The Double Mother

by Michel Bussi

  The psychologist realized that he had the captain’s attention, so went on, taking care not to speak too quickly.

  “Except that . . . how can I explain this? It doesn’t appear to be a classic case of trauma. He doesn’t seem to be scared of his new parents, for example. He likes them, in fact. It’s just that he thinks they’re not his parents.”

  “Pedophilia, or violence from a close relative—not necessarily his father or his mother—could that have provoked this behaviour?”

  “Not as far as I know. I haven’t detected anything of that nature.”

  Marianne looked down at her watch.

  12:20 P.M.

  For several minutes now, a rainstorm had been hammering against the window of the captain’s office. This was a common occurrence in Le Havre. It never lasted long—the rain, at least. The humidity lasted, though, that gray dampness, as if the water had soaked up the concrete from the city center, the gravel from the port and the pebbles from the beach.

  Behind the other window—the one that looked out on to the corridor—officers continued to walk past unhurriedly, their body language a sure sign that Timo Soler had still not shown any signs of life. Or of death, if the justice rendered by Larochelle’s scalpel had been a little too heavy-handed.

  Marianne decided to continue the interview for a while longer, and not just because of the shrink’s beautiful eyes. He was talking to her about early childhood, about Malone Moulin, about children aged between zero and four. About those sweet little kids, similar to the one she hoped to carry in her womb one day.

  “Mr. Dragonman, I’m going to be honest: I’m finding it very hard to follow you. Everything you’ve told me seems like a bad joke, but last night you said it was urgent, an emergency. That was what worried me. You claimed that this child’s memory could vanish if we didn’t act quickly. Explain that to me. What will happen if no one except you believes this boy’s story?”

  8

  Little hand on the 12, big hand on the 4

  There was an opening about ten centimeters high between the white tiles and the bottom of the door, presumably to make it easier to clean the floor. Malone peered through the gap. Water was accumulating in front of the toilet block, forming a little puddle: the same, only smaller, as the one in the sand at the bottom of the slide. All he’d have to do is jump over it. It’d be easy, even if he wasn’t good at jumping or running fast, all those things that the big boys did.

  It wouldn’t be a big deal if his trainer got wet. Once the water had fallen from the sky, it wasn’t dangerous anymore, because it died when it crashed onto the ground. Like bees: once they’d stung someone, they died. Maman-da told him that; she often talks to him about bees, mosquitoes, ants, and other little creatures.

  Yes, he’d just have to jump over the water.

  When the rain was over.

  Not straight away.

  Malone could still hear the rain falling on the roof of the toilets and he didn’t know if it was the drops that were already dead falling from the branches of the trees or the roof, or if it was the others, the ones that sting like a thousand snakes, like a thousand arrows from a knight’s bow, if you didn’t have time to hide.

  He crouched down to look through the gap again. On the other side of the playground, through the classroom window, behind the raindrops that splashed against the pane and the handprints stuck to the glass, he could make out the face of Maman-da.

  * * *

  “I don’t feel comfortable here, Miss.”

  Amanda Moulin had removed a few bits of plasticine from the nearest shelf and her fingers were kneading them into tiny balls. Dimitri Moulin, still contorted on his miniature chair, now seemed to have little interest in the conversation.

  “School was never my thing, you see,” Amanda went on. “This is the school I went to. I started here nearly thirty years ago, in 1987. Mrs. Couturier was the headmistress. Back then, there weren’t all these toys outside and in the classroom. There was just one classroom, and there were only about a dozen of us. So, you see, I ought to feel at home, but, even if I force myself, this place doesn’t bring back any good memories. I’m telling you this to try to explain why the village fairs, the elections for the parent‒teacher association, selling cakes after class, all that stuff . . . it’s just not my thing. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to take part, or that I don’t think it’s important. It’s just . . . ”

  Amanda hesitated. Her fingers moulded two balls, one red and one white, into a single pale pink ball streaked with scarlet veins. Clotilde stared at her, listening attentively.

  “It’s just that, to be perfectly honest, school was always a bit of a burden for me, like a ball and chain that I dragged around with me from the age of three. And I’m probably not the only one who feels like that, am I? There are always more dunces than geniuses! When I’m working the register at Vivéco, I chat to everyone, I’ve been there six years. Anyone will tell you. I’m not really shy. But here, it’s like I become shy again. I tell myself there must be loads of other people who are more intelligent than me, who can speak, or know something, or have an opinion, all of those people who actually liked school.”

  The soft pink ball moved from one hand to the other. I was warned about this, thought Clotilde. Some parents are suspicious, hostile, aggressive even, as soon as they are back in a school playground; but it’s only fear. A fear that goes back to childhood.

  “Tell me about Malone, Mrs. Moulin.”

