Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  “Your change of mind doesn’t alter a thing, Madame Dupain. A woman’s testimony in support of her husband isn’t worth—”

  Stéphanie Dupain raises her voice.

  “Nonsense! Any lawyer…”

  Sérénac now seems strangely calm.

  “Sylvio, leave us.”

  Bénavides tries to conceal his disappointment, but he knows he has no choice. He picks up a bundle of papers, places it under his arm, and leaves Room 33, closing the door behind him.

  “You… you’re spoiling everything!” Stéphanie Dupain immediately explodes.

  Laurenç Sérénac keeps his cool. He is sitting on the office chair, rolling it gently back and forth with his feet outstretched.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Giving a false statement.”

  Stéphanie doesn’t reply. Her eyes drift from the Cézanne to the naked back of the red-haired woman.

  “I hate Toulouse-Lautrec. I hate that kind of hypocritical voyeurism.”

  She looks down. For the first time in the office she meets Laurenç Sérénac’s gaze.

  “And why are you doing that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Concentrating on a single line of inquiry. Hunting down my husband because you’re convinced he’s a murderer. He isn’t guilty, I know he isn’t. Just let him go!”

  “On what evidence?”

  “Jacques had no motive. It’s ridiculous. How many times do I have to tell you, I never slept with Morval. No motive, and he has an alibi. Me.”

  “I don’t believe you, Stéphanie.”

  Time stands still in Room 33.

  “So what are we going to do?”

  Stéphanie paces nervously back and forth. Laurenç watches her, his head tilted, his chin resting on his open hand, feigning a composure he does not feel. Stéphanie takes a deep breath, as if she were lost in the spiral of the red chignon on the model painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, then suddenly turns round.

  “Inspector, what choice does a desperate woman have? How far would she go to save her husband? How long would it take for her to understand the message? You are familiar, Inspector, with those American thrillers, the kind of policeman who’s capable of accusing some poor fool just in order to steal his wife.”

  “That’s not it, Stéphanie.”

  Stéphanie Dupain walks toward the desk. Gently, she pulls out the two silver ribbons, letting down her long chestnut hair. She sits down on the desk while he remains seated in his chair, looking up at her.

  “This is what you’re waiting for, isn’t it, Inspector? You see, I’m not such a fool. If I give myself to you then it will all be OK, is that it?”

  “Stop it, Stéphanie.”

  “What’s wrong, Inspector? You’re scared to take that last step? Don’t ask yourself too many questions. You’ve caught her, the femme fatale, in your net. You’re holding her, her husband is behind bars, she’s trapped. She’s all yours.”

  Stéphanie gently raises her legs so that her skirt slides back over her bare skin. One button of her white blouse disappears between her fingers and an explosion of freckles is revealed as she exposes the edge of her bra.

  “Stéph…”

  “Unless she is the one, this femme fatale, who’s been pulling the strings since the beginning. After all, why not?”

  Stéphanie’s eyes narrow to almond-shaped slits. To his surprise, they remind Laurenç Sérénac of a mysterious indigo sunrise. He really must pull himself together.

  “There could be two of them,” the teacher continues. “Husband and wife, accomplices. Les diaboliques. The infernal pair. And you would be their toy, Inspector.”

  Stéphanie has put both feet on the desk, and her beige cotton skirt is now just a crumple around her waist. A second button of her blouse springs open. The areolas of the teacher’s breasts are visible through the fine lace of her underwear. Drops of sweat run down the hollow of her cleavage.

  Is it fear? Or arousal?

  “Stop it, Stéphanie. Stop playing this ludicrous game. I will take your statement.”

  Laurenç gets up and grabs a sheet of paper. Slowly Stéphanie Dupain buttons up her blouse and straightens her skirt, then crosses her legs.

  “I warn you, Inspector, I’m not going to change my mind. I’m not going to change a line of what I have already said. That morning, the morning of Jérôme Morval’s murder, Jacques was in bed with me.”

  The inspector writes it down.

