A few inaudible words were spoken in the hallway, before two sets of footsteps ascended the stairs and made their way towards his mother’s room. The door must have remained open for a short time, because Raymond was able to catch a few words of the conversation before Thérèse was dismissed and the door was closed. In the intervening minutes, Raymond reflected that he had been wrong to assume a connection between his father’s non-return and the policeman’s visit. Perhaps there had merely been a burglary in the vicinity and the cop had called to ask if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual. In this case, he would certainly want to speak to Raymond as well. Perhaps the cop would ask him about his own movements, and having no alibi—he had not left his room all evening—he would himself fall under suspicion.
Until this point, Raymond’s day had been unremarkable. Around eight o’clock in the morning, he had drunk a cup of tea and eaten some bread and butter at the counter in the kitchen. He could feel the heat of the range at his back. The house was cold in winter—his father being generally ill disposed towards heating—but the kitchen was always oppressively warm. Mme Thérèse was preparing his mother’s breakfast tray with her usual put-upon air. His father had already left.
Raymond, as he always did, called on Yvette, who lived on Rue des Trois Rois. They then ran into Stéphane at the corner of Avenue de Bâle and Avenue Général de Gaulle. As the three of them walked to school, Stéphane talked enthusiastically about a book he was reading, but Raymond had paid little attention. Little of note occurred during the day. Mlle Delarue, the French mistress, was absent, as she often was, and her place was filled by the deputy head, who had merely set the class a task and then left the room. Raymond spent the lesson staring out of the window at a pair of wood pigeons strutting stiffly around the schoolyard. At lunchtime, he ate a slice of onion tart with potato salad in the canteen. As he had no class in the final period he had walked home alone. He made himself a pot of tea, took it to his room and listened to some records. As his father dined out on Tuesdays, it was always a relief not to have to sit through the evening meal in his presence. His mother’s mood was lighter and she even seemed to acquire a little colour in her cheeks. She would enquire about Raymond’s day and he would amuse her with anecdotes about trivial incidents at school, sometimes impersonating his teachers or classmates. When he aped one of his teachers in a particularly cruel fashion she would chastise him, but so half-heartedly that it was clear she did not really disapprove. Even Mme Thérèse went about her business with a less sombre air and, on occasion, if there was some household business to discuss, she would join them at the table during dessert. Once, when Raymond’s father returned unexpectedly, she had leapt from her chair as if she had sat on a tack and busied herself with the dishes on the sideboard. When Maître Barthelme entered, he gave no sign of having registered this breach of protocol, but to Raymond’s amusement, Thérèse’s cheeks had reddened like a schoolgirl’s.
Five minutes passed before Raymond heard the door to his mother’s room click open. He listened to the cop’s footsteps approach, then pass, the head of the stairs. Raymond stepped back from the door. He grabbed his book from the floor and threw himself on the bed. This would look odd, however, as the straight-backed chair remained in the middle of the floor as if set out for an interrogation. But there was no time to rearrange things and Raymond did not want the cop to hear him scurrying around in the manner of someone concealing evidence. There was a knock on the door. Raymond did not know what to do. It would seem rude to call out Who is it? That would imply that admission to his room was somehow dependent on the identity of the person knocking. In any case, the question would be disingenuous: he already knew who was at the door. It was not a dilemma Raymond had ever faced. His mother never entered his room, and Thérèse only did so when he was out at school. His father refused to knock, a source of great annoyance to Raymond, as it meant that he could never fully relax in his own domain; he might at any moment be subject to inspection. He was not even sure why his father called in on him. Their conversations were brief and strained and it was difficult not to conclude that the only purpose of these paternal visits was to keep tabs on him; to remind him of the fact he was not yet old enough to warrant a degree of privacy.
In the end, Raymond got up from the bed, book in hand, and opened the door himself. The man on the landing did not look like a policeman. He was of medium height with greying hair, cut short in almost military fashion. He had a pleasant face, with mild enquiring eyes and thick black eyebrows. He was dressed in a dark brown suit with a slight sheen to the fabric. His tie was loosened and the top button of his shirt unfastened. He did not have the imposing presence Raymond would have expected of a detective.
