‘That’s fine, that will do, you’ve told me what I wanted to know. Thank you, my boy.’
He was back at his spot on the corner of the street when I went over to him.
‘I’ll take a newspaper, too.’
How should I do it? I needed scissors and some glue. A bit further along the street I found a cobbler who was willing to lend them to me, but I had to be careful with the baby, they were leather scissors and very sharp. Thank you, Monsieur, it’s very kind of you . . .
But above all I had to be quick. Annie would be leaving for the gardens soon.
While waiting for the newsboy’s report, I had hidden in the basement of the building. Ever since the first air-raids, the door had routinely been kept open. I went back there. At the cobbler’s I had bought a little duck on wheels for Camille to play with, but of course she was more interested in what I was doing, and she stopped me from going as fast as I would have liked. But somehow I managed to finish in time.
I waited until I saw Annie leave the building. Once she had disappeared around the corner, I went up to the fourth floor: the apartment on the left-hand side of the landing, the newsboy had said. As I slipped the paper under the door I prayed that the boy was not one of those people who mix up left and right; my plan hung by a thread. Like all plans.
I took a taxi. I only just had time to call by the house. We had an appointment in the gardens half an hour from then, but she didn’t know that yet: a real appointment this time.
‘Go and show your duckie to Papa, sweetheart.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. You know, Papa knows how to make duckies talk.’
‘No, he doesn’t make anyone talk. He doesn’t even talk himself.’
At home I changed my blouse and put on a black hat. Paul was working in his study and I set Camille and her duck down on the sofa in front of him. I eyed the Deringer on the wall, alongside the other weapons in the collection.
‘By the way, I won’t be here for lunch. I’m going to the cemetery. I can’t take Camille, it’s not the right place for her.’
‘Why on earth are you going to the cemetery now? Can’t it wait?’
‘No, it cannot wait.’
‘But how will I manage? She’ll start crying.’
‘If you don’t put down your newspaper and play with her a bit, yes, she will cry.’
Just then Camille interrupted us.
‘Maman cut newspaper.’
I was ill at ease.
‘Papa, you want to cut newspaper, too? Please Papa?’
‘No.’
I left the two of them, one screaming, the other mute and distraught. ‘Maman cut newspaper.’ Fortunately, she didn’t yet have the words she needed to denounce me. The time during which one can keep things from children does not last long. Damn! I had forgotten to take a handkerchief.
I sat down on a bench and waited for Annie. She would come, I was sure of it. She would stand before me, pale and anxious at seeing me alone and dressed all in black.
It all happened just as I had imagined. She hurried over to me, and said tonelessly, ‘Where is she? Where is Louise?’
I looked at her: could I do it? And I plunged ahead, coldly, disjointedly. The game had begun.
‘Last night I left her in Paul’s study, not long, just the time it took to go and fetch her a sweater . . .’
‘Where is she?’
‘. . . her hands had seemed cold, a child’s hands at that age, they’re often cold, even very cold. As I went down the stairs I called to her, but she didn’t answer. I wasn’t really worried, this often happens with children, when they hear you they don’t always answer, it’s the same thing even with adults . . .’
‘Stop it, tell me where Louise is.’
‘. . . she was lying on the floor, the little Deringer next to her. She must have taken it off the wall to play with it. Blood was pouring from her stomach . . . She’s dead, Annie, Louise is dead. She must have pressed the trigger and the bullet went straight into her stomach. I cannot understand how it happened, none of the weapons in the collection has ever been loaded. Ever.’
At that moment I looked up at Annie and saw she was having trouble absorbing what I had said. Her face resembled my lie, the blood had drained from her body. I don’t know how many long seconds she stood there rigid in front of me. And then she screamed, the cry of a mortally wounded animal, and ran away.
I had no fear of bringing misfortune on Camille; it was Louise who had died.
What happened after that I can only imagine, but it must have gone just as I planned.
