ALSO BY
PHILIPPE GEORGET
Summertime, All the Cats Are Bored
Autumn, All the Cats Return
Europa Editions
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2015 by Editions Jigal
Published by arrangement with Agence litteraire Astier-Pécher
All Rights Reserved
First publication 2017 by Europa Editions
Translation by Steven Rendall
Original Title: Méfaits d'hiver
Translation copyright © 2017 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
Cover photo © gremlin/iStock
ISBN 9781609453909
Philippe Georget
CRIMES OF WINTER
VARIATIONS ON ADULTERY
AND VENIAL SINS
Translated from the French
by Steven Rendall
Le vent se lève! . . . Il faut tenter de vivre!
—PAUL VALÉRY
CRIMES
OF WINTER
CHAPTER 1
It sounded like a bubble bursting in Claire’s purse.
A text message.
At 7 A.M. on a school vacation day.
Lying on a sideboard in the dining room, the purse was taunting him. It was a famous Spanish brand, a multicolored and multi-pocketed designer bag that the kids had given their mother for her birthday. Inside was her telephone, with the truth. The whole truth. The truth he’d been refusing to see for more than six months.
The past summer, Gilles Sebag had caught his wife in a flat-out lie. One day at noon, he’d come to her gym class to invite her to lunch afterward, but she wasn’t there. At the time, he wasn’t surprised. But the gym teacher’s condescending smile had haunted him all afternoon. That very evening—without having premeditated it, he’d slipped a harmless-seeming question into the conversation.
“So, how was your gym class?”
“Exhausting,” she had replied, calmly.
Over the following days, other disturbing signs had increased his concern. Claire went out a lot with her girlfriends, more than usual, and he had sometimes caught her being distracted while he was talking to her. Her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. With another man, perhaps . . . And then she had left on a cruise with her girlfriends. As a teacher at the middle school in Rivesaltes, she had more vacation time than he did. And that year, for the first time, she had decided to take advantage of it without him.
She’d come back more in love with him than ever, and all the signs that had earlier worried him had suddenly disappeared. And he tried to forget his doubts. If Claire had taken a lover, the affair was over and it had been just a fling. It was him she loved, not someone else. They’d been living together for eighteen years; they’d raised two children together, Leo, who was sixteen, and Séverine, who would soon be fourteen, both of them great kids.
He had tried to understand that these days, love was no longer necessarily accompanied by eternal fidelity. That the desire to see herself as beautiful in another man’s eyes could be stronger, and also the desire for another body, another skin, the desire for the first stirrings of interest, a first smile, a first rendezvous, a first kiss.
He’d tried to understand and he was still trying.
But his imagination made it harder. It didn’t stop with a first kiss, it invented what came afterward, with increasingly painful details: raunchy images of shared erotic pleasure, sighs and tender words exchanged in bed or by telephone, maybe sometimes behind his back, by text message, for example.
Another bubble burst in the purse.
His experience as a cop had taught him that today there is no better confidant than a mobile phone. And no worse traitor.
For the past six months, he’d been struggling not to spy on his wife. That was a step he had always refused to take. Especially since he might be mistaken. His boss and his colleagues constantly praised his legendary flair. But for once, he might have gone astray, these feelings, this excessive love, and this jealousy that had flourished in him like a cancer might have addled his brains. Too much emotion, too close: his intuition might have gone off the rails. It was easier to let it guide him coolly in a police investigation.
Coolly?
The adverb wasn’t right. He never conducted an investigation coolly. On the contrary, he always got emotionally involved. And it was this empathy, for the victims and also for the perpetrators, that made him a good cop. No, he wasn’t mistaken: Claire had had a lover. Maybe she still had one, or at least was still in distant contact with him.
He was so sick of all these questions!
He went over to the open purse. The telephone wasn’t in a pocket but simply lying on top of an incredible jumble of women’s things. A little light was flashing on its right side, sending him vulgar winks, like a Bulgarian prostitute on a sidewalk in La Jonquera.
He reached out to take it, then changed his mind.
What was the point?
Claire was on winter vacation; she was still sleeping in their bedroom. The children hadn’t gotten up yet, either. In a few days, it would be Christmas, why spoil everything right now? He decided that if he still hadn’t succeeded in getting a grip on himself after the New Year, then it would be time to lance the boil. Finally to speak with Claire and remove the last doubts. For better or for worse.
But the light was still flashing.
Oh, for shit’s sake!
He grabbed the phone and used his right thumb to bring up the screen. There were in fact two text messages. Two. He pressed the icon. A first name came up. It meant nothing to him. He pressed again and read the two messages. There was no longer any possible doubt.
He felt something like a rip in his belly, a fissure in his life. The world had just collapsed.
