Vertigo

by Pierre Boileau

  All at once Flavières understood. He drew closer behind her, to be all the more sure of not losing her.

  He could smell her perfume. A complicated smell, which had affinities with rich earth and dead flowers. Where had he come across it before? The previous day, of course, in the deserted part of the Cimetière de Passy… He liked it. It reminded him of his grandparents’ house near Saumur, built on the side of a steep rocky hill with caves in it. People lived in the caves. To reach their houses, they had, like Robinson Crusoe, to use a ladder. Here and there a stovepipe peeped out of the rock, and above it a long smudge of black stained the white stone. During his holidays he had loved to explore this strange settlement, peering in through the openings at the beautifully polished furniture inside. Once he had gone into one of those dwellings that had been abandoned. Only a little light penetrated to the far end of the cave. The walls were cold and gritty and the silence was terrifying. At night they must have been able to hear moles burrowing in the ground, and perhaps an occasional worm would fall writhing from the ceiling. A rickety door at the back led into the ‘basement’ which was rank with mouldy air. He hadn’t dared explore further into the forbidden world of galleries and passages which ramified in all directions, extending beyond the sprawling clumps of grey toadstools growing just beyond that door.

  The whole place was imbued with that scent—the scent of Madeleine. And there on the sunny boulevard under the budding trees, Flavières experienced once again the fearful attraction of the shades, and he understood why, at the first glance, Madeleine had touched him.

  Another image surged into his brain. At the age of twelve, under the shadow of that hill, he had read a translation of that unforgettable book of Kipling’s The Light that Failed. The frontispiece was a picture of a boy and a girl who were leaning over a revolver, and the absurd caption had remained in his mind and had never failed to bring tears to his eyes: C’était the Barralong qui faisait route vers l’Afrique Australe… The young girl, dressed in black, resembled Madeleine—he was sure of it now—and had made no less an impression on him. He had thought about her as he went to sleep and heard her footsteps in his dreams.

  All this was ridiculous, of course. It would be, at any rate to a man like Gévigne. On another level it was true enough, with the truth of a lost dream found once again and full of mysterious evidence. Madeleine walked in front of him, a slim dark figure, a prey to the shadows, smelling of chrysanthemums. When she turned down the Rue des Saints-Pères, Flavières felt a sort of bitter satisfaction. Of course that didn’t prove anything, either. And yet…

  There was the house Gévigne had spoken of. It must be that one, because there was an antique shop on the ground floor, and because Madeleine at once went in through the entrance at the side of it. There was only one thing which didn’t tally with Gévigne’s description: the house from the first floor upwards was a hotel. An English name: Family Hotel. It couldn’t have more than twenty rooms by the look of it. A card hung at the door bearing the word complet. Flavières went in. An old woman knitting at the reception desk looked at him over her glasses.

  ‘No, I don’t want a room,’ said Flavières. ‘I merely wanted to know the name of the woman who has just come in.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  Flavières held out his old card giving his status as a detective. He had kept it as he kept everything: old pipes, broken fountain pens, and documents that were no longer of the slightest interest. His wallet was stuffed with yellowing letters, receipts for registered packets, old coupons and counterfoils. For once he could congratulate himself on this otherwise foolish habit. The old woman, still looking askance at him, answered:

  ‘Madeleine Gévigne.’

  ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve seen her, is it?’

  ‘Oh no. She often comes.’

  ‘Does she have a… a visitor in her room?’

  ‘She’s a most respectable lady.’

  Looking down at her knitting, she smiled knowingly.

  ‘Would you mind answering my question? Does she see people here, friends or otherwise?’

  ‘No. No one has ever come to see her here.’

  ‘Then what does she do here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t spy on my customers.’

  ‘What’s the number of her room?’

  ‘Nineteen. It’s on the third floor.’

  ‘Is it one of your best rooms?’

  ‘No, though it’s comfortably furnished. I offered her No. 12, but she wouldn’t look at it. She wanted the room on the third floor which gave on to the yard. It was that or nothing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She didn’t say. It’s a sunny room—perhaps it was that.’

