Don't Turn Out the Lights

by Bernard Minier

  21

  Ensemble

  Christine did not sleep that night, except for an hour towards morning, when she dozed. That night she understood that a city contains various sorts of hell, of varying sizes and aspects, but that the principal form of torture, as Jean-Paul Sartre put it, comes from the other people who inhabit that city.

  The night before, she had given a start when Lieutenant Beaulieu uttered the time-honoured phrase: ‘It is eighteen forty. From now on, you are in police custody.’

  She had listened while he explained the charges brought against her and read her her rights, and she had watched him go through the initial gestures of police liturgy, then put through a call to the prosecutor of the Republic. The female cop went out. Beaulieu asked her, among other things, if she wanted to consult a lawyer. She figured that the fewer people knew about this, the less chance there would be of a leak to the press (she could already imagine the article’s introductory paragraph: ‘Radio Five presenter in custody for assault’). She could certainly survive a night in a cell. She replied that she did not want a lawyer, because she had done nothing. He shrugged, and at about seven o’clock, invited her to go with him. It wasn’t really an invitation. They made their way to another lift, not the one she had taken, but one directly opposite. The cop swiped his magnetic badge and the doors to the lift opened. Once they were inside, he swiped the card again and the lift began to go down, vibrating.

  When the doors opened again, the cold, clinical aspect of the place made her begin to tremble. They turned to the right and immediately came to a corridor with many doors on either side. The place was vast and echoing and poorly lit, as were some of the cells; others were completely dark. She saw men lying near the ground, their heads close to the window, like puppies in a pet store, and she began trembling again. On the other side of the corridor, in a room that was entirely glassed-in, several guards in light-coloured uniforms were observing her; two of them stood up and left the room to join them in an adjacent space where there was a metal detector. There were no windows at all. Anywhere. A basement. She swallowed hard.

  ‘Hey,’ said Beaulieu, ‘I’ve brought you Mademoiselle Steinmeyer. How are things this evening?’

  ‘Calm,’ replied one of the guards. ‘But it’s still a bit early: the D&Ds aren’t here yet.’

  Beaulieu saw her worried look.

  ‘Drunk and disorderly,’ he explained. ‘See that she gets an individual cell – if that’s at all possible.’

  The man nodded and looked at her. The other guards were also staring. She shrivelled beneath their gaze.

  ‘She’s in your hands,’ declared Beaulieu. ‘See you tomorrow. Night, lads.’

  ‘Please go through the metal detector,’ said one of the guards politely.

  She obeyed. A woman in uniform joined them soon after. She greeted the men then began searching Christine – a superficial search, but the guard’s hands displayed a repulsive absence of restraint which gave her goosebumps.

  ‘Follow me.’

  She opened a door onto a little room with forty or more lockers. Christine noticed that there were motorcycle helmets lined up along the top. The woman in uniform – small and stocky – grabbed hold of a large deep wooden box and placed it on the table.

  ‘Please remove all your jewellery: watch, rings, bracelets, earrings and your belt, and put them in the box,’ said the woman. ‘Along with any money, papers, keys and mobile phone.’

  Christine did as she asked, with the impression that she was losing a bit more of her identity with every object she relinquished. The guard drew up an inventory, out loud, while writing it down at the same time in a big ledger; then she took a piece of paper, looked at Christine’s ID, and wrote, Christine Steinmeyer, 31/4817. She placed the box in one of the lockers, locked the door and stuck the paper with her name on the door.

  ‘Where shall I put her?’

  When she had an answer, they went through the glass door and the woman walked ahead of Christine down the long, poorly lit corridor. The cells had Plexiglas facades and metal posts painted blue-grey. The men behind them were lying on brown blankets in the harsh light, on blue plastic-coated mattresses. Christine made an effort not to look in their direction.

  ‘Hey! What time is it?’ called one of the men as they walked by. ‘Hey, babe, first visit, is it? Watch out for that vicious guard: she likes pussy!’

