Based on a True Story

by Delphine de Vigan

  Without looking back at the house, I opened the gate and limped out onto the narrow road, then set off towards the village.

  L. must surely be waiting somewhere, with her engine off, looking out for me. I was certain that at any moment I’d hear her car start up and see her hurtling towards me.

  That must be her plan. To allow me to escape half-naked, catch me in her headlights and knock me down like a skittle.

  I kept walking along the road, despite the pain, which grew with every step. I couldn’t see anything because of the rain except a lighted window in the distance, which stood out in the darkness.

  I was just a few yards from the first house in the village when I fell into a trench dug for the sewer pipes by the edge of the road. I have no image of that moment, just the sensation of the ground giving way and then mud. I passed out.

  I have a very confused recollection of being taken in the ambulance. Today, all I can remember is the survival blanket, golden and shimmering in the ambulance’s rotating light. The feeling of the trolley in my back. The speed of the vehicle.

  I woke up in a hospital room in Chartres. Before long, a nurse came in. She told me what had happened. She said my husband was on his way, or rather about to catch a flight; he’d been informed.

  It was one of the council road workers who’d found me at daybreak. The doctor said I must have fallen shortly before the man found me, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it. I was in an advanced state of hypothermia.

  No one asked me about how I’d ended up there, in my underwear and a pullover in the hours before dawn. They told me to take my time, to think it all through. They gave me pills for the pain and others to help me sleep.

  The splint on my foot had been replaced with a resin cast. I’d been supplied with new crutches. I slept almost the whole time until François arrived.

  He was by my bedside the next morning, looking worried and drawn. He hugged me. I needed to rest. The main thing was that I was here, safe and sound.

  I later discovered that they’d found traces of several sleeping pills and rat poison in my toxicology results.

  Later, when they thought it was the right time to ask me what had happened, I understood that most of the medics – and probably François too – were convinced I’d taken this cocktail myself. And then panicked and gone out in the middle of the night to get help.

  50

  L. had gone before I left the house. L. had left me alone, with the possibility that I would escape, but also the possibility that I’d fall asleep and never wake up.

  L. disappeared from my life in the same way she came into it. I’m aware that is the sort of sentence that creates the sense that you’ve read it before. It creates the impression that the story is tied up, that it’s just a memory. That in the act of telling it has found a sort of meaning – perhaps even resolution. The fact is that L. disappeared, leaving no trace.

  It was several weeks before I was willing to go back to Courseilles. I waited till I was feeling better and walking normally. And was able to conquer the fear that came flooding in at the very thought of crossing the threshold.

  When François went back there for the first time, while I was still in the hospital in Chartres, he found the house in perfect order. The dishwasher had been on; the housework was done. Everything was perfect. Folded, tidied, put back in its place. L. had taken time to turn off the water, empty the bins and turn down the thermostat. She’d organised her departure and made sure she left the place nice. In the room where she’d slept, the bed had been stripped. The sheets had been washed, dried and put back in the cupboard, as had the bathroom towels. The toilets were clean.

  The only sign of our stay was to be found in my room: an unmade bed, empty, dirty bowls, a T-shirt tossed on the floor.

  François never found my suitcase, or my phone, or any of the things I’d brought with me.

  When I asked him to tell me exactly what L. had said the evening she’d answered my phone, I could see he doubted my memory. He adopted an indulgent tone to explain that he’d never spoken to L. on the phone, not that evening and not subsequently. It was the overcautious tone that people use to try to get the mad to return to reason.

  François told me he’d actually spent a whole day trying to contact me, but I hadn’t picked up or given any sign of life. Thereafter, he went straight through to voicemail, as my mobile was turned off. This made him worried. We never let a day go by without speaking to each other. In the evening, he eventually rang his friend Charles, who lives at the other end of the village, and asked him to go round. When Charles climbed over the garden wall, there was no car in the garden, no lights on, and all the shutters were closed. François assumed we’d gone back to Paris (which is probably what L. wanted him to think). A little later, it occurred to François that I might have a lover. And then he got the call from the mayor’s secretary, the morning they found me, and he caught the next plane.

  A few days after this conversation, François asked me to tell him again how I’d met L.

  I described, once again, the party after the Book Fair, at a friend of Nathalie’s, and the woman who’d approached me.

  François thought it odd that he’d never met her. Throughout the whole time I’d been seeing L. in Paris, and even had her living with me, how was it possible that he’d never bumped into her?

  The fact is that in normal times, for various reasons, I went to his place much more than he came to mine. And during the time that L. was there, I’d arranged it so that he never came once.

  He asked me to explain, once again, why I’d decided to go with her to Courseilles on a whim; why I hadn’t asked someone else, a closer, more reliable friend to go with me? What make of car did she have? How did she happen to be on the scene after my fall? How had she been able to go away like that, on the spur of the moment? Why had we been living like that, with the shutters closed? Why would she have switched my mobile off?

  Behind his desire not to want to hurt or annoy me, I could sense his suspicion.

