The Portrait

by Antoine Laurain

  I rang but there was no answer and I was about to knock when the door opened.

  ‘So it’s you,’ said Dr Baretti wearily.

  He was very at home in the large room with the tiled floor and was wearing one of the light three-piece suits that I had seen him in previously. It seemed to me his grey hair was shorter than usual. At the back of the room I noticed a bar and sofas, then a spiral staircase leading to the basement. On one of the sofas I recognised Jean-Stéphane whom I nodded to. He turned away and continued to drink his peppermint cordial. Dr Baretti went to sit down beside him and indicated that I should take the white leather ottoman, which I did, sinking down almost to the floor.

  ‘Is this what you call a back room?’ I asked to break the silence.

  ‘I don’t believe you’re here to perfect your knowledge of gay culture, are you now, Maître?’ Dr Baretti replied coldly.

  I agreed with a movement of my hand that, indeed, that was not why I was here.

  ‘Before we go any further, I have to tell you I find this absolutely disgraceful.’

  ‘I would have to agree with you,’ I replied calmly.

  Again, the three of us looked at each other in silence. Dr Baretti was right, it was absolutely disgraceful. I had called him to let him know that I would tell his wife and daughters about Jean-Stéphane unless he provided me with all necessary proof that I had been in his clinic for the last four years, under the name of Aimé-Charles de Rivaille, Comte de Mandragore.

  ‘It took me all night to do this,’ said the doctor, opening a red file. ‘Here is a real fake file. I falsified my computer records for the last four years; for you I have even falsified a police report. Have you brought the photos?’

  I showed him the photos I had taken in a photo booth at the metro station. My hair was a mess, I looked distraught. ‘If you’re claiming to be the victim of an accident, don’t appear in your best suit. You need to look as bad as possible,’ he had told me the day before. Politely, I pointed out that I had gone as far as to add a bruise to my temple with a make-up crayon bought that morning at a service station. He glared at me and snatched the photos from me before asking Jean-Stéphane if he would mind getting a pair of scissors and a tube of glue.

  ‘I like the reference to Cocteau,’ I said, as the doctor carefully glued my photographs in place.

  As he did not reply, I went on, ‘For the name of the club …’

  ‘You like Cocteau?’ Jean-Stéphane asked me.

  ‘Yes, very much,’ I replied.

  ‘I suppose that redeems you slightly …’ murmured Baretti.

  A few minutes later, the photos were drying on the seventy-two-page medical file.

  ‘I never want to hear anything about you ever again,’ Baretti told me, as he accompanied me back to the metal door.

  ‘I don’t want to hear anything about me ever again either.’

  He nodded and I left the courtyard.

  Outside, the street was sunny, young people were walking hand in hand, and I was no longer frightened. I was Aimé-Charles de Rivaille. It said so in the file, on the page headed ‘Memory recovery’: ‘The man named Jean since his arrival this morning claims to be called Aimé-Charles de Rivaille from Burgundy.’

  NEWS IN BRIEF

  A lawyer has gone missing from the seventeenth arrondissement in Paris. The family and colleagues of Maître Pierre-François Chaumont say they have not heard from him in almost two weeks. His car, a Jaguar XJS, and some personal effects are also missing. An intellectual-property specialist, he had recently been working as the lead lawyer on a sensitive case concerning a new engine part used in Formula 1 cars. Police have not ruled out any line of enquiry.

  COURTROOM DISPATCHES

  A major upset in the small world of Formula 1. After the disappearance three months ago of Parisian lawyer Pierre-François Chaumont, who had been working on a dispute over a new Durit system (BN-657), police yesterday carried out dawn raids on the premises of rival teams Laren and Foscarini. An official source revealed that the police have not excluded the possibility of a link between the lawyer’s disappearance and industrial espionage.

  OUTBURST

  Franck Massoulier, a highly respected fluid-mechanics researcher within Formula 1, caused a disturbance at a Speed & Passion show at the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Centre last night. Massoulier grabbed the microphone during a media presentation of the new Foscarini engines and accused the show’s guest of honour, Gianni Foscarini, 96, of having ordered the kidnap and assassination of his lawyer, Pierre-François Chaumont, from whom nothing has been heard in the past eight months (see previous issues). Monsieur Massoulier, who is bilingual, used the language of Dante to launch a tirade of insults at Gianni Foscarini and attempted to physically attack the elderly man before security guards were able to restrain him.

  SENTENCING

  Massoulier, the engineer and top Formula 1 figure who insulted Gianni Foscarini and his group some months ago (see previous issues), has been ordered to pay damages of two thousand euros plus interest to the Foscarini group for slander, defamation and obscenity. There is still no news of lawyer Maître Chaumont, whose mysterious disappearance provides the background to this case. Police have abandoned the line of enquiry linking Chaumont’s disappearance to his professional activities, due to lack of evidence. The focus has now turned to his contacts within the art world. Maître Chaumont’s name appears in the professional diary of auctioneer Paul Pétillon, charged six months ago with handling stolen goods.

