Bed of Nails (24 page)

“No, it’s true.”

The waitress stood up again.

“You know about that, the olden days, Mesrine and stuff?”

“Yeah, did know them.”

Bunker had dropped his voice not to be overheard. The waitress was speaking loud and clear as she wiped the next table.

“So where you off to, then?”

“Place called Saint-Céré, in the Lot.”

“That’ll be the Toulouse train, 21.58.”

She must spend her life looking at the back end of trains.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“I get my holidays in August, and I go to Royan. Do you go there often, the Lot?”

“First time.”

“Is it nice? Countryside?”

“Dunno.”

“You don’t know where you’re going?”

She laughed showing her sharp little teeth, good for biting apples, and was gone in a trice.

Bunker had realised what had happened, as his confidence was coming back. Even if he probably reminded her of her grandfather, she had given him a smile. And she wasn’t a mummy in the park, or a teenager, or a student from the Luxembourg. A real woman, in her natural background, had smiled at him, a free man. Out of the fish tank into the ocean.

All he’d had to do was open his mouth without being afraid of drowning, or of the air ripping painfully into his untried lungs.

A happy sort of apprehension made his hair stand up on end: “Attention please. The train now standing at Platform 17 H is the Express Teos 3624 for Toulouse, departing at 21.58. Calling at …”

He counted his money quickly, taking it out of a pocket that had once been full of 100-franc notes with Pascal’s portrait on them, those big banknotes that snapped like no others. Not that he gave a toss, riches had brought him nothing that lasted, and a man his age still had a right to some love. He left three euros tip on the table, a small fortune, but cheerfully spent.

Bunker snatched up his case. Mesrine came bounding behind him and they approached Platform 17 H. Bunker gripped his ticket in his hand, counting the carriages and muttering their numbers over and over at each door until he reached the right one. His hand on the steel handle, his foot on the step.

Night had been a good excuse not to panic. The American had given him a hug in the rue de Vaugirard, like an old comrade, or like a son sending his elderly dad off to the countryside as the war reached the city. Not a son, a friend. A real friend, who had landed him in the shit.

Sitting in his seat, watching his own pale reflection, it seemed to Bunker that the details of the Gardens were already vanishing from his memory.

*

He didn’t sleep, didn’t want to. At Vierzon, contrary to expectation, he had found something to look at, even from the train door. Passengers getting off or on, sleepy faces of people waiting to meet other people. He had sniffed the air, trying to recapture the scent of a hard-working provincial town that had long been a Communist Party stronghold. He remembered stopping at Vierzon in the summer of ’72 or ’73, driving back up from the Côte d’Azur in a Renault 16, with his pockets full of money. He had sat at a café terrace, it must have been the days he used to drink Fernet-Branca. The train moved off after a minute, under a metal bridge painted
in strange colours. A nocturnal monstrosity that made his heart leap with joy. Mesrine had calmed down, Bunk was thirsty and they went off in search of refreshments.

The drinks guy was taking it easy in a reserved compartment in the middle of the train. His red uniform tie looked as if it was strangling him; as he was a heavily built forty-year old with the forearms of a welder, the three dots tattooed in a triangle at the base of his left thumb probably had something to do with it. Bunker bought two tiny bottles of wine from him at an exorbitant price, trying to cover up the cross on his own hand. But the ex-con sandwich salesman, probably taking part in some rehab programme, had already spotted it. An unwelcome recognition, which came with its own codes and attributes. Distrust at first. Because they were both wild creatures, and might have friends or enemies who were incompatible, both inside and outside. Then the connection, the fucking connection, that all the ex-cons in the world have between them: not being ashamed, as you were with other people, of having been behind bars, and a sort of stupid pride when you met someone who knew what it was like, that value judgements inside weren’t the same as outside, and how hard it was, even if you couldn’t admit that to yourself. But above all, it was the recognition of fear in the look they gave each other. The cold fear of people who know that freedom is a conditional gift: keep a low profile. Bunk wanted to grab his wine before starting the ritual exchange of pedigrees, breaking the tradition of ex-cons always having to speak to each other, even if only a few words. Because you had to establish a hierarchy, weigh every word, every gesture, whereas all Bunk wanted to do was speak normally and smile rather than have to clench his teeth.

