The two vehicles smash into each other at full speed, then fall on top of each other tangled, crushed, fused.
The body parts that don’t disintegrate in the collision are shredded by the metal carnage, and flames overwhelm them.
Now it’s over.
EPILOGUE
Dinner at Mathilde’s. I buzz and wait on the landing. I’ve brought flowers and I’m wearing a smart suit, a raw-silk pinstripe number. And my enormous diving watch with its fluorescent green strap, which never leaves my wrist, much to everyone’s astonishment. As always, it’s Gregory who opens the door, while Mathilde, tucked away in the kitchen, calls out excitedly: “Oh, Papa, you’re here already?” My son-in-law’s handshake is so firm that I can feel the challenge, the macho gauntlet being thrown down. But I never fight back. Those days are over.
Mathilde emerges when I enter the sitting room, always saying the same thing as she fixes her hair: “Oh my god, I must look dreadful. Papa, help yourself to whiskey, I’ll be back in a second.”
She then disappears into the bathroom for a good half hour, leaving Gregory and me to exchange various pleasantries, sticking to the safe, uncomplicated ground that experience has shown us.
Gregory has gained in self-confidence since taking office in the brand-new apartment I bought them, a large five-room place in the heart of Paris. The way he handles the decanter, the haughty postures he adopts . . . you’d be forgiven for thinking that his fortunate circumstances are due to his own considerable merits, his undeniably superior qualities. The two of us are like boxers: we owe our success to being smacked in the face. I never say anything. I hold my tongue. I smile. I tell myself it’s fine, that I’m just waiting for my daughter. Eventually she’ll arrive, each time wearing a brand-new dress that she twirls on entry.
“What do you think?” she asks, as though I’m her husband.
I try to mix up my compliments. I really ought to start a list of adjectives for future evenings, because these monthly visits (always the second Thursday) will make my dwindling linguistic resources dry up before long.
I always feel unprepared. Sometimes I say “Marvelous!” but that seems too old-fashioned, or maybe “Amazing!”—that sort of thing.
Charles’s words, I suppose.
From the window you can make out the spires of Notre-Dame. I sip the whiskey that Mathilde buys specially for me. My own bottle at my daughter’s house. In spite of this, please don’t assume I’m becoming an alcoholic. Quite the opposite—I’m doing everything I can to stay in shape. Nicole is very appreciative of my attempts at self-maintenance. My discipline. I’ve joined a gym near her place. It’s pretty far, I’m not sure why I chose that one, but that’s how it is.
We sit down for dinner. Mathilde has the presence of mind to give me a quick update on Lucie, because she knows I’m eager to hear her news. It’s my only link with her since the end of all that.
With Lucie, it finished in the apartment on avenue de Flandre. I hadn’t been expecting anyone, but the doorbell rang, and when I opened, Lucie was there.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said.
“I was in the area and decided to drop by,” she replied.
And she came in. It wasn’t hard to see she was lying. She hadn’t been in the area—she’d come specially. Her face said it all. Anyway, she got to the point immediately. She’s not as polite as the others, so no attempt to keep up appearances.
“I’ve got some questions for you, now,” she said.
No talk of sitting down, going for dinner, or any of that. Her “now” resounded heavily, so heavily, and I looked down expecting the first barrage, knowing how difficult it was going to be.
“But,” she continued, “I’m going to start with the main one: Do you really take me for a complete fucking idiot?”
Terrible start.
The whole thing had finished barely two weeks earlier.
The day before her visit, I’d written checks for everyone. Big checks. Mathilde looked at hers and took it for what it was: an unimaginable Christmas present, smack in the middle of the year. It was like she’d won the lottery.
In reality, these were fake checks. Just to mark the occasion. I explained to them that their millions of euros were stashed in offshore accounts and that using such sums would require various precautions regarding the tax authorities. We’d need to get creative with our accounting. Nothing major, but just be patient, I had it all under control.
Nicole laid hers on the table carefully. She’d already known about this for several days. I’d explained it to her right away. With Nicole it was different, it wasn’t like with the girls. She put her check in front of her as you might place a napkin on the table at the end of a meal. She said nothing. There was no point in her repeating herself. Quite simply, she didn’t want to ruin it for the girls.
Lucie looked at her present, and it was obvious that it had plunged her into a state of deep reflection. She stammered “thank you” a few times, listening to my enthusiastic explanations in a manner that was both attentive and absentminded, like she was hearing a different speech in parallel.
