Three Days and a Life

by Pierre Lemaitre

Then he launched into the final blessing, he needed to get to Montjoue, he was already running late.

  8

  Outside the church, men gathered around Monsieur Desmedt, laid a hand on his shoulder and muttered platitudes. Bernadette walked off without looking at anyone. Valentine stood on the opposite pavement and people could not help but wonder what she was waiting for. Hands in her jacket pockets, she watched the crowds leave the church with studied indifference.

  Antoine had a knot in his stomach, he was terrified, he had no-one he could talk to. He set off for home, weaving his way through the groups of churchgoers.

  Surrounded by his habitual entourage, Théo was casually letting slip a few more indiscreet details to shock and surprise his listeners. Antoine hurried along. The enmity between him and Théo was such that you could feel it in the air itself. When Antoine was finally defeated, Théo would be king of the school, of the town, no-one would challenge his authority ever again.

  Antoine felt beaten, crushed, humiliated.

  At the garden gate, he turned back and, in the distance, watched his mother, arm in arm with Bernadette, trudging slowly homeward.

  The piteous sight of these two women floored him: Madame Desmedt, grieving her murdered son walking side by side with Madame Courtin, the mother of his murderer . . .

  Antoine pushed open the door.

  The house was filled with the smell of the roasting chicken his mother had put into the oven before she went out. At the foot of the Christmas tree, there were several presents – she always managed to put them there without his noticing. He did not turn on the light. The room was illuminated only by the flickering string of fairy lights. His heart felt heavy.

  Having survived the ordeal of Midnight Mass, the prospect of spending Christmas Eve with his mother was gruelling.

  There were few things that escaped Madame Courtin’s mania for transforming everyday events into ritual, and every year Christmas Eve was exactly the same. Over the years, something that had been a simple, unalloyed pleasure for Antoine had gradually become a ritual and then a chore. And it felt interminable. They would watch the Christmas show on T.V., have dinner at 10.30 p.m., open presents at midnight . . . Madame Courtin had never made a distinction between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, she planned them according to precisely the same model, down to the presents.

  Antoine went up to his room to fetch the gift he had bought his mother. This was another difficult task, finding something different for her each year. He took the small package from his wardrobe, he could no longer remember what it was. A gold label in one corner read, “Tabac Loto Cadeau – 11, rue Joseph-Merlin” – Monsieur Lemercier’s shop. On the left as you entered, there was a display case containing knives, alarm clocks, tablemats, notebooks . . . But try as he might, Antoine could not recall what he had bought this year.

  Hearing his mother open the garden gate, he raced downstairs and put the present with the others.

  Madame Courtin was hanging up her coat.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, what a terrible business . . .”

  Walking home arm in arm with Bernadette had upset her. A second night with little Rémi still missing, the Mass, that priest telling people they should prepare for the worst – he hadn’t put it in those words, exactly, but that was what he meant – the police arresting someone she knew, in this concatenation of events Blanche Courtin encountered something that was beyond understanding.

  She took off her hat and hung it with her coat, put on her house slippers, shaking her head.

  “Honestly, I ask you . . .”

  “What?”

  She tied her apron around her waist.

  “Kidnapping a little lad like that . . .”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Maman!”

  But Madame Courtin was on a roll. In order to understand, she needed to conjure images:

  “I mean, can you imagine? Abducting a six-year-old boy . . .? And I mean, why, for God’s sake?”

  A vision came to her. She bit her lip and dissolved into tears.

  For the first time in years, Antoine felt the urge to be close to her, to take her in his arms, reassure her, beg her forgiveness, but the sight of his mother’s ravaged face made his heart lurch, he did not dare move.

  “They’ll end up finding that child dead, you mark my words, but what sort of state will he be in . . .”

  She dabbed at her tears with the corners of the apron. Unable to bear it, Antoine dashed from the kitchen, ran up to his room and threw himself on the bed where he, too, burst into tears.

