Late one night in early 1968, Benard sat at his desk, going once again through the documents that Noi had given him. Charles’ life had been so complicated and unhappy, Benard wondered if the boy had had any chance at all. Now that he understood the whole story he was convinced that Charles’ statelessness had contributed to his feeling of dislocation and his criminal record.
Charles had been eighteen years old when he arrived back in Marseilles after his disastrous trip to Saigon. When French immigration authorities gave him only a temporary visitor’s permit and refused him permission to work, a pattern of petty crime was established – mainly stealing cars – for which he was punished with ever-increasing jail terms and a deportation order.
Once Charles’ current jail term was completed he would face deportation from France again. But to what country? India? Vietnam? The problems would only repeat themselves. Benard got up and walked out into the night air, on his way to the library, where he had already spent months poring over history books and legal records relating to France and Cochin-China.
He thought that there must be a solution to the problem, and since current legal opinion was ambiguous, he had been searching for forgotten laws that might still have effect. At the end of the evening he found one: a law of 1898 which proclaimed that people born in Saigon automatically had the right of French citizenship.
On Saturday 6 April 1968, Charles turned twenty-four. He spent the entire day in solitary waiting for Benard to arrive for his usual visit. Finally Benard entered the visitors’ room wielding a large brown paper parcel.
‘See if they fit,’ he said, watching Charles’ face as he removed the wrapping eagerly. Inside was a crisp new shirt, a jacket, trousers and a shoe box. As the lid came off to reveal a pair of shiny leather shoes, he was pleased he’d been able to follow Charles’ instructions. He’d been careful to avoid a pointed toe.
‘Thank you, Alain. I’m so happy today. I don’t even care that they put me back in solitary. They expect me to work. But I refuse! How can I work with only eleven more days to freedom?’
‘I’ve never seen you look so healthy,’ said Benard, feeling content.
‘I sleep well, eat well, do yoga, and pray every day. But what about the suit?’
‘Hotchand has sent you some clothes,’ said Benard. ‘They should be here by the time you’re free.’
He hadn’t told Charles that when he’d first written to his father he’d received a frankly despairing account of Charles’ visit to Saigon. It concluded with this admission: ‘When Charles left, I decided I must forget him for ever.’
Fortunately, in the ensuing eighteen months, the father’s attitude had softened and Hotchand had sent a measuring chart to Charles so that he could make him some suits. He even offered to have his son back and to make him manager of one of his stores.
‘If he behaves nicely,’ he wrote to Benard, ‘some day he will be rich.’
Noi had also kept in touch. ‘Thank you very much for all the things you do for my son,’ she wrote to Benard soon after their first meeting. ‘Tell him I’ve forgotten the past, and I think of him always.’
Starting to enjoy his birthday for the first time that day, Charles couldn’t contain his excitement.
‘It’s been five years now, Alain, five years in jail! What a waste. And now, thanks to you, it won’t happen again. It will never happen again. I feel so different, like a new man, Alain. And when I look back at my past, it fills me with horror.’
‘It’s not about what you did, Charles,’ said Benard quickly, ‘it’s more what was done to you.’
‘But everything changed the day you gave me a country, Alain. You came through that door and handed me a future.’
‘I didn’t give you a nationality, Charles. You are legally entitled to that.’
‘But before you, nobody cared,’ he said, carefully buttoning up his new white shirt. He stood before Benard in his new outfit. ‘So, how do I look?’ he asked expectantly.
‘Like a business executive on his way to the top,’ Benard said, impressed by Charles’ transformation.
Even in his prison clothes Charles had always looked stylish. He was meticulous about his personal appearance. Now, in the black trousers, white shirt and sports jacket, he radiated a commanding presence.
‘You look ready for your new life. And I have news. You start with the fire-equipment company selling fire extinguishers two weeks after you’re out, and in three months they’ll give you a car.’
‘A country, a job. You are even letting me stay in your apartment. Without you, what would I do?’
Having finished preening, Charles walked over to the table and sat down opposite Benard. For a moment, he put his head in his hands, and then as if in a trance, he began to talk. Later Benard realized what a startling confession he had made.
