The Mystery of Henri Pick

by David Foenkinos

  6

  For now, he had to decipher what exactly was meant by “a few days”. It was almost as vague as Joséphine’s “a while”. He went into the neighbouring shops, from the fishmonger’s to the stationer’s, attempting to obtain information about Magali’s return. Nobody knew anything. She’d just left without warning, leaving behind that enigmatic note. Everybody agreed that she was a highly professional person, who worked hard to keep the library alive. From what they said, her sudden vanishing was completely out of character.

  At the dry-cleaner’s, Rouche spoke to a tall, thin woman who looked like one of Giacometti’s sculptures. “Maybe you should ask at the mayor’s office?” she suggested.

  “You think they’ll know when she’s coming back?”

  “It’s a municipal library, so the mayor is her boss. She’s bound to have told him. Actually, I’d like to know too. She dropped off a pink suit here, and I’d like to know when she’ll be back to pick it up. If you happen to see her, please ask her for me.”

  “Of course…”

  Rouche left, burdened with this message for Magali, although it was highly unlikely that it would be the first thing he said to her when he did manage to find her. He had fallen a long way as a journalist, but not quite so far as to become a messenger boy for a dry-cleaner. A pink suit, indeed…

  7

  At the mayor’s office, a fifty-something secretary explained to him that Magali had left without leaving word of when she would be back.

  “Don’t you find that worrying?”

  “No, she was owed a lot of holiday time. You see, everybody knows everybody here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That we all trust one another. I’m not shocked that she should leave without telling the mayor. She works very hard, so she has the right to take a breather.”

  “But has she ever left like that before, without warning?”

  “No, not that I can recall.”

  “If I may… have you worked here a long time?” asked Rouche.

  “Forever. I was an intern here at eighteen, and I never left. I would prefer not to tell you how old I am, but let’s just say it’s been a while.”

  “May I ask you another question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know Henri Pick?”

  “Vaguely. I know his wife better. We wanted to have a little ceremony for her at the mayor’s office, but she refused.”

  “A ceremony for what?”

  “For her husband’s book. His novel. Haven’t you heard about it?”

  “Well, yes, of course. What do you think of all that?”

  “All what?”

  “That whole story. The novel written by Henri Pick.”

  “I think it’s been wonderful for the town. There are so many visitors now. It’s been a big boost for our shopkeepers. If we’d had a publicity office working to promote the town, they could never have achieved what Henri Pick’s book did. As for the library, we’ll work something out. I have an intern here who could look after it. We wouldn’t want to disappoint all our new visitors, would we?”

  Rouche paused for a moment to take a good look at this woman. She had such energy. Each of her answers had shot from her mouth as from a catapult of words. He sensed that she could talk for hours like this, answering all sorts of questions with the same tireless vivacity. The point she had just raised was an important one: Rouche had to admit that Crozon had never been as famous as it was now. Perhaps this entire manuscript story had been put together by a brilliant Breton publicist? Abruptly, he asked her: “Did you know Jean-Pierre Gourvec?”

  “Why are you asking me that?” said the secretary coldly, her tone suddenly changed.

  “Just because. I mean, he was the one who had the idea of the library of rejected books, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, ideas. Yes, he had lots of those.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Anyway, if you don’t mind, I ought to be getting back to work.”

  “Okay,” said Rouche. Apparently there had been some awkwardness between Gourvec and this woman. She’d blushed bright red at the mere mention of the librarian’s name. After Magali’s pink suit, it seemed that his investigation was taking the form of a variety of shades of the same colour. He thanked the secretary warmly for her valuable help and slipped away.

  His investigation was not going to make much headway today. He may as well resign himself to it. So what should he do? Go to a bar and drink a few beers? It was an idea, certainly, but perhaps not the most constructive. Then he had a better idea: he would visit Henri Pick.

  8

  It was true that Magali was not the kind of person to just leave without warning; as a general rule, she was not the kind of person to do anything spontaneous; her existence was a series of planned events.

  As she drove home that night, a few days earlier, she had to stop several times. She had to stop and think so she could be certain that she really had experienced what she’d experienced. Her ideas were far from clear (in fact they were totally confused), but a few inhalations was all it took for her to register a strange smell. It was the smell of Jérémie. The reality clung to her skin, the physical proof that it wasn’t all a dream. A young man had desired her, in a simple, animal way, and she wondered what she was doing, driving towards her husband and leaving all that beauty behind. Several times, she wanted to make a U-turn. It was forbidden on that stretch of road marked by a solid white line, but so what? A line couldn’t stop her doing what she wanted. And yet she’d continued to drive home, and the journey had seemed to her as long and winding as her own prevarications.

  Her husband had called her several times, anxious that she had not yet arrived. She’d made an excuse about doing an inventory. Anybody who knew her even slightly would have guessed that she was lying. But why? Nobody lied in Crozon. There was no reason to. So her husband had worried a little bit, because her absence that evening was unusual, but that was all.

