The Mystery of Henri Pick

by David Foenkinos

  7

  Seeing each other again after several years, it felt like a first date. Joséphine was obsessed by her appearance: what would he think? She had aged, of course; she examined herself in the mirror for a long time, and was surprised to find that she looked beautiful. Yet she was not the type of woman to blow her own trumpet. On the contrary, she had often been guilty of endless, wearying bouts of self-deprecation. Recently, however, she had reconnected with the pleasures of life, and apparently that had rejuvenated her appearance. How could she have wasted so many years wallowing in misery? She felt almost ashamed at having suffered, as if the pain had not been something that happened to her but something she’d decided to feel. She had thought that it was all over, that she would now be able to bump into Marc in the street without pain, but she was wrong: hearing his voice on the phone, she realized immediately that she had never stopped loving him.

  He arranged to meet her in a café where they used to eat lunch. Joséphine decided to get there early; she would rather be sitting down when he arrived. Above all, she didn’t want to have to wander around the restaurant looking for him, with the risk of him observing her as she did so. She was annoyed at herself for fearing his opinion; she had nothing left to lose now.

  Nothing had changed—the restaurant looked exactly the same—which added to her confusion. The past inhabited the present. She ordered a glass of red wine, after hesitating over a whole range of drink options, from herbal tea to apricot juice to champagne. Red wine struck her as a good compromise to mark the intensity of the moment without being overly celebratory. Everything seemed complicated to her; she even wondered how she should sit. Where should she position her arms, her hands, her legs, her gaze? Should she try to look more relaxed than she felt, or sit up very straight, as if on the lookout? He wasn’t here yet, and she was already exhausted.

  He finally arrived, a little early. He hurried over to her, smiling broadly.

  “Ah, you’re here already?”

  “Yes, I had a meeting in the area…” Joséphine fibbed. They embraced warmly, then stood for a moment looking at each other and smiling.

  At last, Marc said: “Strange, isn’t it? Seeing each other again…”

  “You must think I look horrible.”

  “Not at all! I saw you in the newspaper, you know. And I thought: she hasn’t changed one bit. I’m the one who…”

  “No, you’re the same. Still as…”

  “I’ve grown a belly,” he interrupted.

  He ordered red wine too, and they started talking, easily, fluently. It was as if they’d never been apart. Their complicity seemed absolute. Of course, they avoided the more difficult topics, for now. It’s always simpler to get along if you talk about painless, neutral subjects, like recent films or trips or people who’d been mutual friends. They shared a few glasses over this light-hearted chatter. But was it real? Joséphine couldn’t stop thinking about the other woman. The burning question was on her lips, as impossible to hold back as a man fleeing a house on fire.

  “And what about her? Are you still together?”

  “No. It’s over. It’s been several months now.”

  “Oh really? Why?”

  “It was complicated. We weren’t getting along…”

  “Did she want children?” Joséphine guessed.

  “Yes. But it wasn’t just that. I didn’t love her.”

  “How long did it take you to work that out?”

  “Not long. But since I’d destroyed our marriage for her, I lied to myself. Right up until the moment when I decided to leave her.”

  “And why did you want to see me again?”

  “I told you. I saw you in the newspaper. It was like a sign. I don’t usually read the paper, as you know. To start with, I didn’t feel like I had a right to call you. I put you through so much. And, well, I didn’t know what your situation was…”

  “I don’t believe that. The girls must have told you.”

  “According to them, you’re still single. But you might not tell them everything…”

  “I don’t hide anything from them. There hasn’t been anyone since you. I could have… but I never could.”

  “…”

  For the first time that evening, a silence deepened between them. Marc suggested they eat dinner somewhere else. Although she felt certain that she wouldn’t be able to swallow a single morsel, she agreed.

  8

  During the meal, Joséphine had to acknowledge the strange destination to which this evening was headed. This was not like one of those normal reunions where you filled each other in about the years spent apart; no, it was something else altogether. Marc spoke more and more clearly about his desire to see her again. Besides, wasn’t this what she had been dreaming of? He kept repeating how much he missed her, his desire for the past, the mistakes he had made. Sometimes, talking about his new hopes, he would lower his head. Marc was usually such a confident man, even a little arrogant, but here he was, groping around in the darkness. Seeing him in such disarray, Joséphine’s feelings intensified, as did her self-assurance. She was more surprised than anyone by how at ease she felt, but it was true; in that moment, everything was clear. She had lived through the last few years waiting only for this instant. She used her napkin to wipe a drop of sweat from her ex-husband’s forehead, and that was how it all began again.

  A little later, they made love at Marc’s apartment. It was a peculiar feeling, being reunited with such a familiar body after so many years. Joséphine felt a first-timer’s fear mingled with a perfect knowledge of her lover. But one thing had changed: Marc’s determination to give her pleasure. She’d always enjoyed sex with him, but it had become mechanical in their later years. His erotic attentions had become very rare. That night, the opposite was true. Her husband was charged with a new energy. Through his body, he wished to give her proof that he had changed. Joséphine wanted to abandon herself to the pleasure, but she couldn’t free herself from consciousness of the act. It would take her more time to be able to make love without thinking about it. Nevertheless, the pleasure she felt was real, and the two of them remained stunned by what had happened. Joséphine ended up falling asleep in Marc’s arms. When she opened her eyes, she realized that everything she had experienced was real.

