Larue watched him go off, his shoulders as stooped as when he arrived, then he heard his car’s engine start up at the same time as the first lightning zigzagged over the opposite shore of the lake. Several people, right after the lightning, saw the car go by with its flashing light turned off, crossing their fingers that they would never again see it in the neighbourhood. When it disappeared beyond the turnoff leading to the highway, a few women sighed, and the storm broke.
At the Ménards’, the Lacroixs’, the McBains’, the men pulled their barbecues under the awnings. The smell of grilled meat mingled with that of the rain, and the voices of nervous mothers vied with the rumbling of the storm, Michael, Marnie, don’t you go near the lake. Life went on, but along with those who thought that the storm would wash away the last remnants of the drama, there were some who couldn’t help thinking that it had all begun just like that, with the rain. They watched the sky, praying that the lightning wouldn’t strike their children.
AFTER ZAZA
No thoughts went through Zaza Mulligan’s mind when she cried out. She was now pure terror, an endless cry whose meaning and origin were unknown to her. Then the hand pressing down on her shoulder, hot and humid, closed over her screaming mouth. Zaza tasted its sweat and its salt, and a strong odour of wood, and the insults she tried to hurl at her assailant turned into gurglings, arg, argul, gargul, more horrifying than the forest whose trees leaned down, whose trees waltzed to the rhythm of her gurgling and the man’s commands, shut up you little bitch, shut up, shut up, words uttered through tears and detonations, words spat in the face of a heedless God, shut up, Jim, please, shut up…
Even if they hardly knew her, most of the people spending the summer near Boundary Pond attended Zaza’s funeral out of a sense of propriety, out of compassion for George and Sarah Mulligan, or because of the guilt gnawing away at them already, the sense that their distress had been inadequate to the event, because it was Zaza, because she’d been asking for it. All, from the most cynical to the most kindly, wore mourning, even old Pat Tanguay, who’d exchanged his filthy upper garment for a clean shirt. No one had expected to see him there, because he’d spent recent summers fulminating against the Mulligans’ outboard, even threatening George to put it out of commission with a shotgun, but Pat remembered the hilarity of the little girls, their explosions of joy that sometimes echoed as far as the mountain, and that had more than once stopped him from throwing himself into the depths of that black hole widening around his boat when it felt like the agony in his joints was just the prelude to an absence of all pain. At those times he was tempted to finish everything off right then and there before the curtain fell, until one of the girls cried out whatever, Sam! and the swell stirred up by their laughter dispersed the black circle surrounding his little boat, into which he collapsed, feeling like an old fool. He at least owed that to Zaza Mulligan, a clean shirt and a few genuflections.
The church was already full to bursting when Stan Michaud dipped his fingers into the font, in case the water, reputed to be miraculous, might ease the headache he’d had on waking, a migraine accompanied by sharp flashes, like those that afflicted him two or three times a year when he felt as if he’d missed something crucial in a case, a detail trying to find a way through the charged synapses in his brain. Before finally falling asleep the night before, he’d gone over the Zaza Mulligan case while thinking about the tie and suit he’d have to wear the next day, the sadness he’d have to face, tormented by the persistent feeling that he’d not asked the right questions, and that some son-of-a-bitch was mocking his ineptitude by hammering on his skull. To his mind, the Elisabeth Mulligan affair, like that of Esther Conrad, was one of those unresolved cases closed only because they’d reached dead ends.
