Two months passed without Mallock, almost despite him. Mallock, who couldn’t go forward anymore, couldn’t walk toward an emptiness of things and feelings anymore. This always happened to him after a good collar, as the police jargon went. First there was a happiness that was almost painful; then a calmer sense of relief. But the mind kept seeking and worrying, running on empty, like a bicycle on a hamster wheel. And then, three or four days later, came the rebound effect, the decompensation. At those times, the only thing to do was to get away, go off to some island with a lover, or the kids. Mallock no longer had either of those. Thomas was gone, and Amélie, it seemed, didn’t want to wake up.
So he turned into the ghost of Mallock; a sharp, terse man, a stone, who didn’t give a damn about anyone, or the rain and the wind, or the path he was traveling.
But for Easter, he made the heroic effort of going away to his cottage in Normandy. His friends had decided to join him for ten days or so, “to watch the idiot tourists and eat until we make ourselves sick.” He had agreed, but only because he was in no condition to argue.
Besides, he had a strong suspicion that they were really doing it for him. And that it might do him some good.
As he drove toward the highway, he made a detour to see Amélie one more time. Her condition had improved slightly; she was more reactive. But could she hear him, from the depths of her coma? Did she feel even the slightest sensation when Mallock slipped his mother’s ring onto the third finger of her left hand, a diamond as insignificant and solitary as its owner?
Confession. He spoke to her softly, told her about his overwhelming sadness; his son, lost forever, and her, gone as well. He whispered in her ear:
“You’re the only one I love.”
After navigating the tollbooths on the Normandy highway, Mallock opened the shutters of his cottage, turned on the heating, and went out to the beach.
It was seven o’clock in the evening. On the seawall, the sunset had broken out its choicest palette. The Channel was milky, beige and blue-green by turns, a vast and liquid sea of hope. The air smelled of iodine. The last tide had formed an army of black dunes made of heaped mussel shells. He walked between them to the water’s edge, where the tongues of salty water murmured to those who knew how to hear their tales of scuppered vessels and dastardly pirates.
Mallock, who was an expert at listening to the waves, settled down on the damp sand and, despite the cold, exhausted by too much Paris, too many drugs, and too much savagery, fell asleep.
In his dream, he was walking hand in hand with Thomas along this same beach, on this very night. He told his son about the pain that can lead to horror, about the hideously beautiful apprentice pharmacist, and about his dysmorphophobia, the sickness that had driven him to do such terrible things. And then he talked about forgiveness and compassion, even for a murderer like that.
The Mallock of his waking hours would never have thought or said this; he wasn’t even truly opposed to the death penalty for cold-blooded killers and repeat murderers. But the sleeping papa teaching his son about clemency and mercy for young pharmacists believed it with all his heart.
Night had fallen and the moon was full. His cottage was waiting for him, warm and cozy. Amédée stood up with difficulty, noting that God still hadn’t done anything about his back. Well, He wasn’t perfect either.
Observing the ground behind him, next to his big footprints he saw traces of a small child with bare feet, the prints exactly parallel. Were they from his dream; were they his Tom’s?
He looked up toward the stars, toward God, and he laughed.
That crafty little boy of his would get him to love God one of these days, even though He didn’t exist.
Amédée made his way back up the beach, careful not to step on the miraculous prints of his son. Tomorrow his friends would be there for lunch. He had a sudden urge to stew two nice chickens, the old-fashioned way, like he’d done last month. He’d need to buy cognac and some chicken livers for the stuffing. But this time, since it was for his friends, he would also use the wonderful truffles he had in a jar, the tuber melanosporum, which Jules had bought directly from some people he knew who hunted them. He would cut them into wide, thin rounds with a mandoline and slide them between the skin and the flesh. His friends would love it. The idea brought the beginnings of a smile back to the superintendent’s face.
As for the little bare footprints next to his on the beach, Mallock had come to a conclusion of his own:
You don’t need shoes in Heaven.