‘Good evening, Raymond,’ he said, ‘I am Georges Gorski of the Saint-Louis police.’
He did not offer any identification. Raymond wondered if he should have feigned surprise, but the moment passed. Instead he just nodded.
‘May I?’ The policeman gestured towards the room. Raymond stepped back to allow him in. The room remained almost in darkness. The cop took a few steps inside the room. He looked at the chair in the centre of the floor with a puzzled expression. He glanced around the bare walls. Raymond stood awkwardly by the bed. It was 23:53.
Gorski turned the chair around to face him, but he did not sit down, merely letting his right hand rest on it. With a matter-of-fact air he said: ‘Your father has been killed in a car accident.’
Raymond did not know what to say. His first thought was: How should I react? He glanced at the floor to buy time. Then he sat on the bed. That was good. That was what people did in such circumstances: they sat down, as if the shock had drained all the strength from their legs. But Raymond was not shocked. As soon as he had heard the doorbell ring, he had assumed that this was what had occurred. He wondered for a moment if this had been by way of a premonition, but he dismissed the idea. What was significant was not that he had assumed his father was dead, but that—without admitting it to himself—it was what he had wanted. If he felt anything on hearing the news, it was a kind of excitement, a feeling of liberation. He glanced up at the policeman to see if he had read his thoughts. But Gorski was looking at him with disinterest.
‘You mother thought it best that I break the news to you,’ he said in the same business-like tone.
Raymond nodded slowly. ‘Thank you.’
He felt he should say something further. What sort of person has nothing to say on hearing of the death of their father?
‘A car accident?’ he said.
‘Yes, on the A35. He was killed instantly.’
Gorski then touched his left wrist with his right hand and Raymond understood that he was concerned about the time. He turned towards the door. ‘Perhaps you should look in on your mother.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Raymond.
The cop nodded, satisfied that his obligations had been fulfilled. ‘If you don’t have any questions, then that’s all for now. There will be a formal identification in the morning. You might want to accompany your mother.’
Gorski left. Raymond followed him to the door of his room and watched him make his way down the stairs. Thérèse was hovering on the landing with her hand over her mouth.
Raymond instinctively retreated. He had the feeling that when he left his room, everything would be different; that he would be required in some way to assume responsibility. He looked at himself in the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. He did not look any different. He pushed his hair back from his forehead with his fingertips. He adopted a solemn expression, lowering his eyebrows and tensing his mouth. The effect was quite comic and he stifled a laugh.
He entered his mother’s room without knocking and closed the door behind him. Lucette was sitting up in bed. She did not appear to have been crying. It would have seemed odd to remain standing or to sit on the chaise longue, which was in any case strewn with undergarments, so he sat on the edge of the divan. Lucette held out a hand and R
aymond took it. He kept his eyes fixed on the wall above the bed. His mother’s nightdress was loosely fastened and the curve of her breast was clearly visible. He wondered if she had received the policeman in the same state of undress.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
She smiled listlessly. With her free hand she gathered her nightdress together. ‘It’s quite a shock.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Raymond had not expected to find his mother weeping hysterically. He had never discerned any great affection between his parents. Since he had begun to spend time in his friends’ homes he had realised that the stiff formality that characterised his parents’ relationship was not usual. Yvette’s parents laughed and joked with each other. When M. Arnaud arrived home, he kissed his wife on the mouth and she arched her body towards him in a manner that suggested she felt some fondness for him. When Raymond was invited to stay for dinner, the atmosphere around the table was convivial. The various members of the family—Yvette had two younger brothers—chatted to each other as if they were actually interested in the details of each other’s lives. Raymond felt quite warmly towards his mother, but the atmosphere of the Barthelme household was entirely determined by his father. The only topic of conversation which animated Maître Barthelme at mealtimes was that of household expenditure. When Thérèse brought in the dishes, he would interrogate her about the cost of the various items and whether she had recently compared prices in other shops. There’s no shame in thrift, was his favourite maxim, and one to which Mme Thérèse was a staunch devotee.
