Come, Barbarians

by Todd Babiak

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “He could barely walk.”

  “The gendarmes said—”

  “He was drunk. Boris Yeltsin drunk. You well know what that makes it. Stop pretending.”

  “He’s been charged.”

  “By his own friends in the police. The mayors. The political party. I’ve been studying these people and I know how it works. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this. I could feel you vibrating with it in Villedieu. Do it.”

  “We can’t assume, Evelyn, just because—”

  “He’s a murderer. And his asshole friends, down in the bar, they’re murderers too.”

  “Who were they?”

  “One had long hair, one short. Men in suits. Men like you.”

  Kruse’s hands ached from making fists. She was on her hands and knees now, on top of the sheets.

  “You know what I want, Chris. I know you want it too.”

  “No.”

  “It’s all I want. It’s all you want. I take back everything I’ve ever said about what you do.”

  “About what I do?”

  “The business you’re in.”

  “Evelyn—”

  “I love what you do. Go do it.”

  “It was an accident. We have to accept it as an accident, an accident, darling. Forgive him and continue. We go back to Toronto. We start over, and—”

  “So you won’t?”

  Kruse stood up out of bed, walked again to the window and opened it. The air was cool on his chest. In the distance, garbage trucks were already running. Some towns in the south were populated by Algerian immigrants, others Tunisians. Vaison-la-Romaine was a Moroccan town. The garbagemen were Moroccans.

  “Long as we’ve been together, you’ve done one thing. I never liked it or even understood it. Now, when I ask you to go and do your job for me, for Lily, just once, you’re too good. Too pure.”

  “You told me to leave her.”

  “No, I didn’t. Don’t you say that again.” He could hear she was up out of bed. “You owe me, Chris. You have to undo your mistake. You should have run faster and you should have run sooner. Go up that hill.”

  “And do what?” Kruse whispered it through the open window, a test, before he turned and said it out loud. “I don’t hurt people.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I protect people.”

  “But not your daughter.”

  His legs could barely hold him.

  “All right.” She pulled on a pair of imitation leather pants and the disobedient nipples of her small breasts peeked through the white cotton of her polo shirt. “All right,” she said again, and walked out of the bedroom and down the hall, down the stairs.

  Kruse leaned out the window and watched her glide up Trogue-Pompée in the pale street light. In her right hand she carried Lily’s bamboo fairy wand. She swiped it once like a riding crop, whipped the air, and then she started to run.

  On his way back to Vaison-la-Romaine from his daughter’s cremation, he took the wrong exit from a roundabout and passed Gare d’Orange. A block later, he pulled over in front of a tavern decorated with a mud-splashed Père Noël from the previous Christmas. Orange station was the closest to Vaison, connected by the regional bus system. It was not yet five in the afternoon. His daughter’s urn sat on the passenger seat, a silver box with her name engraved on the front. He briefly debated taking it, taking her with him. He pulled the emergency brake and left the car in front of the tavern, jogged to the station past the clipped and leafless branches of the plane trees that reached, tortured, for the sky. Lily, who so adored Halloween, called them witches’ hands.

  There were cameras in front, inside, and on the platform behind the station, a whitewashed mid-century modernist rectangle attached to a more substantial building in the back. An armed security guard stood near the door, his huge arms crossed. When they had renewed their passports, they were forced to buy six photos. Only two had been necessary, so the rest, of Lily and of Evelyn, were in his wallet.

  The security guard suffered from the syndrome that affects all security guards: he daydreamed for a living. He barely looked at Evelyn’s photo. Her hair in the photograph was newly dyed and especially blonde. She had not wanted to smile but both Lily and Kruse had tried to make her laugh. The dimple on the right side of her mouth seemed to be the only thing holding the frown in place. The guard invited Kruse to speak to the supervisor on duty, who had an office through the heavy metal door. All he had to do was knock.

  “Harder,” said the security guard.