  He did not hear his mother. He simply felt her gently lay her hand on the back of his neck. He did not tell her to go away. Had the time come to confess? His face buried in his pillow, Antoine desperately wanted to confess, already he was fumbling for the words. But the moment of deliverance had not yet come.

  Madame Courtin was saying:

  “Poor thing, you’re upset by this business too, aren’t you . . .? He was such a sweet little lad, wasn’t he . . .?”

  Suddenly she was talking about Rémi in the past tense. She sat for a long time, brooding on this cruel tragedy while Antoine listened to the blood pound in his temples so loudly it made his head ache.

  For the first time, their end-of-year ritual was thrown out of kilter.

  Madame Courtin turned on the television but did not watch. The stuffed capon was as huge as in previous years (it had to look like the colossal American turkeys seen in cartoons, they would be eating it all week), they sat down to dinner without worrying what time it was.

  Antoine could eat nothing. His mother chewed a sliver of breast meat, staring at the T.V. screen. Variety-show music filled the living room accompanied by laughter and shrieking; shiny, happy presenters brandished microphones like ice-cream cones and shouted seasonal catchphrases.

  Her mind on other things, Antoine’s mother cleared away his plate without a word, something that was not like her. She brought in the bûche de Noël, the sort of cake Antoine had always loathed, and said in what she hoped was a cheery, rousing tone:

  “What do you say we tackle the presents, hmm?”

  For once, his father did not fail him. The parcel contained the PlayStation he had asked for, but it gave Antoine only an abstract pleasure because he felt terribly alone. Who would he play with? He could scarcely imagine that tomorrow even existed. Would he be allowed to take it with him when he was arrested?

  “Now, don’t forget to call your father,” Madame Courtin said as she opened her own present.

  She exaggerated her anticipation, I wonder what it can be . . . Finally, Antoine remembered what he had bought: a little wooden chalet that played music when you lifted the roof.

  “It’s beautiful!” his mother gushed, “Where on earth did you find it? It’s just lovely.”

  She wound up the mechanism and listened to the tinkling melody, smiling as she racked her brains. It was the sort of tune everyone has heard a thousand times without ever paying attention to the name.

  “Oh, I know this one,” Madame Courtin murmured as she looked for the instruction booklet.

  “‘Edelweiss’ (R. Rogers). Ah, yes, maybe . . .”

  She stood up and kissed Antoine, who was already setting up the PlayStation. Since it came from his father, there was bound to be something wrong with it: he had hoped for “Crash Team Racing”, but had got last year’s version of “Gran Turismo” instead.

  Madame Courtin finished clearing the table, did the washing-up, then came back into the living room with the glass of wine she had poured herself over dinner and had left untouched. She saw Antoine holding the joystick but with a faraway look in his eyes, staring at some point above the wall. She had just opened her mouth to say something when the doorbell rang.

  Antoine flinched, instantly panicked.

  Who could it be at this hour of the night, and on Christmas Eve . . .?

  Even Madame Courtin, who was not anxious by nature, walked warily down the hallway. She peered through the spyhole,
pressing her forehead against the door, then quickly opened it.

  “Valentine . . .!”

  The girl apologised.

  “It’s my mother, she’s locked herself in the bedroom, she won’t come out for anyone, and she won’t answer . . . Papa was wondering if . . .”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Madame Courtin bustled between the hallway and the kitchen, taking off her apron, getting her coat . . .

  “Come in, Valentine, come in . . .”

  Close up, the girl looked different to how she had when Antoine had seen her earlier that evening, that condescending pout, the disdainful look. Her vivid lipstick brought out the pallor of her face. Her eyes, circled with dark-blue eyeliner, were wet with tears. She took a step towards the living room and watched as Antoine got to his feet. She gave him a curt nod and he responded with a little wave. He stared at the girl, who now seemed indifferent, as though she were alone and no-one was watching her.

