The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

  Under a large stone? Between the roots of a tree? Near a seashell?

  It was impossible to remember.

  But poor Gouti never dared tell his mother.

  Days passed, all of them the same, and with each passing day Gouti felt more ashamed and less able to admit to his mother that he was too absent-minded for such a precise and meticulous job.

  Then one morning, winter came.

  Gouti’s whole family left its branch and went to hide under the spider of roots. Theirs was a deep, clean burrow that Gouti’s grandfather had dug a long time ago, but with the family growing so large there was no longer enough space to keep their food close by.

  They slept for six months, but it felt like only a second.

  When they awoke and went up to the surface, they thought they must have emerged on the wrong side of the earth.

  Their big tree was no longer there.

  No tern, no owl. Even worse, there were no longer any hazel or walnut trees, any oaks or pines. There was no more forest.

  A winter storm had blown down all the trees while they slept.

  Their mother always knew how to organize things, even in a crisis such as this. The most important thing is food, she said in a calm voice, and she asked Gouti to go and dig up the food he’d buried in the sand.

  Gouti started to cry.

  The beach was vast. It would be easier to find a pine needle in a forest; they would all die of hunger before he found a single hazelnut . . . and the trees that lined this beach would never produce any more nuts because they were all lying on the sand, their branches broken, their roots in the air.

  Maman did not scold Gouti. She simply said: “We have to leave, children. We must find another place where we can feed ourselves.” And she asked Gouti to carry Musa on his back since she was still very little, while she would carry Gouti’s grandfather, who seemed to have aged another two years during the second that their winter nap had lasted.

  They went all around the world.

  They crossed plains and rivers, mountains and deserts. They ate wherever they could, in cellars and attics, at the top of strange trees they had never seen before and at the bottom of endless holes that seemed to burrow beneath the ocean. They were chased away by brooms, they made children scream in schools and old ladies in churches, they travelled in trucks and on boats, and even once in an airplane.

  And then one day, months or maybe even years later, one day when they were even more starving than usual, the grandfather with the white moustache, who had hardly uttered a word since the start of their voyage, told them: “It is time to go home.”

  Maman must have thought it was a ridiculous idea. But as grandfather never said anything, when he did speak, she felt she had to obey him.

  So home they went. They were sad because they remembered the trees of their forest lying on the sand, the vast beach without a single leaf under which they could hide, the empty seashells and the dead branches.

  At first they thought they must have come to the wrong beach.

  Only grandfather was smiling, making his white moustache dance. He asked the whole family to sit on a little pile of sand and began to talk: “A long time ago, when I was young—around Gouti’s age—I was very absent-minded and I used to daydream about going around the world. We were poor and thin, there were barely any trees on the beach, there was no forest, we had almost nothing to eat and, on top of that, every time I buried one of the few hazelnuts I had managed to find, I would forget where I’d left it. And then one day, from one of those forgotten hazelnuts just one a tree grew, and on its branches were a hundred hazelnuts. Then another tree. And another. A forest. The forest where you were all born.

  “Home.

  “No life passes without a storm, without having to start over again.”

  And so they walked on over the sand.

  And on the beach, where Gouti had buried and forgotten hundreds of hazelnuts, walnuts and acorns, there was the biggest, greenest, densest forest they had ever seen. Gouti’s mother hugged him tight to her chest while Mulo and Musa ran between the trees and applauded with their little paws, watched calmly by the tern and the owl, who had come back long ago.

  Then Gouti’s grandfather said that he was very tired, that he would soon fall asleep, just for a second, but a second that would last longer than the winter. But first, he had one last thing to tell Gouti.

  He took his grandson aside, and they walked until their feet almost touched the waves and his moustache was flecked with foam. Then grandfather spoke softly: “You see, Gouti, the real treasure is not what we spend our life searching for; the real treasure was buried close by all the time. If we plant that treasure, one day, if we cultivate it and water it every evening, even if we forget why, then one fine morning, when we have lost all hope, that treasure will bloom and grow.”

  * * *

  Gently, Malone let Gouti fall asleep once more. His toy would need to be wide awake tomorrow. Maman-da and Pa-di were coming to school to see his teacher. He was a little scared about what they would say.

  He had to sleep too, but he didn’t really want to. He knew the nightmares would return. He could already hear that icy rain falling, cold, shining, cutting. He didn’t even want to close his eyes.

  Not because he was afraid of the dark. When Malone closed his eyes, behind his eyelids, in his head, he saw only one color, as if everything had been painted.

  Just one color.

  Red.

  Everywhere.

  TUESDAY

  THE DAY OF THE WAR

  5

  Vasily Dragonman waited patiently in the lobby, his bag resting on his knees. Policemen hurried past him. If it weren’t for their uniforms and the psychologist’s worn leather jacket, he could easily have passed for a pharmaceutical sales rep waiting in a hospital corridor, with overworked nurses rushing back and forth in front of him.

  Captain Augresse appeared. She was walking more slowly, down the middle of the corridor, forcing her colleagues to flow around her, brushing the walls on either side as they passed. She called out to one of the policemen who was walking towards her.

