The Ninth Life of Louis Drax

by Liz Jensen

  I understood Sophie’s decision to get away from the situation. If she came back now, what would she be coming back to? The same man she had left. A man hopelessly, if uncomfortably, in love with Natalie Drax. The truth was that despite myself, despite all the instincts which urged reason, I had succumbed to something that was out of my control. I hadn’t changed. And didn’t want to.

  —Tell her I’ll be fine. I just wanted her to know what was happening, that’s all. I thought about Natalie. About the letters. Stay away from men. Bad things will happen. Insulin. Chloroform. Arsenic. Sarin gas. Lupin seeds.

  Louis had made me prescribe his mother poison. A disturbed child with an Oedipus complex, Perez had said.

  Louis Drax, in his coma, wanted his mother dead.

  But why? What sort of child would want to punish the mother who loved him? Wish to do further harm to a woman so devastated by circumstance that it was a wonder she was still intact?

  After Jacqueline had left I finished off the grapes and arranged the pips on the table in a series of concentric circles. This activity was strangely soothing, and banished all thought.

  Gustave picks up a big pine branch with clumps of pine cones on and lights the end with a match till the pine needles are all fizzing with fire and he holds it up in the air and waves so burning sparks come down and you cough from it.

  Children need an adult they can trust. That’s what Maman says. But who? And how do you know?

  —Ever seen a torch like this before?

  —No. It’s cool.

  He’s holding my hand like Papa used to do. He’s slower than Papa though, because he’s got a limp. He’s all broken and thin from being hungry all the time, if you pushed him he’d fall over, he isn’t any stronger than a boy who’s only nine. If we had a fight I might win, I might even kill him by accident. That kind of thing can happen, trust me. Someone gets in a rage and they don’t know what they’re doing and they’re sorry afterwards but then it’s too late.

  It’s dark and you can hear an owl hoot, and smell burning from the forest that’s on fire and you can see a red bit glowing if you look down where the hill is, just where we lit our bonfire, far away but maybe moving closer because fire spreads just like a flood, except it can go uphill and water can’t, unless it’s a giant tidal wave called a tsunami that can devastate a whole region e.g. several Caribbean islands. And while I’m walking along with Gustave, holding his hand that you can feel the bones in, I’m beginning to understand something. I need to tell Dr Dannachet because if you feel the danger coming you have to tell an adult, one that you can trust. But he’s gone and I don’t hear his voice any more. He used to be there, just like in another room, or underwater with the monster tube-worms. But he’s gone like a star goes. Papa once told me about stars, there are shooting stars and you might be able to see them but they’re not really there, it’s just the light that’s left behind after they’ve vanished that you’re seeing. But sometimes you see a star really vanish. You can stare and stare at it, and then you blink or you look away just for a second, and it’s gone. I must’ve blinked or looked away and that’s how Dr Dannachet disappeared, and the others too, Maman and the nurses. What’s happened to l’Hôpital des Incurables? Maybe if I wanted to go back and tell Dr Dannachet the thing I need to tell him, I couldn’t. I can feel the danger getting nearer and I’m scared.

  —Nearly there, says Gustave. —Just stick with me, Young Sir.

  But then he trips on a root and falls over and that’s when I see how skinny he is, you can see his ribs, and he lies there to cough up more waterweed and sick and I get even more scared because maybe he’s dying faster than I thought, maybe I’m killing him, maybe that’s the danger. I try to pull him up but I can’t because he’s too heavy, so I sit down next to him till he gets his breath back and we can walk again. But this time it’s much slower, all his energy’s used up like a triple-A battery.

  Then maybe we sleep because when we wake up we’re in a new place. It’s cold and the light’s coming back and we’re on a slope looking down into a big hole that’s dark and creepy, and cold air’s coming out of it like a freezing mouth breathing out.

  —It’s down there, he says. —We’ll need to climb. I bet you like climbing, Young Sir.

