Viviane Page 7
How handsome he was, Julien, and that hasn’t changed since he left you. At three twenty, he appears in your launch window, creating an eclipse of memory: you imagine him coming toward you for the first time, naked, on offer, just as he presented himself three years earlier, free of all ties.
Your memory comes back. The breaches opened by the inevitable return to plodding reality, the pike staves that become lances, and you who couldn’t see it coming because you were expecting a child and the horizon was bounded by the circumference of your belly. The suspicions wiped away with the dust when business meetings began to last forever. The phone calls made behind the bathroom door, the hurt you kept inside on every occasion, for example the cocktail party at Biron Concrete in June when the newly recruited Héloïse cruised dangerously close to Julien and you had to struggle to keep yourself from blasting her whenever she crossed your line of fire.
He’s on the threshold of the apartment. He called up on the intercom and you buzzed him in. Standing perfectly still behind the door while he climbed up the three flights of stairs, you waited for him to ring and here he is in front of you. With locks of hair falling over his forehead. You could brush them back—after all, this man still belongs to you in the eyes of the law. You restrain your fingers just in time.
How are you he says while walking around you because you still haven’t moved, and he goes into the living room to sit in the deepest armchair, the leather one. Hands crossed on your lap, you sit in a rather uncomfortable chair with a seat upholstered in a navy blue plaid. Julien gives a quick look around and exclaims these plants, good lord, it’s monstrous, they’re going to invade us all. You notice that he said us. But then he adds what are those marks on your arms, Viviane, they’re awful. You roll your sleeves back down over your wrists now that you’ve finished cleaning and repeat meaningfully: invade us all, Julien? At first he doesn’t understand. Then he does. Invade the hall, Viviane, I said invade the hall. You shrug as you announce I’m going to make some tea, you’ll have some? Thanks he replies, which means yes or no, another habit of his.
While the kettle heats up in the kitchen, as you prepare a tray with two cups and watch the snow falling in the interior courtyard, you listen to the creaking of the parquet that tells you where your husband is. He seems to be roaming the living room, then advancing cautiously into the hall, gradually approaching the middle room. At last you hear the tiny squeak when he ventures a look inside at the sleeping child who is also his—it takes some effort to remember this but you concede the point.
The kettle whistles. Carrying in the tray you can see, through the now wide-open door, Julien bending over the baby. A wispy babbling reaches your ears. You study the teapot where the leaves are steeping. Not a very interesting sight but you often contemplate motionless things, waiting for them to reveal their secrets.
She seems to recognize me, he says in self-congratulation, plopping back into the armchair. Then he tries to talk about material arrangements, administrative procedures, rights and duties. What’s going on outside the windows suddenly absorbs all your attention. You consider the movements on the square, the crowd at the tables under the heated outdoor umbrellas at the brasserie, the snow covering the central flower bed, pocked with footprints and the depredations of children.
Are you listening to me, Viviane?
Not really, Julien.
You have to be reasonable, Viviane.
I don’t think so, Julien.
Then he invokes various responsibilities, and the welfare of the child. He knows you are a woman of good sense, you have always shown that despite differences of opinion, slight disagreements, and a few misunderstandings. For example, he goes on, it astonished me, that phone call from the police. I hadn’t known you were seeing a doctor. That sort of thing, isn’t it rather for people who are totally self-centered, don’t you think?
I don’t need you, you reply. What you take, you take away from me and I’m not going to make it any easier for you.
Julien murmurs God knows what in the direction of his lap but you would swear he said bitch. You exult in having managed so well to make him hate you now that love is gone. More tea? you ask, all smiles.
He shifts forward in the chair, sets his cup down on the tray, watches you pour the tea like a perfect hostess.
This isn’t the right way, Viviane. The law is on my side. And anyway you can’t manage all by yourself, you need help.
You stop serving the tea. The teapot tips toward the carpet and pours all the rest of its contents on the floor. When it’s empty, you let go of it with a loud laugh. The carpet softens the fall but the china is fragile and shatters into pointed shards that fly into every corner of the room. On the other side of the wall, the child has begun to cry.
You have no idea, you say now, what I’m capable of.
Viviane, he tries, it’s the stress, the emotional situation. You’ll recover, you’ll see things differently.
You reply fuck you and gather up everything on the tray, the cups, the saucers, the silver spoons, the sugar bowl, the milk jug, to throw it all at his face. He protects himself with his hands as he retreats, and you harry him all the way back to the front door. You expect him to beat it but he turns around one last time, looks you right in the eye and says it’s not going to be this way, you’ll see, I’m going to move into a new apartment with my new wife, we’ll gain custody of the child, and you’ll be left eating your heart out, then he clatters down the stairs while you stand paralyzed on the threshold.
14
Above the cradle, the lions and giraffes slow down and take off again, set in motion by a cord tied to the child’s foot so that the slightest movement will bring the menagerie to life. For a good fifteen minutes now the baby has been trying to solve the mystery of causes and consequences. Left to yourself, you adjust the pleats in the curtains, wipe away some imaginary dust with the flat of your hand, pick up an object only to set it right down in the same place. Nightfall has finished blanketing the railway tracks, and the trains cutting across the window are stippled in white by the snow sweeping across the panes.
