Vango

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “Died of natural causes”— that’s what he’d been told. He didn’t like natural deaths. He didn’t believe in them.

  Deaths by natural causes were an aberration for arms dealers, and Voloy Viktor was never taken in by them. For him to feel well, Viktor needed to hear the sound of weapons and see the lifeless bodies in front of him.

  The dog started barking again, a bit closer this time.

  “I insist that you tell me which train he boarded!”

  Boulard was about to have an apoplectic fit. He was on the line to Paris.

  “I don’t know,” came the voice on the other end. “I’ve got absolutely no idea. Your trains all look the same to me!”

  “Now, look here! Did he board the first train? The one that went to Bourges?”

  “The first train?” the man repeated. “Let me just ask my colleague. . . . No. He wasn’t in the first one.”

  “Well, was he in the second, then? The one that was going to La Rochelle?”

  “Hold on.”

  The man in Paris could be heard talking to someone again. The phone line was so bad that he sounded like a chirruping cricket.

  “Well?” Boulard snapped after several seconds. “Was he in the second train?”

  “The second?”

  “Yes, you heap of dehydrated remains!” the superintendent erupted. “In the second! I asked about the second. Two! Two! Two!”

  “Oh, no, certainly not, not in the second.”

  “Well, then he must have been in the third!” shouted an exasperated Boulard. “Can you confirm for me that he boarded the train bound for Chambéry?”

  “Sorry?”

  “In the third! Three! Three! Two plus one!”

  “No, Chambéry, the third train was for Chambéry!”

  “Yes,” groaned Boulard. “The third going to Chambéry.”

  “In the third? Let me just ask my colleague. . . .”

  “Pass him over, that colleague of yours, you pile of toenail clippings! Pass him over or I’ll have you sent to a penal colony for the rest of your days.”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello? Are you the colleague of Toenail Clippings?”

  “No, it’s still me.”

  Boulard nearly hanged himself with the telephone cable.

  Lieutenant Avignon gently took the receiver out of his hands.

  “We would simply like to know whether he was put on the third train,” he stated as calmly as possible.

  Boulard was watching him like a snarling dog ready to bite.

  “You are joking?” said Avignon after listening for a short while. “Are you . . . Are you quite sure about that? Right. We’ll call you back.”

  He hung up and turned to face Boulard.

  “They’re saying that Viktor was in the fourth train.”

  Superintendent Boulard’s eyes had glazed over. With the end of his tongue between his lips, he looked like a five-year-old child.

  “The . . . fourth. All wight, Lieutenant. Thank you. You may go. Tha’th all I wanted to know.”

  He clutched at the bar and asked for a cold drink.

  “Any particular preference?”

  “Yes. Those . . .”

  With a sweep of his hand, he indicated the entire shelf of liquor.

  There was no fourth train.

  Through his narrow window, Voloy Viktor caught sight of a glistening waterfall cascading over a rock face. The train had been on its way again for some while.

  The Pyrenees. They were almost there.

  The fourth train had just passed the French-Spanish border between Cerbère and Portbou, close to the Mediterranean.

  It hadn’t been made to stop at any station or by any barrier. It had simply filled up on coal and water somewhere in the open country. But it had instantly set off again because a dog was barking.

  Someone must have been lurking in the vicinity.

  Viktor finally felt the train braking as they passed beneath a very high bridge that dominated a wild valley. It was gliding silently over the rails now as it entered a tunnel where it switched tracks and entered another tunnel. Finally, it pulled up to a giant concourse carved out of the mountain and lit by powerful projectors.

  The train stopped on a platform where ten men were waiting for it.

  The door opened.

  Two figures appeared, their faces encased in welder’s masks. They didn’t say a word to Voloy Viktor. In a matter of minutes and by the glimmer of a blue flame, they had liberated him. Viktor stood up and walked toward the light.

  “Here we are!” he declared.

  Dazzled, he stepped down onto the platform and had a good stretch.

  “Is everything all right?” a man asked the arms dealer.

  “Have you got our padre?”

  “No.”

  Victor shot him a murderous look. He had just been ushered into a chair in the middle of the platform, where three people were bustling around him.

  “In that case, everything is most definitely not all right, Dorgeles. How did you let him get away?”

  “We followed him from the police station as far as the Gare d’Austerlitz.”

  “How very admirable. Fifteen minutes by Métro! You really are geniuses when it comes to trailing people. And then?”

  “We saw him go into the Jardin des Plantes.”

  Victor started to clap.

  “Congratulations, Dorgeles. Following a man into the Botanical Gardens: you’ve clearly got an eye for this line of work!”

  The men and women around Voloy Viktor smiled on cue. They looked like the devil’s courtiers. Their hands were full of pencils and hairpieces. They were busy applying his makeup. He was already unrecognizable.

  “The trail for Zefiro went cold in the Natural History Museum,” explained Dorgeles.

  “What a pity.”

  The irony had dropped out of Viktor’s voice.

  “He was very familiar with the premises, Mr. Viktor; he knew them like the back of his hand. He shook us off.”

  “He could only shake you off if he knew you were following him in the first place. How did he know that, eh, Dorgeles?”

