RÉMI HOURTIN WAS a psychiatrist; his wife, Corinne, a child psychologist. They had opened an office together in Geneva and rented an apartment in Ferney above the Ladmirals, who introduced them to their circle of friends. At first everyone found them funny, lively, a touch pretentious. Pretty, probably lacking in self-confidence, and clearly eager to seem captivating, Corinne displayed naive admiration or cruel contempt for things, always in slavish conformity with the decrees of women’s magazines on what was in or out. Rémi had a taste for fancy restaurants, racy remarks, cigars and clear fruit brandies at the end of a meal, a lavish lifestyle. The Ladmirals felt and still feel for this jolly companion the indulgent affection people with tidy lives have for fast-lane types who faithfully keep playing their parts. Romand must have envied and perhaps secretly hated Rémi’s glib tongue, his success with women, his relaxed, uncomplicated approach to life.

It quickly became obvious that the Hourtins were having their troubles and that each of them took liberties that were frowned on in that corner of the world. They had about them a shocking air of amorality. Luc, a handsome man and not insensitive to Corinne’s charm, was able to catch himself in time, but this aborted adventure along with others that doubtless went further earned the young woman a reputation as a man-eater and homewrecker. When she left Rémi to move to Paris with their two little girls, their friends took the side of the abandoned husband. Only Florence Romand pointed out that Rémi must have cheated on his wife as much as she had on him, that if they’d made mistakes it was their own business, and that she, Florence, having never suffered any hurt from them, did not wish to judge either of them and would remain friends with both. She often phoned Corinne, and when she and Jean-Claude spent a few days in Paris, they all had dinner together. The Romands visited the apartment Corinne had found near the Eglise d’Auteuil in the sixteenth arrondissement and showed her pictures of the house they themselves were about to move into. Corinne was touched by their kindness and loyalty. At the same time, this tall, athletic girl and her big teddy bear of a husband belonged to a closed chapter in her life: she’d crossed off the province, its malicious gossip, its petty compromises, and now she was struggling to make a life for herself and her children in Paris. She and her visitors no longer had much to say to one another.

Three weeks later she was astonished to receive an impressive bouquet of flowers with Jean-Claude’s card saying that he was in Paris for a conference and would be delighted to invite her out that evening. He was at the Hôtel Royal Monceau. This detail as well surprised Corinne, and favorably: she wouldn’t have imagined he was used to staying in four-star hotels. He continued to surprise her, first by treating her to a fine restaurant and not a simple brasserie, then by talking about himself, his career, his research. She knew he was quite reserved on those subjects—it was a characteristic as proverbial as Rémi’s fondness for jokes—but seeing him as nothing more than a serious and somewhat dull scientist like so many others in the Gex region, she had never tried to break through that reserve. Suddenly she discovered a different man, a researcher of great ability and international reputation, on familiar terms with Bernard Kouchner. Soon he might be taking over the direction of INSERM—he mentioned that in passing, making it clear that he was wavering because of the burden of additional work involved. The contrast between this new reality and his earlier lackluster image made him seem all the more appealing. It’s common knowledge that the most remarkable men are also the most modest, the least concerned with others’ opinions of them. This was the first time Corinne, who had known mostly seductive sensualists like her ex-husband, had formed a friendship with one of these remarkable men, austere scholars or tormented geniuses whom she had admired from afar until then, as though they lived only in the arts and sciences pages of the newspapers.

He came back, invited her out to dinner again, spoke to her some more about his research and his conferences. The second time, however, before saying good night, he announced that he had something a bit delicate to say: he was in love with her.

Familiar with the desires of men, Corinne had been flattered that he’d chosen her as his friend without any ulterior motive of making her his mistress: that meant he was truly interested in her. Discovering she’d been mistaken, she was at first stunned (in spite of all her experience, she hadn’t seen it coming), then disappointed (he was just like the rest of them), a bit disgusted (she didn’t find him at all physically attractive), and finally moved by the pleading note in his confession. She had no trouble gently turning him down.

The next day he telephoned to apologize for his badly timed declaration, and before she got home from work he dropped a package off at her place containing a ring of yellow gold with an emerald surrounded by little diamonds (19,200 francs from the jeweler Victoroff). She called to tell him he was crazy, she would never accept such a gift. He insisted. She kept it.

