By a Slow River

by Philippe Claudel

  “Whatever you want,” he says, peaceful as ever.

  “The little girl?”

  “I killed her. I’m the one. I saw her. I followed her. I stabbed her in the back three times with a knife.”

  “No, you strangled her.”

  “Yes, that’s right, I strangled her, with these very hands. You’re right, I didn’t have a knife.”

  “On the bank of the little canal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you put her in the water.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Felt like it.”

  “You wanted to rape her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she wasn’t raped.”

  “Didn’t have time. There was some noise. I ran off.”

  The lines flow without hesitation, as at the theater—that’s how the mayor put it. The typographer stands very straight, speaks very clearly. The judge doesn’t miss a beat. You’d think they’d been rehearsing for hours. The little Breton cries, his face full of snot, heaving his shoulders and shaking his head continuously in futile dissent. Matziev envelops himself in the smoke of his cigar.

  The judge addresses the mayor. “You’re a witness to these confessions?”

  This takes the mayor aback. He knows full well he’s witnessed no such thing. He knows Mierck realizes this too. And to top it off, he knows the judge doesn’t give a damn what he thinks. Mierck has what he wants, and the likes of the mayor won’t be snatching it away from him.

  “Can we really say confessions—” ventures the mayor.

  Matziev gets into the act. “You have ears, Mayor, and a brain. So you’ve heard them and understood them.”

  “Perhaps you would like to lead the inquiry?” the judge says, backing up the colonel. And with that the mayor falls silent.

  The little Breton is still crying. The other one stands straight as a flagpole, now smiling broadly, elsewhere already. Anyway, he’d figured it out. Deserter: shot. Murderer: executed. Either way, so long! All he wanted was to go quickly. That’s all. So why not stick it to them in the process?

  Mierck called back one of the policemen, who conducted the typographer upstairs to a narrow room, a broom closet. He was locked inside and the gendarme stood guard at the door.

  The judge and the colonel decided to reward their own efficiency with a break, so they gave the mayor to understand they’d call him when they needed him. The tearful little Breton was led down to the cellar by another policeman, and since the cellar couldn’t be locked, he was handcuffed and made to sit on the floor. The rest of the squad returned to the scene of the crime, on Mierck’s orders, to go over it with a fine-tooth comb.

  It was already fairly late in the afternoon. Louisette came back with a lot of provisions she’d collected here and there. The mayor told her to serve those gentlemen—and, not a mean man, he told her to take a little something to the prisoners as well.

  “At the time my brother was at the front,” Louisette would tell me. “I knew it was tough; he’d had the same idea as them. ‘You’ll hide me!’ he’d told me one day when he’d come on leave, and I told him, No, if he did that I’d tell the mayor and the police.” She wouldn’t have done it, but she knew what happened to deserters and wanted to frighten him. In the end he died anyway, a week before the armistice. “All that to tell you I felt sorry for those poor guys, so before I served those two healthy men, I took food to the prisoners. The one in the cellar was huddling in terror. He wouldn’t take the bread and bacon; I left everything beside him on a barrel. As to the other one in the closet upstairs, I knocked on the door. There wasn’t any answer. I knocked again: still nothing. I had my arms full of the bread and bacon, so the policeman opened the door. The poor guy was smiling—I swear, he was smiling, staring us right in the face, his eyes open wide. I screamed and dropped everything. The policeman said ‘Shit!’ and pounced on him. But it was too late. He’d used his trousers to hang himself; he’d made strips of them and tied them to the handle of the transom window. I wouldn’t have thought an old window handle was that strong.”

  Mierck and Matziev took the news in stride. They were men able to find their justification in any development. “Further proof, as if any were needed!” Mierck said to the mayor.

  Night was beginning to fall. The colonel added logs to the fire, and the judge summoned Louisette. She arrived with her head lowered, trembling all over. She thought he was going to question her about the suicide. Mierck asked what she’d found for them to eat. She reported. “Three sausages, some potted meat, some ham, some pigs’ feet, a chicken, some calves’ liver, a cow’s-milk cheese, and a goat cheese.” He was obviously content and gave his orders without a moment’s thought: the pork products as an appetizer, braised calves’ liver after that, then a stew of chicken, cabbage, carrots, onions, sausage, followed by pigs’ feet à l’estou fade, the cheeses, and an apple crêpe. And wine, of course, the best available. White with the first course, red after that. And with the back of his hand, he sent her off to her kitchen.

