Autumn, All the Cats Return

by Philippe Georget

  Around 5:30, Sebag suddenly felt ravenously hungry. After talking to Pascal Lucas, he’d gulped down only one portion of pizza and a couple of pieces of fruit, but he hesitated to go out to buy himself a treat. Since he’d turned forty, he found that he had a tendency to gain weight. And despite his running, he had to watch what he ate.

  The ring of his cell phone provided a welcome diversion.

  The call was from Guy Albouker.

  “Excuse me for bothering you, but after our conversation I had an idea.”

  “Did you remember something important concerning Mr. Martinez?”

  “No, it’s not that. I think I told you everything about Bernard. I didn’t know him that well.”

  “So?”

  “It has to do with the common conflation of the Pieds-Noirs and the OAS, you remember, I talked to you about that . . . ”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  Molina entered the office noisily, threw a paper bag on his desk, and slumped into his chair. Distracted for a moment, Sebag had to ask Albouker to repeat what he’d just said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the president of the association said, “I think it wasn’t clear anyway. In fact, I don’t know how to explain it to you . . . I might be sending you on a wild-goose chase, but it occurred to me that since people always lump OAS and Pied-Noir together, the murderer might have done that, too.”

  Albouker stopped there.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Sebag said. “Could you explain a little further?”

  “Well, I was thinking that the murderer might not have had it in for Martinez in particular, or even for the OAS, but for Pieds-Noirs in general.”

  This time Sebag understood, and he was beginning to see the disturbing consequences of such a hypothesis.

  “Aren’t you being a little paranoid, Mr. Albouker?”

  “Yes, I know, and it’s probably absurd. But I couldn’t get the question off my mind and wanted to mention it to you. I don’t know whether I should have done that.”

  “Yes, yes, you did the right thing. We have to explore all hypotheses. Has anything happened recently that would lead you to have such a . . . concern? Threats, hostile letters?”

  “No, nothing like that. At least not at the Circle. But we’re not the only association of Pieds-Noirs in the region, and you’d have to ask the others. You must know that the situation in Perpignan has been rather tense for a few years with all the more or less violent controversies over some of our monuments . . . ”

  Sebag preferred not to venture onto a terrain that he still didn’t know very well. Castello had mentioned the subject the day before, but hadn’t given any details, as if everyone already knew all about it. Sebag remembered only that there had been stormy debates about a stele or a wall, he didn’t quite know. He’d have to work up the subject for tomorrow.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Albouker, we’ll look into everything. Besides, we have a meeting tomorrow with some of your opponents.”

  “Wait a minute, I didn’t say that it was they. I haven’t accused anyone.”

  “I know, Mr. Albouker, I know. I’ve noted your concern and your hypothesis. And for your part, if you hear anything about recent threats made against your community, don’t hesitate to let me know.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Sebag, and thanks for your understanding. Excuse me for having bothered you. But we arouse so much hostility each time we speak out that I’ve always feared that some day we’d be the victims of fanatics or extremists.”

  “No one can know the future, but for the moment, we have no information that would justify that kind of concern.”

  “You’re right, I’m probably being a little paranoid. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do for the moment, so as we used to say over there: Insha’Allah!”

  Albouker excused himself again and hung up.

  In the meantime, Molina had booted up his computer. He looked up.

  “What’s going on?”

  Sebag briefly summed up the conversation.

  “Pure fantasy,” Molina commented. “And fortunately for us. Can you imagine, if he were right . . . ”

  “Even if he’s wrong, it could cause a lot of problems if that worry spread. All it takes is for certain people to believe it.”

  Molina grabbed the paper bag on his desk and held it open for Sebag.

  “A little pastry?”

  “Is that reasonable?”

  “It’s being reasonable that isn’t reasonable. Life is too short.”

  “You can see where a maxim like that leads,” Sebag said, pointing to his belly.

  “My name is Jacques, Jacques Molina. Not Maxime.”