He fell into the habit, that spring, of spending a day and night in Paris every week. Arriving from Geneva on the 12:15 flight, he would check into the Royal Monceau or the Concorde La Fayette and invite Corinne out that evening to a fancy restaurant. He explained these trips by claiming to be doing important experimental work at the Institut Pasteur. He used this pretext with Florence as well. In deceiving the two of them, he could tell the same lie.

THESE WEEKLY DINNERS with Corinne became the great affair of his life. It was like a spring welling up in the desert, something miraculous and unexpected. He no longer thought about anything but that, about what he would tell her and what she would say in return. The words that had whirled around in his head for so long—he was finally saying them to someone. Before, when he left home at the wheel of his car, he knew that until he returned he would be lost on a vast beach of dead and empty time where he wouldn’t speak to anyone, wouldn’t exist for anyone. Now, this time preceded and followed the moment of seeing Corinne again. It separated him from her and drew him nearer to her. It was alive, rich with expectation, uncertainty, and hope. Arriving at the hotel, he knew he was going to telephone her, arrange to see her that evening, have flowers sent to her. Shaving in front of the mirror, in the luxurious bathroom at the Royal Monceau, he saw the face she would see.

He had known Corinne in the world he shared with others, but with one bold stroke, by inviting her and establishing the ritual of these tête-à-têtes, he had introduced her into the other world, the one where he had always been alone but where for the first time he wasn’t anymore, where for the first time he existed in someone else’s eyes. He was still the only one to know this, however. He reminded himself of the unhappy monster in Beauty and the Beast, with the added touch that the beauty had no idea she was dining with him inside a castle where no one else before her had ever gone. She thought she was sitting across from a normal inhabitant of the normal world, a world in which he seemed remarkably involved, and she could not imagine—psychologist though she was—that one could be so radically and secretly estranged from it.

Did he almost tell her the truth? Away from her, he cherished the hope that next time, another time, the words of his confession would finally be spoken. And that it would go well, that there would be a flow of confided secrets, a mysterious understanding between them that would allow the words to be spoken. For hours on end, he rehearsed the preliminaries. Perhaps he could recount his strange story as if it had happened to someone else—a complex and tortured individual, a psychological case, a hero in a novel. As he spoke, his voice would grow more and more solemn (he was afraid that in reality it would become increasingly shrill). His voice would caress Corinne, envelop her in his emotion. In control of himself until then, expertly dominating every situation, the fabulist would become human, fragile. His weak spot was now revealed. He had met a woman. He loved her. Not daring to tell her the truth, he would rather die than continue lying to her. Corinne gazed at him intently. She took his hand. Tears ran down their cheeks. They went up to their room in silence, they were naked, weeping, they made love, and their shared tears tasted of deliverance. Now he could die, it wasn’t important anymore, nothing was important anymore, he was forgiven, saved.

These reveries filled his lonely thoughts. During the day in his car, at night next to his sleeping wife, he created a Corinne who understood him, forgave him, consoled him. But in his heart he knew that if he were face-to-face with her, things could not turn out this way. To move and impress her, his story would have had to be different, something like what the investigators would imagine three years later. As a fake doctor but real spy, real drug trafficker, real terrorist, he would surely have fascinated her. As simply a fake doctor, mired in fear and humdrum routine, swindling humble retirees with cancer, he didn’t have a chance, and it wasn’t Corinne’s fault. Maybe she was superficial and full of preconceived ideas, but even if she hadn’t been so shallow, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. No woman would agree to embrace that Beast, who would never be transformed into Prince Charming. No woman could love what he really was. He wondered whether there was a more unspeakable truth in the whole world, wondered if other men were so ashamed of themselves. Perhaps certain sexual perverts, the ones they call short eyes in prisons, the ones other criminals despise and mistreat.

SINCE HE WAS working and traveling a great deal, Florence took care of their move to Prévessin by herself. She arranged everything, decorated the house in her own warm and unpretentious style (pine shelves, rattan armchairs, duvets in gay colors), and hung a swing in the garden for the children. He, usually so careful with their money, began signing checks without even listening to her explanations. He bought himself a Range Rover. She never suspected either that the money came from her mother’s house or that he was spending it in Paris with even greater abandon. There was much astonishment over this at the trial, but while they did have a joint account, it seems she never looked at their bank statements.

