Eleven

IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED Juliette’s death, Manfred was numb. Sorrow, guilt and fear vied for his attention. Fortunately his grandparents were accustomed to him spending long hours alone in his room. That first evening he did not join his grandparents for dinner. How could he sit there when his sweetheart lay crumpled and dead in the woods and he, with whom she had only moments before exchanged the most passionate exhortations, had killed her? And yet, even then, there was an instinct of self-preservation that kept him in his room. It would surely be obvious to anyone who set eyes upon him that he was the guilty party.

During the storm that broke that evening, Manfred spent the night rigid on his bed, imagining Juliette’s body on its sodden deathbed. He saw the wind whipping up the cotton of her dress, the rain plastering her hair to her forehead. It was all he could do to prevent himself from rushing back out to the woods to cradle her drenched body. But he did not do so. And, at some point, he must have fallen asleep, because when he awoke the next morning, he experienced a brief moment of nothingness before the events of the previous day flooded back into his mind.

The storm had left a heavy smell of wet earth in the air. Manfred went downstairs at ten o’clock. His grandmother was in the garden. In the kitchen, the housekeeper ignored him as he spread a piece of bread with butter. He took one bite, which he was unable to swallow, and put it in the bin. Then he returned to his room. Later, there was a flurry of voices downstairs as news of the murder filtered through the household. Normally, the servants talked only in hushed tones, as if they were in a library. Manfred lay on his bed awaiting the police, but no one came. He realised it had been a mistake not to appear for dinner the previous evening. From now on he must act as if nothing had happened. He must at all times act naturally.

His grandfather looked askance at him when he appeared at the dining table. Manfred did what he always did when someone looked questioningly at him. He cast his eyes down and said nothing. He could hear the servants in the kitchen discussing the murder, but the matter was not mentioned at the dinner table. Instead, the meal was passed with a few banal remarks about the storm and Monsieur Paliard’s day at work. It seemed to Manfred a sick joke that his grandparents could behave as if nothing of note had occurred, as if his entire world had not come to an end. It seemed, furthermore, beyond belief that nobody could see that he was the killer. Manfred forced down a few mouthfuls of food before excusing himself at the earliest opportunity. He went upstairs and threw up.

Within two or three days, Manfred accustomed himself to behaving normally. He presented himself at mealtimes, skulked in his room and even forced himself to leave the house during the day, although he did not, of course, go near the woods. He betrayed no particular curiosity about the murder, nor did he pretend that it was of no interest to him. He began to think of himself as an actor preparing for the role of his former self. He drew no satisfaction as each day passed without his arrest. He was indifferent to his fate. But he came to understand why no one could see that he was guilty. All the talk in the papers and among the servants was of a monster, some beast abroad in the woods or further afield who could and, undoubtedly would, strike again. The maids were nervous of leaving the house and women were advised not to walk the streets unaccompanied. Amid this talk, Manfred was just a boy. Nobody was looking for a boy.

In the early evening of the fourth or fifth day Manfred heard a detective being ushered into the parlour at the front of the house. It was some minutes before Monsieur Paliard made his way to where the policeman was waiting. Manfred’s grandfather had a low opinion of the police and he would have made a point of keeping the detective waiting. The murmur of voices reached Manfred in his bedroom. He pictured the detective, in his fifties, wearing a crumpled raincoat over a crumpled suit, neatly parted grey hair, narrow darting eyes. The voices subsided then he heard footsteps and his grandmother calling his name from the bottom of the stairs.

Manfred sat on the edge of his bed. He imagined being led handcuffed down the drive to a waiting police car, a crowd of onlookers greeting his appearance with catcalls. As he drew nearer, their cries would subside and he would hear them stage-whisper, But he’s no more than a boy. Not even a man.

Manfred stood up and walked slowly down the stairs. He felt relieved that his burden was about to be lifted. He wondered if the detective would accuse him straight off or slyly question him, slowly drawing the truth from him. There was no need for such a strategy. Manfred had no intention of denying anything.

The detective was not as he had imagined. He was young, thirty perhaps, with a modest, unthreatening air. He stood, looking somewhat ill at ease, with his back to the large stone fireplace. There was a tray of coffee things untouched on the table. The parlour was rarely used. It was a large formal room, which even at the height of summer retained a chill.