That evening, I told my two girls that whatever happened, their futures were assured. They could use what I’d given them to buy themselves an apartment (or two or three) and do whatever they wanted to feel safe. This was a gift from their father. I was paying everyone back.
I’d split it three ways. I was paying everyone back a hundred times over. I even thought my gesture might earn me a bit of respect.
It did, but only in part. Mathilde was in raptures; Gregory asked endless questions about the practicalities. I said as much as I could without giving away the essentials, all the while feeling like it wasn’t going at all as I’d planned, nothing like I had dreamed.
And the following day Lucie was back, asking: “Do you really take me for a complete fucking idiot?” It was nonstop because, as it always is with Lucie, she provided the question along with the answer to the question. Because she hadn’t stopped thinking from the first second she saw her enormous check, from the moment it had dawned on her.
“You manipulated me in the most contemptible way possible,” she said.
She spoke without anger, her voice level. That was what scared me the most.
“You hid the truth from me throughout because you thought that, in my naivety, I would defend you better if I thought you were innocent.”
That hit the nail on the head. I’d had a thousand opportunities to explain what I’d really done, but I thought it would have undermined her defense. And I had my reasons. If I had given her the full picture, I would be in prison right now for a very, very long time.
Until the very last second, I never thought I’d be certain to hold on to the money.
Could I have reasonably told them about it, raising their hopes about a life finally free of need, only to pull the carpet out from under their feet if I didn’t manage to see my plan through?
I tried to make her appreciate all this, but she cut me dead:
“You wanted me to come across as genuine. You made a spectacle of our relationship. You did everything in your power to make the press think that this was about a poor victim of unemployment being defended by his well-meaning, generous daughter. You got exactly what you wanted when I choked up in front of the jury. Maybe that final moment was what exonerated you the next day. That single second was the culmination of months and months of lies, of making me believe the same as everyone else. You wanted me to defend you because you wanted someone hardworking and credulous, someone clumsily honest. And to achieve that, you needed me to be a silly little girl. I was the only person in the world who could play the dummy so perfectly. I was a shoo-in. Your best shot at being let off was to have a muppet at your side. What you did was disgraceful.”
Exaggerating as ever.
But that’s in her nature, it’s how she is—she can’t resist taking it a bit further.
Lucie is always mixing up cause and effect. I need her to realize tha
t there was never any strategy. At no stage did I think she needed to be a dummy to be effective. She was an incredible lawyer. I couldn’t have asked for a better one. All that happened was I realized—too late in the day to tell her the truth—that even her faux pas would work in my favor. That’s it.
Things are not at all the same when seen from her angle and from mine.
I needed to say all this, but Lucie didn’t give me a chance. Not another word. An argument would have reassured me. I would have taken insults, but this . . .
Lucie looked at me.
And she left.
It kills me when I think back to it. I stayed there for a while, frozen in the middle of the room. She left the door ajar. I went as far as the landing and heard the little click the elevator makes when it reaches the ground floor. I returned to the apartment, battered with exhaustion and feeling totally demoralized.
On the doormat there was a scrunched-up piece of paper that I picked up and unfolded. It was Lucie’s check.
I can’t stop thinking about that, and it breaks my heart.
Gregory is still talking as we sit at the table, regaling me with the latest drama at work, from which, of course, he emerges the hero. Mathilde stares at him, transfixed. He’s her big man. It makes me want to kill myself, but I weigh in with a “No?” or a “Nice one!”—not listening to a fucking word.
Lucie hasn’t called me once for almost a year.
All I have left are these monthly conversations with Gregory.
I’m finding life pretty tough.
So I drift off and think of Charles.
Of Nicole.
I picture us a year ago. God, it was miserable.
After Charles died, when everything was over, we stayed together for two days in that gloomy flat on avenue de Flandre. We stayed by each other’s sides, lying on our backs for hours at a time, simply holding hands like a pair of petrified snow angels.
And on the third day, Nicole said she was leaving. She told me that she loved me, but that she just couldn’t go on. She couldn’t—something was broken.
Finally, my epic ego trip had come to an end. We had to go through all that for this simple realization to dawn on me.
“I need to live, Alain, and that’s not good enough for you,” she said.
