Three knocks at the door. Hard, fast, imperative. The police, André thinks. That’s how cops knock, impatiently, and he imagines them out there on the landing, guns at the ready, listening for his footsteps. He goes to the window and sees nothing in the street: no vans or suspicious cars, no lookouts. Just in case, he asks who it is, and hears the voice of his landlord: “It’s just me, Monsieur Ferrand.”
The man enters as soon as he opens the door, without greeting him, without meeting his eye. He hands him the newspaper.
“This is about you, I think.”
He taps a short news story on the front page with his index finger.
CRIMINAL ON A MOTORBIKE
André Vaillant, real name Jean Delbos, suspected of six murders committed in Bordeaux and the surrounding region, including those of Inspecteur Eugène Mazeau and his wife, drives a motorcycle, probably a Norton. The police, who are actively searching for this armed and dangerous individual, made this information public yesterday, in the hope that it will lead them to the suspect. Jean Delbos is about forty years old, and 180 cm tall, with a slim build. Anyone able to provide the police with useful information can call the central station or dial 17.34
André looks up at Ferrand, who is watching him, hands in his pockets. He folds the newspaper and hands it back to him.
“So?”
“So I thought you should know.”
The man turns away, takes a few steps. Then he throws his newspaper on the table, near a notebook filled with small sloping handwriting.
“What are you writing?”
“Nothing . . . A detective novel.”
The man laughs silently.
“You should have plenty of material . . . Can I read it? I love that, those noir thrillers. Especially written by a murderer.”
André comes over to close the notebook and put it away in a drawer.
“Why did you kill those people?”
“I didn’t kill the cop or his wife. The others, I . . .”
André falls silent. He stares at the man, who is motionless, impassive, hesitating over what he should do, strangely attracted, perhaps, by this killer who is front-page news. André knows he could take the pistol from under his pillow, get rid of the landlord to give himself time to flee. He could throw a sucker punch, knock him out. But this man just stands there, doing nothing, apparently waiting, and looking almost embarrassed, or maybe sad.
“It would take too long to explain, about the others.”
“You were in the camps, is that right? They mentioned it in the paper before. Where were you?”
“In Poland. Auschwitz.”
“That was for Jews, wasn’t it? They sent the Jews to Poland. They sent my son to Mauthausen. He was in the Resistance. He was eighteen.”
“Did he—?”
“No,” Ferrand answers hastily, as if trying to prevent the word being spoken. “Almost. When he came back he weighed only eighty-four pounds. And he wasn’t short. And he’d put some weight back on by then. He was sick. No-one seemed to know what was wrong with him. Even the doctor was afraid to come. Me and his mother, we just watched over him, hoping he wouldn’t die. There wasn’t much else we could do. He’s a fitter at Moto-Bloch now. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Did you lose someone?”
“My wife and my son.”
The man stares at him, shakes his head and sighs. He is about to say something, but André speaks first.
“There’s nothing to say. I’m going to leave.”
“I wouldn’t inform on you. I’m not like that. You must have had your reasons, for killing those people. You’re not one of those murderers who kill people for fun or to rob them. Not like all those Nazis and militiamen. You’re not like them. I know that, cos I’m not scared of you. I can look you in the eyes, like that, no worries. And I can tell you one thing: someone informed on my son and his friends, in late ’43. I’ve got his name and address, and if it were just down to what I wanted, I would . . .”
He stops talking and walks to the window. There is sunlight in the street now, shining on the façades on the other side of the road, and he stares at this light with surprise.”
“If it wasn’t for Arlette . . . I’m bringing her up on my own, now my wife is dead.”
He turns to André and speaks in a firmer voice.
“You can stay here, you know. I’ve told you I won’t go to the cops.”
André examines the man’s face, trying to decipher the lines for signs of falsehood, to tear away his smile to reveal a wolf’s leer. Impossible to know. He feels plagued by contradictory signals.
“It’ll cause you trouble, if I stay. It’s better if I go. Thanks for everything. For your silence.”
“I guess you don’t trust anyone anymore?”
“I don’t know. It’s nothing against you . . .”
Ferrand sighs, picks up his newspaper and walks to the door.
“I’ll leave you to pack. Just put the key on the table. I’ll come and get it later.”
He closes the door softly behind him and André listens to the sound of his footsteps fade as he walks downstairs. And then that crushing silence again. There are noises outside—the distant rumble of trucks on the docks, the cooing of a pigeon—but here, in this room, the silence deepens and devours him. Like a bomb crater. Or a ditch. He remembers the ditch where he died. Remembers the corpse on top of him, heavy and cold.