  She was wearing the same clothes she had worn to Mass, red jeans and a white leatherette jacket that she now unzipped with a sigh, as though suddenly realising how warm it was in the room, to reveal a pink mohair jumper that tightly hugged her bust. Antonie wondered how they could be this shape, he had never seen breasts so perfectly round. It was even possible to see her skin through the wool. The perfume she was wearing evoked some unfamiliar flower he could not quite identify . . .

  “Antoine?” said Madame Courtin, already buttoned into her coat, “. . . aren’t you ready?”

  “Am I coming with you?” said Antoine.

  “Of course you’re coming. I mean, given the circumstances . . .”

  She shot Valentine an embarrassed look.

  Antoine could not work out why “the circumstances” required his presence. Was she saying this simply because Valentine was here?

  “Right, well, I’m off. You catch me up, Antoine, O.K.?”

  The prospect of going into his neighbours’ house, of finding himself face to face with Monsieur Desmedt, made his stomach heave.

  The door slammed shut.

  He glanced around, frantically looking for a way out.

  “What is this?”

  He whipped around. Valentine had not gone with Madame Courtin, she was standing in front of him. She was holding the PlayStation controller, the handles pointing towards the ceiling. She grasped one of them, as though it were the hand of a hammer, and studied it curiously. Then her small, slender hand began to stroke it, tracing it with her forefinger as though to measure the smoothness, the texture, but her eyes stared deeply into Antoine’s as she did so.

  “What is this?” she said again.

  “It’s . . . for playing,” Antoine stammered.

  She smiled as she looked at him, still toying with the joystick.

  “Oh, for playing . . .”

  Antoine nodded vaguely, then scarpered, taking the stairs three at a time, he dashed into his bedroom and took a deep breath, his heart was hammering out a terrifying rhythm. He tried to remember what he had come for. Oh, yes, his shoes. He sat on the bed. Exhaustion engulfed him again, he could not resist the temptation to lie down, to close his eyes.

  He could still picture Valentine’s hand, still feel her magnetic presence. He was seized by an uncertainty so intense, so painful, that it rekindled his anxiety.

  He was anxious to be caught, to be arrested.

  Anxious to confess. To be done with it. To be able finally to sleep, to sleep.

  The terrible consequences of his confession gradually faded as he was confronted with the impossibility of carrying on like this, of living with this dread, with these images. As soon as he closed his eyes, as he had now, Rémi reappeared.

  The image was always the same.

  The little boy lying in the dark crevasse, his hands reaching out . . .

  Antoine!

  Sometimes there was only one hand, struggling desperately to find some purchase, and Rémi’s voice fading, as though melting away.

  Antoine!

  “Are you in bed already?”

  Antoine sat up with a start as though he had just received an electric shock.

  Valentine was standing in the doorway, she had taken off her jacket and slung it casually over her shoulder, holding it with a crooked index finger.

  She surveyed the room with an inquisitiveness that had nothing to do with curiosity, took two or three steps closer, moving with a sinuous, dancing rhythm Antoine had never seen before. The perfume he had sensed earlier now permeated the whole room.

  Valentine did not look at him. She slowly wandered around the room, like a blasé, indifferent visitor to a museum.

  Antoine felt very hot, he tried to compose himself. He bent down, grabbed his shoes and began to lace them up, head down, eyes fixed on the floor.

  He felt Valentine move closer, enter his field of vision, though it was as restricted as possible. She stood in front of him, her legs slightly parted; he could see nothing but her white trainers, the damp cuffs of her red jeans. If he had raised his head, he would be at eye level with her waist.

  He carried on with his task, but his trembling hands refused to do his bidding, he had an almost painful erection. Valentine did not move. She seemed to be waiting patiently for him to finish what he was doing. So Antoine bounded to his feet, trying to step past without touching her, but there was so little room that he lost his balance and fell back on the bed. With the agility of a fish out of water, he turned over so the girl would not see the bulge in his trousers. He got to his feet again, raced to the door . . .

  Valentine had not turned around. Her jacket had fallen to the floor. He was looking at her back.