  Throughout the evening, Louisette shuttled between the town hall and the mayor’s house: bringing bottles and tureens, removing the empties, serving the next course, carrying off the dishes of the preceding one. The mayor had taken to his bed with a sudden fever. They had unhooked the typographer and taken him to the hospital morgue. A single gendarme had stayed behind at city hall, to keep watch on the little Breton. Louis Despiaux was the gendarme’s name, a fine fellow; I’ll come back to him.

  The mayor’s office, where the judge and the colonel had bivouacked, looked out onto a small courtyard, where a skinny chestnut tree had grown very tall. From one of the office windows you could see it perfectly: a scrawny thing that never had room to flourish and become a real tree. It’s been gone a long time now. Shortly after the Case, the mayor had it cut down, finding that when he looked at it he saw something besides a sick tree, something he couldn’t stomach. From the office you reached the courtyard by a low door that closed a corner. On the door, spines of books were outlined in trompe l’oeil; this beautiful design augmented one’s impression of the library, which was otherwise pretty threadbare and held precious few real books—never opened—alongside tomes of the civil and the municipal codes. At the end of the courtyard there were toilets and a canopy wide as a man’s outstretched arms, under which logs were stacked.

  When Louisette brought the ham and potted meat, she was welcomed by a cry of contentment; then, though she couldn’t recall it exactly anymore, a pleasantry by the colonel in her regard that made the judge laugh. She placed the plates, the silverware, the glasses, and all the clink-clank on a round table and served. The colonel threw his cigar into the fire and sat down first, after asking her name. He supposedly remarked, “Louisette: a very lovely name for a very lovely girl.” And Louisette supposedly smiled, pocketing the compliment—unaware the dandy was making fun of her, with her three missing teeth and her eyes slightly at odds with each other. Then the judge spoke. He asked her to go down to the cellar and advise the guard that they needed to talk with the prisoner. Louisette left the office, trembling as though she were going to Hades. The little Breton had stopped crying, but he hadn’t touched the bread and bacon. Louisette delivered the message, but the prisoner was unresponsive, and Despiaux had to grab him by the handcuffs and frog-march him upstairs.

  I tracked Despiaux down not long ago. He told me his story on the terrace of the Café de la Croix at V. The weather was mild. It was a June evening, June 21. After the notorious night I’m about to describe, he left the police force and headed south, where a brother-in-law of his had a vineyard. After that he went on to Algeria, where he worked for a maritime trading post that stocked ships with provisions. He came back to V early in ’21 and still serves as an assistant accountant at Carbonnieux, the department store. A good job, he says. He’s a tall fellow, quite slender but not skinny, his face still very young, though his hair is as white as flour. As he remembered
it, his hair went white all at once after the night with the little Breton. But who knows? In his gaze one sensed some kind of void. The closer one came to it, the farther away it would float. Yet it beckoned to be explored, though you’d hesitate for fear of getting lost in it. He told me, “The kid, who hadn’t said two words, had cried his eyes out. When I took him to the mayor’s office from the cool humid cellar, it was like entering the Sahara. Or a baker’s oven, which burns all day. In the fireplace there were far too many logs, but the heat didn’t blunt their appetite. I found them both with their mouths full, even though they were a breathless red. I gave a military salute. They lifted their glasses a little higher in return. I wondered, What kind of place is this?”

  The little Breton came out of his torpor when he caught sight of the two lawgivers again. He started moaning and then took up his litanies of disbelief as before. This put a crimp in Mierck’s good mood, so offhandedly, between two mouthfuls of potted meat, he told him without an extraneous word about the typographer’s death. It was news to the little Breton—as well as to Despiaux, for that matter—and the kid took it like a rock to the head. Despiaux had to prop him up.

  “You see,” the colonel said, “your accomplice couldn’t live with what you two did.”