  The door opened a minute later and a somewhat less-bored security guard stood before him. Kruse asked for the supervisor by name: Madame Aubanel. Keys jangled as she walked out of her office and into the hallway. She was nearly six feet tall and shaped like a pear, a tawny-haired woman with glasses that magnified her eyes. He introduced himself, they shook hands, and he pulled out a photograph of Evelyn. Unlike the other security guard she listened to his pitch before telling him no, with a detailed explanation why. After six months in France he had come to see how bureaucracy had replaced Catholicism.

  “I promise it won’t take long, and I’ll pay for my time.”

  “It’s absolutely against the regulations, Monsieur, to show security footage to non-security personnel. I am forbidden.” She lifted her right hand to her mouth, to catch a cough, and said with a whisper, “How much?”

  “Whatever it takes, Madame.”

  She asked him to come back at nine o’clock and to bring five thousand francs.

  The mistral had finished blowing. The sky and the air were blue and sharp. The quality of light now, as dusk began its long sigh over Orange, most resembled early May, the month of their arrival. Northern Provence wasn’t nearly as fragrant or as green, as drunk with itself, as it had been at the height of summer. But now, in this season and through his fatigue and anxiety, every colour, every late-blooming flower and evergreen, every stained stone building, every man and woman and baby and bird was sharp with contrast.

  It was not yet winter but the women dressed differently, replacing their white and off-white linen dresses with jeans and long-sleeved shirts, scarves. Lily’s fourth birthday was in three weeks, so she would have had time to change her mind, but Kruse had already decided she would be a fashion designer when she grew up. For the figures she sketched, Mommy and Daddy and la maîtresse and her friends from school, Lily created flamboyant outfits. Often, in her drawings, Kruse wore a jacket that was also a live falcon.

  The retired soldiers of the Roman empire had settled in Vaison and here in Orange. He walked from the station to the old city centre, with a hill in the middle of it and an enormous theatre turned black by two thousand years of weather. Retired couples holding hands, out for a stroll, were a minority. Tough boys in soccer suits stared at him.

  Kruse paid the entry fee for the theatre and walked its dark corridors, waiting for his appointment at the train station. It was cold where the sun did not reach. In the auditorium there were hundreds of seats and, on stage, pillars and a statue. The lights above were modern; Elton John was set to play here in a week. There were only a few other tourists in the theatre. One of them, a handsome man in a navy suit, leaned back and appeared to watch Kruse. There was something familiar about him, so Kruse climbed the stairs for a better look. He was a friend of Jean-François’s maybe, from the party in Villedieu. The man stood up and walked the length of the row and down and away without another glance in Kruse’s direction. It was the slow and confident walk of an athlete.

  At nine o’clock Kruse arrived at the main door of Gare d’Orange. It opened before he could touch it and Madame Aubanel rushed him inside, nervously chattering. The video cameras were off but eyes were everywhere. She led him down a hallway, her big feet pointed out like a cartoon ballerina’s, and into a small room that smelled of sausage with three television sets attached to a video machine. It was already several years out of date so Kruse could not hope for much. />
  Madame Aubanel pulled nine tapes from the shelf, marked with the date and times. The recordings for November 1 started at 5:45 in the morning, roughly twenty minutes before the departure of the first train. There were only two possible directions: north to Paris or south to Marseille. There were several stops along the way but not for all trains. Madame Aubanel synced the three tapes at 05:45. Kruse helped press play on all three at the same time.

  They watched at double speed. Madame Aubanel held one of Evelyn’s passport photographs in her hand as she scanned.

  “You had an argument?”

  “Something like that, Madame, yes.”

  “Do you fear she has left you for good?”

  To finish the conversation, Kruse nodded.

  He was not successful. Madame Aubanel fixed her glasses. “You have children?”

  “One.”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Girl. She’s gone now, Madame.”

  “Gone where, with your wife? How old?”

  “Nearly four.”

  “A baby. This is a crime, in France, to take a child from her father.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Oh. Excuse me. What was her name?”

  “Lily.”

  “You’re not … how did she die?”

