Talking to Ghosts (21 page)

Madame Huvenne trailed off and in the silence that followed Vilar found his mind filled with the images conjured by her story. He could see the quiet, well-behaved boy heading to school with his bag on his
back, the other children shoving and shouting. He could picture Nadia alone with her torturers, resisting them and then huddling up under the rain of blows, see her picking herself up after the rape, bruised and violated, her life once again shattered into quivering pieces, and running to find shelter here, in this very room. Vilar caught himself listening to the silence in the vague expectation that he might catch some ghostly echo of that day, the petrified young woman panting for breath, the words she had used to explain what had just happened to her.

Madame Huvenne shifted in her armchair and the creaking noise brought Vilar back to reality. He apologised, saying that he had been thinking.

“Do you think that Victor knows this guy Éric?”

“Of course. He would have been there in the evenings when the man sometimes came to the house. He would definitely have seen him. Though I do know Nadia did everything she could to make sure he didn't talk to the boy, she said Éric would taint him just by looking at him, that she didn't want her son having anything to do with that world. That's what she'd say. With those people, she said that too.”

The woman sighed. She shifted her legs, rubbed her knee. Vilar asked again whether she remembered the other man's name, but she said no, she didn't think Nadia had mentioned it. Gingerly she got to her feet and massaged the small of her back. When Vilar stayed still, waiting for her to say or do something, she smiled.

“At my age, you've always got an ache or a pain somewhere. From spending too long on your feet, too long sitting down, lying in the wrong position … Your bones creak like a piece of old furniture … Never get old, that's my advice.”

Vilar almost told her that this was his plan, that he had very nearly ended up remaining forever young. He thought about Pablo, about how time had passed for him, or rather how it had stopped. Then suddenly everything around him began to lose shape and form and he felt as though he were floating in a dark abyss, an astronaut cut loose from the cable tying him to his ship, doomed to drift forever, frozen instantly
by the galactic void. He would have preferred not to think – not even to be capable of thought – because thinking about this was both necessary and impossible.

Shuffling, the old woman led him into the hallway, and once again he urged her to call at any moment if she thought of anything that she had forgotten to tell him. He shook her small bony hand and she took his and pressed it to her, and told him to keep his chin up because she feared he was hunting an evil man weighed down by terrible secrets.

The oppressive heat choked him the moment he stepped outside. He drove back to the docks with his windows rolled down, and in the fast-moving traffic, the air roaring into the car dried his sweat. Straight ahead, to the south, the opalescent sky was drained of colour, grey and dark, and Vilar hoped for a cloudburst, longed for a raging storm, that clamour of war erupting suddenly in a thunderous blast, in hail, rain and fire.

When he got back to the station, Daras told him they had tracked down the car he had called in about. It had been stolen two days before from a supermarket car park in Bègles. The driver had abandoned it on the street right in front of the skating rink opposite the police station, and walked off towards the cathedral while the duty officer watched, gobsmacked, blowing his whistle.

Every day Victor kept an eye on the road. He roamed the streets of the village on the lookout for the Peugeot belonging to Éric, since that was the name by which Victor knew him. He kept a knife with him, an Opinel folding pocket knife he had found in a drawer in the garage, honing and oiling the rusty blade until, though still a little tarnished, the grey steel gleamed. He was not sure whether he wanted the man to come back so he could plunge the knife into his throat or whether he dreaded the thought that he might reappear like some evil spirit. Victor thought he spotted him once in a supermarket car park, but the man disappeared behind a van and never re-emerged. He also thought they had passed the beat-up Peugeot driving along the narrow road to the beach, but once again a sharp bend made it impossible for him to confirm his suspicions.

He knew the man would be back. Because predators like that never let go. Never gave up. And every time he imagined this day of reckoning, he slipped his hand into his pocket and took hold of the knife, the blade safely folded into the handle.

At night, he would talk to his mother, leaving the wardrobe doors wide open so he could see the reddish gleam of the urn. He would whisper to her absentmindedly, then say nothing for a long time in case her answer, if it came, fell so softly that not a molecule of air would have quavered. He vowed to avenge her so that she could finally be at peace. He did not know where she was, but perhaps it was not so far away from where he was.

“I know him, I've seen the guy who did it, he
was here.” He went on talking in a low voice, begging his mother to come back because he could not bear this emptiness he carried with him everywhere, the emptiness that had eaten away a part of him and threatened to suck him into the void. Then he would go to the window and listen to the night breeze playing in the trees, its quivering, tremulous voice like a weary sigh. Afterwards, he would manage to sleep, lying in the cool sheets, nestling into the pillow, suddenly so happy that it was almost as though his cheek was resting against some-one's shoulder. He would smile in the darkness. And, though no-one could see it, as he slept, his face took on the relaxed expression of a small child, that happy smile they have when they know that everything is fine.

