The Double

by Ann Gosslin

  He stared at his own face, pasty and thin, and winced at the untidy mass of wavy hair, bell bottom denims and loud plaid shirt. How ridiculously young he was. Barely cooked, though his mind had been on fire, desperate to inhale great gulps of knowledge, like a starving man stuffing himself with delicacies. Still innocent, when the photo was taken, of the secret that would send him to the brink of hell.

  He scanned the faces of the other boys, hoping one of them would spark something in his brain. That they all looked nearly identical didn’t help. Those wide-lapelled shirts and dungarees, the same mop of straggly hair. Mick Jagger look-alikes.

  In the third row, on the left, a boy looking away from the camera seemed vaguely familiar. During his first year at the Sorbonne, Gessen had known all these students, at least by sight. But never a social butterfly, he’d attended at most one or two of the get-togethers for the foreign students. Painfully shy in those days, he was interested in books and learning, not parties. He flipped the page.

  Eveline leaned against his shoulder. ‘I think that’s the end-of-term party for the first years. I didn’t go to any more after that, mostly because I wanted to fit in, not be set apart as a foreign student.’

  The light was poor and most of the students in the photo appeared loopy with drink or exhaustion from having survived exam week. Had he gone to that party? He couldn’t remember now. His first year was a blur, arriving in the city full of hope, only to feel like a fish out of water amongst the sophisticated French. It hadn’t helped that he was out of sorts, having left Switzerland rather abruptly. After arguing with his adoptive parents about their reluctance to talk about his real mother and father, or how he’d come to live with them.

  But in this shot, there was one boy who could be the same as in the group photo, the one who’d turned his face away from the camera. In the party photo, the boy’s gaze was directed at something behind the person taking the picture. With his hair pushed back, and his face turned away, the line of his forehead was clear, as was the shape of his nose. Was this the boy he was thinking of, the one who flicked his ear in the lecture hall?

  He tapped the photo. ‘Do you remember him?’

  Eveline squinted. ‘I think so. A bit of an odd duck, if I recall. Attended a couple of parties, but didn’t mingle much and didn’t drink. That stuck out, considering the rest of us were quaffing the free wine as if dying of thirst.’

  ‘Do you recall his name?’

  She pushed her hair off her face and closed her eyes. He waited. ‘Something with an M perhaps or an N? Michael, or Nico? Wait!’ Her eyes flew open. ‘He spoke French.’ She shook her head and laughed. ‘But we all did, of course, some with atrocious accents…’ She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘M… Mikhail, maybe? He could have been Russian. Give me a minute… No, it’s gone.’

  A heaviness fell over him. Just as he feared. Too far in the past, and the boy too inconspicuous to have made an impression.

  At Eveline’s suggestion, they went out for dessert and espresso at a bistro down the street. Pleasant as the evening was, Gessen sensed he was beginning to wear out his welcome. It was nearly eleven and Eveline’s eyes showed signs of fatigue. When they’d finished their crème brûlée, Bertrand set his fork on his plate and pushed back his chair. Sadly, their time together was drawing to a close. At the corner they would part, Gessen to his hotel, his friends to their flat.

  Bertrand held his wife’s elbow as they passed along the pavement, quiet now that the blustery weather had forced all but the intrepid indoors. The wind rattled the branches of the lindens overhead. The chilly air was damp with impending rain.

  As Bertrand steered them along a narrow street, they passed a Vietnamese restaurant and a Lebanese takeaway. In an alley by a sushi place, two yellow-eyed cats waited for scraps. Eveline stopped short, and Gessen nearly bumped into her.

  ‘I remember now.’ She turned, her eyes shining. ‘Milen. That was the boy’s name. Not Michael or Mikhail, but Milen. I’m pretty sure of it. It just popped into my head. I’ve been thinking of that party ever since we left the flat, and I could see it like a film in my head. That boy skulking in the corner, so shy and awkward he was practically feral. I think he might have been from Albania, or maybe Malta? Someone tossed a crumpled paper cup in his direction and shouted his name. Milen. Attention! Or something like that.’

  Milen. It didn’t quite ring a bell, but it was a start.

