The Double

by Ann Gosslin

  The rain is coming down in buckets. I must sign off now and hurry to shut the windows.

  Yours sincerely,

  Anna Kiraly Molnar

  Gessen tucked the letter into Vidor’s ever-growing file. A pity. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. What he should do was ask Vidor point blank where his sisters were living. But he doubted Vidor would be so forthcoming. Not when it was obvious Gessen wanted to contact his family members to dig up salacious details on Vidor’s life.

  If he didn’t make any progress in the next few sessions, he would have to pull out his trump card. Inform Vidor that the man he attacked in Copenhagen had subsequently died, and that his own life and liberty were on the line. It was a risky tactic, so he would have to tread carefully. Vidor might fabricate a horrific event from his past that resulted in chronic post-traumatic stress. Or he could easily fake additional episodes of psychosis, muddying the waters even more. Whatever trauma Vidor came up with would be difficult to corroborate, and where would that leave him? Colluding with Vidor, intentionally or not, to have him absolved of the crime of killing an innocent man.

  If he wanted to get anywhere, he would have to do some more sleuthing into Vidor’s past on his own. The next obvious place was Paris. Vidor’s home after the flight from Budapest, and though decades had passed since he moved away, if Gessen were lucky, he might find someone who’d known Vidor as a child.

  Gessen hated being away from the clinic, even under the best of circumstances. It didn’t help that he was currently at loggerheads with Ismail. Someone needed to rein the boy in before he did anything stupid. And only yesterday, his Munchausen’s patient had managed to land herself in the infirmary. Though her personal attendant swore she watched Babette like a hawk, she’d somehow found time to swallow a handful of gravel, necessitating an emergency endoscopy. A crude form of self-harm, at best, but it got her the thing she craved most: a great deal of fuss, and the staff attending to her every need. Before Gessen went anywhere, he would have to scold Hélène, once again, about yanking Vidor’s chain. While it might seem amusing, she was making a difficult situation worse.

  Ursula would have to handle all this, and more, during the few days he would be away. At least she’d agreed, if reluctantly, to his latest plan to get Vidor to talk. Hopefully, upon his return, he’d have something to work with. Heavy snows were forecast in the coming days. He studied the darkening sky, beset with misgivings, and hoping the trip to Paris wouldn’t turn out to be another dead end.

  20

  When had he last been in Paris? Years ago, it must be now, when he was invited to give the keynote lecture at a conference at the Palais des Congrès. Late spring it was, with the horse chestnut trees flaunting their pink and cream blossoms in a frothy mass along the Seine, as the city hummed with the portent of summer. Now, in late November, the trees’ blossoms were long gone, and an amber light shone on the dying leaves as he trod along a gravel path in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

  He exited the park at the Odéon gate and checked his watch, pleased to see there was enough time to pass through the gardens of the Cluny Museum, though not enough to duck inside to view the tapestries. During his first year at the Sorbonne, in thrall to the city’s delights, he liked to sit in a quiet corner of the garden, amongst the flowers and bees, with a book open on his lap. Forty years later, the thrill Paris once gave him flickered to life.

  Such was his affection for the city of his youth that he’d even considered bringing Fernanda along, simply for the joy of watching her explore the park. As he scuffed his feet through the falling leaves, he imagined her bounding up to the other dogs, out for a morning stroll, when the air was crisp and mist hung in the boughs. But he’d thought better of it, and just as well. This wasn’t a holiday, and he was obliged to direct his energy towards solving the mystery of Vidor Kiraly. With any luck, and a little prodding, the city would reveal the information he sought.

  Having a few minutes to spare on his way to see Bertrand, a school chum from his Sorbonne days, he swung by the magnificent library’s reading room. With its ornate, blue-painted ceiling and subterranean light, it had been his favourite place to study. Between lectures, he would sit at the end of a highly polished table, breathing in the hush, as he turned over the pages of his philosophy texts. While this trip visit to Paris was a fact-finding mission about Vidor’s past, and not a trip down memory lane, as long as he was in the city, it wouldn’t hurt to visit some of his old haunts.

