Le Divorce

by Diane Johnson

  “I must smoke,” said Anne-Chantal. “You don’t mind? I received the most terrible news this morning, that Jérôme—this is unbelievable—plans to spend the summer in Paris! At first I was hysterical, now I am calm. How can the man dare?”

  No good pointing out that the man was a Parisian, after all, and could not leave that fact behind when he ran off.

  “Seriously, though, how awful for you, a dead man, did you see him?” Anne-Chantal went on.

  “I saw his foot,” Roxy said, trying still to bring herself to a sense of this event and knowing that she could not, for her heart was still numb, something she felt no power over at this moment.

  “How did he die?”

  “I have no idea, actually.”

  She had been bad to Tommy Smithers. She had refused finally to lend him money, he was so exasperating, so pathetic, so continuously in turmoil, you couldn’t help him out every time. Her imaginings became dreadful. Tommy had gone hustling somewhere, pickpocketing or picking up men, had been murdered by a vengeful client who knew where he once lived. Or drug overdose, that was possible too. Or suicide.

  They looked over at the police inspector hurrying toward them.

  “We’ll be interviewed,” Roxy said.

  The policeman took off his hat. “Madame de Persand,” he said, “we are sorry to tell you, it is grave news, it is your husband.”

  Roxy simply stared.

  “So Madame Florian has attested. I am sorry, Madame. Could you perhaps? Could we ask you . . . ?”

  Roxy felt as if she had had a spinal, a cool sensation of numbness proceeding down from her neck. Now she felt nothing. She blinked at the policeman, who blinked at her. He had small round glasses. He was wearing his hat. She rose.

  “That’s impossible, my husband is gone,” she said.

  “Yes, so Madame Florian has attested. That he no longer lives with the family.”

  “It can’t be. I don’t think I should look,” Roxy said. “The baby. No, I cannot look.”

  “Madame.”

  “There is a mistake.”

  “We understand. We are sorry. Perhaps you should not look.”

  “I will look,” said Anne-Chantal. The officer seemed to be reassured by the presence of a native Frenchwoman. “I am sure it cannot be Monsieur de Persand. Madame de Persand should not look.”

  “If you would, Madame. You are . . . ?”

  “Lartigue, Anne-Chantal. Madame. Sixty-eight Boulevard Saint Germain. Take me to see the body.”

  “We are obliged to ask Madame de Persand to come also,” said the policeman to Anne-Chantal, as if Roxy were not there. “But we are agreed she does not look.” They crossed the rue Lagrange. All was as usual. The retarded boy who always sat on the bench was this morning bundled warmly into a coat by his mother. He groaned and barked, and the Brasserie Metro dog barked back. The officer gallantly took Roxy’s arm.

  Now police cars had blocked the rue Maître Albert. There would be sun today despite the rime of early morning frost on the bedraggled chrysanthemums in the garden of the Place Maubert. People in fur coats hurried by without looking at the commotion of police and men in plain clothes. Others stared at Roxy and Anne-Chantal as if to ask what they had done. Roxy was conscious that the policeman (strong pink face, still smelling of his shave, for it was early) slowed his steps for her sake. His touch, light on her elbow, could instantly tighten to catch her if in her unwieldy bulk she should slip. Surely they were wrong, it could not be Charles-Henri, that idea she did not take seriously.

  “Madame was à côté,” said her policeman to another who was waiting. From the hall, as they entered, Roxy could see the bizarre sight unchanged, human leg in blue jeans protruding from the trash bins, an arm illumined by the flashes of men inside photographing the scene in the dark space below the stairs.

  “Madame de Persand is advised not to look,” cried her policeman to the others. “She will stand here. Madame Lartigue will identify monsieur.”

  Roxy, feeling nothing, stood in the hall while Anne-Chantal went a few steps into the utility room. Feeling nothing, she could not even summon a feeling of surprise at Anne-Chantal’s little cry, her little choked trill of dismay, or horror. “Oh, mon Dieu, it is he.”

  Abruptly Anne-Chantal, shaken-looking and pale, pushed her way out of the utility room and embraced Roxy. “Oh, my poor dear, it is he.”

