Don't Turn Out the Lights

by Bernard Minier

  The phone rang behind her and Christine instantly froze. She could feel the goosebumps on her skin and anything resembling a coherent thought vanished. The young locksmith was staring at her. No doubt he noticed the sudden change in her expression. She headed reluctantly to the phone on the kitchen counter. It kept on ringing, piercing the silence. She reached for the receiver as if it were a venomous snake.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Christine?’

  A woman’s voice, familiar.

  ‘It’s Denise.’

  A huge wave of relief went through her chest. Then instantly, a question: why was Denise calling her here? She suddenly remembered the pictures on her computer: their tête-à-tête through the window of the café – and a wave of anger mingled with concern created a knot in her stomach.

  ‘Denise? What’s going on?’

  ‘Christine, I have to see you.’

  Her voice made Christine think of that elastic she used to play with when she was a little girl, stretching it all the way to the point of breaking.

  ‘What’s it about? Is it so urgent?’

  ‘Yes. I think it is.’

  There was a touch of authority in Denise’s voice. And hostility as well. Christine immediately felt on her guard. Something had happened. Her nerves jangled.

  ‘What’s the matter? Can’t you tell me what this is about?’

  ‘You know very well what it’s about.’

  This time, it was more than authority. It was an accusation. There was anger, defiance. Did she want to speak to her about Gérald and herself?

  ‘I want to see you, now.’

  Christine felt herself go hard inside: who did this bitch think she was?

  ‘Listen, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. But I really don’t like your tone of voice. So let me put it this way: I’ve had a rough day and I intend to speak to Gérald – about you, about him, and about me.’

  There, she’d said it. She waited for a reaction.

  ‘In half an hour, at the Wallace on place Saint-Georges. I think you ought to be there.’

  Good God! Not only was this idiot giving her orders, she had even hung up on her!

  * * *

  The Wallace Café was noisy and crowded when Christine walked in. It had a lounge décor, with fake stone walls lit from underneath, little square armchairs, and a bar with blue light like an aquarium. Eighty per cent of the customers were students. The music was a typical indie rock compilation: Asaf Avidan, Local Natives, Wave Machines.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, narrowing her eyes as she sat down.

  Looking down at her glass, Denise seemed more nervous than she had on the phone. She made a great show of stirring her cocktail with the fluorescent stick before slowly raising her lovely green eyes. Caipirinha … It’s a little early for alcohol, thought Christine. Perhaps the young PhD student needed some Dutch courage. But why?

  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘I came, as you asked. So why do you want to see me? Why that tone on the telephone? Why all the mystery?’

  Denise looked around the room before settling her gaze on Christine, apparently reluctantly.

  ‘Yesterday, you – uh – saw us together at the Institute, Gérald and me, in his office.’

  Christine felt her stomach contract even further.

  ‘You almost said caught,’ she noted coldly.

  ‘Caught, saw: it doesn’t matter.’ The hostile tone was there again. ‘It’s not what you think. Not at all. We were there for work. Gérald as much as me. As it happens, he is my thesis advisor and—’

  ‘Thank you, I know that.’

  ‘—and it’s not just about my thesis. It goes further than that. You have to understand that we are working on a very ambitious project: we are going to propose a new approach for the acquisition of GNSS signals, that is, in the domain of satellite navigation. Until now, we have had the American GPS, the Russian GLONASS and the Chinese BeiDou. Since 2005 the European Union has launched four satellites and the Galileo system should soon be operational. The method we are using enables us to increase the frequency resolution of the Fourier transform without an excessive increase of the design load within the positioning sensor.’ She gave an apologetic wave. ‘I know, I know – it sounds like gibberish, and I’m not trying to drown you in scientific jargon, but we are on the verge of producing a very important article, so important that it could earn us the prize at the ION GNSS conference, the biggest and most prestigious international conference in the domain of satellite navigation.’

  Her voice was beginning to betray a certain nervousness.

  ‘I know that, viewed from the outside, it seems terribly boring. But in fact it’s a fascinating area, and Gérald and I love our work, the research we are doing. Gérald had the idea for this study, and he’s a terrific thesis advisor.’

  She paused.

  ‘That’s why we couldn’t care less whether it’s Christmas Day or not. I suddenly had an idea, and when I spoke to him on the phone, he got very excited and told me to meet him at the Institute at once.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Christine understood the hidden meaning behind her gush of words. Stop imagining things, girl: you can’t understand, because you’re not intelligent enough, not clever enough, and you didn’t go far enough with your studies. Your future husband and I share this world, and you will never have access to it. You may as well get used to the idea right away, sweetheart.

  Denise looked at her again, and all her nervousness and concern were gone: her gaze was merely accusing.

