“I’m going to go home early this afternoon…” she began, then stopped talking.
“Yeah. And then?”
“I’ll pick up my things. And then we’ll leave together.”
“Perfect,” said Jérémie, moving towards her.
“Wait. Wait. Let me finish,” said Magali, raising her hand to order him back.
“All right.”
“I checked. The bus to Quimper is at three o’clock. After that, we’ll take the 5.12 train to Paris.”
“You’ve researched it all. That’s great.”
“…”
“But why don’t we just go in your car? It’d be more practical.”
“I can’t do that. My husband’s car broke down months ago. He’d have to buy another one, and that would be too expensive. He goes to the factory with a colleague who picks him up and drops him off. Anyway, you get the idea… I can’t leave him and take the car.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“…”
“Can I hold you in my arms now?” Jérémie asked.
12
All morning long, Magali forced herself to work as if nothing was happening. She’d always liked that expression, the way it tried to mask the essential; in this case, the precipice of a life-changing decision. Several times, she went to see Jérémie, who seemed lost in thought.2 He must be mentally constructing novels that he will never finish, she thought; so many lives are soothed by illusions. Whenever she glanced at him, she had to admit in her heart of hearts that it was folly to go with him. After all, she barely knew him. But she was living through one of those rare moments when after doesn’t matter; when only the power of now guides your life. She felt good with him, it was as simple as that. There was no point trying to define what was happening in her body; words were useless in this kind of situation. No matter how many of the thousands of books surrounding her she opened, she would never find the key to her own behaviour.
Around noon, as the library was emptying, she said to Jérémie: “I’m going to close up. You should go to the bus station now, and I’ll meet you there later when I’ve picked up my things.”
“Perfect. Can I take a few books?” he asked casually, as if completely unaware of how important this moment was to Magali.
“Yes, of course. You can take anything you want.”
“Just two or three novels. I want to travel lightly, since we’re not taking the car.”
He gathered his belongings, took three books, and the two of them left the library. Out of fear that someone would see them, they separated without any show of affection.
13
Magali headed straight for her bedroom. Her husband was still asleep, which proved how exhausted he was. For a moment, she sat on the edge of the bed, and you might have thought that she was going to wake him; you might have thought that she was going to tell him everything. She could have told him: I met another man, and I have no choice, I have to leave you because I’ll die if I let him leave and he never touches me again. But she didn’t say anything. She just kept watching him, taking care not to make a sound so as not to disturb his sleep.
She examined their bedroom. She knew every inch of it by heart. There were no surprises here; even the gathering of dust took place at the same, predictable rhythm. This was the familiar framework of her existence, and she was almost surprised at how reassured it made her feel. While the last few days had been divine in terms of pleasure, they had also been exhausting. She had lived each minute of her brief passion with her stomach in knots, dreading the possibility that she would be judged for her actions. It was perhaps predictable with José, but she was beginning to realize that there was a form of pleasure in that predictability. There was a beauty in this comfort. What had seemed to her mediocre was now revealed in another light, and her life itself looked different. She understood that she was going to miss what she had rejected a week ago. Yes, with a certain irony, at this last moment, she felt herself missing what she was about to leave. Tears ran down her cheeks, releasing all the feelings that had been pent up inside her since she first found herself in this emotional whirlwind.
Finally she stood up, grabbed a bag and threw a few things inside. Opening a drawer, she woke her husband.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Just tidying up.”
“That’s not what it looks like. You’re packing a bag.”
“A bag?”
“Yes. Are you going somewhere?”
“No.”
“So what are you doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“…”
“You look like you’re crying. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Magali couldn’t move. She had forgotten how to breathe. José watched her uncomprehendingly. Could he possibly imagine that a man young enough to be his son was waiting for his wife at the bus station? He usually didn’t even notice Magali’s mood swings. When he didn’t understand her, he just thought oh well, that’s women for you. But this time, he sat up in bed. He had sensed something different, perhaps serious.
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
“…”
“You can tell me.”
“I’m packing a bag, because I want us to leave now. Straight away. Please don’t ask questions.”
“But… where are we going?”
“I don’t care. Let’s just get in the car and go. The two of us. For a few days. It’s been years since we went anywhere on holiday.”
“But I can’t just leave. What about my job?”
“I told you, I don’t care. You can get a doctor’s note. You haven’t been off sick in thirty years. Please, don’t think about it.”
“So that’s what you were doing with the bag?”
“Yes, I was packing our stuff.”
“What about the library?”
“I’ll leave a note on the door. Come on, get dressed. We’re leaving.”
“But I haven’t had my coffee yet.”
“Please. Let’s just go. Come on. Quickly, quickly, quickly. You can get a coffee on the motorway.”