CHAPTER 2
Christine opened the window of the hotel room and lit a cigarette. Éric had left it for her before departing. He’d also given her his lighter. He was an attentive man. Was he in love with her? No. And it was better like that.
She took a long drag on the cigarette, looking down on the Rue de la Poissonerie. It was a narrow, deserted street, like most of the streets in the old quarter of Perpignan. The cigarette warmed her body, her mind, it prolonged the pleasure she’d felt a few minutes earlier. An intense pleasure spiced with the aroma of the forbidden.
She adjusted her glasses on her nose. She never took them off, even to make love. At first, Éric had tried to make her take them off, but he’d had to give up. She felt too naked without her glasses. It was only with Stéphane that she agreed to take them off. Sometimes, only sometimes. When she thought about her husband, she felt her mouth contract and twist to the left. A new grimace that she couldn’t control. Éric had pointed it out to her recently.
She raised her head. Only two meters separated her from the windows of the building across the street. She had put her blouse back on, but still wore only her panties. Fortunately, the guardrail on the windowsill hid her from indiscreet eyes. If there were any: there had still been no sign of life behind the dirty windows of the buildings across the way.
She took another drag on her cigarette and bits of a song rose up from the depths of her memory. A song by Charles Dumont, she seemed to recall. She hummed:
Ta cigarette après l’amour
Je la regarde à contre-jour
Dèjà tu reprends ton visage
Tes habitudes et ton âge.
She rubbed the place between her eyebrows with her thumb. Two vertical wrinkles were forming there. They’d appeared very early on, and were now threatening to separate her forehead into two equal parts.
Ta cigarette après l’amour
S’est consumée à contre-amour.
Heaven knows they were exquisite moments. An unexpected fountain of youth. Never had she imagined that she would experience that feeling again. Her index finger slipped over her crow’s-feet and then over the little folds around her mouth. Her skin was inexorably drying out, despite all the care, creams, and sessions at the beauty salon.
But for the past few weeks she had grown younger in her soul. She was twenty again.
Christine had met Éric in her yoga class. She had not felt any particular attraction to him, but she had immediately perceived the spark in his eyes. Flattered to feel herself desired that way, she had enjoyed meeting him at every class. He had started smiling at her, politely greeting her, and even tried to exchange a few words with her. At first, she had remained reserved. This kind of thing was not appropriate for her—not anymore—so why yield to it now? Why say yes to him after having so often said no over the past eighteen years? But she had ended up saying yes. Probably because she felt that she was getting old . . . And maybe also because Éric had known how to be patient, and to find the right words . . . The right guy at the right time. He had succeeded in overcoming her defenses, one by one.
Until they ended up in this room . . .
The cigarette was almost finished. She’d have to leave soon. It was already past 2 P.M. She stubbed out the butt on the windowsill and threw it out into the street. Then she closed the window and closed the gray curtains. The bittersweet effluvia of their lovemaking were still floating in the room. She picked up her black stockings and sat down on the bed to put them on. Her thighs still remembered Éric‘s caresses, on and under the nylon.
She looked for her skirt. Where could it be? She grabbed the bedspread and shook it. Her skirt, wrinkled because it had been too quickly taken off, fell on the carpet. She put it on over her stockings and smoothed out the fabric with her hand to make it look more suitable. Then she couldn’t help folding the bedspread and putting it over the tangled sheets.
She liked this little room’s bare, pale-blue walls.
The first time they had come there was in mid-October. She had been trembling all over and hadn’t been able to relax. But she had liked feeling Éric explore her body. He had done it at first with his breath. In this domain as well, he had proven patient. And the intensity of their meetings had increased each time.
No, she hadn’t grown younger, she wasn’t twenty, she was really forty-seven, and it was not the body of young woman that climaxed but that of a mature woman blooming with new feelings in the arms of an attentive and experienced lover. She had never known that before, not even during what she had always considered as a youthful mistake. It was just after Maxime’s birth. No, she had never known that before, and would probably never know it again. That was the whole pleasure of this adventure which would someday come to an end.
Necessarily.
He had his life, and she had hers. There was no question—not for him and not for her—of endangering what each of them had built in their own worlds.
She shivered and her mouth twisted again.
Before leaving the room, she was always gripped by uneasiness. Life was going to resume its usual course until the next time. Though she was fearful during the first part of her affair, Christine had found it increasingly easy to go back to playing her role as a mother and housewife. To return to her habits.
As if nothing had happened.
She had thought that she would be uncomfortable lying and hiding things. She wasn’t at all uncomfortable with it. She was ashamed to admit that she even took a certain pleasure in it. She drew new strength from this situation. Up to this point, she had lived so much for others . . . For her son, for her husband. Now she felt alive. Yes, alive. Finally! Her existence had become richer and more intense. Her happiness had become greater.
