by Jean Echenoz
She was able to see all of this thanks to a spindle-shaped wall lamp near the bed, which constituted the only light source. The room did contain a window, but it was hidden by a shut blind, its slats so tightly wedged together that not even the faintest hint of light, artificial or otherwise, filtered through. The long crank handle that would have enabled her to open this blind had been removed.
Approaching the window anyway, Constance had no idea what she was doing here, nor why nor how, nor even the idea of wondering about any of this. The weight of the situation was enough to squash any curiosity she might have had about its motives, its terms and conditions, or any fears she might have had regarding the future. The same was true for the past: her memories ended with her visit to Philippe Dieulangard’s real estate agency. After that, nothing; even the walk in Passy Cemetery had been expelled from her memory. When, by chance, her gaze alighted on a red dot fringed with pink about one-third of the way up her left forearm, she remembered the injection she’d been given, but only as an isolated event, purely physical and without any context. Then the present slipped away from her like the past when, her gaze sliding down her forearm, Constance noted that her wrist was bare: they had taken her watch.
At the foot of the bed, she saw her handbag and quickly checked its contents. At first sight, nothing was missing: passport, wallet with money inside, house keys, cell phone. The latter, however, with its battery and SIM card removed, was no use to her whatsoever, not that she’d even thought of calling anyone, but at least she would have known what time it was. She had to think about doing her makeup before she realized that her cosmetics bag—containing nail varnish, lipstick, powder, compact mirror—wasn’t there either: confiscated, apparently.
So there was no way of figuring out where or when she was, nor how long her artificial sleep had lasted: not long, perhaps, as the imprint of her watch strap was still visible, its side seams embedded in her skin. Then a sudden desire to go back to sleep took hold of her, illogically since she had just woken up, but as this setting offered no entertainment or any alternative to sleep, she didn’t see what else she could do. And it was as she lay down that she finally noticed an important phenomenon that, fully occupied as she had been with what she was experiencing in the moment, she hadn’t perceived when she opened her eyes: the noise. The huge noise. The massive, constant background noise.
Despite the shut window and the lowered blind, a ceaseless and close-sounding engine roar filled the room, making all the furniture vibrate. To judge from the volume and tone of that engine noise, it had to be produced by heavy-goods vehicles, probably a very large quantity of eighteen-wheelers in fact, the nuances of the sounds indicating an incessant succession of vehicles crossing, passing, changing speed, and double-clutching, on a highway situated just below the window and which, given the volume of the noise, must be at least four lanes wide, if not six. This phenomenon did constitute a clue, at least: wherever she might be in the world, Constance had not been removed from all civilization.
It may seem surprising that it took her so long to become aware of such a din, and indeed she was surprised by it. But perhaps it was because the sheer immensity of the volume had become, in a way, the perfect inverse of silence, to the point where the two were exactly equivalent. Perhaps. In any case, while the roar of heavy traffic on that truck-filled highway hadn’t troubled her chemical lethargy, it was going to be an entirely different matter to fall asleep normally with it in the background. After switching off the lamp, after tossing and turning fruitlessly on the bed, after trying to block her ears with the edges of the pillow, she turned the lamp back on and the poster of the horse on the beach suddenly brought back a memory.
A childhood memory: a vacation house by the ocean, very close to the beach, nighttime, rocked peacefully to sleep by the sound of waves, their regular ebb and flow, waves being born and growing louder as others wear themselves out, collapse, and stretch out over the sand with a hiss, reduced to foam. When the ocean was rough, it roared and howled just as loudly as a highway full of trucks, but not only did the backwash not prevent Constance from falling asleep; it acted like a narcotic on her. There was nothing to stop her, now, from imagining those eighteen-wheelers as equally hypnotic waves, just as long as she could filter out their squealing brakes, their screaming revs, and above all the fact that the sea does not honk its horn.
It was amid this racket that Constance distinctly heard a fine metallic sound from the other side of the door: the sound of a key turning in a lock.
