Let’s see where we are, says the chief inspector. On the other side of the desk, the prisoner is slumped in defeat. We received a phone call from your husband, he continues; it seems that you are not yourself these days. So tell me, what are those marks on your arms, Madame Hermant?
The woman’s arms are covered; she studies them without moving. Then the chief inspector explodes: he stands up, pounding his fat fist on the desk, and walks around it yelling stop fucking with me, show me your arms now and tell me how they got that way.
Since she still does nothing, the inspector who brought her in steps forward and pulls up one sleeve of her sweater. The chief inspector is right next to her, the mass of his face swollen in a grotesque close-up. All she sees is an orbit, black against the backlighting because it’s the accused who is illuminated, the lamp shining in her face, the face of an animal dragged from the depths of its burrow. But in that instant she loses all fear. A feeling of destiny sweeps over her: she awaits the fatal blow.
You’ve been fighting? bellows the chief inspector, his thick breath shooting directly into the nostrils of the accused woman, you had a fight and the other one fought back, is that it? You look like a middle-class lady but you have your little moods, get angry and then you can’t answer for yourself? Huh, Madame Hermant?
The echo of these suppositions dies away in the office, and she says yes looking down at her lap, yes I had a fight. And who with? continues the chief inspector in the same vein, the syllables falling like projectiles around the person in pain. With the Boujon kid, she admits at last, I fought with Tony Boujon.
The two men draw back smartly. What the hell were you doing with him? demands the chief inspector. So then comes the admission that she’d undertaken some research. Cut out newspaper articles. Waited for him in the Gare de l’Est to talk to him but regrets that now, it wasn’t a good idea in the end. Then she falls silent once more. After which neither the shouting of the chief inspector nor that of the inspector when they switch roles (counting on the contrast to soften up the target) nor their kicks at the chair she clings to until she finally lets go and winds up on the floor—nothing will rouse her from the mutism into which she has withdrawn, and they lock her up out of spite.
The cell is about six feet deep by four and a half wide. Provided with a cot and a door of safety glass, it is absolutely clean. The walls do not weep with humidity; no insect scoots around the tile floor. If one wishes to go to the toilet, permission is granted; one is accompanied by an officer of one’s own sex. One can also obtain a glass of water but nothing to eat. At last the possibility of a phone call is offered. The person in question ignores this offer. She curls up on the cot with her palms over her eyelids to make everything black, because that’s still where one sees the best.
This will give you time, the chief inspector said before tossing her in the hole, to think about the consequences of your actions. Well that’s just what she wants, to bring some order to her memory. Instead of coming to light, however, events are retreating ever deeper into darkness.
Bereft of her recent past, she shelters in ancient history. She remembers the mother who has no more beginning than end, impossible to date by any method, introspection or carbon 14. And next to the monolith appears a tiny shadow. A personage who was loved after a fashion, with what remained of affection, but who then simply evaporated one fine day: they were no longer three in the apartment on Place Saint-Médard, they were two, face-to-face like two porcelain figures. And if the disappearance of the third element upset the equilibrium of the landscape for a while, it was quickly relegated to the status of remembrance, like those bibelots on the mantelpiece one polishes automatically but would never give up for anything in the world, so indispensible are they to the new configuration of the whole. Explanations were doubtless demanded, around the age of twelve or fourteen, when one hopes through skillful inquiry to obtain justice and amends. It quickly becomes clear, however, that an absence of cause is better than a slew of unsatisfactory motives, and silence reclaims its due.
The person on the cot sways from right to left and vice versa. Time passes and might flow on forever, but a back twinge or a tiny ache in one knee finally brings the body back to mind. Leading to a lifting of the head, a change of position. An examination of what’s going on outside, beyond the glass door, in the corridor where a few scarce officers pass without ever looking at the prisoner.
Toward the middle of the night, they remove her from her cage to return her to the same office. Another guest is already seated in one of the visitors’ chairs.
Sit down, Madame Hermant, orders the chief inspector. You will now tell me how the two of you met.
That’s her, Tony Boujon insists loudly, she’s the one that came up to me, then she wanted to go to my place, it’s her that planned it all!
Well, Madame Hermant, what do you say to that?
It’s true, says the humiliated woman. I saw his photo in the paper. I don’t know why I got the idea to follow him but I did and I regret it.
The story of this episode must be told. Everything must be gone over in extreme detail, the approach, the assault, the tangled limbs, and precisely how it went, including what fluids were exchanged, until the suspects agree on a common version. Which doesn’t present major difficulties, since the boy wants to downplay his guilt and the woman wants to comply. She says yes, it’s true, I threw myself at him then I don’t know what came over me, I scratched him, I bit him, he defended himself as best he could, and the boy enthusiastically endorses that version, repeating yes, that’s it, that’s totally what happened, she wouldn’t let go of me, I didn’t know how to get her off me. The policemen take down this version. Sometimes they look up, having trouble believing that two suspects would agree so zealously with each other. But in the other business, the important one, with the doctor, Tony Boujon has a cast-iron alibi. He is careful to bring this up, how he had to go to work earlier that day, a machine had broken down, they’d called him in to help out and three workmen can testify that he was there all night.
Then perhaps Madame Hermant is your accomplice, suggests the chief inspector; perhaps she is the hand and you the brains in this case. Everyone in the room looks at everyone else, considering this hypothesis, each one weighing it individually, and it’s so idiotic that in order to save face the chief inspector is the first to abandon it, rising and swatting the kid, who lands on the floor as the fat man leaves the office saying little bastard.
The two accused don’t dare turn around to see if the inspector is still behind them. Tony climbs painfully back onto his chair and they wait in perfect submission. Finally they figure out that they’re alone but still don’t move, staying on their chairs for long minutes that become hours. Shortly after dawn, an officer frees him and takes her back to her hole.
A few more hours pass during which she ties her hair in knots, rocking back and forth this time, hypnotized by her own movement. An officer enters the cell to place a glass of water next to her and asks if she wants to go with her to the toilet. She replies no thank you. At the end of the afternoon, someone opens the door again to tell her she is free.
She works her way slowly out of the cell, and hugging the walls so harshly illuminated by the ceiling light in the corridor, blinking and lightly touching these walls in case she has to lean on one, she reaches the elevator, crosses the lobby of the police station and finds herself outside. At first she can’t remember very well how to get home, what would be the best bus or métro line. She remembers that her arms are empty and that the child who belongs there is missing.