The Dead of Winter

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The Dead of Winter Page 26

by Lisa Appignanesi


  ‘It’s over Pierre. You know that. I don’t really understand what’s going on, but whatever it is, we’ve lost it. We can’t live together anymore. It’s too dangerous. The wrong kind of danger. My fault. Yours. It doesn’t matter. It’s over.’

  I don’t know whether she wants me to refute her. In any case, I can’t. However much I may want to hold her, she is right.

  ‘Maybe we can be friends. I don’t want to lose you. Not altogether. Some time we can be friends.’

  My voice seems to have disappeared. I cannot find it. I touch her arm. She pulls away, then gives me her hand.

  ‘Not yet. It’s too soon. We need distance. Yes. Distance. Today. I’m going to leave today. For Lyon. Rehearsals will start soon. If you can find another place by the time the play has had its run, that will be fine. If not, I’ll sort something out.’

  I still can’t speak. Something has risen in my throat that prevents words. Maybe it is shock.

  Madeleine gets up. She slides open the door of the wardrobe and takes down a case. She throws clothes into it, any old assortment, any old way. She isn’t paying attention. Her lips have that tragic cast, as if gravity were pulling at their corners. At the same time, she looks like a child. A child who is hurt from seeing too much pain and is trying very hard not to cry as it tugs on jeans and a sweater.

  When she is dressed, she meets my eyes for a moment, ‘Will you write?’

  I think I manage to nod.

  And then she is gone. I lie there unable to move. Only when I hear the door slam does the paralysis end. I am running, shouting, ‘Madeleine. Madeleine…’ But by the time I reach the front gate, she has already disappeared.

  The shadows in the house don’t want me with them. They bite at me and pursue. They call me brute, killer.

  I pack my bags and leave the same day. I move into a hotel. Within two weeks, I am in Algeria. I wander. I run. The hot desert sun burns a hole into my brain. It oblilterates the past. When a little late, I read of Madeleine’s academy award nomination, I write her a card. I only resurface in the familiar world after several years. And then I go to Ottawa.

  The sky has grown dark by the time I reach the turn off at the plywood factory. As I force myself back into the present, I notice a car behind me. It occurs to me that it has been behind me for some time, its lights glinting into my rear-view mirror. I have the sudden certainty that I am being followed, but in the darkness I can’t make out whether the car is Contini’s or not. A shiver creeps over me. I shrug it away. There is nothing for it but to go home. That is where Contini wants me to be.

  As I near my house, the car vanishes. I cheer myself with its disappearance and with the sight of my neatly shovelled drive. I have done well to hire young Bobineau to clear my premises. I must recommend him to Mme Tremblay. Bobineau comes fully motorized, plough in winter, rotor blade in summer, suction hose in fall. Not like Michel Dubois.

  The sight of a car in the driveway gives me pause. I am not expecting any visitors. I wind round it to the garage, park, and instead of taking the interior stairs to the house, go round to the front door.

  A dark figure waves to me from the porch. It takes me a few seconds to recognize my brother.

  ‘Pierre. It’s freezing out here. I was just about to give you up. You’d forgotten I was coming, hadn’t you?’ There is a querulous note in his voice.

  I stop the apology which rises to my lips like a tired tune instantly triggered by a familial push of the admonishing button. ‘I didn’t think you’d be quite so early. How are Monique and that security guard son of hers?

  He doesn’t answer. He waits for me to unlock the door. As I switch on the lights, I can suddenly see his troubled pallor and delayed guilt shafts through me.

  ‘I’ve been worrying about you. Worrying about Madeleine, too. The awfulness of it.’ He searches my face, his lips forming the word ‘murder’into a gasp. Then he shakes his head adamantly, as if the gesture could rearrange both his thoughts and reality. ‘It’s a terrible, terrible thing. Here amongst us. I have prayed for Madeleine’s soul. All night I prayed.’

  He seems to be about to fall to his knees and enjoin me to do the same. Instead he retrieves the mass of envelopes which litter the floor and hands them to me in a neat pile. The intent look is on me again, my father attempting to probe my boyhood secrets.