  Perhaps because he was able to imagine an entirely different sort of betrayal, François is the only person I tried to tell the whole story to. From the start. How I met L., how I became attached to her. What she did for me, and what she did on my behalf. What she knew even before I said it, what she understood so well. What she thought of my books, what she expected of me. I had to admit to the pretence and the lies. The weeks when I pretended to everyone that I was busy writing, when I was spending my time wandering the streets or in Monoprix.

  I explained how, in the casualty department of Saint-Louis hospital, the idea had come to me to write about L., to take her life as my inspiration. How obvious and powerful this idea had seemed and, for the first time in ages, worthy of interest. That was why the prospect of a stay behind closed doors with her in Courseilles felt like a gift from the gods. It was an incredible opportunity! So no, I hadn’t been afraid. The need to write, the certainty that I at last had a book, had erased any mistrust. But L. had discovered my plan and things had gone downhill.

  As he looked at me, François wore a perplexed expression that I knew well. I felt he wasn’t taking even half my story seriously.

  He asked me several times, apparently jokingly, whether L. was a man. But deep down, I think what he really thought was that I had arranged things so that I could escape to Courseilles on my own, through a wish to isolate myself, cut myself off from everything.

  Though he didn’t say so, I think he later came to share the doctors’ opinion. I’d been through a severe depressive episode. The medicines I’d taken had caused a confused, even hallucinatory state, which would explain most of what happened. In the midst of some sort of nocturnal crisis, which I’d distorted in my memory, I’d left the house half-naked and fallen into a municipal ditch. I had a psychiatric history.

  The truth was completely different: L. had tried to poison me. Weaken me. She’d put me in danger.

  I could have pressed charges against her, or at least
tried to find her.

  I didn’t do so. I didn’t have the energy. In any case, I’d have had to answer all sorts of questions, give a description, tell the story over and over, provide details, evidence. And I wasn’t sure I had evidence.

  51

  When I got back to Paris, after three days under observation in hospital, I turned my computer on. The intuition I’d had was right: L. had deleted all the messages we’d exchanged in the first months we knew each other. All of them. She hadn’t missed a single one.

  Given the amount of time she’d spent each day on my machine when she was living with me, she’d had plenty of time to sort through them and empty the trash so as to leave no evidence.

  There was nothing there: not the slightest trace. By contrast, she’d left all the emails she’d written for me: they had my name at the bottom and nothing to prove (except my word) that I hadn’t written them.

  I discovered several messages of encouragement and support, kind thoughts, which my friends had sent me after receiving the email from L. in which I (she) asked them not to get in touch. Of course, L. had made sure she didn’t tell me about them.

  I went several days without going out. Outside scared me. And alone in my apartment I was scared too.

  My friends heard I was unwell and came to visit me. They were pleased to see me after all this time. And I was glad to see them. They spoke gently to me.

  One night I had a dream about L. She was crawling across the kitchen floor at Courseilles, her head hanging down, blinded by blood. She was trying to reach the back door and was calling for Ziggy. I watched her, unable to go to her aid.

  I woke up bathed in sweat, sitting up in bed. The terror remained with me till morning.

  After a week or two, I gradually began to go out again.

  As soon as I sensed anyone walking behind me or following me a little too closely, I crossed the road. I sometimes thought I felt a presence behind me (the rubbing of my scarf on my leather jacket, the click of a belt buckle) and turned round to find no one there. I felt spied upon, pursued, soiled. I jumped at the slightest noise; I could feel every muscle tensed to its limit. My whole body was on the alert. I was certain that danger was imminent, without knowing what form it would take, without knowing if the danger lurked inside me or outside.

  Whatever the time of day, I opened the door to my apartment with a knot in my stomach, certain the day would come when I would find someone waiting for me, sitting on my sofa or lurking under the bed, come to settle the score.

  Louise and Paul came back to see me often. François decided to remain in Paris and I postponed any writing plans.

  I went back to Saint-Louis hospital for a check-up X-ray. They removed my resin cast. At first, I didn’t dare put my foot down. After two or three physio sessions, I was able to walk without limping again.

  For several weeks, I continued to hear creaks and other strange noises at the front door. Several times a day I’d check through the spy-hole that no one was listening behind the door. I still closed the curtains, night and day, when I came home. I got it into my head that L. could have hidden video cameras and microphones in the apartment. I ran my hand everywhere: under tables and cushions, inside lampshades, in every nook and cranny. To make sure.

  These various signs could be considered the consequence of a psychological trauma or the deterioration of a pre-existing paranoid tendency. I have no view on this.

  Nonetheless, little by little, I re-established what is known as a ‘normal life’.

  52

  I thought about L., of course. I thought about her like a bad dream or a rather shameful memory you’d rather not dwell on. As time passed, the memory of L. became wrapped in a kind of opaque membrane. I wondered if this was about preserving the memory intact, out of the light, so that it didn’t alter, perhaps with a view to writing about it one day or, on the other hand, making it disappear. Today I know the answer.

  In April I accepted an invitation from the Chalon-sur-Saône literary festival. The plan was for me to meet, in front of a larger audience, a group of readers who had read all my books over the course of the year. I accepted the invitation because I’d known the festival programmer, himself a writer, for ages.

