Night

by Bernard Minier

  Then she backed over to the bed and lay down. She opened her bathrobe completely, revealing a tattoo from her groin to her hip, a sentence, in Norwegian probably – letters and numbers. Only the little bedside lamp was lit, leaving the recesses of the room in deep shadow, where the ghosts of her life were hiding. Night enveloped them.

  GUSTAV

  26

  Contacts

  Kirsten woke up at six and looked at Servaz, still sleeping. Oddly, after the events of the night, she felt rested. She put on a pair of cotton boyshorts with the name of a Norwegian rock group printed on the buttocks, a T-shirt, and a tracksuit, and once she was outside, she set off at a run around the little park surrounding the hotel. It took her five minutes to go around it, and she started again a half-dozen times, running on the gravel and the snow, never going any further away.

  The icy air burned her lungs but she felt good. She stopped by a bench and the statue of a faun to do some stretches, her gaze fixed on the Pyrenees, a few summits lit by the dawn. She missed her boxing. That was both her safety valve and her way of staying balanced. To hit a bag or a sparring partner helped her to clear away some of the frustration of her job. As soon as she got back to Oslo she would head for the gym. She had a brief vision – the dark ladies’ toilet with the bucket and mop in the middle – but she banished it by focusing on what lay ahead.

  At half past six Servaz woke up and saw the empty bed. The sheets still bore Kirsten’s imprint and her smell. He listened out, but the room, like the bathroom, was silent. He concluded that she hadn’t wanted to disturb him and had gone down for breakfast. He got up, got dressed, and went back to his room.

  In the shower he thought about the night he had just spent. After their lovemaking they had talked, first out on the balcony where they shared a cigarette, then in bed, and he had eventually told her about the woman who might be Gustav’s mother. She had questioned him at length about what had happened in Marsac, about Marianne, and about his past. He opened up to her in a way he had rarely done since the tragic events in Marsac, and she had listened, watching him with a calm, kindly expression. He was grateful to her for not commiserating, and he in turn avoided any self-pity. After all, she surely had her own share of problems. Who didn’t? Then he remembered her question. She was smart. She had put her finger on it almost right away. The question he’d been circling around for a long time without daring to voice it: ‘So, he could be your son?’

  He put on clean clothes and took the lift to the ground floor. When he went into the breakfast room, he looked for her but she was nowhere to be seen. She couldn’t have gone far. He felt a bittersweet pang of disappointment, chased it away, and headed to the buffet and the coffee machine.

  Once he had sat down he took out his phone and called Margot.

  Voicemail.

  She unlocked the door to her room with her electronic key and was surprised to find the bed empty.

  ‘Martin?’

  No answer. He’d gone back to his room. She felt a faint stab in her stomach. Better not to think about it. She undressed quickly and headed to the shower. She was beginning to feel seriously hungry.

  When she entered the bathroom she realised he hadn’t even had his shower there: the towels were folded and hanging in place; the shower cubicle was unused and dry. The hurt returned, a touch stronger. They had slept together, fine. They’d had a good time, but it would go no further. They wouldn’t get to know each other any better than that: this was the message he had left for her.

  She looked at her face in the big mirror above the basin.

  ‘Okay,’ she said out loud. ‘That’s what you planned, wasn’t it?’

  On entering the breakfast room she saw him sitting alone at a table and went to join him.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, reaching for her cup. ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Yes. And you? Where were you?’

  ‘Running,’ she said, then went to the coffee-maker.

  Servaz watched her walk away. Their exchange had been short and without warmth. She didn’t need to say anything more, he got it straight away: what had happened last night would not be mentioned. He felt intense frustration; he’d intended to tell her how it had done him good to talk last night, that he hadn’t felt that good with someone in a very long time. The sort of thing you sometimes feel like saying, without getting too heavy. And now he felt stupid. Right, he thought. Back to work. We’re keeping our distance.

  Kirsten devoured bread and jam, sausages and scrambled eggs, drank a big cup of coffee and two glasses of orange juice filled to the brim – in Norway, breakfast was the biggest meal of the day – while Servaz made do with an espresso coffee, half a croissant and a glass of water.

  ‘You’re not eating much,’ she pointed out.

  She expected him to come out with one of those bloody clichés about Norwegians being built like lumberjacks, but he merely smiled.

  ‘You can’t think as fast on a full stomach,’ he said eventually.

  She didn’t know that when people spoke about food, he sometimes still thought about a sublime but poisoned meal, and the fine wines that had gone with it, that a judge had served him once upon a time.

  L’Hospitalet was a village perché high on a slope only a short distance from the Spanish border. The road was narrow and winding, bordered in places with stone parapets, and in others hanging over the void with nothing to stop a car if it suddenly veered out of control.

  Once they were over the mountain and had started down the other side they could see a church steeple and the white, luminous roofs of a village below them, huddling together like a herd of sheep seeking out the warmth of their own kind.