He would wake early but lie in his bed, watching the sun rise through the venetian blinds, and the long shadows of night disappear. He would hear Denis getting up and going to the bathroom, the rush of water or the rumble of pipes. Nicole was always up next. She would make breakfast and liked to sit for a while with Denis since it was the only time of day when they could talk in peace, untroubled by heat or exhaustion. They would smoke a cigarette in the cool air outside the French windows. Victor would hear them whispering, but he could never make out what they were saying. Sometimes they would laugh and try to smother their laughter so as not to wake the children. Victor loved this time of the day. Without knowing why, he was happy for them and he would find himself staring up at the ceiling, smiling at this little moment of happiness that made him jealous.

He would spend the rest of the day thinking about Rebecca. It was terrible and wonderful.

He lurked around her house, going back and forth on his bike, taking any opportunity to go into the village to fetch bread or take a letter to the postbox. He would stop on the corner of the two crooked houses and hang around waiting for her to appear at a window or in the garden, and when he saw her he felt his heart beat faster and something tightening in his chest, and even as he savoured these moments he also dreaded them. There was something about the girl that frightened
him. He felt that at any moment she might turn against him and attack him. Perhaps he even hoped that she would.

One day he saw Rebecca's mother get out of a car, laughing loudly, stroke the head of the man behind the wheel and say goodbye. She went straight into the house, a red handbag slung over her shoulder, and slammed the door. The noise echoed along the empty street and Victor thought he saw the little house shake. A few minutes later Rebecca dashed out looking upset, slamming the door in turn. She cycled straight out into the road in front of a tractor whose driver yelled something at her.

She gripped the handlebars with one hand and, with the other, clutched a bunch of red flowers to her chest. She pedalled furiously, her hair streaming behind her like tattered black scarf. When she disappeared round a corner, Victor decided to follow her. There was more traffic on the little square she was now crossing. People stopped to gaze in shop windows. Three or four delivery vans were parking as cars came and went. She weaved between the pedestrians who crossed the road, barely slowing down. He gained on her and saw that the flowers were roses and dahlias. He occurred to him she might be visiting her grandmother, although he did not think it likely, and when he saw her take the narrow path that ran past the winery storehouses, he dismissed the idea. He let her pull ahead, now that she was riding between the vines. Sometimes all he could see was her dark, glossy mane flickering as she rode over the potholes.

And then she disappeared. He thought perhaps she had fallen off her bike, and pedalled frantically until he felt his legs burning with the strain, then, as he came up to a brick cottage, he turned and suddenly stopped. She was fifty metres ahead of him. She had set down her bike and was walking down the hill still clutching the flowers. Victor crouched and scuttled forward, stumbling over clods of dry earth that crumbled under his feet. He stayed close to vines in case he needed to duck and hide.

She was kneeling, her head bowed; he could see only the curve of her back, the purple sleeveless T-shirt clinging to her skin, her bare
shoulders glistening with sweat, moving slightly as she reached for something in front of her. She looked as though she were gardening. He wanted to go over to her, but the thought that he would be entering unknown and forbidden territory held him back. He remembered the movies in which explorers ended up being tortured by some tribe whose secret they had profaned, and this unhappy mixture of curiosity and fear made him huddle deeper into the furrow. He pulled his bike after him between two rows of vines and camouflaged it as best he could, lying at the foot of a vine, its branches already drooping from the weight of the grapes.

Peering through the vines he saw Rebecca get to her feet. She rubbed her hands and stood motionless for a moment, then came back up the hill and picked up her bicycle. Victor sank down into the furrow as she walked past, leaning over her bicycle. He counted to a hundred then warily got to his feet and, bent double, walked back to the path. There was no-one. He listened but could hear only the drone of a faraway tractor and cars passing on the road. He walked over to the spot where Rebecca had been standing.

It was a carefully weeded patch of bare soil, a metre long and half a metre wide, forming a perfect rectangle. She had simply laid the bouquet of red dahlias and roses, their stems wrapped in damp kitchen paper.

He sucked in a lungful of air and wiped the sweat from his face. He stood in front of the little grave and the flowers that would soon wither, at once curious about what could be buried there – the body or the bones of a dog or a cat? – and surprised that Rebecca would have come to lay flowers on this pathetic tomb. He assumed she had been forbidden to bury the animal and had dug this hole in secret, deep in the vineyards where no-one was likely to see her.

He was happy he had discovered this secret, dismal as it was. It made him feel closer to her, so close he could look over her shoulder, see the things she saw, an intimacy they could only share when he plucked up courage to tell her that he had been spying on her. He knew something about her that no-one else did. Something they were the only two people in the world to know.

When he got back, Marilou was alone in the house, doing the dishes in the cool, bright kitchen. She was humming to herself and did not answer when he said hello. He offered to put the dishes away, but again she did not answer, pretending not to notice that he was standing next to the bowls and cutlery on the draining board.