  The woman stopped two doors further down, turned the key, then gave the short vertical bar a sharp tug. The powerful clang of metal resounded down the entire corridor – a sound out of a film, a prison sound. Christine was trembling so violently that her shoulders abruptly drew level with the base of her skull.

  ‘Take your shoes off.’

  She obeyed. The woman opened a drawer in the glass and metal facade, just below the bunk, and she shoved them into the dark.

  ‘Go in.’

  She trembled as she stepped forward in her socks over the cold concrete. She looked around at her cell: an off-white cave of two metres by three, a concrete bench with a partitioning wall, behind which the toilet must be hidden. Rounded corners everywhere. A mattress. A sink in a niche at the back. That was all.

  ‘In a short while, two people will come to take you for fingerprinting. In the meantime try to get some rest.’

  ‘It’s cold here,’ said Christine.

  ‘I’ll bring you a blanket. Do you want something to eat?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She wasn’t hungry: she was cold, she was frightened – she was terrified.

  Once she had the brown blanket over her shoulders, she closed her eyes and tried to close her mind to the place as well, to forget where she was – and how she’d got there. After all, it’s not so terrible. At least here no one can get at you. You’ll see: in an hour or two, you’ll feel better – even if it won’t be easy to sleep on this thing. She spent the next hour curled up on the thin, hard, plastic-coated mattress, wrapped in a musty-smelling blanket, and she was sorry she had turned down the food, because her stomach was contracting with cramps.

  After an hour had gone by, two people – a man and a woman who were younger than her – came to fetch her and led her into a windowless, neon-lit room (near the lift, which gave her a brief, cruel flash of hope that was immediately extinguished). There was a table, a computer, a counter behind a glass window and a large device that looked like a cash dispenser. A man with blue gloves, his face protected by a surgical mask, was waiting for her behind the window. He made her sit down, asked her to open her mouth, and with the help of a cotton bud took what she supposed must be a DNA sample; after that, the young woman asked her to go over to the big device for fingerprinting: first her entire hand, then her five fingers one by one. She spoke to her pleasantly, as if this were some simple administrative formality. Finally, in one corner of the room, Christine was entitled to the traditional mug-shots. Once the two young people had accompanied her back to her cell, Christine felt as if this time it really had happened: she was on the other side now. She found it hard to fight against the dejection and despair that were overwhelming her. Her brain, which up to now had not taken the full measure of the situation, was howling with shame, confusion and fear.

  And then it was hell.

  Every dealer, pimp, thief, streetwalker, drunk or junkie in Toulouse seemed to have agreed to meet there. They came in one after the other, between ten o’clock at night and two o’clock in the morning, making an enormous racket. Christine was glad no one could see her behind the canvas blind because her madness was increasing from one minute to the next. And her anger: a terrifying tension ran from one end of the corridor to the other, bouncing down it like particles along a collider. It was impossible to sleep: her cell was the next-to-last individual one; two doors further down were the larger cells where between four and ten people were locked up. Noise, fury, havoc: a frenzied Sabbath. By around two o’clock the corridor was as busy as the main concourse of a railway station, transformed into a rowdy
, keyed-up, feverish menagerie.

  That night, Christine listened to the shrill screaming of wild beasts, their demented howling, their pounding fists and flailing kicks against Plexiglas and metal, the sinister laughter of drunkards, the desperate wailing of junkies, the provocative, querulous insults of whores, languages, accents, locks turning, doors opening and closing, footsteps, calls, ringing sounds, cries. She tried to shut herself off from the anarchy, from all the bestiality and fury that reigned. And couldn’t. At around three o’clock, her body eventually reacted: she was overcome by nausea and she hurried to the hole to vomit, on her knees on the ground that was covered with industrial surfacing, hidden by the partition wall, while other newcomers started up with their own racket. She got up, wiped the sweat from her brow and pressed the button for water from the tap – and it splattered her clothes. This time, she began to cry, stifled sobs at first – because she was afraid someone might hear her – then louder and louder, shaken by convulsions, as all her mental barriers broke down.

