His neighbours at the back of the courtroom didn’t know him. Perhaps they sensed vaguely that he belonged to that race of men you see lying in the corridors of night trains, or in railway stations, or that you find in police stations, waiting patiently on the ends of benches or trying desperately to explain themselves in an impossible language, the kind who are made to get off at borders, who are given a rough time by the authorities and who, perhaps because of that, have beautiful, touching doe eyes.
After all, wasn’t it for the mundane reason that his corduroy jacket smelt bad that people moved away from him? He didn’t seem to notice. He looked straight ahead, like a crank or a fool, pushed from one side to the other. He sported a long, droopy Bulgarian moustache, the kind you saw in pictures before the war, and you could easily imagine him in some national costume or other, with at the very least metal buttons on his jacket, those buttons that contain gold coins, boots of a special model, rings in his ears, a whip in his hand …
Poor Judge Niquet, with his head split in two by his mouth, really did resemble a shrill, cynical ventriloquist’s dummy!
What was the judge saying? Loursat heard him, and some phrases lodged in his memory without his being aware of it.
He was looking at the man pinned to the wall by the crowd, behind the rows of lawyers. He must have been standing on tiptoe to keep his balance.
‘… born in Batum on …’
It was in the files! The Luska file. Luska’s father had been born in Batum, at the foot of the Caucasus, where twenty-eight races jostled in a single town. Did his ancestors wear silk robes, fezes, turbans? Whatever the case, one day he had left, as doubtless his father had left for somewhere before him. By the time he was ten, the family was in Constantinople and, two years later, they were in Rue Saint-Paul in Paris!
There was something brown, oily, almost limp about it all. And the end-product of all this fermentation, the young Luska struggling now on the witness stand, was a redhead, with a frizzy shock of hair in the shape of a halo!
‘I first met Edmond Dossin one evening when I was playing billiards at the Brasserie de la République …’
Which proved that the judge, too, had wondered how the humble Luska, a barker on the pavement outside Prisunic, had come to insinuate himself into Dossin’s elegant entourage. Feudal lords need courtiers. Dossin was a feudal lord in his way, and the redhead from Eastern Europe must have flattered all his instincts, laughed when required, approved, crept about, smiled, bent to his every whim.
‘How long ago was this?’
‘It was last winter.’
‘Don’t be afraid to face the jury and speak up.’
‘It was last winter.’
Loursat frowned. He had probably been looking at the father at the back of the room for five minutes now, thinking about him, trying to sense all the …
With the eyes of someone waking with a start, he leaned towards Nicole and said a few words to her in a low voice. While she leafed through the files, he examined young Luska, almost surprised to see him still on the stand and trying, like a latecomer at a mass, to guess what point had been reached.
‘That’s right,’ Nicole said. ‘It was you who had him called.’
He got to his feet. It hardly mattered if he was cutting someone short.
‘I beg your pardon, Your Honour. I note that we have in the room a witness who has not yet been examined.’
Everyone looked around the room, of course. The public turned, scrutinizing its own ranks. And the extraordinary thing was the gently dazed air of Luska the father, who was looking around with the others, pretending to believe that he wasn’t the person referred to.
‘Who is that, Maître Loursat?’
‘Ephraim Luska.’
All the while, the son stood motionless on the stand, scratching his nose.
‘Ephraim Luska! Who let you in? How is it that you’re not with the witnesses? Which way did you come in?’
The man with the big gentle eyes pointed vaguely at a door through which he certainly hadn’t passed. Once again, he was a victim of fate! He didn’t understand why he was there, or how, and he muttered to himself as he made his way between the rows.
‘Let’s not beat about the bush.’
Monsieur Niquet had said this without thinking, without looking at young Luska, and he was surprised to hear the room laugh, only understanding when he at last noticed the witness’s shock of bushy hair.
‘Any questions, prosecutor?’
‘I would only like to ask the witness, who has known the accused since their schooldays, if he considered him to be of an open, happy nature or rather as someone quick to take offence.’
At first, Manu, knowing he was being watched, hadn’t dared to be natural. By now, forgetting the room around him, he could be seen occasionally making involuntary grimaces. At that moment, he jutted his head forwards a little to get a better look at Luska, and his facial expression became again that of a little boy challenging another.
Luska, too, turned to him, and the expression in his eyes was even blacker than that of his former classmate.
‘Definitely quick to take offence,’ he said at last.