‘I know I’ve been impulsive in the past, Alain,’ he said, ‘but that’s all over now. You can trust me. I understand myself better now. I know that inside me there are two natures at war with each other. On one side is my logic and intelligence, even my spirituality. And on the other, there is my weaker side, my emotions. It is this side which made me fixate on wanting to be with my father. It was an obsession that drove me back to Vietnam and to disaster. And so when I ended up in jail, I decided to kill this side of myself. That’s why I went on the hunger strikes, Alain. And the first few days were torture. I wanted to give up. “This is crazy,” I said to myself. “It’s too hard. Forget it.” But I answered myself. “No, don’t give up! Resist! Suffer! And then you can anchor this suffering inside.”’
Charles thumped his stomach with his fists, proud of his muscled torso.
‘If my feelings ever get swept away again, I have this inner core I can cling to now. That’s how I lasted forty-five days without food.’
Although accustomed to his young friend’s intensity, Benard was alarmed. And yet he was deeply moved too.
‘If you eliminate your feelings, Charles,’ he said gently, ‘you’ll turn yourself into a monster.’
‘I still have feelings,’ he said calmly. ‘But I’m in control. Remember the day you came and told me that you had seen my mother? She had given you all the papers relating to me and told you, “Here is my son. Take him. I give him to you.” I had been completely numb until that moment, and then a strange sensation came into my heart. So many times you have come into this room, bringing me the things I have needed so desperately. My citizenship papers. Remember? It was you who gave me a fatherland. All this you did for me and more, much more.’
Benard nodded. He had done everything he possibly could for his troubled friend.
‘And then one Saturday you didn’t come,’ Charles continued. ‘All day I waited in the cell, expecting them to call my name. It got dark, and still I waited. Where were you? Why weren’t you here? When at last I realized you wouldn’t come, that same strange sensation flowed into my heart, stronger than before. It took me back to my childhood. I smelled the soup stalls near the river in Saigon.’
Charles looked up, straight into the older man’s eyes, and smiled.
‘I analysed this feeling, Alain. And then I realized what it was. It was the emptiness in my heart when Noi took me away from my father.’
He jumped up and began pacing the cell.
‘It was a yearning, an ache, like my emotions for Hotchand,’ he explained. ‘It made me laugh, Alain. I laughed, and then I wept. I had gone all around the world searching for my father until I landed in Poissy Jail and then here, deep in the dungeons, my father comes to me, my true father.’
Benard stared at the handsome young man. He felt the mesmeric pull of Charles’ eyes.
‘Do you realize, Alain?’ said Charles, coming over to him, clamping both hands on the man’s shoulders and staring into his eyes with a sort of joy. ‘You have become my father.’
At this moment they heard the rattle of keys, and a guard pushed open the door. Charles’ hands dropped to his sides. He stepped away from his friend, and Benard stood up quickly, aware that the guard was listening.
‘Do you need anything else before the seventeenth?’ he asked, attempting to keep the emotion from his voice.
‘Just a belt, thanks, Alain,’ said Charles nonchalantly. ‘The trousers are a bit loose.’
At dawn, eleven days later, Alain Benard drove through the forest of St-Germain-en-Laye to Poissy Jail. At home, the boy’s room was ready, and the suits which had arrived from his father in Saigon were hanging in the cupboard. Now, he wanted to be there, waiting for Charles when he came through the gate. But as he turned the corner out of the forest, he saw him sitting on a suitcase under the streetlamp in front of the tall iron gates. As he pulled up beside him, Charles leapt up, grinning broadly.
‘They couldn’t wait to get rid of me!’ he exclaimed.
The very next evening, Benard surprised his charge with an invitation to a dinner party. He had not been able to resist the opportunity to introduce his young friend to an educated fraternity of his peers and knew their hosts’ tastefully appointed home would impress Charles.
Everything began propitiously. The murmur of pre-dinner conversation rose and fell. The silver candelabra blazed on the sideboard. Three bottles of burgundy were uncorked and the hostess ladled gazpacho into pink china bowls. Benard, sitting at her right, passed the bowls to the rest of the dinner guests, discreetly keeping an eye on Charles, who was clearly at ease despite the great contrast with his recent circumstances. Rather than feeling like a fish out of water, which Benard had feared, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Also seated at the table, opposite Charles, was an exquisite young woman. She had captured Charles’ attention immediately, but her response to his glances was not what he hoped. In fact her mind was quite elsewhere. Just that morning, her boyfriend, a fellow student at the Sorbonne, had told her that he wanted to end their relationship. When she did notice that Charles was staring at her, she felt slightly annoyed. She was in no mood for unsolicited male attention. When her soup arrived, she was relieved to find a distraction, turning to the guest on her right.