  But I’m scared. It looks too steep for anyone to go down, especially if you’re all broken and covered in bandages and your energy’s gone. And I don’t want to follow him because if we go in, how do we get back out? We don’t. This sucks, and I need to talk to Dr Dannachet or maybe even Fat Perez about the danger feeling that’s squeezing me like a big snake, it could break your bones. But there’s no one, just me and Gustave with his bleeding bandages and if you make a choice it’s your choice and no one else’s.

  —I hate climbing. Climbing sucks.

  —Trust me, Young Sir, he says —I’ll help you. I’ll light one of our torches, look.

  And he gets out his matches and he sets fire to the clumps of pine needles on the end of his branch, whoosh, and they crackle and little sparks zing out and fizzle like a firework and his bandages look bright white but the blood on them is dark like earth, like dried-up earth, and suddenly I want to see his face even if he hasn’t got one.

  —Down here, he says. —I’ll go first. Then you. Just follow me, Young Sir. We’ll take it slowly, a little bit at a time. Best to go backwards. Feel for footholds.

  And he coughs a bit more and when he’s finished he crawls to the edge and starts lowering himself down backwards, holding the branch-torch above his head, all flaming and fizzing and spitting out burning needles, and when he calls me, I follow him, even though I’m scared, because I don’t know what else I can do, going backwards like he did, clinging on to the rocks and putting my fingers in the cracks – it’s cold, it’s freezing – to hold on. It’s a long way and I’m still scared and the cold air’s in my chest and my feet are freezing, I’m freezing all over and shivering – that’s from cold but being scared too – and the smoke from the torch comes up and chokes me and makes me cough, and it goes on and on, climbing down and down and down in the almost-dark with Gustave somewhere below and all you can see of him is the fire of the branch-torch, and I’m climbing down into the danger, I can feel it.

  —Not much further now! he calls. He sounds like he’s far below. —I’m at the bottom, it’s flat down here. I’m going to light another torch, Young Sir, and you can see your way better. That’s it. Just a few more metres and you’re there.

  And then I feel his bony hands grip my tummy and he’s lifting me down the last bit but then he falls underneath me because he’s not strong enough, and then I’m standing on a floor and we’re in a cave and the burning branch shows walls all around, white stone like bone, like inside a creepy skull.

  —Is this the place?

  —Yes, he says. —You can hear water: listen.

  And so we listen to it rushing and it sounds like something I heard once before, long ago; Papa having a shower maybe.

  —You have to trust me, Young Sir, he whispers. —You have to believe I love you and I would never hurt you.

  And then he points to the stone.

  —That’s where I wrote her name in blood. And my son’s name too. See?

  And I look. You can’t see it at first, it’s too dark. And then you can. They’re huge letters, all lopsided and croaky, the hugest letters you’ve ever seen, and you can see the blood’s gone dark on the white stone just like the blood on his bandages that he’s starting to unwrap, around and around and around like spaghetti Bolognese.

  CATHERINE

  LOUIS

  And I look at the names for a long time and I blink and blink, and then I turn round and there he is. He’s taken off his bandages, and there’s his face.

  Georges Navarra came back after an hour, looking a little happier than before. His eyes had a spark to them.

  —What’s happened?

  —Nothing definite yet, he said. —But I’ve spoken to Dr Vaudin, and Madame Drax. Sh
e’s too occupied by other things to press charges. She may change her mind but she’s in quite a state, as you can imagine. So it looks like you’re in the clear, if the clinic can have the property that you borrowed returned safely. Meanwhile ...

  All of a sudden his hands became busy sorting through the sheaf of papers he had in a loose folder. Among them was a page of Le Monde.

  —I shouldn’t really tell you anything, Pascal, he said. —But I think I can let you see this, as it’s in the public domain. He handed it to me, pointed to a headline and left, closing the door behind him quietly.

  MYSTERY BODY FOUND IN CAVE. I swallowed. My mouth and throat were dry as I read. In the Auvergne, near Ponteyrol, a team of speleologists had made a macabre discovery: the remains of a male body, on a ledge of rock inside a cave.

