“What, after?”
“After… will I see you again?”
She looked surprised. “We live a long way apart.”
“Three hundred and twenty-one miles.”
She smiled and looked at me kindly—that was all: kindly—and I felt something pinch my heart.
“I’ll add you on Facebook. Leonard what?”
“I’m not on Facebook.”
“Well, sign up.”
I nodded several times.
“I’m sorry… Vacation’s not like the rest of the year, you know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean.”
“But I do like you, Leo.”
“I like you, too, Luce.”
She kissed me on the cheek and held me in her arms. I cried a bit and then it passed.
“WILL THE PARENTS of the little girl paddling in the puddle opposite the barbecues please come and fetch her?”
It was gray, almost cold. Everything was sad and slow this Sunday. The ground was soaked, muddy, covered with puddles and little streams. The campers dug channels and hung out their wet clothes under the vanished sun. It was like a battlefield. Tubes of sunscreen and inflatable mattresses lay abandoned on the ground. Only the children kept riding bikes and shouting, because they were on vacation, and that was even sadder. It felt like fall, like the morning after the night before. I wanted to leave. Oscar was still sticking to my skin, damp and cold like seaweed, rotting foully somewhere. I couldn’t remember his eyes.
Luce walked with me toward my tent. Both of us were silent. Bubble suddenly ran in front of us, like a happy escapee.
My father sprinted after him. “Come here, you little bastard!” He managed to grab the leash but fell face-first into a puddle. When he stood up, he glared at Bubble, then he noticed us. I realized that Luce had been holding my hand, because she let go of it just then.
“Hello,” said my father.
“Hello,” she replied.
He blushed. The blood rushed to his head. Even his ears turned red. He let go of Bubble’s leash. The dog tried to run off again, but my mother appeared in time to stop him. “Hello.”
“Hello, madame.”
“We were looking for you,” she told me.
I nodded.
“So… how are you?” my father asked, opening his arms wide and laughing nervously.
“Very well, thanks, and you?”
“Yes, yes, very well. Although it’s always a bit sad when you have to leave.”
“We’ll be back next summer,” my mother added.
“You should go to Bordeaux instead. It’s pretty there.”
“That’s true. Bordeaux is very pretty…”
Bubble looked at the four of us as if we were stupid. Luce turned to me. “I’ll be going, then. Goodbye, Leo.”
“Goodbye…”
She kissed me without warning. My parents looked shocked and suddenly had lots of things to do with Bubble. Luce smiled at me. I thought she looked happy and sad at the same time, and she was even more fantastic like that. I sensed that I was looking at her for the last time. I wanted to talk to her more, but she was already leaving. When she had gone, my parents finally dared look at me again. They were shy and proud in a way I had never seen before. In that moment, I loved them.
“Are we leaving now?”
“Yes,” said my father, starting to move. He added in English: “Yes, yes, yes, go.”
THEY HAD ALREADY folded up the tents. It was time to leave. The empty camping spot looked strangely insignificant. Just a square of dried grass. Somewhere here, I had spent fifteen nights. Fifteen times I had gotten up while the others were sleeping and walked blindly over to the hedge to take a piss, then tossed my tissue full of semen into the trash bin before going back to my tent. Nothing remained of all that. By the next day, another family might have taken our place and started their own vacation. Camping spot number 330. Happiness guaranteed for only twenty euros a night. Satisfying customers for decades, and for centuries to come. We strapped the bicycles to the back of the car and got in. We drove along the paths slowly, careful not to run over a child. My seat was too upright because of the luggage behind it. Bubble lay in his basket looking disappointed. Alma and Adrien were sad, too. They would soon be going back to school. Near the restrooms, we saw the pink bunny, although he wasn’t really pink anymore: the filth had turned his fur brown. He was carrying a crate of empty beer bottles. He’d taken off his bunny head. Underneath was a man in his thirties, very tired-looking. The big grin drawn on his bunny face continued smiling at us from his back, where it hung like a severed head.
My parents were as silent as churchgoers before their suddenly grown-up son, happy and sad after his first summer of love. We drove through the main square. There were several policemen there. I closed my eyes. But my father parked close to the reception building. “I’m going to pay.”
He got out. We waited for him. No one said a word.
I was frightened. For the first time, maybe, I felt that raw fear of being caught, without any other anxieties getting in the way. My pulse throbbed loud in my ears. I thought about airports and customs officers. Inside, my father was talking. It went on too long.