With the arrival of the duck, the host stood up and began to slice the meat. His young niece stood next to him pouring from the sauce boat. Conversation lulled as the plates were passed along the table. Charles, who attached little importance to food, was secretly bemused by the formality of the proceedings and the glow of entitlement enveloping the scene. He glanced again at the luminous young woman at the other side of the table. This time he caught and held her eyes. A shiver went through her.
Why does that handsome young man keep staring at me? she asked herself, aware that the intensity of his gaze was making her feel uncomfortable. She averted her eyes. When she glanced up again, he was smiling and talking to the people around him. With his high cheekbones and sensual mouth, he was unlike anyone she had ever seen before. He seemed so composed, so in his element, and yet there was something electric about him that singled him out.
Benard had noticed this covert exchange, and the way Charles was attempting to mask his interest in the young woman. He decided to keep an eye on the pair. When dessert arrived he began to pass bowls of lemon sorbet down the table. He was so proud of the boy. Watching him, so at home in his new suit and tie, talking urbanely with this group of intellectuals, he became convinced that Charles was going to make it. With his brains and charm, how could he fail?
After the meal, the guests dispersed to the library for coffee. The young woman chose a seat by the window.
‘Forgive me, Mademoiselle,’ said Charles, taking the opportunity to approach her. ‘Perhaps you caught me glancing at you a few times. I admit, I couldn’t help but notice your beautiful hands. Tell me, has anyone ever read them?’
For years he’d been studying the pseudo-science of reading palms. The lines on his own hands indicated a long life. He drew a chair close up beside her. She extended her fingers, which tingled as her skin made contact with his.
‘Do you believe in palmistry?’ she asked, uncertainly. He bent his head over her hands.
‘I can see a journey across two cultures,’ he murmured.
‘I was born in Morocco,’ she said, taken aback.
‘Maybe that’s it,’ he replied slowly, ‘although I was looking at the path of the future.’
‘I don’t understand how it could work,’ she said, drawing back from the sudden intimacy. ‘I’ve always assumed it was like people being obsessed with astrology.’
‘It goes against my love of logic too,’ he replied, reassuring her.
‘Cognac, Cointreau, Calvados?’ asked their host, as he wheeled a cart past tinkling with bottles of liqueur.
‘No thank you,’ said Charles, letting go of her hands and sliding back into his chair. An awkward silence followed and the young woman was relieved when Benard arrived to join in the conversation.
‘Do you work together?’ she asked Charles politely.
‘No. I’m Alain’s guest at the moment while I finish my studies,’ he replied quickly.
‘Allow me to introduce my friend Charles Sobhraj, Mademoiselle,’ said Benard. ‘Charles, this is Chantal Lemaître.’
She smiled, producing a cigarette from her handbag and lighting it.
‘What are you studying?’ she enquired.
‘Law,’ he answered, looking shyly at Benard, who remained silent. ‘But mostly I travel and do business in different parts of the world.’
She sensed his evasiveness, but just then several of the other guests decided to join them, and the moment was lost.
Charles was up early the next morning and dressed in one of his new Saigon suits, tailored to his detailed specifications: single-breasted, high-buttoned, with narrow lapels and tapered trousers. He splashed himself with Benard’s Eau Sauvage and lightly oiled his glossy black hair.
‘Alain, is it possible for you to advance me a few francs on my future salary?’
Hovering anxiously as he watched the former inmate transform himself into an impeccable young gentleman, Benard readily agreed. Although a court order forbade Charles from entering the inner-city arrondissements, he guessed the boy was headed for the centre of Paris. Let him enjoy his first day of real freedom.
From the Metro, Charles joined the crowds walking along the Boulevard St-Michel. Tourists sat in cafés, watching the elegant Parisians from behind copies of the International Herald Tribune. A man played a flute, and there was laughter in the air as couples strolled arm-in-arm towards the Luxembourg Gardens. For a moment Charles was caught up in the easy atmosphere of a Parisian spring. He had his whole life ahead of him, safely anchored to the community as a citizen of France. He was ready to seek his fortune – preferably an enormous one – to make up for the five years of captivity.
Finding a café in the Place de la Sorbonne, he took a seat at a table where he could watch the students surging through the stone archway of the university. He found himself enthralled by commonplace sights, and savoured the passing parade for an hour or so. It was still hard to believe he was free.
Then Charles saw her. In a short tartan skirt and a silk blouse with a satchel slung over her shoulder, Chantal was walking towards him, caught in the stream of the lunchtime crowds.
