Blood Wedding

by Pierre Lemaitre

  He swallows hard.

  *

  He does his best. He is very attentive. When Sophie sobs, he says, “We don’t have to . . .” She says, “Help me.” He wipes away her tears. She says, “It’s not about you, you do know that.” He says, “I know.” Sophie thinks that this man might be able to understand everything. He is calm, unhurried, careful, all things that she never expected of him. It has been a long time since she had a man inside her. For a while, she closes her eyes as though she is drunk and desperately wants the world to stop spinning so fast. She guides him. She encourages him. She breathes in his familiar smell which until now she has caught only at a distance. It is the anonymous smell of male lust. She manages to choke back her tears. He is careful not to put his weight on her, he seems to be deferring the moment of climax, she smiles up at him. She says, “Come . . .” He is like a callow boy. She hugs him to her. He is under no illusion that this is love.

  They lie there in silence, she looks at the time. Each of them knows what they do not have to say to the other. They are both casualties of life, and for the first time she wonders what happened to him that hurt so.

  “What about your story, the real story?” she says, coiling his chest hair between her fingers.

  “I’m a pretty ordinary guy.”

  And Sophie wonders whether this is his answer.

  When you work night shifts, everything is out of sync. As he is drifting off to sleep, Sophie gets up and goes downstairs to catch the shuttle bus.

  *

  They are still together: Véronique and the manager from the fast-food restaurant. She killed them both in the same way. She cannot remember how. They are lying side by side on the steel autopsy table in the morgue. Like man and wife. Covered by a white sheet. Sophie walks past the table and, although they are both dead, their eyes are open and they watch eagerly as she passes. Only their eyes move. As she moves around the end of the table, passing the backs of their heads, blood slowly begins to ooze, they smile.

  “’fraid so!”

  Sophie whips round.

  “It’s like your hallmark. A few swift blows to the back of the skull.”

  The manager of the agency is wearing a pale-yellow shirt and a green tie. His tight trousers make his paunch look bigger, his flies are undone. He steps forward like a pathologist, he is pedantic, self-assured, precise, surgical. And smiling. A sardonic smile.

  “Sometimes just the one.”

  He is standing at one end of the slab, looking down at the skulls of the deceased. Blood drips to the floor, fat drops splashing on the concrete, spattering the turn-ups of his trousers.

  “Take our friend here [he bends down and reads the tag] . . . Véronique. That’s right, Véronique. Five stab wounds to the stomach. To the stomach, Sophie, honestly! Well, never mind, let’s move on. This man here [he reads the tag] . . . David. In his case, you had a weapon to hand. A baseball bat David kept purely for decorative purposes, and here he is, his skull caved in with the logo of the Cincinnati Reds. Some deaths are absurd, don’t you think?”

  He moves away from the table and walks towards Sophie. She backs against the wall. Still he keeps coming, smiling:

  “And then there is me. I was a little luckier: there was no knife, no baseball bat around, I had it easy, I can’t complain. I’m sure if you could have, you would have smashed my head against the wall and I would be dead, like the others, from a fractured skull. I, too, would be bleeding from the back of the head.”

  Sophie watches as a bloodstain suddenly spreads down the back of his yellow shirt. He smiles.

  “Just like that, Sophie.”

  He is standing right in front of her, she can smell his acrid breath.

  “You are a very dangerous woman, Sophie. And yet men fall in love with you, don’t they? You have killed many. Do you plan to kill all the people you love, Sophie? All those who get close to you?”