After taking a look at the crowd he sat in one of the church’s last pews, where cops usually sit to have a better overall view and to distance themselves as much as possible from the mourning family, which doesn’t want to be reminded that the deceased died a violent death. Several people whom he’d questioned in Boundary had already taken their seats in the church, most of them in the back, not daring to mix with the close relatives. He recognised Gilles Ménard, the McBains, Samuel Duchamp, his wife and their three children, as well as the campground attendant, Mark Meyer, looking cramped in a suit that he mustn’t have worn for a long time. Michaud didn’t like his looks, and he would have loved to grill him some more, but Meyer had an airtight alibi. The night Zaza disappeared he’d left the campground around ten o’clock with his father, who’d taken him to West Forks, the village where he lived, for his weekend off. Despite his innocence, the young man seemed nervous, and kept glancing from left to right as if he knew he was being watched, and someone indeed was watching him, Bob Lamar, the father of Françoise, called Franky-Frenchie, sitting a bit farther off behind the Morgans. It was clear that Lamar couldn’t abide Meyer, and you could understand his aversion to him. Meyer was an insignificant little Don Juan who owed his charm to his suntan and his white teeth. Michaud didn’t know why Lamar was staring at the young man, but he would have sworn that he’d got too chummy with his daughter. He had the look of a father who sensed the stench of carrion behind the courtesies of a suitor.
The priest was just coming into the chancel to the accompaniment of booming organ music when Michaud finally caught sight of Sissy Morgan, flanked by her parents, as still as a statue. When the priest asked the congregation to rise, she didn’t move, didn’t cross herself along with the others, and her shoulders began to convulse when Zaza’s name was read out from the pulpit. Tears closer to cries than sobs rose up beneath the nave, obscuring the priest’s voice, and triggering the lamentations of Sarah Mulligan, Frenchie Lamar, and Stella McBain. The sniffling and moans of one were succeeded by those of others, spreading throughout the church, and heightening the discomfort always associated with that sort of ceremony.
Michaud, for his part, didn’t weep. He hadn’t for years. His pain manifested itself differently, it ate him up inside, generating sleepless nights that left his eyes red, but as dry as those of criminals. It’s that dryness that drew him close to them, and enabled him to glimpse what people see who don’t shed tears. Every time he had to lean over a lifeless body he went deep into himself to where the springs had run dry, and positioned himself behind that matt screen from where a killer coldly contemplates others’ fears. He’d taken that indifference on himself while looking down on Esther Conrad’s remains, an indifference to cruelty that heeds no entreaties, and that gave him a clear understanding of the detachment needed for a murderous act. Esther had had no chance. He’d had the same feeling next to Zaza Mulligan. The screen had come down over the forest, and for an instant he’d glimpsed the hatred driving a hand that kills. Zaza Mulligan had not died as the result of an accident, he’d thought, looking at the body. And he hadn’t changed his mind. Someone had stood there, as near as could be to a child who was going to die, with dry hands and eyes, someone who was perhaps there in this congregation. Instinctively, he sought out those who were not weeping, mostly men, but that proved nothing, since many of them had no real connection to the deceased. But Michaud had learned to his own cost that there was no better shelter for the guilty than the light of day, there where evil may easily dissemble itself among the innocent. So he kept his eyes open, just in case. He noted the calculated gestures, the blank stares, the hands that didn’t tremble enough.
During communion, he spotted Pat Tanguay in a side aisle, as stooped, as vulnerable as on the lake. Was it the setting? Was it the circumstance? He instantly felt immense compassion for the old fisherman, whose bent fingers drummed out on the prie-dieu the melody taken up by the organ, a requiem that shook the whole church. As the organist attacked the last chords, a searing pain flashed through Michaud’s skull, like a fire igniting a drought, and he let himself drop back onto the bench. Pat Tanguay no longer existed, nor his hands crippled by arthritis, nor Sissy Morgan’s anguish. When the f
ire abated at last, the coffin was on its way down the centre aisle on the black-clad shoulders of Jack and Ben, the first bearers, the brothers. He lowered his head, but not soon enough to dodge the eyes of Sarah Mulligan, the mother, reddened by the constant flow of salt and water.
The procession seemed to him to last forever, and he cursed his migraine, which had jolted him out of time as it ran on in step with the mournful music, and had prevented him from making an early exit. He would have preferred to monitor the procession from a distance, so as not to discomfit anyone with his policeman’s eye, but the harm was done. Sarah Mulligan had been hurt, and there was nothing he could do about it. As soon as he’d mustered the strength, he put on his dark glasses and slipped outside. The day was warm and the sky cloudless, but no one heeded the brightness rebounding from the hearse’s gleaming chrome. Gloom had filed out of the church along with the coffin, and hung suspended there under the blue sky.