  “I’ve taken a note of that, Stéphanie. Even if I don’t believe you.”

  “Do you want more details, Inspector? Do you want to test the credibility of my statement? Did we make love? In what position? Did I come?”

  “The investigating magistrate is bound to ask those questions.”

  “Then write it all down. Write it down, Laurenç. No, I didn’t come. We did it very quickly. I was on top of him. I want a child and apparently that is the best position for getting pregnant.”

  The inspector keeps his eyes lowered and writes in silence.

  “Do you need any other details, Inspector? I’m sorry, I don’t have a photograph, but I can describe—”

  Laurenç Sérénac jumps to his feet.

  “You’re lying, Stéphanie.”

  The inspector walks around the desk, opens the top drawer, and takes out a hard-backed book. Aurélien.

  “I’m sure you’re lying.”

  He opens the book at a page with the corner turned down.

  “Remember, you were the one who told me to read this book, because of that strange phrase found in Jérôme Morval’s pocket: ‘the crime of dreaming’ and so on. Shall I refresh your memory, Stéphanie? Chapter sixty-four. Aurélien bumps into Bérénice in Monet’s gardens, she runs off down a sunken lane in Giverny, as if trying to escape her fate. Aurélien pursues her, finds her out of breath, lying against an embankment… Forgive me, I can’t remember the whole text by heart, but I’ll read you the scene.”

  Almost for the first time, Laurenç Sérénac holds Stéphanie’s lilac gaze.

  “‘Aurélien walked toward her, he saw her heaving breasts, her head thrown back, with her blond hair falling to one side, her fluttering eyelashes, the dark circles that made her eyes even more troubling, and those trembling lips, and her gritted teeth were feline, so white…’”

  The inspector walks forward until he is standing directly in front of Stéphanie. She can’t move back, trapped as she is on the desk. Laurenç keeps advancing, until the teacher’s knee is touching the denim of his jeans. The inspector’s pelvis is precisely level with the base of her belly. She need only uncross her legs…

  Sérénac is still reading.

  “‘Aurélien stopped. He was in front of her, very close, he loomed over her. He had never seen her like that…’”

  He sets the book aside for a moment.

  “You’re the one who’s spoiling everything, Stéphanie.”

  He places a hand on her bare knee. Her flesh quivers, there is nothing she can do to stop it. Nor can she prevent the trembling of her legs, which are twisted around each other like wisteria around a stake.

  “You’re a strange man, Inspector. A policeman. An art lover. A poetry lover…”

  Sérénac doesn’t reply. He picks up the book and turns a few more pages.

  “Still in that famous chapter sixty-four, a few lines on, do you remember? ‘I’ll take you to a place where no one knows you, not even the motorcyclists… Where you will be free to choose… Where we will make our own decisions about our lives…’”

  The book falls with his arm, down to her waist, as if it weighs a ton. He leaves his other hand on the smooth skin of her knee, as if soothing the troubled heart of a young child.

  They stay like that, in silence.

  Sérénac is the first to break the spell. He steps back. His fingers close around the sheet of paper on which he has recorded the teacher’s statement.

  “I’m sorry, St�
�phanie. You were the one who asked me to read this novel.”

  Stéphanie Dupain runs a hand over her eyes; tearful, emotional, and weary.

  “Don’t confuse everything. I’ve read Aragon too. I know I’m free to choose. Don’t worry, I’ll make my own decisions about my life, Laurenç. I’ve already told you that I don’t love my husband. I’ll give you another scoop: I think I’m going to leave him. It’s been growing inside me, like a river, as if the ripples of these past few days could only herald a cascade. But none of that changes the fact that he’s innocent. A wife doesn’t leave a man who’s in jail. A wife only leaves a free man, do you see that, Laurenç? I’m not withdrawing a word of my statement. I was making love with my husband that morning. My husband did not kill Jérôme Morval.”

  Without a word, Laurenç Sérénac holds out the piece of paper and a pen. The teacher signs it without rereading it, then leaves the office. Sérénac reads the last few lines of chapter sixty-four of Aurélien.