He turned away abruptly.

“Hey!”

This wasn’t the first ex-con he’d met, but this one made him
uneasy. He left a trace of prison behind him, wherever he went, and had done since the day he got out.

Bunker clenched his fists, Mesrine was showing his teeth.

“Your change, sir.”

The voice of a kid from the sticks, overlaid with inner-city vowels, unmistakably someone who had done time.

The guy held out some coins. Bunker pocketed them, and the man pressed another little bottle of wine into his hand.

“Go on, take it. I don’t like talking about it either, but I never know what to do.” The salesman rubbed at his tattoo with his thick fingers, the hands of a man who now had a vegetable allotment and felt happy with it. “And bon voyage, mate.”

Bunker stood like an idiot, trying to say something, the best present he had ever had in his hand, but the man had already retreated into his compartment.
Bon voyage
.

At Brive-la-Gaillarde, he had to hang about for two and a half hours on the platform in the middle of the night. Sitting on a bench, with his coat collar turned up, the old bear listened to the hand of the station clock tick every minute. He had sipped slowly at the last bottle of wine and smoked his roll-ups, as he waited for the train for Saint-Céré. Departure 5.57 a.m., arrival 7.49 a.m.

Mesrine was curled up on his feet, asleep with one eye open. At 5.50 a.m., three youths, no more than twenty years old, in the last stages of drink, rolled onto the platform. They chucked beer cans at the rails to watch them explode. Bunker went on watching the clock. Mesrine was now sleeping with one ear cocked.

The local train, a rusty old diesel, had only two coaches. Bunker let the youngsters get in and chose the other one. No other passengers. The roisterers had slumped across seats in their coach, taking up two places each, pushing and shoving one another. Bunk put his case beside him, his tattooed hand flat down on it. Fatigue
was beginning to make his eyes sting, but he waited until the three lads had gone to sleep, worn out with their night on the tiles, before he pulled down the blind.

He was awoken by the stillness, as the train came to a halt in the little station of Bretenoux. Bunker’s reflection was no longer visible on the pane now: the grey dawn was lighting up the deserted platform, and he could see through the window. The youngsters had disappeared. He took from his pocket the directions the American had written for him. They included a list of all the stations between Brive and Saint-Céré. Bretenoux was last but one. His watch said 7.30 a.m. He felt like sleeping some more, but the fire in the sky to the east held his attention. An orange glow, outlining a low range of mountains on the horizon. Without taking his eyes from it for a second, he watched the sun rise up out of the earth. It was his first horizon, his first real sunrise since … Bunker hadn’t visited the seaside when he had left jail the last time. It was the favourite fantasy of long-timers, the subject of endless discussions on nights when your morale was in your boots: “I’m going abroad, way away somewhere”, “smell the sea air”, “get as far from here as I can”. A dream one distrusted, that some men wouldn’t admit to or even entertain, because it was too good to be true and the time dragged even more slowly after that. From Fleury, Bunk had taken the bus straight to Paris, without searching for the horizon. So did everyone else.

He set foot in the Lot by stepping down onto the platform at Saint-Céré station. The ground felt as hard there as everywhere else. As the two-coach train rattled away, he listened. Silence. A few cars on the other side of the station building, just to remind you they still existed. Insects. Crickets, like in the old days in the Paris metro, when they used to feed on fag-ends. The air here had its own scent, not marked by pollution.

In his immigrant’s costume, clutching his suitcase tied with string, and with his mongrel crouching by his leg, Bunker felt like
staying there for a few hours, no need to move. An early morning breeze, already warm, ruffled his hair. He could feel emptiness all round him for a radius of several kilometres, the absence of humans crammed together.

A taxi was standing outside the station.

“I’m going to Lentillac, know where that is?”

The driver, who looked like a cross between an ape and a tractor, glanced at him curiously.

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m a taxi man!”

Shit, these natives had a different accent from him. Bunker had not realised he was so far south.

“O.K. for my dog?”

“Wouldn’t want him to run behind now, would you?”