  Her policeman tightened his grip on Roxy’s arm in case she should fall, as if expecting her to fall, but Roxy felt nothing. Then a slight leak began from her deadened spine into her brain, a drop of understanding, Charles-Henri in there, inexplicably dead, his legs sticking out.

  “But how?” she managed finally. It made no sense at all, thus was probably not true, yet you were to proceed as if it were true, policemen expecting you to faint or cry. She looked around, confused, to read the countenances of others. Anne-Chantal took her other arm and, to the policeman, gestured with her head toward the staircase. Roxy thought of Charles-Henri smiling, his scarf blowing, standing by a cliff they had once climbed up to, and she had been afraid the wind whipping his scarf would pull him off.

  Now she felt that same crawling fear. It was too late to save him. He had fallen. His body lay broken. A sob escaped when she tried to speak, like the groan of a hinge, a sound squeezed out of her by a sudden thrash of the child inside her.

  “Yes,” said the inspector. “There are things we must ask madame. His whereabouts, his residence, where he was last night? But perhaps we could conduct the interview at the Commissariat de Police, it is just nearby? Madame? That will be easier?”

  “Yes, just as you like,” Roxy agreed.

  “Are you able to walk, madame? It is just à côté.”

  This was Wednesday, not a market morning, and Roxy and the policemen walking together attracted no attention. Crossing at the light toward the rue Monge, her policeman exchanged nods with the guards at the rue de Bièvre, where President Mitterrand might be sleeping at this very moment, unaware of the shattered decorum of his neighborhood. Roxy had been inside the police station before, making an attestation when her purse was stolen. Only now did she put it to herself that her husband was dead and she was going to the police station to make an attestation, as if for some lost purse.

  “How did he die? Oh, tell me?” she cried.

  “Can’t you tell us, madame?” said the policeman. He held her elbow really very tightly. Looking sideways, she could see that his face was not friendly, not sympathetic as she had thought, she had mistaken his tone. He must think I have killed Charles-Henri, came her thought. To her horror, she heard herself giggle, like a child in school.

  She thought for the millionth time, as every time she saw it, how ugly the police station was, monolith of concrete looming over the Place Maubert; goodness knew how many lovely old buildings they had pulled down, nearly a square block, to build its horrible cement piers, the blind windows. They climbed the steps. Considerately slow. Frenchmen (except for Charles-Henri) had a reverence for pregnancy, mamans, bébés. Charles-Henri was no more. Her head felt lighter and more peculiar as more of this idea dripped into it.

  Inside the station, men appeared to be waiting for her.

  “Madame de Persand?” said a higher official (she supposed from his more numerous buttons). They went into his office. She was sat upon a chair. Somewhere behind her she heard whispering, as the higher official settled himself into his chair, behind his desk, offices alike the world around, desk, metal bookcase, little flag on a stand, seals on the wall, wastebasket—“Madame de Persand?” Yes, Anne-Chantal was still with her, standing protectively against the wall just inside the door.

  “Crime passionnel,” said a whisper behind her. “ L’américaine. A gun was used. They all have guns. Bien sûr, il s’agissait d’un coup de fusil. Elle est américaine.”

  “Your name, madame, prénom, nom de jeune fille?”

  Roxy barely heard herself answer these questions, easy questions about her name, her life, her
marriage. The higher official, she was thinking, looked something like her own father, same high bridge of the nose, same rusty hair. Was that not strange? Was it not strange that Charles-Henri should be dead? Later she would cry, she promised herself. She would feel, deeply feel to her heart, the pain, the poignancy, the loss of her handsome young husband. The horror of it would overcome her, she promised herself. It just had not struck her yet.

  “Would you mind, madame, we will do a certain test concerning your hands,” said the higher official. Anne-Chantal appeared to be smiling at her, making a little thumbs-up sign. Courage, she seemed to be saying. Good for you, she seemed to be saying. But good for you for what?

  Roxy in the police station also felt a need to pee. Alert to any change within her, she asked herself was it the baby coming, but no, it was just pressure on her bladder as she got up to follow where they told her, into another room, to put her hands into soft wax or whatever it was, just routine they said again and again, they had to do it. They did not let Anne-Chantal come with her, but Anne-Chantal was hovering there supportively in the hallway, chatting with the policewoman who had welcomed them. The reality of things began to weigh more heavily on Roxy now, Charles-Henri dead, policemen asking serious questions, though she knew she was herself in no danger, she gave no thought to herself, concentrated all her power on feeling the horror, and indeed the mystery, for how did he happen to be dead? They had not said how.

