Three Days and a Life Page 9

  On the sideboard there were family photos in ill-assorted frames. One of them was empty, the one that had held the snapshot they had given to the gendarmes, the one that had been shown on television, Rémi in his yellow T-shirt, his unruly tuft of hair . . .

  The other frames had not been rearranged to fill the gap. They were waiting for Rémi’s photograph to return to its usual place, for life to return to normal.

  9

  Day seemed as though it would never break, the sky above the town loured a boundless milky white. The first to arrive found Monsieur Desmedt standing under the porch light, staring at his garden, wearing heavy boots and a beige parka, his balled fists stuffed into the pockets. He had the hard-faced expression of days best forgotten.

  There were many more men than women, but there were also some bigger boys, older than Antoine, sixteen-and eighteen-year-olds he knew only vaguely.

  Antoine had not closed his eyes all night, he was sapped of all strength.

  The moment he looked out his bedroom window and saw the crowd gathered outside the Desmedts’ house, preparing to set off for the mairie, his courage failed him.

  “What d’you mean you’re not coming?”

  Madame Courtin was outraged. What would people think if he didn’t come, what would the neighbours say about him, about them? Even if only for Bernadette’s sake . . . The whole town was taking part in the search, it was their duty!

  “The Mouchottes won’t be going!” said Antoine.

  It was a hypocritical argument, he knew it was; no-one hated the Desmedts more than the Mouchottes, people often said it was a good thing their houses were separated by the Courtin’s, because otherwise the two men would long since have ripped out each other’s guts.

  “That’s different,” Madame Courtin said, “you know perfectly well . . .”

  To end the argument, Antoine conceded defeat and came downstairs.

  He shook a few hands and tried to stay as far as possible from the Desmedt family, which was hardly difficult since they were surrounded by so many people. Valentine was still wearing her red jeans, but in the dreary light of dawn the colour seemed washed out while the girl, engulfed by the crowd, looked older, out of place, inconsequential.

  They set off in procession towards the meeting point.

  Although those flanking the Desmedts observed a respectful silence, further back, rumours were flying and tongues wagging. Firstly, the pond . . . I mean, honestly, for years they’ve been talking about putting up safety barriers, but have the mairie bothered to lift a finger . . .?

  And this search today, is it being run by the mairie or the préfecture?

  The exceptional circumstances offered a new channel for the townspeople’s fury, which had been simmering now for two days, they vented their anger at the mairie, meaning the mayor, meaning the proprietor of Weiser Wooden Toys. All the rancour stirred up by the various threats to the community coalesced into an inchoate rage which, finding no direct outlet, had been transferred onto this incident.

  Two large white tents had been set up outside the mairie by the sécurité civile, the emergency services and the gendarmes were in attendance. Where are the search and rescue dogs? someone asked. Madame Courtin was talking to the grocer. Antoine tried to listen in, but he could not hear; there was a deep rumbling inside his head, an incessant vibration that muffled every sound, he caught a word here, a snatch of conversation there – Hey Antoine! He turned. It was Théo.

  “You’ve no business being here!”

  Antoine opened his mouth to speak, why should he have . . . The mayor’s son puffed out his chest, happy to break the bad news.

  “You have to be an adult to take part!” he said, as though he was not personally affected by this restriction.

  Madame Courtin quickly turned to them.

  “Is that true?”

  A gendarme arrived, the one who had interviewed Antoine the night before.

  “Participants must be at least sixteen years old.” He gave the two boys a half smile. “It’s good of you to volunteer, but . . .”

  New arrivals joined the growing crowd. People shook hands, affected a self-effacing but resolute attitude. The mayor was chatting with gendarmes and members of the sécurité civile. Ordnance surveys maps had been spread out. A police van arrived with four dogs tugging on their leashes. About bloody time! someone said.

  It took some time to organise the groups, each of which were led by a gendarme or a member of the emergency services. Clear, firm instructions were issued. The men, wearing caps and woolly hats, nodded sagely.