Normally, Stan Michaud would have gone to the cemetery, it was his job to be there, to observe, to bow his head before the tearful prayers, to endure the sidelong glances, but this chore was beyond him. Glint from the chrome lanced right through him, splintered into needles that stabbed him beneath his eyelids. There was no point in going to the cemetery, all he’d see would be a muddle of luminous forms bent over a trench just as luminous. There would be no police officer today standing in the shade of one of the Evergreen Cemetery’s trees to watch Zaza Mulligan’s coffin being lowered into the ground in a shower of sparks.
Before going back to his car, he shot one more glance at the crowd, in case he might spot Brian Larue. In vain. The book man was back in his den.
Zaza was already slipping away. Zaza’s beauty was fading along with the thousands of images from those boundless yesterdays lingering in death’s wake, the piano lessons, the pillow fights, grey feathers fluttering about faces lit up with radiant laughter. Where are you, Zaz? Where were you? Why?
Standing near the grave over which the coffin hung suspended, somehow weightless despite its bulk, Sissy Morgan turned over in her mind her idiot memories embellished with non-existent flowers, ridiculous suns, and dreams both vain and stupid. Numb with tears, she was adrift at the heart of those murky thoughts that had filled her head ever since her father entered her room, pale as a ghost, to inform her of Zaza’s death: don’t say it, Dad! Please don’t… but the dreaded words issued from Vic Morgan’s mouth like a swarm of lifeless flies that filled the air and came swooping down on her. The ground opened up and the whiteness of death, already there in the earth’s clefts, blanketed with its light everything that was once alive. Sissy Morgan’s thoughts took on the consistency of glass and began to retreat from the inaudible words flitting about the room, spilling like so many obscenities from the ashen lips of Vic Morgan, the father who couldn’t shield her from the suffering every life must know. Dead, Zaza. Dead, indeed.
A week had passed since then, in the course of which Zaza’s belly had been cut open along with her heart, her head, but the thought of it was still receding far down the narrow endless corridor opening into Sissy Morgan’s mind. Make it go away, Dad, she’d murmured, letting fall to her feet the flower that had been placed in her hands. A lily, perhaps. Then the dull sound of shovelfuls of earth on metal cued them to leave. A few birds flew over in the blue sky. On the ground, the sun turned the shadows black.
Dorothy was making jam when Stan came in. The sweet smell of raspberries filled the house along with the end-of-afternoon sun, and lent it a festive air. It reminded Michaud of his childhood, the still steaming puddings he devoured in huge quantities before going back outside into the August light, the warmest of all for him, immensely mild and rich. As far back as he could remember August had been his favourite month, a month of yellow plenitude, when the heat did not scorch. His most vivid memory, in fact, went back to a late August day, a memory beautiful as a mirage. He’d found himself alone in the middle of a field near a heavy-branched apple tree, surrounded by golden hay, and that image represented all that was perfect and true. Nothing could be excised from that moment, or added to it. Everything was there: solitude, silence, the smell of hay and apples, the day’s veiled hue, together with a sense of freedom not tied to the capacity of movement he enjoyed nor to the endless prospect beyond the field, but associated, rather, with his perfect fusion with time, his serene understanding of that place, his awareness of a moment that nothing, no misfortune and no impediment, could ever take away from him. If one were to ask him who he was and what was his ideal, he’d have no choice but to describe that scene, which, fleeting as it was, embodied the beauty that could exist in the world. It was not happiness, but fullness, that was the only word that came to his mind, and it seemed to him that the quintessence of his entire self had been contained in those few moments.