  ‘But you’re imagining things, Christine. Because I’m pretty, because Gérald values my work, and because we get along well. So I don’t know what you’ve gone and got in your head, but…’

  Christine really didn’t like the way Denise formulated those last words. Her allusion to the intellectual compatibility and complicity that existed between her and Christine’s future husband. Christine wondered if Gérald ever compared the two of them. At the same time, she felt relieved. She had been afraid of something else on coming here. What, exactly? A bad surprise like the medication found in her desk drawer? The revelation that Gérald and Denise really were having an affair? She couldn’t put her finger on it – she had simply had a terrible premonition on hearing Denise’s voice on the telephone.

  ‘Denise,’ she said. ‘Everything is fine. I’m not imagining things, I promise you. I know how much Gérald loves his profession – and how he values your work. It really isn’t a problem.’

  Really? Are you sure?

  ‘Well then, can you explain this to me,’ came Denise’s icy voice from the far side of the table.

  Christine froze. Denise pushed a printed sheet of paper across the table.

  ‘Hello!’ said the waiter with professional enthusiasm. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘What is this?’ asked Christine.

  ‘You really don’t know?’ hissed Denise in the same voice, trembling with anger.

  The waiter beat a hasty retreat. Christine leaned over. An email. She skipped the heading to read the text.

  Dear Denise, if you think I haven’t figured out what you’re up to … keep your hands off my guy. Take my advice.

  Signed: Chris, showing her claws

  She felt as if the table and the entire room had begun to spin. It can’t be … this can’t be happening …

  She read the email again. Close your eyes. Open them. She was gobsmacked: none of this could be real.

  ‘I didn’t write this.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Christine, please. Who, apart from you or I, could know that Gérald says that about you when you’re angry?’

  ‘What?’ She shook her head. ‘Are you saying that this is some nickname Gérald has for me?’

  Denise was looking at her, her expression wavering between impatience and scorn.

  ‘As if you didn’t know.’

  ‘Denise, I don’t know what is going on, I swear. I didn’t send this! When did you get it?�
��

  Silence.

  ‘Last night.’

  It was him. Who else? But how could he know all this about her?

  ‘Christine,’ said Denise, in the tone of a professor speaking to a particularly obtuse student, ‘the email has your address in the heading. This message came from your computer. And that signature … that’s already pretty damning, don’t you think?’

  ‘Have you told Gérald about it?’

  A cautious look from across the table.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Please, don’t say anything.’

  ‘So you admit you wrote it?’

  She hesitated. She could deny it. She had to deny it. She could tell her about the urine on the doormat and the incident on her radio programme and her visit to the police and the message on her windscreen … And then what? She knew precisely what sort of impression it would leave: that she was suffering from rampant paranoid psychosis. She could just imagine Denise gushing to her friends: The poor woman is a complete nutcase – certifiable, if you want my opinion. I don’t know what Gérald sees in her.

  ‘Yes,’ she confessed.

  Denise looked at her, her face full of consternation. Christine felt undressed, judged and convicted – all in the blink of an eye. Denise nodded. Her face was inscrutable.

  Then she shook herself and Christine could guess what she was thinking: Aren’t I the lucky one, fuck, to be sitting here with this nutcase.

  ‘I really like Gérald,’ said Denise quietly.

  There was so much conviction in her words that Christine wondered if she ought to change two of the letters in the word ‘like’.

  ‘No, really, I like him a great deal. He’s a good person – and a fantastic boss. Let me stress: there is nothing between Gérald and me. But I do like him a lot, it’s true.’

  Enough, you already said that, I understand. Let’s talk about something else.

  ‘And I wonder if…’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘If you really are the right person for him.’

  Christine felt as if she’d been slapped.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘In any case,’ continued Denise as if she hadn’t heard, ‘even if there had been something between us, that’s no way for you to behave. You should see a shrink.’

  Christine was staring at Denise now, not moving a muscle, as if someone had pressed pause. Several seconds went by before she began to speak.

  ‘How dare you?’

  She spoke loudly. The male students at the next table turned their heads, aware that something interesting was going on between the two good-looking girls at the table behind them.

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

  Heads turned. Denise backed down:

  ‘I’m sorry; it’s none of my business, after all. You’re right.’ The young woman raised her hands in a sign of surrender. ‘Gérald is old enough to know what he wants to do with his life.’

  Too late, sweetheart. Christine felt her good old anger was back. And it was out of the question to try to contain it.

  ‘Indeed, it’s none of your fucking business. And it’s true – since the moment has come to lay our cards on the table – that I find you just a little bit overzealous for a PhD student.’ She stressed the word. ‘A little bit too – how should I put it? – familiar, if you know what I mean?’

  She stared at her for a long time. Denise seemed too stunned to reply.

  ‘So, yes, I’m going to give you some advice: from now on mind your own business, and focus on your thesis. Just your fucking thesis. Before I go and ask him to give up being your supervisor.’

  She got to her feet.

  ‘Stay away from my man.’

  * * *

  On her way out, Christine walked past a man sitting at the table next to them, less than a yard away. The man folded his newspaper and took a sip of his beer. He watched her leave. His eyes were expressionless, like two black pebbles.

