Krzysztof stroked the photo with his tobacco-stained fingertips. “Mine little girl. Helena.”
“Where is she?”
The Pole looked at the priest, apparently not understanding, as though alien to time and space, and alien to himself. Kern repeated the question, pointing at the photo. “Where is Helena now?”
Krzysztof vaguely gestured around.
“Is she in Paris? Krzysztof, your daughter is in Paris? How old is she now? When was this picture taken?”
“I look for Helena. She leave Poland. She leave Kraków.”
“When was that? How old was she when she left? You came all the way here to look for her? When did she leave Poland?”
In response to this last question, Krzysztof traced a date in the mix of sand and gravel that, every night, constituted his bed, a date which, alone, summed up the extent and duration of the man’s fall: 1996.
Kern found it hard to ask the next question. Looking at the vagrant in his torn padded jacket, he thought he already knew the answer. “Did you find your daughter?”
The Pole grabbed the diminutive priest by the collar of his dry bloodstained shirt, and his breathing suddenly became noisy. He glared straight at Kern and his pale eyes grew misty. Then he muttered a few words into his beard two or three times before putting the photo back into his inside pocket. “You find killer. You find killer.” He opened a second can of beer and stared at it, disgusted, before emptying it in one go.
A few yards away, a municipal employee had just unbolted the garden gate and was starting a vague tour of inspection. Krzysztof hid farther behind the foliage. The priest laid his skinny hand on the Pole’s thick forearm. “I will find him, Krzysztof. I promise. I promise, on my faith in the Blessed Virgin.”
It was time to go. Kern waited for the employee responsible for public gardens to leave. When he finally made up his mind to get up, his limbs testified to his memories. It was going to be a day filled with pain. He had to muster all his willpower to start walking. His body, he could feel it, was at the end of its tether. He turned once more toward the bush where Krzysztof was crouching, sluggish, huddled in his wine-colored padded jacket that was shedding feathers, and felt a pang in his heart.
He rinsed his face at the fountain on the corner of the square and Rue d’Arcole. His head was still caked with dried blood from the night before and he plunged his neck under the water. He shook himself like a puppy and the coolness did him good. Father Kern turned to the façade of Notre Dame. The two towers rose above his dripping head and, for the first time in his life, he thought they looked menacing. It wasn’t eight yet, and the Portal of Saint Anne was still shut. He’d have to go through the gate reserved for the staff, on the side of the Seine, walk along the cathedral south wall, past the presbytery, before he’d reach the sacristy door. At this time, with a bit of luck, he wouldn’t meet anybody before he’d had the chance to change his clothes. He needed to get rid of his dirty clothes and of Krzysztof’s smell of alcohol that permeated him. And above all, he had to cleanse himself of that moment of distraction when, as he lay his hands on a woman’s skin, he forgot nearly everything.
Like a shadow, he slid into the corridor of the sacristy and walked straight to his locker where, like all the priests at the cathedral, he kept his liturgical garments and a change of clothes. With each step he took, he was aware of every limb, every muscle, every joint in his body. He felt as though he was leaving behind a gray trail of stench and guilt, which grew increasingly dense as he went deeper into the building, and its filth was a reflection of his actions. And yet that prostitute’s skin, the memory of which remained intact on the palms of his hands, had seemed so pure, so soft, so white.
As he was changing his clothes, he heard a metal object fall out of his pocket and bounce on the floor. It was his cross, which he’d chosen to remove from his buttonhole the evening before, and which he’d then kept for a long time clutched in his fist while his body was being riddled with blows. He picked it up and carefully pinned it on the lapel of the clean jacket he’d just put on. He rolled the dirty clothes into a ball and crammed them at the bottom of his locker to conceal their stench.
He sat down on the wooden trunk, as he was used to doing and, for the first time since the previous day’s events, took a moment to review the situation. What did he know, exactly? What had he learned? There were twenty or so narrow wooden lockers arranged along the wall opposite him, each at the disposal of a cathedral priest. And yet one of these lockers belonged to one of the regular clients of Luna Hamache, student and prostitute, whom, four days earlier, Father Kern and his sacristan had found murdered.
