Come, Barbarians

by Todd Babiak

  “They did make a mistake. That’s why they’re chasing my wife.”

  “Why didn’t they skin you too?”

  “I don’t know anything. And I could help them, lead them to her.” Huard tapped on the table and spoke with the soft voice he had used in his office. A voice of defeat. “Go home, Monsieur Kruse.”

  “You’re driving.”

  “Back to America.”

  “When I find her I’ll go back. When I figure out what happened Halloween night. When I find …”

  “I will admit these men are vicious,” said the Marseillais. “I do believe you saw something up here. But you can’t stop them. All of the police forces in the world, working together like the Monteverdi Choir, could not stop them. As long as we want drugs and whores, Monsieur Kruse, gangsters will live and thrive.”

  “And the Front National? They hired or they’re working with mobsters to find and exterminate my wife. Why? If she murdered Jean-François and Pascale, why wouldn’t they simply allow you, you two, to find her and throw her in some horror show of a prison? It’s proof, all of this, that she’s innocent. If not proof, it will lead to proof.”

  The Marseillais looked at Huard.

  “There was an accident and your darling daughter died.” The lieutenant spoke so quietly now it was difficult to hear him. “The man driving the car was no Mariani. In fact, he’s dead. This is, really, better justice than either of us could manufacture for you. You are still alive, Monsieur Kruse. You’re young.”

  “We can’t help you,” said the Marseillais. “We’re not even permitted.”

  “They’re going to kill my wife.”

  “You know what I think happened?”

  “What, Monsieur Huard?”

  The lieutenant didn’t answer for some time. It was as though he were studying the tabletop. “I think you failed her, your daughter. Lily.”

  Kruse looked down to the street again, the rain falling and hopping on the cobblestones.

  “You should have been with her. You should have been carrying your little girl, Monsieur Kruse, or holding her hand, standing close to her. Close enough to lift her away. How old was she? Four? Not even four?”

  Kruse pushed a loose nail into windowsill. It stopped halfway so he pressed harder.

  “You didn’t protect your daughter and now she is gone. This is the only truth.”

  He pushed the nail until his right thumb burst and bled. For the first time all day, his chest was not burning. He shivered, though it was not cold enough for that.

  “This idea, that gangsters or the Front National want to find and murder your wife …”

  “Don’t forget the Jews and the Freemasons.” The bearded Marseillais finished his cigarette and tossed it out the window. “They also hate little girls and like to chase innocent American women all over France. Who wants a drink?”

  “Drive me home.”

  “This is what I’m telling you. Vaison-la-Romaine is not your home, Monsieur Kruse. You can either live in regret or you can live. Believe me …”

  Kruse walked out of the apartment and ignored Lieutenant Huard, who called down the stairs and out to the street. He called him “Christophe.” The rain had stopped. It was cooler now but men sat out on lopsided Rue de la Cathédrale anyway, with blankets on their laps, to drink together and listen to the soccer match. The game was in Paris.

  At the train station Kruse bought a ticket home. Then he apologized to the woman behind the counter and gave her another four hundred francs. If the game was in Paris he would go all the way.

  NINE

  Allée des Vergers, Roissy-en-France

  KRUSE HAD PAID THE MONTHLY BILL FOR MATT GIBENUS, ANONYMOUSLY, at the long-term care facility in Vaughan, Ontario. Once every few weeks he would drive out and volunteer to be a buddy—as one of Matt’s old friends. He was the only old friend who visited, which charmed the nurses. Each time, Kruse had to reintroduce himself to the grown-up Zen toddler. Unlike other brain-injured residents in the facility, Matt had become a simple and contented man. Kruse would push the wheelchair through the indoor courtyard garden or read passages from what had become Matt’s favourite book: Stuart Little.