5
LOU TAUSK DID NOT INFORM the police. First of all because of those threats, even if they struck him as puerile, and then also because he had his reasons. He decided it was better not to rush into anything, to take his time to consider the matter and go to Neuilly to see Hubert, not the most enjoyable of tasks. Seeing Hubert, and being in Neuilly, was no fun at all, but it had to be done: the next morning, he took the metro again. The usual line, with its system of automatic announcements, but this time in the opposite direction.
And so it is a pleasant young woman’s voice—she might not be a bad choice for his concept album, in fact—that, before each stop, proceeds to name the station, not once but twice. The first announcement comes when the train is about to reach the station: the register is that of an alert, its sense almost interrogative, pronounced in an ascending melodic curve: attention, we’re arriving. Then, once the passenger’s attention has been caught and the station reached, its name is pronounced again, this time in the imperative mode of an official statement, the inflection descending and conclusive, confirming arrival: that’s it, we’re here.
There is no variation in the way that the station names are pronounced, though, beyond these two modes, interrogative and conclusive. If they chose to, they could individualize it, according to the person or the place that it evokes: there might be a dramatic pronunciation for Stalingrad, for example, a Flemish accent for Anvers, a devout voice for La Chapelle, or Cornelian for Rome. But no, nothing personal; everyone is treated the same way. The succession of these two tones, rising and falling, also sounds as if the voice were introducing two people during a social function, which most of the time is completely pointless: there is no reason to engineer a meeting between Pigalle and Jaurès. Unless one was to introduce a woman named Blanche to another woman named Blanche, or Alexandre Dumas père to Alexandre Dumas fils. But anyway . . .
So Tausk took Line 2 as far as Étoile, where he caught a Line 1 train toward Neuilly. Not a very complicated change, but he was already in a bad mood before he had to walk through the corridors, and then the escalators were out of order, and it began to get on his nerves. He sat in the only available place: a folding seat next to a young mother dandling a baby on her knee. The child appeared serene at first sight, but Tausk regarded it warily. When it started to scream, as he’d feared it would, Tausk grew even more tense, though the mother stuck a pacifier in its mouth.
On Line 1, the names of the stations are also announced automatically, but the girl who has lent her voice to the system lacks the gentleness and thoughtfulness of the Line 2 girl: first, she pronounces the station name with indifference—she really sounds like she couldn’t care less—and then, when the train enters that station, she repeats it in an annoyed voice: if you haven’t understood, I’ll remind you, but it’s really your fault. It is much, much less considerate. Not only that, but Tausk’s car contains a mandolin player doing awful things to canzone napoletana, which ratchets up his exasperation a notch. Whenever he’s in a bad mood in the metro, the musicians who pass from car to car with their steel guitars or bandoneons, their bagpipes or rondadors, the string quintets or Central European choirs who set up camp in the entrances of corridors in the stations themselves, these people always make him want to shoot randomly into the crowd.
When he got to Neuilly, Tausk opened his cell phone and called the caretaker of the building on Rue de Pali-Kao, to check whether he’d received any more mail. Hang on, said the caretake
r hurriedly, standing in the building’s entrance hall and holding a thick wad of envelopes tied up by the mailman. I’m distributing the mail now. Hang on, I’ll look. And behind him, a huge man suddenly appeared, bald or with a shaved head, dressed in a baggy gray suit that made him look even more huge, pushing open the door to the street.
There’s hardly anything, the caretaker said, just a letter from your insurance company and some kind of bill, gas or something. However, as the gray suit turned around, we noticed that his face had a very distinguishing feature: a long reddish birthmark on his forehead, an angioma in the exact shape of New Guinea, down to the smallest capes, isthmuses, and gulfs. All right, said Tausk, walking toward Hubert’s office, well, let me know if you get anything else.
