Me, read novels? Never!”
Although he lived surrounded by thousands of books, boards sagging wearily from floor to ceiling along the walls of his gloomy apartment, he became indignant at the mere suggestion that he might possibly waste his time with fiction.
“The facts, nothing but the facts! Facts, and ideas. Until the day I run out of reality, I will not grant a single second to unreality.”
Very few people entered Maurice Plisson’s apartment, because he didn’t like having people around; however, from time to time, when one of his students showed a real spark of interest for his discipline, he would gratify him at the end of the school year with a reward, a privileged moment: an hour with his teacher over a mug of beer, served with a handful of peanuts on the coffee table of his living room. Every time, the student—shoulders sloping, knees close together, intimidated by the premises—would gaze at all the shelves and see that filling all that space were essays, studies, biographies, and encyclopedias, but not a single book of literature.
“Do you not like novels, Monsieur Plisson?”
“You might as well ask me if I like lying.”
“To that degree?”
“Look, my young friend, from the moment I first realized my passion for history, geography, and law, despite forty-five years of assiduous reading at the rate of several books a week, I am still learning. What could I possibly discover in a novel, a work of mere fantasy? No, tell me: what? If they tell a true story, I already know it; and if they make something up, I couldn’t care less.”
“But literature . . .”
“I don’t want to belittle my colleagues, or dampen your energy, particularly as you are a brilliant student and quite capable of admission to the école normale supérieure, but, if I am to be perfectly frank, I will say: stop boring us with literature! Stuff and nonsense! Reading novels is an occupation for a woman on her own—although knitting or embroidery would be more useful. Those who write novels are writing for a population of idle women, no one else, and they’re seeking votes. Wasn’t it Paul Valéry, a respectable intellectual, who refused to write a text which began with ‘The marquise went out at five o’clock?’ He was absolutely right! If he refused to write it, I refuse to read it: ‘The Marquise went out at five o’clock!’ First of all, the marquise of what? Where does she live? In what era? Who can prove to me that it was truly five o’clock, not five ten or five thirty? And besides, what would that change, if it was ten o’clock in the morning or ten o’clock at night, since it’s all made up? You see, novels reflect the reign of the arbitrary, complete vagueness. I’m a serious man. I don’t have the place, or the time, or the energy to devote to such nonsense.”
He felt that his arguments were irrefutable, and this year as in all other years, they produced an identical effect: the student did not reply. Maurice Plisson had won.
If he had been able to hear his student’s thoughts, he would have found out that silence did not mean victory. Disturbed by his peremptory tone, considering his theory to be too cut and dried for an intelligent man, the young man wondered why his professor kept such a distance from the imaginary, and why he was so wary of art and emotion; and what surprised him most of all was his professor’s scorn regarding “women on their own,” since it came from a man on his own. For it was public knowledge at the Lycée du Parc that Monsieur Plisson was a “confirmed old bachelor,” and had never been seen in the company of a woman.
Maurice Plisson offered his student another bottle of beer, as a way of signaling the end of the interview. The student understood, mumbled some thanks, and followed his professor to the door.
“Have a good vacation, young man. And just remember that it would be a very good idea if you were to begin revising your ancient history already in August, because in the course of the coming year, you won’t really have time before the entrance exams.”
“I’ll do that, sir. Greek and Latin history as of August 1st, I’ll follow your advice. My parents will have to agree to take a trunk full of books with us on vacation.”
“Where will you be?”
“In Provence, where my family has an estate. And you?”
While the student may have asked his question simply to be polite, it nevertheless surprised Maurice Plisson. He squinted his eyelids and looked for help in the distance.
“Well . . . we . . . in the Ardèche, this year.”
“I love the Ardèche. Whereabouts?”
“But . . . but . . . listen, I don’t know, it’s . . . a friend who is renting a house. Ordinarily, we go on package tours, but this summer, we will have a real stay in the Ardèche. She decided for us, she took care of everything and . . . I don’t remember the name of the village.”
The student maintained a kindly attitude toward his professor’s embarrassment, shook his hand, and went down the steps four at a time, impatient to meet up with his friends and spread the news of the day: Plisson had a girlfriend! All the gossipmongers had been wrong about him, those who thought he was a homosexual, or those who said he visited prostitutes, or the ones who believed he was still a virgin . . . In truth, Plisson, although he was ugly, had had a woman in his life for years, a woman with whom he traveled around the world, whom he met up with during the breaks, and, who knows, maybe even every Friday evening. Why didn’t they live together? Two possible explanations. Either she lived far away . . . or she was married. Good old Plisson, he would be the main topic of conversation that summer, among the students in the final year.
When he had closed the door behind his student, the professor could have kicked himself. Why had he spoken? Never, in the thirty years of his career, had he given away the slightest clue about his private life. How could he have yielded? It was because of that question, “Where, in Ardèche?” and he realized that he had forgotten . . . With his memory like an elephant, he usually remembered everything . . . It was so distressing that, consequently, wanting to make up for his slip, he had mentioned Sylvie . . .
What had he said? Oh, it hardly mattered . . . Dreaded ailments usually started like this, with confusion, or a lapse, a memory that escaped you . . . Now his brain was boiling. He must have a fever! Was that the second symptom? Could your brain degenerate that quickly?
He dialed Sylvie’s number, and while it was ringing, because she didn’t usually take so long to answer, he suddenly became afraid he’d dialed the wrong number without realizing . . .
“It’s even worse than I thought. If I mixed up the numbers, and if someone else starts talking to me, I’ll hang up and head straight to the hospital.”
After the tenth ring, a voice answered, sounding very surprised: “Yes?”
“Sylvie?” he asked, breathless, in a dull voice.
“Yes.”
He took a breath: it wasn’t so bad, at least he had dialed the correct number.
“It’s Maurice.”
“Oh, forgive me, Maurice, I didn’t recognize you. I was at the back of the apartment . . . what’s going on? You don’t usually call me at this time?”
“Sylvie, where is it we are going this summer, in the Ardèche?”
“To a friend’s house . . . well, a friend of friends . . .”
“What’s the place called?”
“I have no idea.”
Appalled, Maurice fluttered his eyelids, tensed his fingers on the receiver: Sylvie, too! We are both suffering from it.
“Would you believe that I couldn’t remember the name you had given me either,” squealed Maurice, “when a student asked me.”
“Maurice, I don’t see how you could have repeated something I never told you. This friend . . . or rather, friend of friends . . . in short, the landlady drew me a map to get there because the property is in an isolated rural area, far from any village.”
“Really? You didn’t tell me anything?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“So I didn’t forget anything? So everything is okay?” exclaimed Maurice.
“Hang on a second,” she said, without suspecting how greatly she had relieved his anxiety, “I’ll go get the paper and answer your question.”