She and Lucie stood in exactly the same place when they left me. Lucie threw away her rolled-up check as she left; Nicole gave me one of those smiles that I never come away from unscathed. I’d just said to her:
“But Nicole, it’s all over and we’re rich! Nothing can happen to us anymore. Nothing can stop us from being everything we’ve ever dreamed of!”
Apparently I had some nerve saying that.
Nicole simply touched my cheek and shook her head, as though she were thinking: “Poor thing.”
After a bit, she said:
“My poor love . . .”
And she left, perfectly calmly.
In this respect, Lucie reminded me of her mother a great deal.
I’m not sure, but maybe this is why I decided to stay living at avenue de Flandre, despite being capable of buying myself a stunningly expensive place.
I filled the ordinary flat with ordinary furnishings, with ready-made ideas straight out of an IKEA catalog.
And to be honest, I don’t actually mind it that much.
Nicole moved into a place in Ivry, I’ll never understand why. It was impossible to persuade her to let me buy her a beautiful apartment like Mathilde’s. Absolutely impossible to discuss it with her. It was a no, and that was that. She didn’t even let me buy her the place in Ivry. She pays the rent herself out of her salary.
We have dinner from time to time. At first, I’d take her out to one of the grand Parisian restaurants. I was aiming to sweep her off her feet again, trying to look all handsome in my first-ever tailored suit. But it didn’t take long to realize she wasn’t impressed. She’d eat in virtual silence, then head home on the métro, not even agreeing to a taxi.
Now, we don’t see each other so often. Before, I suggested endless outings to the opera, the theater; I tried to give her books on art, weekends away, things like that. I told myself that I had to win her back, that it would take time and no little sleight of hand, but that bit by bit we would find our way back to each other, that she’d realize how wonderful our new life could be. That’s not how it went. She said yes to one or two things, but after a while she stopped. For a while, I called her all the time; then one day she told me I was doing it too often.
“I love you, Alain. I’m always glad to hear you’re doing well. But that’s all I need to know. I don’t need anything more.”
At the start, without her, time went slowly.
I felt like a moron in my sparse apartment with my made-to-measure suits.
I’ve become a sad man.
Nothing disastrous, but I don’t get the enjoyment from life that I’d hoped for. Without Nicole, nothing has any real meaning.
Without her, nothing has any meaning at all.
The other day, something came back to me that Charles had said in those bizarre sentences of his: “If you want to kill a man start by giving him what he seeks the most. More often than not that’s enough.”
I miss Charles an awful lot.
I’ve put the rest of the money in accounts opened under the girls’ names. I don’t pay much attention to it. I know it’s there. It’s what I won. That’s all I need to know.
The first few months were terribly long, being alone like that.
But then I started a new job a few weeks ago, a volunteer position: a “senior consultant” at a small charity that helps young entrepreneurs.
The fact is I can’t help it: I can’t not work.
Vézénobres, August 2009
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My first thought is for Pascaline, of course. For her patience and her tireless rereadings. For her presence.
Afterward, thank you as ever to all the following:
Samuel, for his constant advice and repairs (at times up on the high wire), which have proved unfailing and valuable companions. My thanks to him for understanding so well that meaning must prevail over precision . . . He is not answerable for any of the lingering errors.
Gerald, for his helpful remarks at a time when the text needed them.
Joëlle de Cubber, for being so responsive to my requests for medical advice.
Eric Prungnaud, whose reading and observations were of great comfort at just the right moment.
Cathy, my affectionate sponsor.
Gérard Guez, for being so welcoming and kind.
Charles Nemes, who came up with the title for this book over a meal (a relatively dry one, by the way).
A huge thank you, of course, to the whole team at Calmann-Lévy, my French publishers.
Finally, readers may well have picked up on references to Alain, Bergson, Céline, Derrida, Guilloux, Hawthorne, Kant, Mailer, Marías, Onfray, Proust, Sartre, Scott Fitzgerald, and others.
Each one of these references can be considered an homage.
PIERRE LEMAITRE was born in Paris in 1951. He worked for many years as a teacher of literature before becoming a novelist. For Alex, he was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger, alongside Fred Vargas, and was sole winner for Camille and The Great Swindle. In 2013, The Great Swindle also won the Prix Goncourt, France’s leading literary award.
SAM GORDON is a translator from French and Spanish. His previous translations include works by Karim Miské, Sophie Hénaff, Timothée de Fombelle, and Annelise Heurtier.
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