Don't Turn Out the Lights

by Bernard Minier

  ‘No, he’s here!’

  She rushed in the direction of the sound, her legs shaking.

  The master bedroom. The bed unmade. Slippers on the bedside rug, old-fashioned furniture, clothing tossed here and there on chairs. A smell of old people. The furniture, as in the rest of the flat, was like a collection of museum pieces from the 1960s, when there were only two television channels, one telephone per house, and children put Banania in their milk at breakfast.

  ‘I’m calling the police!’ shouted Michèle. ‘Get the hell out of here!’

  It occurred to Christine that it was a bit rich to hear Michèle going on about calling the police when she spent the rest of the time bad-mouthing them and anything else that represented the state. She felt another wave of despondency: Iggy was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘So you see,’ said her neighbour, once she had gone around the room.

  She nodded; she felt lost, nauseous.

  ‘Go home,’ said Michèle without animosity, her voice almost compassionate – and her compassion horrified Christine more than anything else.

  Her head was spinning. She felt as if she were about to pass out.

  She retreated hurriedly, breathlessly, to the entrance of the flat. The yapping had stopped. She was going mad. She went across the threshold, wanted to apologise but couldn’t find the strength. She turned on her heels.

  ‘Go and see a psychiatrist,’ said Michèle gently. ‘You must get treatment. Would you like me to call a doctor?’

  She shook her head. The door closed again behind her. The door to her flat had stayed open and a ray of light fell from the vestibule onto the landing. Guided by it, she dragged herself inside, then bolted the door.

  Silence.

  Here, too, the yapping had stopped.

  Christine walked into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. An invisible, invincible force was crushing her. At what point had she triggered it? Why? Who could possibly have it in for her like this?

  She curled up on the sofa, her knees folded against her belly with a cushion between them. One solitary lamp was lit, and a strange apathy came over her. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. In less than three hours, she would have to get ready to go to the radio station. At that moment, the last thing she cared about was whether she would be up to it or not. Then she suddenly sat up.

  A bark …

  And another one.

  Iggy …

  He was still here! Somewhere. Alive. And he was calling for help. She shook herself. It was still coming from the same place: the kitchen. The wall she shared with her neighbours. For a moment, she was tempted to go back there. Or could it be … She rushed behind the counter, leaned over the worktop and the sink and gave a violent yank on the metallic flap of the rubbish disposal chute. Iggy’s voice rang out: clear, shrill, heart-wrenching.

  Carried by the echo of the chute.

  Iggy was downstairs

  in the rubbish area

  in the cellar …

  She almost burst out laughing; she almost thanked the heavens. Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? Quick, she had to get him out of there! He must be so frightened, alone in the dark, shut inside a place he didn’t know. The urgency was like a tonic. But her thoughts were confused, interrupted by a discordant voice. That little voice told her that he didn’t get in there all by himself, that he hadn’t opened the rubbish disposal with his little paws before diving in with all the unconscious joy that went into making him the dog he was – and that to go down to the cellar at a time like this, with all that had already happened, would be a bit like going too close to the bank of a river full of crocodiles. She was not mad. She had proof of that. If she was not mad, if she accepted this basic premise, she must draw the following conclusion: she was in danger. And down there, no one would hear her scream.

  Do you really want that?

  Then Iggy’s pathetic little bark came out of the chute again, calling for help, and she knew she could not possibly let him spend the rest of the night alone down there. She leaned over the opening.

  ‘Iggy, Iggy! Do you hear me? Don’t move, I’m coming!’

  Her voice was amplified by the echo. The mongrel stopped barking for a moment, then barked even louder – hoarse barking that reverberated along the wall, followed by pitiful whimpers that broke her heart.

  She opened the top drawer and took out the longest, most solid-looking knife. Then she went back to the front door and opened the box where her keys were kept. She took down a ring which had two keys on it: one for the cellar and the other a spare mailbox key. She put on a pair of fluorescent trainers. Her hand was trembling slightly when she unlocked her door for the second time that night. The darkness on the landing aroused her fear, which spread through her brain like a cloud of ink, her heartbeat suddenly dangerously irregular.