With his large bag on his back, he drives the motorbike over to the docks and abandons it near a bar that opens early in the afternoon and closes late at night, a bar frequented by sailors and women he can see perched on bar stools, wearing too much makeup, sometimes turning to stare at passers-by through the window, with expressions of sadness or contempt. He hopes the bike will be stolen within a few hours and that this will make the police’s work a bit more complicated.
He walks along the docks for a long time, squinting in the slanting spring sunlight, then he takes a bus and walks a bit further, thinking about Darlac who is searching for him, who will tear the city apart in order to find him. André wonders if he still has the strength and the willpower to destroy this man, wonders if the mixture of hatred and grief that has fuelled his acts up to now might be slowly thickening into a glue that will paralyze him.
He has to knock twice before the door is opened. A woman’s face appears in the narrow gap. Short salt-and-pepper hair. Large dark eyes, elongated by eyeliner. André says hello, but she doesn’t reply, just stares at him in surprise or curiosity.
“Is Abel there?”
“Jean?”
The woman’s face comes to life, with a sad smile. “Abel told me you came round. I’m glad to see you.”
Violette. André doesn’t know what to say. He tries to return her smile, to find some appropriate words, but nothing comes to his mind.
“Come in. Don’t stay out there.”
In the darkness of the hallway, she smiles at him again.
“How are you?”
She whispers, and her voice is immediately absorbed by the silence.
“O.K., I guess. I didn’t recognize you.”
“Have I aged that much?”
“No . . . Maybe it’s the short hair. But it’s definitely you.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
She spots the large sailor bag on his back.
“Put that down. You’re not leaving straight away, are you?”
After he has balanced the bag against the wall, the two of them stand there looking at each other in embarrassed silence for a few seconds.
“Abel’s not doing too well, you know. The doctor’s given him two months at the most. He’s resting, in there. He has an afternoon nap now. Come on, let’s have a coffee.”
Violette enters the dim kitchen and pours coffee into a saucepan, which she puts on the stovetop.
“What’s happened to you? You know he doesn’t want to see you anymore.”
He sits down heavily on a chair that creaks beneath him.
“I’m in trouble. Nowhere to go. I have to talk to him.”
Violette says nothing. She puts the cups on the table, along with the sugar bowl, then lights a cigarette. She doesn’t look at him, watching the coffee in the saucepan instead.
“What do you want?”
His voice makes them both jump. André turns towards Abel, who is leaning in the doorway, breathless and unsteady. His dark eyes shine deep in their sockets; the skin of his face, stretched tightly over his death’s head, glistens grayly.
Violette pushes a chair towards him and he sits down, holding on to the table as he lowers himself. He closes his eyes for a long moment, and slowly gets his breath back. His face is waxy.
“It’s you in the paper, isn’t it? Darlac’s trying to frame you for his own dirty business, right? So what do you plan to do now? Hide here? You’re up shit creek, and you want me and Violette to join you for a paddle? Is that it?”
“Just for a few days. Just enough time to . . .”
“Enough time to what?”
Abel makes a hand gesture to Violette. She gets up, grabs a cup, and pours him some coffee. He takes small mouthfuls, coughs a bit, pulls a face, then blows on the cup. He shrugs, and looks André in the eye.
“I’m all out of time. I’ll soon be finished with all this. Anyway, you know what I think about you, about what you’ve done. But I’m not going to die leaving a guy on the run to the mercy of the streets, especially not when it’s Darlac who’s hunting him. There’s a spare room upstairs. Move your stuff in. You don’t owe me anything. I’ll still have plenty of cash left when I’m dead. You can even take the car if you want.”
“Thank you, Abel. I—”
“Skip the pleasantries. I don’t even know why I’m doing it. Maybe just as a way of hanging on a bit longer. Because the past is all I have. Anyway, I think it’ll make Violette happy.”
The woman offers a tired smile. She puts her hand on André’s forearm. The silence holds the three of them together, punctuated by Abel’s ragged breathing. André jumps when Abel’s chair legs scrape the tiles and he stands up, remaining immobile for a moment, leaning on the table, blinking and shaking his head, as if he were having a dizzy spell. Then he turns slowly to the door and sets off unsteadily, holding on until he reaches the table. They hear his feet shuffling through the hallway then the soft creak of a leather chair. André shoots a concerned glance at Violette, who reassures him with a pout and a flurry of batted eyelashes.
“He’s going to read a bit, then he’ll fall asleep.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m with him. It’s my life. I was always with him. What I went through before doesn’t count. That wasn’t living.”
“Can you really do that? Cut your life in two, I mean, and get rid of the bad bits? Forget them completely?”
The woman picks up a sugar cube and soaks it in the bottom of her cup, then nibbles it.