  ‘Go ahead and cry, baby, it’ll do you good,’ said a woman’s voice gently from the neighbouring cell.

  * * *

  The cold woke her up. She had eventually fallen asleep on the hard mattress, wrapped in the brown blankets, and when she sat up, the aching in her back was like a thousand nicks with a razor. Her mouth was furry and she was horribly thirsty. She noticed that it had grown silent at last. The corridor was calm once again. Loud snoring came from the cells, as did murmured conversation in low voices. Then the locks clicked again and there was the sound of footsteps. Doors opening; people waking, complaining, coughing. Three minutes later the woman in uniform was pulling up the blinds, unlocking her door and handing her a tray.

  ‘Here.’

  Two sugar biscuits and a carton of orange juice.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, despite everything.

  The woman pulled down the blind and went on to the next cell. Christine looked at her breakfast, which in other circumstances she would have pushed away disdainfully, but her stomach was cramping with hunger. She hadn’t eaten a thing since the night before, so she hurried to open the carton of juice, her teeth clenched so tight it felt as if she had needles in her jaws when she took the first sip. Once she had finished, far from being assuaged, her hunger and thirst were even greater.

  One hour later, as she was dozing and dreaming, the blind was raised and the lock clicked again.

  ‘Follow me.’

  She went down the corridor behind the woman. Beaulieu was waiting for her by the guards’ glassed-in room.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, going ahead of her into the room with the lockers. ‘Please take your things, Mademoiselle Steinmeyer. Make sure everything is there and write, “collected searched items, all complete” here, please.’

  The woman in uniform opened her locker, pulled out the wooden box and set it down before her on the little table. Christine felt her chest inflate with hope as if it were an inner tube. She put her watch back around her wrist, fastened her belt and picked up her papers and her belongings one by one, her hand trembling. She did not recognise her uneven handwriting as she wrote across the page, as jagged as the scrawl of a seismograph.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Beaulieu.

  Hope again, when he went ahead of her towards the lift. As they rode upwards she felt like a diver in the depths who has been freed from imprisoning straps and with a kick of her heel rises to the surface at the last minute, just as her oxygen tank is nearly empty. She would never have believed that a simple lift could symbolise freedom to this degree. Then there came a chilling thought: he was going to interrogate her. And then he would take her downstairs again. Oh no, please. She realised she was ready to confess anything rather than go back into that hell. But she was no fool: if she confessed, it would make things much, much worse.

  They came out of the lift and Beaulieu led her not to the interrogation room but to his office. He pointed to a chair. She collapsed into it with the same pleasure she would have experienced luxuriating in a soft armchair at some grand hotel.

  ‘You are lucky, Mademoiselle Steinmeyer,’ he said, sitting down in turn.

  She said nothing. All her senses were on the alert.

  ‘You are being released. You are no longer in custody.’

  She almost asked him to repeat himself.

  ‘Corinne Délia has withdrawn her complaint.’

  Clearly, this was not to his liking, and Christine wondered if he was joking, if this was some sort of mental torture – like hostages, blindfolded, made to undergo fake executions. She couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘I tried to dissuade her, but she didn’t want to know,’ said the cop sternly. ‘She is of the opinion that she also had her part to play in the matter, and that you have learned your lesson. You really are very lucky. But don’t forget we have your name now.’

  There was still not a shred of kindness in his protruding eyes. He reached for a sheet of paper on the desk and handed it to her.

  ‘Here, this is a list of psychiatrists who might be able to help you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’

  He got up to accompany her to the lift, which he activated with his badge. Just as the doors were about to close, he leaned closer to be able to speak in a hushed voice.

  ‘A few words of advice,’ he said. ‘I have my eye on you. So don’t go messing with me, sweetheart. Make yourself scarce.’

  The endearment and the threat were like a slap in the face. Her knees shaking, she sought refuge at the back of the lift. With only one thought in her mind: to get out of there.