  And I probably also wanted to test myself, prove that I could do it on my own.

  When I got off the train, I took my things to the hotel. I lay down for half an hour. It’s a moment I love, when I feel like I’ve been teleported to an unfamiliar room, in a town I’ve never been to, a moment of respite before the public appearance. Later I walked to the theatre. I chatted briefly with members of the reading group while the audience gradually took their seats. I scanned the large space, my silent radar sweeping the crowd without lingering on their faces. As my eyes returned to the centre, I realised what I was doing. I was looking for L. Or rather, I was checking that L. wasn’t in the room. Once reassured, I took a deep breath and the event began.

  The group asked questions about all my books, and the connection between them. The atmosphere was warm. Kindly. I was glad to be there. It reminded me that I liked meeting readers, hearing their interpretations, talking about my work. That I liked looking for the image, the emotion, the spark from which my books originated, asking myself about writing and trying to express the answers that I felt came closest to the truth.

  And then there were other questions from members of the audience. They were mostly about my latest novel. None of these questions was entirely new. But I hadn’t answered them for a long time. And time had changed my relationship with the text. My lines had shifted; I had some perspective. It had been a long time since I first presented the book, and burst into tears in front of two-dozen booksellers. Afterwards, I’d felt ashamed of not having been able to hold back my tears. Of having made a spectacle of myself.

  But that evening in Chalon, it felt as though I was at last at the right distance from it.

  After a few exchanges, a woman in the front row asked a question on behalf of Léa, a girl who was in the audience but was too shy to ask it herself. The woman stood up, holding the microphone. There was something serious in her tone.

  ‘So, Léa would like to know if you’re sincere. Sometimes while she was reading your book, she had some doubts. She wondered if you’d made some of it up. Is what you write the truth? Is it all true?’

  For a moment, I felt like saying that Léa had hit the nail on the head. Because of course it wasn’t, it was all pure invention, nothing I described had happened, none of it, and what’s more, Léa my dear, at this very moment, my mother is rolling in the grass somewhere in Creuse; she isn’t dead, not at all; she wears cowboy boots summer and winter, gold satin dresses, lives with an old cowboy who’s madly in love with her and looks like Ronald Reagan; she’s still as beautiful, funny and annoying; ten illegal immigrants from all over the world live with her, in a big house full of plants and chaos; she reads Baudelaire and watches The Voice on TV.

  Instead, I tried to explain the extent to which I’d tried to be sincere in the sense she meant; yes, as far as possible, and that had probably harmed the book, because now pointless details jumped out at me, absurd explanations, names that I should have disguised, parasitic faithfulness, the whole tribute in fact that I thought I had to pay to reality and that I should have freed myself from. And then I tried to say, as I had already done many times at this sort of event, how inaccessible the real seemed to me. I tried to explain an idea I kept returning to; whatever you write, you are in the domain of fiction: ‘Even if it happened, even if something similar occurred, even if the facts are attested, you’re always telling a story. You’re telling yourself a story. And ultimately, maybe that’s what matters. Those little things that don’t adhere to reality, that transform it. Those places where the tracing paper comes away, in the margins, in the corners. Because no matter what you do, it crinkles and curls and betrays you. And perhaps that’s why the book moved you. We’re all voyeurs, I grant you, but deep down, what interests us, fascinates us
, is not so much reality, but the way it’s transformed by those who try to show it to us or tell us about it. It’s the filter on the lens. In any case, if a novel’s certified as real, that doesn’t make it better. That’s my view.’

  A man spoke up. He had a strong voice and didn’t need the microphone: ‘You’re wrong. That’s not what it is. What we like in your book is the ring of truth. You can feel it; you can recognise it. You can’t explain the ring of truth. No matter what you say, that’s what gives what you wrote its power.’

  The man waited for my approval. What could I say to that? I was the least well-placed person to determine what it was about my book that gave pleasure or displeasure. But I wanted to put an end to this notion of the ring of truth.

  ‘I don’t believe in the “ring of truth”. I don’t believe in it at all. I’m almost certain that you, all of us readers, all as much as we are, can be totally taken in by a book that presents itself as the truth and is pure invention, disguise and imagination. I think that any halfway capable author can do that: ramp up the reality effects to make you think that what he’s writing actually happened. And I challenge all of us – you, me, anyone – to disentangle true from false. And in any case, it could be a literary project to write a whole book that presents itself as a true story, a book inspired by so-called real events, but in which everything, or nearly everything, is invented.’

  As I spoke, my voice grew less sure; it began to shake. For a moment, I felt certain that L. was about to burst from the back of the hall. But I went on. ‘Can one book be less sincere than another? I’m not so sure. In fact, it might be highly sincere.’

  A murmur rippled through the hall.

  The man spoke again. ‘You’re talking about a con. And readers don’t like to feel conned. What they want is for the rules to be clear. We want to know what we’re dealing with. It’s true or it’s not. End of story. It’s an autobiography or it’s pure fiction. It’s a contract between you and us. But if you con the reader, he’s going to resent it.’