  “He, at least, had some honor,” added the judge. “Why don’t you make a clean breast of it?”

  There was a silence, but not for long. Despiaux said the kid looked at him and the other two one by one, and then, as if having concluded there was no reasoning with them, he let out a howl— a sound, it seems, no one had ever heard before. Despiaux said he would never have believed a human being could make such a sound, and it went on and on until it was silenced by the sting of the colonel’s crop, lashed straight across his cheek. He’d gotten up deliberately for that. The little Breton was stunned. A purple welt crossed his face, and drops of blood oozed from it slowly. With a jerk of the head, Mierck let Despiaux know he could take him back down to the cellar.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Matziev said. “Take him out to the courtyard to jog his memory.”

  “To the courtyard?” said Despiaux.

  “Yes,” Matziev said, looking out the window. “I see there’s even a sort of post out there to tie him to. Get on with it!”

  “Colonel, sir, it’s cold, even freezing—” Despiaux ventured.

  “Do as you’re told!” The judge cut him short, tugging a piece of ham from the shank bone.

  “I was only twenty-two,” Despiaux told me, over a second round of Pernod. “At twenty-two, what can you say, what can you do? I took the little guy out to the courtyard and tied him to the chestnut tree. It must have been about nine o’clock. We’d left the Sahara of the office and entered the Arctic of the courtyard: it was minus ten degrees, minus twelve maybe. I wasn’t proud of myself. ‘You’d be better off telling everything if it’s you. Then at least you could go back where it’s warm,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘But it’s not me, it’s not me,’ he swore in a low voice. There were dozens of stars in the sky, but the whole courtyard was black. The only light was from the mayor’s office, so our eyes were drawn to it. Through the window, it was an unreal scene, like the cutout of a children’s theater: two men with flushed faces eating and drinking without a care in the world.

  “I returned to the office, and the colonel told me to wait in the room next door. There I sat down on a sort of bench, waiting and wringing my hands. There was a window in that room too, and from it you could see the courtyard and the prisoner tied to the tree. I stayed in the dark. I didn’t want to turn on the light and let him see me. I wanted to run, to get the hell out of there, but respect for the uniform kept me from doing it. Nowadays, that wouldn’t keep me from doing anything, believe me! From time to time I heard their voices or the steps of the mayor’s servant, who kept bringing them steaming dishes that should have smelled very good. But that day those aromas were like a terrible stink I couldn’t get out of my nose. My stomach churned. I never felt such regret to be human.”

  Louisette too had suffered from the cold, shuttling between the mayor’s house and the office. The meal went on for hours. Mierck and Matziev were in no rush, and the alcohol lubricated their revels as one story glided almost without break to another. Louisette hardly looked at them as she served. It was her habit more than it was a judgment. Always kept her eyes on her feet. She never saw the little Breton in the courtyard either. Sometimes it helps matters not to see.

  Toward midnight, Mierck and Matziev, their lips still glistening from the aspic of the pigs’ feet, were finishing the cheeses. They spoke louder and louder, sometimes breaking into song. Pounded on the table. They had drunk maybe six bottles. Not less, anyway.

  They went out to the courtyard, as if for a bit of air. It was the first time Mierck had gotten near the prisoner since having put him out. For Matziev, who’d been going out between courses, to check on him, it was the fifth visit. They strolled around oblivious to the little Breton’s shivering and shuddering. Mierck lifted his head to the clear sky and spoke about the stars. He pointed them all out by name to Matziev. Stars were among the judge’s passions. “They console us human beings, they’re so pure.” Despiaux from his darkened window heard those very words. Matziev took out a cigar; he offered one to the judge, who declined courteously. The two of them held forth awhile longer on the stars, the moon, the movement of the planets, their heads turning toward the faraway vault. Then, as though pricked by something sharp, they got around to the prisoner.

  For three hours now he’d been out in the cold. He’d had all the time in the world to count those stars, until his tears had nearly frozen.

  The colonel passed the burning end of the cigar under his nose several times, asking him the same question over and over. But the little Breton was no longer speaking, only moaning, and after a while this enraged the colonel.