  “Papy, did you call the doctor back?”

  Lieutenant Pierrick Pasdeloup slowed down. All of his colleagues called him Papy, not only because he was the oldest person in this particular station, only a few months from retirement, but above all because—at just over 50—he already had six grandchildren scattered across France. Shaven-headed, with a thin salt-and-pepper beard, he had the gentle eyes of a faithful dog and the lean physique of a runner. The very oldest guys in the brigade thought he was still young, the younger ones that he was already old.

  “He’s busy with patients all morning,” the lieutenant replied. “He’ll call us back when he gets a moment.”

  “But did he confirm that the man he stitched back together yesterday really was Timo Soler?”

  “He’s one hundred percent sure. Timo Soler came to him a few minutes after we spotted him near the pharmacy in Saint-François. Professor Larochelle patched up our armed robber at the port—the Quai d’Osaka—hidden away between some shipping containers.”

  “And the good doctor contacted the police immediately afterwards? Not too troubled by professional secrecy, this one . . . ”

  “No,” Papy confirmed with a smile. “And you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Marianne Augresse blinked away the image of the wounded robber and turned to Vasily.

  “Shall we go, Mr. Dragonman? I’ve had to fit you in between two meetings, and I can’t promise we won’t be interrupted by an emergency.”

  The psychologist’s calm demeanor stood in sharp contrast to the general frenzy around him. He sat down without creasing his leather jacket, opened his bag, took out a notebook and spread the child’s drawings in front of him. His light brown eyes—almost the color of varnished wood, terraco
tta or golden pastry—scanned the documents like a laser. His Slavic accent seemed even more pronounced than it had been on the phone.

  “These are Malone’s drawings. I have an entire notebook filled with notes and comments. I started typing them up, but . . . ”

  Marianne Augresse lifted one hand, as if to make Vasily freeze so that she could observe him. This psychologist was incredibly charming. A bit younger than her, maybe, but she adored shy, reserved men, the type who seemed to burn with some secret, inner passion. Like a tragic character straight out of a novel by Tolstoy or a play by Chekhov.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Dragonman, but could you start at the beginning? Who? Where?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sorry. The child’s name is Malone. Malone Moulin. He’s in his first year of preschool. In Manéglise. I don’t know if you know where . . . ”

  The captain signaled for him to continue, with a simple glance at the map of the estuary pinned to the opposite wall. Manéglise was a small village of around 1,000 people, surrounded by fields, about ten kilometers from Le Havre.

  “It was the school nurse who brought him to my attention. According to her, Malone kept talking nonsense. I met him for the first time three weeks ago.”

  “And that’s when he told you that his parents weren’t his real parents!”

  “Exactly. He claims to remember another life, before . . . ”

  “And the parents deny this.”

  “Yes.” He checked his watch. “In fact, they should be meeting the headmistress of the school in Manéglise at this very moment.”

  “Without you?”

  “They didn’t want me there.”

  “The parents or the headmistress?”

  “Well, both, really.”

  The psychologist gave a sorrowful smile, his eyes imploring. A lost dog in the street, begging for a sandwich.

  “It’s hard to argue with their view, really, isn’t it? Frankly, Mr. Dragonman, if Angélique hadn’t sent you . . . ”

  There was a sparkle in his golden eyes as he pushed the child’s drawings in front of the captain.

  “At least let me explain. These drawings, a few words. It won’t take long.”

  Marianne Augresse hesitated. This man really was irresistible, the way he kept apologizing, stammering, hesitating, yet never letting go of his objective. She would have to ask sly little Angie where she had found him.

  “OK, Mr. Dragonman, you have fifteen minutes.”

  At that moment, the door opened, and Papy broke the spell.

  “We’ve got the doctor on the phone!”

  “Jesus! Put him through to my personal line.”

  “I can do better than that,” said Lieutenant Pasdeloup. “I can project his face on to your wall, larger than life. This is Professor Larochelle, Marianne, he’s a bigwig at the Monod hospital and his office is equipped with the latest videoconferencing technology.”

  The captain asked Vasily Dragonman to leave the office for a few minutes.

  “It’s to do with the armed robbery in Deauville, in January, do you remember that?”

  The psychologist nodded, more amused than annoyed, and went out to wait patiently in the corridor while a second lieutenant entered, pushing a trolley with a camera and a microphone on it.

  “We need to update our equipment!” said the cop, pointing the camera at the white wall.

  He crouched down next to the trolley. He was wearing a skin-tight white T-shirt and jeans. About thirty. Face of an angel, muscles of a bodybuilder, trainers on his feet and a general laid-back appearance.

  Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Lechevalier. Married. Two children. A devoted husband and contented father. And a walking, talking female fantasy.

  “Hurry up, JB!”

  Marianne was only grouching at him for form’s sake. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the lieutenant’s curved back, before descending to those square centimeters of exposed flesh between the bottom of his T-shirt and the top of his jeans.

  Already taken. Hands off . . .