  Kruse told her.

  “I read about her. About you.” The French put the emphasis on the y at the end of her name. Madame Aubanel looked away from the television screen for a moment. “Lily.”

  No one who looked remotely like Evelyn had departed on the first four trains. They were now past five in the afternoon on the video, and the crowds in the station had thickened. The cafés were open for early dinner and passengers carried soda and snacks with their luggage. Trains arrived and Madame Aubanel slowed the tape. Watching in fast-forward was dizzying, so they took short breaks.

  Evelyn appeared at the front of the station at 18:12 with a black bag. It was difficult to see her on the outdoor camera, as the mistral had blown up so much dust. White T-shirt, imitation leather pants, sneakers. She spent nine minutes in the lineup and bought a ticket.

  “What is she carrying?”

  He didn’t tell Madame Aubanel: a fairy wand.

  “Did she kill the politician and his wife? Is she guilty?”

  “No, Madame.”

  Evelyn walked away from the ticket office and looked up at one of the screens showing departure times. She went straight out to the platform. The images were not perfectly clear but she was fidgeting with her ticket. She looked around constantly, not one of her habits.

  “North.”

  “She went to Paris?”

  “The 18:28 is a night express. There are only two possible stops, Monsieur: Lyon and Paris.”

  They continued watching until the express departed. The bridge was empty afterwards, but for a man in blue overalls pushing a broom.

  Kruse pulled out his wallet.

  “Just give me three thousand. You lost a child and, it seems, a wife. I cannot take five thousand francs from you.”

  “How about you take the extra two thousand for the videotapes? I’ll buy them from you. You can say there was a technical error.”

  “I hope you find your wife. If she wants to be found.” The woman ejected the tapes and gave them to him. She stuffed the money into her purse. “I wonder why the gendarmes haven’t come, with the same questions.”

  The trains from Orange were finished for the day but he could drive to Avignon or Marseille. Even if he did, Kruse would arrive at four or five in the morning in a city of ten million people without a single clue. He wanted to take the train as she had taken the train, to see what she had seen: his best and only hope was some sort of psychological fusion, to enter her thoughts.

  Madame Aubanel sold him a ticket for the first express of the day, departing before dawn. Would he like to pay with cash or with credit?

  Kruse looked in his wallet and saw more than money. He came dangerously close to kissing the nearsighted supervisor for asking the question. “What, Monsieur? What?” She laughed along with him, missing the sarcasm.

  “Do you have a telephone cabine in here?”

  There were several, but Madame Aubanel had to lock up and leave. She was exhausted and a little nauseated, from watching the videos in fast-forward. Kruse drove around Orange, looking for a telephone, and couldn’t find one in the dark. He drove twenty minutes to Vaison-la-Romaine and parked in front of the horse stable; it was the first time in weeks that he had found a spot on Rue Trogue-Pompée. Lily had been with him the last time. Evelyn had said she wanted to spend a few hours at the library, so Kruse had driven with his daughter to the top of Mont Ventoux. It was a sunny day, warm in town but cold and windy on top. They could see the Alps in one direction and the Mediterranean in the other. On the way back down they had stopped for a picnic. And there, just like in the Astérix books, a wild boar trundled out of the bushes, looked up at them, and ran away.

  When he found Evelyn he would ask her: Were you really at the library that afternoon? Madame Boutet, the gendarme, had nearly spit out a mouthful of goat cheese when he told her that Evelyn is not the sort of woman who has an affair. Not with Jean-François de Musset or anyone else. Evelyn didn’t believe in affairs, in that sort of weakness. She wasn’t capable.

  “But you said you had come to France to save your marriage.”

  “Our problems weren’t like that.”

  “What were they like, Monsieur Kruse?”

  He told her.

  “So she couldn’t be attracted to another man?” Madame Boutet looked at her partner for a moment and back to Kruse. “Your wife is really so different from every other woman in the world?”

