Seeing her stops me in my tracks. I don’t even dare sit opposite her. She smiles at me. I turn my head to avoid meeting her eye. My physical appearance must have changed a good deal, because she bursts into tears almost immediately. She takes me in her arms and holds me tight. Behind us, the guard bangs on the metal with his key. Mathilde lets go of me and we sit down. She’s still so pretty, my daughter. I feel enormous fondness for her, because I’ve taken so much from her, done irreparable damage, and yet she’s here. For me. It moves me very much. She says she couldn’t have come any sooner and is about to get tangled up in a futile explanation when I hold up a hand to show there’s no need, that I understand. She seems grateful for that.
The world in reverse.
“I hear more of your news from the papers than the phone,” she says, taking a stab at a joke.
Then:
“Maman sends her love.”
And finally:
“Gregory, too.”
Mathilde is one of those people who always says what ought to be said. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass. Right now it helps.
Their apartment fell through. She says it doesn’t matter at all. On top of everything she lent me, they also lost a large part of their deposit since they failed to complete on the specified date.
“We’ll need to start saving again. It’s no big deal . . .”
She attempts another smile but fails miserably.
The truth is that part of her life has clouded over since her father’s downfall, but Mathilde (something to do with teaching English, no doubt) has acquired something of the British stiff upper lip: she keeps her cool while the storm rages around her. She stops crying almost immediately. She’s standing firm. Mathilde’s motto must be “Dignity in all circumstances.” The day after her wedding, she got rid of my name. She’s one of those women who goes crazy over the idea of taking her husband’s name. That means she’s safe—her colleagues won’t know that the poor loser in the papers is her father. But I’m certain that if they found out and asked her about it, Mathilde would boldly hold her ground, admit the truth and, despite her wholehearted disapproval of my actions, say something like “family is family.” I love her the way she is. She’s been amazing to me, as if she’s forgotten that I vanished away her savings and punched her husband in the face. What more could you ask for?
“Lucie thinks you can get extenuating circumstances,” she says.
“When did she say that?”
“Yesterday evening.”
I breathe. Lucie’s coming back. I have to get in touch with her somehow.
“Have I aged that much?”
“No, not a bit!”
That says it all.
Mathilde talks to me about her mother, who’s sad and shaken up. She’ll come back as well. Soon, apparently.
Our thirty minutes are up. We stand and hug each other.
“I think the apartment’s been sold. Maman will tell you about it next time she visits,” she says just before leaving.
An image comes to me: our apartment, stickers everywhere, dozens of nonchalant buyers walking about in silence, picking up an object here and there with a look of mild disdain . . .
The thought kills me.
35
I didn’t have to wait much longer for Fontana’s return.
The man never wears the same suit. He looks a bit like me in the glory days, back when I had a job, although the blue of his suit is hideous and supremely vulgar. It must have cost him a fortune, but more than anything it reeks of bad taste. He’s the sort of guy who wears a pocket square in an attempt to come across as a smart modern gentleman. His clothes are quite loose fitting. In his line of work, he needs to feel at ease—function over fashion. When he tries them on, I bet he pretends to punch the shop assistant in the face to see whether the sleeves inhibit his movements, or maybe he checks that the trouser leg has enough slack for a big kick in the poor man’s balls. Fontana is nothing if not a pragmatist. That’s what scares me about him. My scrutiny of his suit is a way of occupying myself because the thought of looking him in the face, of meeting his cold glare, completely terrifies me.
I need some composure. I won the first round by the skin of my teeth, but now we’re squaring up for the second and I need to know what cards he’s holding. I would be surprised if he’d turned up empty handed. Not his style. I’ll need to be alert, stay focused. In the silence, Fontana’s expression is blank.
“Well played again, Monsieur Delambre.”
Subtext: Delambre, you piece of shit, just you wait. I’m going to destroy that other hand of yours.
I take a gamble:
“I’m glad you liked it.”