  Antoine counted a dozen groups of eight.

  The television crew arrived, creating a buzz of excitement. A cameraman panned across the crowd of people anxious to appear orderly, willing and responsible. The reporter was spoiled for choice, everyone had something to say. A woman whom Antoine had never seen before was telling the journalist how distraught she was, clasping her hands to her chest, anyone would have sworn she was the missing boy’s mother. While she was pouring her heart out, the reporter was standing on tiptoe, desperately scanning the crowd for Rémi’s parents. When she at last located them, she did not even allow the woman to finish her sentence but elbowed a path through the crowd, followed by the cameraman, zigzagging towards the large white tent.

  When Madame Desmedt saw them approach, she began to sob. The cameraman quickly shouldered his kit.

  Within two hours, the footage he was shooting would be broadcast all around France.

  Madame Desmedt’s grief and what she said were gut-wrenching. Give him back. Three words, barely audible.

  Give him back.

  Her voice was anguished, tremulous.

  The assembled crowd were so moved that one by one they fell silent as though in a silent prayer that some feared might be prophetic.

  The young gendarme, armed with a megaphone, climbed the steps of the mairie while officers wearing armbands handed out leaflets.

  “Thank you all for coming here this morning, especially on such a miserable day . . .”

  Secretly everyone felt doubly virtuous and compassionate.

  “We would you ask you to carefully read the instructions on the leaflets being distributed. Do not move too quickly, focus only on what is directly in front of you. It is crucial that every square metre we search can be definitively eliminated from our investigation. Do I make myself clear?”

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  While the gendarme was speaking, Antoine was distracted by the arrival of Madame Antonetti and the parish priest.

  “There are nine groups. Four will go to the pond with the dog handlers, three will search the western perimeter of the woods, and the last two groups will head up towards Saint-Eustache.”

  Antoine froze. It was over. He had a shudder of relief.

  Now he knew what would happen, he knew what he would do. In a way, it made things easier.

  “After we break for lunch, we will assign new areas to each group, depending on the progress made this morning. If today’s search should prove fruitless, we would request that you volunteer again tomorrow.”

  It was at this moment that Monsieur Kowalski appeared.

  He moved with slow, faltering steps. People fell silent as he passed, everyone stood aside – not out of deference, but because the man reeked of brimstone. He’s been released . . . the words were on everyone’s lips. They looked at each other warily. Had he been released on bail? No-one had heard anything.

  As Monsieur Kowalski approached the mairie, those he left in his wake began to mutter in low voices. He might have been released, but only for lack of evidence . . . after all, the police don’t just make arrests at random, only if people are somehow involved in a case. No smoke without fire, Kowalski . . . they say his business is in financial difficulties, that he has to do the rounds of the neighbouring village markets just to make ends meet.

  Kowalski’s face betrayed no emotion, it was gaunt and wizened as ever, those hollow cheeks
, those bushy eyebrows . . .

  He passed close to Antoine and his mother. Madame Courtin pointedly turned her back on him. He approached the gendarme, stopped and spread his arms, I am here, tell me what you want from me.

  The gendarme studied the various groups, felt their negative energy. People looked away, some turned their backs, the more uncompromising walked off without waiting for the signal.

  “I see . . .” said the gendarme, with a hint of weariness. “Alright, you can come with us.”

  The crowd set off, conversations resumed, the ground was already strewn with the sécurité civile leaflets.

  Back at home, Antoine stood at his bedroom window for a long time, staring into the distance. When they found the body, they would radio the préfecture, he would see the flashing lights far away, heading up the dirt track to Saint-Eustache.

  He closed the window and went into the bathroom.

  He emptied everything from the medicine cabinet. Madame Courtin, like most of her compatriots, was a conspicuous consumer of medications; there were countless bottles each containing a small quantity of pills. Together, they made a huge pile of pills.