  Sebag chuckled and thrust a hand into the bag.

  “I’d planned to go running this evening anyway. So, what did you learn this afternoon?”

  “Nothing, or in any case not much. I talked to the mayor and the head of the winegrowers’ cooperative in Terrats, and as might have been expected, there was nothing interesting in that direction. When he returned from Algeria, Martinez bought four hectares of vineyards and a little house. He sold his wine to the co-op. He worked alone, except of course for harvest time. He never made much money and was hit hard by the recession in the sector. He went into debt to improve the quality of his wine, but the revenues didn’t come in. As we already knew, he sold everything in 1997, the house and the land. He had to pull out the vines.”

  “That must have been a heartbreaker for him.”

  Molina shrugged.

  “As it was for everybody who had to do it. You know, when I was a kid, there were vineyards everywhere around here. In twenty years the area in vines has been reduced by half or two-thirds. And these last few years it’s gotten even worse.”

  Sebag knew the situation. His usual running paths between Saint-Estève and Baixas passed through former vineyards. Weeds had taken over and were thriving around the giant carcasses of uprooted vinestocks.

  “Are you sure, then? Should we drop the winegrowing lead?”

  “I don’t claim to have your intuition, but I think we can at least put it on the back burner. What’s next?”

  “We have a meeting tomorrow with members of the CCN, the ‘Collective Contra Nostalgeria,’ the people who have organized against the monuments to the memory of the Pieds-Noirs.”

  “‘Nostalgeria,’ that’s a pretty good one. And what were those monuments? I don’t quite remember . . . ”

  “I don’t either. I have to bone up on that before I go home this evening, and I’ll give you a rundown on it as we’re driving there tomorrow.”

  “That’s perfect. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to head home now. I’ve got a date tonight.”

  Divorced five years before, Jacques Molina was making up for lost time.

  “You don’t stop, do you? Brunette or blonde?”

  “Blonde. And you?”

  “What do you mean, me?”

  “Your noontime date today!”

  “Oh yeah, that . . . Big and hairy!”

  Molina looked disgusted.

  “Yuck,” he muttered as he left the office.

  A plastic bag was sailing on the wind, trying vainly to imitate the flight of a turtledove. It slowly rose into the dark sky and was then abruptly blown back to the ground. Its hazardous course ended when it got caught in arms of a gnarled grapevine. With every gust of the north wind, the last vineyard in the area was decorated by such sad garlands.

  Sebag quickened his pace. The wind was now blowing in his face.

  After giving Claire a kiss, he’d put on his running shoes and sweats and headed for the gravel paths. He’d gone without hesitating, driven by the gusts of wind and the things he had on his mind. Now he had to go home, his mind empty and his legs tired, running into the damp wind. Big clouds were mounting in the sky, heralding the first
rains of the autumn. As he was coming home from work, Gilles had listened to the weather on his car radio. Storm warning. Over the next two days, as much water was going to fall as fell on central France in a whole winter. But for all that Gilles, who had worked for several years in Chartres, would not have traded the climate in Roussillon for that of Eure-et-Loir. Rains were like hassles: better that they come all at once, so long as they don’t last.

  The first drops fell when he reached the Saint-Estève heights. He still had a few fallow fields to cross before going back down toward his home. Under the heavy sky, the piles of uprooted grapevines no longer made him think of giant carcasses but of tiny, ridiculous slag heaps.

  Sebag slowed his pace as he entered his street. He picked up his empty trashcan, which the refuse workers had left lying flat on the ground so that the wind wouldn’t blow it into the middle of the street.

  CHAPTER 9

  The family burial vaults lined the wide paths in the cemetery. They looked like the minuscule houses of a quiet village made of marble. He walked slowly and carefully.