My voice betrays my anxiety. I sit farther back in my chair, out of range.
“My client enjoyed it very much. So did I. Everybody enjoyed it, in fact.”
I say nothing. I try to force out a smile.
“I see that you’re resourceful,” he continues. “There obviously wasn’t any list. It took me two days to question my client. And then the IT specialist we enlisted to check it out lost us another good twelve hours. In the meantime, you managed to garner some interest in your case from the press, denying me any means of intervention. For now.”
I make as if to stand up.
“Don’t go, Monsieur Delambre. I’ve got this for you.”
His voice remained level. He didn’t think for a second that I was really going to leave. He’s a skillful player. I turn around and let out a cry.
Motherfucker!
Fontana has just laid a large black-and-white photo on the table.
It’s Nicole.
I feel like my legs have been chopped off.
The photograph shows Nicole in the lobby of our building. She is standing with her back to the elevator. Behind her, a man wearing a black balaclava is pinning her against his body, face-on to the camera. His forearm is locked across her throat. She’s trying to pull his elbow but she doesn’t have the strength. Her struggle is futile. It reminds me of how Bébétâ held me. Nicole’s face is petrified, her eyes bulging. That’s why the photograph was taken. So I can see directly that Nicole’s life is in extreme danger, so I can see her frenzied look. Her lips are open: she’s gasping for air, suffocating. She’s on the tips of her toes, because the man holding her is much taller and pulling her off the ground. Strangely she hasn’t let go off her bag, which she’s holding in her outstretched hand. Nicole stares at me, full frame.
The man is Fontana. I can tell it’s him despite the balaclava. He’s wearing a pocket square.
“Where is she?” I yell.
“Shhhh . . .”
Fontana screws up his eyes, as if the volume of my cry had come as a tremendous inconvenience.
“She’s gorgeous, Nicole. You’ve got good taste, Delambre.”
No more Monsieur Delambre—straight Delambre, now.
Everything goes into overdrive as I grip the table without registering the pain in my fingers.
I’ll kill this guy, I swear it.
“Where is she?”
“At her house. I was going to say: ‘Don’t worry about her.’ But actually you should worry about her. That time, she got away with a fright. As did you. But next time, I’ll break all ten of her fingers. With a hammer. And I’ll do it personally.”
He accentuates the “personally.” With him, you get the impression that it won’t be any ordinary hammer, and that there’ll be a very deliberate technique for shattering the fingers. There’s a grim determination in his voice. Then, seamlessly, before I can venture a response, he pulls out a second photo and slams it down violently on the table. Same style. Black and white. Blown up.
“As for her, I’m going to break both her arms and both her legs.”
My heart lurches cruelly and my stomach turns. Mathilde. I think I recognize the place, not far from the lycée. The kids are walking behind the public bench where she’s sitting. She’s pulled the cling wrap to one side and is eating a salad fro
m a see-through tub with a plastic fork. I never knew she did that. She’s not smiling. Her hand is suspended in midair as she listens attentively, even curiously, to what the man sitting nearby is saying.
Fontana again. They’re chatting—a typical conversation in the park. The scene is calm, ordinary in fact, but it is shattered as I imagine the aftermath: they stand up, take a few steps back toward the lycée, a car pulls up, and Mathilde is bundled into it.
Fontana, unsmiling, adopts an air of concern, as if a question is nagging at him. He’s really hamming it up.
“And your lawyer, yes . . . Your other daughter . . . Does she need her arms and legs for work, or can she do it from a wheelchair?”
I want to be sick. Don’t touch a hair on their heads. Shit, let me die if that’s what it takes. Let Boulon come and break every bone in my body, every one, no holds barred, but don’t lay a finger on my girls.
What saves me at this moment is my physical inability to articulate a single syllable. The words stay trapped at the bottom of my throat, frozen. I try to crank my brain back into action, but all the cogs have seized up and I fail to formulate any thoughts. My entire being has been consumed by the images of my girls.
