Somewhere near the back I finally found what I had been looking for. On a battered Ping-Pong table were two boxes with my name scrawled on them, both filled with nostalgia. I hauled the boxes upstairs—it took two trips—and spilled out the contents to sort through them.
On the kitchen table, I laid out everything connected with the year 1992 that might prove useful to my investigation. A blue Eastpak backpack daubed with Wite-Out, three-ring binders full of notes, report cards that offered a portrait of the meek, model student I had once been: Diligent, constructive attitude in class. An easygoing, assiduous student. Insightful and relevant contributions. A keen mind.
I flicked through a number of essays that had been important to me: an essay on Rimbaud’s “Le dormeur du val,” another on the opening section of Belle du Seigneur. I even found some philosophy homework marked up by Alexis Clément, who had taught me my junior year. On my essay entitled “Can Art Exist Without Constraints?,” he’d written, Interesting and sophisticated reasoning skills—B. And on one entitled “Can Passion Be Understood?,” I received a glowing assessment from Clément: Despite a few elementary errors, this is an excellent essay, showing a clear grasp of concepts and elucidated with examples that demonstrate a genuine comprehension of literature and philosophy—A-.
Among the other treasures in the boxes were our senior-year class photographs and a series of mixtapes I’d painstakingly made for Vinca but never dared give her. I opened a cassette box at random and perused the song titles that were the soundtrack to my life. The Thomas Degalais I had been back then was utterly consumed by words and music. This was the soundtrack of someone who was still “different from other boys,” gentle, a little unconventional, oblivious to fashion, in touch with his emotions: Samson François playing Chopin, Jean Ferrat singing “Les yeux d’Elsa,” and Léo Ferré reciting “A Season in Hell,” but also Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and Freddie Mercury’s “Love Kills.” Almost a premonition…
There were books too. Old yellowing paperbacks of the titles I still quoted in every interview when I said that “books taught me at a young age that I would never be truly alone.”
If only it were that simple.
One of the books here was not mine, the collection of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems signed by Alexis that I’d taken from Vinca’s room the day after the murder.
For Vinca,
I wish I were an incorporeal soul
that I might never leave you.
To love you is to live.
Alexis
I gave an ugly laugh. At the time, I had been moved by this dedication. Now I knew the jerk had stolen the line from a letter by Victor Hugo to Juliette Drouet. A charlatan to the end.
“So tell me, Thomas, what the hell are you doing here?”
I spun around. My father had just stepped into the kitchen holding a pair of pruning shears.
3.
Despite not being particularly affectionate, my father was demonstrative and usually hugged me when he saw me, though this time I was the one who felt like taking a step back.
“How’s things in New York?” he said as he carefully washed his hands in the sink.
“Can we go into your office?” I said, ignoring his question, “There something I want to show you.”
My mother was prowling around somewhere and I did not want her sticking her nose in just now.
Richard dried his hands, grumbling about my showing up out of the blue and being mysterious. Then he led me up to his den, a study cum library decorated like an English gentlemen’s club with a chesterfield sofa, African statues, and a collection of antique hunting rifles. Two huge picture windows bathed the room in light and offered the finest view from the villa.
I immediately handed him my phone. On the screen was the Nice-Matin article about students finding a bag of cash. “Have you seen this story?”
He picked up his glasses but did not bother to put them on. He merely glanced at the screen, then set his glasses down again.
“Yeah, it’s completely insane.” Arms folded, he stood in front of the windows and jerked his chin toward the holes in the lawn next to the swimming pool. “Those bloody Asian red-bellied squirrels are taking over the place. They chewed through the wires to the pump, can you imagine?”
I focused on the article.
“That money would have been stashed back there when you were still dean,” I said.
“Maybe. I don’t know,” he said, frowning but not turning toward me. “Did you notice we’ve had to cut down one of the palm trees? Red palm weevils—”
“I don’t suppose you know who owned the bag?”
“What bag?”
“The bag the money was found in.”
“How would I know?” Richard bridled. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
“A journalist told me that the cops found two sets of fingerprints. One set belonged to Vinca Rockwell. Remember her?”
At the mention of Vinca’s name, Richard turned back to me and sat down in a battered leather armchair.
“Of course. The girl who disappeared. She had…the freshness of a rose.”
He screwed up his eyes, and, to my great surprise, the former French teacher began reciting François de Malherbe:
But she was of this earth, where all great beauty knows
a fate so forlorn;
And Rose, she did live as live the wild roses,
the space of a morn.
He was silent for a moment. Then, for the first time, he asked a question.
“You said something about two sets of fingerprints?”
“The cops don’t know who the other set belongs to yet. But I’d stake my life on them being yours, Dad.”
“How dare you,” he said, startled.
I sat facing him and showed him the screenshots of the bag that Pianelli had sent me.