“…”
14
A few minutes later, they were in the car. José had never seen his wife like this, and he realized that he just needed to do what she said. She was right, after all. He couldn’t keep going like this. His job was killing him. It was time to go, to leave everything behind, to take a breather, if they wanted to survive. On the way, she stopped at the library and left a note explaining that she’d be back in a few days. She drove quickly, without really knowing where she was going, intoxicated by that uncertainty. At last, she was acting spontaneously. José opened the window to let the wind whip his face. He wanted to be sure that he really was awake, because what he was living through at that moment felt like a dream.
15
Without knowing it, Rouche had seen Jérémie at the bus station that day. Then he’d seen that the library was closed, and asked a few shopkeepers about it before questioning a woman at the mayor’s office. This had led to a dead end, as was becoming usual with this investigation. He always failed first before finding what he was looking for. In fact, it was the succession of failures that had led him to where he found himself now: on the right track.
He was beginning to understand why his life had forced him to face up to such massive disillusionment; he’d imagined he was living it the way he wanted to, and he’d headed into literary spheres armed with strategic ideas for success. Now he was discovering that he should also follow his intuition. That was why he’d felt the need to visit Henri Pick’s grave. From there, he could follow the thread back towards the truth buried deep in the past.
The journalist was surprised by how big Crozon’s cemetery was; hundreds of graves either side of a central aisle that ended in a monument for the victims of both world wars. At the entrance, there was a small hut, painted a faded pink, where the concierge lived. Seeing Rouche appear, the man em
erged from his lair: “You looking for Pick?”
“Yes,” replied Rouche, a little taken aback.
“Space M64.”
“Ah, thank you…”
The man went back into his hut without another word. Apparently he was an information minimalist. He came out, said M64, and went back in. “M64,” Rouche mentally repeated several times, before thinking: even dead people have an address.
He walked slowly through the rows of graves, not looking for their numbers, preferring to decipher each name until he found that of Henri Pick. Instinctively, he started calculating the number of years that each person had lived. Laurent Joncour (1939–2005) had died early, at sixty-six. He wasn’t the only one, and the journalist could not help thinking that all of them, like him, had lived ordinary lives; each corpse had, on one day or another, made love for the first time, argued with a friend over something that now seemed stupid… perhaps some of them had also scratched cars. Here, he was a survivor of the human community. And, a few metres away, he now spotted a fellow survivor. She was a woman in her fifties, and there was something familiar about her. He walked towards her, while continuing to read the names on the graves, but he felt almost certain that this woman was standing at Pick’s grave.
16
When he came closer, Rouche recognized Joséphine. He’d waited for her outside her shop, in vain, and now he’d found her here. He glanced at the grave and saw a heap of flowers and even a few letters. This vision gave him a real sense of the phenomenon that had grown around the novelist. Pick’s daughter remained immobile in front of the plot, in a sort of trance. She didn’t notice the new visitor. Unlike the photographs of her he’d seen in the press, where she smiled so excitedly that it bordered on the ridiculous, she looked serious now. Of course, she was standing by her father’s grave, but Rouche knew that the source of her sadness lay elsewhere. In fact, he thought, she had come here to seek a comfort that she couldn’t find beyond the cemetery’s walls.
“Your father wrote you a very beautiful letter,” he said with a sigh.
“Excuse me?” said Joséphine, surprised to find a man standing next to her.
“The letter that you found. It’s very moving.”
“But… how do you know that? Who are you?”
“Jean-Michel Rouche. I’m a journalist. Don’t worry. I wanted to meet you in Rennes, but you’d disappeared. Mathilde told me about the letter. I managed to persuade her to show it to me.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I was looking for a written trace… of your father.”
“Look, leave me in peace. Can’t you see that I’m busy?”
“…”
Rouche took a few steps back, then stopped as if frozen. What an idiot he had been not to anticipate this sort of reaction. He was so tactless! This woman was visiting her father’s grave, and he talked to her like that, out of the blue, about the letter. About that very personal letter which he had obtained without her permission. How did he expect her to react? His investigation made him happy, but he hated the idea of hurting someone. Sensing that he was still standing behind her, Joséphine turned. She might easily have become annoyed again, but something disarmed her. With his frayed, soaked raincoat, this man looked like some sad, harmless lunatic. She asked him: “What do you want exactly?”
“I’m not sure this is the right moment.”
“Oh, stop beating about the bush. Just say what you have to say.”
“I have a hunch that it wasn’t your father who wrote that novel.”
“Oh really? Why?”
“Just a hunch. Something seemed off to me.”
“Go on.”
“I needed proof. Written evidence.”
“So that’s why you wanted the letter?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now you’ve seen it. How does it help you?”
“You know very well how it helps me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t lie to yourself. All you’d have to do is read two lines of that letter to realize that your father could never have written a novel.”
“…”
“It’s a touching letter, but the vocabulary is very limited, the style is naïve, it’s full of mistakes… I mean, don’t you agree?”