  9

  During the days that followed, they continued along this path. They met in the evenings to eat dinner, talked about memories and mistakes, hopes and plans, and ended the night making love at Marc’s apartment. He seemed happy and fulfilled; little by little, he told Joséphine how the other woman had suffocated him, depriving him of the space he needed, attempting to control his life. She’d needed to be reassured with gifts, money. Joséphine did not enjoy hearing all this. It sent her back into the pain she’d felt and, ultimately, left a bitter taste in her mouth. They had to move beyond the past.

  “Please don’t talk about it any more…”

  “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s over.”

  Suddenly changing the subject, Marc asked: “Could you ever have imagined your father was capable of writing a story like that?”

  “What?”

  “Your father’s book… Could you have imagined it?”

  “No. But then I couldn’t have predicted what’s happened with us either. So anything is possible.”

  “Yes, you’re right. But we don’t sell so many books!”

  “True.”

  “Do you know the figures?”

  “Of what?”

  “Well… your father’s sales. I read in the papers that his book has sold more than 300,000 copies.”

  “Yes, I think so. And it’s still selling.”

  “That’s huge,” said Marc.

  “I’m not sure I realize what it means, really. But yes, I think it’s a lot.”

  “Believe me, it really is.”

  “It’s just strange, more than anything. My parents worked their whole lives, they never had much money, and suddenly
my father leaves behind a book that will make my mother rich. You know her, though. She couldn’t care less about money. It wouldn’t surprise me if she gave it all to charity.”

  “You think? That’d be a shame. You should talk to her about it. You could make all your dreams come true. Buy yourself a boat at last…”

  “Ah, you remember…”

  “Of course. I remember everything. Everything.”

  Joséphine was surprised that he should recall that particular detail. The desire for a boat was something that went back to her childhood. For Joséphine, true freedom was possible only on the water. She had grown up close to the Atlantic and spent her childhood looking out to sea. When she returned to Crozon, it was often the first thing she did, even before going to see her mother: say hello to the ocean. She fell asleep thinking about that boat, which she might be able to buy. Until now, she hadn’t asked her mother about the royalties that the book was earning. Their life was bound to change.

  10

  For now, the consequences were mostly media-related. Joséphine continued to receive calls from journalists asking her for interviews and new details. She promised she would do some research, but she couldn’t really think of anything that would be useful. They hadn’t given up. Letters? Official documents? Something had flashed in her memory then: she felt almost certain that her father had written her a letter during the summer she turned nine. She’d received it when she was at a holiday camp in the south of France. She remembered it, because it was the only one. Back then, nobody used the phone to keep in touch during separations. So her father must have decided to write to her. What had she done with that letter? What did it say? She had to find it, come what may. It would finally be a written trace left behind by her father. The more she thought about it, the more firmly she believed that he had deliberately not left any such writings behind. A man capable of writing such a great novel in secrecy knew exactly what he was doing.

  Where could she have put it? Even while she slept, Joséphine couldn’t stop thinking about it. That night in her dreams, she drew close to the place where she’d left the letter. It took her a couple more nights to find the solution. People who don’t sleep deeply are either exhausted or exhausting for others. Joséphine lived constantly in the middle of this bipolar rhythm, her days alternating between a sort of slow-motion life and a life surging with energy. Every morning, in the shop, Mathilde waited to see if she would be working with a mollusc or a dynamo. Recently, the dynamo had prevailed. Joséphine talked nonstop. She felt a need to tell everybody she saw about what she was experiencing, and as the person she saw most often was Mathilde, she bore the brunt of these monologues. The young salesgirl listened—with a certain pleasure, it must be said—to the details of Marc and Joséphine’s reunion. It was enjoyable to see this woman, whom she genuinely liked (she had hired her, after all) gesticulating like somebody thirty years younger.

  The next night, Joséphine dived even deeper into her memories, attempting to retrieve the letter’s hiding place. After her divorce, she had dumped a load of cardboard boxes in Crozon, but she remembered keeping her collection of records. She had thought about getting rid of them, as she no longer had a turntable on which to play them, but those vinyl discs reminded her strongly of her adolescence. All she had to do was look at one of the record sleeves and a memory would instantly bubble up. In her dream, she saw herself slipping her father’s letter inside one of those record sleeves; she had done this more than thirty years before, thinking to herself: “One day, I will listen to this album and I’ll be surprised to find the letter.” Yes, she felt certain that this was what she’d done. But which album was it? She told Mathilde that she had to go home to listen to some old records. The salesgirl did not appear surprised, as if the past few days had accustomed her to her boss’s strange behaviour.