‘Our grandson,’ said Monsieur Paliard by way of introduction. His tone was apologetic. Manfred stood with his back to the wall next to the door. The detective did not invite him to sit down.

‘I’m investigating the murder of Juliette Hurel,’ he began. Manfred was surprised that his cheeks did not colour at the mention of Juliette’s name.

‘Your grandparents say that you often go walking in the woods where her body was found.’

‘Yes,’ said Manfred, ‘Sometimes I go there to read.’ Revealing this additional information suggested, Manfred thought, that he was willing to co-operate fully.

‘I don’t suppose you ever came across the girl when you were in the woods?’

Manfred was surprised at the way in which the detective phrased his question. It seemed an invitation to denial, as if he had already made up his mind that the response would be negative. It seemed easier to agree.

‘No,’ he said.

‘I understand you were in the woods the day Juliette was murdered,’ the detective went on.

‘No,’ said Manfred, ‘I went walking along the river that day.’

The lie took him by surprise. Up until that moment, he had imagined confessing everything at the first opportunity. But this lie had come from nowhere and at once he saw that it was a good one. Nobody knew where he had been that day, so one quiet place was as good as another.

‘Oh,’ said the detective as if a little disappointed that his lead had evaporated so quickly. ‘And you’ve never seen anyone suspicious around the woods?’

Again the question phrased in the negative. Perhaps, Manfred thought, the detective had asked these questions so often that he had no expectation of a positive response. There was no significance in him asking Manfred. He was just crossing another potential witness from the list.

‘No,’ said Manfred. That much was true.

The detective nodded, as if Manfred had confirmed what he had expected him to say. He clasped his hands together to indicate that the interview was over and took his leave, apologising somewhat obsequiously for disturbing his grandparents. Manfred went back to his room and lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. He felt no relief, merely the feeling that the inevitable had been postponed. In a way, he was disappointed. It would have been better to get the thing over and done with.

When Manfred returned to school at the end of the holidays, he withdrew completely from his peers. He had always been on the periphery. His status as an orphan made his classmates wary of him, but it also provided a shield behind which he could hide. However oddly he behaved, people put it down to ‘what he had been through’. He had always heard whispers to this effect. Now, however, Manfred’s retreat was complete. While his classmates flirted and arranged dates, he was nothing more than an observer. Nobody seemed to notice. He had always struggled to fit in and if he had now given up trying, it was no real loss to anyone. And while part of Manfred longed to participate, to be part of the crowd, the greater part of him was relieved. He developed a sense of superiority. His peers were mere children. The girls with their giggling and obsession with clothes seemed silly creatures, an entirely different species from Juliette. And the boys, posing with their leather bomber jackets, cigarettes held in the cup of their hand, were despicable. Little did they know that he, Manfred Baumann, had experienced love of the most intense and profound nature and had committed an act that placed him outside the normal boundaries of society.

Manfred followed the trial of the tramp Malou with dispassion. It did not occur to him to come forward and exonerate him, nor did he take any pleasure in his conviction. It had been clear to Manfred since the visit of the detective that he was going to ‘get away with it’.

It was around this time that Manfred experienced his first migraine. It came upon him at his school desk without warning, or at least he did not recognise the signs. All he knew was that he found himself clutching at a severe pain in his temples. He was helped to the school sickbay where the nurse insisted that an ambulance be called. Perhaps he was suffering an aneurysm. The medics gave him a cursory examination and, to his relief, refused to take him to hospital.

Manfred did not tell his grandparents about the incident and no questions were asked when he failed to appear for the evening meal. The headaches began to occur every few weeks. Each one lasted a day or two and left him drained of energy for days afterwards. Manfred spent these days in his room with the curtains drawn and the sheet pulled over his head. The slightest noise sent fresh shards shooting through his skull. During the episodes he lost all sense of time. Minutes dragged by as if mired in mud and whole days vanished as if struck from the calendar. Manfred could recall little of what occurred.

Even to the staunchly godless Manfred, it was impossible not to see these attacks as a punishment. But in the absence of a vengeful God, what force governed such things? Even in his pained state such thoughts irritated Manfred; the universe was chaotic and meaningless. Still, it was difficult not to see the killing of Juliette and the onset of the headaches as connected.

