Unforgivable

by Philippe Djian

  “Follow her. I don’t like it much.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake. Don’t be so pathetic.” I placed my hands on his shoulders. “It’s a personal favor I’m asking you, Jérémie.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “It’s not the right moment to let me down.”

  “Listen, I don’t really like spying on people.”

  “Of course not. Thank goodness. It’s just for this once. Put yourself in my shoes for a second. I need someone whom I can trust.”

  Apart from me, I didn’t know what other company he kept. “Do you want us to discuss your fee again?”

  He said it was all right. He added that I would probably come to the conclusion that my wife had no lover. “Until there’s proof to the contrary,” I said, “I agree.”

  He leaned toward me.

  “But what difference can it make to you, after all? What good will it do you? I thought you weren’t getting on together.”

  “I want to know the truth. That’s all, I would see to it myself were not Alice occupying my entire thoughts at the moment. Believe me . . . You need a job, don’t forget . . . It’s always better to have a bit of money in your pockets. Hold on for a week or two. Think about it for a moment, old friend. Remember that people are washing windows on the sixtieth floor of buildings for barely one thousand euros a month.”

  I was probably wrong to bring up this aspect of the situation with a boy who had chosen a murky path. I was probably wrong to tell a young man that jobs existed for less than one thousand euros. That very morning, I had seen a man walking along a crane shaft, in the wind, miles above the ground. I hoped he had fastened his helmet—a yellow helmet that was a target for the first rays of the sun.

  “You would have the best teacher imaginable,” I told him. “That’s not to be sniffed at.”

  “I know. That’s not the problem.”

  “Stop. Please. Good grief. Look around you. Jérémie. Look around you. It’s not a joking matter, you know. Short of trying to scour every service station in the country, I don’t get the feeling it’s such a bad option, being a detective. I wouldn’t have minded, on reflection. Following people. Mind you, it’s rather what I do when I write. It wouldn’t have altered me very much. Let’s be clear: nothing’s going to force you to do that all your life. Get yourself back in the saddle, and I’m sure that afterward everything will turn out fine. A private detective, eh? It’s better than being a croupier, in any case.”

  This type of conversation made him walk faster, then he overtook me and set off at a trot with his dog. Yet again. There was nothing that could be done. At the end of the day, A.-M. was probably right to be worried. Six years in prison was not a trivial matter. The pain ran deep. The pain had deep roots.

  On the other end of the line, A.-M. said it was extremely kind of me to discuss this matter with him. “It’s only natural,” I replied. “If it can help you, that’s great.”

  Something was bothering her. It was still too soon to talk about it, but she would keep me informed. I didn’t have the energy to try to find out more. “Is everything OK in Paris? D’you get time to enjoy yourself a bit?” I knew that she was seeing a woman in the Les Halles district. “Sort of,” she answered. “You know how it is. You really have to be on your toes to establish a long-lasting relationship.”

  I had had the opportunity to see a photo of her girlfriend. She had the look of a schoolteacher.

  “I reckon this dog is doing him a lot of good,” I said. “I reckon this dog is your best ally. I only wish he’d get a name, don’t you agree?”

  You only had to look at them together: the abandoned dog and the young lad who had left prison—it was a poem in itself.

  “But you’re right to be very careful,” I continued.

  “I’m extremely careful in that respect.”

  “I believe it would be the wrong moment.”

  I didn’t know her sufficiently well to gauge from her reaction whether he had uncovered the truth. Something told me that it wasn’t something he’d especially appreciate.

  “His father was the most pathetic sexual partner imaginable,” she said in a hollow voice.

  “You certainly did the right thing. I don’t doubt it for a moment. But one has to be wary of a boy’s image of his father. Touching upon it is like handling dynamite. It’s best to know, you see. Don’t we spend our lives making up for the mistakes and humiliations of our fathers?”

  When I put down the phone, Judith was sitting opposite me. She had come back from her jogging, exhaling a mist of invisible particles around her.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked me.

  “What are you talking about? Some things are fine, others less so.”

  She gave a slight sigh, then looked up as if to indicate that she did not want to get involved in these matters. “Nothing new?” I shook my head.

  “I trust her entirely. If there’s anything to find, she will find it.”

  We used to call Alice our daughter, but Alice was not her daughter, there was no question about that. I had all the proof I wanted in the coolness with which she dealt with this situation when I knew that Johanna would have been worried stiff, just as I, her father, was totally drained.

  Knowing beforehand the gist of the remarks she would make if I were to blame her for her lack of empathy, I was careful not to say anything critical in this respect. What good would it do? Our most memorable rows, in the past, had blown up in connection with Alice—up until the day we decided that the subject was closed.

  “I’ve nothing against your friend,” she said after staring at me for a moment. “I’d just like to be sure that you have made the right choice.”

  “I’ve known this woman since we sat on school benches together. We used to go to anti–Vietnam War demonstrations. Whom I could trust more?”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  “How do you expect me to know? Our evenings were somewhat hazy in those days. There were lots of substances going around. In any case, I wouldn’t say she’s a girlfriend.”

  I examined her legs and her arms closely, but discreetly, for any signs or marks, but I found nothing convincing.

  I tried to obtain her favors once more, just to see. After the fiasco of the other night, I wanted to find out the truth. And so, when it was dark, without further ado, I flicked a comb through my hair and let myself into her bedroom.