“Well,” she said. “I thought you were going to tidy things away?”

He opened a cupboard, put the bowls away one by one, taking care to line them up on the shelf. Marilou watched him, frowning.

He turned around and took a deep breath.

“What was Rebecca's dog's name?”

“What dog? Rebecca's never had a dog in her life. She hates dogs, she's scared of them.”

He looked at the girl, gazing into the great dark eyes that stared back at him, trying to detect some lie, some hesitation.

“Why are you asking about a dog?”

He shrugged, turning away and putting the cutlery in a drawer.

“It's nothing,” he said.

Marilou came up and touched his arm.

“What are you talking about? What dog?”

“It's fine, I told you – it's nothing. I don't know. It was just an idea.”

“An idea, eh? You fancy her, that's what it is. And you're trying to find things out about her.”

“No I'm not,” he said in a whisper. “I'm not trying to find out anything. In fact, I couldn't care less.”

She cupped his chin and turned his head towards her.

“Look at me: you can always tell these things by looking in some-one's eyes.”

She studied the boy's glistening eyes.

“You do fancy her. I knew it!”

She let out a shrill laugh.

“Stop it,” Victor said. “Let me go.”

He pushed her away and stumbled out of the room, dazed, ran into the garden and sat on the swing, which groaned under his weight. He could hear Julien in the garage, banging pieces of metal, hitting things
with a hammer. He went to see what the kid was up to, standing in the doorway to watch. Tools were strewn all around, over the floor, over the workbench and every other surface large enough to hold a spanner or a screwdriver. He was beating at an old rusty, chrome-plated mudguard.

“What the hell are you doing?” Victor shouted over the racket.

Julien stopped hammering and shut one eye, checking the curve of the mudguard.

“Denis gave it to me. He said if I can get it working again, I can drive it.”

Next to the boy lay the frame of an ancient orange moped with something that looked like half an engine attached. Wheel rims, tyres and inner tubes were leaning against a wall.

The boy stood up, hammer in hand, his vest smeared with oil, his grubby skin glistening with sweat.

“He said he'd help me, I've got everything I need, even new spark plugs. He'll give me a hand with the engine, because that's a ball-buster, apparently. What about you? What the hell are you doing?”

Victor screwed his face up and shrugged. “You thirsty?” he said. “You want me to get you a drink? Because there's no way Nicole's going to let you inside all covered in engine grease.”

“Fuck, yeah, could you get me a Coke, I'm fucking dying here!”

Victor brought back two cans and they drank to the successful completion of the kid's mechanical jigsaw puzzle. Julien drained his can in one and let out a throaty, almost booming burp that astonished them both and then had them doubled up with laughter. When they calmed down, Julien announced he had to get back to work because he wanted to have the moped working by the weekend. Before he could start hammering at the buckled mudguard once again, Victor went over to him:

“How well do you know Rebecca?”

“I dunno, she's Marilou's cousin. Her father was Nicole's sister's husband.”

“Where is he, her father?”

Julien shook his head. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, smearing grease on his face.

“No idea,” he said feebly.

“He's banged up, isn't he?”

“Well, if you knew that already … Listen, Victor, I've got work to do.”

“What's he inside for? Is he in for long?”

“I haven't a clue! Stop busting my balls! Go ask Nicole, she can tell you.”

“Nicole won't tell me anything. On account of her sister.”

“O.K. then, she won't tell you, and that's that.”

The kid made the most of the silence and resumed his pounding, making a deafening racket. Victor grabbed the head of the hammer in mid-air and blocked the boy's arm.

“Did Rebecca ever have a dog?”

“Why you asking me?”

“Just answer me.”

“She hates dogs. She thinks they stink.”

“What about cats?”

The kid squirmed, trying to escape from Victor, who had begun to twist the arm.

“O.K., alright, she likes cats. She likes them. Can you let me go now?”

Victor found himself outside again, jolted back to earth, his head heavy with questions to which he had no answers. He pictured Rebecca in front of the grave and suddenly realised that he did not believe she was taking flowers to some dead dog. Nor could he believe it was a cat, a canary or a goldfish. He went and sat beneath the chestnut tree to think things over but all he could think about was that patch of bare earth and the bouquet of red flowers which were probably already withering in the sun. And he thought about what lay under the earth, about the hideous thing that it had become. He shuddered in horror, his mind teeming with gruesome images. He pictured dead children. Little children who might fit in such a grave.

He raised his head, desperate to look anywhere other than at his
feet, where these grisly images swarmed, and, in the distance, he saw Marilou staring at him solemnly, brushing away the wisps of black hair the wind whipped around her face. He gave her a little wave, because he did not know how to behave, but she ignored him and turned away, head bowed, and slowly headed back into the house.