I glance to my side, seeking something new to cling to. I clear my throat, still saying nothing. No doubt my eyes are like saucers, like a junkie after an all-nighter. All the blood has drained from me, but still I’ve said nothing.
“I will break all three of them. Together.”
I make a conscious effort to shut down my sense of hearing. I’m aware of the words, but their meaning doesn’t register. There is an urgent and overwhelming need to distance myself from these unbearable pictures, before I vomit or die. Any resistance is vanishing.
He’s bluffing. I must convince myself that he’s bluffing. I check. I look at him.
He’s not bluffing.
“I will break every one of their moving parts, Delambre. They will be alive. Conscious. Let me assure you, what happened to you in here will be child’s play compared to what I have in store for them.”
He’ll be enunciating their names. He’ll be saying: “With Mathilde, I’m going to . . . ,” “With Lucie, I’m going to . . .” His threats will be drawn from deep within him. “As for your wife, I’m going to tie her . . .” His threats are an extension of himself. He’s saying bad things about them. When he refers to “all three of them,” the anonymity sounds absurd, as if they were just things.
I need to keep talking to myself to maintain some form of defense, because I mustn’t react. The photos are laid out in front of me so that I am left to fill in the blanks. He’ll still be detailing everything he’s going to do to them, in minute detail. I resist him with thoughts like this. My assessment of his persuasion technique? Could do better. It helps me hold my tongue. I forcibly dispel any notion of Nicole, even her name. I make her disappear from my memory. My wife. I repeat the words in my mind, repeat them ten, twenty, thirty times, until they are nothing but a string of syllables devoid of meaning. Endless seconds pass as I exercise my willpower. It enables me to continue my silence, buying me time despite my desire to cry, to vomit. My girls . . . I resist. My girls my girls my girls my girls . . . These words are emptied of meaning, too. I stare straight at Fontana without blinking. Maybe there are tears streaming down my cheeks that I don’t notice, like when Nicole first visited. Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole. Another word without meaning. Drain the words to drive away the images. Hold Fontana’s stare. What do his eyes remind me of? Craters? I focus on his pupils, and soon it’s Fontana’s turn to be emptied of substance. I mustn’t think about what he is. All this to stay silent for as long as possible. No, that’s it, they’re not craters. His pupils are like those random shapes you get on audio software, those ones . . .
Fontana buckles first.
“What do you say, Delambre?”
“I’d rather it was me.”
That’s the truth. I manage to avoid returning to reality completely. In my head I keep on repeating Nicole my wife my girls Nicole my wife my girls Nicole my wife my girls Nicole my wife my girls Nicole my wife my girls. It’s kind of working.
“That may be the case,” Fontana replies, “but this isn’t about you. It’s about them.”
Clear my head. Nullify the words. Don’t think about anything real. Stay in the realm of ideas—conceptualize. What words of wisdom from management theory?
Find a solution. I can’t.
What else?
Bypass the obstacle. I can’t.
“They are going to be in a lot of pain.”
What else?
Propose an alternative. I can’t.
Nicole’s face comes back to the surface. I see her pretty smile, but I must chase it away. Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole Nicole. It works.
There’s another management technique—what was it again? That’s the one: Overcome the obstacle. I can’t.
Only one thing left for it: Reframe the issue. I can do that. At what cost? No time to think—I launch straight in:
“Is that all?”
Fontana frowns slightly. Good. That wins me a bit more time. Reframe the issue: maybe this will do the trick.
He cocks his head quizzically.
“I said, ‘Is that all?’ Have you finished your performance?”
Fontana’s eyes widen. Lips pursed, jaw clenched. Cold, hard fury.
“Are you fucking jerking me around, Fontana?”
This might work. Fontana sits bolt upright. I go in for another dose:
“You’re taking me for a prize prick, aren’t you?”
