After the Crash: A Novel

by Michel Bussi

  He turned away and opened the door of the Xantia. Grand-Duc had not lied about the envelope at least: there it was, on the passenger seat. Marc tore it open. Inside were four typewritten pages. He walked over to where Malvina was curled up in the fetal position, still quietly weeping. He sat down next to her and began to read out loud:

  “I am going to tell you everything, Mr. Grand-Duc. I never did anything wrong, after all. I have nothing to feel guilty about. I always knew I would have to tell the truth about this one day and, now that you have found me, that time has come. I was what they call a ‘difficult’ teenager. By the time I was seventeen, my relationship with my parents was over. I had long since stopped going to school, and I was just hanging around, like so many other young people. My parents managed to drag me to the employment agency, and I went through a series of internships before I got a temping job at the nature preserve. It was only for a few weeks and my main task was to pick up garbage in the forest. There was me and a small group of other interns, and we were all working for Grégory Morez. He was incredibly handsome, and he could be very sweet with the girls he liked. He had this way of touching you that never felt invasive. He was more than ten years older than me. I fell in love with him, like so many others before me. We made love for the first time, in the middle of the forest, near a waterfall. After that we did it many times while I was still working there, and for several weeks afterward. Everywhere, in the most amazing places. I knew he had other girls, but I thought he felt differently about me. I thought he truly loved me. I wanted to believe all his promises. It’s a cliché, really, isn’t it? The stupid young woman and the old charmer…”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I became pregnant. I didn’t realize until I was six weeks gone. By then, I was already on a downward spiral: no work, a family I hardly ever saw, and increasingly estranged from my friends. And I had this suicidal obsession with Grégory Morez. For his body, and the pleasure he gave me.”

  “Was Grégory the father?”

  “Yes. He was the only man I had ever slept with. I told him about the baby one night, in a seedy hotel room in a suburb of Belfort, after we’d made love.”

  “How did he react?”

  “Just as you’d expect, Mr. Grand-Duc. He showed me the door. He told me I was just a little whore who was trying to trap him. He said there was no proof he was the father and that I should get an abortion.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No, although I never really made a decision to keep the child—I simply let the weeks go past without doing anything. It all happened so quickly. I was still completely obsessed with Grégory. I was convinced that I could change his mind and win him back. And my life was going from bad to worse: I was living on the streets most of the time. I would only go back to my parents’ house about once a week, and when my pregnancy became obvious I stopped going back altogether. I just phoned them instead.”

  “Did you give birth in a hospital?”

  “Yes, in Montbéliard. I had just turned eighteen. I was in a bad state. The baby was very small—not even five pounds. She was born on August 27, 1980. I left the hospital one week later. I still hadn’t filled out all the official forms. I ended up just dumping them in a trash can.”

  “It was that easy?”

  “I saw dozens of doctors and nurses during the week I was in the hospital. I’m sure there must be some kind of proof that my child was born there. But who was going to check that the child was still with me, that I was bringing it up? None of my family ever knew anything about the baby.”

  “What name did you give her?”

  “I never called her anything. I told the people at the hospital that I hadn’t chosen a name yet, that I was waiting for the father. I left with my child in my arms. Within a few weeks, it was as if I had fallen out of normal society altogether. I had no connection with any of my family or friends. I slept in the street, breast-feeding my child anywhere I could. I was exhausted. I hung around with people who didn’t judge me. Drunks and junkies, mostly. Sometimes I thought about going home and letting my parents look after me. Sometimes I dreamed I would take my little girl to Grégory and persuade him to help me bring her up. Even at that age, she had incredible blue eyes—a bit like mine, but even more like her father’s. Sometimes I thought I would just lie down and die, right there on the pavement…”

  “So why did you decide to leave the town?”