  The air vibrated with the hush of intense concentration, as rows of students pored over their books. It was here, seated at a table in the back, that he’d first spotted Sophie, her cloud of golden hair creating a halo of light in the dense atmosphere. This time of year it was, or close enough. Early December, just before the end of term, and the library was heavy with the smell of damp wool. She’d worn a sweater the colour of the evening sky, and a red scarf looped around her neck. Flustered, he’d knocked a book to the floor, and when she looked up their eyes met. A flash of recognition like a jolt of electricity.

  C’est toi. There you are. It was the girl who’d been drifting through his dreams of late, though he couldn’t fathom who she might be, or why she’d infiltrated his slumber. Nearly forty years ago, yet the pain had never left him. The story of their love contained in the simple words, if only... Si seulement. The two saddest words in any language. If only he didn’t feel things so strongly. If only he had been the son of a different man, she would have been his wife.

  Gessen blinked, and the vision was gone. Across the years Sophie had lived on in his imagination as a young woman, though she’d be nearly sixty now. Married, surely, perhaps a grandmother. A wave of regret passed over him like a fog. How young he’d been, how delirious with heartache. Begging her to run away with him, to Canada or America or New Zealand. Anywhere they could start a new life, far from the curse of history.

  He should have known that no matter where he turned, there was no escaping the poisonous legacy in his blood. After he’d smashed their dreams to bits, with no explanation for his behaviour, her parents had whisked a heartbroken Sophie away to their country house in Normandy. When she returned to the university in the autumn, thin and lifeless, she met with him once at a nearby cafe, her speech wooden, her eyes flat. He refused to tell her the real reason he’d broken their engagement, having vowed to tell no one about his past. But he couldn’t bear the idea of her believing he was a cad. So he told her a watered-down version of the truth, clasping her hand as he whispered the vile story in her ear. She’d said it didn’t matter to her, that love conquered all. But that wasn’t the point. It mattered to him, and after his wrenching split from Sophie, he’d made a solemn vow to never marry, to never have children. He would be the end of the line.

  * * *

  By the time Gessen reached his friend’s office, he was a few minutes late, and a student with scraggly hair and a wild look in his eye was just coming through the door. The boy could have been Gessen’s twin, forty years ago, his mind teeming, the thirst for knowledge unquenchable. He knocked and pushed open the door.

  ‘Anton.’ Bertrand sprang from behind his desk and kissed Gessen noisily on both cheeks. ‘It’s been too long.’

  ‘Indeed, it has.’ Bertrand had scarcely changed, though. Still thin as a wire, and vibrant as ever. Only the greying hair at his temples betrayed his age.

  Bertrand moved a stack of papers from a chair. ‘Please have a seat. I just need to send a couple of emails.’ He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘Wretched admin, I’ll never get used to it.’

  Gessen scanned the bookshelf while he waited. How different his life would have turned out if he’d stuck with his youthful plan to study philosophy and mathematics instead of switching to medicine. Even now, he kept a much-thumbed edition of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations in the top drawer of his desk. Often turning to it after a difficult day or a particularly trying session with a patient.

  The clatter of the keyboard, a long, drawn-out s
igh. ‘Fini.’ Bertrand pushed his chair back and stood. ‘Let’s have a coffee somewhere.’ He grabbed his jacket from a hook by the door. ‘I’d like to escape before some student bumbles in with yet another complaint.’ He hustled Gessen into the hall. ‘I don’t remember being so spoiled at that age. We just got on with things, didn’t we?’ He flung his arm around Gessen’s shoulders. ‘All fired up, weren’t we? With our fierce desire to burn down the world and create a new one from the ashes.’

  Out on the pavement, Bertrand hesitated. ‘Shall we go to our usual place, for old time’s sake? It’s been tarted up a bit, but the coffee’s still good.’

  Bertrand strode across the boulevard, talking over his shoulder as Gessen tried to match his loping stride. He couldn’t help but smile. Here they were again. Tall, lanky Bertrand striding ahead, with Gessen trotting behind, like a younger brother trying to keep up.