  He watched her leave. Her back was bent, in imitation of one who does not walk quickly… He was frozen by that incredible confession. She was lying, plainly! No. She wasn’t lying.

  How much time passes before Sylvio Bénavides knocks at the door? Several minutes? An hour?

  “Come in, Sylvio.”

  “So?”

  “She’s sticking to her version of events. She’s covering for her husband.”

  Sylvio Bénavides bites his lip.

  “Perhaps it’s for the best, in the end.”

  He slips a pile of papers onto the desk.

  “This has just come in. Pellissier, the graphologist from Rouen, has changed his statement. After further examination, he has concluded that the message carved into the paint box found in the stream can’t have been written by Dupain…”

  An excruciating moment of suspense, then:

  “Hold on tight, Chief. In his view, the message was carved by a child! A child of around ten. He’s quite positive about that.”

  “Christ,” Sérénac murmurs. “What is this nonsense?”

  His brain seems to be refusing to think. But Bénavides hasn’t finished.

  “It’s not just that, Chief, we’ve also had the first analyses of the blood found on the paint box. According to the results, the blood doesn’t belong to either Jérôme Morval or Jacques Dupain.”

  Sérénac gets up, staggering slightly.

  “It’s another murder, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “We don’t know, boss. To tell the truth, we don’t understand anything.”

  Laurenç Sérénac paces in a circle around the room.

  “OK. I’ve got the message, Sylvio. I have no other choice than to release Jacques Dupain. The investigating magistrate will complain, of course, even though we’ve only held him for less than five hours.”

  “He’d rather have that than a judicial error.”

  “No, Sylvio. No. I can see what you’re thinking: that I’ve been taken for a ride, all that drama at the end of the Astragale path just to nab one guy, and in the end all the evidence slips through our fingers a few hours later. We’ll have to let him go. But it doesn’t alter my opinion at all. Not one bit. Jacques Dupain is guilty!”

  Sylvio Bénavides doesn’t reply. He has worked out that in the minefield of his superior’s gut feelings, it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion. However, that does not prevent Bénavides from thinking about all the contradictory elements building up in the columns on the folded sheet of paper that never leaves his pocket. There can’t be a simple answer to all these clues; it’s impossible. The further the investigation progresses, the more Sylvio has a sense that someone is playing with them, pulling the strings, enjoying themselves by sending the police down blind alleyways in order to execute his perfectly orchestrated plan.

  “Come in.”

  Laurenç Sérénac looks up, surprised that someone should be knocking at his door so late in the day. He thought he was alone, or nearly alone, in the station. The door to his office isn’t closed. Sylvio is standing in the doorway with a strange look in his eyes. It isn’t just tiredness, there’s something else.

  “You’re still here, Sylvio?”

  He consults the clock on his desk.

  “It’s after six o’clock! For heaven’s sake, you should be at the maternity ward, holding Béatrice’s hand. And getting some sleep too.”

  “I’ve found it, Chief!”

  “What?”

  Sérénac almost has a sense that even the painted figures on the walls have turned round.

  “I’ve found it, Chief. God alive, I’ve found it.”

  59

  The sun has just hidden itself behind the last row of poplars. For any painter, the descending twilight would mean that it’s time to fold up that easel, put it under your arm, and return home. As Paul walks along the bridge, he watches Fanette frantically painting, as if her whole life depended on those last few minutes of light.

  “I knew I’d find you here.”

  Fanette waves a greeting, but goes on painting.

  “Can I have a look?”

  “Go ahead, I’m in a hurry. Between all the schoolwork, my mother being constantly on my back, and night coming too early, I’m never going to finish my painting. I have to hand it in the day after tomorrow.”

  Paul tries to be as discreet as possible, as if even the air he breathes might disturb the balance of the composition. But there are so many questions he would like to ask Fanette.

  Without turning toward the boy, Fanette anticipates his questions.