  It seemed that the cliff from which the man had probably fallen into the ravine was pitted with caves, some three metres above the water level; the whole mountainside in that region of Ponteyrol was a Swiss cheese. When the water level was high, as happened whenever there was a violent storm, the water level in the river would rise, spilling into the whole cave system and flooding it. The speleologists had assumed at first that the man’s body belonged to another cave explorer. But he had no equipment, and was not dressed for potholing. It seemed that the dead man had been sucked into one of the caves by the force of the roiling water in the ravine.

  It was a dismal spot, barely mapped and almost impossible to access. Had the speleologists not been making their own detailed exploration of the river and its caves, the body might never have been discovered. It was a big, ragged hole of rock with a small cleft, high above, through which the occasional bar of daylight could enter. It was inhabited by a huge colony of pipistrelle bats. It proved very difficult to get the body out of the cave. It was badly decomposed, and access was awkward. In the end, they had to dig from above, and lower a team down into the cave through a narrow crack. Whatever happened, it appeared that the man did not die right away. There was evidence to indicate that he was still alive when he reached the cave.

  The police made the connection between the body and Pierre Drax at once; as soon as the DNA match came back, Pierre’s mother had been contacted, and his wife informed of the discovery.

  I read the article three times before Georges Navarra returned.

  —So if he was alive when he got to this cave, how did he die? What’s this ‘evidence’? I asked when I had finished reading.

  —That’s what they’re not sure of, said Navarra slowly. —But it seems possible ... well likely, that he–

  He stopped and looked out of the window at the vineyard. The long parallel rows of vines stretched to the far distance over the roll of the hill, lit by blazing sunlight.

  —He starved to death, he said quietly. —Pierre Drax starved to death in a cave.

  By lunchtime I was free to leave the police station. There was no serious threat contained in the letters, according to Maître Guilhen, my lawyer, to whom I spoke on the phone. Nothing actually illegal had been done; I had borrowed property from the clinic which I was about to return. Natalie Drax was unlikely to press charges, and with the discovery of her husband’s body, she had enough on her mind. It would never get as far as court. As for my sleepwalking story, I had best keep quiet about it, or I would look like a madman. He finished on what he called ‘a personal note’ by saying that it sounded to him as though I needed a break from the clinic, and he was glad to hear that Dr Vaudin had recommended one. Funny, I had never struck him as the eccentric type, he said.

  —I’m not, I said. —I treat patients in comas. I have four bonsai trees. I pay my taxes.

  —I didn’t know about the bonsais, he said. —Should I reconsider my verdict? Listen, take a holiday. Club Med or something. I hear Turkey’s nice. Take Sophie.

  As soon as my belongings were returned to me, I checked my mobile. There were two messages. The first was from Sophie. Her tone was formal. She didn’t understand what was happening but she had a right to know why the police were involved. I should ring her at the girls’ apartment and tell her what she needed to know. The second was from Natalie. I barely recognised her voice. She was speaking through angry tears. I was sick. What the hell did I think I was doing. She had trusted me. I was the one she called when she got the letter. And all along, I was the one who’d written it. I was even sicker than Pierre.

  I rang her immediately but there was no answer, so I left a long, rambling, absurd message in which I began to explain about the sleepwalking, and Perez, and how sorry I felt for her, and how I wished I could help, wished I could make her understand that it wasn’t sickness, it was Louis, Louis who was trying to get through to her, to both of us ... and how I missed her. I missed her, I missed her. I didn’t know what was happening to me, I had tried not to think about her but ... In the end I hung up, appalled at my own inarticulacy, and the hopelessness of it all. What in Christ’s name did I think I was doing?

  I went back to the clinic and quietly returned the tapes to the drawer. The ward was almost empty, and the only nurse, Marianne, told me that an emergency meeting was in progress in the conference hall. When Vaudin spotted me come in, he frowned; he had clearly not expected to see me. He was outlining how the fire department had recommended we evacuate the building as early as tomorrow, if the wind continued in this direction. Everyone groaned. It was a precautionary measure, he said. But with the forecast, and the way the winds were sweeping ...