  22

  These smells, these gestures, these moments . . . In Sophie’s mind they are an omen of what is to come. She will need an escape plan. When the time comes. But all of that is in the future; right now she needs to fake it. To fake it convincingly. No outward show of passion, this is a relationship based on mutual benefit, but one that promises more. They have spent four nights together. Tonight is the fifth. The second in a row. Because she needs to speed things up. She has managed to swap shifts for a few days with one of the girls on the other cleaning team. He comes to pick her up. She slips her arm through his, tells him about her day. By the second time, it is already a habit. As for everything else, he is attentive to the smallest detail. Sometimes it seems as though every gesture is a matter of life and death to him. She tries to reassure him, tries to make their new-found tenderness seem less contrived, less artificial. She cooks for him on the two-ring hotplate in his tiny apartment. Gradually, he relaxes. In bed, he does nothing unless she makes the first move. She does so every time. And every time it terrifies her. She pretends. Sometimes, for an instant only, she imagines she could be happy. The very thought makes her cry. It is something he never sees because it comes at the end, when he has fallen asleep, when she is staring at the dreary bedroom in the murky darkness. At least he does not snore.

  Sophie spends long hours like this, watching the images of her life unspool. As always, the tears come of themselves, foreign to her, unrelated to her. Little by little, she slides towards the sleep she finds so terrifying. Sometimes, she reaches for his hand and grips it tightly.

  23

  It is a dry cold. They are leaning on the wrought-iron railings, the fireworks have just begun. Children scamper along the tree-lined avenue, parents stare into the heavens, mouths agape. The sound of war. The explosions are sometimes preceded by an ominous whistling. The sky glows orange. She presses herself against him. For the first time she needs him, truly needs to nestle in his arms. He slips an arm around her shoulders. It could be anyone. It is him. It could be worse. She strokes his cheek, turns his face towards her. She kisses him. The sky glimmers blue and green. He says something she does not catch because a rocket explodes at that moment. From the look on his face, it was something nice. She nods.

  Parents try to shepherd their children, hackneyed jokes spark from one group to the next. They start to head home. The couples go arm in arm. They try in vain to find a pace to suit them both; his strides are longer than hers, he marks time, she smiles, gives him a shove, he laughs, she smiles. They stop. It is loveless, and yet something about it feels good, something that feels like an overwhelming weariness. For the first time, he kisses her with an air of authority. In a few short seconds, the New Year will have begun, some cars are already blaring their horns in their eagerness to be first. Suddenly, everything explodes, there are screams, sirens, laughter, lights. A wave of collective happiness sweeps briefly over everyone, the event is carefully stage-managed, but the joy is real.

  Sophie says, “So are we getting married?” She has asked the question.

  “I’m up for it . . .” he says, as though apologising. She hugs his arm.

  There.

  It is done.

  In a few weeks, Sophie will be married.

  Farewell, Sophie the Psycho.

  A new life.

  She can, for a short while, breathe freely.

  He looks around at the world and smiles.

  Frantz

  May 3, 2000

  I’ve just seen her for the first time. Her name is Sophie. She was coming out of her apartment block. I barely caught a glimpse. She’s obviously a woman in a hurry. She got into a car and sped off so fast I had difficulty keeping up on my motorbike. Luckily she had trouble finding somewhere to park in the Marais, and that made things a bit easier. I followed her at a distance. At first I thought she was going shopping, in which case I would have had to stop tailing her, too risky. But in fact she was meeting someone. She went into a tea room on rue des Rosiers and headed straight for another woman about the same age, looking at her watch to make it obvious s
he was rushed off her feet. I knew for a fact that she had left home late. Caught red-handed in a lie.

  I hung around outside for about ten minutes, then went in and sat in the back room where I found the perfect seat from which I could discreetly keep an eye on her. Sophie was wearing a print dress, flat heels and a pale-grey jacket. I could see her in profile. She is a good-looking woman, the sort most men probably find attractive. Her friend, on the other hand, looked to me like a slut. Too much make-up, too vain, too female. At least Sophie knows how to be natural. They stuffed themselves with cupcakes like a couple of schoolgirls. Watching them, I could tell they were joking about breaking their diet. Women are forever going on diets and forever breaking them. Women are so shallow. Sophie is very slim. Much slimmer than her friend.

  I soon regretted coming into the tea room. It was a foolish risk, she might have spotted me and, for some reason or other, remembered my face. Why take unnecessary risks? I resolved to be more careful in future. Though I have to say, I like this girl. She’s bubbly.

