Viviane Page 9
The days go by; you have no idea whether the court-ordered appraisal is really moving forward but you no longer think about the future. In any case you will not be staying on at the Hôtel-Dieu, which is not a place for long-term care. The feeling is something like traveling on a train or cruising in the Mediterranean: time seems suspended. Satisfied with your recent composure, the chief physician reduces your medications. And it appears that this hospitalization has in fact calmed you down.
On the other hand, you’re now becoming seriously bored. You complain to the nurse, the one who does not include empathy among her main attributes. Still, she hasn’t the heart to refuse you a little distraction and hands you a tabloid magazine full of divorces and eating disorders. You sympathize. Seeing you touched by these troubles that doubtless move her as well, she allows you a pencil to play the games. You fill in the blanks, erase the answers with the end of the pencil, then start over again the next morning. After a few days, you have more or less memorized the solutions and erased lots of holes through the pages.
The inspector comes to see you at the end of the week. He requires two or three more details regarding November 15, which you wearily supply. No, you do not have a chronometer, you would really like to help him out but there are things that escape even their supposed author. Fine, we’ll leave it at that, he says and presents some papers for signature. You sign without knowing what you’re signing and you couldn’t care less.
After another week, you are so well behaved that they give you back your daughter. She arrives with her baby gear, the cradle, the mobile, extra outfits, and pulls the usual stunt: carried in screaming, she shuts up as soon as you take her from the nurse’s arms. The reunion is heartwarming. So much so that it distracts you a bit more from your problems with the law. On that count, they’re still not telling you anything. The specialists visit you now and again but interest in your case seems on the wane. Soon they stop giving you any meds during the day, only a tablet at night to help you sleep.
18
Pascal Planche.
Pascal Planche owns three dust-colored suits. The first of flannel for summer wear, the second in a wool mixture for winter, the last of synthetic material for other eventualities (stains, delayed dry cleaning, torrents of rain). His shirts feature stripes in a matching color, or sometimes a small check. His shoes belong to no identifiable species: moccasins, Oxfords, bucks, sneakers, loafers, or flip-flops. He loves them, though, spends his Sundays taking care of them. After lining the pairs up in front of him, he gets out the shoeshine box where he keeps his supplies. On one side, rags and sponges; on the other, polishes and creams. Pascal spreads out a piece of newspaper on the floor and gets to work. He proceeds by stages rather than by pairs, judging that this method is more relaxing. One shoe after the other, he buffs off dirt with a soft, long-bristled brush, then massages the leather with an enriching liquid, brushes again, shines, waxes, polishes, rubs, until the process is complete and he enjoys an invariable and well-earned satisfaction.
Pascal lives on Rue de l’Argonne in the 19th arrondissement, by the Corentin-Cariou métro station. On Monday mornings he takes the 7 line to the Archives Nationales, where he is in charge of the department preserving draft contracts written by Parisian notaries. Overlooking the beautiful main courtyard, his office is a cramped room of about one hundred square feet, and in his domain boxes are stacked floor to ceiling, carefully labeled. He can find any document without a moment’s hesitation: his system is perfectly organized, without any possibility of failure or mistake.
Pascal is very obliging. He helps out his colleagues when they’re inundated with work, carries groceries for old ladies, waters plants for people on vacation, feeds the cats. And he’s easy to get along with, his friends would add, army vets who get together every Friday evening: Planche is always up for everything, a few drinks, going to a movie or helping someone move, supporting any soccer team if that will please someone. He’s so obliging that they never know what he really thinks. In fact they’ve ended by believing he doesn’t think anything.
As a result, Pascal has been on medication for seven and a half years: two tablets morning and evening, plus another whenever his brain gets ready to blow out the valve in his skull. At least that’s the expression noted down by the doctor during his first consultation. Ever since, Pascal had had the Monday 10:30 appointment. On Mondays he used to show up at the Archives at 8:30, then swiped out again at 10:10 to go see his physical therapist, he told his colleagues. That a man in his profession should have back problems seems quite plausible. So off he would go, taking the 7 once more to Censier-Daubenton. By 11:20 he’d be back, and would finish work at 5:40 to make up for the seventy minutes spent dealing with his pain. Still, there was some worry about the fact that his condition never seemed to improve. Chronic, it’s now chronic, Planche would reply evasively, then resume filing his documents.