Manu sneered. He seemed about to appeal to the judge to back him up, so outrageous did it seem to him, so incredible that Luska should dare claim that he was quick to take offence! He barely restrained an impulse to stand up and object out loud.
‘You mean, I suppose, that he was envious. Please take your time to answer. Manu was of humble circumstances, like you. At school, many of your classmates were considerably more fortunate. In such cases, clans often form. Jealousies are born, which turn to hatreds.’
‘What are you …?’ Manu began.
‘Silence!’ the judge yelled at him. ‘Let the witness speak.’
For the first time, Manu was losing his temper, appealing to the whole room to bear witness to the enormity of what was happening. Unable to resign himself, he continued muttering under his breath.
‘Silence!’ the judge said again. ‘Only the witness may speak.’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘Yes, what? Are you saying that – to use the prosecutor’s word – your companion Manu was envious?’
‘Yes.’
Rogissart resumed:
‘According to your previous statements, which the accused in fact confirms, it was he who asked you to introduce him to your friends. Please try to remember. Starting that first evening, in other words, the evening of the accident, was Manu’s attitude towards Edmond Dossin, among others, provocative?’
‘It was obvious he didn’t like him!’
‘Right! It was obvious he didn’t like him! Did he demonstrate his antipathy in a more specific manner?’
‘He accused him of cheating.’
At times, Manu was so tense, it looked as if he was going to jump over the rail of the dock.
‘How did Dossin respond?’
‘He said it was true. He said he was the cleverest of us and Manu just had to become good enough to cheat like him.’
‘In the days that followed, did you see Manu often? You worked in the same street, didn’t you?’
‘The first two or three days …’
‘What?’
‘He spoke to me. But then, as soon as things started with Nicole …’
He was so feverish, you could clearly see his knees shaking through his uncreased trousers.
‘Please go on. We’re trying to get at the truth.’
‘He stopped bothering with us, not just me, the others too.’
‘In short, he had achieved his goal!’ Rogissart said decisively, rising smugly to his full height. ‘Thank you. No further questions, Your Honour.’
Slowly, Loursat got to his feet.
From the first words, the hostilities began.
‘Can the witness tell us how much pocket money his father gave him?’
As Luska, thrown by the question, turned quickly to Loursat, Rogissart made a movement in the direction of the judge.
Loursat explained the point:
‘What the prosecutor asked of the witness was not specific, objective information, but purely personal opinions. He will allow me to elucidate in my turn the personality of Ephraim Luska, known as Justin.’
He had hardly finished when Luska retorted:
‘I didn’t need to be given money. I earned it!’
‘Very good. May I ask how much you make at Prisunic?’
‘About four hundred and fifty francs a month.’
‘Which you keep for yourself?’
‘Out of which I give three hundred francs to my parents for my food and my laundry.’
‘How long have you been working like that?’
‘Two years.’
‘Do you have savings?’
His tone was aggressive, and Rogissart stirred again and bent forwards to be heard by the judge without raising his voice.
‘More than two thousand francs.’
Looking very pleased with himself, Loursat turned to the jury.
‘The witness, Ephraim Luska, has more than two thousand francs in savings, and he isn’t yet nineteen. He’s been working for two years.’
Then, once again aggressive:
‘Were you expected to dress yourself with your hundred and fifty francs?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you managed to dress yourself and still put about a hundred francs aside. Which means that all you had left was fifty francs for your everyday expenses. Do you also know how to cheat at poker?’
Luska had somewhat got out of his depth. He was unable to take his eyes off that moving mass, that hairy face from which questions shot out like cannon balls.
‘No.’
‘You don’t cheat at poker! Did you steal money from your parents’ till?’
Even Manu was astounded! Rogissart assumed an appropriate expression to show how superfluous, even shocking, this examination seemed to him and made a sign to the judge to intervene.
‘I never stole from my parents.’
The judge struck his desk with a paper knife, but Loursat didn’t hear.
‘How many times did you go out with Dossin and his friends? Don’t you know? Let’s see now. Think. Approximately thirty times? More than that? Forty? Between thirty and forty? And you drank like the others, I assume? In other words, more than four glasses in an evening …’
The judge’s voice rose at the same time as his and Loursat at last turned towards him, abruptly calm again.