  There was a bank of two public phones at the bar-tabac that doubled as a bus station, at the limit of the terrace. He had bought a twenty-five-credit France Télécom card, but he didn’t need it for the toll-free Visa number, which was fortunate. It took twenty minutes and he ultimately had to choose the “lost or stolen” option to speak to a human being at this hour. It gave Kruse time to punish himself for waiting this long.

  It was early in the morning in Canada, though the operator did not sound tired. She wanted clarity: the card was not stolen or technically misplaced. Yet he had called the lost and stolen number.

  “My wife has been misplaced, and we share a card.”

  “So you want to find her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she want to find you?”

  “We were separated in error.”

  Her latest charges were for a train ticket, a hair salon, and two restaurants in Paris. She took money out of their account only once, in Orange. There was one request for a pre-authorization but the woman on the phone didn’t have the location. Most pre-authorizations are from hotels. Kruse asked the operator if anyone else would have access to their accounts. Anyone in my position, she said. Certain law enforcement agencies, though she didn’t have specifics: Interpol, surely. Did the operator have any way of seeing who had accessed their information, from among these organizations? Bankers, say, or police?

  “Perhaps someone could see,” she said. “It’s all computerized. But I don’t have that access. Anything else I can do for you, Mr. Kruse?”

  He was tempted to cancel her card, so no one else could find her. Evelyn taught art history, which offered few opportunities to think like a fugitive. Her limit at the ATM was two thousand francs a day. At the same time, if he annulled her card he would lose his connection to her. Now that Lily was gone they shared nothing else.

  FIVE

  Rue du Champ de Mars, Paris

  THE LAST TIME HE HAD BEEN IN PARIS WAS TO ACCOMPANY THE anxious son of a pharmacy magnate to ESCP Europe, the top business school on the continent, for an interview. His father, who also owned the Denver Broncos, had received death threats for something he had done to unionized workers. The most serious danger, on that trip, had been unpasteurized milk. The boy did not get into ESCP.

  The
man and woman he followed off the train fell to their knees on the concrete platform so abruptly he nearly tumbled over them. A little girl and a littler boy, perhaps five and three, in a dress and a suit, sprinted into hugs. An older couple, the grandparents, looked on. “Never go away again, Papa,” said the girl, crossly.

  The metro station at Gare de Lyon looked the way he felt. All but a few of the overhead lights were off and the tunnel was deserted apart from a security man smoking a cigarette, telling everyone who came around that metro drivers were on strike. The view from the front windows of the station was not encouraging: it was windy and raining heavily, and there was a long lineup for a taxi. He bought a sturdy black umbrella at a boutique on his way out, but the gusts were so strong along the river it turned inside out with a pop. Kruse walked the north bank of the Seine past city hall and the Louvre to Place de la Concorde, where they had cut off all those heads. He crossed the river at Pont Neuf and stayed along the quay, as Lily would have liked. She was the sort of child who would not have noticed the rain as long as there was something pretty to see, birds to identify, and enough to eat along the way. Maybe a hot chocolate in a little bistro. It wasn’t the best day for distant views, birdwatching, or architectural wonders, as a dark cloud had collapsed over the city. She would have understood.

  In the guidebook Evelyn kept on the bedside table, she ranked her chosen hotels from one to five. Her number one choice, on Rue Valadon, was impossible: it had been under renovation since the end of September. The neighbourhood immediately east of the Eiffel Tower was a hybrid of her interests: beautiful, chic, quiet, traditional, family-oriented, absolutely devoid of American chain stores. The streets were thin and in shadow most of the day, with a nearby market corridor full of bistros and grocery stores, fish and wine and cheese. There was nothing to do in this wealthy dreamland of Paris but live well. Less than a block away, on Rue du Champ de Mars, Kruse stepped into a pleasant but cramped lobby that reminded him more of a hotel in rural England than the seventh arrondissement.

  The man behind the counter quietly exclaimed at the sight of Kruse, who was windswept and half-soaked. “I would not blame you for thinking otherwise, Monsieur, but the taxi drivers are not on strike at the moment.”