  “Are you a man or an animal?” he shouted in his ear, but to no effect. Casting his cigar into the snow, Matziev seized the prisoner, who was still tied to the tree, and shook him violently. Mierck watched the show with fascination, blowing on his fingers. When Matziev had tired of shaking the little Breton’s shivering body, he looked all around as though trying to find something. What he found was an idea, a fine son-of-a-bitch idea.

  He drew from his pocket a hunting knife, which he used to pop all the buttons off the little Breton’s jacket, one by one, methodically, and likewise the ones on his shirt; then with a single stroke he split his undershirt. Once Matziev had stripped the torso, he did the same with the trousers, the long johns, and the underpants. Slicing through the laces, he slowly loosened the boots, whistling “Caroline and Her Patent-Leather Shoes.” The kid was yelling like a madman. Matziev stood up straight again. The prisoner was completely naked at his feet.

  “There, perhaps that will clear your head.”

  He turned toward the judge, who said, “Let’s go back in, I’m getting cold.”

  They shared a chuckle before returning to share the big steaming apple crêpe that Louisette had just laid on the table, along with coffee and a bottle of mirabelle brandy.

  Despiaux gazed at the June sky, breathing in its softness. The night edged closer. Apart from calling the waiter so our glasses would never be empty, I did nothing but listen. There were a lot of people, frivolous and merry, around our table outside the café; but I really believe we were alone, and I felt cold.

  Despiaux told me how the young man had curled up like a dog at the foot of the tree. He could not bear either to watch him or to look away from him, especially when the howls resumed and sounded to Despiaux like what the old folks told of having heard back in the days when we still had wolves in our forests. The former policeman could not contain his grief even at the memory of the scene.

  I can imagine Mierck and Matziev standing with their noses against the windowpane, their asses turned to the fire, glasses of brandy in their hands, and taking in the same scene as they chatted about hare hunting, astronomy, or bo
okbinding. I’m only imagining this, but I’m probably not far wrong.

  What’s certain is that a little later Despiaux caught sight of the colonel going out again. He went up to the prisoner and nudged him with the tip of his boot, three times—small kicks in the back and the belly, as you might do to see whether a rabid dog is good and dead. The boy tried to catch the boot—to beg, no doubt—but Matziev pushed him off. The little Breton howled louder than ever when the colonel took a pitcher of water he’d brought from the table and poured it over the kid’s chest.

  “His voice, his voice, if you’d heard his voice—it wasn’t really a voice anymore, and what he said was words thrown together helter-skelter, saying nothing. He was making no sense until the end of this litany when he yelled, yelled out that it was him all along, yes, it was him, he confessed to everything, the crime, all crimes, he had killed, murdered . . . You couldn’t stop him.”

  The colonel summoned Despiaux. The kid was thrashing about, seeming almost giddy at unburdening himself at last of this long-sought-after story: “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me!” His skin was blue, marbled with red blotches here and there; the tips of his fingers and toes had already started turning black with frostbite. He had the white face of someone soon to be a corpse. Despiaux wrapped him in a blanket and helped him walk inside. Matziev and Mierck raised a glass to their success. The cold had gotten the better of the little Breton. Despiaux couldn’t manage to keep him quiet and listened to him repeating his story like a schoolboy proud to have memorized his lesson. The policeman gave him something hot to drink, but the boy wasn’t able to swallow it. All through the night, rather than keeping watch on him he kept watch over him. No official duty to guard him now. He was nothing anymore.

  June evenings can almost restore your hope for the earth and for mankind. There are so many fragances, coming from the girls and the trees, the air so beguiling you want to begin everything anew, to rub your eyes and believe that evil is only a dream and pain but a deceit of the soul. No doubt all that partly explains why I suggested to the former policeman that we go somewhere to have supper. He looked at me as though I’d spoken a profanity. Maybe raking over all these ashes had ruined his appetite. To tell the truth I wasn’t so hungry either, only afraid we would part too soon. But before I’d had time to order another round, Despiaux got up. He stretched his massive frame and smoothed his jacket with the palms of both hands. Then he straightened his hat and looked me square in the eye—with a slightly caustic glint I’d never seen in him.