Your arms feel a little itchy. You roll up your sleeves, interrogating the long wounds running from the delta of veins at your wrists to vanish in the fold of the elbow and reappear at your neck. You try to recall how you got them but in truth you are seeking a more ancient element that has fallen into a deep well, leaving you with only a pale reflection.
You still retain a rather precise memory of your marriage. Back then every moment was a delight, and the doctor’s wincing expression seemed to say poor thing, you’re twenty years behind. Yes, you had almost forty years under your belt and the feeling of walking on water. You were unbearable. The slightest occurrence was a pretext for rhapsodizing about how loved you were, and how loving. The doctor was chafing in agony but you didn’t give a hoot. He was paid to listen to you and was going to hear every detail. He was biding his time.
The problems began, in your opinion, three months after the wedding. That’s an approximation; Julien would doubtless have a different idea. Today he would say from the beginning, from the beginning things were going wrong, I don’t know how I ever let myself get involved in this business. So let’s say—after three months. It started with your cat. Which wasn’t strictly speaking yours, it belonged to your mother. You inherited it. You hadn’t made a mystery of that last point. Neither had you made a big deal out of it. Raised in the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, you have a considerably reduced emotional range that you don’t find at all inconvenient.
But Julien showed no interest in family affairs. It was enough for him to know that everyone was dead and he asked no questions, because they were all dead on his side as well, or just about. On the other hand, he was interested in the cat. From the kitchen to the bathroom, he found it constantly in his way and wanted to know when a new home might be found for it. He hadn’t mentioned putting it down, he was still in love and there are things one leaves unsaid d
uring those times when one fears ruffling another’s feelings. He did mention dumping it in the woods, though. You plugged your ears and continued walking on water.
He kept at it. He said by the way, is that all you inherited? You replied no, there’s also the apartment. He repeated the apartment? Real estate? What neighborhood? The 5th arrondissement you said. He smiled. (You might have told me sooner.) Then he wanted to see for himself and you agreed, to have some peace. Leaving your mother’s apartment he’d estimated its market value and announced that the furniture wouldn’t bring much but every little bit helps. You’d suggested a walk in the Jardin des Plantes.
At the entrance to the rain forest greenhouse he’d asked when you were thinking of putting it on the market. You’d scraped a bit of gravel in the path with the tip of your shoe and made embarrassed faces. Finally you’d said I’d rather not sell, we don’t need the money, we make a good living, let’s forget it. He then asked how long you had been holding on to this apartment. You took ten euros out of your wallet to pay for the greenhouse tickets. He asked again in front of the prickly pear cactus. Suddenly you felt very hot. You took off your jacket and fumbled in your purse for a tissue, hoping to take as long as possible. When you looked up, Julien had moved off toward the palmetto palm. You took a little stroll, patting your cheeks, then joined him near the orchids. He’d asked the question again. You’d answered to get him off your back. Seven years? Eight? He’d said Viviane, there’s something really wrong here.
In the cradle the child has set out to break her toy, tired of these stupid animals that go around in circles without ever leaving their orbit. Great thrashings of the lower limbs communicate their contradictory injunctions to the mobile, sending lions and giraffes flying in every direction, crashing together like clacking castanets. You’re about to take her in your arms when the doorbell rings. It’s nearly midnight. No one has yet visited you in this apartment and you wonder who it could possibly be.
Well it’s the police.
In the doorway stands that inspector from the other day, that Philippot with the tender, inviting eye, who were he to go about it more skillfully would wangle out any and all confessions. He is accompanied by a subordinate but you don’t register any details of his physiognomy. You look the inspector up and down, waiting for an explanation and he offers none, showing you his police credentials according to regulations and saying Madame Hermant, you’re to come with us, collect the child’s things and please come along.
What does one do in these circumstances. One flutters in vain, asking questions nobody answers. The policemen hurry you along, put things into your hands barking you’ll be needing this and that and in the end they hand you a travel bag they’ve found in a packing box and you stuff your daughter’s things inside it. Plucking the cradle from its frame, they carry it out to the stairs and you run after them, dashing down the steps behind the child they’re carrying off, tripping over the coat dangling from your arms, your shoes only halfway on your feet.
A vehicle is parked outside the building. Its door is open; a policeman motions you inside while the officer who’s carrying the cradle and the traveling bag hands them over to a man who has come out of the shadows. It’s Julien. He’s there, he doesn’t look at you, he grabs the loot and disappears. You’re given no time to take in this picture. The policemen push you into the backseat where you find yourself between the inspector and his subordinate. The driver pulls away immediately and you look desperately into the rearview mirror, pleading for a sign, an augury, some hope, but the face in the mirror does not recognize you.
15
Let’s see where we are, says the chief inspector. On the other side of the desk, the prisoner is slumped in defeat. We received a phone call from your husband, he continues; it seems that you are not yourself these days. So tell me, what are those marks on your arms, Madame Hermant?