As for the Ladmirals, they were building a house a few miles away, out in the countryside. They were living in the midst of the construction, half in their old house, half in the new one. Pregnant again, Cécile was supposed to rest as much as possible. Luc remembers Jean-Claude dropping by unexpectedly at the beginning of the summer. The workers had just left after pouring the concrete slab for the terrace. Luc and his visitor had a beer out in the rubble-strewn garden. Luc was preoccupied with the worries of a man dealing with a contractor. He inspected the work site, talking about delays, cost overruns, the placement of the outdoor grill, topics that obviously bored Jean-Claude. Not wishing to dwell on such problems, Luc dutifully asked Jean-Claude about his own move to Prévessin, but that didn’t interest him either, nor did the week’s vacation he’d just spent in Greece with Florence and the children. He answered distractedly, smiled with a distant, evasive air, as if he were pursuing an inner reverie that was infinitely seductive. Luc suddenly realized that he’d lost weight, looked younger, and instead of his usual tweed jacket and corduroy trousers was wearing a well-cut and expensive-looking suit. Luc had the vague feeling that if Cécile had been there, she would have understood at a glance. As if to confirm Luc’s suspicion, Jean-Claude blurted out that he might be moving to Paris soon. For professional reasons, naturally. Luc pointed out that he’d just moved to Prévessin. Of course, of course, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t rent a pied-à-terre and come back to the house on weekends. Luc shrugged: “I hope you’re not doing anything foolish.”

Late one evening the following week Jean-Claude telephoned him from the airport in Geneva. His voice was thick. He didn’t feel well, he was afraid he was having a coronary, but he didn’t want to go to the hospital. He could drive, and he was on his way. A half hour later, pale, extremely agitated, wheezing heavily, he came through the front door, which had been left ajar so that he wouldn’t awaken everyone. Luc examined him and diagnosed a simple panic attack. They sat down facing each other, like the old friends they were, in the dimly lighted living room. It was a quiet night; Cécile and the children were sleeping upstairs. “So, okay,” said Luc, “what’s going on?”

If Jean-Claude, as he told it, was on the verge of spilling the whole truth that night, his listener’s first reaction made him beat a retreat. Luc blew up over his having a mistress. And that it was Corinne outraged him. He’d never had a very high opinion of her; what he was hearing confirmed his suspicions. But Jean-Claude! Jean-Claude, cheating on Florence! It was the collapse of a cathedral. Although this was rather unflattering to his friend, Luc assumed that Jean-Claude was the decent guy, fairly inexperienced in love, and Corinne the siren who through sheer malice, to confirm her power and destroy a home she envied, was ensnaring him in her net. That’s what happened when you didn’t sow your wild oats at twenty—you wound up pushing forty in a full-blown fit of adolescence. Jean-Claude tried to protest, to seem not ashamed but proud of his adventure, to appear in Luc’s eyes as that dashing Dr. Romand whose reflection shone from the mirrors of the Royal Monceau. A waste of time. Luc made him promise, in the end, to break off the affair as soon as possible and then tell Florence everything, because silence is a couple’s worst enemy. A crisis weathered together, however, can turn out to be their strongest ally. If Jean-Claude didn’t act or delayed too long, he, Luc, would speak to Florence about it for both their sakes.

LUC DID NOT have to show his devotion by denouncing Jean-Claude to his wife. In mid-August, Jean-Claude and Corinne spent three days together in Rome. He had insisted on the trip, which was a nightmare for her. Their accounts, equally elliptical, agree on this point: on the last day, she told him she didn’t love him, because she found him too sad. “Too sad”: those are the words they both used. He wept, pleaded the way he had fifteen years earlier with Florence, and like Florence, she was kind to him. They parted promising always to remain friends.