  You’ll never manage, you haven’t got the guts.

  Her hand found the timer for the light and very slowly she began to breathe again. Without realising, she had pressed the button for the lift: it was already there. For a fraction of a second she hesitated, then she opened the cage and stepped inside. The rattling of the lift as it went down reassured her somewhat, but when she was out on the ground floor, standing in front of the low door leading to the basement, she came very close to giving up. She was at the foot of the main stairway, separated from the actual hallway by a double glass door framed in wood, and the greyish light was so weak that it erased any details and gave her the impression that she was gazing at the scene through special glasses made for watching an eclipse.

  The silence had returned and fear slammed into her like a wall. She had only been down to the cellar once: when she first visited the flat. She seemed to recall that the rubbish bin room was at the bottom of the steps to the right. She turned the key in the lock, the door opened with a groan when she pulled on it and a pungent odour of mould and cellar rose from the dark depths.

  Two flights of stairs, she recalled. She flipped the light switch and a yellowish glow lit up the peeling walls.

  She felt very close to crying out, calling for help, waking up the entire building. Then she remembered her neighbour. If someone found her wandering around in the common area with a knife in her hand at four o’clock in the morning, and they found Iggy in the dustbin room after the incident with the letter, the antidepressants at work, and the fuss she’d just made at her neighbours’, it would leave no doubt: she would be entitled to immediate and automatic committal at the kind of institute whose motto was ‘we-repair-your-brain-or-send-it-at-no-charge-to-the-scrap-yard-but-in-the-meantime-you’re-not-about-to-get-out-of-here’. Come on, Christine, you just need to grit your teeth … She went down the last steps, stopped, and listened. Nothing. She had reached the first landing. She looked ahead and felt all her courage abandon her: at the bottom of the steps, the corridor leading through the cellar was nothing but a well of darkness, a black, opaque tunnel. Once again, panic spread through her chest like a bouquet of poisonous flowers. Iggy, forgive me, I haven’t got the courage. It’s too hard … forgive me … She was about to go back up, had already turned her back on the darkness, when a faint noise came to her.

  ‘Iggy?’

  No answer.

  ‘Iggy!’

  This time, she could clearly hear him barking. So near … She hurried down the last steps without thinking. Her feet touched the ground, the dirt floor. She looked around: the row of doors to the individual cellars to her left – black holes full of useless old things, cobwebs, memories, and rats – and the dustbin room to her right, behind a metal door painted green.

  Her hand on the doorknob, she pulled open the heavy door.

  ‘Iggy, here I am!’

  The dog barked in the dark. Where was the bloody light switch? The obscurity beyond the door was as terrifying as if she had come upon a crevasse while walking on a glacier. She felt as if she were plunging her hand into a shark’s jaws. Her fingers groped their way along the rubble stone and ceme
nt joints until they met a plastic box. There was a flood of light, as sooty as winter twilight, the bulb on the ceiling casting more shadows than it banished, and Christine saw several large shapes, squat and dark, lined up against the wall to the right. The rubbish bins … Iggy’s barking came from the last bin, not the one overflowing with black bags that was just beneath the mouth of the rubbish chute, but another one, seemingly empty, its lid open and resting against the wall. She went closer.

  The slam of the door caused her to jump out of her skin. Two more steps. Now she could see part way into the inside of the tall rubbish bin, but she couldn’t see her dog. She could hear him, however, and the deep container acted as an echo chamber. There were thick shadows between the other bins, and she thought fleetingly that someone could hide in there.

  Don’t think about it. You’re nearly there.

  She took another step.

