Viviane (10 page)

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 during 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 prisoner.

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.

Then perhaps Madame Hermant is your accomplice, suggests the chief inspector; perhaps she is the hand and you the brains in this case. Everyone in the room looks at everyone else, considering this hypothesis, each one weighing it individually, and it's so idiotic that in order to save face the chief inspector is the first to abandon it, rising and swatting the kid, who lands on the floor as the fat man leaves the office saying little bastard.

The two accused don't dare turn around to see if the inspector is still behind them. Tony climbs painfully back onto his chair and they wait in perfect submission. Finally they figure out that they're alone but still
don't move, staying on their chairs for long minutes that become hours. Shortly after dawn, an officer frees him and takes her back to her hole.

A few more hours pass during which she ties her hair in knots, rocking back and forth this time, hypnotized by her own movement. An officer enters the cell to place a glass of water next to her and asks if she wants to go with her to the toilet. She replies no thank you. At the end of the afternoon, someone opens the door again to tell her she is free.

She works her way slowly out of the cell, and hugging the walls so harshly illuminated by the ceiling light in the corridor, blinking and lightly touching these walls in case she has to lean on one, she reaches the elevator, crosses the lobby of the police station and finds herself outside. At first she can't remember very well how to get home, what would be the best bus or métro line. She remembers that her arms are empty and that the child who belongs there is missing.

16

In your lap you're rocking the case of knives you just retrieved from your husband's apartment. This time you did not run into Madame Urdapilla. The apartment had not changed much since the other day, except that things belonging to the absent baby were lying around the second bedroom. You called Julien after leaving his place. Naturally you did not say where you were. You said I've been thinking: I got carried away the other day, we do have to get organized about the baby, adding I'm going to sell my mother's apartment so do you want to meet with me late this afternoon to talk about things? Julien said okay. A week has gone by and Julien now understands what it's like taking care of a child. He would be only too happy to get rid of her for a few days.

Outside the window, the snow still blankets the gravel of the railway beds and the sky looks like a sea
of cotton. You stop the rocking chair, shove the knives into your purse, and leave.

The ruins of Arènes de Lutèce lie about five hundred yards from Place Saint-Médard in the Latin Quarter. You go through the gates and along the path by what remains of the Gallo-Roman amphitheater, then climb the stepped terraces to look down into the arena. Buildings of middling height close the perimeter to the north. To the south are trees, a thick wall of snowcapped branches shutting out the city. Perched atop the tiers, you see the gates through which were released the hungry lions, and through the stage door appears your mother.

She spots you right away, a large shape swaddled in your gray coat like a makeshift tent. When she reaches you she says aren't you a little crazy, in this weather, you could have come to my place, after all. You reply I know, but I'm in a hurry. You observe the texture of her image. The extreme materiality of the features that are just as you've always known them, the bumps, the hollows, the special glow of the skin, the general allure like no other. You are really crazy she says again indulgently, and looks as if she's about to reach toward you, but in the end she holds back, turns, and vanishes among the
trees. You remain alone with the knives, delivered up to the snow that begins falling again.