He rejoined his family, on vacation in Clairvaux. Early one morning, he drove into the woods of Saint-Maurice. His father, who had been a forester there, had shown him a chasm where a fall would be fatal. He says that he tried to jump in, that he did jump in but was held back by branches that scratched his face and tore his clothes. He did not succeed in dying but doesn’t know how he got out of there alive, either. He drove as far as Lyon, checked into a hotel, and phoned Florence to tell her he’d just had an accident on the freeway between Geneva and Lausanne. He’d been thrown from the car, a Mercedes belonging to WHO; the car had been completely crushed. He’d been taken by helicopter to the hospital in Lausanne, and he was phoning her from there. Panicking, Florence wanted to rush to his side, and panicking in turn, he began to play down his injuries. He returned that same evening to Prévessin, driving his own car. The scratches from the brambles didn’t look anything like the results of a traffic accident, but Florence was too shaken to notice. He threw himself on their bed in tears. She hugged him to comfort him, gently asking what was going on, why he was suffering. Lately she had had the definite feeling that something was wrong. Still crying, he explained to her that if he’d lost control of the car, it was because he’d had a terrible shock. His supervisor at WHO had just died of a cancer that had been eating away at him for several years. During the summer, the disease had spread rapidly; Jean-Claude had been well aware that all hope was lost, but to see him dead … He sobbed all night long. Florence, although deeply moved, was surprised by the strength of his attachment to a superior whom he had never mentioned to her.

Jean-Claude as well must have felt that he needed to offer more of an explanation. At the beginning of autumn, the lymphoma that had been dormant for fifteen years awakened in the form of Hodgkin’s disease. Knowing that this would meet with more understanding than a mistress had, he confided in Luc. Listening to him say he was doomed as he sat bloated and miserable, slumped in his armchair, Luc remembered the elated Jean-Claude who had visited him at the construction site. He was wearing the same suit, but it seemed shabby, the collar covered with dandruff. Passion had ravaged him. Now it was attacking his cells. While he did not regret having argued so adamantly for a breakup, Luc felt profound pity for his friend’s soul, which he sensed was as sick as his body. Always the optimist, however, he wanted to believe that this trial would bring Jean-Claude back to Florence and lead to a deeper communion between husband and wife. “The two of you talk about it a lot, of course …” To his great surprise, Jean-Claude replied that no, they didn’t speak about it much. He had informed Florence, dramatizing as little as possible, and they had agreed to behave as if nothing had happened, so as not to cast a pall over the household. She had offered to accompany him to Paris, where he was under the care of Dr. Schwartzenberg (this also astonished Luc: he’d had no idea the world-famous physician was still seeing patients—and that’s assuming that he’d ever had office patients at all), but Jean-Claude had refused. It was his cancer, and he would fight it alone, without making demands on anyone else. He was assuming responsibility; she respected his decision.

THE ILLNESS AND treatment exhausted him. He no longer went to work every day. Florence got the children up, telling them not to make noise because Papa was tired. After driving them to school, she would have coffee at the home of one of their classmates’ mothers, or go to her dance class, her yoga class, perhaps do some shopping. Alone in the house, Jean-Claude spent the day in his damp bed, the comforter drawn up over his head. He had always perspired heavily; now the sheets had to be changed daily. Drenched in unhealthy sweat, he dozed, reading without understanding, stupefied. It was like the year he’d gone to ground in Clairvaux after his failure at the Lycée du Parc: the same gray torpor, shaken by chills.

Despite the declaration of friendship with which they had parted, he had not spoken to Corinne again since the catastrophic trip to Rome. As soon as Florence left the house, he’d hover over the telephone, dialing Corinne’s number and hanging up as soon as she lifted the receiver because he was afraid she would be annoyed to hear from him. He was astounded, on the day he dared speak, to find that she was happy he had called. She was going through a very upsetting time: professional difficulties, love affairs with no future. Her loneliness, her children, her disquieting availability were frightening to men, and she had suffered enough from their loutish behavior to welcome hearing from this Dr. Romand who was so sad, so clumsy, but who treated her like a queen. She began to tell him of her disappointments and resentments. He listened to her, comforted her. Deep down beneath the surface, he said, the two of them were much alike. She was his little sister. He returned to Paris in December, and it all began again: the dinners, the evenings out, the presents, and after the New Year, five days of romance in Leningrad.

This trip, which gave rise to wild speculation early in the investigation, was organized by Quotidien du Médecin, a daily newsletter for physicians to which Jean-Claude subscribed. If he had looked around, he could have found dozens of ways to spend a few days in Russia, but it never occurred to him to travel otherwise than with a group of doctors, many of whom knew one another, whereas he knew no one. Corinne was surprised at this, and at how studiously he avoided their traveling companions, cutting short all conversations, keeping aloof. Corinne, on the other hand, would have liked to make some friends. If he felt it beneath him to socialize with them or if, as she thought, he was afraid of any nasty gossip that might reach his wife’s ears, why were they traveling with them? No doubt about it, she found him exasperating. After three days, she made the same speech she had in Rome: it was all a mistake, they were better off as friends, big brother and little sister. He burst into tears again and, on the flight home, told her that in any case he had cancer. Soon, he would be dead.