Maurice Plisson collapsed in the Voltaire armchair he had inherited from a great-aunt, and smiled to his apartment, which suddenly seemed to him as beautiful as the château of Versailles. Saved! Rescued! Safe and sound! No, he was not about to depart from his beloved books just yet, his brain was still functioning, Alzheimer’s disease was camped outside, well beyond the fortress wall of his meninges. Begone, threats and fantasies!
From the crackling sound in the headset, he guessed that Sylvie was going through her papers; finally, he heard a victory cry.
“Here, I’ve got it. Are you still there, Maurice?”
“Yes.”
“We will be in the gorges of the Ardèche, in a house built at the end of a road that has no name. Let me explain: after the village of Saint-Martin-des-Fossés, you take the road to Châtaigniers; there, on the third road after the crossroads with a statue of the Virgin Mary, you drive for two kilometers. Is that a good enough answer?”
“It’s fine.”
“Do you want to have your mail forwarded?”
“For two weeks it’s not worth it.”
“Me neither. Especially with such an address.”
“Okay, Sylvie, I don’t want to keep you any longer. As you know, the telephone and I . . . See you on Saturday, then?”
“Saturday, ten o’clock.”
In the days that followed, Maurice dined out on the cheerfulness which had closed this conversation: not only was he in fine form, but he was also about to leave on vacation!
Like many single people who have no sexual life, he worried a great deal about his health. The moment anyone mentioned an illness in his presence, Maurice imagined he would catch it and from that very moment he lay in wait for it to show up. The more the illness revealed itself through vague, uncharacteristic symptoms, such as fatigue, headaches, sweating, and gastric discomfort, the more he dreaded he was infected. His doctor, just as he was about to close his office, would see Plisson show up, looking feverish, hands trembling, mouth dry, desperate to obtain confirmation of his imminent demise. Every time, the physician conducted an in-depth examination—or at least gave his patient that impression—before going on to reassure him and send him home as delighted as if he had been cured of a real ailment.
On those evenings, when he felt he had been set free, as if he had been granted clemency on death row, Maurice Plisson would get undressed and look with satisfaction at his reflection in the full-length mirror in his bedroom—a relic from his grandmother, a solid burr walnut wardrobe with an inside mirror. To be sure, he was not handsome, and no more handsome than before, but he was healthy. Entirely healthy. And this body that nobody wanted—it was purer than many attractive bodies, and would live even longer. On those evenings, Maurice Plisson liked himself. Without the intense fears with which he periodically inoculated himself, he might have been incapable of displaying such affection toward himself. Besides, who else would have shown it to him?
On Saturday at ten o’clock he blew his horn outside the building where they had arranged to meet.
Sylvie came out on the balcony, fat, giggling, badly dressed.
“Hey there, cousin!”
“Hey, cousin!”
Sylvie and Maurice had been friends since childhood. When they were young, and he was an only son, and she was an only daughter, they had adored each other so much that they had promised to marry when they grew up. Alas, an uncle who had been let in on their secret explained to them that first cousins were not allowed to get married, which put an end to their matrimonial projects, but not their friendship. Was it the shadow of their doomed nuptials that prevented them from creating lasting ties with others? Did they never resolve to envisage any other relationship, after that original one? And now they were both fifty years of age, with doomed love affairs behind them, and they were resigned to their single status. They spent time together the way they used to, during vacation, with as much if not more pleasure, because each time they met it was as if they were annihilating time and the hardship of life. Every year, they gave each other two weeks, and they had been together to Egypt, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Russia, for Maurice appreciated cultural trips. And Sylvie liked traveling of any kind.
In a whirlwind of veils and shawls that floated around her enormous body, she came out the front door of her building, glanced over at Maurice, and strode across the sidewalk to the garage to load another suitcase into her tiny car. Maurice wondered why this obese woman systematically bought tiny cars. Not only did they make her seem more voluminous, they could not be very practical in the long run.
“Well, Maurice, what are you thinking?”
She went up to him and gave him a resounding kiss.
Crushed against her monumental bosom, trying on the tip of his toes to reach a cheek where he could leave a kiss, he suddenly saw himself as if he were Sylvie’s car. Puny, hollow-chested, short, with slender joints, on a photo next to Sylvie and her Mini he would have looked as if he belonged to her collection.
“I was looking around the parking lot and I remembered that on my street there are two blacks who have white limousines. Black. White. The opposite. Have you noticed?”
She burst out laughing.
“No, but you reminded me that one of my colleagues at the town hall, Madame N’Da, has a bichon, a cream colored dog, that she’s crazy about.”
Maurice was going to smile when he noticed to his horror that his car—long, high, solid, with a body of American proportions—confirmed the law of opposites. He would never have suspected that he too was trying to compensate for his own complexes through the choice of his automobile.
“Maurice, you seem somewhat tired . . .”
“No, everything is fine. We’ve been talking on the phone for months without seeing each other, so how are you?”
“Just great! I’m always just great, Maurice!”
“Did you do something with your hair?”
“Oh, hardly . . . what do you think? Is it better?”
“Yes, it’s better,” replied Maurice, not really sure what he thought.
“You might also have noticed that I lost ten pounds—but nobody notices that.”
“Actually, I was wondering . . .”
“Liar! And in any case, it’s ten pounds off my brain that I’ve lost, not ten pounds of fat. So those ten pounds, you won’t see them, you can just hear them!”
She gave a deep, full-throated laugh.
Although he didn’t laugh with her, Maurice nevertheless looked at her indulgently. Over time, his affection had been tempered with lucidity: he knew that his cousin was very different from him—not terribly cultured, too sociable, fond of gargantuan meals, dirty jokes, and fun-loving loudmouths, but he didn’t hold it against her; as she was the only person that he loved, he had decided to like her too, that is, to take her as she was. Even the pity he felt toward her unattractive physique—increasingly unattractive with each passing year—reinforced his tenderness. Basically, the compassion he showed Sylvie for her lack of physical charm was in lieu of the one he could have shown himself.
Leaving Lyon and its winding freeway overpasses behind, they drove in convoy for several hours. As they drew closer to the south, the heat seemed to change consistency: thick, paralyzing, and motionless in the region around Lyon, like a lead shield burning above mortal beings, it gradually became airier, with a pleasant breeze as they followed the Rhône River, then it became drier and somehow mineral when they reached the Ardèche.
In the middle of the afternoon, after making mistakes that added to Sylvie’s good mood, they managed to find the wild dusty road that took them to the villa.
Maurice immediately noticed that the qualities of the place might also be its defects: clinging to a rocky slope where only a few thirsty bushes survived, the house, of natural stone as ocher as the surrounding countryside, was situated miles from the nearest village, and several hundred yards from the nearest neighbor.
“Excellent,” he exclaimed, to win Sylvie’s approval, for she looked doubtful; “a perfect place to rest!”
She smiled and decided to share his opinion.
Once they had chosen their rooms and unpacked their belongings—books for Maurice—Sylvie made sure the television and radio were working, then offered to go and stock up on supplies in the nearest supermarket.