  ‘She keeps the room permanently, does she?’

  ‘She has it by the month. At least, she took it for one month.’

  ‘When did she come?’

  The old woman stopped knitting and turned over the pages of the register.

  ‘Three weeks ago, I think. Yes, here we are—April 5th.’

  ‘Does she stay long in her room as a rule?’

  ‘Sometimes an hour, sometimes two.’

  ‘Has she got any things up there?’

  ‘No. She’s never brought any luggage.’

  ‘She doesn’t come every day, does she?’

  ‘No. Two or three times a week.’

  ‘Have you ever thought there was anything queer about her?’

  The old woman pushed her glasses up on to her forehead and rubbed her wrinkled eyes.

  ‘Everybody’s queer in one way or another,’ she said. ‘If you’d spent your life at the reception desk of a hotel, you wouldn’t ask such a question.’

  ‘Does she use the telephone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long has this house been a hotel?’

  ‘For the last fifty years.’

  ‘What was it before?’

  ‘A private house, I suppose, like the others.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a certain Pauline Lagerlac?’

  ‘No. Do you want me to search the register?’

  ‘That would be useless.’

  For a moment they looked at each other in silence.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Flavières.

  ‘Don’t mention it!’ said the other a little tartly, and went back to her knitting.

  Flavières didn’t go at once. For another minute he stood with his elbow on the desk, fidgeting with the lighter in his pocket.

  ‘I’ve lost the knack,’ he thought. ‘I no longer know how to squeeze the truth out of people.’

  He would have liked to go up and look through the keyhole of No. 19, but he knew very well he would see nothing. With a nod and a grunt to the old woman, he turned and went out.

  Why had it got to be the back room on the third floor? Unless in its day it had been Pauline Lagerlac’s bedroom. Only, if it had been, Madeleine couldn’t possibly know it. She didn’t even know of the woman’s suicide… In that case?… What mysterious appeal could have brought her to this particular room in this particular house? Various explanations occurred to him—clairvoyance for instance—but he rejected them one after the other. Madeleine was a perfectly normal woman: there were specialists to vouch for it… No. The answer had to be sought for in some other quarter.

  At the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain he looked back, and he almost broke into a run at the sight of Madeleine walking in the opposite direction, down towards the Seine. She had been in the hotel barely half an hour. Walking briskly along the quays, she passed the Gare d’Orsay, then suddenly hailed a taxi. Flavières just had time to secure another.

  ‘Follow that Renault,’ he shouted, jumping in.

  Perhaps he ought to have brought his own car. Madeleine had almost given him the slip.

  On the Pont de la Concorde and all up the Champs-Elysées the traffic was as thick as on the busiest days before the war. Madeleine’s taxi was heading towards the Etoile. She was obviously going home.
There were uniforms everywhere and big cars flying pennants as on Bastille Day. There was something a little feverish about it all which even Flavières couldn’t ignore. He didn’t really dislike this sensation of slightly heightened life on the brink of danger… No. She wasn’t going home. The taxi rounded the Arc de Triomphe and then went straight on down the Avenue de Neuilly towards the Porte Maillot. The cars were less numerous here; they dawdled along with windows down and roofs open.

  ‘Seems they’re going to cut down the petrol ration, even for taxis,’ observed the driver.

  Flavières said to himself that, thanks to Gévigne, he’d get all the coupons he wanted. He reproached himself for the thought, then proceeded to smother his conscience—a gallon or two more or less in the wholesale wastage would make no difference to anyone.

  ‘Drop me here, will you?’