“…”
“You can tell that it took him a superhuman effort to write you those words, because he knew that all children receive letters from their parents when they’re away at holiday camps.”
“A quickly dashed-off letter to a child and a novel… it’s hardly the same thing.”
“Be honest. You know as well as I do that your father couldn’t have written a novel.”
“I don’t know that. And how can you ever be sure? We can’t ask him any more.”
They both looked at Henri Pick’s gravestone, but nothing happened.
17
One hour later, Rouche was in Madeleine’s living room, sipping a cup of caramel tea. Joséphine was living here for the moment, he guessed, while she recovered from the trauma of Marc’s betrayal. She was trying to find some serenity in her life, to rebuild herself. She only left the house to go to the cemetery. And yet, she resented her father. His novel had sown destruction, in the end. Madeleine said that her ex-son-in-law’s unspeakable actions should allow her daughter to finally turn the page. And she was right, of course. The brutality of Joséphine’s discovery had put an end to years of sorrow; now she was mourning the death of all hope that she would be able to revive her marriage.
Marc had sent her lots of messages, apologising, attempting to explain. He’d been deep in debt, and the other woman had coerced him into it. He didn’t know how he could have acted so unscrupulously. Since then, he had really broken up with her. He wrote to Joséphine about their reunion: while his motivations had initially been bad ones, he’d felt such intense happiness at being with her again. He knew he’d ruined everything, but he couldn’t forget the joy of their rekindled relationship. He saw everything clearly now. And it was too late. Joséphine would never see him again.
For now, she was sitting in a corner of the living room, at a distance from Rouche and his mother. Madeleine reread the copy of the letter several times, before asking: “What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever you want.”
“My husband wrote a novel. That’s just how it is. It was his secret.”
“But the letter…”
“What about it?”
“It’s obvious that he couldn’t write. Don’t you think?”
“Oh, I’m so tired of all this. Everybody’s gone crazy over this book. Look at my poor daughter! It’s all such nonsense. I’m going to call the editor.”
Rouche watched in surprise as Madeleine rose to pick up the telephone. She opened an old, dog-eared black notebook and dialled Delphine’s number.
It was almost eight in the evening; Delphine was eating dinner with Frédéric. Madeleine did not waste words: “There’s a journalist at my house. He says Henri didn’t write the book. We found a letter.”
“A letter?”
“Yes. Not very well written… When you read it, you have to doubt that he wrote a novel.”
“But… a letter and a novel… it’s hardly the same thing,” Delphine stammered. “And who’s the journalist? Is it Rouche?”
“Does it matter? Just tell me the truth.”
“But… the truth is that your husband’s name was on the manuscript. And the contract is in your name. You will receive all the royalties. Isn’t that proof enough that I’ve always believed that he was the author?”
Delphine had put the phone on loudspeaker, so that Frédéric could hear the conversation. He whispered: “Tell her to ask the journalist who he thinks the author is.” The old lady repeated this question, and Rouche replied: “I have an idea. But I can’t say anything for now. In any case, it’s time to stop letting people believe that it was Henri Pick.” Delphine tried to smooth things over by telling Madeleine that, until t
here was any proof to the contrary, the author of the novel was her husband. And this journalist should find some real evidence to back up his theories instead of digging up old letters sent to a child. She added: “If you found an old shopping list written by Proust, maybe you’d think it was impossible that the same man had written In Search of Lost Time!” With this, she wished Madeleine a good evening and hung up.
Frédéric pretended to applaud. “Bravo! Excellent argument. Proust’s shopping list…”
“It just came to me.”
“Anyway, you knew this was bound to happen one day.”
“Doubt is normal. But that letter doesn’t prove that Pick didn’t write his book. There’s no concrete proof.”
“For now…” added Frédéric, with a smile that Delphine found supremely irritating. She was usually so level-headed, but she flew off the handle now.
“What’s that supposed to mean? My reputation is at stake here! The book is a success, and everybody thinks I have a gift, so that’s it. This stops here.”
“This stops here?”
“Yes! The story is perfect as it is!” she said, getting to her feet. Frédéric tried to grab her arm, but she pushed him away. She rushed over to the door and left the apartment.
Madeleine’s call had revived tensions between them. They didn’t agree, but before they had at least been able to talk about it; why had she reacted so violently? He ran after her. Out in the street, he looked around, and was surprised to see that she was already quite far off. Yet he had the impression that he’d waited only a few seconds before going after her. Increasingly, his sense of time seemed distorted, the result of a disconnect between the motions of his mind and the reality of the present. Sometimes he would spend a long moment thinking about a sentence, and he’d be disconcerted to discover that two hours had passed. He was losing touch with everyday life, and the sensation was growing stronger as he drew closer to the end of his novel. It was so long and so hard that the final chapters had been written in a kind of fog. The Man Who Told the Truth would soon be finished.
The Mystery of Henri Pick Page 16