His mind traveled farther back, to the end of the Assumption celebrations, on the eve of the tragic discovery. He saw himself back in the same corridor, among other Notre Dame priests, all of them busy taking off their liturgical garments, like actors removing their costumes once the curtain has come down at the end of a performance. That evening, like after all large-scale celebrations or a Mass involving a large crowd, the atmosphere was composed of different ingredients: there was the stress of the event still fresh in their minds, the relief and tiredness gradually creeping into their bodies as they put their stoles away in the lockers, and schoolboy humor to signal the resumption of a certain routine. Kern recalled seeing the auxiliary bishop, Monsignor Rieux Le Molay, still in his mass garments, walk down the corridor and go out into the fresh air on the side of the Seine, his cell phone glued to his ear. He remembered Gérard putting on a pair of latex gloves and pouring detergent on a sponge cloth after the rector had spilled his cup of coffee on the sacristy rug. He tried to recall any detail, any word likely to betray unusual tension in one of the priests who were in the corridor. He went through them in his mind’s eye, one by one, trying to remember the order in which they’d left, their final words before they’d exited the cathedral enclosure. He even attempted to feel in his empty hand the firmness or limpness of each handshake as they’d said goodbye.
Exhausted by this procedure, which turned out to be depressingly fruitless, Kern closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. The mission he’d undertaken was against nature in that it forced him, the man of God, the bearer of a message of hope, to see evil everywhere, including within his Church.
“Did you fall out of bed this morning, Father Kern?”
It happened to be Gérard, coming back from the chancel after laying out the liturgical items for morning Mass. The sacristan paused in his work to stare at the diminutive priest.
“No kidding, Father, did you smash your face? One of your cheekbones is bruised.”
“A minor accident. I’d rather not tell you about my evening, Gérard.”
“You got into a fight in a bar in Pigalle again, didn’t you, Father?”
The priest forced a smile. “You go ahead and joke about it.”
“Jokes are all we’ve got left, Father.”
“You’re absolutely right. Jokes and a small portion of faith. At least I hope so.”
Gérard disappeared into his sacristy then popped his head back into the corridor. “Seriously, Father, you got the time wrong. I’ve just looked at the timetable and you’ve got nothing on until midday Mass. And then confessions from two o’clock this afternoon.”
“I’ll wait. I’ll go pray. If not, I’ll go make jokes.”
“You’d better go see a doctor. Meanwhile, would you like a little coffee?”
Kern followed Gérard into the sacristy. While the liquid was pouring into the cups, they heard the jingling of keys in the corridor, in time with heavy footsteps they identified immediately.
“There’s a smell of coffee in here.”
“Hello, Mourad. Come in and join us. Father Kern is here, too.”
The guard’s tall form appeared in the doorway. “Oh, dear, Father! Did you play rugby last night or what?”
“Good morning, Mourad. Is it you unlocking this morning?”
“The shop’s open, Father.”
Moura
d hung the cathedral keys on the nail in the paneling. Then he joined the priest and the sacristan by the coffee machine. They drank in silence for a moment, then Kern, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the bunch of keys, spoke again. “Gérard, do those keys open all the doors in the cathedral?”
“That’s right, they open all the doors. That bunch must weigh at least six pounds.”
“Including the doors that are hardly ever or even never used? Including, for argument’s sake, the little door in the apse that opens onto the back garden?”
“Those keys open every single door in the cathedral, Father, including the crypt, the ambulatory, the cellars, the roof, and wherever else.”
“And is this bunch of keys kept here all day?”
“In the sacristy? Yes, of course. Nobody’d go walking around with a bulk like that on his belt.”
“They’re kept here every day?”
“Every blessed day, Father. The guard on duty hangs them on the nail after opening up at eight a.m., like Mourad’s just done. And they stay here until closing time at eight p.m.”
“And after that?”
“After that? After that the guard hands the keys to the janitor, who keeps them at his place until the following morning. It’s like that every day of the year.”
“What about the nights when there’s a screening? When the cathedral reopens after eight p.m.?”