  The village, at first, seemed dreary, monastic and hostile to outsiders. Its steep, narrow streets – the houses were set out in tiers on the slope – must only have caught a few hours of sun a day. And yet they emerged onto an ordinary square with an extraordinary view: the sky was clear, the clouds had scattered, and you could see for miles, to the place where the three valleys converged; all the way to the streets and roofs of Saint-Martin-de-Comminges, in fact. The town hall was modest, simple and grey, but it had the same amazing view.

  They got out. From the moment they passed the sign at the entrance to the village Servaz could think of only one thing: Gustav.

  He looked all around him, as if the boy might appear at any moment. There was not a soul around.

  He went up the two steps leading into the town hall, beneath a rather faded tricolour flag, tried to open the glass door but found it was locked. He knocked but no one came. The snow had been swept from the steps, haphazardly, and he took care not to slip as he went back down them.

  But on the corner of the square, at the entrance to a narrow, curving street, there was a sign that read: ‘Pasteur Primary School’.

  Servaz looked at Kirsten, who nodded, and they started walking cautiously down the steep, slippery slope. He noticed a curtain being pulled to one side on the first floor of one of the houses, but there was no one there, as if the village were inhabited by ghosts.

  When they had come round the bend they could see the playground just below them. Yet another place that evoked childhood, with its covered courtyard and playground, and the rusty clock by the gate. Servaz felt a pang of anguish.

  It was break time, and the children were running, shoving and screaming joyfully around the single plane tree. The roots of the old tree had forced their way up through the tarmac, and here too the snow had been swept to one side. There was a man watching the children from the covered yard. He was wearing grey overalls and glasses. There was something strangely anachronistic about the whole tableau, as if they had gone back in time a hundred years.

  Suddenly Servaz froze. He felt as if he had been punched in the face.

  Kirsten had continued on her way down, but now she stopped and looked back. She saw him standing there, a cloud of vapour in front of his open mouth. She deciphered his gaze and turned around to look in the same direction towa
rds the playground. To see what he had seen.

  And she understood.

  He was there.

  Gustav.

  The blond boy, among the other children. The boy in the photograph. Who might be his son.

  27

  An Apparition

  ‘Martin.’

  No reply.

  ‘Martin!’

  His voice was low, soft, forceful. Martin opened his eyes.

  ‘Papa?’

  ‘Get up,’ said his father. ‘Come with me.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  His father merely smiled as he stood by the bed. Martin got up, groggy and lethargic, his eyelids heavy. In his blue pyjamas, barefoot on the cold tiles.

  ‘Follow me.’

  He had followed him. Through the silent house: the corridor, the stairs, the front room full of light, rays of dawn flooding through the curtainless windows on the east side. He glanced at the clock. Five o’clock in the morning! He was very sleepy. And he wanted only one thing: to go back to bed. But he’d followed his papa outside because he’d never dared disobey. In those days, you didn’t disobey. And because he loved him, too. More than anything on earth. Except – perhaps – his maman.

  Outside, the sun was beginning to peer over the hill, 500 metres away. It was summertime. Everything was still. Even the ripe wheat. There wasn’t a shiver, either, in the lacy leaves of the oak trees. He had squinted as he stared at the sun’s rays flooding the countryside all around. The morning calm was bursting with bird song.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘This,’ replied his papa, opening his arms wide to take in the landscape.

  He didn’t understand.

  ‘Papa?’

  ‘What, son?’

  ‘Where should I look?’

  His father smiled.

  ‘Everywhere, son.’ He ruffled his hair. ‘I wanted you to see this, just once in your life: the sun rising at dawn, the morning …’

  He could hear the emotion in his father’s voice.

  ‘My life is just beginning, Papa.’

  His father looked at him with a smile and put his big hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I have a very smart little boy,’ he said. ‘But sometimes you have to forget your intelligence and let your senses and your heart do the talking.’

  Servaz was too young at the time to understand, but now he knew. Then something happened: a deer appeared at the foot of the hill. Silently, cautiously. Like an apparition. She had emerged from the woods into the open, her neck outstretched. Little Martin had never seen anything so beautiful. It was as if all of nature was holding its breath. As if something was about to happen that would splinter this magic into a thousand pieces. Servaz remembered: his heart was pounding like a drum.

  And indeed, something did happen. A sharp popping sound. He didn’t immediately understand what it was. But he saw the deer freeze, then fall.

  ‘Papa, what happened?’

  ‘Let’s go now,’ said his father, his voice full of anger.

  ‘Papa? What was that sound?’

  ‘Nothing. Come.’

  It was the first shot he had ever heard, but not the last.

  ‘She’s dead, is that it? They killed her.’

  ‘Are you crying, son? There, there. Don’t cry. Come on. It’s over. It’s over.’

  He wanted to run to the deer, but his father was holding him. Then he saw the men come out of the woods at the foot of the hill, their rifles over their shoulders, and he was overwhelmed with rage.

  ‘Papa!’ he screamed. ‘Are they allowed to do that? Do they have the right?’

  ‘Yes. They have the right. Come on, Martin. Let’s go home.’

  He shook himself, standing there in the middle of the street. He noticed Kirsten’s gaze as she walked towards him. And Hirtmann, he wondered, what is he teaching his son? Or mine?