  Standing confidently, facing the bed, she crossed her arms and clasped her shoulders. Antoine noticed her nails were painted candy-pink. He could not stop himself from staring at her buttocks, so round, so firm, at her narrow hips, at the taut bra-strap faintly visible through her jumper.

  He felt suddenly giddy. He could not tell whether he was losing his balance or whether Valentine was swaying, grinding her hips almost imperceptibly in a still, silent, suggestive dance.

  Antoine steadied himself on the doorframe. He needed air. He needed to get out. Right now.

  He took the stairs four at a time, rushed to the kitchen sink, turned the water on full and plunged his face into his cupped hands. Then he shook himself, grabbed the tea towel and wiped his face.

  As he set it down, he glimpsed the figure of Valentine in the hallway, heading for the door. The cold night air gusted into the room; Antoine began to run. Valentine was already out in the street, walking slowly and unhurriedly. She pushed open the gate of her parents’ garden, calmly crossed it and went into the house, not bothering to close the door, so certain was she that Antoine was running after her.

  Before he knew what had happened, he was in the Desmedts’ house.

  The characteristic smell of the place greeted him. It was a smell he had never liked, a combination of cabbage, sweat and wax polish.

  Antoine took a step and stopped dead.

  Directly in front of him, sitting at the far end of the long dining table, Monsieur Desmedt was staring at him.

  All of a sudden he was convinced that the only reason Valentine had come over to his house was to bring him here to face her father.

  The girl pretended to hang around, casually leafing through the T.V. guide, running a finger along the edge of the sideboard. Then she turned and stared at Antoine. She was a different person. The flighty teenager was once again consumed by the shadow of her little brother which floated in the room like a foreboding. She brusquely turned on her heel and went up the stairs and disappeared without a sign, without a backward glance.

  “They’re upstairs,” Monsieur Desmedt said in a hollow voice.

  He jerked his chin towards the upper floor from where garbled whispers could be heard. The living room was illuminated only by the bare bulb in the kitchen and the lights on the Christmas tree which were identical
to their own. Probably bought from the same shop,

  Antoine stood transfixed. A bottle of wine and an empty glass stood in front of Monsieur Desmedt. The man’s head was bowed, he seemed thoughtful. He sat like this for a long moment, then abruptly seemed to remember that he was not alone. He nodded to the chair next to him. Antoine was terrified that the man would drag him from the doorway and force him to sit down. Nervously, he stepped forward. The more he approached, the closer he came, the more this brutal, hulking man terrified him.

  “Take a seat.”

  The chair Antoine pulled out made a sound like chalk on a blackboard. Monsieur Desmedt stared at him for a long time.

  “You know Rémi pretty well, don’t you?”

  Antoine pursed his lips slightly, yeah, pretty well, I mean, not very well . . .

  “Can you imagine a kid like that running away? He’s six years old.”

  Antoine shook his head.

  “Can you imagine him wandering off into the back of beyond? Getting so lost he can’t find his way home in a place where he was born and raised?”

  Antoine realised that Monsieur Desmedt was not really asking questions, but voicing the thoughts he had been brooding over for hours. He said nothing.

  “And why don’t they keep looking for him through the night, huh? Surely they’ve got some bloody torches at the gendarmerie?”

  Antoine made a helpless little gesture with his hands, unable to explain.

  Monsieur Desmedt exuded an unpleasant smell which mingled with the wine he had obviously been drinking in some quantity.

  “I should go.” Antoine muttered.

  When Monsieur Desmedt did not move, he slowly got to his feet as though he did not want to rouse him.

  Then Monsieur Desmedt turned abruptly, grabbed him by the hips and pulled him close. He slipped his arms around Antoine’s waist, pressed his face into the boy’s chest and burst into tears.

  Antoine almost toppled under the force, but managed to stay upright. He saw the thick, pale neck of Rémi’s father racked by sobs, breathed in his overpowering odour.

  Imprisoned in the man’s brawny arms, Antoine wished that he could die.