“I leave at eight p.m., Father. What happens after that, I couldn’t care less. By that time, I’m already back home eating my dinner.”
Mourad, who, up to now, had been content to just stir the sugar in his coffee, took over. “On screening nights, Father, the keys make an extra return trip. The cathedral is reopened at nine-thirty p.m. and then locked up for good at ten-thirty, once everybody’s gone at the end of the movie.”
“So during the entire screening, the keys remain on this hook, here in the sacristy, and anybody could have access to them.”
“Not just anybody. During the evening screening the whole back of the cathedral is closed: the ambulatory, the treasury, the sacristy. Only the nave remains open to the public.”
“Mourad, I’m going to ask you a very direct question: Who had access to these wretched keys during the screening of Rejoice, Mary last Sunday?”
Mourad took time to think. “Last Sunday? The night that girl got murdered?” He took another sip of coffee. “I can only think of one person, Father.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
Kern made an annoyed gesture that caused Mourad to react immediately. “Is there a problem? Is this still about this business of the rounds I allegedly forgot to do, Father?”
“No, Mourad, not at all.”
“Any minute now I’m going to be accused of killing the girl the other night.”
“Nobody’s going to accuse you of anything, Mourad. The case has been closed. The rector has decided not to call you before the disciplinary committee. And I know you’re completely innocent.”
The guard was still suspicious. “Are you sure, Father? You’re not also going to start imagining things, are you?”
“Yes, Mourad, I’m sure. I know you’ve got nothing to do with this ghastly murder and I know you’ve made no professional blunder. And I know it for a very simple reason.”
“And can I ask you what it is, Father?”
Kern hesitated for a moment. “The reason I know you’re innocent, Mourad, is that you’re not a priest.”
Gombrowicz was letting himself be lulled by the gentle murmur of the Mass. He hadn’t sat in the chancel, where the eight o’clock Mass was taking place, but in the nave, opposite the Virgin of the Pillar. The priest’s voice sounded distant and echoed slightly, as the monotonous prayers of the handful of early risers gathered around the celebrant formed a muffled cloud around him. The cathedral couldn’t have been calmer.
He yawned and thought with longing of the bed he’d had to leave early in order to be at Notre Dame the moment it opened. What was he doing here, exactly? Did he still have any responsibility for this affair? After all, Number 36 had given him forced leave after young Thibault’s death, two days earlier. Was it a protective measure or a way of sidelining him? He’d been questioned, he’d filed his report, then he’d gone back home, still in shock over the fall of the blond angel, still distraught, while the Police Inspection Committee was keeping Landard hanging. The better to grill him about the conditions in which he conducted his interrogations.
The day before, he couldn’t help going to the funeral of the Notre Dame Madonna, attending the ceremony, watching from a distance, standing aside, and seeing who was there. Then tailing that little priest who seemed as interested in porn sites as in the Virgin Mary. Now he had no choice anymore. He had to follow the instinct that had prompted him to pick up the investigation where his superior, Landard—not to name names—had left off: a suspect’s suicide and the closure of the whole case.
He was lost in the contemplation of the statue opposite him. The white of her dress was a little dirty, and the face of baby Jesus, whom his mother was carrying in her left arm, looked too grown up, too stern, and also too plump, which made Gombrowicz feel uncomfortable. And yet he couldn’t help thinking that Mary was beautiful. This was mainly due to her face, where he was focused. Her tiny mouth, slim nose, large, almond-shaped eyes, and very high eyebrows gave an impression of absence, of sadness, and also of pain, as though this Virgin wished to be elsewhere. What could she have seen, to be looking away like this? What was weighing on her conscience that she dared not admit? What had they done in her house that she could not, with decency, confide in a policeman?