  When she got home, Magali prepared an explanation. Perhaps he would notice her mussed hair, her crumpled clothes, the glimmer in her eyes? Yes, José would take one look at her and know exactly what had happened. It was obvious, it was written all over her face, and she had no way of erasing her joy. But everything seemed different that night; she had been surprised by her husband’s anxious attitude. Magali had always imagined that she could disappear for at least two or three days before he even noticed her absence. Sometimes they would spend whole evenings without exchanging a single word, and other times their only conversations would be about practical matters: who would do the shopping the next day, for example. Now, she had to admit that she’d been wrong; he’d called her just to find out what she was up to. So what did she want? She might actually have preferred his indifference, so that he wouldn’t disturb her pleasure with his phone calls.

  She thought about it constantly, that pleasure. The giddiness she’d felt. Jérémie had asked her to come to the library early the next morning and wake him “with her mouth”, and she was haunted by those words, but a big part of her thought: he won’t be there tomorrow. He said it, but the truth is: he’ll be gone. He’ll have gone home, or he’ll be fucking another woman like me. They couldn’t be too hard to find; there were women like her everywhere, women who couldn’t bear not being touched any more, women who thought they were fat and hideous. Yes, everywhere he went, he must leave behind beautiful, indestructible memories; that was his legacy, since he wasn’t able to get published. Yes, she felt certain now; he wouldn’t be there. She smiled at the fact that she’d ever imagined he would be.

  At home, she walked silently across the living room. Magali was surprised to find all the lights off. This was not at all the setting for a deeply worried man. She tiptoed up to their bedroom, where she found her husband, mouth open, deep in a fathomless slumber.

  9

  For much of that night, Magali was wide awake. She left early the next morning, after spending an hour in th
e bathroom. She hadn’t needed to explain anything, since her husband had been asleep the whole time she’d been in the house. He’d be happy when he woke up, anyway, because the coffee was hot and the table set for breakfast.

  In the dawn light, she opened the door of the library. Inside, all was calm, as if the books too were sleeping. She walked between the shelves to her office, her heart beating in a strange new rhythm. She could have walked quickly, could have rushed towards what she was going to find, but she liked this waiting period; for a few more metres, for a few more seconds, everything was still possible. Jérémie could be there, sleeping, waiting to be woken by her mouth. She gently opened the door and saw the young man lying on the floor, sleeping as calmly as the surface of a Swiss lake. She closed the door, and opened it again, as if to be certain that it wasn’t an optical illusion. Then she moved towards him, to take a closer look. The night before, she hadn’t dared really look at him, often turning away when their eyes met. Now, she could contemplate him, pausing over every detail of his body, intoxicated by his beauty. So… now she had to wake him with her mouth. Did he want kisses? She started touching her lips softly to his chest, then his stomach, and he shivered; he put his hand on her head then, caressing her hair for an instant, before gently pushing her a little lower.

  Later, Magali made a coffee and handed it to Jérémie. He was sitting behind the desk. He must have wandered around the library during the night, because he’d assembled a little pile of books. Among other names, Magali spotted Kafka, Kerouac and Kundera. From this, she could have concluded that he only looked at the K section. He hesitated for a moment between The Dharma Bums and The Trial, before finally opening Laughable Loves. Magali watched him for a moment, then asked: “Are you hungry? Shall I get us some croissants?”

  “No, thanks. I have everything I need right here,” he said, gesturing at his book.

  She left him alone, so she could open the library to customers. It was a particularly quiet day, which gave Magali plentiful opportunities to go and see Jérémie. Sometimes he would tell her to come over, and he would slide his hand between her legs. She let him do it without saying anything. What was going to happen? What did he want? How long was he going to stay? She would have liked to simply enjoy the madness, but that was impossible: her mind was filled with an avalanche of questions. Jérémie no longer seemed like the tortured dropout he had the day before; today, he was more like a bon vivant, enjoying life’s gifts. At the end of the day, she went out to buy a bottle of wine and some food and they picnicked on the floor. They talked more than they had the first night. Jérémie told her about his difficult relationship with his parents, and his mother in particular; he’d been sent to boarding school, then put in a home, and now it was almost five years since he’d seen them. “They might be dead,” he said, before admitting that this was unlikely; someone would have told him if they’d died. Magali was chilled by this idea. When she saw young people begging outside the supermarket, she always suspected that family problems were at the root of their homelessness. She thought about her daughters: she didn’t see them often enough. Perhaps she didn’t show them enough of her love.

  Encouraged by Jérémie, Magali started talking about her own parents. They had died many years ago, and she never spoke about them any more. Nobody ever asked her about her childhood. Suddenly she was seized by an intense emotion. For years, she had lived without asking herself what was missing in her life. She understood now that she had been suffering from the lack of her mother’s closeness. She had told herself that her mother’s death was just one of those things. Now she realized that just because something was a common experience didn’t mean that you couldn’t feel it as an emotional outrage, something it would be impossible to ever get over.