  I feel in a very strange state of mind. All my senses are heightened. This was why I was able to turn a futile incident into a fruitful opportunity. I left about twenty minutes after they did, and as I was taking my jacket from the coat rack, I noticed a man had hung his coat there. I quickly slipped my hand into the inside pocket and left with a rather handsome wallet. Its owner was one Lionel Chalvin, born in 1969, so only five years my senior. He lives in Créteil. He still has one of the old-style identity cards. Since I have no intention of using it if asked for my papers, I tinkered with it, pasted a photograph of myself on it – I did a pretty good job, too. There are days when I am glad that I’m good with my hands. If you don’t study it too closely, it looks legit.

  June 15

  It took me about ten days to come to my decision. I’ve just suffered a terrible blow, years of hopes and waiting dashed in the space of a few short minutes. I never thought I’d get back on my feet so quickly, but, oddly, I think I am over it. I’m a little surprised, to be honest. I followed Sophie Duguet wherever she went, I deliberated, I watched her. I finally came to a decision last night while staring up at the windows of her apartment. I saw her appear for a moment, she drew the curtains with a broad, sweeping gesture. As though sowing the stars. Something in me clicked. I realised that I was going to take the plunge. I needed a Plan B in any case, I couldn’t just give up on everything I had ever dreamed about, everything I had longed for. I decided that, all in all, Sophie would fit the bill.

  I opened my notebook. There are a lot of things I need to prepare and taking notes will help me think. Because this plan is much more complicated than the previous one.

  Sophie’s husband is a tall guy who seems intelligent and very self-assured. I like that. Well dressed, elegant in fact, though in a casual way. I showed up early this morning so I would be here when he left and I could follow him. They’re doing well for themselves. They own two cars and a luxury apartment. They could be a perfect couple with a bright future ahead of them.

  June 20

  Vincent Duguet works for Lanzer Gesellschaft, a petrochemical company about which I have managed to track down a lot of information: I don’t understand all the details, but basically it’s a German limited-liability company with branches all over the world and one of the market leaders in solvents and elastomers. The headquarters of Lanzer Gesellschaft are in Munich, the French head office is in La Défense (where Vincent works), and they have three research centres across the country, in Talence, Grenoble and Senlis. In the company’s organisational chart, Vincent appears close to the top, as Assistant Director of Research and Development. He has a Ph.D. from the Université de Jussieu. The photograph in their promotional leaflet looks just like him. It is obviously recent. I cut it out and pinned it to my corkboard.

  Sophie works for Percy’s, the auction house (antiquarian books, fine art, etc.). I don’t know what exactly she does just yet.

  I started with the easier part, gathering information on Vincent. As for Sophie, things seem a bit more complicated. Percy’s is reluctant to give out anything. With companies like that, you only ever get to see the shop window. Percy’s itself is quite well known, but if you try to track down any information, you come up only with vague details. This is not enough for me. There is no point hanging around Saint-Philippe-du-Roule where their showrooms are, because of the risk of being spotted.

  July 11

  I need more detailed information about Sophie and I have noticed that, of late, she has been using her car more frequently – it being July, the streets of Paris are pretty quiet. It didn’t take me long to put two and two together. I had new number plates made for my motorbike and, yesterday, I followed her car at a distance. Every time we stopped at a traffic light, I mentally rehearsed the scene. And when Sophie’s car stopped at the front of the line at a red light, I was ready. Everything went to plan. I felt calm. I rode up on her right-hand side, careful to leave myself room to manoeuvre. As soon as the lights turned amber, I had only to reach out to open the passenger door, grab her handbag, accelerate away and take the first turn to the right. In no time I had covered several hundred metres, zigzagged through three or four side streets, and five minutes later I was casually sailing along the Périphérique. If everything were this simple, it wouldn’t be any fun.

  A woman’s handbag is such a wonder! What a marvel of grace, intimacy and childishness! In Sophie’s bag I found a pile of things that defy all classification. I worked through them in order. I began with those that told me nothing about her: a travel card (I clipped out the photograph), a nail file, a shopping list (probably for tonight’s dinner), a black biro, a pack of tissues, a packet of chewing gum. The remainder proved more enlightening.

