Labarthe’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to call Aurore to the rescue. But the seconds were ticking by. He had to answer. Otherwise Hirtmann would suspect something. And in fact, the next message proved this was already the case:
[Is there a problem?]
Bloody hell! Answer! Something!
[Just that Gustav is sick right now, he’s coming down with the flu]
[Has he got a fever?]
[Yes. A little]
[Since when?]
[Last night]
[Has he seen the doctor?]
[Yes.]
Labarthe’s heart was racing. He stared at the luminous screen, waiting for the next message.
[The usual one?]
Labarthe hesitated. Did Hirtmann suspect something? Was he trying to trap him?
[No. Another one. It was Sunday]
[What are you giving him?]
[Aurore took care of it. Do you want me to go and fetch her?]
[No, there’s no point. I’ll come by this evening]
[What? But there are some policemen at the hotel, watching the chalet!]
[That’s my problem]
[Master, I don’t think it’s a good idea]
[I’ll be the judge of that. Tonight. 20.00]
Hirtmann had logged off.
Fuck! Labarthe swallowed. He felt as if a thousand ants were crawling around his neck. He needed air … He went to the window and opened it. Breathed in, looking at the sparkling white landscape.
Julian Hirtmann would be there that evening.
Why had he said it was the flu, for God’s sake? Instead of gastroenteritis? Fuck, what had come over him?
And what if Gustav told his father that he hadn’t seen a doctor?
The entire time he was writing his book, he had imagined himself in Hirtmann’s skin; he liked thinking he was him. When he walked down the street in Toulouse and looked at the women, he looked at them with Hirtmann’s eyes; he felt strong, powerful, cruel and ruthless. What a joke! They were nothing but words. Was he frightened? Of course he was frightened! Julian Hirtmann was no fiction, he was fucking reality – and he had entered their lives.
He remembered their first encounter: he was signing books in a bookshop in Toulouse. Or at least he was supposed to be signing, but in the half-hour he had been there he had seen no one. And then finally one reader came up to have his book signed. When Labarthe asked him his first name, the man replied, ‘Julian.’ Labarthe had laughed. But the man standing before him on the other side of the table remained impassive – and the way his eyes examined Labarthe from behind his glasses sent a little shiver down Labarthe’s spine.
Labarthe was heading for his car in the Jean-Jaurès car park when the man suddenly emerged from a dark corner, causing him to jump out of his skin.
‘Christ, you frightened me!’
‘You made a mistake on page 153,’ said Hirtmann. ‘That’s not the way it happened.’
Without knowing why – perhaps because of the intruder’s tone, or his aloof calm – Labarthe instantly knew he was not dealing with an impostor. That he had the real Julian Hirtmann there before him.
‘Is it you?’ he stammered.
‘Don’t be afraid. It’s a good book. If it were not, you would be well advised to be afraid.’
Labarthe tried to laugh it off, but his laughter caught in his throat.
‘I … I … I don’t know what to say. It’s a great … honour.’
He had looked up, at the face in the shadow of the ceiling: Labarthe was no taller than 1 metre 70. Hirtmann took a mobile from his pocket and handed it to him.
‘Here. We will meet again soon. Don’t mention this to anyone.’
But Labarthe had mentioned it. To Aurore. He had no secrets from her.
‘I want to meet him,’ she said at once.
Now he left his study then looked in vain for her on the ground floor. He could hear voices upstairs. He went up the stairs and down the corridor at a run. Aurore and Gustav were together in the boy’s bathroom.
‘It’s getting worse,’ she cried, wiping a damp sponge over the boy’s forehead. ‘His temperature has risen.’
It can’t have!
‘I just spoke to Hirtmann.’
‘Did you call him?’
Her tone was incredulous.
‘No! He messaged me. I don’t know what’s got into him. He wants to see the boy!’
‘What?’
‘He’s coming tonight.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That Gustav is ill, that he has … the flu.’
‘The flu? Why the hell did you say the flu?’
