Hacine was totally fed up. Coralie had run into some friends from work, and there was no escaping them. He’d been forced to sit down and have drinks with them. There were three couples, and if there was one thing Hacine hated in his new life, it was having to hang out with other couples. Sooner or later, the men would always wind up together, talking among themselves. You had to play the game. A guy wearing boat shoes and a Mise au Green shirt started telling how he planned to upgrade his apartment so he could buy a bigger one. Seriously, why the fuck would anyone care about that? Besides, Soizic and Romain had just bought a dog, a totally moronic pug that kept bothering Nelson. Hacine would have liked to fire a load of buckshot at it, to see how he liked it. He couldn’t even do any real drinking, since he was going back to work the next day. Coralie, who must’ve realized that something was wrong, put a hand on his knee. She gave him a squeeze from time to time to remind him to behave. He got the message.
Hacine was all the angrier because when he went to take a piss, he ran into that little dipshit with the twisted eye. Granted, the valley was narrow, gloomy, and inbred, but this was really too much. On top of that, he’d had to slink off like a coward, because he had to rejoin the other morons at their table. Ever since, he’d been feeling weird, like being on probation and especially like he was being spied on. He constantly glanced at his watch and looked around to see if someone was about to jump him. Meanwhile, Rémi and his girlfriend were trying to convince Coralie and him to go skiing with them. Hell.
“Just for a weekend.”
“I’ve got an agreement with the head of my company. Three days at the chalet, and it doesn’t even come to five hundred francs a head.”
“But I don’t ski,” said Hacine.
“That doesn’t matter. You’ll see, it’s beautiful in the mountains.”
Coralie insisted, and Hacine’s misgivings became less and less audible. You’d think he was crazy to pass up such a wonderful opportunity to freeze his nuts off.
“No, I mean it. You guys can go without me.”
“But it’s just two days.”
“Two days is nice. We’ll make fondue. You’ll drink mulled wine.”
This went on and on, to the point where Hacine began to wonder if they were doing it on purpose, just to annoy him. He finally dropped out of the conversation and let his gaze wander. There were already fewer people around. On the dance floor, the DJ was playing a series of slow numbers, as much to get people to dance as to calm them down. A man was staggering along the edge of the dance floor.
“No…” Hacine muttered under his breath.
“What is it?” asked Coralie.
Hacine was on his feet. He recognized the man over there, who seemed about to fall down. It was the guy who had destroyed his mouth.
“Oh!” said Coralie, trying to grab his hand.
Hacine’s face had totally changed. It almost scared her.
“Is something wrong?” asked Soizic.
He couldn’t really make out the man’s face, but that didn’t matter. He would have recognized that look anywhere, even in the dark with his eyes closed. Five weeks of hospitalization and two months of convalescence had written it in his guts.
Around the table, everyone had fallen silent. The two other couples exchanged meaningful glances. Speaking in a low voice, Coralie tried to salvage the situation:
“Stop it! What’s gotten into you?”
The man at the edge of the dance floor still seemed unsure whether to stand up or lie down. Then he started walking again. Hacine immediately stepped away from the bench. Coralie tried to stop him. Her hand closed on emptiness.
“It’s nothing,” she said with a weak smile.
They all acted as if that were true.
Meanwhile, the man began walking at a good clip in spite of his drunkenness, and at first Hacine had trouble keeping up. Then they moved away from the dance, and the festivities gradually faded behind them. Soon they were alone, and all that remained was a dull murmur in the distance. They continued onward, heading south, with only twenty or thirty yards between them. The man swung close to the shore, and his lurches sometimes left him splashing in the water. But he kept stubbornly on, relentlessly moving toward the end of the beach. It was the lake’s biggest, almost two miles long. There was something in his determination, his drunken heaviness, that suggested a beast of burden, like he was accomplishing a task almost in spite of himself.
In ten minutes they reached the point where the sand turned to mud, a swampy tangle of rushes, brambles, and tall grass. Only then did Hacine dare look behind him. Without realizing it, they had covered quite some distance. For his part, the man walked on, then found a flat rock and sat down on it. With legs bent and arms draped over his skinny knees, he gazed out at the lake and the night. Hacine bent over and got closer, then knelt down to watch him. What he saw between the rushes and the grass was a motionless shape, like an Indian. The man wasn’t doing anything. Every so often a croaking sound broke the silence. Hacine waited for the right moment.
Then the man seemed to pass out. His head became too heavy and slumped onto his chest. Hacine thought this was it, now. But the man almost immediately awoke and shook himself, grumbling. He got to his feet, still muttering what sounded like curses and criticisms. He continued to complain as he removed his shoes, with some difficulty, before taking off his shirt, pants, and socks. And finally his underpants. Once naked, he cautiously walked into the water up to his waist. He stretched out on the surface, first on his back, floating like an otter. Then, without warning, he started swimming away from shore.
“What the fuck is he doing?” wondered Hacine.
The man’s pale arms were flailing in clumsy strokes, but he was swimming. Hacine stood up, the better to see. But the man’s shape was already almost out of sight, disappearing in the distance, in the mix of water and darkness for lack of a horizon. Hacine glimpsed a sort of whitish band, then nothing.
He hurried over to the flat rock where the clothes were piled. The water lapped gently at his feet. He couldn’t see a thing. Everything was black as ink. His heart was thudding against his ribs.
“Hey!” he shouted.
Then again, in a laughably childish way:
“Hey, mister!”
But his calls didn’t ring true. He waited a good long time, scanning the expanse of water and night stretching before him. He would have liked to leave but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Something in him, some incongruous hope, resisted. Finally, he searched through the things the man had left on the flat stone. There wasn’t much; no watch, no wallet, just his clothes and a knife, a beautiful hunting knife that Hacine slipped in his belt. He had nothing to feel guilty about. He then walked through the woods to the road. During the whole way back, he thought about the man and his son. Hacine felt he had the soul of a killer. It wasn’t unpleasant.