  THE CRANACH AFFAIR

  ‘Crooks, yes. Murderers, no!’ This was the Attorney General’s verdict on the accused. The auctioneer Paul Pétillon and antiques dealers Carpentier, Beauchon and Victurian were questioned all morning about lawyer Maître Chaumont, who has been missing for almost a year, and with whom they have all had past dealings. The criminal investigation linking Chaumont to the ‘Cranach Affair’ has been dropped.

  THE CHAUMONT AFFAIR

  Regrettably, this headline is misleading. There is no Chaumont affair, none at all, but we would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the Parisian lawyer who has now been missing for a year. Chaumont was a patents specialist and for a time his disappearance was linked to the world of Formula 1 – specifically, there was speculation he might have become an innocent victim of the industrial-espionage war that has plagued the sport. This line of enquiry came to a dead end. Police investigated Chaumont’s private life, looking for evidence of the sexual misdemeanours or money worries that often lie behind uncharacteristic disappearances. Nothing. The most recent line of enquiry attempted to link the lawyer’s disappearance to the art world. His name and mobile phone number appeared in the professional or private diaries of a number of auctioneers and antiques dealers, some of whom were convicted in the ‘Cranach Affair’ (see previous issues). An art-lover, according to his friends and family, Pierre-François Chaumont knew the antiquarians in a strictly professional capacity and only communicated with them with regard to his own collections. Those close to him describe Chaumont as having been depressed and obsessive in the months leading up to his disappearance, which sadly opens up the possibility that he may have taken his own life. It is hard to avoid comparisons with a missing-persons case we documented two years ago, that of Henri Dalmier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs official not seen at his place of work or residence for the past twenty-five months and two weeks. Our thoughts are with the families of these two men at this very difficult time. For those left behind, learning the worst might even provide some relief from their ongoing anguish. There are between 12,000 and 15,000 disappearances every year in France, of which around 80 per cent will be explained – runaways, debt avoidance, suicide, depression, murder or an accident – while the remaining 20 per cent remain a total mystery. That’s between 2,500 and 3,000 people a year who disappear without a trace. This magazine is determined not to forget them.

  That was the last time the press did me the honour of writing about me. Though no fu
ll-length articles worthy of the name had been dedicated to my ‘disappearance’, I came across these brief accounts while browsing the crime sections. They are taken from Le Parisien and Le Nouveau Détective, the investigative magazine that kept up the story of the vain efforts to trace me longer than the rest. It was this magazine that likened my disappearance to that of a Foreign Affairs official. I don’t know whether Henri Dalmier ever resurfaced; I haven’t looked into it. Over the course of this year, from my home in the depths of Burgundy, it’s myself I’ve been trying to learn about as I browse the online newspapers. They thought I committed suicide. In a way, they weren’t altogether wrong.

  One evening I went into Rivaille and slipped into the telephone box in the market square, making sure that no one had seen me. I picked up the receiver and dialled my Paris number. I wanted to hear Charlotte’s voice one last time. I wasn’t planning to speak to her, I just wanted to listen. The phone rang for a long time but there was no reply. The sound must have reached up to the crystal of my chandelier just as Charlotte’s strident cries had done a year earlier.

  Then, as I had tried one number from my past, I rang another. What could be more natural than to call the friend who had been part of my life for twenty years? Chevrier. I had no intention of speaking to him either, but to hear him say ‘Hello?’ down the line several times would fill me with pleasure. The idea that I would be on the other end and that he would probably suspect that it was me would add to the illicit thrill.

  This time the phone only rang twice and the ‘Hello?’ that followed hit me like a lightning bolt.

  It was Charlotte. At twenty to midnight at Chevrier’s house. What was she doing there?

  ‘Hello?’ she repeated.

  She had picked up the phone and answered with the nonchalance of someone who belonged there. And where was the telephone? On a table, a chest of drawers, at the bedside? I tried to recall how the various items of furniture were arranged but couldn’t quite remember.

  ‘Hello?’

  Her affair with Chevrier must have been going on for years. Years during which he had been telling me about his affair with the wife of another man … And that man had been me. Chevrier had never stopped loving Charlotte. She had made her life with the richer, smarter partner whilst at the same time leading another life with the one who played the role so brilliantly as my number two, my ‘assistant’, as certain of our clients liked to say.

  ‘We spoke to your assistant, Maître.’ ‘My partner,’ I corrected them. In fact he was neither partner, nor assistant; he was a lying snake consorting with a viper as soon as my back was turned. Their two bodies must have writhed in pleasure together at the weekend when I was off at the auction house raising the bidding. That was how their guilty coupling must have come about. ‘My passion will have helped theirs,’ I thought. Now it seemed so obvious. How could I have been so blind? Like Charlotte, Chevrier and all the others when they were looking at my portrait. The evidence was right in front of them, as it was right in front of me and yet we had seen nothing. We did not want to see anything. My wife was as invisible to me as I was to her. That phone call and the voice at the other end were just what I needed. They erased all the doubt, remorse and guilt I had been experiencing even up to this evening. I thanked Charlotte for not seeing the resemblance between me and the figure in the painting; and she could thank me for not having loved her enough for all those years. I had left the way clear for her.