  In the depths of the bin she could see Iggy’s nose raised towards her, his soft gaze shining with hope in the gloom, and she held back her tears yet again. He barked and wagged his tail. Then he moaned plaintively the moment he moved. His claws were clicking on the plastic wall of the container but when he tried to straighten up, he again let out a heart-rending whimper. Dear Lord, what has that bastard done to you? She was already thinking about how she could get him out of there: the tall container stood chest-high; her arms were too short to take hold of Iggy, and she couldn’t dive in there head first. There was only one way: to lay the container flat on the ground and crawl inside. She put the knife on the floor and grabbed hold of the dustbin.

  The rear wheels made it harder than she had expected, and Christine struggled until she was finally able to tilt the container then lower it gently to the ground. After that, she slid inside. Iggy yapped joyfully from the bottom. Then whimpered. And yapped. He was barking stridently, fit to burst Christine’s eardrums in the sound box the dustbin made. She had the vague impression that she had heard the metal door to the room open, and an icy chill went all down her spine. She froze. She could feel her heart beat faster. She had left her knife outside, out of reach. But there were no other sounds, only the blood in her veins. She slid further forward and her fingers finally reached Iggy’s rough fur. She went even closer and wanted to take him in her arms, but the dog reacted by recoiling and growling defensively when she touched his right hind leg.

  What had that bastard done to him?

  Christine groped cautiously with her fingertips along his little paws and felt his curved claws and rough pads, then as her fingers moved up, his hard muscles, the thin bones apparent through his fur, and when she reached his shinbone Iggy began to growl again. She immediately stopped what she was doing.

  ‘Calm down, Iggy, it’s only me. There’s no danger now.’

  As best she could, straightening up and kneeling inside the rubbish bin, with her back curved and her neck against the plastic, she gently lifted the dog, without touching his injured paw, and she held him against her. His warm, rough tongue licked her cheek in thanks. Tears welling in her eyes, she buried her face in his thick curly coat, then she crawled backwards, knees rubbing against the plastic, until she could finally stand up again.

  When she inspected his hind leg in the weak glow of the light bulb, she almost passed out: not only was it broken, but a piece of bone was sticking out of the matted fur. The rest of his paw hung loosely, disjointed, like a doll’s broken limb held in place only by an elastic band. Iggy must be in agony … She wondered if her dog’s paw had been shattered when the man threw him in the dustbin, or whether the monster had deliberately broken it.

  Another thought occurred to her: the sort of person who could treat an animal so cruelly – who knew how far they would be prepared to go? This was no joke, now. Yet another hope evaporating, my dear: your I-scare-women friend is clearly more damaged upstairs than you would have imagined – and yet you have a great deal of imagination, as a rule.

  She looked all around her, trembling. She hurried to pick up the knife.

  Then with Iggy in her arms she went to the door, pushed the metal bar with her elbow and hurried up to the ground floor. It was only once she was back in her flat, with all the bolts and locks securely home, that she began to breathe. She realised her hands were shaking violently, and she sat for a long while on the sofa, with Iggy on her lap, and his terrible wound – but he seemed peaceful now, curled trustingly against his mistress.

  She couldn’t leave him like this; his paw must be seen to urgently.

  Before the damage was irreparable.

  Gérald … Gérald had a friend who was a vet.

  She hunted for her phone, but once she had found it, the sight of it made her freeze. What if Gérald didn’t answer? Or even worse: what if he were with someone else? She looked at Iggy out of the corner of her eye as he dragged himself pitifully to his litter box, head lowered, hind leg dangling – and she pressed the button.

  ‘Christine? What’s the matter?’

  For a fraction of a second, she merely listened and didn’t say anything. She tried to make out any voice, breathing, or movement next to him.

  ‘It’s Iggy,’ she murmured.

  ‘What?’

  She was about to tell him what had happened when she realised what he might think. That she was going crazy. Since that’s what her torturer wanted: to isolate her, to make her seem crazy, depressive, both to her friends and her family; she must avoid making the task any easier for him.

  ‘Iggy broke his leg,’ she said. ‘He’s in pain … He has an open wound, it’s really nasty, the bone is exposed. He can’t stay like this. And no vet is going to answer at this hour. Except, except, maybe, that friend of yours – if you call him.’