It became impossible to conceal what was occurring from his grandparents. Despite his protestations, Manfred’s grandmother insisted on making an appointment with the family doctor. Doctor Faubel was a middle-aged man with greasy thinning hair and a shiny complexion. He smiled pleasantly as Manfred sat down. The surgery smelled strongly of dark tobacco.

‘So,’ he began, ‘headaches, I hear.’

‘Yes,’ said Manfred. He was simultaneously relieved that he did not have to explain why he was here and embarrassed that his grandmother must have already briefed the doctor, as if he was still a child. ‘Headaches’ did not seem like a legitimate reason to take up a doctor’s time, especially headaches that Manfred, despite himself, believed to be a kind of just punishment.

Faubel asked a series of questions about the nature, frequency and duration of the ‘painful episodes’, as he called them. He appeared to take Manfred’s complaint quite seriously.

‘On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the level of pain?’ he asked.

Manfred was about to respond, ‘Ten,’ but that would be ridiculous. He had read of certain techniques of torture that would undoubtedly be more painful. Besides, he did not wish to appear lily-livered or melodramatic.

‘Seven,’ he said.

‘Seven?’ the doctor repeated. He emitted a breathy whistle.

‘Eight, maybe,’ Manfred said.

Faubel asked Manfred to describe what he did during the painful episodes.

‘I just lie there with my eyes closed. It’s as if I become the pain. There’s nothing else to think about.’

‘And prior to the onset of these attacks, do you experience any unusual sensations?’

Manfred looked blankly at the doctor.

‘Unusual effects of light, perhaps, a kind of flaring? Like an aura?’

Manfred nodded. This was precisely what he experienced. He would not have described it as an aura, as he disliked the word’s mystical connotations, but it was as if he was looking at the world through the glass of a rainy window. Colours appeared to slide into one other. Faubel smiled to himself, clearly pleased with the accuracy of his diagnosis. He explained that Manfred was suffering from migraines. It was the first time Manfred had heard this word. The causes of migraines, Faubel went on, were unknown and there was no cure. The only option was to try to manage the condition.

Manfred felt a pang of disappointment. His hopes had been raised by Faubel’s insight into his symptoms.

‘It’s quite common for migraine to rear its head in someone your age. Often the frequency of attack decreases and, in time, it can even disappear completely.’

Faubel instructed Manfred to keep a diary of everything he ate and drank, what exercise he took, his sleep patterns and whether he was feeling anxious or depressed. He was to make another appointment when he had experienced another two painful episodes, at which point they would review his journal and see if they could identify any triggers for the attacks. The most important thing in combating migraine, he said, was to establish a routine and stick to it.

Manfred left the doctor feeling downhearted. As instructed, he kept a journal for the next two weeks, but as he did not experience an attack in this period, he let it lapse and never made the return visit to Doctor Faubel.

As the school year wore on, Manfred’s aloofness and indifference to his peers seemed to exert a certain fascination upon some of his female classmates. He had matured into a good-looking young man and his lack of attention to his appearance perhaps struck these girls as possessing a certain charm. One girl, Sonia Givskov, took to hanging around Manfred during lunch hour, sitting in his vicinity and passing remarks about whatever book he was reading. She had a large nose, matronly breasts and thick lips, and wore unfashionable clothes, which Manfred suspected her mother made for her. Before the events of the summer Manfred would have felt her a kindred spirit, but now he felt nothing but contempt for her. She was not Juliette. Yet the more dismissively Manfred behaved towards her, the more she appeared to be in his thrall. He did not have the heart to shoo her away and out of some vague principle he refused to actually avoid her, so they took to sitting together, mostly in silence. Occasionally, Manfred heard mocking remarks about Sonia Givskov now being his girlfriend. But such tittle-tattle meant nothing to him. The idiots around him had no idea who they were dealing with. Nor would he betray Sonia Givskov by contradicting them.

In another way this arrangement with Sonia suited Manfred. Despite the fact that he had no desire to ever be with anyone other than Juliette, the school environment conspired against him. He could not fail to notice the down-covered napes, tanned calves and saucily revealed bra-straps of the girls around him. He initiated a rigorous regime of masturbation, performing the act first thing in the morning and as soon as he returned home from school, whether he felt the urge or not. It had been a lack of control over his sexual desire that had led to the death of Juliette and he made a pact with himself to curb this malevolent force at all times. The perception that he and Sonia Givskov were an item meant that other girls kept their distance. She acted as a buffer.