  “I’m getting to that, honestly I am. But I needed to tell you about me first, because it’s important that you understand. So the reason we’re here is that Malone is saying we’re not his real parents and the school psychologist is taking him seriously. But how can you take his story seriously, Miss? Malone has lived with us since he was born. We brought you all the photos showing his first steps, his birthdays, parties with the neighbors, holidays, walks in the forest, going to the seaside, to the shopping center. The longest we’ve been away from him since he was born is two days—when we stayed at my sister’s in Le Mans, a year ago, for a wedding. They didn’t swap him for another child then, you know. I think we’d have noticed!”

  Clotilde forced herself to smile. With the tip of his shoe, Dimitri Moulin traced the road that wound its way around the printed carpet.

  “I mean, you can ask anyone we know,” Amanda Moulin insisted. “Our neighbors in Place Maurice-Ravel, my family, Dimitri’s family, Malone’s babysitter, the other mothers who take their babies to the Parc des Hellandes. He’s my kid! You know he is I brought him here last May, to enroll him. And the mayor’s office knows it too! We registered his birth and we’ve got all the certificates.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Moulin, no one doubts that.”

  Long seconds of silence filled the classroom, a silence that Clotilde never quite managed to obtain with her children. Amanda suddenly crushed the pink plasticine ball against her velvet skirt.

  “They’re not going to take him away from us, are they?”

  Dimitri jumped. His foot banged into a little white ambulance. The headmistress didn’t even have time to look surprised; Amanda was already talking again.

  “We look after him as best as we can. We bought the house in Manéglise when I was pregnant. It was a mad thing to do, Dimitri will tell you. We didn’t have the money, so we ended up with a thirty-year mortgage, even with a zero interest rate, but, well, we didn’t want to bring him up in a council house in Mont-Gaillard. Besides, I knew there was a good school here. I thought so, anyway.”

  Dimitri frowned at his wife. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “We’re doing our best. Doing what everyone tells us we should do. A garden so he can play outside, meals with vegetables that we force him to eat, not too much TV, lots of books. We’re really trying, so that he can have the opportunities we didn’t really have.” She took a handkerchief from her pocket. “If you
only knew how much that kid means to me. We’re doing everything we can, I swear to you.”

  Clotilde moved closer to Amanda Moulin and stood right by her, the way she would if she were helping a child to blow their nose or brush their hair.

  “No one doubts that, Mrs. Moulin,” the teacher repeated. “But then why is Malone telling all those stories?”

  “Stories about rockets, and a castle, and pirates? Stories about another life he had before he lived with us?”

  “Yes.”

  “All children tell stories, don’t they?”

  “Yes . . . But there aren’t many who say that their parents aren’t their parents.”

  Amanda seemed to be thinking about this. Dimitri stretched out his legs. He seemed to be in a hurry to leave now, and made a show of zipping up his jacket. Amanda took no notice.

  “You think he’s doing that because we aren’t good at looking after him?”

  “No,” Clotilde replied, too quickly. “Not at all.”

  “Because when I think about it, maybe that’s it. Malone is better than us. More intelligent. He’s advanced for his age, the shrink told us that at our first meeting. In fact, that’s why we agreed to let Mr. Dragonman see him. There are loads of things in Malone’s head, stories, adventures, his own world, all these things we don’t understand, Dimitri and me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe we’re not the parents that Malone would have wanted, that’s what I’m saying. I’m sure he’d have preferred other parents, richer, younger, better educated, parents who could take him on an airplane, go skiing, visit museums. Maybe that’s why he’s inventing other parents.”

  “Mrs. Moulin, a child doesn’t think like that.”

  “I did! That’s why I left my parents. Because I wanted to live a different life. Something more than just the countryside, the daily grind, bosses . . . I believed I could do it back then. I even thought I’d succeeded, before you summoned me here.”

  “I didn’t ‘summon’ you, Mrs. Moulin. And it’s adolescents who dream about having another life, and parents, not three-year-old children.”

  “But that’s what I was telling you: Malone is advanced for his age.”

  At that moment, Dimitri Moulin stood up. His six-foot frame unfolded and his silhouette suddenly overshadowed the room with its miniature furniture and its minuscule toys.

  “I think we’ve been over this enough now. I’m already late for my shift. And my kid has been standing on his own in the playground for a long damn time.”

  His wife had no choice but to stand up too. Dimitri took a moment to look the teacher up and down. At the other end of the playground, Malone came out of the toilets.

  It wasn’t raining anymore.

  “Look at my kid,” said Moulin. “Everything’s fine. So you can give that shrink a message: if he’s looking for trouble, he and I can settle this man to man. My kid hasn’t been beaten or raped or anything like that. He’s fine, you understand? As for the rest, I’ll bring him up however I want!”

  “I understand.”

  Clotilde Bruyère opened the door, hesitated as she watched Malone come towards them, then decided to speak:

  “But if you’ll allow me to give you some advice, because I’ve been watching Malone in my class for several months now, and don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. and Mrs. Moulin, but I think you need to dress your son in warmer clothes.”

  “Why, is it going to get very cold?” worried Amanda.