  She put words to the chasm inside her, and even an explanation—about the way she’d let go of her body. Jérémie sensed her distress and consoled her with a few touches.

  10

  The days that followed were all suffused in the same atmosphere. Magali flitted between moments of euphoria, when she was electrified by the power of her feelings, and moments of dread at what was happening. She tried to avoid her husband, which wasn’t very difficult. Recently, José had been more exhausted than usual by his working hours at the Renault factory. He was full-time now. In order to maintain car production in France, the employees had to redouble their efforts, show that their expertise was more valuable than low-cost manpower abroad. The consequence of this fierce competition was an ever-greater exploitation of all workers: those who wanted to keep their jobs, and those who hoped to get one. Both sides lost. José was looking forward to his early retirement as if to a release from prison. Finally, he would be able to enjoy life; in other words, go fishing and walk around the coast. Perhaps his wife might even go with him sometimes; it had been ages since they’d spent time together like that, without any objective in mind, just wandering around aimlessly.

  Jérémie was still sleeping in the office; Magali had brought him a blanket. The lack of comfort did not seem to bother him. She didn’t dare ask him how long he was planning to stay. Until, one day, he announced: “I have to go home.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “…”

  “I’ll get the train to Paris. I’ll probably spend one night there, and on Sunday I’ll leave for Lyons. A friend of mine has offered me a part-time job. I can’t turn it down. You understand?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “I have a small attic room in Lyons. It’s pretty tiny, but it’s fine. You could come.”

  “Come… with you?”

  “Yeah. What’s stopping you?”

  “Well… everything.”

  “You don’t want to stay with me?”

  “Of course I do. That’s not the point. I mean, I have a job…”

  “Just close the library. Tell them you’re taking sick leave. And with your experience, I’m sure you’d find something in Lyons.”

  “What about my husband?”

  “You don’t love him any more. And your children have grown up. We’ll be happy there. There’s something special between us. It was my fate to bring my book here, so I could meet you. Nobody has ever been so kind to me before.”

  “But I haven’t done anything special.”

  “The past week has been the best of my life: lying here, with these books, and you coming to see me from time to time. And I love making love with you. Don’t you?”

  “I… yes.”

  “So? Let’s go tomorrow.”

  “But… this is all happening too quickly.”

  “Does that matter? You’ll regret it if you don’t come.”

  Magali had to sit down. Jérémie had spoken very calmly, as if what he was saying was simple and obvious, whereas for her it meant overturning her entire life. She started thinking: he’s right, I should just leave, I shouldn’t even think about it, because it’s obvious, I can’t let this man slip away from me, I can’t live without his body, his kisses, his beauty, I couldn’t just go on with my life knowing that he was somewhere far away, yes, Jérémie is right, I don’t love my husband any more, or in any case I never question my feelings when I’m with him, it’s just the way it is, and it will go on like that until death, what Jérémie is offering me is the chance to escape for a moment from the death that awaits me, he’s offering me life and I’m suffocating, I can’t breathe any more amid all these books, they’re stifling me, all these stories that are preventing me from living my own story, all these sentences, all these words, weighing me down all these years, I’m tired of novels, I’m tired of readers, I’m tired of failed writers, I can’t stand these books any more, I need to escape the prison of these shelves, calm down, Magali, calm down, everybody gets like this after a while, we all feel a sort of disgust for our life, our job, but I love books, I loved José, and I probably still love him if I’m honest, it would make me feel bad to just leave him here, orphaned, but it’s true that we do
n’t do much together any more, he’s become a mere presence, a constant presence, changeless and indistinct, united as we are by our past, our memories, that’s maybe the most important thing, the memories that prove that love existed, and we have the physical proof with our sons, my children who have moved away, before I was everything for them and now it’s just a few quick calls, mechanical tenderness, hellos that are like goodbyes, how would they react if I left, one would say it’s my life, the other that I was mad to do that to Papa, but in the end I don’t care about their opinions, I don’t judge them for the choices they make, so they should respect my choices too, leave me free to try to be happy.

  11

  Again, Magali didn’t get much sleep. She thought about Henri Pick’s book. It seemed to have incredible resonance in her own life. Who had she been living with these last few hours? With Jérémie or with José? That night, she observed her husband, the way you might contemplate a landscape on the last day of your holiday. She wanted to memorize everything. He was sleeping deeply, completely unaware of the emotional danger that prowled close by. Everything was confused at that moment, but Magali knew one thing: she couldn’t go on living as she had before.

  The next day, she left without waking him. It was a Saturday, he didn’t have work; he would sleep until noon at least. As soon as she entered the library, Jérémie asked her what she’d decided. She thought she would have a few more seconds to think it over, but no: the time had come to take the plunge.