Maurice went with her because, knowing his cousin’s temperament, he was afraid she would buy too much and spend too much.
Pushing the shopping cart, he went along the aisles with Sylvie who wanted to buy everything, babbling, comparing products with the ones she found at home, and criticizing the selection. Once the most dangerous part had been taken care of—preventing Sylvie from emptying the entire cold meats department into her shopping cart—they headed for the checkout counter.
“Stay there, I’m going to get a book!” exclaimed Sylvie.
Maurice mastered his irritation because he wanted his vacation to be a successful one; mentally, however, he placed his unfortunate cousin before the firing squad. Buying a book in the supermarket! Had he ever, even once in his life, bought a book in a supermarket? A book was a sacred, precious object, one you first read about on the bibliographical list, and then you went on to find out more about it, and only then, if you really wanted to, did you write the reference on a piece of paper and go to order it from a bookseller worthy of the name. Under no circumstances should a book ever be selected from among the sausages, vegetables, and washing powders.
“What a sad time we live in . . .” he murmured through his lips.
Unabashedly, Sylvie pranced around among the piles and shelves of books as if they were appetizing. With a quick glance, Maurice confirmed that naturally the supermarket sold nothing but novels and, feeling like a martyr, he glued his eyes to the ceiling while he waited for Sylvie to finish sniffing this cover, or inhaling that volume, or feeling the weight of this one, or leafing through pages as if she were checking whether there was dirt in the salad.
Suddenly, she gave out a cry.
“Way cool! The latest Chris Black!”
Maurice had no idea who this Chris Black was, to be triggering a pre-orgasmic state in his cousin, and he did not deign to pay the slightest attention to the volume she threw onto the pile of shopping in the cart.
“You’ve never read any Chris Black? It’s true, you don’t read novels. Listen, it’s great. You can devour it in one sitting, you are, like, drooling on every page, you can’t put it down until you’ve finished it.”
Maurice noticed that Sylvie talked about the book as if it were something to eat.
“I suppose they’re right, the salespeople, to put the books in with the food,” he thought, “because for this type of consumers, it’s exactly the same thing.”
“Listen, Maurice, if you want to do me a favor someday, read some Chris Black.”
“Listen, Sylvie, just to please you, I can put up with you talking to me about this Chris Black, whom I don’t know from Adam, and that’s already a great deal. Just don’t count on me to read him.”
“It’s really stupid, you’ll die without knowing what you’ve missed.”
“I don’t think so. And if I do die, it won’t be because of that.”
“Oh, you must think I have bad taste . . . and yet, when I read Chris Black, I’m perfectly aware I’m not reading Marcel Proust, I’m not that stupid.”
“Why? Have you read Marcel Proust?”
“Now you’re being mean, Maurice. No, you know perfectly well I haven’t read Marcel Proust, unlike yourself.”
Like some Saint Blandina of culture, smarting with wounded dignity, Maurice smiled, as if he were finally being awarded a quality that had been only stingily conceded to him before. Basically, he found it delightful that, both his cousin and his students assumed he must have read Proust—something that he had never even attempted, because he was allergic to narrative literature. So much the better. He would not deny it. He had read so many other books . . . Unto those that have shall more be given, no?
“Maurice, I’m well aware that I’m not reading a great masterpiece but, on the other hand, I’m having a really good time.”
“You are free, you have the right to have fun however you want, it’s none of my business.”
“Trust me: if you’re bored, Chris Black is as great as Dan West.”
He could not suppress a chuckle.
“Chris Black, Dan West—even their names are simplistic, two syllables, almost onomatopoeias, easy to remember. Any idiot chewing gum in Texas could repeat them absolutely flawlessly. Do you think those are their real names or do they re-name them to apply the laws of marketing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Chris Black or Dan West, that’s easier to read on an end display than Jules Michelet.”
Sylvie was about to reply when suddenly she gave a shout on seeing some friends. Wiggling her chubby fingers, she pounced on three women who were as imposing as she was.
Maurice felt piqued. Sylvie would abandon him for a good half an hour now, the minimum length of time for a short conversation by her standards.
From a distance, he gave a faint wave to Sylvie’s friends, just to emphasize that he wouldn’t be joining in their improvised meeting; he would simply have to grin and bear it while he waited. With his elbows on the edge of the shopping cart, he let his gaze wander over the products for sale. The cover of the book gave him pause. How vulgar! Black, red, gold, puffy letters, an exaggerated expressionistic design that sought to give the impression that the book contained terrible things, as if they had put a label on it to warn the reader, “Caution, poison!” or “Do not touch, high voltage, danger of death.” And the title—The Chamber of Dark Secrets—it would be hard to find anything more trivial, wouldn’t it? Gothic and contemporary, two forms of bad taste under one cover! Moreover, as if the title were not already enough, the publisher had added this blurb: “When you close this book, you won’t leave fear behind!” How ghastly . . . No need to open the book to know it was absolute shit.
Chris Black . . . He’d rather die than read a book by Chris Black! On top of it, it was corpulent, hefty—like Sylvie herself, actually; it was supposed to give you your money’s worth.
Making sure that Sylvie and her friends, absorbed by their conversation, weren’t looking at him, he discreetly turned the book over. How many pages were there in this door stop? Eight hundred pages! How awful! When I think they cut trees down for this, to print the unspeakable garbage of Mr. Chris Black . . . He must sell millions of volumes all over the world, the bastard . . . For each of his bestsellers they must destroy a three-hundred-year-old forest, slash, down it comes, the sap flows! This is why the planet is being trashed, why the earth’s lungs are disappearing, its reserves of oxygen, its ecosystems—so that fat women can read fat books that are worthless trash! It disgusts me . . .
Since the women were still chatting without paying him the slightest attention, he leaned closer to read the back cover.
If she had known where the adventure would take her, FBI agent Eva Simplon would never have lingered at Darkwell House. But she has just inherited it from a distant aunt, and needs to stay the time it takes to arrange the sale. Should she have refused such a poisoned gift? In store for her are some surprises as mysterious as they are hair-raising . . .
Who is meeting after midnight in an inaccessible room deep in the house, with no apparent entrance? Whose are these voices chanting in the night? And who are these strange buyers offering millions of dollars for an isolated old house?
And the 16th century manuscript her aunt told her about one day—what is so explosive about it to make so many people covet it?
Agent Eva Simplon has her work cut out for her, and the reader is in danger of losing sleep along with her.