‘I don’t know! It was all I could think of, on the spot like that. He also wanted to know whether Gustav had seen the doctor.’
She looked cautiously at the boy, then stared straight at her husband.
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘That he had.’
He saw Aurore turn pale. She turned to look at Gustav, who returned her gaze with a sad, exhausted, almost tearful look, but one that was also full of affection and trust, and for the first time, this hard-hearted woman felt a truly human emotion and was wracked with guilt. She stroked his cheek then hugged him, on impulse, feeling his damp hair against her face. She almost felt like crying.
‘Don’t worry, treasure. It will be all right. It will be all right.’
She turned to Labarthe.
‘We have to take him to A&E,’ she said.
‘Not a moment too soon, dammit.’
‘They’re going out,’ said Kirsten.
Servaz joined her at the window.
‘Look how they’ve bundled Gustav up. He doesn’t look well, even at this distance.’
She handed him the binoculars.
‘He didn’t go to school today,’ he observed.
The anxiety was there again. He checked his watch. Nearly three o’clock. Over three hours had passed since Labarthe had got back from the pharmacy, if that was where he had been. Clearly Gustav’s condition had got worse. Servaz would have given anything to know what the boy was suffering from.
He saw them place Gustav on the back seat; Labarthe’s wife put a blanket over his lap and stroked his hair. Her husband sat behind the wheel, not without first glancing over at the hotel.
‘What shall we do?’ asked Kirsten.
‘We leave things as they are. There are already on their guard. On these roads, they’d spot us in no time. And you’re in no fit condition anyway. We’ll wait until they get back.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
But he knew he wouldn’t be able to put up with this uncertainty for long. Where were they taking him? He didn’t give a damn about the Labarthes, or even Julian Hirtmann. At that very moment, he could think of only one thing: Gustav. Why am I so worried? he wondered. If the kid is not mine, why should I feel so concerned?
Aurore sat in the back, holding Gustav. She’d dressed in the first trousers and jumper she could find. The chill in the car was damp and penetrating; she had wrapped the boy in the blanket, but he wouldn’t stop shivering.
‘Are you trying to freeze us or what?’ she shouted towards the front.
Labarthe put the heating on as high as it would go and said nothing, keeping his eyes on the tricky road.
At the end of the hairpin bends they came out onto a wider road cleared of snow. He took a left, in the direction of Saint-Martin.
He accelerated.
‘I’m going to throw up,’ said the little boy.
Dr Franck Vassard was on his break in the lounge when the nurse came for him.
‘They’ve just brought in a kid who can’t stop vomiting.’
The young intern sat up on the worn sofa, looked at her and stretched, his arms spread. He rubbed his hipster beard and looked at the nurse.
‘How old?’
‘Five. And he has a few symptoms of jaundice. It could be liver failure.’
‘Is he with his p
arents?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any fever?’
‘38.5.’
‘I’m coming.’
He stood up and went over to the coffee machine. Drat, he’d hoped his siesta would last a little longer. Saint-Martin was a little hospital, and the emergency services rarely had to deal with the chaos that characterised A&E in major cities.
Two minutes later Vassard left the little room and went down the corridor full of carts, nurses and commotion. The child was sitting on a gurney. The couple watched him walk towards them. Without knowing why, he thought there was something strange and mismatched about the pair and he felt uneasy.
‘Are you the boy’s parents?’
‘No, we’re friends,’ replied the man with the goatee. ‘His father should be here shortly.’
‘Right then, what’s the matter?’ he asked, moving closer to the blond kid with the feverish gaze.
‘We’ll give him some activated charcoal and an anti-emetic,’ he said. ‘I’m not a fan of stomach pumping. And besides, we only use it when a highly toxic substance has been ingested, which is not the case with the sedative you gave him.’ Here, he could not help but tinge his words with a frankly disapproving tone. ‘Then we’ll keep him under observation until tomorrow morning. What worries me most are his symptoms: the jaundice, his swollen liver, his abdominal pain. Biliary atresia is no laughing matter. Is he being treated for it?’