  ‘I know what you think,’ he murmurs. ‘I have been hard-hearted, uncharitable. I have lacked both sympathy and tolerance. It’s true. I have asked God to forgive me for that, to help me grow in understanding. I have also prayed that God in his wisdom may be merciful with Madeleine whom I wrongly maligned.’

  The self-criticism surprises me. For a moment I envy my brother his religion. It gives him an ability to voice big sentiments aloud and make speeches wholly uninflected with irony. Though from the face he turns on me as he hands me his coat, it seems that for today at least, the communication with forces greater than himself has not altogether provided him with a necessary solace.

  ‘To be merciful with you, as well,’ he says.

  I want to tell him it is not mercy I think I need. What I need is for the clock to move backwards. But he is already in the salon. He looks around him at a slight loss, settles awkwardly into the stiffest chair in the room. My brother, I remind myself, is not at home here. He has never lived here.

  ‘The parishioners have been coming to me, seeking advice, seeking comfort. All day today, one after another. There is so much fear in the air. Hatred, too. I don’t really know how to contain it.’ He examines his hands, then quickly folds them into his lap and gives me that probing gaze again. It sets up a nervousness in me.

  ‘Let me get you a drink. Or coffee, tea? Some food perhaps.’

  ‘A little tea would be fine. No sugar.’

  ‘With some brandy to warm you.’

  I drop the pile of envelopes on the coffee table and stoop to light the fire before heading for the kitchen. Jerome’s eyes never leave me. I have the uncanny feeling he really can read my unruly thoughts.

  He leaps up to follow me. I have done no more than fill the kettle when his hand is suddenly tight on my arm. The face he turns on me is all turbulence.

  ‘Pierre, tell me. I need to know. Did you… Did…’

  ‘Speak to Mme Tremblay?’ I cut off his stammer. ‘About the circumstances of Madeleine’s birth?’

  He waves his hand in a dismissive gesture, as if his earlier fears of scandal had grown utterly trifling. ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Well, let me put your mind at rest in any case. Madeleine was indeed the daughter of the music teacher at the seminary. Alexandre Papineau. Not our father. Mme Tremblay was quite put out at that suggestion. I guess that means Monique’s sins don’t have to weigh too heavily on your family conscience.’ I turn my back on him, pour hot water into the teapot, slosh it round, measure out the tea, pile everything onto a tray. ‘Good thing it wasn’t our father. Even I, terrible reprobate that I am, would have found that a little hard to swallow.’

  ‘Don’t joke, Pierre. It isn’t a time for jokes. But I’m glad you still have a conscience.’

  Something in his tone makes the tray waver in my hand as I carry it back to the salon. I don’t meet his eyes as I hand him his cup.

  ‘And I’m glad that has been cleared up. But I came about something else.’

  ‘Oh? Don’t tell me.’ Irritation takes me over. ‘You came about Monique. Your great love. Penitent about her past, so you can forgive her now. Well, Mme Tremblay can’t quite so easily. She doesn’t want her in her house.’

  Jerome’s face has turned a hot pink. He puts down his cup with a clatter. ‘Monique knows she’s been remiss,’ he blurts out, then with an effort collects himself. ‘And in her own way, she’s desolate about Madeleine. We must have compassion. Her life has been hard. Three years ago, her husband died. A boating accident of some kind. Did you know?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘She’s on her own. And I don’t think
she’s very well. She’s certainly not very well off. Blais squandered what money there was. The son you met is out of work. The others have nothing to do with her.’’

  ‘So it’s as you predicted. She’s been spurred here by the thought of the will.’ A perverse cruelty propells me.

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘More or less.’

  He looks aghast at his own bad moral taste, gets up and starts to pace. ‘Perhaps there’s a grain of that. We all have our venality. But nonetheless, that doesn’t change the fact that Monique is a sad, disappointed woman. A bereaved mother, even if not altogether a good one.’ He stops to face me. ‘I’ve been putting her up in one of the rooms in the school. The boys are almost all away. But they’ll be back on Tuesday. And then I thought she could stay here until Mme Tremblay comes round.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes.’ Suddenly he crosses himself. ‘Because you have to leave Pierre. I told you already. That’s what I’ve come about. You must go. Even now…even now that the police think they have their man. It may not change anything. Please.’

