“When?” Hervé asked.
“Soon…”
What did that mean, soon? One day, one week, one year? According to the doctor, soon could mean a few months. In the end, though, what did that change? The news marked the end of his life. He thought about his wife a bit more than usual. She had died of cancer at thirty-four, when they were trying to have a child. None of his colleagues knew this. Hervé Maroutou had lived the nomadic life of a sales rep because he had sworn never to become involved with anyone else. Twenty years later, he found himself in an echo of the same sad scene. With one major difference: he was alone with his fear. He had at least been able to hold his wife’s hand when she found out, and they had loved each other until her last breath. He had never forgotten the last hours of their love, hours that were, paradoxically, peaceful and serene. All that remained was the essential: the absolute, crazy love of a man accompanying his wife to her death. Was she waiting for him on the other side? No, he didn’t believe that. Her body had decomposed a long time ago, and his would soon follow suit.
20
On the day of the party organized by Grasset, Maroutou summoned enough strength to attend; it would do him good, surely, to see some of his friends and colleagues. He had to force himself to live. Who knows? Maybe he could drive the disease back, as other people had done. But he didn’t have the necessary energy to fight it; alone, he let himself drift towards his final day, hoping only that he wouldn’t suffer too much.
He felt exhausted, so he ordered a whisky at the bar then went to sit at the back of the room, away from the crowds. The party already resembled the end of a wedding; it was only eight o’clock, yet everybody looked drunk. Sitting in his corner, Maroutou was joined by a grey-haired man.
“Good evening. May I sit with you?”
“Sure,” Maroutou replied.
“Rouche,” the man introduced himself.
“Ah, I didn’t recognize you. I remember your articles.”
“Would you like me to sit somewhere else?”
“No, not at all. Maroutou. Hervé Maroutou. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you too.”
The two men shook hands. Each man’s grip was so limp that their handshake was about as energetic as a neurasthenic mollusc.
They made some small talk about their only visible point in common: they were both drinking whisky.
“So what do you do?” asked Rouche.
“I work for Grasset. I’m a rep. Based in the east of France.”
“That must be interesting.”
“I won’t be doing it for much longer.”
“Ah? You’re retiring?”
“No, I’m going to die.”
“…”
Rouche went pale, then stammered his condolences.
“I’m sorry,” Hervé said. “I don’t know why I said that to you. Nobody else knows. I don’t talk about it normally. And then, suddenly, out it comes. Tough luck for you.”
“Don’t apologize. It probably had to come out. I’m there for you, if you… well, I mean, I’m probably not the most joyful company…”
“Why?”
“No, it’s ridiculous. You’ve just told me you’re dying, so I’m not going to bother you with my small problems.”
“Please do,” Maroutou insisted.
It was a bizarre situation, thought Rouche; he was going to complain about his misfortunes in order to entertain a dying man. In the past few days, his life had taken a strange turn; he felt like a character in a novel.
“It’s my wife,” began Rouche, then he immediately fell silent.
“What about your wife?”
“Well, she’s not actually my wife. We’re not married.”
“Go on…”
“She just left me.”
“Ah, I’m sorry. How long were you together?”
“Three years. And it hadn’t been going well, but I do think I loved her. Well, maybe not. I don’t know. I clung to her, to our relationship, because my life was a mess.”
“If it’s not too indiscreet, why did she decide to leave you?”
“Because of her car.”
21
This was a somewhat crude summary of the situation, but not entirely false. After sleeping in the Volvo, Rouche had decided to drive back to Paris. The letter he’d acquired was all he needed for his investigation, for now at least. It was a crucial piece of evidence. Thinking back to his evening with Mathilde, he felt happy. You have to be wary of moments like that, he thought afterwards, as if admitting that his happiness rendered him suddenly fragile.
When he got home, he rested for most of the afternoon, then took a shower before Brigitte’s arrival. When she turned up, he immediately tried to tell her about his discovery, but she seemed uninterested. He felt bitter about this. Rouche had dreamt that the story might bring them together again, that it would be a source of complicity, a subject that would lead to lively discussions. Now he was alone with the dead author he planned to unmask. Instead, she interrogated him:
“Did everything go okay with the car?”
“…”
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Um, no reason.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Well, almost nothing.”
“Where are you parked?”
He followed her downstairs, like a man walking towards his own execution. Brigitte looked horrified when she saw the car. Jean-Michel argued that it wasn’t too bad, that it would be easy to fix. In other circumstances, the incident might not have seemed so important, but given the increasingly ominous atmosphere between them, she saw it as symbolic. She’d decided to trust him, and this was the result. Brigitte stared at the two scratches, as if the car’s bodywork represented her own heart. Suddenly she felt exhausted at not being loved the way she wanted to be.
“I think we should separate.”
“What? You’re not going to leave me for a scratch?”
“There are two.”
“Does it matter? We’re not going to split up over that.”
“I’m leaving you because I don’t love you any more.”
“If I’d taken the train, would we still be together?”