  Her forehead crinkled in a frown. ‘Does that help? Maybe if I had more details…’

  ‘It certainly does,’ Gessen said. Impulsively, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry to be so mysterious. I would tell you more if I could, but doctor–patient confidentiality prevents me from saying too much. If it turns out that my suspicions are right, this Milen person could provide a clue.’

  ‘A high-profile case, is it?’ Bertrand gave him a questioning glance.

  Had he said that, or was his friend fishing for more? Bertrand loved a good story. When Gessen didn’t respond, he pressed him again. ‘What makes you suspect your patient could be the boy from the Sorbonne?’

  ‘I’m not sure, exactly.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s just a hunch.’

  When Bertrand paused to look into a shop window, Eveline leaned in close and touched his arm. ‘It’s Vidor Kiraly, isn’t it?’ She met his eyes.

  Gessen’s thoughts spun. How could she possibly have guessed?

  ‘Sorry, I know it’s confidential, but Bertrand mentioned your high-profile patient had attacked a stranger unprovoked.’ She lowered her voice. ‘It’s all anyone can talk about in the lab, so I put two and two together.’ Eveline glanced behind her. ‘We’ve never met, but I do have a story about him that might help your case. Last year, just before the Nobel Prizes were announced, a bunch of us were sitting around trying to guess who might be tipped for the prize in Medicine or Physiology when Kiraly’s name came up.

  ‘Everyone was sure he would win. I can only imagine how disappointed he was not to get the call, but then he won the Søgaard, which is the next best thing, though I imagine it might have felt like a consolation prize.’ She looked behind her again. Bertrand had pulled out a notebook and was jotting something down. ‘We were at a cafe having drinks after work, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt, but a visiting scientist from Budapest said flat out that Kiraly wasn’t Hungarian. He’d met him at a conference in Berlin, apparently, and said that while Kiraly’s mastery of Hungarian was excellent, he would bet a whole stack of money that it wasn’t his mother tongue.’

  Gessen stared at her. Not his mother tongue? ‘Perhaps, after forty years in England, I can only imagine that…’

  Eveline shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t forget key expressions or idioms or tonal inflections. Look at me, I’ve spoken French exclusively since I was nineteen, but when I visit my family in the UK, no one would suspect I spoke anything other than English.’ She gave him a steady look. ‘It’s something to think about anyway.’ As Bertrand approached, she brought a finger to her lips. ‘Mum’s the word.’

  After thanking his friends for their hospitality, Gessen turned in the direction of his hotel, his head buzzing with wine and the shock of Eveline’s pronouncement. But if Vidor wasn’t Hungarian, then where did he come from? It wasn’t illegal to change one’s name or adopt a nationality not one’s own. But what might have spurred Vidor to do so? In his own case, Gessen was not his birth name, either. He had acquired it later from his adoptive father. Though now a Swiss national, he’d been born overseas. The change in paperwork orchestrated by his mother, shortly before she disappeared.

  Whatever the case, it fit with his own suspicions that Vidor at one time could have gone by another name or hailed from a different background. But why the switch, and when was it made? Whatever Vidor’s name might once have been, the puzzle remained. When – or how – had the transformation from a socially awkward student, possibly named Milen, to the worldly Vidor Kiraly taken place?

  22

  A
shadow covered the sun, and Vidor looked up to see the Emirati Prince, not two metres away, blocking his light. Libby stood by his side, so close they were nearly touching. She shaded her eyes with her hand as they watched a group of attendants huddled in the distance. Around them quivered an air of alarm.

  ‘I bet one of the patients has escaped,’ Ismail said. His cut-glass accent pierced the thin air. Educated abroad, it would seem, old-school style. Probably to prepare him for the rigours of running one of those tiny oil kingdoms built on a bed of shifting sands.

  ‘Who’s escaped?’ Vidor couldn’t help but interrupt. He didn’t like the look that boy was giving Libby, or the way they were standing with their shoulders practically touching. The attendants were doing a poor job of being discreet as they stooped to peep in the shrubbery.

  ‘The woman with the handbag would be my guess.’ Ismail turned to scrutinise the nervous staff. ‘I’ve seen her talking to whatever it is she carries around in that bag… gives me the creeps.’ He bumped Libby with his shoulder. ‘You haven’t got any fags, have you? Bloody rules. I’d kill for a smoke.’