That his father was the root of the frosty atmosphere in the house was borne out by the more cheerful mood at the dinner table when he was not in attendance. Even in his absence, however, when Raymond and his mother shared a light-hearted moment, they would restrain themselves, as if their deeds might be reported to the authorities. Raymond wondered if his mother was now feeling—as he was—a certain lightness; a feeling similar to that which he experienced when the school year ended for summer, or when spring arrived and it became possible to leave the house without a winter coat.
Raymond kept these thoughts to himself. Instead he said: ‘The policeman said that the body would have to be identified.’
It was odd to hear himself refer to his father as ‘the body’.
‘Yes,’ his mother replied. ‘They’re going to send a car in the morning.’
It was a relief to turn to these practical matters. Raymond asked if she would like him to accompany her. She squeezed his hand and said that that would be helpful. They looked at each other for a moment and then, because there was nothing further to say, Raymond got up and left the room.
Three
For the first few days after his wife’s departure Gorski had taken advantage of the situation by shaving in the en suite bathroom. It was an act of defiance. As a rule he shaved in the cramped WC on the ground floor. Barely a month after they had married and moved into the house on Rue de Village-Neuf, he had been banished from the en suite. He took too long and left a ring of whiskers in the washbasin. The en suite became Céline’s domain, and even in her absence Gorski felt that he was encroaching on her territory. So he reverted to using the WC downstairs. Then, after a week or so, as if to test the limits of his freedom, he had decided not to shave at all. After all, with Céline gone, he could do whatever he wanted. Over his morning coffee that same day, he had smoked a cigarette in the kitchen. He could not bring himself to leave the butt in the ashtray, however. What if this turned out to be the day that Céline chose to return? All that day, Gorski had felt self-conscious in his unshaven state, but no one at the station commented on his unkempt appearance. In the afternoon, he had called on an elderly widow in Rue Saint-Jean who claimed some tools had been stolen from her garden. When she opened the door she peered at him suspiciously. A lapdog yapped at her feet. Gorski ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. He felt slovenly and unprofessional. The tools, it turned out, were in the garden shed.
‘Oh, yes,’ the woman had said. ‘I remember putting them in there now.’
But she had not apologised for wasting Gorski’s time.
On the morning after the accident, Gorski performed his ablutions, made coffee and sat at the kitchen table. He did not smoke a cigarette. Without Céline and Clémence around, everything felt strange. Previously he would have been hard-pressed to describe the fixtures and fittings of the room in which he now sat. His attention would have been occupied by the movements and chit-chat of his wife and daughter, who had recently turned seventeen. But now there was nothing to distract him from staring at the units, tiles and work surfaces. He had imagined being called into investigate his own wife’s disappearance. He would have been embarrassed to question a husband under such circumstances.
She left a note?
‘Yes.’
And it said what?
‘Only that she was leaving.’
He would then, for sake of thoroughness, be obliged to ask to see the note. And as it could not be produced—Gorski had thrown it in the trash—this would inevitably lead to further questions.
When did you last see her?
It would have been that morning, of course, but Gorski could remember nothing specific about the occasion. It had been a day like any other. He and Céline’s actions would have been replicated on thousands of previous mornings. Certainly, there had been no clue to her intentions, or, if there had been, Gorski had not noticed it.
And have you any idea where she might have gone?
‘To her parents, I suppose.’
Have you tried calling her there?