  Beads of perspiration have formed on his brow. They set up a chill in me. A small hammer has taken up residence in my head. It beats against a stone wall, searches for chinks. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I mumble.

  ‘Don’t you?’ He surveys me intently. ‘It’s all bound to come out. All the rot. We’ll sink with it. Both of us. You’re my brother.’ With an abrupt movement, he takes a rosary from his pocket and shifts the beads, his lips formed into a mute murmur.

  I pour myself a whisky. For some reason I think of Giorgio Napolitano’s story. My brother really does feel he is my keeper.

  Jerome clears his throat harshly. ‘Don’t ask me for my sources.’

  As he says it, I have a sudden pungent whiff of the fetid heat of the confessional. All those voices in his ear, pouring out secrets. His own, sanctioned to probe. What has he uncovered?

  ‘Before… before her death, Madeleine said she had a score to settle with you. A major score. She was angry. Very angry. She poured vitriol on your character. She said she would see you that very night. Then… then just yesterday, I learned… Someone saw…’

  Suddenly, as if we had conjured up the wrong kinds of spirits, there is a loud thud, a booming crash somewhere to the side of the house and Minou comes streaking in, her tail rigid.

  With something like relief, I race for the door. Jerome is right behind me pulling on his coat as I unearth a flashlight. We dash in the direction of the noise.

  An avalanche of snow has tumbled from the roof of the shed. It lies in broken heaps on the ground.

  Jerome’s voice punctures the stillness. ‘Nothing serious then. Nothing to be afraid of.’

  I flash my torch through the door. What was once a neat pyramid of logs is a jumble on the floor.

  ‘It could have been an animal,’ Jerome says. ‘Not your cat. She would be too light. Something bigger.’ He talks on to still his nerves. He doesn’t like being out here. He is a man of interiors - churches, libraries, schoolrooms, confessionals. The big dark sky where his heaven might be frightens him.

  It frightens me too at the moment. I have the distinct sensation that something is watching us. I remember the car that tailed me. Contini, I thought. But sheds are not Contini’s style. I shine the torch on the ground, looking for tracks in the snow. Around the shed, the avalanche has obliterated them. Further afield, speeding towards the house, I can see Minou’s prints, partly covered by Jerome’s and mine coming in the opposite direction.

  I turn the other way and pace towards the woods. It is then that I see it, a fuzzy scattering of snow like an animal’s tail dragged over the surface. But no animal’s tail could swallow its own tracks. It doesn’t make sense. Nor does the fact that my boots now sink so deeply into the ground that walking is nigh on impossible, let alone walking without leaving a trace.

  ‘See anything?’ Jerome calls to me.

  ‘Not sure. You need snowshoes to go out there.’

  Of course. Snowshoes. But how would one cover their tracks? An image of Noel Jourdan sneering at Gagnon earlier this morning leaps into my mind. Noel would be quite capable of playing some kind of prank on the Jew-lover I patently now am in the eyes of Ste-Anne. Was it he who raced to the confessional and poured suspicions into Jerome’s ear?

  ‘We can check it out in the morning.’ Jerome’s voice echoes my own mounting anxiety.

  We trudge back to the house. He pauses at the threshold. ‘I’ll go now, Pierre. As long as I’ve convinced you of the necessity of a swift departure.’

  I shake my head, urge him in. I don’t want to be alone. This time I pour him a brandy.

  ‘Don’t ask me to say anymore,’ he mumbles as he takes the glass. ‘Just trust that I know what’s best. For once.’ His eyes plead.

  ‘Was it one of your priests?’ I ask with sudden intuition. I have a vision of an endless ladder of breaches of faith, a priest on every rung, my brother toppling at the crest.

  Jerome looks away, his face wretched.

  The sound of the doorbell shatters our taut silence. We both jump to our feet, then hesitate, as if our separate ghosts might be coming to visit.

  Wrapped in a heavy black coat, his face barely visible beneath his hat, Giorgio Napolitano stands at the door.