  “Zefiro is very cautious.”

  “And you’re not cautious enough.”

  Dorgeles was single-handedly responsible for devising Viktor’s escape. He had prepared the fourth train, disguised and armed an entire regiment, bribed the pointsmen, and corrupted ten other people, but Viktor showed no sign of gratitude.

  “Don’t you have something else to say to me?” demanded Voloy Viktor.

  The makeup team was working frantically on his face. Even his voice was changing.

  “Don’t you have something else to say, Dorgeles?”

  “I’ve got an important lead. A photo taken at Gare d’Austerlitz.”

  Snatching the photo out of his hands, Viktor repeated, “I’m asking if you haven’t forgotten something, Dorgeles!”

  Voloy Viktor pushed aside the people who’d been fussing over him. He was no longer the same man.

  Dorgeles took a step backward.

  Before him stood a forty-five-year-old blond woman who looked like she was hardly wearing any makeup at all.

  “I asked you something, Dorgeles.”

  Dorgeles finally understood what Viktor was expecting from him.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Please accept my apologies . . . Madame.”

  Viktor didn’t answer.

  Dorgeles moved off. He knew that time was running out for him.

  “What about this photo?” Viktor wanted to know.

  “It’s someone who was trying to speak with him, at Gare d’Austerlitz. Zefiro pushed him away. But I’m convinced he knew him.”

  “And have you got him? This somebody?”

  “We’ve just picked up his trail in London. He had disappeared for a few weeks, but we won’t lose him again.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A criminal wanted by your old friend Boulard for the murder of a priest. He claims to be innoce
nt but is pursued by hit men.”

  “Get to him before the others do, and make him talk about Zefiro. Don’t let me down. It’s your only chance of redeeming yourself, Dorgeles.”

  “I’ve already got ten men on the case.”

  Voloy Viktor stood there alone on the platform. From now on he would be called Madame Victoria. As a character, she suited him. No one had ever recognized him under this identity.

  It was cold in the depths of the earth. Madame Victoria was wearing a silk coat over her shoulders. She was holding her high heels in one hand and in the other a photograph, which she brought closer to those long-lashed eyes of hers.

  The photo had been taken in a smoke-filled train station.

  Padre Zefiro could be seen on one side of the shot, staring straight at the camera. And on the other, a young man was walking toward Zefiro. Smiling.

  London, the following night

  It was raining. Vango was running along the bridge. There were still three men behind him. He could see them in the light of the oncoming train. They had been on his heels since the beginning of the night.

  Dozens of intersecting railroad tracks covered the bridge. Vango had got off the train just before Cannon Street station, and his pursuers hadn’t wasted any time in jumping after him. Now he was running between the rails over the Thames. In the distance, he could make out the halo of light from the docks.

  Three times, Vango thought he had escaped them.

  The first time he saw them was when they entered the pub where he had just started working.

  He had traveled across Europe, from south to north, like a stray animal, only coming alive at night. He had long since run out of money, so had taken to feeding himself in the back alleys behind buildings. It was on the outskirts of London, while Vango was picking through some leftover vegetables, that the proprietor of the Blue Fisherman had offered to hire him as a kitchen porter.

  “Can you wash up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come by tomorrow, then.”

  Vango had accepted. On a few coins a day, he would eventually be able to buy the train ticket he needed to continue his journey up north.

  On the third evening, they came for him in the restaurant. They must have followed Vango in the street and spotted the place where he was working. Five or six customers were sitting at various tables. The visitors made straight for the kitchen.

  The landlord tried to stop them at the door.

  “It’s no-entry here, thank you.”

  He received a punch in the forehead and collapsed to the floor.

  When the intruders burst in, the cook put his arms in the air, a carrot sticking out of each hand.

  “I surrender! I surrender!”

  “Shut up.”

  “Are you looking for me?”

  “No. The other one.”

  “Take him. I don’t know him!”

  They stuffed an enormous turnip into the cook’s mouth to make him pipe down.

  Here we go, thought Vango.

  He was trapped at the back of the long kitchen, with no exit. There were four of them. One by one, he hurled the dirty plates and cast-iron pots that were piled up next to him. The cook had tucked himself under the meat safe.

  With no weapons left to halt their advance, Vango poured the greasy, hot dishwater over the floor.

  He managed to shut himself in the storeroom by upturning a table. Vango could hear them skating around on the tiled kitchen floor as he climbed on top of a cupboard, smashed through a skylight with his elbow, and emerged into the back alley.

  In a few movements, he had scaled the facade of the building, aiming for the window on the next floor up. The shutters were closed. He scaled another floor, and then another. All the windows looked rotten. The building had been left to rack and ruin.

  Wiping his face with his arm, Vango felt something hot and wet trickling down his neck. The elbow he had used to smash the skylight was bleeding heavily. He couldn’t really move his right hand anymore. He stuffed it into the bottom of his pocket and didn’t take it out again.

  Noises rose up from the kitchens. Vango completed his ascent like a maimed spider, but with astonishing speed.

  He hung on to one of the wide shutters on the top floor. He wanted to reach the roof.