  Madeleine was getting out at the far end of the Pont de Neuilly. Flavières had his money all ready in his hand, so as not to lose a moment, but this time Madeleine sauntered off with as leisurely a pace as on the previous day. She walked along the quays, apparently with no aim in view, just for the pleasure of walking. It was impossible to think of any link between the hotel in the Rue des Saints-Pères and the Quai de Courbevoie. If she just wanted to walk, why come all this way? The quays in the centre of Paris were far more beautiful. Was it the need to get away from the crowd? If she wanted to think something out, or merely to dream, it was certainly quiet enough here beside the smoothly flowing river. He thought of the days when he had wandered along the banks of the Loire, with its little islands, its tongues of sand, hot underfoot, the osier-beds in which the frogs croaked out their joy at being alive. Madeleine was like him: he felt sure of it; and he was tempted to overtake her. They wouldn’t need to talk. They would simply walk side by side watching the barges gliding through the water. It wouldn’t do, of course, and to curb the impulse he stopped altogether and allowed her to get well ahead. He even thought of going home. But there was something a little intoxicating and more than a little questionable in this pursuit which fascinated him, obsessed him. He went on.

  Heaps of sand, heaps of stones, then more heaps of sand… Here and there a rustic wharf, a crane, some tip-trucks on narrow rusty rails. They were opposite the Ile de la Grande Jatte. What was she doing in this dismal suburb? Where was she leading him? They were all alone there, one behind the other, yet she showed no sign whatever of being conscious of his existence. She was too absorbed in the river to look behind her.

  Little by little, Flavières was assailed by a vague fear. No, she wasn’t out for a walk. Was this some eccentric escapade? Or an attack of amnesia? He knew something of the latter, as the police often had to deal with people who had lost their memories, strange bewildered people who spoke like sleepwalkers. He was overtaking her again. They were approaching an isolated building, one of those little bistrots which cater for bargees. Outside it were three iron tables under a discoloured sunblind. She sat down at one of them. Flavières hid behind a stack of barrels on the quay, but without taking his eyes off her.

  She took a piece of paper out of her bag, and a fountain pen. With the back of her hand she made sure the table wasn’t wet. The innkeeper didn’t put in an appearance. She wrote carefully, her features slightly puckered.

  ‘She loves someone,’ thought Flavières, ‘someone who’s been called up.’

  But that supposition was worth no more than the others. Nor did it explain why she should come all this way to write a letter she could have written just as easily—more clandestinely, in fact—at home. Her pen went steadily on; she never paused to grope for a word. Perhaps she had been composing the letter in her head while walking. Or during that half-hour at the hotel. Suppositions again! Really he had nothing to go on… Was she breaking with Gévigne?… That might explain her restless ambulations. Not her visit to Pauline Lagerlac’s grave, however.

  No one came to serve her. The innkeeper was no doubt at the front, like the others. Madeleine folded up her letter, put it in an envelope, addressed it, and carefully licked it up. She looked round her, rapped on the table to attract attention. Still no one came. Finally she got up, holding her letter in her hand. Was she going to retrace her steps? She hesitated. Flavières would have given anything to have been able to read the name on the envelope.

  Still uncertain, she wandered down to the edge of the quay, passing quite close to the barrels, so close that once again he caught a whiff of her perfume. A soft breeze was blowing, just strong enough to make her skirt flutter. Her face, side-view, was calm. If there was any expression on it at all, it was one of discouragement. She looked down, turned the envelope over, then suddenly tore it in two, in four, and finally into tiny pieces, which she scattered in the breeze. They fluttered down, some on to the stone coping, some on to the water, where they floated for a while; and she stood gravely contemplating them. She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger as though wanting to rid herself of an undesirable contact. With the toe of her shoe, she extricated some fragments caught up in a tuft of grass, and they too disappeared. Quite calmly she took a step forward.

  The splash came up right on to the quay, almost wetting Flavières’ feet.

  ‘Madeleine!’

  For a moment, Flavières stood where he was, non-plussed. The last fragments of the letter had blown into the water except one solitary bit which fluttered along the quay, stopping, then going on again in sudden spurts, like a white mouse.

  Madeleine!

  He threw off his jacket and waistcoat and rushed towards the edge. A ring of wavelets was still spreading out across the river. He dived in. The cold took his breath away. But that didn’t stop her name welling up to his lips from the very centre of his being.