Aw, isn’t that cute . . . so idiotic that you can already see the film—Maurice Plisson also hated the cinema—with shrieking violins, blue lightning, and a ditzy blonde running through the darkness . . . What was fascinating was not so much that there were imbeciles prepared to read this pap, but that there was someone unfortunate enough to write it. There are no stupid professions; however, one could aim for a less unworthy way of paying one’s rent. Moreover, it must take months to churn out eight hundred pages. There are two explanations possible: either this Chris Black is a swine infatuated with his own talent, or he’s a slave to a publisher who stands there with a pistol up against his forehead. “Eight hundred pages, buddy, and not a page less!” “Why eight hundred, sir?” “Because, you dummy, you shit-faced scribbler, the average American can only donate $20 of his monthly budget and thirty-five hours of his monthly time to reading, so you give me a book worth $20 and thirty-five hours of reading, okay? No need to go over, no more, no less. It’s good value for money, the law of the marketplace. Got it? And stop quoting Dostoyevsky to me, I hate communists.”
Leaning on his shopping cart, his shoulders shaking with sarcastic mirth, Maurice Plisson delighted in inventing the scene. Good old Chris Black, you had to feel sorry for him, in the end.
And then what he had been afraid of happened: Sylvie insisted on introducing him to her friends.
“Come here, Maurice, it’s through them that I found the rental. Grace, Audrey, and Sofia are staying not far from us, two miles away. We’ll have a chance to meet again.”
Maurice stammered a few words that must have seemed friendly enough, while wondering if Parliament shouldn’t draft a bill to outlaw giving the names of beautiful women—Grace, Audrey, Sofia—to fatties. Then there were promises of meeting for orange juice, or petanque games, or walks in the country, and they parted with emphatic assurances of meeting up again soon.
As they drove back to the Villa, with a deserted countryside flashing by the window, Maurice could not help but think about The Chamber of Dark Secrets—what a ridiculous title—because there was one detail that had captured his curiosity. Which 16th century manuscript could it be that the plot revolved around? It had to be a work that existed, American novelists lack imagination, according to his literary colleagues. A treatise on alchemy? A memoir of the Templars? A register with inadmissible family trees? A text by Aristotle that had been thought lost? In spite of himself, Maurice could not help but play with various hypotheses. After all, Chris Black, or whoever it was that hid behind the pseudonym, might be more than a pompous ass full of his own genius, he might be an honest researcher, an erudite, one of those brilliant academics the United States know how to produce, but who is underpaid . . . Why not someone like himself, Maurice Plisson? What if he were a decent man of letters who only accepted to write such vile porridge in order to pay his debts or feed his family? Perhaps not everything was bad in the book.
Maurice was annoyed with himself for showing such indulgence, and he decided to think about more serious subjects. And so it was almost in spite of himself that he stole the book while he was emptying the shopping from the trunk: using the pretext of a trip between the car and the pantry, within three seconds he had slipped it into a porcelain umbrella stand.
Sylvie was busy fixing up the kitchen, making the evening meal, and didn’t realize. To prevent her from thinking about it, Maurice even suggested watching television, specifying however that, as was his habit, he would go to bed early.
“If I stick her in front of the box, she won’t think about reading and she’ll be glued to her armchair until the last weather report.”
Everything went according to plan. Delighted to discover that her cousin would agree to pleasures as simple as an evening watching a movie, Sylvie declared that this would be a great vacation together, and they had been right not to go traveling this year, this would be a good change.
After half an hour of a movie he didn’t watch, Maurice yawned ostentatiously and said he was going up to bed.
“Don’t move, don’t lower the volume, I’m so tired by the trip I’ll fall asleep right away. Goodnight, Sylvie.”
“Goodnight, Maurice.”
As he crossed the hall, he grabbed the book from the bottom of the umbrella stand, slipped it under his shirt, hurried up to his room and raced through his washing and toothbrushing, closed the door, and settled in bed with The Chamber of Dark Secrets.
“I just want to find out what this 16th century manuscript is,” he decided.
Twenty minutes later, he was no longer asking that question: any critical distance he had hoped to keep with regard to the text had only lasted a few pages; by the end of the first chapter, he started the next one without pausing for breath; as he read, his sarcasm melted like sugar in water.
To his great surprise, he learned that the heroine, FBI agent Eva Simplon, was a lesbian; he was so astonished that from that moment on he could no longer cast any doubt over the acts or ideas that the author ascribed to her. Moreover, because this beautiful woman’s sexuality marginalized her to some degree, Maurice recognized his own feeling of marginalization—his ugliness; very quickly he felt a strong connection with Eva Simplon.
When he heard Sylvie switch off the television and clump heavily up the stairs, he was reminded that he was supposed to be sleeping. Feeling deceitful, he hastily switched off the light on the bed table. But she mustn’t know that he was still up! Still less that he’d gone off with her book! And she mustn’t take it back . . .
The minutes he had to spend in darkness seemed long and fretful. The house was creaking with a thousand noises too complicated to identify. Had Sylvie remembered to lock all the doors and windows? Surely not! He knew how trusting she was, by nature. Did she not realize they were living in a strange house, built in the middle of nowhere, in the wilderness? Who could guarantee that the region wasn’t infested with prowlers, burglars, and unscrupulous individuals ready to kill them for a credit card? Maybe there was even a maniac on the loose who broke into villas to cut the throats of their inhabitants? A serial killer. The butcher of the Ardèche Gorges. Or even a gang . . . Clearly everyone in the area knew this except for them, the newcomers, because no one had warned them, and that made them ideal targets! He shivered.
Here was the dilemma: should he get up to go and check that everything was locked, which would show Sylvie he was still up, or let miscreants get into the house, to hide in the closet or in the cellar? At that very moment, a lugubrious sound echoed in the night.
An owl?
Yes. Bound to be.
Or a man imitating an owl to alert his accomplices? The oldest trick in the world for miscreants. No?
No! Of course it was an owl.
He heard the cry again.
Maurice began to sweat; the small of his back was soaking. What could the repetition mean? Did it prove it was a real owl or was it an answer from an accomplice?
He sat up and quickly put on his slippers. Not a minute to lose. Never mind what Sylvie might think, he was more worried about a gang of psychopaths than his cousin.
As he rushed out into the corridor, he heard the splashing of the shower; that reassured him: she wouldn’t hear him going downstairs.
When he got down there, and saw the living room and dining room bathed in a spectral light, he found to his horror that she had left everything open. Not a single window shutter, nor the shutters to the French doors, had been closed; you only had to break a window to get in. As for the door, there it was with the key in the lock, not even turned. Foolish wretch! With people like her, was it any wonder that there were murders.
Hastily, he went out and, not even taking the time to breathe, so afraid was he of losing a second, he pushed closed the wooden panels, running from window to window, not daring to look at the gray countryside behind him, dreading with each instant that a hand would come down onto the back of his neck to knock him out.
Then he went back inside, turned the key, drove home the bolts, lowered the latches, and once again ran around inside to block all the shutters with their bar.
Once he’d finished his sprint, he sat down to catch his breath. As his heartbeat gradually slowed, since everything seemed calm around him, he understood that he had just suffered from a panic attack.
“What’s happening, my poor Maurice? You haven’t been terrified like this since childhood.”