  ‘I was in Ste-Anne,’ he begins apologetically, ‘and Detective Contini told me you might be at home. So I thought I’d drop in.’

  ‘Contini?’ I echo in surprise.

  ‘Yes. We had an interview.’ He glances round uncomfortably. Remembering myself, I take his coat.

  ‘There is something I need to talk to you about, Pierre. Otherwise my sleep won’t be easy.’

  I don’t know why, but for a moment, I think of the crash in the shed so few minutes ago and wonder whether Giorgio’s arrival might in any way be connected.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, about Madeleine.’

  ‘Something you told Contini?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ His handsome face is rueful.

  ‘Something he told you?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Who is it, Pierre?’ My brother’s voice intrudes on us. I had forgotten his presence.

  ‘You’re not alone,’ Giorgio tenses.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  I usher him into the living room and introduce him to my brother. They exchange desultory smal-ltalk. Despite everything, despite the hammer which still pounds away in my head, there is something in this meeting between the renegade priest and my brother which tickles my fancy. Can Jerome guess Giorgio’s former vocation just by looking at him? I decide to underline it.

  ‘Giorgio was once one of yours,’ I say to Jerome.

  ‘Really?’ My brother tries to hide his instant stiffening. He studies Giorgio hard, as if he suspects him of unspeakable acts. ‘Did you know Madeleine Blais?’ he surprises me by asking.

  Something seems to be clicking into place in his mind as Giorgio responds.

  ‘And where do you live now?’ Jerome has shifted into an interrogating mood. Whereas a moment before he was on the point of going, he now settles back in his chair and it is Giorgio who declares he must leave. It will be a busy night at the Auberge, he explains. When the telephone rings, he seizes the opportunity and rises.

  ‘You answer it, Jerome,’ I gesture him towards the phone and accompany Giorgio to the door.

  ‘What it was you wanted to tell me before?’ I ask softly.

  He shakes his head. ‘Not now.’ His eyes stray over my face. He seems to be about to say something more, but instead, he merely grips my hand in a taut shake and hurries down the porch steps.

  ‘That was Mme Orkanova,’ Jerome says when I come back into the room. She has just finished making a cassoulet and offered to bring it over. Kind of her. I accepted for both of us.’

  ‘What?’ I stare at him.

  ‘I thought it was only right that you said good-bye to her before leavi
ng.’ He concentrates on some minute spot on his jacket.

  With too much commotion, I prod the fire, refill my glass and slump into the sofa.

  ‘You’re wretched,’ Jerome murmurs. ‘I wish I knew how to offer you consolation.’

  When I look up at him, his face is soft with a tenderness I have never before noticed in it.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t preach at you. I would pray with you, but I know how you feel about prayer.’

  We gaze at each other and I don’t know why but in that hushed meeting of our eyes, I have a sense that some tight ancient knot inside me is loosening. I wasn’t altogether aware of its presence before, but now I can see each of its thick, hoary coils and their intricate winding as if a spotlight had been focussed on them. I do not know when the loops were formed, but I have one of those certain intuitions that the knot grew in thickness and intricacy when Madeleine and I first parted and ever since then its solid coiled presence has cut off one of the paths to my heart. Like an elaborate bulwark, it has guarded against the dangers of emotion, against the hazards of a reliance on anything outside the solitary circle of the self. My brother has forced blood through one of its coils, opened up a passage.

  Maybe he feels something of all this, too, for we both look away simultaneously in mute embarrassment.

  When he speaks again, his tone is soft, musing. ‘You know, all those years ago, when I was in the grips of that delusion about Monique and our father, I had to struggle to pray. Monique’s image would interfere with my prayers. She would plant herself in front of the Virgin Mary and I would have to beg Mary to suppress the image of that harlot, Monique.’ He laughs.

  ‘It must all have been very hard for you. I can see the confusion. Monique and Mary, both invisibly impregnated. By our father.’

  He stiffens and I sense I have overstepped the bounds of spoken intimacy. I start to shuffle aimlessly through the pile of envelopes on the table.

  The one at the bottom of the heap, the largest one, forces me into nervous attention.

 

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