  The airplane to Marseille had been due to leave at midnight, so their last day in Toronto was a full day. Officially Evelyn hated packing but she didn’t trust anyone else to do it. She was anxious and irritable and could not abide the sounds of dollhouse, hide-and-seek, and hands-and-knees tag, a painful game for daddies on hardwood floors. It was a rainy day so they could not play in the yard. The natural choice would have been to go to the studio, but they had already said goodbye to Tzvi. So Kruse put Lily in her booster seat, picked up a couple of au revoir McDonald’s hamburgers, and drove out to Vaughan. Lily, too, liked the sound of an E.B. White story about a polite and well-dressed mouse. The rain was monsoon-strength in the suburbs, so they sat together, the three of them, in the too-bright common room of the facility. The off-white tile floors had just been washed. All the world smells like the swimming pool, when it is clean. Matt, uncharacteristically, lacked the patience for a reading. A television had been bracketed to the corner, and a few of the other patients sat drowsily watching it; the final moments of The Price Is Right was on. Lily watched Bob Barker.

  Matt watched Lily. He pointed. “What’s wrong with that girl’s face?”

  This happened rarely, as the scar became less noticeable with every surgery, every passing month. She looked to Kruse.

  “Nothing’s wrong with her face, Matt. Her face is perfect. She’s perfect.”

  Matt turned to Kruse and held his gaze—the wise one.

  “We’re moving to France. We came to say goodbye.”

  “Have a nice day,” Matt said, slowly and carefully, but what Kruse heard was You should have killed me.

  He arrived in Paris before dawn and walked across the river to Jardin des Plantes. It had rained before he arrived. The gardens smelled of wet soil and decomposing leaves. Evergreens and holly glistened and dripped in the spotlights. Winter was preparing itself. He found a dry bench next to the natural history museum and lay there for an hour, waiting for sunrise and watching for watchers. Lily woke at six thirty in the morning no matter what time she went to bed, seven o’clock or midnight. In his calculations of guilt, he went back to this at least once a day: if they had left Villedieu on time Halloween night, for her sake, she would be waking up for school at this hour. If he was not at the bakery he would make breakfast for her, oatmeal or cereal or, if there was enough time, pancakes. Maybe, if Evelyn was still asleep, he would turn on the television so she could watch a few cartoons. Evelyn did not approve of cartoons. They were either violent, like The Bugs Bunny Show, or vapid. On nights she did go to bed late, Lily would wake up the next morning helplessly emotional. It would start with giggling fits and end with weeping or temper tantrums. And it was never her fault.

  At seven o’clock Kruse hopped the fence and took the long route to the unlovely building on Rue Santeuil. He stopped at a bakery and bought a paper bag full of warm pain au chocolat. No one had followed him, not from Gare de Lyon to the gardens and not from the gardens to her building. He pressed her button and pressed it again, and two minutes later he pressed it again.

  “Yes?” Sleepy and frightened. “Hello?”

  He identified himself and she said nothing in response. After a long while the door buzzed open.

  “Apartment 631, Monsieur Kruse.”

  The unpainted concrete stairwell smelled of cooked vegetables. At her door he knocked quietly and heard nothing in response. Anouk was evidently not like Lily. Kruse did not like opening the door himself, as it exposed him, but he did it and she stood in the middle of a dim rectangular room with her hands behind her back. She wore jeans and a long white T-shirt with a rendering of Johnny Hallyday, the French Elvis, on a motorcycle—her bed shirt. Her eyes were dark from sleep and her thick black hair was wound up. Her expression carried none of what he had left her with, a bit drunk, after t
heir evening in the Café Delmas. Her feet were planted with care. She breathed quickly.

  “Can I come in, Madame Laferrière?” He put the paper bag down next to the door and spoke just above a whisper.

  “Why?”

  “Let me come in and I’ll tell you.”

  “Close the door then.”

  He stepped in and closed the door behind him, and then she showed the knife—a large butcher knife.

  “I’m not afraid to use this, if you …”

  “Yes, you are, Madame.” He lifted his hands. “I came because some men—”

  “What men? Those Russians?”

  “No. Well, yes, they’re part of the same group. What’s happened?”