The mansion that houses Hubert’s offices—located on the first floor—is also his principal residence. As for Hubert himself, he is not only Tausk’s legal adviser but his younger half brother too. Hubert’s full name is Georges-Hubert Coste and, as they have the same father, Tausk’s real name is Louis-Charles Coste. But as there was a risk, when Tausk decided to enter the world of showbiz, that this name would not fit the bill, literally and metaphorically, he decided to adopt—as already suggested—a stage name: Lou Tausk. Lou because of Louis, Tausk because of the psychoanalyst Victor Tausk (1879–1919), and because he liked the way it sounded. Out of respect for his decision, we will continue referring to him this way.
So, back to Hubert’s mansion, which has a garden behind it and a courtyard in front of it, where the gravel crunches with pleasure under the tires of the expensive vehicles owned by a clientele who come to consult Hubert on points of fiscal, business, and corporate law. Barely has Lou Tausk set foot in the entrance hall, decorated by a large Tancrède Synave oil painting, before Hubert comes out to welcome him. He is not dressed remotely like a classic lawyer: lime-green polo shirt, slightly faded under the armpits, flared jeans, tasseled loafers. Hubert’s client list is so rich and varied that he gets away with this carefully scruffy style. In this way, he is able to put the bigwigs at ease when he meets them at the golf course or the tennis courts or the squash club, but he also doesn’t scare away the anonymous Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, magnetized by his reputation but reassured to see such an eminent lawyer dressed so simply, taking care of their humble interests. In this way, Hubert gains the fascinated respect of the Tom, Dick, or Harry, making him fully aware of the honor that is being done him, until the day when Hubert’s secretary announces to said dumbstruck Tom, Dick, or Harry the total amount, including VAT, of his fee.
His teeth immaculate, his thick hair gelled backward, embellished with one unruly comma—a recalcitrant lock of hair that he throws back with a flick of his head as he moves lithely toward Tausk—Hubert takes his half brother in his arms and hugs him, because they’re family. Tausk submits to this with bad grace, though he tries not to let this show on his face. There is no way to get out of it, even though it means a hard clash of cheekbones (Hubert’s are very prominent): a somewhat painful experience for Tausk, but it’s done now. Hubert Coste is taller than Lou Tausk, slimmer, more cheerful, more tanned, more muscular, more everything-that-can-be-imagined, and let’s not even mention his extremely pretty bitch of a wife or his nasty little wonderful children. Physically, he is perfect, while Tausk—each of them taking after his mother—is rather less so.
Maybe that is why Hubert, each time he sees his half brother, makes a remark intended to express his consideration and affection. This morning, for example, holding Tausk by the shoulders and stepping back to take a good look at him, Hubert says with concern: You look a little red, don’t you? Tausk immediately panics and fearfully touches one of his cheeks. Oh, do I? Well, you’ve got some color anyway, says Hubert, that’s good. I guess you’ve been sunbathing. I don’t think so, Tausk replies evasively. Well, yes, I did actually, he lies. Last week, that must be it. That’s good, reiterates Hubert, brushing a real or imaginary bit of dust from his half brother’s sleeve, you need to get some fresh air now and then. And what brings you here today?
They moved into his office, and Tausk explained the situation. The abduction of Constance, the ransom demand, the disturbing photograph, the traditional threats, what can you do? In all honesty, it’s such a banal situation, the kind of thing you see every day, that we are all a little embarrassed: Tausk by the humiliation of having to ask his half brother for help, Hubert by the fact that Tausk is yet again bothering him without offering a dime in return, and me by this completely unoriginal plotline.
But as always Hubert knew just how to smooth away all the rough edges, avoid all the pitfalls, remove all the obstacles. Seems like rather a shabby operation, he observed, a bunch of amateurs, I would guess. You shouldn’t pay them a cent, trust me. Don’t react, let them come, wait for things to deteriorate. They’ll blink first. Either that or you should go see the cops and let them deal with it. I’d prefer not to bring in the cops, Tausk sighed. How come? Hubert asked, suddenly interested. Nah, it’s nothing, said Tausk, it’s just that it always causes trouble, getting the cops involved. All right, Hubert concluded, getting to his feet, well, keep me in the loop.