  “I had no choice in the end. A teenager living on the streets of Montbéliard with a baby… you can’t hide that kind of thing forever. After a few weeks, social services were after me. I knew how that would end. They would steal my daughter from me and take me back to my parents’ place. Without even asking for my opinion. I should confess to you, Mr. Grand-Duc, that some of the things I did were not legal. I sold drugs, I shoplifted. I sold my body, too, more than once. So I had to leave Montbéliard, just to survive.”

  “And that was how you met Georges Pelletier?”

  “Yes. He was like me, a total down-and-out, and he needed to get away from the police and social services, too. He thought I was cute, in spite of the mess I was in. I think he imagined himself becoming my pimp, although I never let him touch me. But we both wanted the same thing—to get away—and Mont Terri seemed the obvious place. It’s close to Montbéliard, and I knew no one would ever look for me there. It was the beginning of December, but the weather was still fairly warm and we were used to sleeping outside. And, best of all, I would be close to Grégory. I imagined bumping into him, and him remembering how much he used to like me, and then seeing my daughter. Surely when he saw those eyes, I thought, he wouldn’t be able to deny that he was the father. I know this must seem crazy, but… well, I was crazy. Grégory Morez was my only lifeline. I had to believe in him.”

  “Did you see him again?”

  “We lived in a little cabin that we found, near the top of Mont Terri. It was cold, but we could light fires and had a roof over our heads. It was better than life on the streets, really. I am going to answer your question, Mr. Grand-Duc, don’t worry. I’m getting to it. Yes, I saw Grégory Morez. Almost every day. He saw me and he saw our baby, but he didn’t recognize me. He never even glanced at me. I was no longer a sexy young girl. Life had chewed me up and spit me out. I had put on weight and my breasts were saggy. There was no sparkle in my eyes. I didn’t look like the same person.”

  “Didn’t you ever speak to him?”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Grand-Duc. I felt humiliated. Utterly humiliated. Had I really grown so ugly? Had he been with other girls, since me? I finally realized that he would never touch me again, never feel attracted to me again. So why on earth would he want to have anything to do with my child? My last flicker of hope died on Mont Terri. My daughter was a millstone around my neck, and the two of us would drown together. Oh, you mustn’t think that I didn’t love my child, Mr. Grand-Duc. I adored her! But I had nothing left to give her. No father. No more milk. I didn’t even have a name for her.

  “The snow started falling suddenly one morning. It was December 22, 1980. Georges Pelletier and I tried to keep ourselves warm by building a campfire in the little hut, but I had to do everything, because he was high on heroin most of the time. He would have frozen to death if I hadn’t been there. I even had to force him to go outside and gather firewood.”

  “And then night fell…”

  “Yes. And the storm got worse. Pelletier was completely out of it. I don’t think he even heard the crash. The whole cabin shook, as if there’d been an earthquake. It felt like the end of the world. From the door of the cabin, you could see the trees on fire, half a mile away. I wrapped up my baby in a blanket and went outside. It didn’t feel cold anymore. In fact, the fire was so ferocious that I could feel my skin burning.”

  “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Not at all. It was a strange scene, unreal. Snow and fire together, and then this twisted plane lying on the mountaintop, the steel melting before
my eyes as if it were plastic. I knew I was the first witness there, but I didn’t realize the emergency services would take so long.”

  “And that’s when you saw it?”

  “The baby, you mean? Yes, Mr. Grand-Duc, that’s when I saw it.”

  “Was it…?”

  “Dead? Yes. Its face was all swollen and I think it must have died right away. No baby could possibly have survived in those conditions. It was hell. I still find it amazing that everyone believed the story of the miracle child… Yes, the baby was dead, Mr. Grand-Duc. And I immediately felt that it wasn’t fair.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That it was cruel, if you prefer. A whole family would cry for the loss of that baby. It was a little girl—she was wearing a dress. So many people would grieve for her. So many lives would be ruined. And yet there I was, with a baby of my own, unable to offer it any kind of future. And she would live, but without anything, anyone, apart from me. Do you understand now what I mean?”

  “I understand.”

