“I don’t understand why you’d betray us, Stéphane. For fifteen minutes of fame? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
“And your job is to betray your friends?”
“My job is being a journalist, and we were never friends.”
I was reminded of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. “Why did you sting me?” the frog asks the scorpion that he is carrying across the river. “Now we’re both going to die.” And the scorpion says, “It’s my nature.”
As Pianelli ordered another beer, he twisted the knife in the wound.
“It’s a fascinating story, like a modern version of the Borgias. How much do you want to bet that Netflix will make a series out of this?”
Watching him gloat over the ruin of my family, I wanted to kill him.
“I can see why Céline dumped you,” I said. “You’re a nasty little piece of shit.”
Pianelli tried to throw his beer in my face, but I stepped smartly out of the way and lashed out with an uppercut to his chin and a punch in the belly that brought him to his knees.
As I left the bar, my enemy was down for the count, but I was the one who had lost. And this time, there was no one to protect me.
Jean-Christophe
Antibes, September 18, 2002
My dear Thomas,
After too long a silence, I am writing to you to say goodbye. Indeed, by the time this letter has crossed the Atlantic, I will have finished my earthly existence.
Before I die, I wanted to write to you one last time. I wanted to tell you again what a pleasure it was to teach you and that I have only fond memories of our long conversations and of the time we spent together. You were the most gifted student it has been my privilege to teach, Thomas. Not the most intelligent, nor the one who got the highest marks, but the most generous, the most sensitive, the most human, the most considerate in your dealings with others.
Please do not grieve for me. I have chosen my way out because I no longer have the strength to keep going. Rest assured that it is not for lack of courage but because life has visited upon me something that I cannot endure, and death now seems the only honorable way out of the hell into which I have foundered. Even books, my faithful companions, can no longer keep my head above water.
My tragedy is utterly banal, but that does not make it any less painful. For many years, I secretly loved a woman, never daring to confess my feelings lest she reject me. For a long time, the very air I breathed came from watching her live, smile, talk. Ours was a meeting of minds unlike any I have known, and the thought that my feelings might be reciprocated kept me strong in my darkest hours.
I confess that I have often reflected on your theory of the curse of the nice guys, and, naively, I hoped to disprove it, but life has not returned the favor.
Sadly, in recent weeks, it has become clear to me that my love will never be reciprocated and that the woman I love is perhaps not the person I thought she was. And I know I am not capable of changing the course of fate.
Take care, my dear Thomas, and above all, do not grieve for me. I can offer you no advice but this: Choose your battles well. Not all are worthy of being waged. Know that there are times when you should cling to your friends. Throw yourself heart and soul into this life, because solitude is fatal.
I wish you every happiness in the future. I do not doubt for a second that you will succeed where I have failed and find a soul mate with whom to confront life’s sea of troubles.
Be demanding. Be different from other boys. And guard yourself against fools. In the tradition of the Stoics, remember: the best revenge is not to be like he who wronged you.
And although my fate might seem to attest to the contrary, I still believe that our weaknesses are our greatest strengths.
With much affection.
Yours,
Jean-Christophe Graff
The Maternity Ward
Jeanne-d’Arc Clinic, Antibes, October 9, 1974
Francis Biancardini gently pushed open the door of the hospital room. The orange rays of the autumn sun streamed through the French doors that led to the balcony. In the late afternoon, the quiet of the maternity ward was broken only by the distant clamor of schoolchildren heading home.
Francis stepped into the room, his arms laden with presents: a teddy bear for his son Thomas, a bracelet for Annabelle, two packages of biscotti and a jar of Amarena cherries for the nurses who had taken such good care of them. He set the gifts down on the bedside table as quietly as possible so as not to wake Annabelle.
When he leaned over the crib, the newborn stared up at him with his new eyes.
“How are you, my little man?”
He took the baby in his arms and settled himself in a chair to enjoy the solemn yet magical moment that follows the birth of a child.
He felt a profound joy mingled with regret and helplessness. When Annabelle left the clinic, she would not be coming home with him. She would be going back to her husband, Richard, and he would be Thomas’s legal father. It was a painful situation, but she was also a woman who defied all norms. A passionate lover who had a very personal concept of commitment but who valued love above all.
She had finally persuaded Francis not to say anything about their relationship. “It is precisely the secrecy of our love that makes it special,” she said. “Flaunting your love to the world makes it vulgar. It loses something of its mystery.” Francis saw another advantage to keeping their relationship secret: It would shelter those dearest to him from his enemies. To tell the world what truly matters to you is to make yourself vulnerable.
* * *
Francis sighed. The loutish character he was forced to play was simply a façade. But, other than Annabelle, no one truly knew him. They did not know the violence and the death wish he carried within him. The rage that had first erupted in 1959, when he was fifteen, in the little village of Montaldicio. It had happened on a summer evening by the fountain on the village square. Some young guys had been drinking heavily. One of them was propositioning Annabelle. She had pushed him away several times, but still he tried to paw at her. Francis had been staying on the sidelines. The boys were much older than he was. They were painters and glaziers from Turin who had come to refurbish the hothouses of someone in the village. When he realized that no one else was going to intercede, he had walked over to them and told the guy to clear off. At fifteen, Francis was not very tall, and he often gave the impression that he was somewhat clumsy. When they had laughed at him, Francis grabbed the boy by the throat and punched him in the face. Despite his build, he had the strength of an ox and was fueled by rage. After the first punch, he had continued battering the young laborer and no one had been able to pull him off.
