The Way I Found Her (34 page)

I was so engrossed in this story that I didn't want to stop, but Violette came in with a meal on a tray and said to me: ‘You better eat something, Louis. If you don't eat now you won't get well, and if you don't get well we're never going to find Madame.' So I put the book aside and Violette stayed with me while I ate a sliver of chicken and a few grains of white rice.

Then, after a while, I realised Violette shouldn't be here. It was Sunday and she never worked in the apartment on a Sunday, so I said: ‘Why are you here, Violette?'

She didn't reply. She got up and closed the door of the room and then she came and sat down closer to the bed and whispered to me: ‘I made a
vèvè
last night, Louis. We asked Ogou Feray to come.'

‘What's a
vèvè
, Violette?' I said.

‘A pattern. You make it on the floor with rice or grains or flour and through the
vèvè
the spirits come . . .'

‘Is Ogou Feray a spirit?'

‘Yes. We say, at home, he lives in the calabash tree. His colour is red, so we made the
vèvè
with red beans. And one of his days is Saturday, so we had to get him to come last night.'

‘What did you ask him to do?'

‘Ogou Feray is the one who fights against all bad conditions – including bad illness. When he comes, he makes you swear, I tell you! You curse and yell when Ogou Feray comes into you.' Violette laughed. ‘But I got used to him,' she added. ‘I've been asking him to help with my bad conditions for a long time now. I think he got those Social Security people to give me a work permit, you see?'

‘What did you ask him to do this time?'

‘Make you well. And now you're sitting up, eating a bit of chicken!'

‘Is this why you came today, to see if I was better?'

‘No. Since you were ill, I come here every day.'

I tried to finish the chicken, but I couldn't. I didn't know where my famous raging hunger had got to. If Valentina had been there and invited me to lunch at the Plaza, I would have had to refuse. I told Violette I was sorry about not eating the food and she said: ‘Tomorrow, you will,' as if this was something that Ogou Feray had informed her.

Then she took my tray away and told me never to tell anyone about the spirits; this was a secret between me and her and could never be revealed. As she was going out of the door, I said: ‘Violette, could you ask Ogou Feray to do something about Valentina?'

She shook her head. ‘Ogou Feray might not be the one to ask. You have to choose which spirit you want – this one for a love charm, that one to protect your home, this one for a good harvest, that one to bring you money – and how do I know what's happening to Madame?'

‘Ask Ogou anyway. If she's been taken, she may be held somewhere very cold or dirty or horrible . . .'

‘Or else there is some spell on her. Then I have to talk to Gédé, to get it removed. But Gédé is the spirit of death and he makes me afraid.'

Alice came to see me. All we talked about at first was the pathetic bit of chicken I'd eaten. Then she handed me something she'd been holding in her lap. It was Elroy. His beret was missing, but I didn't mention this. I just took him and laid him on one of my cushions, face down. The cushion was gold and he looked a bit as if he were slithering up a hill of sand towards an enemy position below. When a real enemy had come, he'd been completely useless.

Alice sat there, looking at me. In the street, I could hear two people having a conversation about the price of flowers. And then Alice said: ‘Hugh called yesterday and I had to tell him that you were ill. I didn't tell him what had happened, but he's not stupid, he senses that something is odd here . . .'

‘I'm not going back to England.'

‘I think you may have to go, Lewis. Bertie and Gwyneth are leaving the house at the weekend and it's only a fortnight or so before your term begins. Dad wants me to send you home no later than next Sunday.'

‘And you agreed?'

‘I said I would talk to you . . .'

‘Well, you've talked to me. I'm not going. We have to find Valentina.'

Alice took my hand and stroked it with hers. I didn't look at her, but at Elroy scaling his dune. Sometimes I envied Elroy his indifference towards everything in the world.

‘You're very fond of Valentina, aren't you?' said Alice.

I still didn't look at her. What I said was: ‘Is Carmody back?'