  Vaudin took me aside afterwards and told me that whatever the outcome of the police inquiry, he insisted I take time off, as of now. I was clearly having a personal crisis, and it wasn’t good for me to be around anyone at the moment. I should sort myself out. He knew of a good shrink in Cannes. He wrote down a name and phone number and thrust it at me.

  —Do it, Pascal, he said. —I want to keep you here, believe me. But you’re making it difficult. Take a breather and come back.

  —But the evacuation ...

  —We can cope.

  On my way out, I looked in on Louis. He wasn’t stirring, apart from the tiny rise and fall of his chest. On his face – waxy in the sunlight – nothing. Less than nothing: the blankness of total uncompromising absence. You could see how no one could believe what had happened. Except me, and Jacqueline, and Perez, and perhaps, eventually, his mother. Despite her angry message, I still felt hope. She knew her son like no one else. Knew what he was capable of. Maybe Louis really did die, she said. Maybe he’s come back as a sort of angel. Is that possible?

  Surely she knew, inside, what he was up to?

  Where was she now? Being questioned, I presumed, and being forced to relive the nightmare on the mountain, reconfigure it to encompass her husband’s death. He must have killed himself; of that I felt sure. How could he live with what he had done? I pictured Detective Charvillefort grilling Natalie about it. The same questions repeated over and over again. Natalie by turns tearful and defiant. And alone. I wasn’t going to be allowed anywhere near her, I knew that. I didn’t want to leave another message. A letter might be a better idea. But in the meantime, there was something I had to do, while I was free to do it.

  I drove to Nice, and caught a plane to Clermont-Ferrand, then hired a car and began the familiar drive to that ancient fading belle, Vichy – France’s Mecca for the dying, the semi-cured and the hypochondriacal. Lavinia spent three months there after she left the Clinique de l’Horizon, convalescing among the floating denizens, the pampered sick. I visited her regularly, and came to know the city well.

  I knew where to find Detective Charvillefort; she would still be at the morgue of the main hospital, and I presumed Madame Drax was still with her. But first there was someone else I had to meet. An hour later, I was strolling through the town. It was cooler than Provence, but a bright sunlight reflected off the walls and glass. Vichy is sadly beautiful. I always loved its genteel whiteness, the faint scruff at the edges of the gleaming modernism, the whiff of spa water and the ancien r
égime redolent in the streets. I rang Meunier’s office from my mobile. He sighed heavily when he heard my voice.

  —I thought I might hear from you.

  —I want to meet. No, I insist on a meeting.

  —Not here.

  —Why not?

  —It’s just not a good idea, he said flatly. —Look, I’ll meet you in the Hall des Sources. Go and ... take the waters and read a paper while I try and make some time. Give me ten minutes to sort something out, OK?

  I entered the sulphur-reeking glasshouse, paid my coin and sat among the halt and the lame who were sipping the rancid, lukewarm water from plastic tumblers or their own little china cups. Some were filling thermos flasks. The steaming air seemed to swirl with real and imaginary infection.

  Exactly when Philippe arrived I can’t be sure, because at first I didn’t recognise him. I’d taken the shuffling, shambling man who looked around him vaguely – as though in search of a seat – for another invalid, someone who had only recently left his wheelchair and was keen to get back to it. He seemed smaller and greyer than I remembered him, like a faded old photo of himself.

  —Pascal, he said, giving me a weak handshake. Even his voice sounded faded. Lost.

  —Philippe.

  We sat down at a small table. Sparrows hopped about us. The stinking vapour rose from the taps, clogging the air around us.

  —I’ve been waiting for you to come, he said. —I thought it might be sooner.

  Gaunt. Haggard. He’d aged ten years in six months.

  —You have to tell me what happened with Natalie Drax, I said.