FORTY

Victor

He could hear the paper burn on his cigarette as he inhaled. It was dead quiet at 11:15 p.m. and it was only getting deader. The silence was a kind of weather itself, blanketing the château in stillness. In a letter to his doctor, after Guy had really begun losing his shit, he wrote: “We are mere playthings for this deceiving and whimsical organ, the ear. Movement causes a particular tiny flap of skin in our ear to quiver, which immediately transforms into noise what is in reality only a vibration. Nature itself is silent.”

Almost.

There were a few dogs on the property, medium-sized things of indeterminate breed that the Ardurats kept in outdoor cages. They made a colossal amount of noise in the early evening, barking at every winding-down château activity. They barked at the Italians leaving, at the gate shutting, at the cars backing out. They barked in anticipation of the Ardurat girl walking across the lawn with a sack of kibble in her arms. They stress-barked at her mother, just as much the embodiment of American Gothic in real life as in her photo, when she slammed the door to the family’s kitchen. They stopped barking after dinner, soothed by the TV glowing from a room on the third floor. Once the room had gone dark, Victor could barely make out the breathing lumps of their bodies from where he hid—which was inside the garden shed, spying from behind a thin pane of glass.

He took a long drag, just to hear the paper crackle under his nose, inhaling the earthy air of drying herbs. Then, for absolutely no reason, an entire rack of garden trowels and shears came crashing down, smashing a terra-cotta pot in their wake.

He waited for the dogs to go off.

“Louise!” Mr. Ardurat poked his balding head out the window. “Ta gueule!”

The dog offered her counterpoint.

“Non! Non! Ta gueule, Louise!”

During the tour, Victor learned the château was split into dozens of rooms (originally designed to keep the heat in during winter). Until now it had been difficult to pinpoint the master bedroom and the residential portion of the château. But now he saw where it was, happily far from his turret. He put the cigarette out carefully, grinding the butt with his shoe, slung his duffel across his chest, and poked his head around the corner of the shed.

At first he stayed low, crouching down over the grass as if avoiding laser sensors. Then he just stood upright, walking steadily as he approached the house. He thought of college, of how he used to have lies prepared in case he got caught stealing. What would be the lie here? His car broke down at the front gate and he needed to use the phone? How did he get this far onto the property? How did he get over the moat? It was covered in grass, but still—a moat.

Victor ran his fingers along the mortar. He squinted and looked up. Unless the Nazi soldier had moved the necklace again without telling Johanna’s aunt, it was still behind a brick somewhere in that turret. The only way in was through the window. He chewed on the skin around his cuticles.

His hand shook as he placed it on a trellis. The insanity of what he was about to do skittered across his brain like a roach running under his kitchen stove. And like spotting a roach, he had two choices: (a) acknowledge it and crush it or (b) reason that he could just as easily have not seen it.

When Victor began climbing, his fear was more centered around the dogs’ barking than his back breaking. He shifted his duffel with every vertical foot, keeping it from banging against the wall. Then came a moment of pure mortal fear, the exact pull that raised him from I will probably break my ankle if I fall to I will definitely break my neck if I fall. Finally, he reached the protruding top ledge of a long window frame, thick enough for him to stand on. The trellis stopped just before the second-floor window. He felt the ledge with his fingers. He tested the branches to see if they would hold him but there was no way to complete the test without putting his full weight on them. Instead he took a deep breath and flung one leg up onto the ledge, letting the other dangle, grunting as quietly as he could while he lifted the rest of his body.

He caught his breath. Clouds rushed over a full moon. Below him, he could see rows of snapdragons dividing artichokes and cauliflowers from each other. He could see the little guest house the owners of the château must have crammed into during the occupation. Had the Nazi soldier, the sensitive soul that he was, ever climbed out here to get this view? Had Guy? Probably not. They were both too busy having love affairs to climb out on ledges.

The window, Victor thanked God, was open. It squeaked loudly on its hinges when he pushed it. He quickly rolled onto the floor, duffel first, expecting to land in Guy’s old bedroom. But he must have climbed at a slight angle in the dark and he popped into the hallway outside the bedroom.

Fuuuuck, he mouthed.

He wiped his pants and looked down the winding staircase. He could see the tops of gold poles and velvet ropes. A grandfather clock ticked at the end of the hallway. As Victor’s eyes adjusted, he saw a hallway table covered in typical hallway table fare: mail, pads of paper, school supplies, eyeglass cases. The air up here was different from the mausoleum on the ground floor. People lived here.

Victor poked his head back out the window, craning his neck to get his bearings. The door to his right was the door to Guy’s old room, it had to be.

His heart thumped. He put his ear to the door and placed his hand against it, as if checking for fire. Who breaks and doesn’t enter? Who indeed. The doorknob, host to a millennia of dings and scratches, gave easily as he turned it.

It wasn’t even locked.