  After I hung up, I forced myself to contemplate the next logical step, the marriage of Charlotte and Chevrier. There was nothing to stop them marrying soon. What would become of my antiques? My study? It was the first time the thought had occurred to me. My collections, so dear to my heart, were now alone and had been abandoned by their master for several months. Yet, although I could not think of a way to get them back, I felt they were safe for now in the apartment. But they wouldn’t be if those two set up home together. They would sell my collections and use the proceeds to take a round-the-world trip, I was sure of it. I would have to come up with a solution and was surprised to find myself invoking St Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. ‘You must help me get my things back,’ I implored him, without knowing what I would be able to do for him in return.

  A few days later, Mélaine and I went to the police station for us both to sign the letter of mutual recognition making my return official.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve had to go to the police station,’ I said as we went in.

  ‘The second,’ corrected Commander Briard with a smile. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Aimé still has some blanks,’ said Mélaine gently.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ murmured the policeman, as if he had committed a faux pas.

  ‘When was the other time?’ I asked.

  ‘The Davier brothers,’ replied the commander, smiling again.

  Apparently, one night, almost ten years ago, I had been out and about in Mandragore with my shotgun, looking for a fox. It had been wrecking the chateau’s flower beds for several weeks. In the forest I had come across the Davier brothers. Martial and Noël had also been after the fox, but not to kill it with a shotgun. On the contrary, they wanted to kill it more gently and sell it to the taxidermist.

  The Daviers were always in on all the local scams and whenever there was a burglary in the area, the first port of call for the police was always the breaker’s yard at Le Pivert, the only property officially owned by the brothers and inherited from their father.

  That night, the cash machine at the national savings bank in Chassanier, the little town not far from Rivaille, had been broken into. Two men had made off with quite a considerable haul. Witnesses had recounted that the two men, glimpsed in headlights, appeared to be redheads. The police had immediately recognised a description of the Davier brothers, the men who were poaching on my land. They were arrested the next day and, when I heard of it, I went to the police station to say that at the time of the break-in, the brothers had been with me in the forest. The Daviers had not yet said anything, since mentioning the taxidermist would only have added to their woes. My spontaneous initiative and my local standing were decisive in clearing their name. The story of the taxidermist did not come out and the brothers were released within the hour.

  Apparently, they were eternally grateful to me. Martial, the elder brother, had been arrested two years earlier for dealing in stolen jewellery and even the smallest offence could have landed him in jail.

  As we left the police station, an image was playing in my head of two powerful crowbars springing the locks on the door of my apartment. I saw it as clearly as if I were there, forcing the metal and wood to give way with a loud crack.

  I had found the solution that would save my collections from the auction room.

  On the pretext of going for a drive around Rivaille to help me recall the missing fragments of my past, I took out the old Santana 4x4 we use in the vineyards. After crossing the village square, I followed a back road towards the breaker’s yard.

  I couldn’t resist making a quick detour via the ‘Madman’s Pond’ – named after a man who tried to drown himself there eleven times before opting for the noose. I got out of the Santana and stood by the dark waters. Scanning the surface, I tried to make out the Jaguar. Nothing.

  This place, which I had first spotted before I set off for Thomas l’imposteur, was where I had sunk my car. After nightfall, I had driven my coupé up to the edge of the pond, whose depth I had measured using a long stick the day before. I allowed myself a cigarette before doing for real what I had previously seen only in films: opening all the windows, taking off the handbrake, pushing the car towards the water and watching with wonder as it sank. My Jaguar proved itself worthy of its final role; it slipped slowly under the water, its disappearance accompanied by occasional bursts of bubbles, until there was nothing left but the roof, and then nothing at all. The pond was silent again, as if nothing had ever happened. I returned to the chateau on foot, avoiding any p
assers-by, and claimed to have given the car back to the doctor and taken a taxi home.

  Afterwards, Mélaine and I pored over Dr Baretti’s file. A fine example of the genre, it was so incredibly detailed it could never be called into question. Even the police had praised the doctor’s unrivalled professionalism.

  ‘It’s men like that who should be getting the Légion d’honneur!’ declared Commander Briard. ‘Instead they hand it out to singers and actresses, more’s the pity.’

  Back on the road, I followed signs towards the breaker’s yard at Le Pivert. The old Santana flew through the warm summer afternoon air, and I was singing the catchy theme of The Draughtsman’s Contract as I entered the car graveyard. I parked the Santana quite close to the entrance so that the powerful pincer manoeuvring the carcasses would not confuse it with the cars on its list for crushing that day. The redheaded man at the controls peered out of the cabin.

  ‘Yes? Whaddaya want?’ he shouted amid the din of crumpling metal.

  A door opened in a little elevated workman’s hut accessed via a set of metal steps. Another man looked over at me, himself a redhead. He was in his forties, wearing a blue vest, and his low brow and little close-set eyes gave him a sheep-like air.