“…”
After spending the previous evening with Mathilde, Rouche had realized that he still loved Brigitte; but it was too late. He’d disappointed her too many times. These were their last hours as a couple. Jean-Michel clung to the illusion that everything would work itself out, but the look in Brigitte’s eyes left no room for doubt. There was no point pleading for a reprieve. It was over. He felt an intense burning pain in his body, which surprised him. He thought he’d been bled dry by his trials and tribulations; he had no idea that his heart was still capable of aching.
22
After listening to Rouche’s account, Maroutou agreed that it was difficult to accept as a reason for ending a relationship. But the journalist made excuses for Brigitte, remembering that she had probably saved his life at a time when he was close to going under. In the end, he couldn’t blame her. The two men drank another whisky to this, before continuing their conversation about Pick.
“So you’ve investigated that story?” Maroutou asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t think he’s the author?”
“I know he’s not,” said Rouche, lowering his voice, as if what he’d just revealed was an affair of state likely to imperil the world’s geopolitical equilibrium.
The louder and more raucous the party grew, the more the two men slumped into their chairs. There is a moment when the joy of others accentuates your own distress. A woman walked past them and said: “You two remind me of Woody Allen and Martin Landau at the end of Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
“Ah, thank you,” said Rouche, uncertain whether it was a compliment. He didn’t remember that film. Maroutou hadn’t seen it; he had always preferred reading books to going to the cinema. But did it really matter any more, what he liked? All th
e books he’d read and championed now formed a heap of incomprehensible words; it seemed to him that nothing of beauty remained to him. And he saw his own life as grotesque.
“I’m going to get us a couple more whiskies,” said Rouche.
“Good idea,” said his companion, although he could barely hear his own voice. Maroutou felt chaotic vibrations: a humming that made it impossible for him to distinguish anything beyond his own thoughts. The CEO of Éditions Grasset, Olivier Nora, was giving a short speech thanking everybody for their hard work; he singled out Delphine Despero. Maroutou recognized the young editor, who seemed a little overwhelmed at being the centre of attention. For the first time, she looked as if she were losing her self-assurance. It made her seem more human, more likeable. Her boss asked her to say a few words. Even though she must have prepared her speech in advance, she tripped over her words a little bit. Everybody was staring at her, including her loved ones. Her parents were there, and Frédéric too, of course, smiling broadly. The only person missing was a representative of the author’s family; Joséphine had been invited, but she hadn’t come. They had tried in vain to contact her.
From his seat at the back of the room, and despite his somewhat blurred vision, Maroutou saw all of this. He thought Delphine looked like a teenager lost in the oversized suit of a grown-up. Suddenly he stood up and walked nervously towards her. He didn’t hear Rouche asking him where he was going. A few people turned to look at this man, who strode ostentatiously through the crowd; this man who brusquely took the microphone from Delphine and uttered the following words: “All right, that’s enough now! Everybody knows that Pick didn’t write that book!”
1He was in the middle of reading Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.
2A strange mechanical analogy, given that the only notable events since his departure from Paris were the two scrapes he’d had with the car.
3Like Christopher Columbus, one foot suspended above the earth of the American continent.
PART EIGHT
1
The news was in the next day’s papers, and social media went wild over it. Conspiracy theorists had a field day. There is such a great temptation nowadays not to believe the official version of anything. The head of Grasset was of the opinion that a small controversy might actually boost the book’s sales, while categorically rejecting the hypothesis that The Last Hours of a Love Affair was written by another author. The novelist Frédéric Beigbeder jumped on the bandwagon to write an article unmasking himself as Pick. After all, the novel had been published by his publisher. And, as a Russian expert (one of his novels was set there), he obviously knew all about Pushkin. It was perfectly plausible. For a few days, the press pack pursued him, and he took advantage of this to announce to all and sundry the details of his new novel. In marketing terms, it was a huge coup. Now the title of his novel, Friendship (Also) Lasts Three Years, was on everyone’s lips.
Of course, Beigbeder did not write Pick’s novel. And in fact there was nothing to prove what Maroutou had so vehemently declared in the middle of that party. The rumour was that the sales rep had been completely drunk that night, and that he’d been egged on by the journalist Jean-Michel Rouche. So it was that the feeding frenzy turned to Rouche. It was said that he knew the truth about this story. Rouche refused to explain the reasons for his conviction. How ironic it was to be the centre of public attention after having been the most scorned leper in Paris! All those people who’d been ignoring his phone calls were suddenly desperate to see him again. But his initial pleasure at this turnaround soon turned to disgust for the entire farce. He decided not to say anything at all. He was in possession of Pick’s letter, probably the only one that the dead pizzeria owner ever wrote; he was not going to gift it to the mob.