  “All right, we’re ready,” said JB, getting to his feet with a cat-like undulation of his pelvis.

  Lieutenants Pasdeloup and Lechevalier both sat down. Marianne took a seat behind her desk. JB touched the remote control and the white wall of the police station was transformed into a sumptuous, high-tech vision. Everything in the image appeared to be square or rectangular, from the varnished wooden desk to the gray leather chairs, from the exotic wood furniture to the plasma screen hung on the wall, even the large bay window that bathed this entire room in light.

  The surgeon appeared in a moment, the ice cubes clinking in the glass he held. His white coat, worn casually over a three-piece suit, seemed specially designed to match his carnivorous smile.

  “Captain Augresse? Sorry, I only have a few minutes. There’s a woman I have to meet. She’s lying down, eagerly awaiting my organ!”

  He paused for two or three seconds before continuing, as if the video system was equipped with canned laughter to punctuate every joke he made. His immaculate teeth looked like an advert for the work of his colleagues in orthodontics.

  “I’m performing a liver transplant, so let’s make this quick. You wanted to talk to me?”

  “You treated Timo Soler yesterday?”

  The surgeon lifted the glass to his lips. The liquid was copper-colored. Whisky? Red Bull? In the corner of his office, some golf clubs protruded from a Hugo Boss bag. Every detail seemed like part of an expensive Hollywood set.

  “The armed robber, you mean? I already told your detectives everything. Your fugitive called me yesterday, late afternoon. An emergency. We met at the Quai d’Osaka, out of sight of any witnesses. He was waiting for me in a white Yaris. I noted the registration number, of course. He had a nasty wound between the subclavian artery and the upper lobe of the left lung, caused by a 9 mm bullet that had lodged there and been extracted somewhat summarily a few months earlier. The wound hadn’t been treated since then. According to what the man told me, the wound had reopened recently, following a nasty fall. He was in agony. I did what I could.”

  “You managed to operate on him like that? In his car, at the port?” The captain didn’t hide her surprise.

  “Of course not! When I said that I did what I could, I meant: I did what I could to help you.”

  “Help us?”

  JB appeared to be spellbound by the surgeon’s room. He could see what looked like a swimming pool behind the office window, or perhaps it was the sea? The office was located on a hill in Sainte-Adresse, the chic part of Le Havre.

  The surgeon seemed annoyed. “Yes. I wanted to help the authorities. Informing you about the presence of the man you’ve spent months searching for is the least any honest citizen would do, don’t you think?”

  “Of course, Professor. And what else did you do to help us?”

  “I injected him with a double dose of nalbuphine, an analgesic that’s twice as strong as morphine. That calmed him down instantly and will ease the pain for a good twelve hours. After that, I examined his wound, fiddled about with it and then sewed it up. From the outside, it looks like a piece of haute couture.”

  The professor flashed another brilliant smile, then moved closer to the camera, as if he were about to impart a secret.

  “But inside, Captain, I must admit that I made a holy mess of it. A scalpel cut here, another there. The pain will be unbearable for Timo Soler when the effects of the drug begin to wear off. He will have no choice but to call me again . . . and this time, you’ll be waiting for him with the cavalry.”

  Marianne swallowed before replying.

  “Yes indeed. We’ll be there.”

  Larochelle emptied his glass.

  “Perfect. I have to go now. The young lady is waiting for me to give her a new liver. And hopefully, she’ll be a liver. Not a dyer, if you see what I me
an . . . ”

  After one last burst of laughter the line went silent, and the luxurious decor vanished instantaneously, as if it had never existed. The three cops continued staring at the white wall a moment longer.

  “The man’s a saint,” said Papy at last.

  “Where would the forces of law and order be without committed citizens such as him?” JB added.

  “OK,” grumbled Marianne. “But all the same, if Timo Soler does resurface to get himself sewn up again, we’re not going to stand by and watch. We’re going to nab him.”

  The captain turned to JB. “Spielberg, tidy up your things.”

  Then to Papy. “You stay on Dr. House’s tail, on a minute-by-minute basis.”

  And then, finally, she picked up the child’s drawings that had been left on her desk. Four wavy, black vertical lines, and a fifth line, in blue, that went diagonally across them.

  A child’s scribble, nothing more.

  “Give me fifteen minutes with that shrink. He’s going to explain to me how a three-year-old’s memory works.”

  6

  Little hand on the 12, big hand on the 1

  The class dispersed and Malone found himself alone. Half of the children were already lined up in pairs, forming a noisy caterpillar, waiting to go through a little iron gate behind the playground that led to the canteen. The other half were running towards their parents. Mothers mostly. The fathers tended to come in the mornings or evenings. Each child grabbed a hand or two arms, hugged a neck, or clung to a leg.

  But not Malone. Not today.

  “Be a good boy and wait here. They won’t be long.”

  Clotilde, his teacher, smiled at him.

  It was true: Malone did not have long to wait. Maman-da and Pa-di arrived just after the other parents had left. Maman-da was rarely late, but she usually came on her own to fetch him for lunch, not with Pa-di.