Torn between the shame of informing and his duty as a citizen, it was Planche as well who told police about the telephone conversation on November 15 between Viviane Hermant and the doctor concerning the appointment made for around, and I mean around, the time of the murder. Planche’s name appears for the first time in Le Parisien on Wednesday, December 22, a paper the nurse will hand to Viviane the following day. Well, according to that edition and with regard to that same November 15, Planche was not able to account for his actions between 5:40 and 9:00 that evening. Worse, having told the police that he’d gone straight home from work as he did every day, he’d found himself contradicted by his next-door neighbor.
In that horseshoe-shaped apartment building on Rue de l’Argonne, the windows of the neighbor woman give onto Pascal’s living room and bedroom. And they were dark until 8:35. She remembers that well because that is the unusually late hour at which he arrived home that evening, just when the final episode of a quiz show celebrating a certain trivial conception of general culture was due to begin. She never misses the concluding episodes: the TV host is so handsome and he’s on for a longer time at the end of the series. And so Pascal finds himself in police custody (Le Parisien, December 25). Merry Christmas, says the nurse to Viviane.
Several days follow during which nothing happens. Then one morning, the door to her cell is left open. Viviane has no particular intention of escaping, but it’s been some time since she’s had a breath of fresh air. Hugging the baby to her shoulder, she ventures out into the corridor where two nurses are pushing rolling carts loaded with medical instruments. To the right, a white wall breached by dozens of cells; to the left, a series of sturdily barred windows overlooking a bare and narrow courtyard. She makes it to the elevator and, since the nurses aren’t paying any attention to her, steps into the car. The doors close, reflecting on their panels the image of a rather pale woman with very messy hair. Aiming at random, she pushes another button.
It’s exactly the same configuration on that floor, except that there aren’t any bars on the windows and there are signs at the beginning of the corridor indicating the direction to various wards. She starts down the corridor and winds up taking a tour that brings her back to the elevator, which she takes to the ground floor this time. Here the décor is completely different. Staying close to the arched windows opening onto an interior courtyard bounded by a labyrinth of evergreen shrubs and a kind of Greek temple, Viviane follows a gallery all the way down to the reception area. In the vast lobby where the two galleries framing the courtyard come together, patients sit drowsing in metal chairs, shuffling their social security papers while awaiting their turn, and right in the center of the far wall is the entrance. Or the exit, as you please. Perfectly accessible, simply a matter of heading toward it to trigger the automatic doors and go out into the open air.
A cloud of dust overwhelms your brain. Stimulates your sudatory system, sends tremors through your fingers. On the verge of vertigo, you cling to the child to save yourself from falling. The baby pulls you through. Steady as you go, you beat a retreat and five minutes later, you
’re back in your cell, sitting demurely on the hospital bed. You are waiting for today’s lunch: scalloped chicken and kohlrabi purée.
19
On January 4 your husband shows up. Julien Hermant, yes, that is his name, he’s out in the corridor and the nurse wants to know if she can allow him in, or if that might upset you (he’s the one asking, I’m just passing it along). You agree to see him and, without responding to his embarrassed greetings, immediately press for news about Pascal Planche.
Locked up, they’ve locked him up, exclaims the still-astonished Julien, who has brought along some magazines and asks timidly if he might hold the child. You know, he continues after she’s handed over, I thought it would be a good idea to relieve you somewhat of this responsibility, but I quickly realized that at this age, a child needs her mother, and I preferred to give her back to you, given that the doctors said things were looking up. Because they are looking up, right? he concludes hopefully.