  Two voices rang out below him. He froze.

  “He must be up there. He couldn’t have got out of the alley.”

  “Where are our English friends?”

  The two men were speaking in French, unlike those who had burst into the kitchen.

  “They’re searching all the floors; they’ll find him, you mark my words.”

  Just then, Vango felt his shutter swiveling around.

  “Hey!” came a voice very close to him.

  The two men looked up at the man who had just flung open both shutters of the top window.

  “We’re heading back down. There’s no one up here.”

  “Little brat! He’s going to pay for this.”

  Vango was pinned behind the left shutter, invisible.

  Four hours later, when there hadn’t been another noise for a long time, Vango finally dared to venture slowly back down toward the courtyard.

  He had heard the police turning up in the middle of the night to record the attack on the restaurant.

  The pub owner was already in the hospital. From behind his shutter, Vango had heard the cook’s heroic tale of how he had defended the young kitchen boy with the aid of a skewer and a butcher’s knife.

  “I didn’t give up until they were down on their knees, begging for forgiveness. Then they left.”

  A little before dawn, Vango slipped down into the street. Everything looked calm. The rain was freezing cold. There was no light at all. Just the sound of a few coins clinking in his pocket and the splat of his poor shoes in the puddles.

  But as he was about to turn the corner of the next building, a car started up and began to give chase.

  Would this never stop?

  Almost at breaking point, Vango ran through the night, down unpaved roads. The rain was making the gutters even wider, so the streets were awash.

  He was up to his ankles in water. The car was growling behind him.

  Suddenly, a crashing din drowned out the noise of the engine. Vango thought it must be a shoot-out. Glancing backward, he realized where the noise was coming from. There was a railroad line behind the fence, on the right-hand side.

  A train was approaching.

  Vango stopped in his tracks, making the tires of the car behind him screech. He took a deep breath and pounced like a lion toward the high fencing, which, as if by magic, he managed to scale.

  “Don’t shoot him!” one of his pursuers called out. “Don’t shoot!”

  Vango had already leaped into the train.

  It was the first train of the morning, and it was headed for the city. A few passengers were dozing on the wooden benches. They didn’t even notice the boy who had appeared without the train stopping.

  Except for an old lady, who smiled at him as if she knew. Vango didn’t acknowledge her. Everything frightened him at that moment.

  He moved closer to the door. He couldn’t trust anyone or anything. He would even have been suspicious of a newborn baby.

  Vango allowed himself to collapse in a corner, against a window. His arm was hurting.

  It wasn’t rain that was falling now, but snow. Gray, fleeting snow.

  What was this deep footprint he seemed to leave behind wherever he went, whether on cobblestones or sand, that meant he could always be found?

  How had they spotted his tracks when there was nothing solid to tie him to this earth anymore?

  Nothing. His parents, Father Jean, Mademoiselle, Zefiro . . . they had all disappeared. It was as if Vango were floating above everything.

  Ethel, perhaps. Ethel still held him by a silk thread.

  He watched the snow falling. His eyelids were starting to grow heavy. Tall factories were belching out smoke over wastel
ands. There were people walking along the platform. He saw them pass by in a flash. He was also revisiting the long downward spiral of his life.

  It can be boring to watch snowflakes falling with your eyes fixed in one place, but when you follow a single snowflake from up high, when you follow its aerobatics, you embark on an intoxicating adventure.

  Vango woke up at the first station. He had slept for only a few minutes. As he opened his eyes, the train was setting off again. Just then, he saw the men running onto the platform and climbing aboard.

  “No.”

  He got up. His pursuers’ car had been quicker than him.

  The old lady was still there.

  Vango opened the window and stuck his head outside. The snow was wet and almost warm. He reached out with his left hand to find a grip-hold on the roof. He heaved himself up with his only functioning arm.

  The old lady watched him disappear, as if the great outdoors had swept him away, just as the men entered. She didn’t say a word. They were panting as they bent down to search under the benches.

  One of them rushed over to the open window and looked outside.

  “That window’s stuck, sir,” the old lady pointed out. “If you were able to close it, we’d all be much obliged.”

  The man pushed it with one finger, and it closed perfectly.

  “Thank you very much.”

  The old lady nodded and closed her eyes for a moment.

  “Why did you say that window was stuck?”

  She opened her eyes again. The man was very close to her face now, and he looked menacing.

  “Eh? I hope you don’t have anything to hide. . . .”

  The other passengers were pretending to be asleep.

  A minute later, as he lay on his front on the roof of the train heading for the bridge at Cannon Street station, Vango saw a man appear, buffeted about by the wind. He had climbed out the same window.

  “Come here!”

  “Who are you?”

  “Come here, my boy. Now, I want you to make your way calmly toward me.”

  The man was threatening him with a pistol.

  Vango started to head over, as requested. The train was passing between two pylons.

  The man followed his every movement. Vango was barely a meter away now. He was crawling slowly. The man would soon be able to reach out and touch him. As the train went under a footbridge, Vango stood up and suddenly jumped, catching hold of a metal arch. He vanished into the darkness.