‘Answer my question,' said Alice.

‘Answer mine,' I said.

So we just stayed silent, like people do when they're trying to work out how to get their way, and the conversation in the street went on and on, clear as a bird: peonies so much, lilies x or y, geraniums bla bla bla, cheaper at Fleurs Monceau than in the rue Ponthieu, cheaper still at the
marché aux fleurs
 . . . if one didn't mind the walk, or if one included the price of the taxi . . .

Alice caved in first. She said: ‘Carmody's back. He came round and I took him up to your room. He's now talked to everyone in the building.'

I didn't want us to go into silence again, so I kept asking questions. Did Carmody have any news of Grisha? Had Alice told him to examine the GOH file? What did Dominique want?

When I mentioned Dominique, Alice turned her head away and looked out of the window. ‘She doesn't know anything,' she said. ‘She's in the dark.'

I stared at her. I thought, I've lost my feeling for when Alice is telling the truth and when she's lying, but I knew it was pointless to pester her; she wouldn't tell me anything more.

I returned to the subject of the GOH file. Alice said it contained a list of expenses and that was all.

‘What kind of expenses?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Aren't they identified?'

‘I suppose not.'

‘If they're identified, they could prove to be important because they could tell us what happened to that translator, Gail, and this could be connected—'

‘Stop!' said Alice. ‘Now look at me, Lewis. This has got to end. You've got to stop taking responsibility for everything and believing you can fix it. Nothing is your fault and nothing can be solved by you, however much you want to solve it.'

‘Wrong,' I said. ‘I
am
solving it. I'm getting close. That's why that face came to my window. They're trying to frighten me.'

‘Carmody said there was no trace of anyone having been on the roof.'

‘You mean you don't believe I saw a face?'

‘I believe you saw something and it frightened you.'

‘It wasn't “something”. It was a man's face!'

‘All right. Then the reasons for going home become greater, don't they? If you're actually in danger because of what you've found out, the only sensible thing is to go back to England. If we told Hugh what had really happened, I'm sure he'd insist on you being sent back.'

‘He might insist on
you
being sent back.'

‘No, I don't think so. He'd realise I had to stay until something's resolved. And there are other things, which you don't know about . . .'

Alice got up and walked to the window and stood with her back to me, looking out. And I knew that when she turned round towards me again, she was going to reveal everything that was happening in her secret life. The moment had come for her confession. She was going to talk to me man-to-man. But I had to stop her. I just couldn't take her man-to-man stuff right now, because I knew it could turn out to be far more serious and shocking than I'd imagined and alter my life and Hugh's and everyone's for ever and this wasn't the moment when I could endure it.

So what I did was begin babbling about some of the things I'd discovered: Gail O'Hara's possible connection to the drug world; the confusion about Valentina's hospital visit; my realisation that the second receptionist had been Russian . . .

Alice turned and gaped at me. She didn't know until this moment how hard I'd been working on the case.

‘Don't give in to Dad,' I said. ‘Please. Be on my side, not his. All I need is a bit more time and I'll find her.'

I could see her hesitating, weighing everything up. In arguments at home between her and Hugh, it was Alice who usually won. Then, finally, she shrugged. ‘OK,' she said, ‘but you know you have to be home in time for the school term. Right? There's no argument whatsoever about that. So all you've got is two weeks.'

I'd done so much sleeping that, when the night came, I didn't feel sleepy. I wanted to carry on reading Valentina's novel, but instead I made myself go on with Grisha's French text.

The further I read the more frequently I wrote a huge
P
in the margin. I also translated and copied out the following passages from Grisha's book:

1. 
Archduke Peter was preoccupied by his collection of military toys. He owned 126 soldiers, made of lead, wax and wood. He set up mock military battles on two large tables in a special room in his apartments and moved the soldiers around by means of ingenious mechanical devices
.

2. 
Archduke Peter was extremely superstitious about water and in consequence refused to wash his body. He once said that he feared the bath more than the fortress
.