‘The prosecutor has pointed out to me that questions can only be asked of the witness through the judge. I therefore ask you, Maître Loursat, to—’
‘Of course, Your Honour. In that case, would you be so kind as to ask the witness who paid for him?’
Somewhat put out, the judge repeated:
‘Could you please tell the jury who paid for you?’
‘I don’t know.’
He was still looking resentfully at Loursat.
‘Would you ask him, Your Honour, if his companion Manu paid his share?’
Rogissart had wanted procedure to be observed. Well, too bad! The judge was forced to comically repeat everything.
‘… asks if Manu paid his share …’
‘Yes, with the money he stole!’
Ten minutes before, the courtroom had been calm, almost glum. Now everyone sensed a fight coming, or rather that it had already started, without anyone being aware of it. Because nobody understood what was going on. They all gazed with some amazement at Loursat, who had leaped to his feet and was now roaring out what still seemed like meaningless questions.
Manu’s features had grown sharper. Was he at least starting to understand?
In the meantime, Luska, beneath his archangel’s shock of hair, was feeling suddenly alone in the middle of this crowd.
‘I’d like to know, Your Honour, if the witness has had girlfriends or mistresses.’
The question became even more absurd in the judge’s immense mouth.
There was anger in the reply:
‘No!’
‘Was that because you were shy, didn’t feel like it, or rather because you needed to save money?’
‘Your Honour,’ Rogissart protested, ‘I think these questions—’
‘Would you prefer me to put it another way, prosecutor? All right, let me dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Before Émile Manu was brought into the gang, was Ephraim Luska in love with Nicole?’
Silence. Luska could clearly be seen swallowing.
‘A witness told us yesterday that he was. You will soon observe that this question is of some importance. What I am trying to establish as of now is that Luska was a virgin and a loner, and tight with his money. He hadn’t had affairs, in which he rather resembles his friend Edmond Dossin, who only a few weeks ago went to a prostitute and asked her to initiate him in …’
At this, there were protests. But Loursat stood his ground and faced them down. In vain, the judge struck the desk with his paper knife.
‘Answer me, Luska! When you approached Adèle Pigasse on the corner of Rue des Potiers a few days after the death of Big Louis, wasn’t that the first time you’d had relations with a woman?’
He didn’t move. He had turned pale, and his eyes remained wide open, unblinking.
‘The Pigasse girl, who was a regular at the Boxing Bar and plied her trade in the narrow streets in the area of the market, has been called a number of times, and I hope she’ll come to the stand before too long.’
‘Any further questions?’ the judge ventured.
‘Just a few, Your Honour. Would you ask the witness why suddenly, in the space of a few days, he felt the need to sleep with this girl several times?’
‘Did you hear the question?’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’
As for Manu, he was no longer either seated or standing, but was holding on to the rail with both hands, leaning so far forwards that his buttocks had risen from the bench and one of the gendarmes was holding him back by the arm.
‘Would you ask the accused—’
He stopped dead, as Rogissart was already objecting.
‘I’m sorry! Would you be so kind, Your Honour, as to ask the witness what he told this girl one particular night when they were in bed together?’
It was important to keep his eyes fixed on the boy at all times. A moment’s respite, and he might get a grip on himself. There was a kind of ebb and flow in him, ups and downs, moments when he grew hard and angry, and others when he looked around for support.
‘I didn’t hear the answer, Your Honour.’
‘Please speak up, Luska.’
This time, it was Manu that Luska looked at, Manu who was breathing heavily, leaning forwards, apparently about to jump the hurdle.
‘I have nothing to say. This is all false.’
‘Your Honour,’ Rogissart intervened again.
‘Your Honour, I request permission to continue my cross-examination uninterrupted. Would you ask the witness if it’s true that on the night of the 7th of October, when Manu, alerted by the gunshot, reached the second-floor corridor, he, Luska, entered the attic just in time and stayed there for several hours, unable to move because the prosecutor’s department and the police were downstairs?’
Both Manu’s fists were clenched and must have been hurting him. In the middle of the courtroom, where nobody moved, Ephraim Luska, known as Justin, was the most motionless of all, as motionless as inert matter.
Everyone waited, respecting his silence. Loursat himself, who stood with his hand suspended in mid-air, seemed to be trying to hypnotize him.
At last, a voice that seemed to come from a distance said:
‘I wasn’t in the house.’
A sigh went through the courtroom, and it wasn’t a sigh of relief.