He’d known other moments that came close to that one, under autumn trees, near a lake ablaze with the odorous light of Thanksgiving, but none imbued with that purity and humble splendour. Curiously, it was always a smell that brought back memories for him, along with a feeling of happy solitude occasioned by the perfume of fruits or lilacs. If he were to bring all those memories together, his past would be reduced to a few minutes only, beyond which he seemed not to have existed at all.
What are you thinking about? Dorothy asked him as she took the saucepan out of the oven and saw him standing still in the doorway. He hesitated, not knowing how to express the joy he felt in inhaling the sugary air, while experiencing an acute spell of vertigo at the idea that his life was being compressed, the more it ran on.
Of my mother’s puddings, he replied, preferring to focus on what was left of his past and to avoid the return of his migraine, which had become a nebulous headache during the few hours he’d spent sleeping in his car parked on a small road on the way out of Portland after Zaza Mulligan’s funeral. Their smell made me happy, he added, going to Dorothy to plant a kiss on the back of her neck, which also smelled sweet, honey slightly tinged with the scent of beeswax. You smell of childhood too, and that was so. Dorothy gave off childhood aromas that calmed him, odours that age had been unable to steal away from innocence.
Dorothy mocked him, refusing to believe that something of her youth still clung to her skin, and she served him a glass of Wild Turkey, choosing for herself a kir, a cocktail she’d recently come across in a magazine and that she saved for quiet days like this one, when Stan was able to relax without a conclave of ghosts hovering over them. Without asking for his assent she led him into the garden, beneath the arbour they’d built twenty-five years earlier, when they were young, when every nail they hammered in spoke to them of the future of the wood, of the aging to which they would bear witness.
We’re going to have to trim the ivy, she said, clinking glasses with Stan. They’d have to cut back the climbing roses, those Nancy Haywards on the fence, that were starting to spread across the lawn. She could have asked Stan how his day had gone, but she didn’t want to summon the shadows that would rush in if she made any reference to young Elisabeth Mulligan’s funeral, which Stan had attended with an eye to tracking down a murderer who perhaps existed just in his head or in his minimal trust in humankind, his inability to believe that violence could at times be accidental. In Stan Michaud’s mind, no stone rolled to the bottom of a hill without some man having set it in motion.
Michaud had no wish to talk about the day either. He wanted to forget it, and to discuss roses, the ivy, the dahlias and phlox, while allowing the warmth of the bourbon to spread through his chest and slowly numb him. Enjoy your drink? he asked Dorothy, not able to fathom the vogue among women for mixed drinks with at times two or three bands of dubious colours superimposed on one another. Delicious, she replied, reminding him that she liked change, liked treating herself to drinks and dishes that went with the season. In three days July would give way to the month of August, the month of berries, and the cassis liqueur made her feel as though the ripening of th
e blackberry bushes was not far off.
Did you know that this drink was named after a French priest? And she went on to talk about Félix Kir, a man who had fought on the field of battle, and who was as devoted to his fellows as much as he was to God, whose reality he affirmed with a somewhat dubious sense of humour, “you don’t see my ass but you know it’s there,” she continued, seeing clearly that Stan was bit by bit withdrawing into himself, indifferent to Canon Kir’s straight talk. What had she said to lose him that way? It must have been her allusion to war. She tried to make up for it by reminding Stan that they ought to pay a visit to his sister over the weekend, but it was too late, the shadows were back. While feigning an interest in her words, it was with them that Stan was conversing, with the shades that had come in under the arbour by whatever route, perhaps via the muddy trenches that Félix Kir had known.
She wasn’t entirely wrong. Stan Michaud was at that moment walking through other trenches, this time laid out by a man who had rejected the war. He was following in the footsteps of Peter Landry in the depths of a forest bearing his name, strewn with traps that for him represented yet another product of warfare. Zaza Mulligan, barring proof to the contrary, was one of the thousands of victims of a conflict that had thrust Landry deep into Boundary’s woods. Without that war, Zaza Mulligan would still be alive.
Boundary Page 9