  Suppressing the urge to retch, Antoine swallowed them in fistfuls. His face was streaked with tears.

  10

  In a sickening spasm, the tidal wave in his stomach ripped through his whole body, burned through his belly and exploded into his throat with a jolt that literally lifted him off the bed. He hung his head over the side, a guttural howl came from deep within his gut, a thin trickle of bile hung from his lips as he choked and gasped for breath.

  He felt shattered, his back was in agony. With each fresh wave, his whole body roiled and churned, dissolving and liquefying as though determined to expel itself from his skin.

  This went on for two long hours.

  His mother came up regularly to check on him, to empty the basin on the rug beside the bed, wipe the corners of his mouth, dab his forehead with a cold compress and go back downstairs.

  When the spasms finally subsided, Antoine drifted off to sleep.

  In his dream, Rémi, like him, was exhausted, he had no energy left. Lying in the yawning black crevasse, he could no longer reach out his arms, only wave his tiny hands in a last desperate effort. Death was coming, it was here, it had grabbed his feet and was dragging him in, Rémi was sinking, disappearing . . .

  Antoine!

  When he woke, it was dark. He had no idea what time it was, but he knew it was not the middle of the night since the television downstairs was blaring. He listened for the church bell, whose peals reached him when the breeze blew in the right direction. There was a brisk wind whipping through the shutters. He thought he counted six chimes but could not be sure. He settled on somewhere between five and seven o’clock in the morning.

  He looked at the nightstand. There was a glass of water and a jug. A bottle of some medication he did not recognise.

  He heard the front door bell, the television clicked off.

  A man’s voice, then hushed whispering.

  Then footsteps on the stairs and Docteur Dieulafoy appeared, alone, carrying his fat leather bag which he set down next to the bed. He bent over Antoine, laid a hand on his sweaty forehead for a moment then, without a word, took off his coat, extracted his stethoscope, threw back the sheet, pushed up his pyjama top (who had put his pyjamas on? He could not remember), and silently went about examining him, focusing on some imaginary, floating point.

  Downstairs, the television had come on again, but the sound was turned down. The doctor took Antoine’s pulse. Then he packed away his stethoscope and sat on the bed, his feet set apart, arms folded, looking pensive and circumspect.

  Docteur Dieulafoy was about fifty years old. His father, everyone agreed, had been a Breton sailor who had travelled all over the world; as to his mother, there were various theories: a housemaid from Vietnam, a prostitute from China, some cheap hussy from Thailand . . . Rumours offered a very scant portrait of this woman about whom no-one actually knew anything.

  The doctor had been living in the village for twenty-five years, and no-one could boast that they had ever seen him smile. He spent every day of the year driving the winding roads of the canton, saw patients at unseasonable hours, everyone knew him and had called on him at one time or another, he had been invited to dozens of weddings, communions and christenings, had attended the funerals of countless old people, and yet no-one knew anything about him. He had no wife, no children, the grocer’s daughter cleaned house for him, while he took care of the surgery himself. On Sundays, whatever the weather, he threw open the surgery windows and, wearing a tattered old vest, could be seen dusting, hoovering and polishing, and if a passing patient should call, Docteur Dieulafoy would open his door, usher them inside, wash his hands, set down the duster and the wax polish, and hold an impromptu consultation.

  Antoine propped himself up on his pillows. His stomach had stopped heaving at last, but it still ached and he had a lingering, acrid taste of vomit in his mouth.

  The doctor sat, motionless, engrossed in his thoughts. His broad, swarthy face was utterly inscrutable and his stillness was beginning to make Antoine uneasy, but after a moment, it was as though he were not there, as though he were simply a part of the furniture. Antoine became absorbed in his own thoughts. It had not worked. He had wanted to die but he had failed. He would have to explain, to justify himself. Suddenly he remembered the search parties setting out for Saint-Eustache . . . There was nothing to explain anymore, he merely needed to confirm what everyone by now knew. The weight of the burden he had to bear was so overwhelming that he felt exhausted, and he closed his eyes and sank back into the pillows.