  Libby smiled at Vidor. She seemed happier than the last time he saw her, though he hoped she wasn’t falling for this playboy. A lad like that would snap her heart in two. And how would heartbreak help her recover from whatever sadness had brought her here?

  So, Hélène had done a runner? He suppressed a smile. The old girl was wilier than he’d thought. But where could she have gone? The only way off the mountain was the funicular, and the operator wouldn’t have taken her down without a pass. He hoped she hadn’t flung herself off an escarpment, though it was unlikely. And what of the handbag? Would she have taken it with her? He hadn’t thought she’d be one to flout the rules, but what did he know? Behind those placid, yellow-flecked eyes might lurk a mind like a well-oiled machine.

  If only he had the good sense – or courage – to slip away, consequences be damned. In his session yesterday with Dr Lindstrom, he had once again begged her for help, pleading to the point of humiliation that she convince Gessen he should be allowed to return to his life. An uncharacteristic outburst of anger at a stranger, in a long and blameless life, was not reason enough to keep him locked up. He had even confessed to her his greatest fear: that Gessen had no intention of letting him go, and that he would be a prisoner here for ever.

  With a deep sense of foreboding, he hauled himself from the chair and headed towards his chalet.

  ‘Hey, wait up. You’re Victor, right?’

  He returned Ismail’s smile with a flat stare. ‘Vidor.’

  ‘Well, Vidor, Libby and I have a bet going about where you’re from.’

  She swatted his arm. ‘No, we don’t.’ She appealed to Vidor. ‘He’s just kidding.’

  ‘So, tell us who’s right. My guess is Afghanistan. Or maybe Iran.’

  Vidor’s heart flipped. Afghanistan. Whatever gave him that idea? ‘If you must know,’ he said stiffly, ‘I’m a full-blood Hungarian. My family are Magyars from centuries back. Though we might, like so many,’ he said, trying to take the edge off his annoyance, ‘have a little Genghis Khan mixed in.’

  ‘So, I was right, then.’ Ismail cocked an eyebrow. ‘Wasn’t he a Persian bloke?’

  Too clever by half. His monthly allowance was probably more than the GDP of some African countries. ‘And you? I take it you’re from where… Dubai, or is it Kuwait?’ Normally, it took a great deal to ruffle him, but something about the boy got under his skin.

  Ismail stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat and winked at Libby. ‘I mostly grew up here.’ He pointed his chin towards the horizon. ‘Geneva. My father’s a diplomat. But I went to school in England.’ He gazed at Vidor with those inscrutable eyes. ‘So where did you learn to speak Arabic, then?’

  What was the lad going on about? In a nervous gesture, Vidor reached up and flicked his ear. ‘I speak several languages, but Arabic isn’t one of them.’

  ‘Is that so? Umuk majnuna, wa abuk khinzir.’

  The hard consonants pierced his skull, and he sucked in his breath. Though he couldn’t understand their meaning, the words were clearly an insult. Something about his father being a pig… though how would he know that?

  Ismail laughed as Libby tugged his arm, leaving Vidor to wrestle with the mysterious rage coiled in his chest. How dare he show up here to taunt me?

  23

  With little more than a sketch of Vidor’s history to work with, Gessen’s only option was to seek out anyone who might have known him as a child. There must be someone residing in the vast city of Paris who remembered the Kiraly family in the late fifties and sixties. At the entrance to the Métro at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he sent a quick text to Ursula: Staying in Paris one more day. Call if you need anything.

  As he rumbled under the city, he tried to boost his spirits with the hope that buried deep in the municipal archives was a record of the Kiraly family’s address. His online search had revealed that some 12,000 Hungarian immigrants were living in Paris in the late sixties. If luck was on his side, there wouldn’t be too many Kiralys amongst them.

  According to Vidor’s somewhat vague recollections, his family had lived in a few different flats in the early years, before settling into their permanent home just after his tenth birthday. Vidor claimed he couldn’t remember the exact address, though he did mention it was within walking distance of the catacombs. A frightening place to a young boy with a lively imagination, so he would go around the long way to avoid the entrance, especially after a school friend told him there were more skeletons of the dead lying under the city than people walking the streets above. In a rare moment of candour, Vidor had openly admitted to Gessen a horror of enclosed spaces and a fear of being buried alive.