She went home. Some sorrows may dissolve in the street, or in a bar, but not the sorrow of a dead child. She could throw herself on her bed, or on the floor, or hide in a corner, but she had to get home.
17, rue de Turenne. Fourth floor, on the left.
Crossing the threshold she stepped on a sheet of paper. She lowered her eyes instinctively, and she could not help but read it. I had not put the paper in an envelope; she would not have had the courage to open it. Nor had I folded it; she would not have had the courage to unfold it.
I had left her no choice but to read the letters I had cut out and glued to the sheet.
IT ISN’T NICE TO GO HIDING THINGS
WHO’S GOING TO TELL
YOUR NEW BOYFRIEND
THAT HE’S SLEEPING
WITH A WHORE
She had not confessed to Louis, of that I am sure. You can tell the truth, the whole truth, when you are sure that you will never see someone again, but she did not want to lose Louis. The risk of the stain, the disgust that prostitution can inspire: not a risk you can take with a young man like Louis. He would not understand why she had compromised herself like that over the last two years. Only a ‘mature’ man can envisage helping a young woman out of such a situation, might even find a certain pleasure in it, the pathetic pleasure of withdrawing a prize from the reach of other men. A young boy has so many fresh, pure women at his disposal that he would no longer trade with someone like Annie.
Annie would be severely distressed by the letter. She would not think of me; I had not been a part of her life for years now. Letters of denunciation were so common in those days that anyone might be the author. A former client. A rival. One of Louis’ jilted girlfriends. Vengeance was not mine alone.
A single argument might suffice to end it all with Louis. Perhaps it need not even be an argument, just an explanation. But she had just had tragic news, and she would be thinking in tragic terms. Louise was dead, and if Louis found out she was working as a prostitute he would never want anything to do with her again: that must be what she would say to herself.
I wanted to assail her from all sides, to stifle her. Through the people she loved. Destroy her radiant future, at the very moment when she had felt closer than ever to attaining it. I knew how propitious such circumstances could be for sudden tragedy, for insanity. Like snatching a toy car or a doll from a child, the very toys you have just given them. Fury. Screaming. The end of the world. Louise. Louis. Everything collapsing, all at once.
She took care of the rest all on her own. She left her room, took her bicycle, pedalled all the way to Nuisement, and threw herself into the lake.
I only found out the following morning, when Jacques called me from L’Escalier to say that Annie had drowned; they had found her body.
I don’t know who told him that—they never found her body. Village rumours are impenetrable, like the Chinese whispers that Camille used to like to play with me when she was a child; you never know at what point, or by whom, the truth has been distorted.
It was not that I had actually premeditated her murder. I had to find a way to keep her out of my life for good, and quickly. I was going for broke. I knew her so well. I could hound her into a corner. Guess at every
little convulsion of her soul that would eventually cause her to lose her footing and fall. Plot all the events, pile them on to break her. Overwhelm her, swamp her, with the worst things imaginable so that she could see no other way out, only death. Psychological manipulation is a weapon like any other, no more or less fallible, the only one, in any case, that can ensure a perfect crime. So perfect that even I was almost convinced I was not responsible for her death. In the end, perhaps I was right.
Just like soldiers going to war, my doubts only came later, as if the feeling of urgency had silenced all other feelings, leaving room only for hard, efficient reason and action. My doubts came with time, with hindsight, with calm, and through the mirrors I gaze into like any other woman, but not for the same reasons. I often scrutinise myself, still astonished by my past deeds; before this I had never been capable of even a white lie of the most inoffensive sort. Perhaps I am like one of those repeat offenders about whom only good things are thought, until they find themselves confronted once again with a similar situation and they commit a new murder. In certain specific circumstances a particular facet of the self comes to light, only to vanish again instantly the moment the circumstances change.
But when I speak of ‘doubts’, it stops there: I have never felt any remorse or guilt. I persist in thinking that Paul and Annie are the ones who drove me to do what I did. I have always thought that betrayal gives one every right.