  11

  As she drove towards her apartment, Joséphine thought about The Beatles and Pink Floyd, about Bob Dylan and Alain Souchon, about Janis Joplin and Michel Berger, and so many others. Why didn’t she listen to that music any more? In the shop, she would sometimes put Radio Nostalgie on in the background, but without really listening to it. She remembered how feverishly excited she had felt every time she’d bought a new album, how eager she’d been to listen to it. When she listened to a record, that was all she did; sitting on her bed, looking at the sleeve, letting the music fill her soul. But all that was over. She’d got married, had two daughters, and stopped listening to her albums. And then CDs had arrived, the new technology giving her an excuse for her vinyl neglect.

  When she got home, she went down to the cellar to collect the two dusty cardboard boxes. Of course, she felt excited, in a hurry to find the letter, but looking at those old record sleeves gave her so much pleasure that she ended up taking her time. Each album was a memory, a moment, an emotion. Looking through them, she found herself face-to-face with scenes from her life, dark melancholy moods mixed with uncontrollable laughter. She looked inside each one, hoping that the letter would fall out. She used to enjoy slipping little notes, cinema tickets and other papers into those album sleeves, hiding these ephemeral scraps inside her music so that they would return to her sooner or later. Her life came back to her, bit by bit; all the Joséphines of the past joined her in this nostalgic reunion, and it was here, surrounded by her past, that she found her father’s letter.

  It was hidden in an album by Barbara, Le Mal de Vivre. Why had she put her father’s letter in that particular record sleeve? Instead of opening the letter, as she ought to have done, she spent a moment contemplating the record. This was the album that featured the beautiful track, “Göttingen”. Joséphine remembered listening obsessively to that song; she’d been a huge fan of the singer at the time. The passion had been a fleeting one, as so many adolescent passions are, but she’d spent several months entranced by Barbara’s dark, melancholy melodies. She downloaded “Göttingen” to her phone so she could listen to it again now, and immediately fell under the spell of those words:

  Of course, we have the Seine

  And our Bois de Vincennes,

  But how beautiful the roses are

  In Göttingen, in Göttingen.

  We have our pale mornings

  And Verlaine’s grey soul,

  But true melancholy lives

  In Göttingen, in Göttingen.

  Barbara was paying a sublime tribute to that city, and in particular to the German people. In 1964, this was a brave act. As a Jewish child who had spent the war in hiding, the singer had hesitated for a long time before performing in what had once been enemy territory. When she first went there, her attitude was far from friendly. She had a tantrum about the piano, and finally appeared on stage two hours late. It made no difference: she was cheered, adored. The organizers did everything they could to make her visit a success. She had never received such a welcome anywhere before, and she was moved to tears by it. She decided to extend her stay, and wrote those few lines, which are more powerful than any speech. Joséphine didn’t know the whole story behind this song, but she was overwhelmed by the melody, like a carousel that takes you in its arms. Perhaps that was why she’d put her father’s letter in this cover. With Barbara’s song playing in the background, she reread the words he had written forty years before. Her father returned from beyond the grave to whisper them in her ear.

  When she got back to the shop, Joséphine decided to put the letter in the small safe where she usually kept her cash. The afternoon was frantic, with far more customers than usual; there was something strangely intense about this whole day. The past few weeks, in fact, had marked a break from the previous years, as if her life was avenging itself for the emptiness, the absence of human adventures.

  That evening, Marc came to pick Joséphine up outside the shop. Mathilde discreetly observed this man, whom her boss talked about constantly. He was not at all how she’d imagined him. There was a total disconnect between the Marc that had formed in her head during all of Joséphin
e’s anecdotes, and the real Marc who stood on the pavement smoking a cigarette. She instinctively preferred the imaginary one, the one she’d invented based on Joséphine’s words.

  12

  After dinner, they went back to Marc’s place. Joséphine preferred it that way. She wasn’t at ease with the idea of inviting him to hers, as if her apartment would give him too many clues about her. She had told Marc about the letter she’d found. She was happy to share that moment with him; he seemed enthusiastic, and kept repeating how amazing the whole story was. Then he added:

  “Like our reunion…”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like Richard Burton?” Marc asked, for no apparent reason.

  “Who?”

  “Richard Burton, the actor.”

  “Oh yeah, the one who was in Cleopatra. Liz Taylor’s husband. Why are you asking me about him?”

  “Well, you know they got married, then divorced, and then they got married again…”

  “…”

  What was he trying to say? Was this a proposal? Since they’d started sleeping together again, she had promised herself not to imagine anything. Just to let herself be guided by this unexpected pleasure. Marc eventually observed: “You’re not saying anything.”

  “…”, agreed Joséphine.

  Marc took Joséphine by the hand to lead her towards the bed, but she preferred to remain on the sofa. She was paralysed by her feelings. Suddenly she started crying. The beauty of tears is that they can have two completely different meanings. You cry with pain, and you cry with happiness. Very few physical acts have such a Janus-like duality, as if to manifest confusion. But in that instant, Joséphine’s hand brushed a scrap of fabric under the sofa cushion. She looked down and saw a pair of lacy knickers.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” Marc said, embarrassed. He grabbed the underwear.