  “Do you want to tell me about it, Antoine?”

  The doctor’s voice was barely audible. He had not moved a millimetre.

  Antoine did not have the strength to answer. Rémi’s death was both intensely present and terribly remote, his mind was a jumble of questions. What had they done with Rémi’s body? He pictured Bernadette sitting next to the supine corpse, trying to warm the tiny hand in hers . . .

  Were they waiting for Docteur Dieulafoy to pronounce him medically fit before coming to arrest him? Were the gendarmes keeping his mother downstairs? Given that he was a minor, maybe only a doctor was allowed to hear his confession . . . He had forgotten the question he had been asked.

  The darkness of his bedroom made him feel closer to Rémi. It was a very dark place that they had taken him from.

  He imagined the men peering beneath the fallen beech tree. Monsieur Desmedt would not allow anyone to fetch his son from the shadowy crevasse, even the paramedics would maintain a respectful distance. They would have brought a stretcher and a blanket with which to cover the body. The moment when Monsieur Desmedt pulled his son towards him was unendurable. He grabbed the boy by one arm and Rémi’s head – that unmistakable shock of sandy hair – rose above the lip of the hole, followed by his shoulders. The body was so limp, so contorted that the limbs seemed to appear in no particular order.

  Antoine began to cry.

  He felt an unexpected rush of relief. The tears were not like those he had shed while he was still free, instead they came in a deep, soothing torrent. They were cleansing tears.

  Docteur Dieulafoy nodded gravely, agreeing with something that had not been said but he seemed to understand.

  Antoine’s tears were inexhaustible. Inexplicably, the moment was tinged with happiness, with joy at this sense of a relief he had thought would never come. It was over, and his sobs were now those of a child, there was something protective about them, they offered a comfort that would remain with him wherever he was taken.

  The doctor sat for a long time, listening to Antoine’s sobbing, then he got up, snapped his bag shut, picked up his coat without looking at the boy.

  And he left without a word.

  Antoine calmed himself, blew his nose and sat up against his pillows. Perhaps he should get dressed before people arrived . . . He did no
t know what to do, this was the first time he had been arrested.

  It was his mother’s footsteps he heard echoing in the stairwell. So she was coming to get him dressed and bring him downstairs. He wished it could be someone else, his mother would cling to him as the gendarmes dragged him away.

  Madame Courtin wrinkled her nose as she stepped into the room, the stench of vomit . . .

  She picked up the basin and was about to set it outside on the landing, but then came back and, despite the gale blustering outside, she opened one of the shutters to let in some air. The chill wind rushed into the room Antoine noticed his mother’s forehead was lined by a small furrow, a sign that she was worried about something.

  She turned to her son.

  “Are you feeling a little better?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she picked up the medicine bottle from the nightstand and poured a teaspoon.

  “It was that roast capon that did for you . . . I had to throw the thing out. I mean really, people shouldn’t be allowed to sell meat in that state.”

  Antoine did not react.

  “Here, take this,” she said. “It’s for indigestion, it’ll make you feel better.”

  This reference to a minor ailment made him wonder and worry. Warily, he swallowed the medicine. He was not sure he understood what was happening. Madame Courtin put the cap back on the bottle.

  “I’ve made some broth, I’ll bring you up a bowl.”

  She had been talking about the capon, but as far as he could remember he had barely touched it. And besides, if he was suffering from a stomach upset, why was his mother not ill too? After all, she had eaten the same meal.

  Antoine tried to recall the sequence of events, but a lot of things were muddled in his head. He could not distinguish between what was real and what he had dreamed. He got up. His legs were weak, he stumbled and had to sit on the bed. He thought about Valentine. Had she been part of his dream, or had she been real? He saw her standing in front of him while he tried to tie his laces, saw himself trying to get up quickly and falling back on the bed, just like now.