There was irony and impatience in the air. Everyone turned to Loursat and waited.
‘Can the witness tell us, under oath, that he was home in bed that night? Will he turn to Émile Manu and tell him—’
‘Silence!’ the judge screamed in exasperation.
Nobody had spoken. There had only been the sound of feet moving at the back of the room.
‘Since you don’t dare look Manu in the face …’
But then he did. He turned abruptly and raised his head. Manu could hold out no longer: he sprang to his feet and cried, his features convulsed:
‘Murderer! Coward! Coward!’
His lips were quivering. He seemed to be on the verge of tears, or of a fit of hysterics.
‘Coward! Coward!’
They saw the shiver that ran through Luska, thought they could hear the chattering of his teeth. He was still all alone in a space that was too big and too empty.
How long was the wait? A few seconds? A few fractions of a second?
Then at last came the gesture that nobody had expected: Luska throwing himself full-length to the floor, his head in his arms, weeping, weeping …
In the middle of the judge’s face, that grotesque outsized doll’s mouth again made it seem as if he was laughing.
Slowly, Loursat sat down again, searched for a handkerchief in the pocket of his robe, wiped his brow and eyes and said with a sigh to Nicole, who had turned pale:
‘I’ve had enough!’
An ugly scene ensued: the judge pulling his robe about himself after asking his associates for their opinion, all those red and black robes fleeing, the jurors moving away reluctantly, still drawn to that body lying on the floor between two male lawyers and a female lawyer with dyed blonde hair.
Manu was being taken away and didn’t know why. He too turned back, anxious and distressed.
Loursat remained where he was, heavy and sullen, sickened by all this hatred he had dredged up and brought to the surface: hatreds like that weren’t even men’s hatreds, but the hatreds of young people, sharper, more painful, more ferocious, based on humiliation and envy, a few francs of pocket money and shoes with holes in them!
‘Do you think they’ll order a further investigation?’
He glowered at the colleague who had asked him the question. Was that any concern of his? There was movement outside the courtroom. They were calling old magistrates to the rescue. Ducup was bustling about anxiously.
Only the public, afraid to lose their places, refused to move, still staring at the empty courtroom, but there was nothing to see now but Loursat sitting with his daughter.
‘Don’t you want to get a little fresh air, father?’
She was wrong. Too bad! He was thirsty, terribly thirsty. And he didn’t care if they saw him rush off in his robe to the little bistro that served Beaujolais.
‘Is it true that Luska has confessed?’ the owner asked, serving him.
Oh, yes! And from now on everything would follow its natural course, all the confessions, all the details, including those they wouldn’t ask him, that they’d prefer not to hear!
Hadn’t the others understood that when he had thrown himself to the floor, it was out of weariness, because he wanted peace? And that the reason he had wept was relief?
At last, he was escaping the one-to-one conversation with himself, all the dirty truths he alone knew and that were going to become something else, a drama, a real one, as people imagine dramas.
Enough of this unhealthy oppression, this constant humiliation, enough especially of fear!
Did he know yet why he had killed? It didn’t matter any more! They would put it in a different way. They would translate it into decent language.
They would talk, for example, of jealousy, unrequited love, hatred for the rival who had taken Nicole from him, although he himself had never dared tell her of his love …
It would become true, and almost beautiful!
Whereas up until then, when he was alone, mulling over his memories, it had been only the painful envy felt by a poor young man, Ephraim Luska, not even envy of the rich, envy of Dossin, whom he had resigned himself to serving, but of someone else like him, someone he had brought into the group, someone who sold books opposite him and who walked all over him without seeming to notice …
‘Same again!’ Loursat said with a sigh.
What time was it? He had no idea. He was amazed to see a funeral pass in the street. On the pavement, there were people from the court, a few lawyers in their robes. Behind the hearse were other people in uniform, some of them in black. The two camps looked at each other curiously, like the servers of different ceremonies …
In the courthouse, discussions were still going on, telephone calls being made. Red-robed lawyers dashed along the corridors. Doors slammed. The gendarmes responded to questions with shrugs.
Drops of purple wine in his beard, Loursat asked for another glass. Someone touched his arm.
‘The judge is calling you, father.’
Sensing that he was hesitant to go, she looked at him imploringly.
‘Just a minute.’
He emptied his third glass and searched in his pockets for change.
‘You can pay later, Monsieur Loursat. You’ll be in again, won’t you?’