Viviane Page 4
It was in this very season that we met. After we began seeing the doctor, unexpected events took place. We enjoy remembering those already distant times, but not the intrusion of this telephone now vibrating in our pocket. We answer it. Inspector Philippot is asking for a prompt appearance at the police headquarters of the 5th arrondissement because he has a few more questions to ask you.
7
The second time, the bloom is always off the rose. However risky the situation might still seem and even if the stakes are higher, the modus operandi is locked in. It’s all a done deal: the routine, the little idiosyncrasies, the question/answer contests to see who’ll come out on top. It’s practically a bore already.
Viviane holds the baby close throughout the entire trip to the police station. The child’s eyes are wide open but she’s quiet, perfectly content to be an amulet, a protective fetish against evil. She registers the elements of the landscape (nippy breeze, encroaching darkness, crowded métro car, curtain of dark coats forming a surrounding well) then turns toward her fists, inexplicably muffled in mittens. Her mother is deciphering advertisements: mattress clearance sales, evening courses, adult English classes, mathematics for grades six through twelve. My daughter, she thinks proudly, will never need remedial courses. She takes after me, it’s obvious: she hardly ever cries.
This time they send her up to the fifth floor of the police station, which proves to be a lot more spacious than the fourth. The corridor serves half as many offices and there are no policemen in uniform. Through the blue-tinted glazed partitions, Viviane can see solemn men ballasted by a long career of overly rich lunches.
Philippot is waiting for her at the office door and casts a cool eye at the bundle slung in a scarf around her neck. You really feel this is the proper place for a child? he asks testily. You really feel this is the proper place for me? says Viviane, blushing immediately. Sorry, I’m touchy these days, my husband’s left me. The inspector is about to reply but decides not to, stepping aside to let her pass. Behind the desk sits a big bald man quietly picking his teeth.
So, says the fat man, how’s it going, my dear little Madame Hermant? I’m Chief Inspector Bertrand. No, don’t look so scared, I’m just a chief inspector, not the divisional detective inspector. Him you’ll see later on. Maybe. What I mean is, I hope not, Madame Hermant. But of course that depends on you.
I’m not scared at all, says Viviane, who speaks right up like an idiot, that’s a trick of the trade, people answer off the tops of their heads even though they’d been determined not to let anything slip about their guilty consciences.
Well of course, you have nothing to reproach yourself for, replies the chief inspector in a tone that means I’ve already heard that one a million times. We called your mother.
Yes?
It isn’t a good idea, Madame Hermant, to play the fool with me. But that’s your lookout; you’re the one who’ll pay for it.
You called my mother, replies Viviane, looking the chief inspector straight in the eye.
Yes, Madame Hermant, we called your mother. And she’s dead, your mother. She died on February 16, 2002, so she’s been dead a good eight years, therefore I just don’t see how she could have confirmed that you did not kill Dr. Jacques Sergent on November 15, 2010. Naturally, I might conclude, since you spend your life at this doctor’s office, that you’re utterly nuts. But we also called your husband, Monsieur Julien Hermant, and your employer, Monsieur Jean-Paul Biron. They have described you as beyond reproach as a wife and employee, so I must urge you most emphatically, Madame Hermant, to provide us with a few explanations.
Even though everyone tells you that I’m beyond reproach? sneers the accused. Yes, my mother died on February 16, 2002: I’m almost certain of the date—I’ve got a pretty good memory for dates.
Your mother, continues the chief inspector, massaging his temples, owned an apartment on Place Saint-Médard in the 5th arrondissement, near the Censier-Daubenton métro station.
Excuse me, she still owns it. I pay the bills, the property tax, I go there once a month to do the windows and the dusting, I never canceled the phone.
So you’re the one who owns that apartment.
Yes, I’m the one, she’s the one, split hairs if you want. Put it this way: we own the apartment. What is it you’re trying to say, Chief Inspector?
You’re playing with matches.
What can I say? I haven’t been able to make up my mind to sell it or rent it out. I was waiting for the right moment, that’s what I was working on with the doctor. My husband understood very well.
That’s not what he told us.
And just what did he say?
He said that if you had sold the apartment, which is worth around nine hundred euros per square foot, you would have had about a million in your piggybank. He added that this would have avoided the necessity of renting that three-room apartment on Rue Louis-Braille, but he was careful to insist that he was not thinking about the money but about your comfort together as a family. Regarding the doctor, we can therefore eliminate any financial motive.
Viviane studies the chief inspector’s features closely: heavy eyelids, fleshy mouth, double chin, and the wrinkles of concentration that hold everything together. She decides he doesn’t believe she could be the murderer.
I did not kill the doctor, she sighs. I’m not going to fabricate such a thing, after all. I was home with my daughter; I did not kill the inspector.
You mean the doctor.
I mean the doctor.
Why did you suggest that we call your mother?
I don’t know, it just popped out. That’s what the doctor taught me, to speak without thinking too much about it.
We’re not in the doctor’s office, Madame Hermant. Listen, I grant you that you’re going through a difficult time at the moment, with the divorce and everything. But this business of saying things to detectives off the top of your head, keeping an apartment worth a million without realizing any return whatsoever—it’s just no good. You have to get a grip or there’ll be repercussions. Now go on, beat it.