“Actually, Leo,” said Adrien, without looking up from his phone, “you know your friend Louis? Well, something weird happened to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some of the guys saw him on the beach very early this morning. Apparently he didn’t look too good. He went swimming in the sea naked. He was floating facedown in the water. Which is okay, except he stayed like that too long. I mean, way too long…”
“What’s all this about?” my mother asked, turning around. She gave me a questioning look, as if I knew the answer.
“In the end,” Adrien went on, “a lifeguard went in and brought him out of the water. He’s okay, don’t worry. But it’s a bit weird, all the same.”
I nodded and looked outside. I touched the door handle.
“Leonard? Do you want to get out? Do you want to go and see your friend before we leave?”
“No, it’s okay.”
My father returned. “All right! So, time to say goodbye to the Landes.”
“Daddy, why are there policemen here?”
“Because of the flood. Are you going to say goodbye to the Landes?”
“It’s not because of that,” Adrien corrected him. “It’s because some guy disappeared.”
“Oh, really?”
“Well, yeah.”
“How do you know things like that?” Alma asked.
“Because I’m smart.”
My mother fell silent. I kept my eyes on her.
“So… are you going to say goodbye to the Landes?” repeated my father, who didn’t really care about all the other stuff.
“Goodbye, the Landes!”
He set off. We drove through the gates. As we turned onto the main road, I twisted my neck to get one last look at the campsite, and I thought I saw Claire in the main square. But then the luggage obstructed my view and the campsite disappeared.
ALMA WAS ALREADY asleep. Adrien was texting his friends. The pines flashed past endlessly. We would have to drive for a long time before we stopped seeing them. I stared at them so I wouldn’t have to see anything else. It was difficult. Gradually, in the gaps between them, I glimpsed other images: Luce was searching the beach for her lost sarong; she found it in the tall grass, near Oscar’s damp, dirty body, which lay like a shipwreck victim washed ashore.
I sensed that my mother was still watching me in the rearview mirror. That same look. I met her eyes. Maybe that was when she knew the truth for sure. I opened my mouth. I thought she was going to tell me not to say anything, to guard the secret deep inside me, but she didn’t do anything; she just kept looking at me with her sad eyes. They were blue, her eyes. I’d never really noticed that before.
“Dad, I forgot something. Can we turn back?”
“Of course.”
“U
gh, what a pain!” Adrien moaned.
“It’s only six miles. We’ll be there before you know it!”
“HERE IS FINE,” I said, just outside the campsite gates.
I didn’t want them to come with me. My father parked on the roadside and put on his flashers. It wouldn’t take long. I got out and walked to the reception building. The police car wasn’t there anymore. Claire wasn’t there, either. All was calm. Maybe they’d found Oscar somewhere on the beach. For a moment I wanted to go there, to see. But I was too tired. I needed to find a policeman, a stranger, a man well acquainted with death. I’d tell him everything and then it would be over.
The woman at the reception desk was busy with paperwork. She didn’t see me as I sneaked into a corridor. I’d never been here before. It didn’t look like a vacation place. In a room with an open door, I found my policeman. He was eating grated carrots straight from the plastic packaging.
“Excuse me. I’d like to talk to you.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
I closed the door and sat facing him. He looked surprised. He ate a few more mouthfuls and then he stopped. He waited for me to speak.
“Oscar died on Friday night. I don’t know his surname, but he’s the one who disappeared. I killed him.”
He stared at me. “Don’t move.”
He was about to stand up, but just then some music came on and he froze. This is the rhythm of the night… His phone was ringing. He blushed and started rummaging around in his pockets, in his jacket, his bag. This is the rhythm of the night…
He doesn’t find it. The phone keeps ringing. A cool breeze blows through the window—or maybe it’s the ventilation system? The heatwave is over. The campsite is silent, as if everyone has already gone home. I don’t know where Luce is. Outside, a broken vending machine beeps at regular intervals. This is the rhythm of my life… The music keeps trying to make me dance.
AUTHOR
© PASCAL ITO
VICTOR JESTIN is a twenty-six-year-old writer and screenwriter who grew up in northwestern France and now lives in Paris. Heatwave is his debut novel. Originally published by Flammarion under the title La chaleur, it won the Prix Femina des Lycéens and was nominated for the Prix Médicis and Prix Renaudot.
TRANSLATOR
SAM TAYLOR grew up in England, spent a decade in France, and now lives in the United States. He is the author of four novels and the award-winning translator of more than sixty books from the French, including Laurent Binet’s HHhH, Leïla Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny, and Maylis de Kerangal’s The Heart.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Victor-Jestin
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Flammarion
English language translation copyright © 2021 by Sam Taylor
Originally published in France in 2019 by Flammarion as La chaleur
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ISBN 978-1-9821-4348-0
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Heatwave Page 8