I never told Paul that Annie had committed suicide. He would have wanted to believe it was for his sake, and their love affair would have become wonderful, romantic, eternal. His sorrow, too. I wanted that love affair to be trivial, vulgar and common. Annie had gone off with someone else: that was all he was supposed to believe. And I would never inflict upon myself the worst enemy a woman can ever have: a dead woman, the woman you can always replace but never equal.
Paul never suspected the truth.
Nor did he suspect the truth about Camille, or if he did, he never spoke about it. And, as the years went by, he had to live with the terrible uneasiness of seeing the woman he had loved in his own daughter, visible, invisible, like some aching ghost lurking where it should never have been. His mistress in his daughter, an unbearable combination.
But let there be no mistake, there were days when we did make up a fine family. A great many days, even. We too had our moments of deep, sincere joy, our contagious fits of laughter and gaiety.
And then there was Pierre’s birth, a wonderful sunny spell in our life. Pierre is my son. Our son, Paul’s and mine.
When I found out I was pregnant I hugged Camille as if she were the one who had made love to me, who had made this child. Her existence had so much to do with it, that I knew. Without her, Pierre would not exist, I am certain; like so many ‘infertile’ women I had conceived my little boy because I no longer expected him.
But there were also Paul’s struggles, and his relapses.
He was drinking.
I never wanted to admit to myself that it was all connected, but it was. He never forgot Annie. He was killed during the war in Indochina. The children suffered a great deal. And I did too, infinitely more than I would have expected.
These days, Camille has become a charming young woman, vivacious and passionate. Not always about life, but about her profession, definitely. She is a publisher. When she told me she was expecting a baby I wanted to believe that she was telling me about a new book.
But suddenly, after all these years only vaguely troubled by doubt, all my demons have awoken, instantaneously, violently unchanged.
I was foolish to believe that one could extricate oneself from an act like mine.
The terrible fear of birth has started again, intact, raging.
I do not want to go through all that again. I’m too old, and suddenly my lie has taken on a new dimension. Until now it only concerned one person: Camille.
I never planned for my lie to outlive me. The nature of a lie is that it will be uncovered, unmasked, it will not become a definitive, unshakeable truth, beyond suspicion. The truth of lives as yet unlived, of people who will never have the means to know—I cannot damage all those people yet to be born. To live in truth, people must know where they come from; when I see the point Camille has reached in her life, I am sure of that.
So, if something were to happen to me—and you will know, the day it does—I beg you to tell Camille everything: you are the only one who can. I know how difficult it might seem; think of it as my final wishes. I beg you. Tell her everything. Be honest. Even with the hardest truths, about the story, about me. Tell her about her mother, her mothers. And above all, don’t bother to say kind things or words of comfort. Don’t apologise, either for me or for you, you have nothing to blame yourself for, and in any case it would never be equal to her sorrow, or perhaps, even, her hatred. But do not worry, I am sure she will be all right, my daughter is strong. Unsinkable. Like her mother. And if she begins to founder, the child she is expecting will prevent her from going under, trust me. Tell her how much I love her, I beg you. Farewell, Monsieur. Farewell, young man. And forgive me.
Everything was crystal clear, filthy, but crystal clear. Once she had finished her story, your mother got up and walked away. I watched her leave: she had the slow gait of someone who is overwhelmed, but at the same time she held herself upright, like those who know where they are going. She knew what she had to do, of that I am certain. That story was the very end of her life. There was nothing I could have done to stop her.
I worked like a dog all night, at my desk, filling the pages of this school exercise book in order to transcribe faithfully everything she had just told me. It was as if I had gone back in time, to those years when I would stand by my sorting table, memorising the compromising letters before I destroyed them, and when, at night, I would creep on my felt soles to the home of those to whom the letters had been addressed, in order to recite them.