  “No. Because your son feels cold. Very cold. Almost all the time. Even on sunny days.”

  * * *

  The Skoda Fabia sped through the empty streets of Manéglise. Route de Branmaze. Pa-di drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Behind him, on his booster seat, Malone hugged Gouti tightly in his arms.

  Little hand on the 1, big hand on the 4.

  He couldn’t wait to get home, to go up to his bedroom and hide in bed with Gouti. So the toy could tell him everything.

  9

  So you want to understand how a child’s memory works, Captain, is that right?”

  Marianne Augresse nodded. Vasily Dragonman took a deep breath and then launched into his explanation.

  “OK. This might take a while. First, you have to bear one very simple principle in mind. In a child, the length of time that a memory is preserved increases with age. If you take a three-month-old baby, for example, its memories will last about a week. A game, a song, a taste. The memories of a baby six months last about three weeks. A baby of eighteen months has a memory of about three months, and at three years old memories are retained for about six months.”

  Marianne did not appear convinced. She waved her hand irritably.

  “Well, that’s the theory. But a child’s memory must depend on other criteria, no? A baby is more likely to remember something or someone that it sees every day, I imagine. Or an extraordinary event, whether it’s something wonderful or frightening.”

  “No,” the psychologist replied. “It doesn’t work like that. Your reasoning would apply to an adult memory, a memory capable of sorting the important from the incidental, the useful from the useless, the true from the false. But the memory of a child under three works in a different way. All the memories that are not reactivated inevitably vanish. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you show a child the same cartoon every day, from the day he’s born until his third birthday. He watches it over and over again, knows it by heart; the characters in the film are his closest friends. Then, for a year, you stop showing it to him and you don’t speak about it for twelve months. On his fourth birthday, you take out the DVD and you let your child watch the show. He will have absolutely no memory of it!”

  “Really?”

  “Really! And what happens with a cartoon or a story can also happen with a close relative who’s never mentioned again, a grandfather who dies, a babysitter who gets a job elsewhere, the child next door whose family moves house. But what confuses the matter is that it is very rare for us not to talk about an important event for several months, so it is reinforced. On the other hand, a young child will have an extraordinarily vivid memory of the immediate past: he’ll know where he hid his dummy in the morning; he’ll remember the color of the slide in the park where he goes to play every week; he’ll recall the dog behind the fence on the way to the bakery. Especially if these actions are repeated or brought up regularly in conversation.”

  “So it’s the parents who shape the child’s memory?”

  “Yes, almost one hundred percent. That’s true for us too, in fact. This is what we call episodic memory, or autobiographical memory. Our adult memory is almost entirely composed of indirect memories: photographs, spoken accounts, films. It’s a bit like a game of telephone: memories of memories of memories. We think we can recall precise details of holidays that took place thirty years ago—each day, every landscape, our emotions—but those memories are only images, always the same ones, that we have selected and reconstructed according to our personal criteria, like a camera that films only from one angle, shows only one part of the backdrop. The same is true of other memories, like the first time you fell off your bike, your first kiss, your cry of joy the day you got your exam results. Your brain sorts through everything and keeps only what interests it on a subjective basis. If you could go back in time or watch a film of the past, you would see that the actual events hardly ever correspond exactly with your memories. What was the weather like? What did you do afterwards? Who was there, apart from you? Nothing. No idea. All you have are flashes!”

  As the psychologist was speaking, Marianne continued to watch her colleagues pass by outside the window to the corridor, holding cups of coffee or sandwiches. No one seemed particularly agitated. Timo Soler still hadn’t called Professor Larochelle.

  “I can well believe that, Mr. Dragonman,” continued Marianne, “even if it’s a l
ittle disturbing. But let’s get back to the memory of a child. At what age do we start to form memories that will last a lifetime?”

  “It’s difficult to say, precisely because of the phenomenon I just explained to you. Some people claim to remember things that happened when they were two or three years old, but those are always reconstructed memories or memories of things they were told. That’s what happens in the case of adopted children, for example, especially those from other countries; how can they distinguish between real memories, the ones that have been repeated to them, and the ones they’ve imagined? Canadian studies have shown that adopted children who were told the truth about their past at a very young age, sincerely believed that they possessed actual memories of that first life, whereas that absolutely wasn’t the case for children who didn’t know they were adopted.” The psychologist looked down at Malone’s drawings for a moment. “So, in an attempt to answer your question Captain, I would say that most of us have no direct memory of anything we experienced before the age of four or five. Everything you do with your children during the first sixty months of their life—taking them to the zoo, to the seaside, telling them stories, celebrating Christmas or their birthday—you will remember all your life as if it were yesterday, but for them . . . nothing. A complete void!”

  Marianne gave him a strange look, as if he’d said something heretical.

  “A complete void? But those are the years that help build their identity, aren’t they? Pediatricians always say that the first four years are the most important.”

  Vasily Dragonman flashed a wide smile. He had taken the captain to the exact place he wanted to bring her.