  “It seemed such an obvious thing to do. The dead baby in the snow was practically the same age as my baby. I acted on impulse. For the first time in my life, I felt I could do something positive for someone, something useful. Bring a dead baby back to life, save another family from grief, and give my daughter a better future. I felt as if I was saving a life. That must be how nurses and firemen feel, I thought. And it was this feeling, which took me by surprise that night, that made me decide I wanted to become a nurse. I wanted to save lives.”

  “You undressed the dead baby?”

  “Yes, Mr. Grand-Duc, in order to save it. I was giving my daughter a loving family, a family with a home and with money, who would never be aware of my sacrifice, who would cry in gratitude for the miracle that had saved their baby. To me, it seemed like there was almost something sacred about what I was doing…”

  “But that’s not what happened…”

  “How could I have guessed there were two babies on that plane? How could I have imagined the consequences? I thought I was doing something good, Mr. Grand-Duc. Afterward, I read the newspapers and followed the story. The families being torn apart. The verdict. But what could I do? What could I say? Apart from saying nothing. It should have been so much simpler… I waited with my baby for about an hour that night, holding her in my arms until I heard the first firemen approaching. Then I left my daughter in the snow, in her new clothes, far enough from the plane that she would be warmed by the fire without being burned. I kissed her good-bye and ran away into the night, carrying the dead baby wrapped up in my blanket.”

  “Was it you who buried her next to the cabin?”

  “Who else? Pelletier was still asleep, high as a kite. I dug up the earth with my bare hands. It took so long. My fingers were bleeding. Pelletier woke up and saw me just as I was close to finishing. The baby’s corpse was already in the grave. I was inventing prayers before I covered the body with soil because I didn’t know any real ones. Pelletier went crazy. He thought I had killed my own child…”

  “And then he saw the bracelet on the baby’s wrist. Is that when he realized the child wasn’t yours?”

  “Yes. I was so upset, I hadn’t even noticed the bracelet, but he saw it right away. And it was gold, too. So we made a deal. I let him have the bracelet in return for keeping his mouth shut. He left that night and I never saw him again. I filled in the grave with soil and found some stones to pile up on top of it. My fingers were so cold I could hardly even bend them. It took me forever to make a little cross from two bits of wood. I spent the rest of the night in the cabin, near the embers of the fire. I barely slept a wink that night. Or the next night…”

  “You came back to tend the grave, afterward?”

  “Little by little, I began to live again. My parents were looking for me—they put that missing persons ad in the newspaper, as you know—and in the end, I returned to Belfort. I went back to school, then to college. I became a nurse. I met Laurent six years ago. Laurent Luisans. He’s an orderly at the hospital. My parents are both dead: my father died five years ago, my mother last year. Laurent and I are not married, but I decided to take his name. He doesn’t know anything about my past. Nobody knows. Laurent wants us to have a child. It’s not too late for me, I’m only thirty-six. But I don’t know… It’s complicated.”

  “I can see that, Mélanie. But you never answered my question, about the grave.”

  “I’m getting to that. Yes, I did go back every year, on August 27, my child’s birthday. I felt as if the baby I had buried was my own child, you see. Not a stranger’s. Not Lyse-Rose. I came back to tend the grave and put flowers by the cross. One year, a long time ago—in 1987, I think—I noticed that someone had disturbed the stones. I didn’t know who, but I knew that the battle between the two families was still going on. That it would never end.”

  “Unless someone dug up the corpse of the baby you had buried next to the cabin. A particularly stubborn private detective, for example.”

  “Yes. I was scared when I saw that the grave had been discovered. I was afraid that if someone dug up that baby, they would dig up my past, too. So I did it myself instead.”

  “Did you dig another grave somewhere else?”

  “That’s none of your business, Mr. Grand-Duc. What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Could we meet?”