“Remember this bag? It’s the one you always had when we played tennis together. You loved the calfskin leather and the dark greenish patina.”
He picked up his glasses again and peered at the phone. “I can’t really see anything. The screen’s too small.”
He grabbed the remote control on the coffee table and turned on the TV as though saying the conversation was at an end. He flipped through the sports channels, watched a few seconds of the Giro d’Italia, then turned back to the Madrid Open semifinal between Nadal and Djokovic. “It’s not the same without Federer.”
I was not about to give up.
“Maybe you could take a look at these. Don’t worry, this time they’re all close-ups.”
I handed him the brown envelope. He took out the photographs and studied them, keeping one eye on the tennis match. I expected him to be unnerved, but he simply shook his head and sighed.
“Who gave you these?”
“What does it matter? Tell me what they mean!”
“You’ve seen the photos. Do you really need me to draw you a diagram?”
He turned up the volume, but I snatched away the remote control and turned off the television.
“Don’t think you’re going to get off so lightly!”
He sighed again and fumbled in the pocket of his blazer for the half-smoked cigar he always carried with him.
“Okay, I got caught,” he said, rolling the Cuban between his fingers. “That little slut was always hanging around. She got me all worked up and I couldn’t resist. Then she blackmailed me. And I was dumb enough to give her a hundred grand.”
“How could you do it?”
“Do what? She was nineteen. She was fucking everything that moved. I didn’t force her. She came after me.”
I got up and jabbed my finger at him. “You knew she was my friend!”
“What difference does that make?” he said. “When it comes to sex, it’s every man for himself. Besides, if you want the truth, you didn’t miss much. Vinca was a ballbuster and a lousy lay. She was only in it for the cash.”
I didn’t know what infuriated me more, his arroganc
e or his vindictiveness. “Just listen to yourself!”
Far from being unnerved or uncomfortable, Richard sniggered. I could tell that some part of him was enjoying this conversation. He probably got off on the idea of the proud father affirming his superiority over his son by humiliating him.
“You filthy pervert. You disgust me.”
This finally riled him. He got to his feet and stepped toward me until he was only inches from my face.
“You have no idea what she was like, that girl! She was the enemy; she was the one threatening to destroy our family.”
He nodded to the photographs on the table.
“Think what would have happened if your mother or the parents’ association had seen those. You live in this romantic, literary world, but real life is nothing like that. Real life is brutal.”
I was tempted to punch him in the face to prove that life could indeed be brutal, but it would not have achieved much. And I still needed information from him.
“So you gave Vinca the money,” I said, forcing myself to sound calmer. “And then what happened?”
“What always happens with blackmailers—she wanted more, and I refused.” Still toying with his cigar, he screwed up his eyes as he thought back. “The last time she showed up was the night before Christmas vacation. She even brought a pregnancy test to try and turn the screws.”
“So the child she was carrying was yours!”
“Of course it wasn’t,” he spluttered angrily.
“How can you be sure?”
“The dates didn’t fit with her cycle.”
It was a pathetic defense. And in any case, Richard always had been a compulsive liar. And what made him dangerous was that, after a while, he ended up believing his own lies.
“If it wasn’t yours, whose was it?”
“That asshole she was fucking on the sly,” he said as though it were obvious. “That pretentious little philosopher…what was his name?”
“Alexis Clément.”
“Clément, yeah, that’s the guy.”
“Do you know anything else about Vinca’s disappearance?” I asked gravely.
“What could I possibly know? You don’t think I was involved, do you? I was in Papeete with your brother and sister when she disappeared.”
As an alibi, it was watertight.
“Why do you think she didn’t take the money with her?”
“I honestly have no idea, and I don’t give a damn.”
He relit his cigar, which filled the room with acrid smoke, and picked up the remote. He turned up the volume. Djokovic was struggling against Nadal, who was leading 6 to 2, 5 to 4, and was now serving for a place in the final.
The air in the room was unbreathable. I needed to get out now, but Richard was not about to let me leave without giving me a last life lesson.
“It’s about time you toughened up, Thomas, time you realized that life is war. Since you’re such a fan of books, try rereading Roger Martin du Gard: ‘All existence is a battle. Life is any victory that endures.’”
10
The Hatchet
1.
The conversation with my father had made me feel sick, but it had not revealed anything I didn’t already know. When I went back into the kitchen, my mother had moved the boxes and was busy cooking.
“I’m going to make you an apricot tart. It’s still your favorite, isn’t it?”
This was something I had never understood about my mother, something integral to her personality—her ability to blow hot and cold. Sometimes Annabelle would lower her defenses; she would relax, become gentler, warmer, more Mediterranean, as though Italy was suddenly prevailing over Austria. When she looked at me, her eyes would glitter with a spark akin to love. For a long time, I craved that spark, watched for it, waited for it, always hoping it would be the prelude to a more enduring blaze. But the flame never rose above a flicker. Over time, I learned not to be taken in.