  She thought of her fatherless children. She thought of poor Suzanne, and the rest of the family, of how they all had loved this blithe, talented person, so lighthearted, so winsome. She thought of how the baby would never know him, Gennie not remember him, just a stupefying tragedy that had not yet burned into her own breast the way it would soon, she knew it would, but was beginning to sink in all the same.

  “You may return home,” they were saying, “but do not leave the area. We will escort you.”

  “I will stay with her, she must not be alone, we will call her mother,” cried Anne-Chantal. “We must call the Persands. Have you notified the Persands?” Roxy’s head spun with a sort of exhaustion in advance, thinking of all the notifying, all the pain in store. It was strange that a policeman was coming with her and Anne-Chantal.

  He said he would stay downstairs, in the foyer of her building. The utility room was sealed with yellow tape.

  It was only noon. Was that possible? She thought she should call Roger. She thought she should lie down, and Anne-Chantal agreed. Anne-Chantal took Roxy’s telephone book and sat in the salon to make the calls.

  Through the long afternoon, into the early twilight, Roxy keeps asking Anne-Chantal if Suzanne is back from Disneyland, and Anne-Chantal keeps calling the number and shaking her head. Eventually she reaches Antoine. Antoine arrives at the rue Maître Albert. He spends a long time in the corridor with the police and then comes up to Roxy’s, face pinched, tearful and grim. He embraces Roxy and drinks a cognac. Then he calls Frédéric and Charlotte. Roxy can hear Charlotte’s screams through the telephone. Antoine’s voice is husky but controlled, in charge.

  “Roxeanne is under arrest, I think,” says Antoine to Charlotte. “Her status is unclear.”

  “Trudi is in the country, she’s coming,” he says to Roxeanne. His staunch, loyal demeanor makes it clear that he does not for a moment believe that poor Roxy had anything to do with this shocking tragedy. The Persands are coming to her side. All agree it is strange that Isabel and her mother and Suzanne and the children are not yet back from EuroDisney. There is such pain at the prospect of having to tell Suzanne the horrible news about her son. It is beyond horrible to think of her blithely unaware, yet, with it so likely they will return soon, inutile to go searching. It occurs to Roxy again to wonder how he died, and by whose hand? Could it have been by his own? They never said.

  Anne-Chantal, hearing her moan of distress, rushes in to feel her forehead.

  “Is it the baby?” she asks. “Oh, how beautiful if the baby would come soon, to lift our hearts with a new life.”

  “I must go see him,” she cries. “Is he—still down there?”

  “No, no, definitely not, you must not look. Later, at the interment.”

  38

  AT EURODISNEY, I knew nothing of any of this, for no one revealed it. I wanted to try to understand the strange day by myself, and so I decided, with Tellman’s complimentary pass, to try the food at the Disneyland Hotel. In the somewhat heavy-handed charm of the Victorian dining room, I ordered dinner and thought about things. It was a wide-ranging reverie about making love to Edgar in Zagreb, getting rich from Saint Ursula, and wondering what would happen if Magda Tellman died. If she died, I supposed Charles-Henri would come back to Roxy, and that would set me free.

  Looking back, this seems rather callous, but I just wasn’t ready to go home to the others yet. Thus, eating blanquette de veau and drinking a half bottle of Côtes du Rhône at Disneyland, I missed the distressing scene when Suzanne and Margeeve brought Gennie back to the rue Maître Albert and learned from Anne-Chantal the news about Charles-Henri, only hearing it myself about ten when I came home. The police at EuroDisney had not known about the death at 12 rue Maître Albert.

  When I got to the rue Maître Albert, Roxy’s lights were dark. I climbed the stairs to the garret without stopping. There was a note on my door to say they had all gone to the Avenue Wagram. This was puzzling, but not necessarily ominous. Perhaps, I thought, Suzanne had proposed dinner for her heroic band of erstwhile hostages. I went down to Roxy’s and called my parents’ hotel, though, to make sure they weren’t there, and they were not. Then I decided to telephone Edgar—it was he I wanted to talk to anyway, so I went back down to Roxy’s apartment and sat in the dark living room.