He remembered having been a fearful little boy, but he thought that he had left that sort of fragility far behind him, in a vanished world, in a Maurice who had disappeared. Could it come back?
“It must be that book! I certainly have no reason to be proud of myself.”
Mumbling to himself, he went back to his room.
Just as he was about to unplug the light, he hesitated.
“A few more pages?”
If he didn’t switch off the lights, and Sylvie got up again, she would see the light under her cousin’s door and be surprised that he was awake, although he had claimed he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
He hunted in the wardrobe for a comforter, and put it at the foot of the door to block the space, then switched the light back on and settled down to read.
This Eva Simplon certainly didn’t disappoint him. She reasoned the way he did, criticized the way he did, even if she went on to suffer from her critical standards. Yes, just like him. He greatly appreciated the woman.
Two hundred pages farther along, his eyelids were struggling so hard to stay open that he decided to call it a day and go to sleep. As he was plumping his pillow to settle down, he recalled the numerous footnotes that referred to Eva Simplon’s previous exploits. What bliss! He’d be able to find his heroine in other books.
Basically, Sylvie was right. It wasn’t great literature, but it was fascinating. And in any case, he didn’t cherish great literature either. Tomorrow he’d have to find a way to go off on his own in order to continue his reading.
He was just drifting off when a thought made him sit up on his mattress.
“Sylvie . . . of course . . .”
Why hadn’t he noticed earlier?
“Of course . . . that’s why she loves Chris Black’s novels. When she confessed as much to me, she wasn’t talking about Chris Black, she was talking about Eva Simplon. There is no doubt about it: Sylvie is a lesbian!”
He saw his cousin’s life before him as if he were leafing through a photo album at great speed: her excessive infatuation with a father who would have rather had a boy, her doomed love affairs and failed relationships with men no one ever met—whereas at every birthday party for the last fifty years all her friends came, all of them girls . . . That afternoon, the three women she had run into so enthusiastically—a rather suspicious enthusiasm, no?—didn’t they all, with their short boyish hair, their masculine clothes, their graceless way of moving, look like Eva Simplon’s boss in the novel, Josépha Katz, the fleshy dyke who hung around lesbian nightclubs in Los Angeles and drove a Chevrolet while smoking a cigar? Obviously . . .
Maurice clucked. The discovery only disconcerted him because it came so late.
“She could have told me. She should have told me. I can understand things like that. We’ll talk about it tomorrow if . . .”
Those were his last thoughts before he drifted into unconsciousness.
Alas, the following day did not go as he planned. Sylvie, grateful to her cousin for inaugurating their stay by accepting her modest evening by the television, suggested a cultural excursion: with a guidebook in her hand, she had put together an itinerary that would enable them to visit prehistoric caves and Romanesque churches. Maurice didn’t have the nerve to protest, particularly as he couldn’t see himself confessing to what was his sole desire: to stay home and read Chris Black.
Between two chapels, while he was walking along the fortified walls of a medieval village, he decided to tackle the problem from another angle, by telling the truth.
“Tell me, Sylvie, if I were to tell you I was a homosexual, would you be shocked?”
“Oh, my God, Maurice, are you gay?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well then why are you asking me?”
“Just to let you know that I wouldn’t be shocked, if I were to learn you were a lesbian.”
Her face went bright red. She could not catch her breath.
“What are you saying, Maurice?”
“I just wanted to say, that when you truly love someone, you can accept everything.”
“Yes, I agree.”
“So, you can confide in me, Sylvie.”
From bright red, she went to dark violet. It took her a minute before she could carry on.
“Do you think I’m hiding something from you, Maurice?”
“Yes, I do.”
They walked on for another hundred yards or so then she stopped, turned to face him and said in a tearful voice, “You’re right. I am hiding something from you, but it’s still too early.”
“I’m here to listen.”
Maurice’s confident composure seemed to upset his cousin, and she could no longer keep back her tears.
“I . . . I . . . didn’t expect that from you . . . That’s . . . It’s wonderful . . .”
He smiled, the good prince.
At dinner, after a succulent magret de canard, he tried to broach the subject again.
“Tell me, your friends—Grace, Gina, and—”
“Grace, Audrey, and Sofia.”
“Have you known them for a long time?”
“No. Not very long. A few months.”
“Really? And yet yesterday you seemed very close.”
“Sometimes there are things that bring people together.”
“Where did you meet them?”
“It’s . . . it’s awkward . . . I’d rather not . . .”
“It’s too early?”
“It’s too early.”
“When you’re ready.”
A lesbian night club, like the one in the novel, it had to be! Something like L’Ambigu or The Kitty that Coughs, the sort of nightclub where Josépha Katz would go to pick up women . . . Sylvie didn’t dare confess. Maurice concluded that he had behaved perfectly with his cousin, and that henceforth he deserved to go and lose himself in the book he had pilfered from her.
According to the same script as the night before, he switched on the television, pretended to be interested in an inane series, then lowered his jaw as if sleep were attacking him, and finally went to take refuge upstairs.
As soon as he was in his bedroom, he took just enough time to brush his teeth and hide the base of the door, then he rushed to pick up the book.
From her very first sentence Eva Simplon was brilliant, and gave Maurice the impression that she had been moping all day long waiting for him to return. In a few seconds, he was back in Darkwell, Aunt Agatha’s mysterious demesne, dangerously isolated deep in the mountains. He trembled at the thought of the chanting that emerged every night from its walls.
This time, he was so absorbed by the novel that he did not hear Sylvie switch off the television and go to bed. It was only at midnight that a sinister hooting tore him from his pages, and he lifted his head.
The owl!
Or the man who was imitating the owl!
He clenched his teeth.
He waited for a few minutes.
Again, the cry.
This time, however, there’d be no dithering: this was no animal cry, this was a human cry.
A shiver went down his neck: the door!
Sylvie had probably not locked the doors and windows tonight, any more than yesterday. Particularly as in the morning, he had gotten up before her, and had opened the shutters to avoid any questions.
Above all, he must not yield to panic. Keep his cool. Show more self-control than he had yesterday.
He switched off his light, removed the comforter from the bottom of the door, and went down the stairs trying not to let the wooden steps creak.
Breathe deeply. One. Two. One. Two.
When he got down to the landing, what he saw paralyzed him with fright.
Too late!
A man was treading slowly through the living room in the slanting rays of the moon. On the walls, his gigantic shadow was even more impressive, defining a sharp chin, a heavy jaw, and curiously pointed ears. Silent, meticulous, he was lifting every cushion, every Afghan, blindly groping on shelves.
Maurice held his breath. The intruder’s calm terrified him as much as his presence. In flashes, the mercury light illuminated his bald head, as smooth as a bonze’s. The colossus did not bump into any of the furniture or the sofas, as if he already knew the house, and he went on feeling his way around the premises, exploring the same spots two or three times. What was he looking for?