  Firstly, about Sophie’s tastes: a “Multi-Active Hand Cream” from Cebelia; lipstick by Agnès b. (“Perfect”, pink spice), a notebook with a few scribbles, mostly illegible, including a list of books she plans to read (Grossman: Vie et destin; Musset: Confessions d’un enfant du siècle; Tolstoy: Resurrection; Citati: Portraits de femmes; Ikonnikov: Dernières nouvelles du bourbier . . .) She clearly has a thing for Russian authors. At the time she was reading Coetzee’s Le Maître de Petersbourg. She had got to page 63.

  I read and re-read her notes. I like her handwriting, though barely legible, it is decisive, spirited: it gives a sense of her determination, her intelligence.

  About her private life: an open box of tampons (Nett “mini”) and a pack of Nurofen (maybe for period pain). Just in case, I put an X on the wall calendar at home.

  About her habits: from her company card, I can see she rarely eats at Percy’s in-house canteen, that she loves movies (she has a loyalty card for Cinéma Le Balzac), that she does not carry much cash (barely thirty euros in her purse), that she has signed up for a series of conferences at La Villette on the cognitive sciences.

  Most importantly: the keys to her apartment, her car, her mailbox, her mobile phone – I immediately made a copy of her contacts – an address book that must be ancient, since the handwriting and the colour of the pen varies, a recently issued identity card (she was born on November 5, 1974, in Paris), a birthday card addressed to Valérie Jourdain, 36 rue Courfeyrac, Lyon, that reads:

  *

  My little poppet,

  I can’t believe that a little girl so much younger than me is all grown up now.

  You promised to come and visit me in Paris: your present is waiting.

  Vincent sends his regards. I am sending much more: my love, and lots of hugs and kisses.

  *

  Happy birthday, poppet. Be crazy.

  *

  Lastly, there is a diary that offers a great deal of precious information on the past weeks and those to come.

  I photocopied everything and pinned it to the corkboard, I had copies made of all the keys (some of which I don’t recognise), and then I went and handed in everything – apart from the wallet – at the police station in the next arrondissement. A
relieved Sophie got her bag back the following morning.

  A nice little trick. And a nice result.

  Best of all is finally to feel that I’m doing something. I spent so much time (so many years) thinking and going round in circles, filling my head with images, poring over the family album, my father’s military record, the wedding photos with my mother looking so beautiful . . .

  July 15

  Last Sunday, Sophie and Vincent went to a family lunch. I followed them from a respectable distance and, from what I knew of Sophie’s address book, I soon worked out that they were going to Vincent’s parents’ house in Montgeron. I went there via a different route and discovered, on that beautiful summer Sunday (why did they not go on holiday?), that they were having lunch in the garden. The long afternoon stretched out ahead of me. So I went back to Paris and investigated their apartment.

  At first, I was in two minds about this visit. I was happy at the considerable potential offered by the situation – unrivalled access to the most private parts of their life – yet at the same time I felt sad, for no reason I could put my finger on. It took me a little while to understand. The fact is, I do not like Vincent. I realise, in fact, that I disliked him on sight. I’m not going to be sentimental, but there is something about that man that I immediately found unpleasant.

  The apartment has two bedrooms, one of which has been converted into a study with a relatively up-to-date computer set-up. For the most part, it’s equipment I’m familiar with, but I will probably download the technical manuals anyway. They have a nice kitchen, large enough to have breakfast in, a beautiful bathroom with twin washbasins and separate cabinets. I will have to check later, but an apartment like this must be very expensive. Admittedly, they both earn a comfortable living (I found their payslips in the desk).

  There was plenty of light, so I was able to take a lot of photographs from various angles, enough to reconstruct the whole apartment. Photos of open drawers and wardrobes, of various documents (Vincent’s passports, photographs of Sophie’s family, snaps of her and Vincent together which seem all to date from several years ago). I checked their sheets. They seem to have a pretty average sex life.