  He was small, really very small. Five foot four. A height, for a man, that is likely to inspire a good number of jibes, half-smiles and condescending looks. He was well proportioned, with a muscular body and a slim waist, but his head didn’t help. It was almost feminine, with a delicate nose, thick lips, high cheekbones and an effeminate cast to the rest of his face. Moreover, he had almost no eyebrows and, conversely, long pale blonde eyelashes. Even his head, which was completely shaved, made one think of a young woman’s perfect head. The only thing that wasn’t feminine about him was his gaze: big, dull, empty eyes, like two windows open onto a void. Not particularly hostile or piercing, just empty.

  He was wearing a khaki parka over a black hoodie and a grey T-shirt, and were it not for his diminutive size and effeminate face, he would not have looked any different from the students around him; apart from his age, perhaps: he was several years older.

  He watched Christine go out the door. With his dull eyes he examined her hips, her back, her buttocks, every curve and contour of her body. Satisfied with his examination, he took another sip of his cool beer and noted that none of the men in the café had followed his example: they were all trying not to get involved in other people’s business. He reflected that most people were stunningly naïve, like angels or eunuchs: they knew nothing about the individuals they spent their days with, they knew nothing about real suffering, or torture, or agony, or the varying degrees of hell that exist in the world; they knew nothing, he thought, of the tears that are as impossible to stem as the sap pouring from trees, and a smile spread across his feminine mouth. They knew nothing about the moment when the brain rips apart and is left in fragments under the effect of pain … nothing about the slow drip of time in the depths of a cave smelling of sweat and piss and shit … nothing about people who, their shirts stained with blood and vomit, suddenly understand – too late – that hell does exist here on earth, that we walk by its gates every day, that we pass its servants in the street or on the Métro, and we don’t see them.

  He recalled some lines by a poet from his country:

  And the cold water grows blacker

  Death grows purer, misfortune saltier

  And the earth more terrible and truthful.

  He turned his attention back to the second young woman.

  The one who was hellishly pretty and, at the moment, terribly pale. She was biting her lower lip and staring into space.

  She had just got to her feet. She looked very angry.

  Perfect; it had all gone according to plan. Almost too predictably for his liking. He let her leave – she was not his target.

  His target was the first woman who had gone out. The one who had raised her voice, attracting the other customers’ attention. Christine Steinmeyer. That was the name he had been given. With the address and a host of details.

  Furtively, his fingers squeezed his hard penis through his corduroy trousers. Just thinking about Christine Steinmeyer – and what he was going to put her through in the days ahead – set his nerves on edge. She had no idea what was coming.

  And to think he was getting paid for this: in every era, under every regime, there was work for people like him. Gifted, zealous practitioners. Experts in confession. He was capable of wresting the truth from anyone, about anything, under any circumstance.

  The little man finished his beer. No one was paying him the slightest attention. People weren’t curious in this country. They spent so much time staring at the screen of their tablet or their smartphone and avoiding other people’s gazes that they became like zombies. And yet there were a few details that might have aroused someone’s attention. For a start, the scar that left a pale furrow beneath his chin. Then there were the tattoos. The first one, emerging above the right side of his collar, was only partly visible, but it looked like the face of a sad Madonna of the kind one sees on Russian icons. Without his clothes, more would be visible: from his neck to his chest, where his missing nipple had been replaced by a scar, a virgin with child – and innumerable other design
s: Orthodox domes, stars, skulls. Each one had a specific meaning. The Virgin with child, for example: the child meant that he had been to prison very young; the Madonna symbolised loyalty to his clan; each point of a star was for a jail term; the stars on his knees meant he would never kneel before anyone.

  The backs of his hands and his fingers were similarly covered with images.

  His illuminated hand reached for the gold pen next to the newspaper, which he opened again. He found an empty space and made a quick drawing. A fairly accurate portrait of a woman in her thirties. Then he drew a crown of barbed wire around the woman’s brow, and underneath it he wrote:

  Chris, showing her claws

  He folded the newspaper over the drawing and left it on the table when he went out.

  11

  Crescendo

  The next day, Servaz got up before everyone else. When he went down to the dining room, it was deserted. Seven a.m. Most of the boarders had difficulty sleeping so they caught up in the early morning.

  Servaz poured himself a bowl of coffee, took a little capsule of cream and went to sit at one of the tables. He liked being alone. He liked the silence; he was fed up with people’s tirades. All these worn-out cops, battered by their chaotic lives, their traumatic experiences: all of them, or almost all of them, revelled in their memories of the past. Since coming here Servaz had felt as if he were constantly bathing in a warm pool of nostalgia.

  ‘Would you like a hot croissant?’

  He turned his head. Élise was standing by the door to the kitchen. Servaz smiled at her. She came up to him and his mouth watered at the smell of the croissant, which she set down in front of him. She sat down across the table.

  ‘Already up?’

  ‘I have something to do in town,’ he replied, taking a large bite from the croissant with its rich buttery taste.