The burglar’s professional poise was contagious. Maurice hovered in the shadow and did not shake, nor did he panic. In any case, what could he do? Switch on the light to frighten him? It was not a light bulb that would get rid of him . . . call Sylvie? Nor a woman . . . Rush up to him, knock him over, and tie him up? This athletic looking man would have the upper hand. And besides, maybe he had a weapon. A pistol, or a knife . . .
Maurice swallowed so noisily that he was afraid he might suddenly betray his presence.
The intruder did not react.
Maurice hoped he was exaggerating the volume of the sounds his body was making; just now, for example, this crazy rumbling in his stomach . . .
The intruder let out a sigh. He couldn’t find what he had come for.
Was he going to go upstairs? Maurice had the feeling that if he did, his own heart would stop.
The stranger hesitated, his powerful face raised to the ceiling, then, as if giving up, he went out the door.
His steps resonated at the front of the house.
After he’d gone a few yards, the crunching sound stopped.
Was he waiting? Was he going to come back?
How should Maurice react?
Should he throw himself against the door, and turn the key twice? The colossus would notice, come back, and burst through the French windows.
It would be best to wait and see if he went away.
And make doubly sure.
Maurice went cautiously back up the stairs and into his room, closed the door, and went over to the window.
He couldn’t see very well through the narrow slits between the closed shutters. The strip of dense, deserted scrub that he could just make out was not enough for him to conclude that the intruder had left.
Maurice stayed frozen for an hour, watching, listening. At times it seemed to him that nothing was moving, but at other times he believed it was starting up again. This vast house already made such a racket just by itself—beams cracking, floors creaking, pipes groaning, mice scampering in the attic—that it was hard to identify all these muffled activities.
But he would have to go back down. He could not possibly spend the night with the door and the shutters open! The man might come back. If he had refrained from going upstairs, it was because he knew that people were living there; but he might change his mind. He might come back later, assuming everyone was asleep, to look for what he wanted on the second floor. And anyway, what was he looking for?
“No, Maurice, don’t be stupid, don’t mix this up with the book you’re reading: unlike The Chamber of Dark Secrets, this house surely does not conceal a manuscript containing the list of all the children Christ and Mary Magdalene had together. You must not get worked up. However, there is something here, some unique thing that this unknown colossus wants, there’s something he’s looking for and not for the first time either, because he moves around so easily in here . . . what could it be?”
The floor in the corridor vibrated.
Was the intruder coming back?
On his knees, Maurice slid over to the door and looked through the keyhole.
Phew, it was Sylvie.
The moment he opened the door, his cousin jumped.
“Maurice, you’re not in bed? Maybe I woke you up . . .”
Maurice uttered in a toneless voice, “Why are you up? Did you see anything?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you notice anything abnormal?”
“No . . . I . . . I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might fix myself some herbal tea. I’m sorry. Did I frighten you?”
“No, no . . .”
“What then? Did you see something strange?”
Sylvie’s eyes grew large with fear.
Maurice hesitated about what to answer. No, best not to panic her. Play for time first. Play for time against the intruder, who might come back.
“Tell me, Sylvie,” he said, trying to make his words sound normal and come out regularly, “wouldn’t it be better to close the shutters at night? And the door, I’m sure you didn’t lock it.”
“Bah, what’s there to be afraid of, nobody wanders around up here. Just remember how hard it was even to find the road.”
Maurice thought that she was lucky to be so silly. If he told her that not even an hour ago, a stranger was going around sizing up the living room . . . It would be better if she went on wallowing in her trusting ignorance. He himself would be less afraid if he was the only one who was afraid.
She came up and looked at him.
“Have you seen something?”
“No.”
“Anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. I’m simply suggesting we close the door and the shutters. Is that really unthinkable for you? Against your principles? Is your religion opposed to it? You find it such a radical step? You won’t sleep at night if we lock ourselves in? Will you be in the throes of insomnia if we take the most basic safety precautions, which is why locks and shutters were invented?”
Sylvie noticed that her cousin was losing control over his nerves. She gave him a bracing smile.
“No, of course not. I’ll help you with it. Better still, I’ll do it for you.”
Maurice sighed: at least he wouldn’t have to go back out into the night where the colossus was prowling.
“Thank you. Here, I’ll make your tea for you in the meanwhile.”
They went downstairs. When Maurice saw how nonchalantly she took her time outside to close the shelters, he blessed her for being so utterly unaware.
After she had turned the key twice in the door, and rammed home the bolts, she joined him in the kitchen.
“Do you remember how frightened you used to be when you were little?”
Maurice was annoyed by her words, that seemed uncalled for.
“I wasn’t frightened, I was cautious.”
His answer had nothing to do with the past, and everything to do with the present situation. What did it matter! Sylvie, astonished by her cousin’s sudden authority, did not quibble.
While her lime-blossom tea was steeping, she reminisced about their childhood vacations, their boat outings while the adults were plunged deep in their siesta on the banks of the Rhône, the fish they stole from the fishermen’s pots to let them go again in the river, the cabin they had called the Lighthouse on an island that divided the waters . . .
While Sylvie followed the thread of her nostalgia, memory was leading Maurice elsewhere, to other memories of that time, when his parents began once again to go out dancing, or to the movies, being of the mind that their ten-year-old son was reasonable enough now to stay by himself in the apartment. He lived through hours of terror. Abandoned, a tiny boy beneath vast ceilings twelve feet high, he would scream, missing his mother and father, their familiar presence, their reassuring smells, the melody of their consoling words; he wept copiously, because his body knew that tears were a way to make his parents come to him. To no avail. What had worked for years to rescue him from helplessness and pain and solitude no longer had the slightest effect. He had lost all his power. He was no longer a child. And not yet an adult. Moreover, when they came back, at one o’clock in the morning—lively, joyful, drunk, their voices different, their smells different, their gestures different—he hated them and swore that he would never grow up to become an adult like them, a sensual, lascivious, cocky adult who loved the pleasures of food and wine and flesh. And while he had matured, it was in a different way, by developing his mind. Cerebral pursuits, science, culture, erudition. No food, and no sex. He may have become an adult, but by becoming a scholar, not by becoming an animal.
Is that why he had always refused to read novels? Because on those evenings when she betrayed him, his mother left the books she loved on the night table to keep him busy? Or was it because he blindly believed everything in the first one he read, and he felt humiliated when his parents, dying of laughter, informed him that it was all made up?
“Maurice . . . Maurice . . . are you listening? I’m finding you a bit strange.”
“But everything is strange, Sylvie. Everything. Strange and foreign. Look, you and me, we’ve known each other since birth, and yet are both keeping secrets from each other.”
“Are you referring to—”
“I am referring to what you are not talking about, that you might, some day, talk about.”
“I swear to you I will talk about it.”
She flung her arms around him, hugged him, then immediately felt embarrassed by her gesture.
“Goodnight, Maurice. See you in the morning.”
The following day was so strange and unexpected that neither one of them had the strength to talk about it.