The driver got out and opened the boot, taking Bunker’s case without missing a beat or looking askance at his suit, which was probably still rather avant-garde for these parts.

The café tables were only just being set out on terraces, the iron curtains of the shops just being raised. Saint-Céré didn’t really wake up until about nine or ten o’clock.

“You going to the hotel, then?”

“Eh?”

“I said, going to the inn at Lentillac, are you?”

“No, the shop. What’s this river?”

“The Bave, of course.”

The road took them uphill, through a narrow valley, green and twisting. Below it ran a river, a few metres wide, sparkling and rippling. Bunker lowered his window and let the air blow across his face. Mesrine remained obstinately crouching on the carpeted floor of the cab.

The road parted company with the river as the valley widened out. The old man tried to glimpse the track that would take him to the American’s camp.

“How far to Lentillac?”

“Four kilometres.”

A minute later, he spotted a dirt track cutting steeply down to the right, towards the bottom of the valley. He unfolded the kid’s plan, with a drawing of the road, wavy lines for the river, a cross marking the church and village, the track going off on the right, three kilometres before Lentillac. That must be it. A tidy step though.

On the way to the village, they had met no other vehicle. It was 8.20 a.m. Bunker paid the driver, who dropped him off in the main square.

War memorial, church, bar, shop, post office. An old geezer on the church steps, leaning on a stick. Mesrine sniffed the air timidly, still sticking close to his master’s legs.

Bunker swayed back and forth in his clumsy shoes, and looked carefully both ways before crossing the road. Mme Bertrand, of indeterminate age, was an antidote to love; and her shop was a museum piece. He filled a basket with tins, some bread, a packet of crunchy dog food, and three bottles of Cahors, good stuff not rubbish. The bottles were heavy and he had a long walk ahead, but it was downhill and he was thirsty.

He dug into his savings to pay the old woman. The American had given him his train fare plus some 10
€
notes for expenses. But he intended to use his own money before he started on that. He had to pay out of his own pocket if the shrink’s therapy was to work. Mme Bertrand wasn’t as indifferent as the taxi driver. She looked at him suspiciously, wondering what this decrepit toff was doing, drifting about this dead-end place. She didn’t miss the tattoo on his hand either, when he put his money down on the counter.

The old man in front of the church had multiplied. Two granddads were now squinting at him from under their cloth caps.

The door of the Bar des Sports was open. The sugar bowl was in the shape of a football, there were trophies and photographs of football teams everywhere, plus the firemen’s calendar, Formica tables. It was cool, dark and deserted. A refuge in summer from the heat. The barman was a nostalgic football fan, but his playing days were over. Seventy years old and still looking good, except for the giveaway strawberry nose.

Bunker asked for a coffee with a shot of Calvados. He no longer felt frightened since setting foot in Saint-Céré. He’d got here, he’d identified the forest track, the place was calm and lovely. The barman, a pro, just went about his business as his customer sat drinking. Mesrine had remained on his feet, his nose pointing at the door.

“You open this afternoon?”

“All day.”

They set off on foot along the road. The two old men watched as the stranger with his dog, his cardboard suitcase and his shopping bags, disappeared in the distance.

Jacket over his shoulder, feeling warm after climbing up the incline, Bunker put his load down in the grass. Nicest cell he’d ever clapped eyes on.

Mesrine was already sitting, his tail wagging in the grass, his paws shaking and his eyes on his boss. Bunker looked at him, his own lip trembling a bit too. “Go on! Go, boy!”

The dog didn’t budge, but was getting more and more excited and apprehensive.

Bunker waved his arm in the air.

“Go on, off you go!”

The old mongrel stood up and rushed straight ahead for about ten metres, stopped, looked all round, his two hundred million olfactory cells exploding with joy. He followed his nose in all directions,
gave a few barks running, stopping and running the other way. Bunker gazed at his dog, without daring to inspect the tepee, or the careful arrangements the American had made for his solitary homestead, the hammock suspended from two trees, and the sunny valley opening out at his feet. He sat down at the top of the log steps and Mesrine joined him. The dog snuggled up to the old man and they both looked down at the valley.