  Her voice quivered and the knife quivered with it. “They’ve been following me. Us. They waited for me outside the office and asked about you. They wanted to know what you had told me. Then, the next day, they were at Anouk’s school. Just standing there and staring at us, at my daughter, just smoking and saying nothing. But I knew what they were saying. These are pitiless men, men without hearts. There is normal life, yes, the way most of us live, and then there is this. This is the advantage men like them have over the rest of us. They feel nothing. It was the same in Bordeaux.”

  The little girl, in mismatched flannel pyjamas—red with pandas on the bottom, white with floating pink Je t’aimes on the top—padded out of the dark bedroom. With eyes still tiny with sleep, adjusting to the light, she looked at her mother and looked at Kruse.

  It had been controversial in their house, but Kruse had always paid special attention to first times with Lily. Her mind was tuned to obsession. If her first time in a home or on a bicycle or with a babysitter was difficult or spooky, Lily would lie in the darkness of her bedroom and brood on it, populate the memory with demons.

  He knew nothing of Annette’s relationship with her daughter, or the girl’s personality, but he was not inclined to underestimate a four-year-old. The girl read the fear, the agitation, the crisis on her mother’s face: first the Russians and now this man. Anouk, in that instant, received it. Her own breathing changed. She opened her mouth and furrowed her brow, first in confusion. Her mother’s face, the big knife pointed and shaking at the stranger with the long scars on his cheek, their cozy home invaded at dawn. Annette did not move. She looked at her daughter and for a long moment said nothing. Available lies floated through the room: the man was a knife sharpener, the man had a loose thread on his jacket that needed cutting, the man wanted to slice a peach and some cheese for breakfast.

  “Maman?”

  Kruse knelt on the floor. “You must be Anouk.”

  The girl looked at him, at her mother, at Kruse again. He spoke with an accent. He smelled of outside, of the wet autumn garden, of weather and sleeplessness. Who had cut his face?

  “Maman?”

  “My name is Christophe. I help people.” Without looking away from Anouk, he reached up for the knife. “I make breakfast for my friends. What would you like for breakfast?”

  Annette hesitated and then handed over the knife.

  “Can I chop up some onions for you?” Kruse pretended to chop. “Do you like onions for breakfast?”

  Anouk looked up at her mother.

  “Oh, I know. Maybe some garlic? I can chop up some garlic and cauliflower, if that is what you would like for breakfast. Cauliflower and garlic soup?”

  “No, Monsieur.”

  “Beefsteak. Little girls love beefsteak for breakfast. Let me start cooking.”

  “No!”

  Kruse reached up and slid the knife onto the counter. “Maybe you and I could go out together, onto the street, and catch a pigeon. I really love roasted pigeons for breakfast, with mustard. Don’t you?”

  Annette opened her arms to Anouk and whispered to her daughter, “Dégoûtant, non?”

  “Disgusting, Monsieur!”

  “Shh, Anouk. Our neighbours are sleeping.”

  “Anouk, I have one last idea. I hope you will like this one.”

  “Is it gross?”

  “Yes. It is probably gross. It’s pain au chocolat, just out of the oven. I can just throw it out the window, because it’s disgusting. No problem. Let me just get the bag and throw it right out the window.”

  “No, no, no.” Anouk wriggled and her mother released her. Kruse picked up the bag and held it low so Anouk could peek inside and smell. She looked up at him and smiled, then said to her mother, “Can I?”

  “We usually have an egg and some yogurt for breakfast, Monsieur Kruse. But maybe, just this once.”

  “Just this once, Maman.”

  “Wash your hands, darling.”

  Anouk sprinted into the bathroom. The spirit of the girl remained in the small room: a sliver of a kitchen leading into a tidy salon with a couch, a chair, and a television. An IKEA bookshelf. They shared one bedroom, dark now with a closed shutter. With the light of the salon he could see the corner of an unmade bed and a box of toys. Annette smiled and then it faded.

  “What are you doing here, Monsieur Kruse?”