Louis
I folded the sheet. I slammed the car door behind me and headed towards the church.
I had pictured it bigger. It was long, low, and narrow. All wood, like a cabin, except for the steeple, which was covered with tiles. It wasn’t grand, but it was beautiful. I went closer.
There was music coming from inside. I would have preferred to be alone. I stood on the threshold: the softness of the light was calming, as were the rows of empty pews. I went in. A simple wooden rectangle: the nave, an apse, and neither side aisles nor upper floor. The statue of Saint Roch was there, standing under a stained-glass window. His trusted companion, the dog, was lifting the saint’s cape to show his wound. There was water in the font. Cool water. I kept my fingers on my brow for a while before making a vague sign of the cross.
In front of me, next to the altar, a man was playing the organ. I could see him from the back, a priest. He wasn’t wearing a cassock, but his white collar left no doubt, nor did the way he was playing, which seemed to me deeply religious. I took a few steps closer then withdrew again. I watched as the man let his fingers play over the keyboard: his broad neck, his thick grey hair. All of a sudden, I knew who he was.
And I recognised the scent from the letters: the woody smell of incense that I had not been able to identify.
And from the ‘Hours of Confession’ handwritten on a sheet stuck to the heavy wooden door, I recognised that capital ‘R’ amidst the other lowercase letters, that handwriting that had turned my life upside down.
It was him all right. Louis.
His arms suddenly froze on the keyboard, the music stopped. Had he sensed that someone was watching him? I left the church. Did he turn around? I started the car.
Louis had taken such care to keep me from finding him, I would not go against his wishes, not now that I knew everything.
‘Everything was as it should be,’ he had said, years before, when, in this very same church, he fell in love with Annie, also seen from
behind. Louis deserved to be left in peace. By inflicting her confession upon him, Maman had forced him to go back into his memories; I would not revive them by introducing myself. I would not impose on him any physical resemblance to that woman he had loved so much.
I watched as the church faded behind me in the rear-vision mirror, that church where Maman had come to ease her conscience and find a messenger. The notebook was open on the seat next to me. Louis’ handwriting, with Maman’s words. Merciless. I could feel the steering wheel brush against my belly, my baby. My mother had killed for me; she had killed herself for the baby. ‘She had the slow gait of someone who is overwhelmed, but at the same time she held herself upright, like those who know where they are going. She knew what she had to do.’ Maman knew that she would accelerate in the bend and that she would not brake. It was bound to be the bend where her own parents had died; that road was not one of her usual routes. In the end, Maman had acted like Papa. How many people commit suicide in ‘an accident’ to spare their loved ones the guilt?
I took the road that went along the lake, the water stretching as far as the eye could see. I could not stop thinking of Annie’s body lying somewhere at the bottom. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I stopped the car. I reread the notebook, choking on every word. Pierre my brother, you will go on saying I was Maman’s favourite—if only you knew how I would rather have been her daughter. The lake water sparkled with the reflection of the sky. Suddenly a dark cloud moved over the surface of the water. I looked up from the notebook. The Lady of the Lake, holding Annie at arm’s length, to give her back to me? No, a flight of cranes. Thousands, perhaps, as if all the oracles in the world had concentrated over my head. They flew in procession across the sky, a majestic choreography of birds, without a choreographer. I too was a migrating bird, I had been forced to migrate from my mother. Maman, why didn’t you keep me with you?
A little aeroplane was approaching the spot where I had parked. It was landing. I wanted nothing more to do with the earth. The sky was what I needed right now, that sky where all my loved ones had gone to. I went over to the flying club. The pilot welcomed me. Quarter of an hour? Half an hour?—An hour. I could not have dreamt of a better guide, he knew the lake like the back of his hand. ‘Fantastic,’ I said as he helped me climb in. Seven months, I’d be okay, no risk I’d give birth up there. It would probably be a boy. A future pilot! Maybe . . .
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