It was not only a question of vengeance: although he felt certain, he didn’t want to reveal anything until he was in a position to reveal everything. This was his story, and he would have to be discreet now if he wanted the opportunity to follow it to its conclusion. Maroutou’s impromptu speech had complicated matters. Rouche had the glimmer of an idea about the identity of the author who had hidden behind Pick’s name, but he wasn’t about to confide it to anyone, not even another alcoholic who would soon be dead. The only person he might have told was Brigitte. But she was no longer there to listen to him. Since their separation, she had refused to answer his calls. He’d left a wide variety of messages on her voicemail, in every tone from humour to despair, but they all fell on deaf ears. When he walked the streets, he constantly looked out for Volvos; after Pick, they were his main obsession. Whenever he saw one, he would quickly check its bodywork. Not one of them had a scratch on it. From this, he concluded that everybody was loved except for him.
2
This time, Rouche took the train. He’d always liked this form of transport, because it allowed him to read. Why hadn’t he gone by train last time? You could lose yourself in your thoughts without risking damage to the vehicle. For him, it was an opportunity to get a little further through Bolaño’s novel. It was such a unique experience. As a big fan of German literature, Rouche was fascinated by the feverish narration of 2666, and the intermingling of several books within one giant project. Stories lost themselves within narrative labyrinths. In his head, he created two teams: García Márquez, Borges and Bolaño against Kafka, Mann and Musil. Between them, a man who had wavered between these two worlds, whom he mentally designated the referee: Gombrowicz. The journalist slipped into a pleasant daydream of this literary battle, rewriting the history of a century through commas.
Suddenly, it all made sense: he was going to a library.
Why had he never written a novel? In truth, he had tried, several times. Pages and pages of sterile attempts. And then he had started judging the work of others, often quite severely. That had made it seem impossible for him to publish a novel, even one as mediocre as those he read. Leafing through certain books, though, he would still think to himself: why not me? By the end of this long path, a mix of envy and frustration, Rouche had definitively abandoned the idea. It was almost a relief, admitting to himself that he did not possess the ability to write. He’d lived in this oppressive atmosphere of unfulfilled promise, with the feeling of not having accomplished what he might have done. Perhaps that was why the library of rejected books had struck such a chord with him. He understood perfectly the act of renunciation.
3
In Crozon, that day, the rain poured down. It was impossible to see anything; he might have been anywhere.
4
As he didn’t have enough money to take a taxi, Rouche had to wait in the station for the rain to stop. Sitting close to the sandwich shop, he attracted quite a bit of attention. Some passers-by took him for a beggar, although he himself didn’t realize this. It was mostly because of his raincoat, which was threadbare in places. Rouche had always felt good in that coat, which made him look like an unfinished novel. He could have bought a new one; Brigitte had suggested that they go shopping1 for one on several occasions. She would tell him that there was a sale, but it made no difference; he preferred to live and die in the same old, ratty coat.
Brigitte had left him now, but his coat was still with him. This thought struck him as incongruous. How many women had he been through since he first bought this raincoat? He remembered every moment, and could reconstruct a large part of his romantic life through the prism of its worn fabric. He saw again the moments spent with Justine, his raincoat clinging to the coat rack of a chic brasserie in Paris; the trip to Ireland with Isabelle, where it protected him from the whip of the wind; and finally the arguments about it with Brigitte. While he was deep in memories of the time he had shared with his raincoat, the minutes flew by, and in Crozon the rain stopped falling.
5
The library was within walking distance. On the way there, Rouche thought about the narrative that had led him to this point. He’d researched the origin of this strange project for amassing rejected manuscripts. He’d gathered information
about Jean-Pierre Gourvec. And he’d read Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion. Rouche was not generally very fond of American literature—apart from Philip Roth. During his days as a critic, he had torn apart Bret Easton Ellis, labelling him “the most overrated writer of the century”. What idiocy, he thought now, repentantly, to write such inanities, to try to be so clever with all my definitive, grandiloquent judgements. He didn’t regret his opinions, only the way he had expressed them. Sometimes he wished he could rewrite all his articles. So that was Rouche: a man too late to create the best version of himself. The same was true for his relationships; in his head, he had a whole speech written for Brigitte that he’d never had time to give. As he walked towards the library, though, he finally felt as if he were living in the present. He was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Nevertheless, his certainty was quickly proved wrong. There had always been a disconnect between the excitement he felt and the reality of the situation. In other words: the library was closed. A note on the door announced:
Back in a few days.
Thanks for your understanding.
MAGALI CROZE
Manager of the Crozon municipal library
It was exactly like it had been with Joséphine. From the very start of this investigation, every time Rouche wanted to meet a woman, she disappeared before he even got there. Should he see this as a sign? Was it his fault? Perhaps they spread the word, so they wouldn’t have to meet him. Added to the fact that Brigitte had just dumped him, this was a lot to take for one man. What should he do now? He absolutely had to talk to the librarian. She could tell him the exact circumstances in which Pick’s supposed novel had been discovered. And anyway, he was eager to find out more about Jean-Pierre Gourvec. Rouche felt certain that the dead librarian’s past was the key to this mystery.
The Mystery of Henri Pick Page 14