“Don’t put yourself to all that trouble, Mom,” I said tersely.
“But it’s my pleasure, Thomas.”
I caught her eye and gave her a look that said Why do you do this? She had unknotted her chignon and her hair spilled out. Her aquamarine eyes shimmered, pure and translucent. On days like today, her eyes were as fascinating as they were inscrutable. My mother, the alien, even went so far as to venture a smile.
I studied her as she took the flour and a cake tin from the cupboard. Annabelle had never been the sort of woman whom men could easily pick up. Everything about her signaled that they would be blown off. She gave the impression that she was somewhere else, on a distant planet, utterly inaccessible. Growing up with her, I had always found her too much—too sophisticated for the mediocre life we lived, too brilliant to be sharing her life with Richard Degalais. To me she seemed as though she belonged in the heavens, among the stars.
The sound of the entry-phone buzzer made me flinch.
“That’ll be Maxime,” Annabelle said, pressing the button to open the gate.
Where had this sudden burst of joy come from? While she headed off to greet my friend, I went out onto the terrace. I put on my sunglasses and watched the maroon Citroën drive through the electric gates, go up the concrete driveway, and park behind my mother’s convertible. As the car doors opened, I realized that Maxime had brought his children, two cute, dark-haired little girls who seemed to know my mother very well; they ran to her, arms outstretched, and hugged her with charming impulsiveness. Maxime must have just gotten back from meeting with Vincent Debruyne at the precinct. The fact that he was here and that he had brought his daughters obviously meant that the interview had not gone too badly. As he got out of the car, I tried to read the emotions on his face. I was about to wave when the phone in my pocket vibrated. I glanced at the screen. Rafael Bartoletti, my official photographer.
“Ciao, Rafa,” I said, picking up.
“Ciao, Thomas. I’m calling about that photo of your friend Vinca.”
“I had a feeling you’d find her fascinating.”
“Oh yes. In fact, I was so intrigued that I got my assistant to enlarge the photo.”
“And?”
“As I was looking at the enlargement, I realized what it was that bothered me.”
I could feel a tingling in my stomach. “Tell me.”
“I’m almost certain that she’s not smiling at her partner. She’s not even looking at him.”
“I don’t get it. Who is she looking at, then?”
“Someone about six or seven meters in front of her and a little to her left. If you want my opinion, Vinca’s not even dancing with the guy in the photo; it’s just an optical illusion.”
“Are you saying it’s been Photoshopped?”
“No, not at all, though it has obviously been cropped. Take my word for it, your pretty little ragazza is smiling at someone else.”
Someone else…
I found this difficult to believe, but I thanked Rafa and promised to keep him in the loop. I texted Pianelli and asked whether he had managed to contact Claude Angevin, the former Nice-Matin editor who might know who had taken the photograph.
Then I went down the steps and joined my mother, Maxime, and his daughters on the lawn. The first thing I noticed was the thick file under his arm. I shot him a quizzical look.
“We’ll talk later,” he whispered, reaching for a bag containing a stuffed dog and a rubber giraffe on the back seat.
He introduced me to his children, two bouncing little girls with dazzling smiles, and for a few minutes, thanks to their antics, we were able to forget our troubles. Emma and Louise were funny and utterly delightful. From the way my mother treated them—and the way my father did when he eventually joined us—I realized that Maxime was a regular visitor to the house. Seeing my parents playing the role of grandparents was charming if faintly ridiculous and, for a moment, it occurred to me that Maxime had filled the vacuum in the family that I left when I moved away. But I did not feel bitter. On the contrary, I felt that it
was all the more important to protect him from what we had done.
After about fifteen minutes, my mother took the girls into the kitchen to help her make the apricot tart—the secret ingredient was lavender seeds sprinkled over the fruit—and my father went back up to watch the Giro d’Italia.
“Right,” I said to Maxime. “Time for a council of war.”
2.
The place I loved most in the Villa Violette was the stone-and-timber pool house my parents had built as soon as they moved here. With an outdoor kitchen, a patio, and a canopy, it looked like a home within a home. It was my favorite spot, one where I had spent countless hours reading, curled up on the canvas sofa.
I sat down at the teak table under the arbor overgrown with Virginia creeper. Maxime sat next to me.
I didn’t beat around the bush—I told him what Fanny had revealed, that, as Ahmed was dying and feeling the need to salve his conscience, he had told her how, on Francis’s orders, he had walled up the body of Alexis Clément in the gym. If he had told Fanny, he might have told others. This was hardly good news, but at least it meant that we knew the identity of the traitor. Well, maybe not exactly a traitor, but the person responsible for our past coming back to haunt us.
The Reunion Page 11