‘Chantal, hello,’ he called, rising from his chair, trying to look casual. ‘I’ve been doing some research in the library. What a lucky coincidence! How about lunch?’
‘Why not?’ she agreed, and sat down. In contrast to the nervousness of the previous evening, they now found each other to be completely relaxed.
From that day and over the ensuing weeks he pursued her relentlessly, driving her to her classes in Benard’s Triumph Herald, surprising her with expensive gifts, narrating selected episodes from his past, and being altogether attentive, serious and devoted. Around them, seemingly without warning, the protests of May ’68 unfolded as the students of Paris stormed the streets. They burned cars, built barricades, and draped red flags over the statues of Victor Hugo and Louis Pasteur. It is forbidden to forbid, proclaimed the graffiti. We are inventing a new world!
So it seemed. The Sorbonne itself was occupied, and a lecture hall renamed ‘Che Guevara’. A jazz band played day and night in the courtyard. The riotous mood spread. Factories and schools closed, and at one point all of France shut down for a twenty-four-hour general strike. In support of the students, half a million men, women and children marched forty abreast from the Place de la Republique through the Latin Quarter to the Place Denfert-Rochereau, chanting, ‘De Gaulle – Assassin!’
A sign was hung from the Sorbonne declaring: ‘Ten days of happiness already.’
One afternoon in the middle of May, Charles and Chantal wove their way, in an almost dreamlike state, through the disarray of barricades to the blossoming cherry trees on the banks of the Seine. Oblivious to the crackle of tear gas and the echoing chants of ‘Freedom now!’ Charles took her hand and asked Chantal to marry him.
From this time on, Chantal began to stay quite often with Charles in his room at Benard’s apartment. An only child, she had always lived at home with her elderly parents at Châtenay-Malabry, a town on the outskirts of Paris. Now the new arrangement led to bitter arguments with her parents.
Benard, too, made her feel uncomfortable.
‘Doesn’t your father mind you staying here?’ he asked her one morning as she was pouring a coffee.
‘Yes, Alain, he does,’ she had answered serenely, ‘but I remind him that I am twenty-one now and getting married soon.’
A lukewarm smile was all Benard had to offer before he disappeared behind the pages of Le Monde. She didn’t understand him. He was never rude to her, and yet he kept her at a distance, avoiding friendship. Was he jealous, she wondered? In any case, she would be glad to get away from this apartment.
One day Charles suggested that a trip to Deauville would give them a chance to spend time alone. Wouldn’t it be romantic to visit the lavish casino for dinner? She readily agreed. She had no interest in gambling, she’d never been to a casino before, but the chance to have Charles to herself was irresistible.
In Deauville the summer people had left for the warmth of Cannes and Monte Carlo. Chantal had selected a blue silk dress for the evening and was proudly wearing the diamond necklace her mother had given her. But they never made it to the dining room. Instead, in the lavish, half-empty casino she found herself one of a small crowd which gathered, as if hypnotized, to watch Charles play chemin de fer. No one noticed her beauty, the blue silk dress, or the necklace glittering in the light from the chandeliers. She watched Charles commanding the cards with the cool poise of a professional. He seemed incapable of losing. Within three hours his handful of chips had become a cluster of tall towers. All around her, people were looking on with awe. This was the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. She loved everything about him. His strangely sculptured face was so unique and compelling that she never wanted to take her eyes from him.
Yet she soon became aware of the press of men with cigars and cognac trying to push past her to watch Charles play. At one moment he smiled and lightly brushed her cheek with his hand, before turning back to the table. As the croupier pushed another mound of chips towards Charles, the crowd closed in front of her. She lost sight of him, and could suddenly bear the tension of the gambling throng no longer. Claustrophobic, drenched with perspiration, she escaped outside to the terrace, glancing impatiently at her watch.
Why didn’t he quit? she asked herself, her heart thumping, her throat contracting with fear. Surely he had won enough already. If he stopped playing now, his winnings would mean they didn’t need to wait to get married. Perhaps they could even afford a car and he would stop borrowing other people’s. Lately, this had worried her. Charles didn’t have a licence and she didn’t really know why people let him use their cars. Charles seemed to be doing well at his job, and he would soon be promoted and given a car of his own. But she was afraid he would lose this chance if he were caught driving illegally. Already she was dreading the return trip to Paris. The Ford sedan that Charles had magically acquired was jammed in second gear, the windscreen wipers were broken and only one headlight worked.
