Louise doesn’t really believe that the man sitting across from her will actually have anything to confess. It seems unlikely that he might have anything to hide at all—but then she remembers that everything about him is a lie, his whole reason for being there, in this compartment with her, obscured behind the veneer of a friendly fellow traveler. Perhaps she is wrong. Perhaps this kindness is only a guise. Perhaps he is a man built of secrets. “What is it, then?” she prompts, anxious to hear what he will divulge.
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his passport.
She takes it from him and frowns. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a fake,” he informs her.
She raises her eyebrows. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. A part of her had thought he might have been reaching for his official papers, that perhaps this was what the great surprise was all along—that he was with the police, not the people who wanted their money back. Her heart began to beat faster at the thought. He has that look, she thinks. Observant, stern. And then there’s the way he sits—his back straight, his posture too exact to be explained as anything else. “Why do you need a fake?” she asks.
“The same reason I suppose anyone does.” He pauses, seems to be waiting for something—a response, perhaps. When she remains silent, he says, “So that I won’t be found.”
“By who? Someone from your past?” she asks, though she doesn’t think so, doesn’t believe that it fits the man in front of her. He seems somehow too good for the sordid tales of her own life. She can’t imagine they might comprise his own as well.
“In a way, yes.”
“Really?”
“You don’t believe me?”
She thinks. “No, I don’t.”
This admission elicits laughter. “What do I need to do to convince you?” He leans forward, starts to point to the passport. “Shall I show you how you can tell?”
“No,” she says, holding the passport away from his grasp. “Tell me why. That has to be part of the answer. A fake passport isn’t enough to explain why it’s the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
He seems to consider. “I have a fake passport because I needed to leave Algeria, and I didn’t want to be found once I did.”
“Why?”
“Because of the way I left.”
“And how did you leave?”
He pauses, looks out of the window. For a moment, she’s not sure he will respond. His tone, up until now, has been light, teasing almost, but there is a seriousness, just there, underneath. A rawness that suggests he isn’t ready to delve into whatever prompted his exodus.
“I abandoned my post.” He seems to consider. “I deserted.”
She thinks, decides her earlier assumption must be right. “French Army?”
“Gendarmerie.”
“And why did you leave?”
He hesitates. “I don’t know how much you know about what was happening—”
She had read about it in the papers—the Algerians fighting for their independence from the French. It all seemed so distant, unreal—but then, the man before her had been there, in the midst of it, and on the wrong side of it as well. She finds she has trouble reckoning these different sides of him—good, kind, but employed by criminals; earnest, smart, but fighting on the wrong side, the side that history would frown upon and condemn. She wants to ask him to explain, to make her understand, but she says only, “I know enough.”
He exhales, looks down at his hands. “I just found that I couldn’t do it, the things I was ordered to do.”
She considers, decides she doesn’t believe that people can change, not really. “All of a sudden?”
“My parents died. That happened first. And then I—”
He looks at a loss for words, and so she offers, “Didn’t want to live for them anymore?” She thinks this is something she can understand.
He looks at her. “Yes, I suppose that makes sense. And then there were the protests with the civilians, all the casualties and—” He stops. “I know it sounds foolish, but I really didn’t see it for what it was. What others were already calling it.”
“War.”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you just resign?”
He hesitates. “There was an interrogation. Of a boy I knew. Aadir. Not a boy by that time, of course. We just hadn’t seen one another since our childhood.”
“And what happened to him?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
It takes him a moment to begin, and she thinks she can see the change in him, the retreat, that takes place. When he does speak, it sounds as though he is speaking of something happening now, in present time, not recounting something that has already happened.
“After the protests, I was called in to ask questions, to interpret,” he begins. “I didn’t even recognize him right away, but when I did, I tried to ask if he remembered me as well—but he didn’t respond.” He shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder whether I only imagined it, whether he really was this boy from my memory, Aadir, or whether he was someone else entirely, my mind playing tricks on me. We were only in there for a matter of minutes, and yet, even now, I can’t get it out of my mind. I close my eyes, and it’s his eyes that I see.”
He leans back in his seat. “When he finally started speaking, I couldn’t decide what to do, not at first. And then, I was translating, every word. His association with the rebels. His part in the planning. I could have held something back, could have arranged the words different, placed emphasis on one thing. But I didn’t. I couldn’t decide, and by the time I did, it was too late.” He shakes his head. “In the days after, I tried to find out what had happened. Everyone I asked shook their heads, claimed they didn’t know who he was or anything about him. It was as if he had just disappeared, as if he had never existed in the first place. And I—I stopped asking.” He stops. “And then I left.”
“You ran.”
“Yes.” He gives a weak smile. “It seems we have that in common.”
Yes, but it wasn’t the same. He had run from an idyllic childhood that had been shattered by war, while she had run from the opposite, a house of anger and hatred and resentment. They weren’t the same things at all, she wanted to tell him. He had done a dishonorable thing for an honorable reason. None of her choices had been made for reasons that were good, that were noble.
She had meant to shock him, before, with her admission. But now he is the one who has rattled her, for it is suddenly clear to her just how staggeringly different they are. She turns away from him, wishes that she were anywhere other than in this compartment, with him, with this man who was, who would always be, better than her because he was good, he was worth saving. Leaning over, she hands him his passport and asks, “Is that your real name?”
He shakes his head, then says, “It’s actually Jean-Henri.”
Even his passport is not entirely a lie. “It suits you.” She turns away, unable to meet his stare. Instead, she glances toward the corridor, desperate to avoid him and this conversation. She notices a figure standing just beyond their compartment. “Don’t look now,” she begins, “but there’s that man again. The one from the dining car.”
Henri doesn’t turn, keeps his gaze directed on her face. “What is he doing?”
“The same thing he was before.” She turns back to look at him. “Watching us.”