  The girl ran back into the room and stood before Kruse. “I’m ready.”

  At the kitchen counter, a bar stool with a back on it had been fitted with a booster seat. Kruse helped the girl up. She was heavier and more muscular than Lily had been. Her hair smelled of sleep. He held the bag open so she could choose one, sprinkled with icing sugar. Annette walked around to the other side of the island and lifted three small plates down. “Anouk, Monsieur Kruse and I are going to speak to each other for a few minutes in private. You eat your breakfast quietly, all right?”

  “All right, Maman.”

  Annette led him to the other end of the little apartment and turned on the television, the news. “We’ll whisper.”

  Kruse told her of his encounter with the Russians and of his morning in Marseille with Joseph and Lucien. He left out the skinning. “They didn’t mention your name to be kind.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. It’s like the president of the republic sweeping shit from the sidewalks.”

  “The president might, if his mistress had put it there and he didn’t want anyone to find out.”

  “What did they want to know, these Marianis? What you had told me?”

  “Not really.”

  “So?”

  “They wanted to threaten me, Madame.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They wanted me to know Lucien Mariani will do anything, abominable things. My daughter is dead, my wife is lost, my only friends murdered. So they mentioned you.”

  Annette slipped a hand into her thick hair and some of it escaped from the elastic. She stood up and huffed and laughed sarcastically. “I never should have taken that call. I should know my place. I never should have spoken to her and I never should have pursued it. That goddamn hotelier, he never should have given you my card. And then you and I, in the café on a rainy night.” Her voice jumped from a whisper to a shout. “If they touch her, come anywhere near her, it’s your fault. You and your wife. You never should have …”

  “Touch who, Maman?” Anouk had climbed down from her booster seat. There was an oval of icing sugar around her lips, flecked with melted chocolate.

  “No one. Touch no one. Eat your breakfast.”

  “But I’m done.”

  Annette walked across the room, pulled another pain au chocolat out of the bag, and plopped it on her daughter’s plate. Anouk looked up at Kruse. He winked.

  “Milk?”

  “I’ll do it.” Kruse jogged across the room to interrupt Annette and opened the fridge, which was full of cheeses and condiments that remained extravagant to him, and found the milk. In France, you didn’t have to put milk in the fridge until the bottle was open. The glasses were in the cupboard next to the fridge and he filled an orange one halfway, a pleasure and an agony at once: half filling a glass of milk for a little girl.

  “Monsieur?”

  He had lingered, dreamily. “Yes.” He sl
id the glass over the counter.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Merci, Monsieur.”

  “Je vous en prie, Mademoiselle.”

  Annette was back in front of the television. There was not enough room to pace, so she walked slowly in a repeatable semicircle. All news, in France, was political news. An affair, a scandal, a humiliating error. The Socialist government of François Mitterrand was not going out with dignity.

  “Sit down, Madame Laferrière.”

  She looked up at him. “No.”

  “Then just listen. You’re going to pack a bag for you and for Anouk, clothes and toiletries, maybe some books. Then you’re going to come downstairs, where I’ll be waiting for you in front of the building, in a car.”

  “You have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where are we going?”

  “A hotel.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s safe.”

  “Our apartment isn’t safe?”

  “Not anymore, no. If they think I have any feelings for you and your daughter—”

  “You have feelings for us?”

  His face went hot. “Or if they think you have the story.”

  “What story?”

  “I don’t know yet. The Mariani family and the Front National, there is some relationship. Why are they cleaning shit from the sidewalk, instead of one of their minions? This is strange and significant, as you say. There is a reason, and it’s an important enough reason to …”

  “You’ve ruined my life. You’ve put my child in danger.”

  “And you can’t go back to work. You’ll have to phone, take a holiday.”

  “I can’t just take a holiday.”

  “Just until I figure this out.”

  “You’re going to figure this out? You’re going to, what, dismantle the Mariani crime family? Dissolve the Front National? Why not also cure cancer and AIDS, end the war in Bosnia, feed the starving children of East Africa?”