That was where the scene ended. In the two weeks since she had left, there had been no contact between them. Gorski should have called the first day. After that, the opportunity had passed. If he were to telephone now, Céline’s first question would be: ‘Why haven’t you called?’ and from there the conversation would quickly descend into a quarrel. In any case, Gorski had no ready explanation as to why he had not called. Or at least not one that he would wish to voice to Céline. The truth was that when he had read her note, he had felt little more than a mild sense of relief. But it had taken only a few days for this feeling to wear off. Now he had begun to miss her and regretted not having made contact. He could easily have stopped by her boutique, which was only a short walk from the police station, and if he had not done so, it was only stubbornness that prevented him. It pleased him that Céline must have been peeved when he had not called that first evening. Certainly she would have expected it. She would have expected him to plead for her to come home, to promise that he would change his ways. But Gorski did not want to change his ways. In truth, he did not know what he had done wrong. So he had not called. And, naturally, Céline would not be the one to end the stalemate. By not calling, Gorski felt that he had won a small victory. But it was a hollow one. He now felt her absence keenly. It had only taken a few days for the things he found most irksome about his wife—her fastidiousness, her snobbishness, her obsession with appearance—to be transformed into endearing idiosyncrasies. He missed being told over breakfast that he could not wear such and such a tie with such and such a shirt, and whereas formerly he had sometimes worn mismatched items just to needle her, he now carefully dressed in a way that he thought would meet with her approval.
But it was his daughter he missed more. The first few days he had hoped to come home to find Clémence sitting at the kitchen table, dipping a biscuit in a cup of the peppermint tea she had taken to drinking. But she had not appeared, and if he had taken to spending his evenings in Le Pot, it was partly to avoid the disappointment he felt when he returned from work to find the house empty.
It was after ten o’clock when Gorski climbed the steps to the little foyer of the police station. The desk sergeant, Schmitt, was at the counter in his habitual posture, hunched over a copy of L’Alsace, displaying his balding pate to anyone who entered. A cigarette burned in the ashtray by his right hand. Gorski had long since given up deman
ding that he present a more professional demeanour to the public. At the sound of the door, Schmitt looked up from his paper and, seeing Gorski, glanced up at the clock that hung on the wall above the row of plastic chairs that constituted the station’s waiting room. He pulled an expression, clearly intended to convey that it was all right for some to swan into work whenever they chose. Gorski ignored him. He generally made a point of being at his desk by eight o’clock. He was not obliged to arrive at the station at any particular time, or even to put in an appearance at all, but he liked to set an example of good timekeeping. Nor did he want his subordinates to think that he thought himself better than them. It should not bother him what a work-shy time-server like Schmitt thought of him, but it did. Why did he feel, even now, that he was sneaking into work like a tardy schoolboy? Why did he have to suppress an urge to offer Schmitt an explanation for his lateness? In his day, Ribéry would breeze into the station at whatever hour he pleased, frequently smelling of stale wine. No one ever looked askance at him, even when he made lewd remarks to female members of staff. But Gorski was not Ribéry. For some reason, he did not fit in. If he tried to join in with the office banter, his contributions were invariably met with silence.
Gorski bid good morning to a few officers in the open-plan area behind the reception window. His greetings were returned, but no one paid him any special attention. He flicked through the mail on the desk in his office. It was all for show. He was due in Mulhouse at eleven o’clock for the identification of Bertrand Barthelme’s body. Gorski took a coffee from the machine in the corridor and returned to his car. As he got into his Peugeot he slopped the drink on the leg of his trousers. Thankfully he had chosen a dark suit for the occasion. There was no reason that he could not have collected Mme Barthelme and her son and driven them the twenty kilometres north to Mulhouse himself. Except that he did not think it becoming for the chief of police to act as chauffeur. The journey would, moreover, be passed in awkward silence, and, having viewed the body, Gorski would then be obliged to drive the traumatised widow home. He disliked being around the bereaved. The conventional words of condolence, however sincerely intended, always sounded hollow. After his own father’s funeral, he and his mother had returned to the apartment in Rue des Trois Rois. She went about making a light lunch as if nothing unusual had taken place. When Gorski glanced into the narrow kitchenette, however, she was weeping over her chopping board. Gorski had stepped back from the doorway, and by the time lunch was served Mme Gorski had dried her eyes. No mention of the funeral or his father’s death had passed between them since.
The Accident on the A35 Page 3