She looked up at the dark-grey skies of the resort town. Even these anxieties could not dampen her joy at their forthcoming wedding. She knew that with their combined intelligence and beauty, she and Charles would go far. Up to a few months ago, her whole life had been given over to ‘culture’, to art, music, ballet and poetry. Now she thought of these occupations as adolescent. Real life, a shared adventure with Charles Sobhraj, was to replace them. At night after her classes, she typed out the lists of his prospective customers and ironed his shirts. She would do anything for him.
Chantal’s only sadness lay in the coldness with which her parents had greeted the engagement. Mr Lemaître was a conservative civil servant, and he had learned that Charles was a man with a criminal past. But she strenuously defended her fiancé. ‘Given his wretched upbringing,’ she insisted, ‘it would be surprising if Charles had not got himself in trouble!’
She had never pressed her fiancé about his past convictions, nor did he like to talk about them. She believed her love was the antidote to the insecurity which must have sparked his criminal behaviour. And, in the end, she knew she would win even her father over.
Now she saw Charles coming towards her. In her heart, she knew already what had happened.
‘Everything?’ she asked, as he came up and took her hands.
‘Everything. More than everything,’ he replied without emotion.
‘Oh, Charles! You talk so much about self-control. Why didn’t you just stop?’
He looked up at the sky above her head before answering.
‘You know, I kept thinking, just a little bit more, and we can own our own house. And then, what about a new car? Of course then I thought we will have children one day. I want the best schools. Today my luck is running high.
‘I guess my dreams ran away with logic and I couldn’t stop playing. I started to lose. Then I thought, I’ll get it back and then, little by little …’ He shrugged. ‘Darling, forgive me.’
How could he tell her what he was feeling? That he resented having to work each day for so little. He would never regain the years stolen from him by France. Five lost years! He wanted to win them back. Chantal did not know the extent of his criminal past, so how could she gauge the bitterness he felt? Even to himself, Charles couldn’t admit that his gambling was a compulsion.
‘Of course I forgive you, Charles,’ she said immediately. ‘You lost a lot, but remember, you started out with very little.’
He stepped away from her, glancing back at the casino, bright with lights.
‘Actually,’ he said soberly, ‘I need to settle some things with the management before we can leave here. I’ll need to borrow your necklace.’
‘Charles, what do you mean?’ she said, confused, her hand automatically moving to the necklace she had been so proud and excited to wear.
‘I’ll pawn it. We can get it back later.’
‘But it’s from my mother, and her mother gave it to her. It’s a family heirloom.’
‘I know, darling, that’s why we will get it back,’ he said as he moved around behind her, caressing her neck as he unclasped the necklace.
As they set off for Paris less than an hour later, it began to pour with rain. Visibility was bad. Charles avoided the Normandy Autoroute and took secondary roads. Near Lisieux they picked up a hitchhiker. By the time they reached the village of Thiberville, Charles was ignoring the speed limit. Sirens began to wail and two motorcyclists began to chase them.
‘I must ask you to excuse me,’ Charles said politely, turning to the hitchhiker, who was cowering in the back seat, ‘I just don’t have time tonight to stop for the police.’
Despite her fear, Chantal was about to giggle when the car crashed into a pole and she lost consciousness. The three of them were rushed to nearby Bernay Hospital for observation. Chantal was given eight stitches in her chin, and the hitchhiker was discharged. Charles, however, disappeared as he was waiting to be X-rayed. Chantal could not understand why until the police explained that he had been driving a stolen car. The following day he was found, arrested and sent to Évreux Jail.
Alain Benard looked up at the Christmas tinsel hanging from the ceiling of the prison hospital. With a heavy heart he waited outside the emergency ward. Why had Charles been rushed here? Had he done something desperate? Was the shock of yesterday’s court sentence too much for him? Charles had often said that if he lost Chantal, he would kill himself. Had the revelations of his criminal background finally broken his spell over her?
Benard had watched the whirlwind courtship unfold with alarm. Chantal was an innocent, adoring child, convent-educated in Morocco until she was eighteen. She’d grown up in the sheltered community of middle-class colonists. Her love for Charles made her easy prey to his grand delusions. Often Benard had wanted to warn her. Many times he had debated telling her that Charles had spent five years of his life in prison, that legally he was not even supposed to enter the metropolitan area of Paris, that some nights he came back to St-Germain with young girls who later phoned Benard complaining that Charles had tricked them into giving him money. He had wanted to warn her, but he had vowed to remain a neutral ally of Charles. It was not his role to be the bell around a leper’s neck, and the boy was already handicapped enough by his past. So, in the end, Benard had said nothing. Yet whenever Chantal had stayed the night at St-Germain, he could never fully disguise his embarrassment at her ignorance.