  * * *

  Thus it was that on an icy, late December morning, Christine dragged herself to the nearest Métro station, feeling ashamed, guilty, unhappy and terrified. She waited for the train and once she was inside, she sat down without a single glance around her. It was a typical early Sunday morning; there weren’t many people. Staring at the glass pane in front of her, she tried to evoke some happy memory, but nothing came. She had thought she could resist, put up a fight, but she had to face facts: it was a lost cause. Despair was about to take control of her spirit and win the merciless struggle; its outcome, she now realised, might well prove fatal for her.

  As she hurried out onto her street, she slipped on the icy pavement and twisted her ankle painfully, but she didn’t even swear. Exhaustion had stripped her of any vague desire for rebellion. She saw her guardian angel sleeping, dead to the world in his cardboard boxes, and she gasped with rage. Some bodyguard he is! The thought inspired a sinister little laugh, void of any humour, until she reasoned she couldn’t expect him to stay awake twenty-four hours a day, after all.

  Christine crossed the street and shook him gently by the shoulder. She needed to speak to someone about what had happened, and he fitted the bill perfectly. After all, he had proved himself more shrewd and attentive than anyone else. But he didn’t move. She shook him again. A loud snore came in lieu of an answer and when he opened his mouth full of yellow teeth a powerful fustiness of alcohol, as if a barrel had just been tapped, caused her to recoil. He’d been drinking … he was drunk! The bastard had taken her money and rushed off to liquidate it, quite literally. He had absolutely no intention of keeping his part of the bargain. The betrayal was like a punch in the stomach and she staggered towards her building.

  Her flat was freezing and she wondered if someone had come to turn down the heat. She had an immediate answer: music was coming from the living room, two women’s voices woven together like vines, poignantly wrapped one around the other. She pushed Iggy to one side; the dog was limping pitifully, his head in his plastic funnel, but he still managed to wag his tail on seeing her. She recognised the music. Lakmé, the ‘Flower Duet’.

  She saw the CD case on the coffee table. Yet another opera.

  He had been here.

  She was stunned with terror and took a step backwards, dazed, unsteady, while the music soared, filling every corner of the flat.

&
nbsp; And yet something else was welling inside her. A devastating anger. As if from a chain reaction, as if her radioactive core had reached a critical mass. Her vision blurred and her anger flared as suddenly as an ember falling onto a bed of dry pine needles. She stepped forward, grabbed hold of her mini stereo and picked it up angrily, yanking the plugs from the sockets and bringing the lament for two voices to an abrupt end. She gave free rein to her fury, yielding to an all-embracing, blinding outburst as she hurled the stereo across the room, smashing it against the opposite wall and screaming, ‘What do you want from me? Go fuck yourselves! Shit-faced bastards!’

  * * *

  Servaz was sorry it was Sunday. He had calls to make, people to visit. Well, not that many. But he had always hated Sundays.

  He was walking in the snowy woods, following a lane that wove through hornbeams and tall, twisted oak trees. He pondered the meaning of the two clues his mysterious correspondent had sent. Room 117 and the Space Station. Célia Jablonka had briefly frequented the milieu of space research and exploration before ending her days in the aforementioned room. Those were the facts. But what was the connection between the two? Clearly, his anonymous informer knew a certain number of things. Why, then, did he not simply give his information to Servaz? Why didn’t he show himself? Was he afraid for his own safety? Could he not do it without breaking some professional secrecy by which he was bound? Servaz probed deeper. A lawyer? A doctor? A fellow cop?

  He couldn’t think of anything. Had he lost his touch? Deducting, constructing, amassing, extrapolating – elementary operations, but the thing was, you always had to go that little bit further, and then a little bit further …

  A space station: space, stars, cosmonauts (didn’t they call them spationauts in this country?). A paranoid, suicidal artist … or perhaps not. A little bit further. He knew where he had to begin, and how: as if he were investigating a murder and not a suicide. He had to start with that premise. First step: the family.