A slight cough next to him pulled him out of his daydream. A woman of at least seventy had sat down on the chair next to him. She was watching him on and off, furtively, staring at him with wide-open, fearful eyes, then she would suddenly turn her head away, as though facing a dangerous threat Gombrowicz was unable to locate. She wore on her head a torn straw hat, to which she’d fixed, with more or less rusty safety pins, a heap of red plastic flowers. He thought right away that he’d come across a madwoman. It was going to be a long day. He was about to get up and change seats when she grabbed his arm. She looked at him intensely, and her face lit up with a smile that was missing a few teeth. Then the smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and the woman began speaking in a barely audible whisper that went on forever, with her pausing only long enough to swallow her saliva and catch her breath. He had to admit it: Madame Pipi had a lot to tell.
“Sacristan to guard, sacristan to guard. Mourad, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Gérard, I’m listening.”
“Where are you now?”
“By the entrance.”
“Could you come and see me, please?”
“What’s it about, Gérard?”
“Do you know how to operate the audiovisual control room?”
“Say that again. It’s noisy here.”
“Do you know how to operate the audiovisual control room?”
“The audiovisual control room? What for?”
“It’s Father Kern. He’d like to see the recording of the Mass last Sunday night again. Would you be able to find it on the computers?”
“Tell Father Kern I’m on my way. I’m just going to get the Chinese group behind me to shut up and I’ll be right over.”
They met at the entrance to the ambulatory and together climbed the dozen or so steps that led to the control room. Mourad sat down in front of the control panel and switched on the computers, the screens, and the editing console while Father Kern took a seat next to him. From this mezzanine floor above the sacristy, it was possible to control all the automatic cameras distributed throughout the nave, and to broadcast the Sunday evening masses live. The Mass of the Assumption was no exception and Mourad, who was handling the system confidently, opened the relevant file. Father Kern watched him, filled with wonder.
“Someday, Mourad, you must tell me where you get your talent for anything
related to computers.”
“I’ve always been interested. You know, Father, it’s simply a question of not letting yourself be intimidated by them. These machines are like big toys. You shouldn’t be afraid to try them. The worst that can happen is that you have to switch everything off and start again. Sometimes I do the odd favor, like carry out an urgent repair during the big masses. Sometimes, the automatic cameras get jammed in the wooden cases, so I take them out and put them back in. I take them apart and put them back together again. I check if anything’s come unplugged. I like this stuff. The other day, I even did some technical work for the police. It’s thanks to the cameras that we caught that poor kid.”
“Yes, I know, Mourad.”
“You want to see last Sunday evening’s Mass again, right, Father?”
“Yes.”
“But weren’t you there?”
“Yes, I was, but my eyes and my memory can never take the place of all these cameras fixed in the nave. They might have seen something that escaped me.”
“Tell me, Father, you’re not aiming for a second career as a policeman, are you?”
“A policeman? Good God, no. I’m just interested in the justice system. It’s like you with computers. You mustn’t be afraid of trying. You and I make the perfect team, Mourad.”
The guard had started playing a long sequence that had been broadcast live five days earlier on the Catholic TV channel KTO.
“What exactly are you looking for, Father?”
“I’ll let you know when I find it. Right now I have absolutely no idea.”
On the screen, the large procession at the beginning of the Mass was leaving the square and entering into the cathedral, which was heaving with people. The great Notre Dame organs were rumbling like thunder, while the choir of the Music School could be heard from the chancel. In the central aisle, a string of teenagers brandishing embroidered banners were walking in front of the silver statue of the Virgin Mary, carried by the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher. There followed the long cohort of Notre Dame priests. The procession reached the podium and the fifteen clerics split at the transept crossing, at the bottom of the three steps, while the auxiliary bishop of Paris, in the absence of the Cardinal Archbishop, intoned a litany of four Hail Marys before the altar. Monsignor Rieux Le Molay evoked the memory of the French kings: “Let us renew before the statue of the Pietà, commissioned by King Louis XIII, the oath of consecration of France to the Virgin Mary, an oath made by the selfsame king on February 10th, 1638. We declared and still declare that, by accepting the most holy and glorious Virgin Mary to be the special patroness of our kingdom, we consecrate to her ourselves, our kingdom, our crown, and our subjects, and beseech her to inspire holy conduct in us, and to defend with equal dedication the kingdom from its enemies.”
The Madonna of Notre Dame Page 14