“I don’t think you ever forget anything. You just end up not thinking about it anymore . . . Well . . . Let’s just say that it no longer weighs so much in the bag you carry around. I don’t know how to put it. I think you have to put something else in the bag. Or maybe it’s like salt: you have to soak the bag in water so the salt that burns you is slowly dissolved.”
She falls silent, watches him. André can’t bear the intensity of her gaze and looks away. He tries to think about what she’s said. He wonders what river might be able to absorb the salt that inflames his wounds.
“It’s as if I was dead and I came back to life. I remember the evening when I came back to myself. I didn’t know where I was. There was Abel sleeping on a chair, and I was scared because I thought they were the ones who had . . . And then I recognized him and it all came back to me: the doctor, the pain in my stomach . . . Abel woke up and he said, ‘How are you feeling? Are you hungry?’ I replied, ‘Yes, a little bit.’ ‘Don’t move. I’ll be back,’ he said, as if I might be about to escape through the window or start cleaning the house. He got up and I heard him fiddling about somewhere in the kitchen. He came back soon afterwards with a tray containing two plates of overcooked noodles and some cold roast pork. And he spread some pâté on bread for me. I cried so much, I felt better. And that was it—everything started again that day. We never spoke about it after that.”
She smiles and nods. Her eyes gleam. She stands up suddenly, rubbing her hands on her apron.
“I’ll show you to your room and give you some sheets.”
In the living room, Abel is asleep, mouth open, a detective novel open in his lap. His chest rises softly, at peace. André can’t help seeing a dead man, despite the small patches of color that have returned to his face.
The room smells of lavender and polish. It overlooks the small green garden, which is starting to turn blue in the twilight. He and Violette make the bed and André sniffs deeply at the scent of the clean sheets as he always has since he first slept in a real bed again, in Paris, after his return. Sleeping in this smell is one of the best moments of the day. He says this to Violette. She felt something similar after Abel removed the sheets in which she’d sweated, bled and slept like a corpse and replaced them with clean ones. These little things that no-one pays attention to in everyday life. Little scraps of happiness.
During dinner, Abel asks André: “What was it like, over there?” Violette stares reprovingly at him, sighs, stands up and clears away the bread and the bowl of vegetables to show her disagreement, then sits down again, putting a pack of cigarettes on the table and leaning forward to listen to André.
So André tells them. Sitting up straight against the back of his chair. For more than two hours, he tells them what he has never told anyone before. What no-one has ever asked him before. The things he has only ever confided to his notebooks. The things that fill his nightmares and his memories. And then Paris, his comrades, the need to live, to learn how to do it again. And also, sometimes—often—his tiredness with life. Hélène, who danced in the ruins. He talks about Olga and how he was unworthy of her. Olga lying sick in his arms and then dying in the terror of the gas chambers.
He stops speaking. Waits for the screaming to stop, the images to leave his mind. Violette holds a hand to her mouth.
Olga: he should have loved her better than he did. Maybe he didn’t love her at all. He lives with the pain of this deficient love. He uses words like love and cherish, words that people usually only speak out loud cautiously, almost apologetically, as if they were saying something embarrassing.
He talks about Daniel, whom he didn’t recognize at first when he went to see him at the garage to get that motorbike fixed. He remembers the little boy’s hand in his when they would walk through the streets every day. He opens his hand and shows it to Violette and Abel as if a trace of the child might have remained there, like a mark.
Violette and Abel listen in silence. She gets up once to make coffee, but returns to sit down while the coffee pot burbles quietly beside her. Abel does not move, does not even blink. Sometimes he nods or shakes his head gently, to show his horror or his dismay. Exhaustion, it seems, does not dare drag him away from André’s story.
“It’s late, isn’t it?” says André after a moment. “I keep talking and talking . . .”
“No, it’s fine,” says Abel. “It’s not that late.”
André pours himself a large glass of water. He cannot remember ever having talked this much.
Abel stands up. He holds out his hand to him.
“Can you help me?”
André holds him up. They walk through the hallway. The bedroom is at the end. Abel weighs nothing. Close to him like this, André can hear his rapid, whistling breath. He helps him to sit down in a wicker chair.
“You O.K.?”
Abel nods, sucking air through his mouth, trying to get his breath back.
“I misjudged you,” he says. “What I said was unfair. Everything has changed so much. And you and I have changed too . . .”
“Don’t worry about that. You should get some rest. We’ll talk about it later, if you want.”
Abel nods, then closes his eyes. He leans back against the seat of his chair, which creaks softly. André goes back to say goodnight to Violette. He finds her sitting at the table. Her cup of coffee has grown cold. She looks up at him with red eyes and smiles and gives a little wave.
“Everything alright?” he asks.
“No, but we’ll muddle through anyway. See you tomorrow.”
34 The French equivalent of 911 at the time.