  At this time of day, just after four, the cafe was quiet. The marble-topped tables looked improbably the same, and the waiters still wore waistcoats and imperious expressions. But the rack of newspapers was gone, and the once plain walls were stencilled in a design of silvery-blue filigree. A group of students clustered around a table in the back corner, intent on their conversation. Two women, probably tourists, judging by the shopping bags at their feet, occupied the table by the window.

  When their coffee was set in front of them, with a pleasing click of porcelain against stone, Gessen breathed in the steam before stirring sugar in his cup. After a minute or two of exchanging pleasantries and asking about each other’s lives, he brought up the reason he’d come to the city.

  ‘I’ve been working with a new patient,’ he said. ‘Quite an unusual case. Though I’m having trouble getting him to cooperate in his own treatment.’

  Bertrand studied Gessen over the rim of his coffee cup, eyebrows raised, but said nothing. Gessen could practically hear the comforting whir of his friend’s thoughts.

  ‘It appears to be a case of either severely repressed trauma, or even a split identity. Though such cases are exceedingly rare.’ He knocked back his coffee. ‘And it’s not an easy disorder to make sense of, under any circumstances.’ After a pause, Gessen continued. ‘He seems to have suffered a temporary psychosis and attacked a stranger unprovoked. I’ve been working with him for nearly a month, and even though the man is in serious trouble, he’s resisted our every attempt to help him.’

  Bertrand ran his hand through his thatch of hair. ‘Do you remember your Socrates? “Sometimes you put walls up, not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.”’

  It was a quote Gessen vaguely remembered from their student days. Very apropos, and so like Bertrand to have a suggestion at the ready.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, trying to put his thoughts into words, ‘I keep having the sense that I’ve met the patient before.’ His attention was distracted by the sound of laughter from the student table. ‘He grew up in Paris, and it isn’t farfetched to imagine I might have bumped into him somewhere, perhaps in one of the cafes by the Sorbonne – even this one – though he claims it’s unlikely. He says he left for Cambridge about the same time I arrived in the city.’

  ‘Someone you knew?’ Bertrand signalled the waiter for another round of espressos. ‘How strange the wheels of fate. Fontaine would have been pleased.’

  ‘That he grew up in Paris and left for England at eighteen appears to be the case.’ Gessen flicked a crumb from the table. ‘But he has this odd tic. Once or twice, while we were in session and I was pushing him to tell me about his father, he reached up absently and flicked his ear, like this.’ Gessen demonstrated. ‘While I was on the train, I was thinking about my first weeks at the Sorbonne and I remembered this student in one of my philosophy lectures who always sat at the back of the room. Once, I came in late and took a seat behind him. I noticed he wasn’t taking any notes, but when another student interrupted the lecturer and launched into a heated argument his shoulders tensed, and he flicked his ear. Exactly like my patient.’

  ‘The plot thickens.’ Bertrand’s face grew animated. ‘The Case of the Nervous Tic. Perhaps your patient has a doppelgänger. The mysterious double we’re all supposed to have, somewhere. Or, maybe it’s an Ankou.’

  ‘On cue?’ Once again, Bertrand had lost him.

  ‘In Breton mythology, the Ankou is the servant of Death. Or henchman, if you prefer, and is sometimes described as the personification of another’s soul. A skeletal or shadowy figure who assists in the collection of the dead.’ Bertrand paused to sip his coffee. ‘For the one who hears it, the cart’s squeaking wheel is thought to be a harbinger of death.’

  Gessen felt a chill. ‘I’m fairly sure my patient is alive.’ He smiled at his friend.

  Bertrand’s gaze grew filmy as if he were receding into the past, then snapped back as he cocked his head to eavesdrop on the two American tourists complaining about the rudeness of the French. ‘What makes you think that boy and your patient are the same person?’

  Gessen stared at the dregs of his coffee, hoping to overcome the onerous fatigue he couldn’t seem to shake. ‘I can’t put my finger on it. But there’s something about his eyes that keeps troubling me. It could just be coincidence. Or an uncanny double, as you say.’

  Bertrand patted Gessen on the arm. ‘I’ve got an appointment with a student in thirty minutes, but why don’t we meet later for dinner? My wife has a mind like a steel trap. Eveline might remember your mysterious boy.’