  “Ah, Isabel, how are you?” he said.

  “I’m okay. Has anyone told you about today?”

  “Which part of the day? The Serbs have resumed shelling Sarajevo. My sister was held hostage for seven hours by a crazed American in the Disneyland theme park, then there is the small matter of the murder of my nephew.”

  “Who?” I cried with sudden horror, seeing that it would be Charles-Henri, of course.

  “Charles-Henri. Shot three times in the chest and left to die in the poubelles at Maître Albert.”

  I don’t know what I said. It was clear enough. Tellman had killed Charles-Henri, and tried to kill Magda.

  “At first, naturally,” continued Edgar, in the same dry, almost angry tone, “the police suspected Roxeanne. I spoke to the Commissaire. But the injured Magda had crawled from her cottage to the Spectorama warehouse by the motorway and found help. She told her story. Her husband had shot her.”

  “My God,” I said, thinking, poor Roxy, poor Charles-Henri, how stupid. Tellman a murderer, he might have killed the children after all. I even thought, poor Magda, maybe Charles-Henri was the love of her life, does anyone care about poor Magda? Does anyone believe in love? I felt like crying, but it was all too strange for tears.

  “Mon Dieu,” Edgar said. “What a world!” he cried in the bitterest tone. “The red and the black—who would have thought the black would so quickly supplant the red?”

  I think he may have been talking about Bosnia. “May I come over?” For I wanted to be in his arms.

  “Non, chérie, I am just going to the Avenue Wagram. Suzanne is very distraught. Your parents are there, I think.”

  “I’ll see you there, then, I guess.”

  I heard a noise and turned around in the dark living room, startled to find Roxy had been standing in the doorway of her bedroom.

  “They’re over at Suzanne’s,” she said.

  “Roxy, how horrible, I didn’t hear, I didn’t realize you were here. I just got here, I . . .” I began. “I’ll stay with you.”

  “I made them go. I wanted to be alone,” she said. “They took Gennie over there. I’ve taken some sleeping stuff. Supposedly not harmful to fetuses. I’m going to sleep.”

  “Roxy, my God,” I tried to say ag
ain, but of course there was nothing to say: sorrow, pity, shock. The way life can turn around in a minute, you never know. “It was the husband, that guy Tellman. . . .”

  “I know, I heard. I think they thought it was me,” she said. Her voice was drugged, bemused and sad.

  “You can’t be alone! I’ll stay here.”

  “I’ll go to sleep in a minute. I couldn’t go with them. I made them go. Iz, there’s something—I feel as though I killed Charles-Henri. But I can’t ever tell them.” From her face, I saw that she did think that. Her eyes were the strange sleepless eyes of Lady Macbeth.

  I didn’t know what idea had gotten into her drugged brain. Of course she hadn’t killed him; Roxy could not be blamed for this. Think of her unwavering loyalty to Charles-Henri, her resistance to divorce, the little pledge of his love so soon to be born—not even the Persands could blame her. I made her go back to bed. I felt tender toward her, and full of pity.

  When she was lying down, she grabbed my arm and hissed at me, “I wish I was a hard-hearted, cold person like you, Isabel. You always have everything the way you want it. Maybe someday you’ll suffer too, but I doubt it. But I don’t hate you. I used to, I think, but . . .” Whereupon her eyelids fluttered closed, and she had drifted off into some kind of stoned sleep.

  I was shocked, but part of me was not surprised she thought these things. I wondered if they were the bitter reflections of the sad moment or the secrets of her unconscious.

  Of course I couldn’t leave her alone. I thought it was strange that the others had left her. I sat on the sofa in the dark, burning to go to Edgar.

  It was only a few minutes before someone rang the doorbell.

  “Ames,” he said, and I buzzed him in.

  “How is she?” he asked, his usually smirky face transformed by love and concern. All at once I saw the nice side of Ames, like a mirror reflecting backward on a hundred other instants, things he had told me and guided me in. His excellent cooking and his responsible dog ownership and reputation for charity.