  She held her breath, and had the feeling that time was standing still. The children’s cries pierced the cold air like shards of glass; the school seemed to be the only living place in this dead village. Nothing moved around them except that little playground and covered courtyard, and one car, way down in the valley, no bigger than an ant; they could hardly hear it.

  Servaz was transformed into a pillar of salt. She went back up the slope to him.

  ‘He’s there,’ she said.

  He said nothing, but let his eyes follow Gustav’s movements across the playground. He was silent and motionless, apart from his darting gaze which never left the child, and his woollen scarf dancing in the wind, and she sensed how much he must be feeling. She let a few seconds go by, and observed the boy herself. He was shorter and smaller than the others. His cheeks were as red as apples from the cold but he was bundled up in a blue down jacket and a poppy-red scarf. At that moment he seemed full of the joy of living. There was nothing of the sickly child that had been described to them, other than his small stature. He did not seem solitary, either: he joined in the playground games with enthusiasm. Kirsten stood for a moment observing him, waiting for Martin to react. But she was too impatient a person to wait for long.

  ‘What shall we do?’ she said eventually.

  He looked around.

  ‘Shall we go down?’ she pressed. ‘We could speak to the guy there.’

  ‘No.’

  It was a very definite no. Again he looked around him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘We can’t stay here. Someone will notice us.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people whose job it is to take care of Gustav, for God’s sake.’

  ‘There’s no one.’

  ‘At the moment.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  He pointed to the road they had come down.

  ‘This is a cul-de-sac, and the only access to the school. When they come to get Gustav they have to come this way. So either they live in the village and they come on foot, or they leave their car on the square.’

  He began to go back the way they had come, up the slope on the slippery paving stones.

  ‘We’ll wait for them. But if we stay in the car’ – he pointed to the window where he’d seen the twitching curtain – ‘the entire village will know we are here within the hour.’

  They came out onto the square. Servaz pointed to the town hall, which stood in the centre and faced east.

  ‘This would be a good lookout point.’

  ‘It’s closed.’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘Not any more.’

  The mayor was a stocky little man with close-set eyes, a heavy jaw and a thin brown moustache like a shoelace beneath widespread, hairy nostrils. He greeted their request enthusiastically.

  ‘Here, what do you think?’ he asked, showing them the windows of a room on the second floor.

  Judging by the long waxed wooden table and the number of chairs, it was here that the town council held its meetings. Against the wall opposite the windows stood a tall dresser with glass doors, behind which shone bound municipal ledgers, which looked as old as the dresser itself. Servaz thought that this village must be full of similar furnishings – heavy, old-fashioned, maintained by the calloused hands of cabinetmakers who were now long dead, well away from the flat-pack furniture of the big cities. The windows had dusty cretonne curtains, and they looked out over the square; the start of the cul-de-sac leading to the school was clearly visible.

  ‘This is perfect. Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. In these troubled times, we must all do our duty as citizens. You do what you can, but nowadays we must all feel concerned by everyone’s safety. We are at war.’

  Servaz nodded prudently. Kirsten, who had not understood a single word, frowned as she looked at him, and Martin shrugged as the mayor turned to leave. Then he stood with his nose to the windowpane, blew a circle of vapour on the glass, and checked his watch.

  ‘All we can do now is wait.’

  At around noon parents began to appear one aft
er the other on the square and head down the cul-de-sac towards the school. Servaz and Kirsten heard the rusty clang of the bell, full of the echoes of childhood, and they squeezed up against the windows. The parents reappeared a few minutes later, holding their chattering offspring by the hand. Apparently no one had school lunches here.

  Servaz swallowed, his stomach twisted with anxiety. Gustav was bound to come out soon, holding someone by the hand.

  But the flow of parents and children gradually ceased. Something was not right.

  Servaz looked out of the window again, resisting the temptation to open it. He checked his watch. Five minutes past noon. The square was empty: no Gustav. Shit, did this mean he lived in one of the houses along the cul-de-sac? If so, with the mayor’s cooperation, it should be easy to set up a hideout …

  He was just pulling back from the window when a metallic grey Volvo came onto the square a bit too quickly and braked with a squeal of tyres. Kirsten and Servaz simultaneously turned just in time to see an elegant man in his late thirties, with a neatly trimmed goatee and well-cut winter coat, burst out of the car. He began running towards the cul-de-sac, checking his watch.

  Servaz and Kirsten exchanged glances. Servaz felt his pulse begin to race. They waited in silence. After the racket made by the children, the silence on the square seemed deafening. Then there was the sound of footsteps and they could hear two voices – one adult, the other a child’s. Again, Servaz did not dare open the window so they could hear better. A few seconds later the man with the goatee emerged from the cul-de-sac.

  With Gustav.

  ‘Dammit!’ exclaimed Kirsten.

  The man with the goatee walked under their window, leading Gustav. Servaz heard him say, ‘You’ve been running too much. You know you’re not supposed to get tired, with your illness.’

  ‘When is Papa coming?’ asked the child who, all of a sudden, seemed pale and worn out.