A speech impediment he had had since he was a child meant that he had never dared talk to Annabelle. The words caught in his throat. So that night, he talked with his fists. By smashing the young man’s face in, he was sending a message to Annabelle: No one will ever hurt you while I’m around.
By the time he finally stopped, the young man was unconscious, his face covered with blood, his mouth full of broken teeth.
The case caused a commotion in the area. Some days later, the carabinieri came to question Francis, but he had already left Italy for France.
When he met up with Annabelle again many years later, she thanked him for defending her but confessed that she was afraid of him. Nonetheless, they became close, and through her, Francis learned to control his violent temper.
As he cradled his son, Francis realized that the baby had fallen asleep. Gingerly, he kissed Thomas on the forehead, and the sweet, intoxicating smell of the baby was heart-wrenching, reminding him of milk bread and orange blossom. Thomas seemed so tiny in his arms and the serenity that radiated from the child’s perfect face was filled with promise. And yet this tiny marvel seemed so delicate and utterly defenseless.
Francis became aware that he was crying. Not because he was sad, but because the thoug
ht of such fragility terrified him. He wiped a tear from his cheek and, with all the tenderness he could muster, laid Thomas back in the crib without waking him.
* * *
He opened the sliding door and stepped out onto the little balcony. He took a pack of Gauloises from his jacket pocket, lit one, and, on a whim, decided that this would be his last cigarette. Now that he had parental responsibilities, he needed to take care of himself. How long do children need their fathers? Fifteen years? Twenty? Their whole lives? As he inhaled the acrid smoke, he closed his eyes to soak up the last rays of sun that filtered through the branches of the linden tree.
Raising a child, protecting him, was a long-term struggle, one that would require constant vigilance. Terrible things could happen without warning. He could never allow his attention to falter. But Francis would not shirk his duty. He was thick-skinned.
Hearing the French door open, Francis was roused from his thoughts. He turned and saw Annabelle, smiling. As she melted in his arms, he felt all his fears fade. Enveloped by the warm breeze, Francis knew that for as long as Annabelle was by his side, he could face anything. Brute force is nothing without intelligence. Together, they would always be one step ahead of danger.
One Step Ahead of Danger
Despite the threat of Pianelli’s book hanging over us, Maxime, Fanny, and I went on with our lives as though it didn’t exist. We were resolved to no longer live in fear. We felt no need to explain or justify ourselves. We made one pledge: whatever happened from here on out, we would face it together.
Something in me had changed. I had a new confidence. The fear that had been gnawing away at me gradually disappeared. The new roots that I had discovered made a new man of me. Of course, I had my regrets—the fact that I had made peace with my mother only after her death; the fact that only now that Richard was in prison did I finally feel close to him; the fact that I had never been able to talk to Francis while knowing that he was my real father.
The fates of my three parents gave me pause, though.
Their lives had been extraordinary, marked by pain, passions, and contradictions. If sometimes they had lacked courage, they had also shown a selflessness that commanded respect. They had lived, they had loved, they had killed. At times, they had been carried away by their passions, but they had tried their best. Tried their best not to have humdrum lives, to reconcile their personal adventures with a sense of responsibility, to define the word family according to a grammar that was theirs alone.
Having come from such parents compelled me, not to imitate them, but to honor their heritage by learning certain lessons.
It is futile to deny the complexity of human emotions. Our lives are sometimes inscrutable, often disrupted by conflicting desires. Our lives are fragile, at once precious and insignificant, sometimes bathed in icy waters of loneliness, sometimes in the warm stream of a fountain of youth. Our lives, for the most part, are beyond our control. The slightest thing can turn them upside down. A whispered word, the twinkling of an eye, or a lingering smile can raise us up or cast us into oblivion. And yet, in spite of this uncertainty, we have no choice but to pretend we can control the chaos in the hope that the inclinations of our hearts will find a place in the secret plans of Providence.
* * *
On the evening of July 14, to celebrate Maxime’s being discharged from the hospital, we all gathered at my parents’ house: Olivier, Maxime, their two daughters, Fanny, even Pauline Delatour, who, now that I had made peace with her, proved to be smart and funny. I had barbecued steaks and some hot dogs for the children. We opened a bottle of Nuits-Saint-Georges and settled ourselves on the terrace to watch the Bastille Day fireworks over the bay of Antibes. The fireworks had just started when I heard the phone in the entryway buzz.
I left my guests, turned on the outdoor lights, and went down the driveway to the gates. On the other side stood Stéphane Pianelli. He was not looking his best; his hair was long, his beard unkempt, his eyes bloodshot.
“What do you want, Stéphane?”
“Hi, Thomas.”
His breath stank of booze.
“Aren’t you going to let me in?” he said, gripping the wrought-iron railings.