  21

  When he entered Bertrand’s flat at half past six, Eveline had yet to arrive. As fellow international students at the Sorbonne, Gessen had only a brief acquaintance with the girl who would later become his friend’s wife. While Bertrand poured him an aperitif, he filled Gessen in on the intervening years. After earning a dual degree in French Literature and Biology, Eveline went on to medical school and had made a career in infectious diseases.

  At a quarter to seven she breezed through the door of the flat, a graceful woman with ash blonde hair and intelligent green eyes. In her fine wool trousers and dove-grey blouse, crisply pressed, it was difficult to picture her coming straight from a laboratory. She greeted her husband before turning to Gessen with a curious gaze. In manner and dress, she seemed more French than the French. Impossible to believe she hailed from a tiny village in Dorset. Not only did she speak like a native, but she’d also captured the expressions and body language of a born and bred Parisienne.

  As she leaned in to kiss her husband and whisper something in his ear, Gessen felt the pang of everything he’d lost. Would he and Sophie have had such a life? A light-filled flat in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, two successful children, and a coterie of friends?

  ‘Lovely to meet you properly at last,’ Eveline said, fetching wine glasses from the cupboard. ‘Funny we were in the same year at university and never got to know each other.’

  Bertrand opened a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and set it on the counter to breathe, while Eveline placed a wedge of brie and glass bowl of olives on a platter. Gessen hung back. ‘May I help in any way?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ She smiled. ‘You’re our guest.’ She shooed the two men into the salon.

  All it took was a few minutes of reminiscing for the years to fall away, and they were students once again, with their talk ranging from books and music to politics and travel. It was the type of free-flowing conversation Gessen rarely had time for in his monastic existence in the mountains. But he waited until they’d finished their dinner, a delicious boeuf bourguignon, and were sipping Cointreau on the dark green sofa in the salon before broaching the topic of his mystery boy to Eveline. Such was the pleasure of their reunion, after so many years, it seemed gauche to throw cold water on their lively conversation. But he had little time to waste. Did Eveline remember an international student who’d attended the university in 1968 and ’69, and then disappeared? Darkish hair, grey-green eyes. Rather slight in stature.

  She pursed her lips. ‘Pos
sibly, though there weren’t too many of us that year, were there? Forty or forty-five perhaps?’ She smiled. ‘I haven’t thought about my student days in years.’ She set her glass on the table. ‘If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I believe I have some old photos stashed away.’

  Only after Eveline had gone to search her office did Gessen remember to ask Bertrand about their children.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Bertrand said, topping up Gessen’s glass. ‘Henri is in his final year at Sciences Po and Amélie is doing a two-year graduate course in America.’ He pointed to a row of photos on the credenza. ‘There they are, all grown up.’

  Gessen raised his glass, Santé, as the two old friends made the rueful smile of those entering the final third of their lives.

  Eveline returned, brandishing a thick photo album above her head. ‘Voila! I knew I had this somewhere.’

  Bertrand cocked an eyebrow at Gessen. ‘Lucky for you my wife is sentimental. Not to mention an incorrigible packrat. I chucked all my old stuff years ago.’

  ‘Touché, mon amour.’ Eveline blew him a kiss. ‘But when we find Anton’s mystery lad, who’ll be laughing then?’ She squeezed in next to Gessen on the sofa and placed the open album on her lap. ‘That’s me,’ she said, pointing to a skinny girl in a purple-and-green knit dress with a black beret set jauntily on her blonde hair. ‘Can you believe the beret? I thought it would make me fit in somehow, but of course no one was wearing them in 1968. Except for old men. I’m sure my fellow students had a massive giggle at my expense.’

  She flipped through the pages of photos, mainly variations of Eveline and her friends, or snaps of Paris monuments and street scenes. ‘This might be useful.’ She drew closer to the lamp. ‘It was taken at the introductory reception for international students. There were only eleven girls in our year, I believe. The dark-haired girl next to me was from Chile. Teresa, I think her name was. And that’s you, right?’ She passed the album to Gessen.