  He felt deep in his bones the humidity that was spreading over Perpignan, and he had to make an effort not to grimace every time he put one foot in front the other. Fifteen years earlier, rheumatoid arthritis had attacked his hands and then gradually inflamed all his joints. His wrists, elbows, neck, knees, and ankles . . . Even the tiny bones in his feet now hurt him. He knew that he would soon have to start using a cane. For months, his doctor had been advising him to do that.

  A calming silence lay over the cemetery. His body was suffering but his mind was at peace. This place pleased him. A natural development, no doubt. As one gets older, one takes pleasure in strolling through one’s future garden. One’s next resting place.

  He wasn’t afraid of death. He’d been around it plenty. Sometimes risking it, sometimes causing it. And he was going to do it again one last time.

  He’d never taken pleasure in killing. He saw himself as a soldier, not a murderer. It was his mission, his battle. He’d always acted out of duty. And even if he was now acting for more personal reasons, he nonetheless had the feeling that he was assuming a collective responsibility. He was killing out of respect for history.

  Someday death would come to demand its due. He would receive it without hatred or fear. As a judgment that no one could escape. Birth was nothing other than a death sentence. Whatever one did, whatever one said, whatever one thought, death would cut down the heroes and the villains, the saints and the damned.

  In front of him he saw a woman bending over the entrance to a vault. She was holding a little watering can and was watering red and yellow flowers with a trembling hand. He thought of Maria. He had loved her so much. Without her, he’d never have had the strength to begin a new life after the tragedy of his youth. If he had passed on before she did, there was no doubt that Maria would have come regularly to take care of his grave. But he’d never returned to the cemetery since his wife was buried there three years earlier. Three years already. He’d never felt either the need or the desire to meditate before her grave. Maria’s memory never left him, and when he wanted to talk to her, all he had to do was look at the photos that decorated their dark apartment. He’d never liked cemeteries.

  Until today.

  He promised himself that once he’d returned to his country after carrying out his mission, he would go sit on the cold stone of Maria’s grave. That would be pleasant, it would be sweet. He would take yellow flowers, yellow went so well with the gray marble.

  Kneeling down, the old woman began a silent prayer. Her shriveled lips made circles, squares, and lines, executing a daily, divine gymnastics. Her knock-knees were resting on the last step of the vault, next to a plaque engraved with a classic but tender “To my beloved Husband.” He slowly approached the widow and was getting ready to greet her politely, but she did not raise her head to look at him.

  He continued on his way with the same painful steps. If he wasn’t mistaken, he had hardly twenty meters to go.

  He came to a wide intersection with a pink star on a circle of pebbles at its center. He stopped, turned ninety degrees to his right, and found himself facing a dark marble stele erected on a rectangle of gravel. Two dwarf palm trees stood at attention, their fronds pointing toward the sky, guarding the monument on which four pots of flowers were blooming.

  There it was! The second stop on his memorial journey. He hadn’t been mistaken.

  The stele represented a man tied to a stake with his hands behind his back. His body was arched backward under the impact of his enemies’ bullets.

  The epitaph engraved at the bottom of the plaque left no doubt: “To the men who were shot, to those who died so that French Algeria might live.”

  Still further down, on the base, four names were inscribed on the marble in large letters. When he saw them, the old man could not control his anger.

  CHAPTER 10

  The sky above Perpignan was carrying ill-tempered icebergs whose violent collisions were making cataracts of water fall on the city, cleaning roofs, roads, people’s souls. It had rained all night. The gutters on the buildings, acting as open faucets, were spewing their dirty water into the streets. Cold showers were spouting from balconies, and their continuous flow was bouncing furiously off sidewalks that were fortunately empty of pedestrians. The city’s storm sewers could no longer handle all this water and puddles quickly became ponds.

  Sebag was driving slowly. The old, struggling wiper on the car the police department provided for them was not able to clear the windshield the way it should, and Gilles felt as if he were looking through the glasses of a nearsighted person with weepy eyes. At the same time that he was watching the road, he was giving Molina a summary of the research he’d done the night before.