That’s not what she’d expected: too easy, sounds like a trap, and humiliating, too. Viviane glances from the chief inspector to Philippot, who has been standing in a corner since the beginning of the interview, a tall, slinky, elegant silhouette leaning against the glass partition. She notes absentmindedly the lines of his clothing, observes again how impatient the chief inspector is as he snatches up the toothpick where he abandoned it on the blotter a little while ago. Then, as there is nothing more to say, she gathers up her things, leaves the room mumbling something inaudible, and heads down the hall.
Sitting on the edge of a plastic chair, a very pregnant woman with red hair is fiddling nervously with her nails. Viviane recognizes her immediately from having studied her picture in the morning paper. The young woman does not notice Viviane, however. She’s looking for someone else and when she sees the inspector, who has come out into the hall, she’s found him. She has returned of her own accord, yes, she would like to speak to the police again, to help with the investigation, and has remembered a few things that might interest them. After Philippot has ushered her into the office, Viviane finds herself alone with her daughter, who is still saying nothing but whose eyes are heavy with reproach.
8
After that I don’t know why I do what I do, but I do it. Not that I believe it’s a good idea or that I’m proud of myself, only—I have to: my feet go forward and I follow them.
I leave the police station. Night encloses Boulevard Saint-Germain; passersby hasten toward the métro entrance. It’s easy to interpret their movements. I could be any one of them, going home from work, swinging by the day care center, and I’d stop off at the supermarket for a few things before jumping on a bus where someone would let me have his seat. I’d get home, warm up the bottle while my husband would give the baby a bath, then we’d sit in front of the television, eating a frozen dinner I’d heated up, and toddle off to bed w
ithout making love, unless it’s the evening when we do make love, in which case we’d sleep better, before beginning again the cycle of days, weeks, years, safe from all suspicion.
Appearances are on my side. Equipped with that alibi, I head toward Rue des Écoles, where I know I will find a hotel. Indeed, I find several. They’re lined up parallel to the Seine on the uneven-numbers side of the street, but I doubt that one can glimpse, from behind the pastel curtains of these semiluxurious establishments, the river and its tourist attractions: Notre Dame, the former royal palace and prison of the Conciergerie, the headquarters of the Police Judiciaire in Paris at Quai des Orfèvres, and the courts of the Palais de Justice. I have my plan. I need a hotel room for a few hours, something not too costly because I’m not sure if I’ll have additional expenses later on and I’d like to economize.
As it happens, these hotels all have three or four stars. Prices are not posted at the door and I don’t dare go inside to ask about them, not wanting to seem hard up. Finally I stop in front of the Moderne Saint Germain where I overhear the conversation of a very East Coast American couple: they will go to the Louvre rather than on the Bateaux-Mouches excursion boats, will skip the Moulin Rouge in favor of the Musée d’Orsay. I don’t need to know them to guess everything about their itinerary because I’d do the same in their place. When I was a girl, I too enjoyed discovering new places by sticking to the sites recommended in travel guides. I smile at the couple and glance inside the hotel; a discreet-looking young man is standing at the reception desk. It’s exactly what I need. But first, a drugstore.
There’s one close by, where I wait on line at the pharmacy and examine the analgesics and sedatives on display behind the counter. They’re mostly antihistamines, phytotherapeutic capsules, which wouldn’t put a horse to sleep but a thirteen-pound child, no problem. When it’s my turn, I ask for four different boxes and, as a precaution, I produce my doctor’s prescription so that I can obtain the tranquilizers, just the tranquilizers. The young pharmaceutical intern gives me a worried look but I don’t back down. I am the customer, she is not a policewoman, I stare back at her until she hurries off to fetch my pills, then I return to the Moderne Saint Germain where I book a single room. It’s seventy-seven euros.
The receptionist as well would like me to be forthcoming with explanations. He doesn’t ask for them but I can tell from his sidelong glances that I should invent a story to justify swanning in with a three-month-old child as my only luggage. So I claim to be from Nevers in Burgundy, my car has broken down and won’t be ready until tomorrow morning. It’s at the Mercedes dealership on the corner I add, because a big car always inspires confidence. He visibly relaxes and, handing me the key to the room, wishes me good night. I say thank you.
The room contains the bare minimum of furniture, plus pink-and-green curtains. Extracting a drawer from a chest, I line it with towels and settle the baby inside. She’s still not asleep, still not crying, and looks at me as if to say, old thing, whatever are you up to now? Sometimes I feel as if she were the mother and I the child, and I reflect that in this case, there’s no point in giving her the pills I bought: she won’t betray me. As if to agree with me, she closes her eyes and goes to sleep.
While the receptionist is sorting through his brochures for the Americans, I leave the Moderne Saint Germain and go back toward Place Maubert, where I park myself in a café practically next door to the police station. In this morning’s Le Parisien I study the photo of the young redhead who showed up earlier to offer new information to the detectives: I want to be sure I recognize her when she comes walking along from Rue des Carmes. Then I withdraw into myself and explore the memory of her face glimpsed in the hall of the police station, gathering all the elements at my disposal so I won’t blow my fleeting chance.