The woman’s arms are covered; she studies them without moving. Then the chief inspector explodes: he stands up, pounding his fat fist on the desk, and walks around it yelling stop fucking with me, show me your arms now and tell me how they got that way.
Since she still does nothing, the inspector who brought her in steps forward and pulls up one sleeve of her sweater. The chief inspector is right next to her, the mass of his face swollen in a grotesque close-up. All she sees is an orbit, black against the backlighting because it’s the accused who is illuminated, the lamp shining in her face, the face of an animal dragged from the depths of its burrow. But in that instant she loses all fear. A feeling of destiny sweeps over her: she awaits the fatal blow.
You’ve been fighting? bellows the chief inspector, his thick breath shooting directly into the nostrils of the accused woman, you had a fight and the other one fought back, is that it? You look like a middle-class lady but you have your little moods, get angry and then you can’t answer for yourself? Huh, Madame Hermant?
The echo of these suppositions dies away in the office, and she says yes looking down at her lap, yes I had a fight. And who with? continues the chief inspector in the same vein, the syllables falling like projectiles around the person in pain. With the Boujon kid, she admits at last, I fought with Tony Boujon.
The two men draw back smartly. What the hell were you doing with him? demands the chief inspector. So then comes the admission that she’d undertaken some research. Cut out newspaper articles. Waited for him in the Gare de l’Est to talk to him but regrets that now, it wasn’t a good idea in the end. Then she falls silent once more. After which neither the shouting of the chief inspector nor that of the inspector when they switch roles (counting on the contrast to soften up the target) nor their kicks at the chair she clings to until she finally lets go and winds up on the floor—nothing will rouse her from the mutism into which she has withdrawn, and they lock her up out of spite.
The cell is about six feet deep by four and a half wide. Provided with a cot and a door of safety glass, it is absolutely clean. The walls do not weep with humidity; no insect scoots around the tile floor. If one wishes to go to the toilet, permission is granted; one is accompanied by an officer of one’s own sex. One can also obtain a glass of water but nothing to eat. At last the possibility of a phone call is offered. The person in question ignores this offer. She curls up on the cot with her palms over her eyelids to make everything black, because that’s still where one sees the best.
This will give you time, the chief inspector said before tossing her in the hole, to think about the consequences of your actions. Well that’s just what she wants, to bring some order to her memory. Instead of coming to light, however, events are retreating ever deeper into darkness.
Bereft of her recent past, she shelters in ancient history. She remembers the mother who has no more beginning than end, impossible to date by any method, introspection or carbon 14. And next to the monolith appears a tiny shadow. A personage who was loved after a fashion, with what remained of affection, but who then simply evaporated one fine day: they were no longer three in the apartment on Place Saint-Médard, they were two, face-to-face like two porcelain figures. And if the disappearance of the third element upset the equilibrium of the landscape for a while, it was quickly relegated to the status of remembrance, like those bibelots on the mantelpiece one polishes automatically but would never give up for anything in the world, so indispensible are they to the new configuration of the whole. Explanations were doubtless demanded, around the age of twelve or fourteen, when one hopes through skillful inquiry to obtain justice and amends. It quickly becomes clear, however, that an absence of cause is better than a slew of unsatisfactory motives, and silence reclaims its due.
The person on the cot sways from right to left and vice versa. Time passes and might flow on forever, but a back twinge or a tiny ache in one knee finally brings the body back to mind. Leading to a lifting of the head, a change of position. An examination of what’s going on outside, beyond the glass door, in the corridor where a few scarce officers pass without ever looking at the pri
soner.
Toward the middle of the night, they remove her from her cage to return her to the same office. Another guest is already seated in one of the visitors’ chairs.
Sit down, Madame Hermant, orders the chief inspector. You will now tell me how the two of you met.
That’s her, Tony Boujon insists loudly, she’s the one that came up to me, then she wanted to go to my place, it’s her that planned it all!
Well, Madame Hermant, what do you say to that?
It’s true, says the humiliated woman. I saw his photo in the paper. I don’t know why I got the idea to follow him but I did and I regret it.
The story of this episode must be told. Everything must be gone over in extreme detail, the approach, the assault, the tangled limbs, and precisely how it went, including what fluids were exchanged, until the suspects agree on a common version. Which doesn’t present major difficulties, since the boy wants to downplay his guilt and the woman wants to comply. She says yes, it’s true, I threw myself at him then I don’t know what came over me, I scratched him, I bit him, he defended himself as best he could, and the boy enthusiastically endorses that version, repeating yes, that’s it, that’s totally what happened, she wouldn’t let go of me, I didn’t know how to get her off me. The policemen take down this version. Sometimes they look up, having trouble believing that two suspects would agree so zealously with each other. But in the other business, the important one, with the doctor, Tony Boujon has a cast-iron alibi. He is careful to bring this up, how he had to go to work earlier that day, a machine had broken down, they’d called him in to help out and three workmen can testify that he was there all night.