  “I know, Paul, there are no water lilies in the stream itself. But I don’t care about reality. I painted the Water Lilies the other day, in Monet’s gardens. As for the rest, it was completely impossible—I couldn’t do a thing with that flat water. I needed to put my water lilies on a river, on running water, something that danced. A real vanishing line, do you see? Something that moves.”

  Paul is fascinated.

  “How do you do it, Fanette? How do you give the impression that your painting is alive, that the water is flowing, and even that the wind is stirring the leaves? Just like that, using nothing but some paint on a canvas.”

  I like it when Paul pays me compliments.

  “I just can’t help it. As Monet said, it’s not me, it’s just my eye. I’m only reproducing what my eye sees.”

  “You’re incr—”

  “Shut up, you fool. At my age Claude Monet was already a well-known painter in Le Havre, because of the caricatures he drew of passersby. And then I’m not… Hey, do you see that tree over there? Do you know what Monet once asked a farmer to do?”

  “No.”

  “He’d started painting a tree in winter, an old oak. But when he came back three months later his tree was covered with leaves. So he paid the owner of the tree, a farmer, to take off all the leaves, one by one.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “No! It took two men a whole day to strip his model. And Monet wrote to his wife to say how proud he was to be able to paint a winter landscape in the middle of May!”

  Paul stares at the leaves dancing in the wind.

  “I’d do it for you, Fanette. Change the color of the trees, if you asked me.”

  I know, Paul, I know.

  Fanette goes on painting for several more minutes. Paul stands in silence behind her as the light continues to fade. In the end the little girl gives up.

  “It’s no use. I’ll finish it tomorrow, I hope.”

  Paul walks toward the bank and studies the stream flowing at his feet.

  “Still no news of James?”

  Fanette’s voice seems to crack. Paul has a sense that painting has allowed her to forget, and that now reality is catching up with her. He tells himself that he is stupid, that he shouldn’t have asked the question.

  “No,” Fanette murmurs. “No news. It’s as if James never existed. I think I’m going mad, Paul. Even Vincent says he doesn’t remember him. But he
did see him—he spied on us every evening. I didn’t dream it!”

  “Vincent’s weird.”

  Paul tries to find the most reassuring smile he has in stock.

  “If one of you is going off their head, it certainly isn’t you! Have you tried to talk to the teacher about James?”

  Fanette leans toward her painting to check if it’s dry.

  “No, not yet. It isn’t easy. I’ll try tomorrow.”

  “And why don’t you ask some of the other painters in the village?”

  “I don’t know. I almost don’t dare. James was always on his own. I got the feeling that apart from me he didn’t like many people.”

  You know, Paul, I’m a little ashamed. Very ashamed, even. Sometimes I tell myself that I should forget James, that I should pretend he never existed.

  Fanette firmly grips her canvas, which is almost bigger than she is, and sets it down on a wide sheet of brown paper that she uses to protect it. Her eyes turn toward the Moulin des Chennevières. The tower stands out against a sky that is beginning to turn orange. The vision is as beautiful as it is frightening. For a moment Fanette regrets having put her materials away.

  “Paul, do you know what I sometimes think?”

  “No?”

  “I think I invented James. That he didn’t really exist. That he’s like a kind of figure in a painting. Paul, I think that perhaps James is Père Trognon from Theodore Robinson’s painting. He got off his horse to meet me, to talk to me about Monet, to make me want to paint, to tell me I was talented, then he went back to the place he’d come from, back into the painting, on his horse, into the stream, at the foot of the mill…”

  Do you think I’m nuts?

  Paul bends down to help Fanette carry her canvas.

  “You mustn’t get ideas like that in your head, Fanette. You really mustn’t do that. Where are we taking your masterpiece?”

  “Let me show you my secret hiding place. I’m not going to take it home. My mother already thinks I’m a lunatic because of James, and she doesn’t want to hear another word about painting, let alone this competition. It just turns into a huge row every time!”

  Fanette climbs over the bridge and jumps down behind the washhouse.