Including her conjugal happiness.
She felt better in her head, in her skin, in her body. She sang at home. Which greatly pleased Stéphane. He seemed to have fallen in love with her again, and was proud to find a radiant wife waiting for him at home every evening.
The poor guy, if only he knew . . .
Her concern increased a notch and even turned into fear. A sound in the stairway. Like hurried footsteps.
She tried to rid herself of these gloomy thoughts. What was done was done, it would be pointless to give in to remorse. It would change nothing, it would only spoil her pleasure. What he didn’t see wouldn’t hurt him. So long as Stéphane knew nothing, she wasn’t hurting anyone.
But she knew her husband. He was jealous and capable of brutality. What would happen if someday he discovered the truth?
The answer came in a crash at the door. Suddenly thrown open, it slammed against the wall. That was stupid, she thought, it’ll leave a mark on the pale-blue wall.
The man who burst into the room looked determined. He saw her, he saw the bed, and his face twisted with hate. He asked no questions, and simply slowly lifted his rifle.
Christine didn’t see the gun, she didn’t hear the shot. Her lips were about to say “my love,” but the words never came out of her mouth. She was already dead.
CHAPTER 3
Lit by the gentle winter light, the Roussillon plain extended its villages, vineyards, and orchards as far as the sea. The austere breath of the tramontane wind was rumbling around the Sant Martì chapel, looking for a body it could seize. Gilles was leaning against the ancestral walls, contemplating the landscape below him. He loved this bit of land, this place between France and Spain—neither entirely the one nor entirely the other—truly a world apart. In the seven years that he had lived here as a voluntary immigrant, he had learned to appreciate the soul and the heart of Northern Catalonia, warm and proud, forged by borders and by exile, sculpted by the caresses of the sun and affronts of the wind.
After his discussion with Claire, Sebag had taken refuge on this strange butte, a hundred and twelve meters above the sea and human beings. He had climbed it by following the path that led to the silent hermitage. He didn’t have the strength to run, this time. He lacked breath, he no longer knew how to breathe.
His telephone buzzed in a pocket of his backpack. Five rings, a short silence, and a beep. A voice message had just been added to the SMS he’d already received. There was an emergency at the police station. He didn’t give a damn.
At that moment the only priority was to get hold of himself. For hours, he’d been waiting there. He was losing his grip by constantly going over the moments that had shaken the foundations of his life.
Going into the bedroom, he’d quietly drawn the curtain. An orange-tinted light from the streetlights flooded the room. The quilt covered Claire’s whole body. Only her brown, wavy hair was outside the sheet. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and ran his hand through her mane.
Claire had awakened slowly. She turned her head and her eyes blinked several times before sinking into the immobile and infinitely sad eyes of her husband.
“What’s going on?”
“I love you.”
She smiled at him tenderly.
“Is that so serious?”
He handed her the mobile. The time he had so long awaited and so much feared had come.
Finally.
Already.
He closed his eyes for few seconds and then reopened them. Claire had read the messages and her smile had frozen. She nodded with resignation.
“You had to find out . . . You s
uspected, didn’t you?”
She sat up in bed, threw away the phone, and took Gilles’s hands in hers.
“I love you, too. You’re the love of my life. I love only you.”
This declaration passed over him without moving him. The words he’d found on the telephone had made him impermeable.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t love him!”
“It wasn’t the same, you can’t compare it.”
Gilles had the strange impression of having been split into two people. He was both the actor and the spectator of a very bad film. With such banal dialogue. He would have liked to be able to change the channel.
“So why, then?”
He didn’t recognize his own voice. It was sad. Cavernous. Alien.
“I don’t know,” she replied after a long silence. “Really, I don’t know . . .”
“That’s not much of an answer.”
“True. But what can I say that won’t hurt you? I felt like it, I needed it. It’s a matter of a friendship that went too far.”
Did he need to know more, Gilles wondered. The truth would necessarily be painful. But silence was even more painful. Questions surged up in spite of him.
“Who is he?”
“A former colleague. Simon. A professor of history and geography.”
“Is it over?”
“Yes. Since the middle of July. He left.”
“Did it last a long time?”
“Only four months.”
He pursed his lips. They turned white.
“‘Four months’ and ‘only’ don’t go together.”
“Probably not.”
Gilles waited for the rest. A basic technique of interrogation. When you’re a cop, you’re a cop for everything, for everyone, always.
“He was living in Toulouse, but his wife is Basque and wanted to go home to be with her sick parents. She’s a nurse and it was easy for her to get transferred. He was supposed to join her, to be transferred, too, but the administration made a stupid mistake. Somebody confused Pyrénées-Atlantiques with Pyrénées-Orientales and he ended up here. Far away from his wife and his children.”
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