During his trip back on the metro, Lou Tausk spent a long time mulling over this affair; then—to distract himself—he tried to think about something else. He would have liked to look through the window at the landscape, but as this was an underground train, nothing was visible through the windows except his own reflection, and we’ve already written enough about that. He could examine the other passengers, of course, but on the metro it is not a good idea to stare at people too much. With women it might be taken the wrong way, while with men it might be taken the wrong way too. And that only leaves children: the good thing about children is that you can look at them as much as you like; you can even look them in the eyes and smile at them without any fear of reprisals. Well, you’d think.
Because in reality, beneath their mask of indifference and candor, they are watching you, taking notes, digging into your private life, identifying you in every last detail thanks to their superpowers, adding you to their files, writing your name on their list, and one day or another, when they’re adults, or even before that, as soon as they’re old enough to settle their scores, you will enter a whole new world of pain.
6
WHILE IT IS NOT ENTIRELY FALSE to say that getting the cops involved can cause trouble, they also have their good sides. But Tausk remembers a certain case and he would not like to see the police’s memory of its details refreshed.
He recalls—this is going back about thirty years, when he was still named Louis-Charles Coste—identifying with a radical, independent, far left ideology; he recalls spouting confused councilist convictions and attempting to compose an equally radical and confused kind of music, which he imagined was in tune with those convictions. He had just bought his first Farfisa keyboard and had joined forces with a novice drummer named Clément Pognel, a fairly nice if somewhat bland boy who had strawberry-blond hair and no distinguishing features except for a W-shaped scar on his cheek. Pognel was totally devoted to Louis-Charles, who criticized the drummer’s too schematically binary—and therefore reactionary—use of his instrument. Such was Louis-Charles’s hold over Pognel that the balance of power between them bordered on serfdom, but both of them—each in his own way—enjoyed the authoritarian nature of this relationship. Musically and politically, it was Louis-Charles who had the ideas, while Clément Pognel attempted to follow them unquestioningly.
A time came when—despite the contempt Louis-Charles felt for the whole notion of a cultural market and for culture in general—the progress in his compositions gave him the idea of recording them and producing an album. Given the intractability of his beliefs, it was not conceivable to audition for anyone, to send demo tapes of his work to those reviled major record labels, or to independent labels, which were all sellouts in the capital. So this meant self-producing the album, which required a budget that Louis-Charles Coste did not possess. Pogn
el blindly offered all his savings, but they were nowhere near sufficient and they quickly vanished once Louis-Charles had, unhesitatingly, accepted them. Soon after this he hatched the plan—in accordance with his ideals—of taking the money from where it resided: a bank, where we will go, my dear Clément, and steal the contents. It shouldn’t be too complicated, people do that kind of thing all the time, as any intelligent scan of the news would attest.
So now they had to prepare. There, too, it was Louis-Charles who came up with a plan and Pognel who unflinchingly adhered to it. First they spent quite a lot of time at the movie theater, studying scenes of armed robbery. Next they sought to procure two guns, not the easiest of tasks when you do not know anyone. They found only one that worked, a PAMAS G1 pistol stolen by persons unknown from a gendarme and bought, for a pretty hefty price, by another person unknown. The only other weapon that presented itself was an impressive Borchardt C-93, but this was a collector’s item, neutralized by welding the trigger in place and consequently incapable of propelling any kind of projectile. For want of a better alternative, they would have to rely solely on its dissuasive appearance. Pognel would be in charge of the Borchardt. Now they just had to choose the bank they intended to rob, and they agreed on a discreet branch, not too many customers, located on the short and compact Avenue de Bouvines, near Place de la Nation. However, as they had planned to park a car outside this establishment in order to flee as quickly as possible once the operation was complete, they had to patiently wait for more than a week before a parking space became available.