What could one say to that? Corinne was troubled and irritated. He begged her, if she had any affection left for him at all, to telephone him now and then, not at home but at his voice mailbox. Their secret code would be 222 for “I’m thinking of you but there’s no need to call back,” 221 for “Phone me,” 111 for “I love you.” (He had the same type of code with Florence, who left the answering service a number from 1 to 9, depending on the urgency of the call.) Anxious to put an end to this scene, Corinne wrote down the numbers, promising to use them. He brought back Russian fur hats with earflaps for his children and nesting dolls for his goddaughter.

HAVING BOTCHED THIS second chance, he fell back into the same old routine and despair. To explain his presence at home, Florence had told most of their friends about his cancer but had asked them not to tell anyone else, which meant that each of them believed he or she was the only one who knew. Jean-Claude was surrounded by discreet solicitude and strained joviality.

At a dinner in the Ladmirals’ home, Rémi, who had gone to see his daughters in Paris, told everyone the latest news about his ex-wife. As unstable as ever, she had wavered between two men to remake her life: a nice guy who was something along the lines of a cardiologist, very big in his field but not much fun, and another man who was definitely more with it, a Parisian dentist who wasn’t the type to let her twist him around her little finger. Rémi, without knowing him, would have leaned somewhat toward the first man, figuring that Corinne needed stability and protection; unfortunately she liked her love life sleazy and had chosen the second guy. The expression on Jean-Claude’s face when he heard that was truly pitiful, Luc remembers.

As she had promised, she called from time to time and, to show him how much she trusted him, would describe her passionate relationship with the dentist who wouldn’t let her twist him around her little finger. He made her suffer but it was stronger than she was, she had him under her skin. Jean-Claude agreed in a doleful voice. He coughed, explaining that the lymphoma was weakening his immune system.

One day, she asked his advice. The office she owned with Rémi in Geneva had been sold. Her share, which she had just received, amounted to 900,000 francs. She was thinking about using it to buy a new office, probably in partnership with someone, but didn’t want to rush into anything and, rather than leave the money in her current account, preferred to invest it. The few investments she did have didn’t bring in much. Did her big brother have a better idea? Well, of course he did. UOB, Quai des Bergues, Geneva, 18 percent a year. He flew to Paris and went with her to the main branch of her bank, where she withdrew the 900,000 francs in cash; then he took the plane again, as in a scene from a movie, with a small suitcase stuffed with bills. No receipt, no trace. He remembers having said, “If something were to happen to me, all your money would be lost.” To which she tenderly replied (this is his version), “If something happened to you, it’s not the money I’d be sorry about.”

It was the first time he was deceiving not elderly members of his family, anxious only to put their savings to work for their heirs, but a determined young woman who needed her money and was counting on getting it back quickly. She had insisted on that, making sure she could do so whenever she wanted, and he had guaranteed it. As it happened, he was in trouble. The gold mine his mother-in-law had entrusted to him was all gone. During the last two years, his expenses had skyrocketed. In Prévessin, he had adopted the lifestyle of his social set, paying 8,000 francs a month in rent, buying himself a Range Rover for 200,000 francs, replacing it with a BMW for 250,000 francs, and in Paris he’d ruined himself with luxury hotels, expensive dinners, and presents for Corinne. In order to keep going he needed that money, which he deposited in his three Banque Nationale de Paris accounts almost as soon as he got home: the one in Ferney-Voltaire, the one in Lons-le-Saunier, and the one in Geneva. The bank director in Ferney was astonished by these irregular cash deposits but didn’t dare question him about his sources of revenue. He had telephoned Jean-Claude several times to propose some investments, some more rational ways of managing his money. Jean-Claude kept putting him off. More than anything else he feared overdrawing his account, which he had once again come perilously close to doing. But he knew that he had only obtained a reprieve and that touching Corinne’s money would make catastrophe inevitable.