Which occurs shortly after nine o’clock. On the other side of the boulevard, a compact mass is moving against the flow of traffic, weaving among the metal frames set up for the market tomorrow. Weighed down by the burden of her belly, her steps are further slowed by the confusion affecting both her mind and body. She advances in jolts, reconsiders, stops in a bus shelter to study the maps of transport lines, and sets out again in a westward direction. I leave the café, skirt the fountain—keeping my prey in sight as she moves slowly in a corner of my visual field—and trail her without any exaggerated precautions. An icy November rain is falling, infiltrating the seams of shoes, chilling legs up to the knees, and will render useless all later attempts to warm up.
Having reached the Saint-Michel bridge, the young woman once again considers the possibility of public transport, which here offers a much larger selection of options—métro, bus, Regional Express Network—but she decides to keep walking, and now we’re crossing the bridge. I do not like bridges. I do not like where we’re headed, the police headquarters at Quai des Orfèvres and its vans all parked in front of us, headlights off, staring at me with dead eyes. But we walk past the police building, the spear-tipped fence outside the courthouse, the flank of the Conciergerie, crossing the Île de la Cité to reach the bridge on the other side where I can breathe better—it must be the fresh air over the river—and I hang back so as not to pass the woman still walking quietly along in front of me because suddenly I would like to run, having escaped the ancient stone walls of the Île de la Cité.
The young woman is not in so much of a hurry. She walks toward Rue de Rivoli, loiters a moment in front of a brightly illuminated shoe boutique, then proceeds up Boulevard de Sébastopol, turning right when abreast of the Centre Pompidou. I fear my plan has come undone when she goes over to a keypad door lock, but she turns around and heads for a brasserie. Guessing her intention, I dart off to the left and just beat her to the door. Entering, I allow myself a glance around.
The solitary customers are lined up along the banquette, facing a television showing a soccer match with the sound turned down. Most of the tables are occupied but I spy two that are free, side by side near the bar, and I take a seat at one—the table closest to a radiator—without looking at the person who has just come in after me. The three plasticized panels of the menu offer various meats with french fries or the usual vegetable sides. I’ll have the steak, I tell the waiter who comes to take my order and, using this occasion to look up from my menu, I pretend to notice the round belly of the young woman now seated to my left. I am flustered: wouldn’t she rather sit near the radiator?
Oh no, she feels warm, so warm that the last thing she wants is to be closer to the radiator. She thanks me nevertheless, says she’s touched by my concern, because you can’t imagine how people can play blind on a bus, deliberately ignoring the huge belly looming over the barrier of crossword pages they erect to protect their jump seats. I can imagine quite well I say, delighted because Angèle—that’s her name, she introduces herself first thing—is in the mood to chat.
People think that the victims of tabloid tragedies are left stupefied, ashamed. Actually, they ask only to speak. They need witnesses to corroborate what they have seen and to recognize the injury done to them. The young woman leans her face over to me, with that milky complexion so typical of redheads, her big eyes gleaming with provincial candor. Angèle wants to share, and anyone at all would fill the bill. I am a shadow, a vessel, I say pleased to meet you, I’m Élisabeth.
9
You are the collateral victim of a sensational incident and you cannot get over it. As far as you’re concerned, the world fell apart Tuesday morning when you discovered the inanimate body of the doctor lying in his office to which you happened to have the key. Since then you have been wandering in a field of ruins, waiting for an equally supernatural phenomenon to put everything back to rights.
You are twenty-six. Born in the département des Hautes-Alpes, you still live there officially, with your parents, but have been living in Paris since getting your baccalaureate. You move from one room to another as your university years go by, paying the rent with your stipend (your family is a large one with only
modest resources) and what you can earn from odd seasonal jobs. You are now a doctoral student. Before his brutal death, you were very close to your thesis director.
Meaning what? asks Élisabeth, fishing for details.
You don’t avoid the issue; you would like your audience to fully understand the situation and thus guide you, perhaps, toward an angle from which you might otherwise never have viewed things, and from which the image would recompose itself as if in an anamorphosis.
Five years ago you set out to seduce a professor whose old-fashioned, even faded air had somehow touched you. You’ve always had strange tastes. Your peers ignored him in favor of more obvious specimens, the university stars who played nonchalantly on their prestige, shining in the brilliance of their thoughts and dramatically flinging out their arms to wave their eyeglasses in the air for emphasis. You’d been the only one to bet on Professor Sergent, never hearing a word of the lectures he delivered so doggedly because you were too busy admiring him through half-closed eyes. And your imagination began running away with you so much that you soon had to stifle your daydreams: in the silence of the auditorium, you were afraid of letting slip too eloquent a sigh.
For months you waited at the foot of the dais to ask insignificant questions, leaving more and more pregnant pauses until he suggested continuing the conversation at a café, where the discussion mainly featured throat-clearing and eyelash-batting. It took a complete campaign to prompt an invitation to a restaurant and months more of effort to wangle an appointment at the doctor’s office, after consultation hours.