The next visit is from Gabrielle. She considers you without any particular animosity, perched on the edge of her chair like a statue unable to find an acceptable plinth. You murmur something in the way of apologies but the widow waves them away. She has come to wrap things up. To continue the story of her life, since you find it so interesting.
Gabrielle discovered that she was rich. Not worth millions, of course, but enough to keep her going for a while. And suddenly she realized that she didn’t need anyone. She packed up, moved back to the Rue du Pot-de-Fer apartment, threw out the doctor’s crummy watercolors and settled in. Angèle’s baby was born without incident, and although the obstetrician had sworn the contrary, it was a boy. At the time the mother hadn’t come up with a given name, but we ended by agreeing on Achille, confides the widow. Oh yes, she adds, having almost forgotten, I also had dinner with your husband. He certainly is handsome. But lord, is that man uptight. Well, what time is it—twenty past noon, I have to go now. See you around sometime, Viviane.
No more visits after that. So, you take a few walks. You explore the hospital, the main courtyard framed by three stories of galleries, the top one of which offers a lofty view over the parvis of Notre Dame. Tourists enclosed behind a fence on the cathedral roof peer out at the panorama. Sometimes they wave and you wave back.
One morning, out of curiosity, you go to the chapel off the passage linking the upper galleries. A big disappointment, not at all worthy of the first-rate establishment where you’re staying. The chapel is a tiny plywood room slapped together in the 1970s with two rows of mismatched chairs and a no-frills altar beneath a run-of-the-mill stained glass window. Actually, it reminds you of the domed Central Committee Chamber at the Paris headquarters of the Communist Party—not that you have a revolutionary past, but Julien used to love dragging you off to that Oscar Niemeyer cupola on Place du Colonel-Fabien so that he could rave about its architectural beauty. You don’t linger in the chapel.
On January 10 the chief physician arrives with his entourage. He examines you for two minutes, says everything’s fine to no one in particular, you can take her to the nurse. Who tells you to hurry and gather up your belongings. You collect the things that have accumulated in the cell as the weeks have gone by and cram them into big plastic bags. Carrying the baby, you follow the nurse along the corridor, into the elevator, down to the ground floor gallery. The nurse escorts you to the exit: tripping the automatic doors, she delivers you and your bags to the sidewalk, where a dark gray taxi awaits. In the backseat, your mother is quietly smoking a cigarette.
20
It is a city fortified with concrete through and through. It could be Saint-Nazaire, Cherbourg, Le Havre. Rows of buildings thrown up in haste after the Liberation form a rampart against the water, all traces of bombardment carefully removed. Along the base of the façades snake the floating docks of the marina, the asphalt road, the shingle beach. The sea and the overcast sky roll toward each other with the speed of an outboard, and at the far end the pale sun sinks into the water.
You are leaning on your elbows at the balustrade of a terrace on the ninth floor. All the apartment windows have full western exposure onto the open water plied by ferries, oil tankers, container ships. To the south rise the cranes of the industrial port, looming over the deserted wharf like long-suffering pterodactyls. Then come the domes of the refinery and the vertical labyrinth of a cemetery.
The apartment comprises three rather well-laid-out rooms, with the bedrooms on either side of the living room, plus the bathroom and toilet together at the end of the hall. The interior decoration is minimal but the packing boxes are gone. All your belongings have been put away in cupboards and closets and on newly installed shelves, an operation requiring numerous trips to major hardware stores. You didn’t do anything. Catalogs were brought to you, you checked off the models, left the details to the professionals. You got out your checkbook.
So you left the Hôtel-Dieu, and your mother brought you home. In the weeks that followed you slept a great deal. Sometimes you watched afternoon television, where airy and insubstantial things happen in faraway settings. Surgeons two-time their wives with nurses pregnant by airline pilots, the husbands die through mishaps with ice picks, and the widows drive convertibles against a backdrop of azure blue. They all lulled you like the memory of an old joke.