Fontana smiles. He’s figured out my game, but I can still sense an element of doubt, so I gather my words, my energy and all my strength, and give him both barrels.
“Even if you did . . . Can you imagine ‘France’s most famous unemployed person’ standing in front of the press holding up photos of his crippled wife and daughters? Followed by accusations against a major oil company of kidnapping, unlawful confinement, abuse, torture . . .”
I have no idea where this came from. Reframing and a bit of quick thinking. Glory be to management! It’s one messed-up discipline, but wonderfully effective all the same.
“And you’re prepared to take that gamble!” Fontana says with false admiration.
I see him hesitate about showing me the photos again. Maybe he figures I’ve got the upper hand. I have a couple of extra rounds, so I reload.
“Is your client prepared to take that gamble?”
“Don’t make me disappear your wife’s body just so there won’t be a photo,” he says after a moment’s consideration.
Reframe again: so far the technique’s worked.
“Don’t try any of that bullshit, Fontana. What do you think this is, for fuck’s sake, The Sopranos?”
That pisses him off.
Reframe again: just the ticket.
“I’m who you need to speak to. Me and me alone. And you know it. So either deal with me, or slink off to your client empty handed. Your threats are starting to piss me off. Your client can’t afford this sort of bullshit. So, what will it be? Me, or nothing?”
That’s how success works. Like a necklace—remove the knot, and everything comes undone. Same with failure. I should know. To avert disaster, you need fiendish reserves of energy. Either that or a death wish. I seem to have a bit of both.
I have an idea. Who knows if it’s good or bad, but it’s the best I can do. That’s what they call intuition. Fontana said I had it, and maybe he was right.
I’ve seized the initiative, and now it’s action time.
“I’m willing to give back the money. All the money.”
I said it without even realizing I was thinking it. But now it’s said, I realize where it came from. I want peace. I don’t want money.
“I want to get out of here. To be free.”
There, that’s what I think. I want to go home.
Fontana looks flabbergasted. I keep
the momentum going:
“I’m willing to wait a bit. A few months, but no more. If I get out within a reasonable amount of time, I’ll give back all the money. Absolutely all of it.”
This knocks the wind out of old Fontana.
“A reasonable amount of time . . .”
He is sincere when he asks:
“And how do you intend to get out?”
Maybe my idea wasn’t so bad.
I give myself four seconds to think it through.
One, Nicole.
Two, Lucie.
Three, Mathilde.
Four, me.
In any case, it’s the only idea I have.
I go again:
“Your client will need to try very, very hard to get me out. But it’s possible. Tell him that’s all I’m asking of him, and that I’ll give back the whole of the slush fund. In cash.”
36
I have lied so much and so often that I’m walled in. Telling Nicole the truth now is beyond my strength. We have been robbed of any confidence in our life together, our safety, our future—everything I was so desperate to recover. How can I explain it to her?
The day after Fontana’s visit, I send her a long letter through Lucie, for the sake of speed. Not entirely legal, but Lucie agrees it’s vital.
I ask her to forgive me for everything she’s been through. I understand her fear. I write that I’m sorry, that I love her, that everything I’ve done has been to protect her, that I am bound to end my days here, to die here, but that all I want is for her and the girls to be alive. I write that I’ve been forced to do things, but I swear that nothing will ever happen to her again, that she must keep faith. I write that if she has suffered because of me, then I’m sorry and I love her, I love her so much, and I write thousands of other words like this. Most of all, I want to reassure her. As I write the letter I am haunted by the image Fontana showed me, by Nicole’s eyes drowning in fear. Each time I am overwhelmed by murderous thoughts. If I get my hands on Fontana, he’ll wish it was only Bébétâ or Boulon. But first I have to reassure Nicole, tell her that it won’t happen again, I swear, and that soon we’ll be together again. I write the word “soon” without putting a date on it—for Nicole, “soon” might be ten or twelve years, and I don’t want to add another lie to the list.
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