not changed much. He had dark, close-cropped hair, an aquiline nose, and a well-trimmed goatee. His clothes could best be described as “cool”—linen pants, short-sleeved shirt, sweater draped around his shoulders. He looked as though he had just stepped off a yacht and reminded me of the old advertisements for Sebago or the election posters of my youth featuring conservative RPR candidates desperately trying to pass themselves off as hip, cool guys. The result was usually the opposite of what was intended.

  “Hi, Thierry,” I said, stepping under the arch.

  “Evening, Thomas, it’s been ages.”

  “I was looking for Fanny. I heard she’s having dinner with you.”

  He gestured for me to take the chair opposite.

  “She should be here any minute. She mentioned that she’d seen you this morning.”

  The rose-tinted sky cast a honeyed glow over the ancient stones. The air was fragrant with soupe au pistou and simmering ragouts.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t spoil your evening,” I said. “There’s something I wanted to check. It won’t take more than two minutes.”

  “No problem.”

  Les Arcades was a veritable institution in Biot. Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Chagall had all been regulars here once. The tables, covered with checkered cloths, spilled out into the square.

  “Is the food as good as it used to be? My parents used to bring us here all the time,” I said.

  “Well, you’re not in for any surprises. The menu hasn’t changed in forty years.”

  We talked for a while about roasted peppers and stuffed zucchini, about braised rabbit with herbes de Provence, and about the wonderful ceiling with its exposed beams. There followed an awkward silence and I did my best to keep the conversation going.

  “How are things with the lab?”

  “Don’t waste your time trying to make conversation, Thomas,” he said, a sudden shift in his tone.

  Like Pianelli this morning, Thierry took out an e-cigarette and started sucking on something that smelled like crème caramel. I wondered what men like Francis Biancardini and my father thought when they saw guys getting their kicks smoking things that smelled like sweets and drinking spinach detox smoothies instead of a glass of Scotch.

  “You know that pathetic old theory about soul mates?” Thierry Sénéca said, glaring at me. “The one that says we’re all looking for the perfect other half, the one and only person capable of forever easing our loneliness?”

  “In The Symposium, Plato has Aristophanes present the idea, and I don’t think it’s pathetic. I think it’s poetic. I like the symbolism.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot that you always were the on-call romantic,” he said mockingly.

  I let him continue.

  “Well, Fanny also believes in that stuff. And it’s all well and good when you’re fourteen or fifteen, but when you’re in your forties, it becomes a bit of an issue.”

  “What exactly are you trying to say, Thierry?”

  “There are people who get stuck in time. People for whom the past is never really in the rearview mirror.”

  I had the impression that Sénéca was sketching a portrait of me, but it turned out that I was not the subject of his rant.

  “Do you know what Fanny believes, deep down? That, one day, you’ll come back for her. She genuinely thinks that sooner or later you’ll realize that she’s the love of your life and you’ll show up on your white horse and take her away to a better life. In psychiatry, they call it—”

  “I think you’re exaggerating,” I said, interrupting him.

  “I wish.”

  “How long have you two been together?”

  “Five or six years. We’ve had some great times and some tough times. But the thing is, even when we’re happy, even when we’re having fun together, it’s you she’s thinking about. Fanny can’t help but imagine that whatever this is, it would be more intense, more fulfilling with you.”

  Eyes fixed on the ground, a lump in his throat, Thierry Sénéca spoke in a hollow voice. His pain was all too real.

  “It’s tough, trying to compete with you, you know, the one who’s different from other boys. But what exactly is different about you, Thomas Degalais, aside from the fact that you’re a homewrecker and a dream merchant?”

  He stared at me with a mixture of hostility and anguish, as though I were both the cause of his pain and, potentially, his savior. What he was saying seemed so preposterous that I did not even try to explain myself.

  He stroked his beard, then took his phone from his pocket and showed me the picture he used as his wallpaper: a boy of about eight or nine playing tennis.

  “Is that your son?”

  “Yeah, that’s Marco. His mother got sole custody and took him to Argentina, where she lives with her new guy. It kills me that I don’t see more of him.”

  It was a touching story, but this sudden unburdening by someone to whom I had never been close made me uncomfortable.

  “I want to have another kid,” Sénéca said. “I’d like it to be with Fanny, but there’s a problem standing in our way. And that problem is you, Thomas.”

  I wanted to say that I wasn’t his shrink and that if Fanny did not want to have a child, the problem was probably him, not me, but the guy was so miserable that I could not bring myself to stick the knife in.

  “I’m not going to wait around forever,” he warned.

  “That’s your problem—”

  I did not get to finish the sentence. Fanny had just appeared at the far end of the arcade, and, seeing us together, she froze. She waved to me—Come with me—then crossed the square and went into the church.

  “I’m glad you came, Thomas,” Thierry Sénéca said as I got to my feet. “There has always been some unfinished business from back then. I hope maybe you’ll deal with it tonight.”

  I left without saying goodbye, walked across the cobbled square, and stepped into the church.

  3.

  The moment I stepped inside, the smell of incense and wood smoke made me feel reflective. The church was beautiful in its simplicity, with stairs running from the main door down to the nave. Fanny was waiting for me, sitting at the bottom of the steps next to a massive brass votive holder on which dozens of candles were burning.

  She was wearing the same jeans, the same shoes, the same blouse I had seen her in that morning. She had buttoned up her trench coat and was hugging her knees as though freezing cold.

  “Hi, Fanny.”

  Her face was ashen, her eyes puffy, her face crumpled.
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  “We need to talk, don’t we?”

  My tone was harsher than I had intended. She nodded. I was about to question her about the theory I had come up with while driving here, but she looked up at me, and the pain I could see in her eyes was so terrifying that, for the first time, I was not sure I wanted to know the truth.

  “I lied to you, Thomas.”

  “When?”

  “Today, yesterday, the day before yesterday, twenty-five years ago…I’ve always lied to you.”

  “You lied when you said you knew there was a body walled up in the gym?”

  “No, that part was true.”

  The candles flickered above her head and the panels of a fifteenth-century altarpiece shimmered in the quivering light. In a gilt frame, Our Lady of the Rosary cradled the Christ Child; in one outstretched hand, she held a bloodred rosary.

  “I’ve known for twenty-five years that there was a body walled up in the gym,” Fanny said.

  I wished that time would stand still. Wished there were some way to stop her from speaking.

  “But until you told me today, I didn’t know Alexis Clément was there too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There are two bodies in that fucking wall,” she spluttered, struggling to her feet. “I didn’t know about Clément. I lied; Ahmed never said anything to me. But I knew about the other body.”

  “What other body?”

  I knew what she was about to say, and my mind was already creating barriers to shield me from the truth.

  “Vinca,” she said at length.

  “No, you’re wrong.”

  “This time, I’m telling you the truth, Thomas. Vinca is dead.”

  “When did she die?”

  “The same day Alexis Clément died. Saturday, December nineteenth, 1992, the day of the snowstorm.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Now it was Fanny’s turn to look up at Our Lady of the Rosary. Behind Mary, two angels were holding open her mantle so that the meek might find shelter there. In that moment, I wished that I could join them. But Fanny raised her head, looked into my eyes, and, with her next words, destroyed everything I cared about.