His gaze met the blonde woman’s, which was shifty, and hypervigilant.
‘He has had the Kasai procedure,’ she replied. ‘He is being treated by Dr Barrot.’
The young intern nodded. He knew Barrot. A competent physician. The Kasai procedure was a surgical intervention that sought to restore the flow of bile from the liver to the intestine by replacing the duct damaged by the disease with a new system grafted from the small intestine. The surgery was successful in one case out of three. But even when it did succeed, it did not prevent the cirrhosis from slowly progressing. Biliary atresia is a cruel, nasty disease, thought the intern, looking at the boy.
‘It would seem the surgery has failed,’ he said, frowning as he looked at Gustav. ‘We might want to consider a transplant. Do you know if one is planned? What does Dr Barrot think?’
They were staring at him as if he were speaking Chinese. What a strange couple, he thought.
‘Next time, don’t use a sedative,’ he insisted, as they didn’t reply. ‘Even if he is very agitated.’
He looked at them one after the other, wishing he could shake them. The woman nodded.
He observed the hospital entrance and the vast esplanade from a doorway 100 metres away. Night had fallen. The streetlamps outside the big building cast yellow circles on its brick facade. A few isolated snowflakes drifted through their halo. He puffed nervously on his cigarette, his little eyes on the lookout behind his glasses.
Everything was so calm, so dark. Nothing moved. Where did the inhabitants of Saint-Martin-de-Comminges go once it got dark? He tossed his cigarette into the snow on the pavement.
He looked all around then calmly crossed the deserted esplanade, despite his overwhelming impatience. He went over to reception.
‘A five-year-old boy was admitted to the emergency department this afternoon,’ he said when the nurse behind the counter condescended to pay him a little attention. ‘Gustave Servaz. I’m his father.’
She checked her computer screen.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, pointing to a glass door to the left of the counter. ‘Go through this door, all the way to the end of the corridor, and then right. You’ll see, it’s signposted. Ask there. And visiting time ends in fifteen minutes.’
He stared at her a fraction too long.
For a split second he imagined himself leaning over the counter, grabbing her by her hair, taking the cutter out of his pocket and slitting her throat.
‘Thank you,’ said Julian Hirtmann.
He walked away and followed her directions. At the end of the second corridor was another office. He asked again.
‘Please follow me,’ said the nurse with limp hair and a weary face.
He saw the Labarthes at the end of the corridor. Roland rushed forward to greet him, Aurore stayed behind, looking at him cautiously. He embraced the cretinous university professor the way the pope gives his blessing, keeping his gaze riveted all the while on the woman. For a moment he relived that time in the attic, when he’d taken her, bound and hanging by her wrists from the rings on the ceiling, completely naked and at his mercy, while Labarthe waited patiently down in the living room for them to finish.
‘Where is he?’
Labarthe pointed to the door.
‘He’s sleeping. They’ve given him a tranquilliser and an anti-emetic.’
He refrained from mentioning the activated charcoal, but he knew that sooner or later the Master would find out what had happened.
‘What happened?’ asked Hirtmann, as if he could read his thoughts. ‘You said something about the flu?’
Labarthe had messaged him to tell him they’d had to take the boy to hospital.
‘He took a sudden turn for the worse,’ said Aurore, walking towards them. ‘He was very restless, and so I gave him a light sedative.’
‘You what?’
Hirtmann’s voice turned vicious.
‘The doctor said it had nothing to do with it,’ she lied. ‘And Gustave is fine.’
He suddenly felt like grabbing her by the neck, shoving her up against the wall, and squeezing until her face turned purple. His voice was dangerously calm:
‘We’ll talk about it another time,’ he said. ‘Go home. I’ll stay here.’
‘We can stay too, if you like,’ said Labarthe.
He stared at the little man with the goatee, and the tall blonde woman. He pictured them dead, cold and stiff.
‘Go home. And drop this envelope off at the hotel.’