  A chilly rain splattered the pavement as his taxi pulled up to the mairie in the fourteenth arrondissement. A stone’s throw from the entrance to the catacombs, it was as good a place as any to start. Deaths, marriages, and births would all be recorded here, probably going back to the early days of the Republic. The woman behind the desk gave him the once-over with a jaundiced eye before disappearing into a back room and returning with a printout of the records from 1956 to 1970. He perched on a wooden chair while she went through the names. Kiraly? She pursed her mouth and squinted in the dim light. The beads on her necklace swung as she bent over the files.

  He breathed in the damp air, suffused with centuries of facts and figures on the living and the dead. But it wasn’t in vain. Seven families named Kiraly were listed as living in the quarter in that fourteen-year period. He paid the fee to receive a copy of the records and tucked it in his bag. He would look at them more closely in the pleasant surroundings of a cafe, rather than the chilly atmosphere of the mairie’s record room under the gaze of its sour-faced guardian.

  * * *

  The rain was slowing to a drizzle as he hunched his shoulders and headed towards the first address on his list, the rue Boulard, where a woman whose maiden name was Kiraly had once lived. She might be one of Vidor’s four sisters. The dates were right, given that the eldest sister was seventeen when he was six, and the youngest was ten. Had Vidor been the much wanted and long-awaited son, or a surprise baby – pleasant or otherwise? The answer to that question could make a world of difference. In the course of his career, he’d seen far too often the disturbing results of growing up as an unwanted child.

  He pressed the bell and, after stepping inside, he explained the situation to the gardienne, a crusty old woman who announced, with a measure of pride, that she’d held her post for forty-three years. A Hungarian family named Kiraly had indeed resided in the top-floor flat, but there were only two daughters, and no sons. He crossed the name off his list and headed out into the cold drizzle to the next address, where an unmarried woman with the surname Kiraly had lived from 1963 to ’69. As he rounded the corner, a chilly wind buffeted his face and he squinted to locate the number of the building. When he pressed the bell, no one answered. The third address
was another dead end. The rain was coming down hard now, and he was about to call it a day when, three blocks from the Métro, he stumbled upon the next address on his list, close to the entrance of the catacombs.

  The gardienne, her eyes cloudy with cataracts, didn’t remember any Kiralys, but she suggested he try the flat on the top floor, where the resident widow had lived since the early sixties. If anyone knew the history of the building, it was Madame Joubert. The gardienne would ring to ask if she was accepting callers.

  He waited in the stuffy room, the air thick with the scent of lemon drops and stewed tea. A tabby cat lay curled on a crocheted cushion. A single teacup and saucer sat next to an ancient electric tea kettle. When the gardienne hung up the phone, she fixed him with a gelid eye. ‘She’s willing to see you. But she doesn’t get many visitors these days, so mind you don’t tire her out.’ She waved her hand towards the hall. ‘The lift is at the back. Sixth floor.’ She crossed her arms and waited, as if expecting something more. Was she worried – or hoping – he was some kind of blackguard? A murderer, perhaps. Or a thief, at the very least. A little excitement to liven up her day. He bowed and wished her a bon après-midi.

  The lift, no bigger than a coffin, rattled and jerked its way to the sixth floor. It opened with a metallic groan, and he stepped into the hallway. The faded maroon carpet smelled of dust. He knocked on the door to number 15 and waited. From the gardienne’s description he had the impression that Madame Joubert was a bed-ridden recluse, but the woman who opened the door had a gleam in her eyes and an impish smile.

  ‘Ah, Monsieur. Do come in.’ She led him into the salon and offered him a chair by the window. ‘I’d just put the kettle on for tea when Madame Dubonnet telephoned to say I had a gentleman caller. I hope she didn’t give you any trouble. Rather an ogress, that one.’ She winked. ‘Or would you prefer an aperitif? My son-in-law sent me a bottle of a delicious eau de vie last month. Peach, I believe. It might make for a little taste of summer on this dreadful day.’