“Fuck off, Stéphane.”
“I’ve got good news for you, Mr. Potboiler. I’m not going to publish my book.”
From his pocket, he took a folded piece of paper and slipped it between the bars.
“Your mother and Francis were really two beautiful bastards!”
I unfolded it as pinwheels and rockets exploded in the sky. It was a photocopy of an old article from Nice-Matin dated December 28, 1997. Five years after the tragedy.
VANDALS CAUSE SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE AT THE LYCÉE SAINT-EXUPERY
by Claude Angevin
Sophia Antipolis technology park was targeted by vandals on Christmas Eve. Much of the more serious damage took place in the gym of the lycée.
The extent of the damage was discovered on the morning of December 25 by the dean of preparatory classes, Mme. Annabelle Degalais. Obscene graffiti had been sprayed on the walls of the gym. The culprit or culprits also shattered a number of windows, set off fire extinguishers, and broke into several lockers.
The dean—who reported the incident to the police—feels that there is no question that those responsible were not students at the school.
The police have carried out the usual searches and, pending further investigation, the school authorities have already begun an intensive cleanup and such construction work as will be necessary so that the gym is fit for use when classes resume on January 5.
Two photographs accompanied the article. The first showed the extent of the damage to the gym: the graffitied wall, fire extinguishers lying on the ground, broken windows.
“No one’s going to find the bodies of Vinca and Clément now, are they?” Pianelli raged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Francis and your mother were too shrewd, too Machiavellian, to leave any evidence. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Potboiler, you and your friends can thank your parents for digging you out of a whole heap of shit.”
The second photograph showed my mother standing with her arms folded, wearing a smart pantsuit, her hair in a neat chignon, her expression deadpan. Behind her loomed the hulking figure of Francis Biancardini in his trusty leather jacket. He was posed with a trowel in one hand and a pen in the other.
What had happened was obvious. In 1997, five years after the murders and a few months before my mother resigned her post, she and her lover decided to move the bodies that had been buried in the wall of the gym. They were not prepared to live with such a potential threat hanging over their heads. They had faked the vandalism in order to give Francis free rein during the cleanup. The repair work had been carried out during the Christmas vacation, the one time of year when the lycée was almost deserted, making it easy for Francis—this time without Ahmed’s help—to move the bodies so that they would never be found.
We had spent years terrified that the bodies might be discovered when, in fact, they had not been in the gym for more than two decades.
A little stunned, I looked again at the photograph of Francis. His eyes seemed to be staring right through the photographer and anyone else who might one day stand in his way. A steely, swaggering expression that seemed to say, I’m not afraid of anyone, because I will be one step ahead of danger.
Pianelli left without further ado and I slowly wandered back to join my friends. It took a long time for me to accept that we no longer had anything to fear. When I reached the top of the driveway, I glanced at the article again. Looking closely at my mother in the photograph, I saw that she was holding a key ring. Probably the keys to the fucking gym. The keys to the past, but also those that opened the door to the future.
The Novelist’s Privilege
In front of me is a Bic Cristal pen that cost thirty centimes and a ruled Seyes notebook. The only weapons I have ever owned.
I am sitting in the school library, in the same place
where I always sat back then, a small alcove with a view of the courtyard and the ivy-covered fountain. The reading room is suffused with the smell of wax and melted candles. Old Lagarde et Michard grammar manuals are gathering dust on the shelves.
After Zélie retired, the school administration asked me if they could name the building where the drama club met in my honor. I declined and instead proposed that they name it after Jean-Christophe Graff, but I agreed to give a short inaugural speech to the students.
I take off the pen cap and I start to make notes. This is what I have done all my life. Write. It is a twofold, contradictory gesture: building walls and opening doors. Walls to hold back the devastating cruelty of the real world, doors to escape into a parallel world—into reality not as it is, but as it should be.
It does not always work, but sometimes, for a few hours, fiction is genuinely more powerful than life. This, perhaps, is the privilege of artists in general and novelists in particular—occasionally being able to win their battles against the real.
I write, I cross out, I rewrite. The ink-blackened pages accumulate. Gradually a story takes shape. An alternative story to explain what really happened on that night in December 1992.
Imagine…the snow, the cold, the darkness. Imagine that moment when Francis came back to Vinca’s room, planning to wall her corpse into the gym. He went over to the body lying on the warm bed, picked her up, and, with the strength of an ox, carried her the way a knight carries a princess. But not to take her to a magical castle. He carried her to the dark, frozen building site that smelled of concrete and oozing damp. He was alone, accompanied only by his demons and his ghosts. He had already sent Ahmed home. He laid Vinca’s body on a tarpaulin on the ground in the blaze of floodlights. He was mesmerized by the body of the girl and found it hard to believe that he was about to pour concrete over her. Some hours earlier, he had disposed of the body of Alexis Clément without asking any questions. But this was different. This was too hard. He gazed at her for a long time, then crept closer to drape her with a blanket, as though she might still catch cold. And, for a moment, as the tears rolled down his cheeks, he imagined that she was still alive. The illusion was so powerful, he could almost see her chest rise and fall.
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