Labarthe glanced at it quickly. It was addressed to Martin Servaz. Of course he knew the name. He’d even wondered, last night, when the man came to his house. He’d looked vaguely familiar. For Christ’s sake, what was going on?
Hirtmann watched them walk away. Then he went into the room. Gustav was sleeping, his features relaxed. He stood for a long moment at the foot of the bed, watching the little boy, then he sat on the only available chair.
Servaz stood looking out of the window.
He listened and watched. Desperately. He stared at the deserted, darkened chalet, the empty night. With butterflies in his stomach.
They had left several hours earlier. He couldn’t stand this waiting and was beginning to regret not following them. Kirsten, too, had been champing at the bit.
Now, exhausted by nerves and the nausea from the previous night, she had collapsed on her bed, snoring faintly.
Suddenly he heard an engine approaching. He put his nose to the glass and saw it: the Labarthes’ Volvo had come back! He saw it slow down and stop outside the hotel.
Labarthe got out, stepped onto the terrace of the hotel and went inside. He came back out a few moments later and the car continued on its way to the chalet.
Servaz felt his heart sink when the doors opened. Labarthe and his wife got out alone. Gustav was not in the car. Where was the boy? What had they done with him?
Just then the telephone rang. Not his mobile, but the big black antediluvian hotel telephone on the little table that served as a desk, and he reached for it before the ringing had time to wake Kirsten.
‘We have an envelope for you,’ said the manager.
Labarthe. What was going on? Once again he felt as if invisible wires were being pulled by a puppeteer. Once again, he was one move behind.
‘I’ll be right down.’
He burst into the lobby less than a minute later. A brown envelope was waiting for him, his name written by hand:
MARTIN SERVAZ
‘That moron dropped it off,’ said the manager.
Servaz’s hand was trembling when he ri
pped it open and took out the piece of paper.
He felt the hotel lobby begin to spin, the entire universe rotating – planets, stars, space, void. All creation overturned in a fraction of a second, the world off kilter, all familiar landmarks gone. The note said:
Gustav is in hospital in Saint-Martin. I’m waiting for you. Come alone. If we join forces, there will be no Kindertotenlieder. J.
36
H
He left Kirsten at the hotel, asleep. The blood was pounding in his temples, as if he were being drip-fed adrenaline. He drove fast. Tore around the bends and gave himself a fright when the car skidded onto the snow-covered verge, dangerously close to the slope, before it stabilised on the icy road.
One sentence haunted him: ‘If we join forces there will be no Kindertotenlieder.’
‘Songs on the Death of Children’. Gustav Mahler. ‘J.’ Only one person could have written that note. And it told him that Gustav was in mortal danger. That his salvation depended on them. It occurred to him that it could be a trap, but he brushed the thought aside. Hirtmann had been taking his photograph for months, and he’d had ample opportunity to set all the traps he liked. Besides, there were better places for a trap than a hospital.
On entering Saint-Martin, he took his foot off the accelerator. Saw the sign indicating ‘H’ and went straight on from the roundabout. Six minutes later he parked in a spot reserved for staff and hurried into the hospital reception area.
‘Visiting time is over,’ said the person seated behind the counter, not even looking up from her mobile telephone.
He leaned over the counter and flashed his red, white and blue card between her nose and her screen. The woman looked up, her gaze furious.
‘No need to be unpleasant,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
‘A kid was brought into emergency this afternoon.’
She narrowed her eyes, looking at him defiantly, then checked her file.
‘Gustave Servaz,’ she confirmed.
For the second time he felt an abyss open in his guts on hearing that first name associated with his last name. Was it possible? Now that his hopes and fears were taking shape, he wondered which he wanted most: for Gustav to be his son, or not. But another vaguer, more dangerous hope was aroused at the same time. A hope he’d abandoned years before, but which had been secretly waiting to be reborn: Marianne. Would he find out at last what had happened to her? His mind tried in vain to brush the question aside, to relegate it to a dark corner, far from the light.
Night Page 28