In March, you were already feeling more energetic: it was time to look to the future. Well, Biron Concrete was—how to put this—none too eager to see you again. Jean-Paul did not come right out and say no, Viviane, I’d prefer that you not return to your old job, or I would like Héloïse to replace you. He said you know, I have contacts—partners, entrepreneurs, district organizations—adding, do you know Normandy? Can you imagine, they’re looking for an assistant regional director of communications, so I thought, hold on, why not you. Wouldn’t you like a little change of air?
You took a train at the Gare Saint-Lazare, interviewed for the job for appearance’s sake. Two weeks later, all taken care of: the salary level, notice given for the Rue Cail apartment, a new place on the waterfront (your only requirement). You started work in your new position on April 15. It’s a job, no more, no less. You go every day to an office, where you do what is asked of you and leave at six o’clock.
The local child-care woman, in your opinion, can’t hold a candle to the old one. She talks a lot, asks too many questions, never waits for the answers before asking new ones. The advantage is you can let her babble on surrounded by screaming children, whereas yours is so well behaved that at times she frightens you.
You did not bring along the rocking chair. That is not where you read the press clippings collected during your stay at the Hôtel-Dieu, nor is it where you knit while you go over the thread of events. You do all that in bed, before setting aside your knitting to apply your hands to a different, more relaxing activity.
And so, after your little panic attack on November 15, you did indeed make an appointment with the doctor for the end of the afternoon, and you showed up right on time. But you were not alone. You were with your daughter, whom you were not going to leave on her own at the age of twelve weeks, after all. What a face the doctor made: he was even more huffy with you than usual, yawning as he listened to you and renewed your prescription.
After which everything becomes very strange, as if someone else’s memories had been instilled in you. Yet you know they are true. You leave the office. Once more, you have not gotten what you wanted. You think, this is a waste of time, there’s no point, it just keeps me on the hook, that’s all. Dusk seeps into the stairwell; a potted plant watches over the silence. You sit down on the top step, curved like a parasol over the baby. You cry.
Someone else is already in the office. You heard the bell ring when you were with the doctor and he let in the next patient using a switch on the low table near his armchair. The person entered the waiting room, closing the door to the landing. When that patient leaves the office, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, you are still sitting on the top step but your te
ars have dried. You look up when he passes you to dash outside. It’s a momentary exchange of glances, a high-angle/low-angle shot in which you both seem equally distraught. He makes as if to do something, sees the baby asleep against you. Runs away. You have no memory of his face, but all the papers will tell you it was Pascal Planche.
You stayed another few minutes on the step before pulling yourself together. It isn’t enough never again to set foot in that office. You must also look the doctor in the face to tell him: you’re useless and you’re fired. This time, all the doors were open. You went right in and saw the man on the floor, the red flood on the blue shirt, the eyes and mouth wide open in one last gasp of incomprehension.
You will not find out what drove Pascal Planche to do this. You will learn only that the doctor’s letter opener was found in his apartment, and tests prove without a doubt that it is the murder weapon. You will conclude that your own knives—lugged from the 12th to the 10th then on to the 5th arrondissements and so on—were never involved. Proof: they have been returned to your husband.
Three months after the incident, when you left the Hôtel-Dieu, you were handed a copy of your medical file. You studied it, frowning with concentration. You read and reread it without recognizing anyone in that pileup of technical terms like the ones in lab reports. You tried to understand. At your local library, you examined journals, specialized dictionaries, but all you saw were white pages streaked with tiny black insects, and those signs supposedly representing letters that would then clump into words and sentences and paragraphs did not trace any intelligible pattern. You observed the people around you, bent over voluminous works from which they were gleaning notes meticulously recorded on index cards. They seemed to understand; to them the words were meaningful. You would have liked to question them, these students, job hunters, lovers of psychological curiosities. Afraid of revealing terrible secrets, secrets accessible to everyone save yourself, you didn’t dare say it’s for a friend, I’m doing research so I can help her. Folding and refolding the medical file, you transformed it into a paper boat and you went to the Bassin de la Villette, the largest artificial lake in Paris, where the water had frozen in large sheets drifting beneath the orange sun. You set the boat in the lake, then turned your back on it.