Maurice had initially been tempted to go back to sleep after all the excitement then, because he didn’t manage to, he switched the light back on and went on reading The Chamber of Dark Secrets. His sensitive nature, already greatly tested by the intruder’s visit, did not recover its calm anywhere in the rest of the novel: Eva Simplon—how he admired this woman, you could really count on her—was being threatened by unscrupulous buyers orchestrating deadly incidents because she refused to sell Darkwell. Every time, she just barely managed to make it out alive from an assassination attempt disguised as an accident. And every time, Eva Simplon found herself up against a new problem, just as worrying: she could not find the entrance to the esoteric room where the nightly chanting was coming from. She felt her way along all the walls, inspected the cellar, and examined the attic, but found nothing. She studied the surveyors’ map at the town hall, and the analysis of successive blueprints in the archives at a notary’s led her to believe that there must be a body inside the building. How could she reach it? Who was getting in there every night? Eva refused to believe in ghosts or spirits. Fortunately, that bitch of a Josépha Katz had sent her a young architect who was trying to analyze the structure of the house—and while Josépha Katz may have been an infernal dyke who was still hitting on Eva Simplon, despite being rebuffed umpteen times, she turned out to be extremely professional—because maybe he would discover an explanation that would eliminate any supernatural hypotheses. And yet . . . in short, at eight o’clock in the morning, Maurice, who hadn’t had any rest at all, got up, tired and irritable, and furious at having to leave Eva Simplon in Darkwell and find himself abruptly in the Ardèche with his cousin. All the more so because today, Monday, he was going to have to put up with a picnic with the girlfriends from the supermarket . . . a day spent in a lesbian colony, among these women who were all more solidly built and manly than he was, no thank you!
He tried to argue that he didn’t feel well and would rather stay home and look after himself. Sylvie would not back down.
“It’s out of the question. If you’re sick and it gets serious, I have to stay here and pamper you. So either I stay here, or you come with me.”
Sorely aware that he would not manage to rescue his day for reading, he went with her.
The hours that followed were a torture. A sadistic sun beat down on the rocky path they walked along to exhaustion. When they reached a green reservoir where the Ardèche river flowed calmly after its torrential flood, Maurice found himself unable to dip any more than one little toe in the icy water. The lunch in the grass turned into a trap because Maurice started off by sitting on an anthill full of red ants and then was stung by a bee that wanted to share his apricot. He emptied his lungs until his head was spinning in order to keep the fire going to cook the sausages; the rest of the afternoon, he had difficulty digesting his hard-boiled egg.
Back at the house, the women wanted to play a party game. Thinking he was safe at last, Maurice was about to sneak off for a refreshing siesta, but when he learned it was a contest based on historical and geographical knowledge, he couldn’t resist, and joined in after all. He won every round, and this compelled him to continue, and the more victories he won, the more condescending he became toward his partners. When he became too despicable, the women got fed up, and aperitifs were served. Pastis on top of a day in the sun was all that was needed to upset his fragile balance, so that by the time he and Sylvie went back inside the villa not only was he aching all over, but he had a stubborn headache.
At nine o’clock, the moment he had taken his last bite, he locked all the shutters and the door and went up to bed.
Leaning on his pillows, he hesitated between two contradictory feelings: the delight of being with Eva Simplon once again, and the dread of a new visit from the intruder. After a few pages, he forgot his dilemma, and was trembling in unison with the heroine.
At ten thirty, he could hear Sylvie switching off the television and climbing heavily up the stairs.
At eleven o’clock, he was beginning, like Eva Simplon, to wonder whether, basically, ghosts existed or not. Otherwise, how could you explain that individuals could walk through walls? There comes a time when what is irrational ceases to be irrational, because it becomes the only rational solution.
At half past eleven, a noise roused him abruptly from his book.
Footsteps. Lights, discreet footsteps. Not at all Sylvie’s footsteps.
He switched off the light and went over to the door. Moving the comforter to one side, he turned the knob. He could sense a presence on the ground floor.
No sooner did this thought cross his mind than the man appeared in the stairway. The bald colossus, treading cautiously and silently, coming upstairs to continue his search.
Maurice closed his door and leaned against the woodwork to resist any attempt the intruder might make to come in. In the fraction of a second, his body was soaked, he was sweating thick drops that he could feel trickling down his neck and his back.
The stranger stopped by his door then continued on his way.
With his ear up against the wood, Maurice could hear a rustling noise that confirmed the man was heading down the hall.
Sylvie! He was going into Sylvie’s room!
What should he do? Run away! Rush down the stairs and get the hell out of there, into the night. But where? Maurice didn’t know the surrounding countryside, whereas the intruder knew every bend in the road. Besides, he couldn’t sacrifice his cousin like some coward and leave her to the hands of this miscreant . . .
He cracked the door and saw the shadow go into Sylvie’s room.
“If I stop to think any more, I won’t move.”
He had to hurry! Maurice knew very well that with each passing second he was losing his ability to take any initiative.
“Remember, Maurice, it’s like diving from the high board: if you don’t jump right away, you’ll never jump. Your salvation lies the way of unconsciousness.”
He took a deep breath and leapt out into the corridor. He rushed toward the bedroom.
“Sylvie, watch out! Watch out!”
As the intruder had closed the door, Maurice bashed it open.
“Get out!”
The room was empty.
Quickly! Under the bed!
Maurice went flat on the ground. No strangers were hiding under the bed.
Closet! Clothes cupboard! Quickly!
In a few seconds, he opened all the doors.
As he could not understand what was going on, he screamed, “Sylvie! Sylvie, where are you?”
The door to the bathroom opened, Sylvie came out, with a look of panic, her bathrobe hardly tied, holding a brush in her hand.
“What’s going on?”
“Are you alone in the bathroom?”
“Maurice, have you lost your mind?”
“Are you alone in the bathroom?”
Docile, she went back in, looked around, then frowned to indicate her bewilderment.
“Well, obviously, I’m alone in my bathroom. Who should I be with?”
Devastated, Maurice collapsed on the edge of the bed. Sylvie rushed over to take him in her arms.
“Maurice, what is going on? Did you have a nightmare? Speak to me, Maurice, speak to me, tell me what’s worrying you.”
From that very moment, he had to keep quiet, otherwise, like Eva Simplon in the novel, they would think he had gone insane, and would pretend to listen to him without hearing him.
“I . . . I . . .”
“Yes, tell me, Maurice. Tell me.”
“I . . . I must’ve had a nightmare.”
“There, there, it’s over. Everything is fine. It was nothing serious. Come on, we’ll go down to the kitchen and I’ll make us some tea.”
She led him downstairs, constantly talking, confident, unruffled, imperturbable. Maurice, progressively won over by her serenity, thought he was right to keep his fears to himself. Sylvie’s tranquil attitude would give him the strength to conduct the investigation right to the end. After all, he was nothing but a simple history teacher, not an agent from the FBI, used to exceptional situations the way Eva Simplon was.