  ‘Christine, for God’s sake, it’s four o’clock in the morning!’

  ‘Please, Gérald, he seems to be in terrible pain.’

  A long sigh down the line.

  ‘Denise told me everything,’ he said suddenly. ‘Your encounter yesterday. Oh, for Christ’s sake, Christine…’

  An invisible hand pulled the plug deep in her guts, draining away the last bit of courage she had left.

  That little bitch!

  ‘Christine,’ hissed Gérald’s voice down the line, ‘I can’t believe you could have written that email. What the fuck came over you? Have you gone mad or what? Did you really threaten her? Did you really say, “Stay away from my man”? Answer me, please: did you say it, yes or no?’

  That was why he hadn’t picked up the phone earlier that evening. Because he was angry with her. Upset. Strangely enough, she found it reassuring. Gérald’s anger was something she knew how to manage.

  ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ she sighed, contrite. ‘Please. I’ll explain everything. Believe me, it’s more complicated than you think. There’s something going on here that’s very hard to understand.’

  ‘So it’s true, then? You really said that? Fuck, I can’t believe it!’ he said. ‘And you really wrote that bloody message?’

  ‘No, I didn’t write the message. Later, please. Call your friend – for me. Afterwards, we’ll talk; please, sweetheart…’

  An abnormally long silence. She closed her eyes. Please, please.

  ‘I’m sorry, Christine. Not this time. I need to think. We can’t go on like this.’

  She froze.

  ‘It would be better for us not to see each other for a while, the time it takes to find out where we stand,’ he continued. ‘To take stock. I need a break.’

  She could hear the words, but her mind refused to grasp their meaning. Had he really said what she thought he’d said?

  ‘As for Iggy, I’m really sorry, but surely it can wait a few more hours. I’d be grateful if you don’t try to contact me for the next few days. I’ll get in touch with you.’

  She stared at the telephone, unbelieving.

  He had hung up.

  13

  Opéra bouffe

  When dawn broke she was asleep. It was Iggy licking her fa
ce that woke her up. She’d been dozing for an hour, no more. Once exhaustion had got the better of her nerves and her tears.

  She almost wrapped her arms around Iggy, who was curled up against her chest, but then at the last minute she remembered his broken hind leg.

  She stole a cautious glance in his direction and saw he had been bleeding again, on the duvet, although not a great deal. She concluded that he must have slept, too – in spite of the pain. A vet: it couldn’t wait any longer.

  She slipped cautiously from the bed and this time the little dog did not follow her. Downcast, he watched her leave the room. It was heartbreaking, the way he was sadly licking his wound. It was too early to call, so she headed to the kitchen. On her way she passed the shoe rack, which she had pushed against the front door before going to sleep, perching a vase on it in a precarious position so it would shatter noisily if someone tried to push against it. In the living room it was cold. She turned up the radiator and with a shiver pulled her dressing gown tighter around her, then made herself a black coffee and some buttered crispbreads.

  Strangely enough, she was hungry. She was exhausted but famished. While she ate, perched on the bar stool, her heels on the foot rest, she began a thought process which surprised even her. The sorrow and horror of the night she had just endured had drained her of all her reserves of self-pity; unlike her dog, she had stopped licking her wounds. She felt something of a return to a familiar emotional state. It was still only a faint quiver, but she knew what it was: Christine’s Great Rebound. Christine’s Great Rebound usually happened after an ordeal – and she had been through a fair number of ordeals in her life (I know what you’re referring to, said the little voice. Don’t even think about it, sweetheart.) It happened when she was really at rock bottom. And each time it led to increased determination, a fierce desire not to give in to despair, a surge of energy. It was as if at times like this her brain manufactured a particular kind of antibody.

  At that very moment, in spite of her extreme fatigue, all her thoughts were focused on her tormentor. If there was some connection that had led him to her – and that connection must exist, given everything he knew about her – it must also be possible to work her way back to him, to trace him as he had traced her.