3. 
Peter received very severe treatment at the hands of his tutor, Governor Brummer. He was often beaten and deprived of meals. Tales were told of his being forced to kneel naked on a harsh surface of dry peas. And it was widely assumed that it was these punishments which led him, in his turn, to punish. His victims were his inferiors: his servants, his grooms and his pet animals, which included a snake . . .

4. 
On his wedding night, the Archduke – unwashed, as he always was – came into Catherine's chamber and demanded to watch while his bride was undressed and made ready for him. By the time she had lain down in the great fortress of a bed, her new husband was asleep. In nine years, Archduke Peter never once succeeded in achieving sexual intercourse with his wife and when he died at the hands of her lover, Orlov, some wondered why the murder had been necessary
.

Virtually everything, supposedly original, that Valentina had written so far about Pierre was based on the Archduke Peter in Grisha's book. She hadn't even bothered to change his name. I was leaning towards the Grigory kidnapping theory more and more when I found this and I numbered it 5:

The story of the Varvarsky Virgin is indeed strange. In the autumn of that year, Moscow, never at this moment in its history a clean city, was visited by a terrible plague. It was a plague of smallpox, not uncommon at the time and deeply feared by the people, who chose on this occasion not to put their trust in the doctors of the city, but to flee to the city wall, where they congregated at the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary at the Varvarsky gate. They spent their waking and sleeping lives there, praying and beseeching the Virgin to save them from the pox
.

The city fathers soon understood, however, that by gathering there all together, the people had turned the Varvarsky gate into a terrible centre of contagion. They went to the crowd and asked them to disperse, but no one was willing to move
.

In desperation, under cover of night, Father Ambrosius, Bishop of Moscow, had the Varvarsky Virgin removed. At dawn, when the people woke and found the Virgin gone and word went around that Father Ambrosius was responsible, they rose up in a great bloodthirsty mass. They pursued Father Ambrosius into the fortress of the Kremlin, where he'd taken refuge. He was discovered hiding in a crypt and he was savagely killed and dismembered and his limbs thrown into the river
.

The night was slowly passing as I read all this. The Volvos and Mercs of the weekenders were back in the rue Rembrandt, their fantastic engines gently cooling; the maids in their high rooms were sighing in their narrow beds, wishing Monday morning wasn't going to come.

And I was thinking, that's it, it's almost conclusive proof: if Grisha knows what is in Valentina's book, then she's in Russia and all the hospital stuff is a blind trail. She never went to the hospital, because she was on a plane.

But as I put the book down I thought, perhaps, after all, Grisha wouldn't kill Valentina. What he'd do is make her live
his
life, with him, in Moscow or Kiev or wherever he decided, in some old concrete block of flats with broken windows and dangerous electric wiring. He'd make her see how half the population of the world had to live; everything she saw and touched and ate would irritate her: the plastic chairs in the living room, the grey toilet paper, the slices of pink sausage served up for her dinner . . .

And then there'd be his bed. It would be just a mattress on the green lino floor. The blankets would be thin and scorched-looking; the sheets would have patterns of marigolds on them. And every night or night and morning Grisha would fuck Valentina and the ugly marigolds would get tangled around their bodies and part of Grisha's pleasure would come from knowing how much Valentina was hating every minute of her life. He'd stroke her hair, which would be going more grey by now. He'd say: ‘Valya, I am never going to let you go.'

On Monday, I got up and walked with Alice to the Parc Monceau. My legs felt like sticks of cooked asparagus.

On the way, we heard Didier at work on the roof, but neither of us looked up.

In the park, we sat on a bench and watched a wedding party having their photos taken. It was a double wedding and both the brides were fat and smiling and both the bridegrooms were serious and small. One of the mothers-in-law parked herself on our bench and pulled her straw hat over her eyes and went to sleep. Alice said: ‘Well, you're looking a bit better, Lewis.'