  “I don’t see that I have much choice. I’m at your mercy. Why don’t we meet tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock? Laurent starts work at five, and I finish at eight. But it takes me an hour to get home. I hope you will be discreet, Mr. Grand-Duc. I have changed my life. I have put all this behind me, and it wasn’t easy. I never meant to do anything bad that night. Quite the contrary. How could I have known…”

  “Known what?”

  Silence.

  “Known what, Mélanie?”

  “That my daughter would look so much like me, when she was eighteen years old?”

  It was just past nine o’clock. The mists that clung to the Jura Mountains were beginning to lift. Marc was the first to spot the little white car moving up the road toward Dannemarie. It passed them and parked in front of the chalet with sky-blue shutters. Marc noticed the nurse’s caduceus symbol on a sticker on the rear window. The blond-haired driver remained motionless behind the steering wheel for a while, then finally the car’s lights went off and the door opened to reveal the tired smile on the achingly familiar face of a perfect stranger.

  62

  May 20, 1999, Aubépines Maternity Hospital, Dieppe

  Tom clenched his fists as he slept in the transparent plastic bed. His tiny chest rose and fell. All that could be seen of him from this angle were a pair of chubby cheeks and a mane of blond hair, amazingly abundant for a four-day-old baby.

  Marc held Lylie’s hand. She was tired. Her eyes kept closing and flicking open again. The silence in the room made a welcome change: at last she was alone with Marc and Tom.

  Nicole had just left. She would happily have stayed with them twenty-four hours a day, watching over her great-grandson, but Lylie had told her, in the kindest way possible, that she needed some rest. The whole of Dieppe already knew about the baby. The first person Nicole had told was Pierre, in the Janval cemetery, but after that she had rediscovered some of the energy of her youth and gone from shop to shop announcing the good news. Marc was dreading the new influx of visitors this would undoubtedly bring.

  Lylie’s head fell onto Marc’s shoulder. He was perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, but he didn’t dare move. Carefully, with his fingertips, he reached out to grab the card they had received from Mélanie Belvoir. It was attached to a huge bouquet of roses.

  Happy birthday, Tom! Lylie, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be your mother. Perhaps you will accept me as a grandmother. I will do my best to make up for lost time, for everything I ruined through my silence. It’s not too late. Please let me into your life, for Tom’s sake, if nothing else. What child wouldn’t want
a thirty-six-year-old grandmother?

  Take care of Marc…

  Mélanie

  So far, Lylie had refused to meet her mother. Mélanie had not insisted. Lylie had felt too confused by the prospect; she needed time. But now Tom was here, and Marc felt sure he would be the link that connected mother and grandmother.

  After barely three minutes of peace, Lylie was woken by the entry of another nurse. Marc cursed inwardly, but this time there was a good reason for the interruption. The nurse was carrying a gift-wrapped package that was bigger than she was.

  “It’s just been delivered by a messenger,” said the nurse. “Good thing we don’t get packages this big every day. The card is for Father, the present for Mom.”

  The nurse left. Lylie stared, wide-eyed.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Marc said.

  “It looks like some kind of joke,” said Lylie. “Are you sure it’s not going to explode?”

  “That depends who sent it.”

  Lylie tore off the wrapping paper while Marc opened the small white envelope.

  He immediately recognized Malvina’s barely legible scrawl, and his heart suddenly felt full.

  “Who’s it from?” Lylie asked, half buried under brightly colored paper.

  “A friend,” Marc replied. “A very dear friend.”

  “Oh?”

  Lylie had ripped off all the wrapping paper and was now opening the cardboard box. Inside she found a gigantic brown-and-yellow teddy bear.

  “Oh, my God!” Lylie squealed. “Look how beautiful it is!”

  Marc finally managed to decipher Malvina’s message:

  For the little bastard. He’d better take good care of it.

  Marc smiled and squeezed Lylie’s hand. Then he turned toward the teddy bear. “You’ve been waiting a long time for this, haven’t you? Finally you get to meet Lylie!”

  The mother of his child gave him a puzzled look.