  Madeleine! Madeleine!

  For a second or two he floundered in the dirty water, then came to the surface. Madeleine had already drifted a few yards downstream. She was on her back, floating, looking already like a drowned person. By the time he reached her—puffing and spluttering, his eyes stinging, his limbs heavy—she seemed to be nothing but a dark shapeless object, slowly sinking. He grabbed her clothes, fumbled for her neck. Yes, that was the thing—he must at all costs keep her head up.

  He found her head, and with one arm around it began swimming towards the bank. They made slow progress. How heavy she was! Had she already become rooted in this river? The quay swept rapidly past as they were carried down on the stream. It wasn’t far, but he felt his strength ebbing away and he was panting for breath. He had never bothered to keep himself physically fit. He took the air in great gasps, sometimes with half a mouthful of water.

  He saw some steps, with a boat moored up alongside. He must at all costs reach those steps before they were swept past. It was a near thing. He just managed to grab the mooring chain of the boat and haul himself along till his feet found the steps submerged beneath the water.

  It was a job hauling Madeleine out. He laboured up, one step at a time. A cascade of water gushed out of their clothes. When she was just clear of the water, he let her lie on the steps for a minute. When she had drained off a bit she would be lighter, he thought. Besides, he had to consider how to carry her up. Finally he bent down and just managed to lift her, and, half carrying her, half dragging her, he got her to the top. There, he collapsed himself, exhausted. It was Madeleine who moved first. Realizing she had stirred, he collected himself, sat up, and looked at her. She was a pitiful sight, her hair plastered on her cheeks, her skin blotchy. Her eyes were open, gazing pensively at the sky, as though trying to recognize something.

  ‘You’re not dead,’ said Flavières simply.

  The eyes turned towards him, her thoughts seemed to come back from some other world.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly. ‘It doesn’t hurt to die.’

  ‘Fool!’ cried Flavières. ‘Come on. Pull yourself together.’

  He put his hands under her arms and lifted her. Her body was quite limp, so he threw her over his should
er. He didn’t find her heavy now, and the little café wasn’t far. All the same, his knees were wobbling when he reached it. He took her inside.

  ‘Hallo! Is anyone there?’

  He put Madeleine down on her feet in front of the bar. She was able to stand, if unsteadily. Her teeth chattered.

  ‘Hey, there!’

  ‘Coming. Coming,’ answered a voice and a woman emerged from behind the scenes, carrying a baby.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ explained Flavières. ‘Do you think you could lend us some clothes? It doesn’t matter what. You see the state we’re in.’

  He laughed awkwardly, trying to reassure the woman. The baby began to howl.

  ‘He’s teething,’ she said, rocking him gently.

  ‘If we could just get into dry clothes, I’ll get a taxi to take us home… I’ve left my wallet in my jacket on the quayside. I’ll go and fetch it… Meanwhile, will you make Madame a hot grog… and make it strong?’

  He was trying to pass it off as easily as possible, both to allay any misgivings on the woman’s part and to help Madeleine get back to her normal self. On his side, he was now overflowing with joy, energy, and decisiveness.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said peremptorily to Madeleine.

  He quickly crossed the deserted quay to the stack of barrels and recovered his jacket and waistcoat. A ducking at that time of the year wasn’t a very serious matter, but, with the river running strongly, it had been a near thing… What chiefly stuck in his mind, however, was not the effort he had had to make nor the dread he had felt, but the vision of Madeleine calmly stepping over the brink. And then, in the water, she hadn’t struggled: she had immediately abandoned herself to the river, with a resignation that was something monstrous. If death had come to her, she simply wouldn’t have noticed it! He swore a mental oath never to let her out of his sight. From now on he would protect her against herself. She needed protection. She wasn’t quite normal, he felt sure of that now. He went back to the bistrot at the run, trying to get warm. The woman, with the baby still on her arm, was filling two glasses.