While Sylvie was babbling, he wondered if there wasn’t an analogy between this house and Darkwell. A secret room with a trap door might even be hidden behind these walls, a hideout where the intruder might have found refuge.
He shuddered.
That meant the intruder was still among them . . . wouldn’t it be better if they left right away?
A sudden revelation overwhelmed him. Of course! How obvious! How could the man have gotten in here since all the access from outside had been blocked off?
He hadn’t come in: he already was in. In fact, the man lived in this place, and had lived here longer than they had. He was living in a space they had not discovered because of the rather strange architecture.
“We disturbed him when we arrived.”
Who is he? And what is he looking for at night?
Unless . . .
No . . . .
Yes! Why couldn’t it be a ghost? After all, people have been talking about ghosts for so long. As Josépha Katz declared between two puffs on her cigar, there’s no smoke without fire. What if . . .
Maurice, taken aback, could not determine which was more terrifying, the colossus hiding somewhere inside the house without them knowing how or why, or a ghost haunting the house . . .
“Maurice, I’m worried about you. You don’t seem to be yourself.”
“Hmm? Maybe I’ve got a bit of sunstroke . . .”
“Maybe . . . Tomorrow, if you don’t feel better, I’ll call the doctor.”
Maurice thought, “Tomorrow, we’ll be dead,” but kept it to himself.
“Well, I’m going back to bed.”
“Do you want some more tea?”
“No, thank you, Sylvie. Go ahead of me, please.” While Sylvie was going up the first steps, Maurice used the pretext of switching off the lights in the kitchen to grab a long carving knife from a hook on the wall. He slipped it up into his loose pajama sleeve.
Upstairs, they wished each other sweet dreams.
Maurice was about to close his door again when Sylvie stopped him, turning her cheek to him.
“Here, I feel like a goodnight kiss. That way, you’ll be even calmer.”
She left a damp kiss on his temple. Just as she stepped back, her eyes filled with surprise: she saw something behind Maurice, yes, something in the room that was alarming her!
“What? What is it?” he exclaimed, panicking, convinced the intruder must be standing behind him.
Sylvie thought for a moment and then burst out laughing.
“No, I was just thinking about something else, no connection. Stop being so worried like this, Maurice, you’re getting yourself all in a tizzy. Everything is fine.”
She went away, laughing.
Maurice watched her disappear with a mixture of envy and pity. Ignorance is bliss! She doesn’t suspect a thing, and she even laughs at my anxiety. Maybe there is a ghost or a potential murderer just behind the wall where she leans her pillows, and she would rather tease me. Be a hero, Maurice, leave her to her illusions: don’t let it annoy you.
He lay down to think, but his meditation only managed to make him more worried than ever. Particularly as the unusual presence of the knife with its shiny blade lying next to his thigh on the sheet frightened him more than it stimulated him.
He opened up The Chamber of Dark Secrets once again, as if he were coming home after a particularly trying journey. Maybe he would find the solution in the book?
At one o’clock in the morning, when the story was more suspenseful than ever, and he only had fifty pages left to find the solution to the puzzle, he sensed something moving in the corridor.
This time, without hesitating for a second, he switched off the light, and took hold of the handle of his weapon beneath the sheet.
A few seconds later, the doorknob began to turn, a fraction of an inch at a time.
The intruder was trying to come into his room.
With a great deal of caution, and nerve-racking slowness, he opened the door. When he had crossed the threshold, the gray light from the lantern in the corridor shone on his bald head.
Maurice held his breath, and pretended to close his eyes; he kept them open a crack to follow the movements of the colossus.
He came up to Maurice’s bed and reached out his hand.
“He’s going to strangle me!”
Maurice sprang out of the sheets, with a knife in his hand and, screaming with terror, struck the stranger, splattering his blood.
There was an unusual amount of activity. In fact, such events were very rare in these sleepy provincial villages, ordinarily so quiet.
Alongside the police cars were those of the mayor, the local parliamentary deputy, and the nearest neighbors. While the house overlooked a rocky wilderness, dozens of rubberneckers had managed to hear about the incident and had come running.
They were obliged to limit access to the villa by means of a symbolic gate—plastic tape—and by stationing three gendarmes to ward off any unhealthy curiosity.
While a truck was removing the corpse, the policemen and the authorities looked unconvinced while the massive woman repeated her story for the tenth time, stumbling over her own words to hiccup, weep, and blow her nose.
“Please, at least let my friends in. Oh, here they are.”
Grace, Audrey, and Sophia rushed up to Sylvie to hug her and console her. Then they sat down on the next sofa.
Sylvie justified their presence to the policemen.
“It is through them that I rented this villa. We met this winter at the hospital where we were being treated, in Professor Millau’s service. Oh, my God, if I had even suspected . . .”
She began to tell her story again for her friends.
“I can’t understand what happened. He was so kind, Maurice, this year. More easy-going than the other times. Simpler. I think he had understood that I was recovering from a sickness, that I’d had chemotherapy for my cancer. Maybe someone told him? Or did he guess? All these last days, he kept reaching out to me, suggesting he loved me the way I was, that I needn’t try to hide anything from him. But it’s true that for me it’s hard. Hard to accept that I’ve lost my hair because of the treatments, and that I have to hide my skull under a wig. The first night, I was sure he had seen me downstairs, in my pajamas, without my wig, I was looking for a book I had bought at the supermarket and had mislaid somewhere. Yesterday evening when I wished him good night at his door, after we had some tea, I realized that the damn book was in his room, on his bed. So around midnight, as I was tossing and turning and couldn’t sleep—I’ve had trouble recuperating since my illness—I figured that I could go and get it from his room without disturbing him. Maurice was dozing. I was careful not to wake him up, I made my way without any noise, and just as I was about to put my hand on the book, he threw himself on me. I felt a terrible pain, and I saw a knife blade, and I cried out and fought him off, and sent him sprawling backwards, and he bounced against the wall and then fell on his side and then, shlack, the rabbit punch! His neck hit the night table! Stone dead!”
She had to stop for her sobs.
The police commissioner was rubbing his chin, unconvinced, then he conferred with his team. The hypothesis of an accident seemed improbable. Why would the man sleep with a knife unless he was afraid of his cousin attacking him?
Then, although the women protested in support of their friend, he informed Sylvie that she was under arrest. Not only was there no trace of a struggle but she was, according to her own confession, the victim’s sole heir. She was taken away, her wrists in handcuffs.
The police commissioner went back upstairs by himself, his hands protected by gloves, and into transparent plastic bags he slipped the two exhibits: a huge kitchen knife, and a book, The Chamber of Dark Secrets, by Chris Black, its pages also splattered with blood.
As he was closing the plastic around the book, he read beneath the brown smudges what you could still see of the description on the back, and he could not help but murmur with a sigh, “Some people really do read the trashiest stuff . . .”