  “There are in fact three monuments to the Pieds-Noirs that have aroused controversies in Perpignan over the past few years. In 2003 a stele in memory of OAS combatants was erected in the Haut-Vernet cemetery. Then in 2007, a ‘Wall of the Disappeared’ was installed at the Sainte-Claire convent; 3,000 names are inscribed on it, French people who are supposed to have disappeared during the Algerian War . . . ”

  “Why ‘supposed to’?” Molina interrupted.

  “At least one person whose name is on the list is still alive.”

  “That seems inappropriate!”

  “The person concerned thought so, too. Finally, the third monument was opened recently: it’s a museum of the French presence in Algeria.”

  To make room for a truck that was coming the other way, Sebag swerved to the right. The car drove through a deep puddle and threw up a spray of water worthy of a Japanese tsunami.

  “Aren’t you going to take the bridge?”

  Molina’s question surprised Sebag.

  “Why? Bompas is this way, isn’t it?”

  “And how do you think you’re going to cross the Têt?”

  “By the ford. Do you think that . . . ”

  “With all that rain last night, it must be closed.”

  “You’re right, I’m stupid, I never thought of that.”

  Sebag turned around and took the bridge that led to the refuse dump. Molina was correct, the Têt, the river that runs through Perpignan and then into the sea, had swollen in a few hours. The trickle of water had changed into a rushing torrent that was carrying along tree trunks of an impressive size. Despite the eight years he’d spent in Roussillon, Sebag still hadn’t managed to get used to these sudden changes in the level of the water. His childhood near Versailles, and then the beginning of his career in the grain-growing desert of La Beauce, hadn’t prepared him for the caprices of Mediterranean rivers. He’d discovered the idea of a ford when he moved to Perpignan. Before that, he’d known only bridges that looked down on watercourses and more often on railroad tracks and superhighways.

  “So who are we going to see?”

 
; “I told you yesterday: the representatives of the Collective Contra Nostalgeria.”

  “Yeah, I remember that, but I mean, are we seeing the president, the treasurer . . . ?”

  “The president, in fact, along with a few other activists, I think. We’re supposed to meet them in a bar in Bompas.”

  “Do you believe this lead will pan out?”

  “I haven’t any idea. So far as I’m concerned, it’s too early to believe anything at all. Castello asked us to look into these groups, so we’re going to do it. At least it will reassure the Pieds-Noirs to know that we’re questioning their opponents as well.”

  “Yeah . . . I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to have to watch our step, because these Nostalgeria guys are not going to appreciate our questions.”

  “Does that mean that you’re accusing us?”

  Sebag and Molina were facing a dozen offended individuals. Relations with the members of the Collective who had come to participate in the interview had been tense from the outset. Eight men and two women sat in a row on the bench in a bistro. They were activists on the left and extreme left who were obviously not fond of the police.

  Sebag thought that for once Molina had shown tact and even subtlety. But their interlocutors were on their guards and didn’t let anything pass. When Jacques asked if one of their members might have particular reasons to be angry with a former member of the OAS, the tension had risen another notch.

  “Clearly, the police’s methods haven’t changed,” a craggy old activist sputtered, pulling on his white ponytail.

  “You can’t help accusing everybody without any proof,” added a big, bearded man wearing a T-shirt with an enormous “Here we come!” and embellished with a fine grease stain not foreseen by the designer.

  Sebag had never understood the reservations, not to mention the hostility, felt by leftists with regard to the police. He’d chosen this line of work in order to defend victims, that is, the weakest people, and he felt himself to be in perfect harmony with the ideas of generosity and solidarity that the left claimed to support. Of course, he wasn’t naive, and he knew that there were just as many creeps in the offices at police headquarters as in the bleachers at a soccer stadium, but that was not reason enough to reject a vocational group as a whole. All kinds of prejudice are wrong, he thought, including—pace the conventional left—anti-cop prejudice.