Manfred let his schoolwork slide. In his state of numbness, he no longer cared what happened, neither in the here and now of school, nor in the future. He did not deliberately flunk tests. He simply no longer knew or could be bothered recalling the answers. He had never been popular with his teachers. Despite his good marks, he lacked charm. He sat at the back of class, never put his hand up and when called upon answered in monosyllables. He was surly. The only person who appeared to notice Manfred’s drive to failure was his French master. M. Becault was in his twenties. He wore an unconvincing ginger beard and dressed in corduroy trousers, cheesecloth shirts and tweed jackets, as if these middle-aged clothes would somehow bestow authority on him. His beard, Manfred observed, disguised a weak chin and slack mouth, but he was otherwise a pleasant-looking man. In the corridor he would form his lips into a thin smile and nod almost deferentially when passing one of his students. Becault committed the cardinal sin of the novice teacher: he wanted to be liked. Consequently, he suffered continual discipline problems. He regularly blushed when texts alluded to the sexual act. Becault had always been Manfred’s favourite teacher.

Once or twice in previous years the pair had chatted uneasily for a few minutes after class. Shortly after the death of his mother Manfred had written an essay on The Outsider. ‘The real shock of The Outsider,’ he wrote, ‘is not Mersault’s indifference to his mother’s death. Rather it is the animosity of others towards this indifference.’ Becault had read these lines back to Manfred and asked him what he meant. Manfred shrugged. He was both flattered by Becault’s attention and embarrassed. In truth, he was not sure what he meant and he suspected that Becault was using this as an attempt to get him to ‘open up’ about his own bereavement. When Manfred failed to articulate anything, the conversation fizzled out. ‘Well, it’s an excellent essay,’ Becault had said, handing it back.

Despite the abortive nature of this conversation, Manfred felt some sort of kinship with Becault. He pictured his teacher as an awkward, disillusioned teenager, always on the outside looking in. For a while he entertained fantasies about meeting Becault in a café to discuss books or other worldly matters. They would smoke and drink coffee together. Sometimes Becault would pause and chat for a few moments in the canteen about whatever Manfred was reading. On account of his weak manner and eccentric appearance, there were rumours that Becault was a homosexual. When he stopped to talk, Manfred was conscious of other students’ eyes upon them. Nothing would have pleased Manfred more than to engage in discussion, but it was not politic to do so. Invariably the situation became awkward and Becault would take his leave with a limp comment such as ‘Best be getting on,’ or ‘Mustn’t keep you from your lunch.’

A few months into the school year Becault asked Manfred to stay behind at the end of class. Manfred slouched in his seat at the back of the room. Becault perched on an adjacent desk. He had shaved off his beard during the summer. The flesh around his mouth was pink and flabby.

‘You don’t seem yourself,’ he said.

‘I wish I wasn’t myself,’ said Manfred.

Becault smiled, as if to himself, and exhaled a little laugh through his nose.

‘I’m concerned,’ he said. He proffered an essay Manfred had written on Gide. ‘This is…’ He let his sentence trail off with a shake of his head. Manfred shrugged.

‘You used to be my star pupil.’

‘I don’t like Gide.’

The teacher seemed encouraged. ‘It’s not a question of liking Gide,’ he said. ‘This is nothing more than a rant. You used to write so well. You had insight.’

Manfred stared at the front of the room.

‘I just want to help you,’ he said.

Manfred said nothing.

Becault pursed his lips. ‘How are things at your grandparents? You’re living with your grandparents, aren’t you?’

Manfred turned and looked at him. He imagined the little daydream he must nurture of fostering his students, of providing them with pastoral care. Probably he went home at night and struggled over a novel about a homosexual provincial schoolteacher in love with one of his pupils. But he had no idea that he was dealing with the Beast of Saint-Louis. Manfred scraped his chair back across the linoleum floor and got up.

‘I don’t need the help of some sad faggot,’ he said. He gathered up his bag and jacket and left the room. Becault remained on the desk at the back of the room for some time. He left the teaching profession the following term.