He looked up as he heard a light step approaching. It was Chantal. She was looking pale, and there was a scar on her chin. Usually, by mutual agreement, they had visited Charles in jail on different days.
‘How is he?’ Benard asked. ‘What’s happened?’
‘You’ll be amused,’ she said. ‘They’ve taken him off to operate. You’ll never guess what he did …’ Her eyes shone. ‘He swallowed a spoon.’
‘My God! What was he trying to do – kill himself?’
‘No. It was so they would transfer him from Évreux Jail to here. The visiting hours are longer. I’ve just been with him for three hours.’
Benard decided to postpone his own visit and offered to drive Chantal back to Paris. For most of the way their conversation skirted the subject of Charles, but as he neared Chantal’s parents’ home, he said, ‘So you finally found out.’
‘Yes. The first time I went to see him in Évreux he told me everything. And he told me about you too, Alain. He owes you a lot.’
Benard would like to have said that Charles owed him nothing, that he received ‘grace’ for what he did, but instead he asked, ‘Will you still marry him?’
‘Of course, Alain. I tell you honestly; I love him now more than ever. I know what you’re thinking, and it’s true. Until the crash I was blind, a stupid, love-crazed schoolgirl. But I was knocked out and a light went on.’
She laughed at the phrase.
‘Now I can see the little boy inside the man, and he knows it. And he also knows that I’ll stand by him. That will help him adjust to reality, don’t you think?’
Benard sighed. ‘Another six months in jail could have a bad effect. He’ll be bitter. He won’t reform overnight.’
‘Nor will I abandon him overnight,’ she said, passionately. ‘Do you expect me to drop him because he’s not a model fiancé? It will take time, Alain, of course, but it’s worth it. You already know that. He’s a special person, isn’t he? Unique, gifted, more intelligent and real than those revolutionaries who used to hang around the Sorbonne. I love him, Alain. I’m committed. He’s dropped into the abyss, and if I do nothing else in this life, I just want to help one human being climb out of his own despair.’
‘But when you’re his wife, Chantal, you’ll be dependent on him. He’s strong, he’ll overpower you.’ Benard shook his head. ‘He needs treatment.’
‘I’m strong too, Alain. I can give him what no psychiatrist can. Love.’
‘He already had your love when he stole the car.’
‘He was miserable in other ways. Next time he tells me he’s borrowed a car from a friend, do you think I’ll believe it?’
Benard pulled up outside her house. ‘It’s more complicated than just giving him love or security. The court psychiatrist said there were problems.’
‘What problems?’
Benard explained that he had been told that Charles was compulsively rebellious, and perhaps incapable of learning from his past experience. He might be unable to sympathize or identify with others; he could even show a lack of remorse at harming others.
‘And did this psychiatrist say anything positive?’ Her voice was trembling.
Benard wondered if he had gone too far. He had only wanted her to see that Charles had a black side to him.
‘Yes. He said his adjustment to society is possible, with treatment, and that he isn’t dangerous.’
‘Of course he isn’t!’ she cried out. ‘There’s such gentleness inside him, such spiritual awareness. He is really searching for something deeper from life. But I don’t need to explain that to you, do I? Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered with him. He’s not just another petty crook, is he?’
Forced to respond, Benard said what he had often thought: ‘No, Chantal, he is not a gangster in his soul.’
Chantal kissed him and got out of the car.
A few days later Benard received a letter from Charles. In it, he thanked him for all he had done. But he wasn’t finished. The letter went on in thick black ink: ‘You no longer have any power over me. Get out of my life. And lay off Chantal.’
In a way, Benard had expected this, and he sent a copy of the letter to Chantal with a note: ‘I knew Charles would not pardon me for warning you. Take courage, Chantal. It will be sad if you become the victim of your own generosity. This letter from Charles is like the last chapter of a book. Please don’t ask me to open it again.’
It was over. Benard asked her to get the key to his apartment from Charles and post it to him. She never forgot the last line he wrote.
‘How shocking is this tragic destiny I see unfurling.’