  She had switched off the light. A glimmer of light shone through the thick curtains. I drew near. It was as if she was expecting me. The sheets had been thrown back. She was wearing her white Petit Bateau underwear.

  In actual fact—I quickly realized—she was asleep. Or pretending to sleep. The weather was mild, we had not yet turned on the heating. In passing, by the way, it had seemed sensible to go and live in the South when we saw the way things were going: the bill from the energy company, for example—better to spend the winter using one log rather than having to burn a whole stack of timber. The Basque Country was one of the right solutions. The countryside was beautiful, the grass was green, the cattle were the same as those in Switzerland. There were places where you could fish for rainbow trout in the shade of wonderful undergrowth—as long as you had prepared the flies correctly—while beyond stretched the open sea with its host of nubile girls surfing in their Eres bathing suits. Some might prefer Corsica. Or a few villages on the Côte d’Azur, but that was really all. The shores of Lake Garda, at a pinch. There weren’t many such places.

  Wake her? Should I wake her? And risk passing for some sort of beast?

  Without being certain that I wouldn’t start to droop along the way?

  Besides, I wasn’t turned on yet. I looked outside, holding the curtain open with one finger. The dunes were deserted. In the distance, the lights of the casino fluttered in the tamarisk trees. I thought of Alice once more. I noticed that the windowsill was flaking.

  I turned around and placed my prick on the pillow, close to Judith’s face. I used to love being sucked off, and, by
behaving like this, I hoped to arouse my erection, but nothing happened. And yet I was an inch away from her lips, from her still astonishingly voluptuous lips, though, to my great consternation, this did not mean that blood went rushing to swell my loins. I withdrew immediately. All I needed would be for her to find me in this unfortunate position, in the role of the impotent lecher. I shuddered at the thought of it. I stepped back a few feet. “You’ve got Viagra coming to you, old man,” I told myself. “OK, I think we’re getting there. That’s it. Let’s go for it . . .” I was reeling.

  Back in my bedroom, I was sweating, panting. Frozen.

  A few days later, Jérémie’s dog was smashed against the rocks by one of those enormous waves that had been rolling in all afternoon—there had been a change in the moon. The dog’s skeleton had been battered to pieces and its head reduced to a pulp.

  Two other dogs were found, some cats, and a few cattle washed down from the Adour River—as happens after every big storm—carrying with it drugs, wads of cash, cigarette cartons, etc. The town hall employed men to clean away these more or less inappropriate objects, some of them bloodstained, from the beach. Jérémie’s dog hadn’t a single tooth left, and its tongue had been severed.

  Dusk was falling. I knew he was searching for his dog. A few hours earlier, he had arrived, slightly concerned, to ask me if I had seen it—occasionally the dog went for a walk with the girls. I had tried to calm him, reminding him just how quick, intelligent, and alert the animal had shown itself to be—even to my eyes, someone who is not very interested in domestic pets—and therefore clever enough to take shelter if the weather was turning for the worse. His complexion was almost gray. Behind him, the sea was roaring, low clouds were streaming past like submarines in the bronze sky. “Keep me posted,” I’d said to him. “Use your phone. Have faith.”

  A moment later, the storm had broken, and during the two hours that followed I completely forgot about him and his dog.

  Roger had set off to do goodness knows what in town, and the two little girls, who claimed they had seen a flash of lightning pass through the house, were clinging to me and trembling like leaves, while the sky was lit up and deafening explosions shook the entire house.

  They were tugging at my sweater. I had one of them on each knee. They were bending forward to yell into my ear when the heavens unleashed a flash of lightning right over the dunes. A sudden apparition, in the garden, just as the storm was moving away, was the cause of their latest cries: a sort of motionless specter on his milky-white, steaming shoulders, from which huge drops trickled.

  Jérémie was holding the remains of his dog in his arms.

  “Listen, girls,” I said. “You must go up to your bedroom.”

  But they had already jumped up, had opened the bay window, and were rushing over to Jérémie before I was able to step in. They were drenched from head to foot in a trice.

  I ushered everyone into the kitchen. The girls were weeping noisily and were throwing tantrums. Jérémie appeared to be in a state of shock. I took the animal from him and went to lay it on top of the dryer. A stuffed doll, weighing ten kilos or so, scarcely recognizable, and unpleasant to touch.

  I made everyone get out of the kitchen. The twins were clinging to me and sobbing, convinced that I could do something to bring this dog back to life. I dragged them over to the bar so that I could pour a dram of 70° whisky—o river of fire, o reviving force—for someone who seemed to be desperately in need of it.

  “Let’s sit down,” I said. “Let’s try to control our breathing. OK, girls? Calm down. And you, Jérémie, drain that glass, please. I’m going to get you another. There’s no point in howling, you know. Where’s your father? I’d like to know where he is. You’re soaked. Go and find some towels. Jérémie and I will dry you. Won’t we, Jérémie? Won’t we, Jérémie? My poor old friend. What a wretched business, by the way. The poor dog. But come along, sit down, don’t just stand there like an idiot. Yes, do, don’t worry about that. It’s waterproof leather. Don’t bother about that. Try to relax. Breathe in. Breathe in deeply. So you found him like that, on the rocks? Beneath the lighthouse, you say? Do you think he fell from up there? That he bumped into a couple of irritable gays going at it in the bushes? Hmm. Maybe. It’s not impossible. I know they don’t like being disturbed. But I don’t imagine you’ve any proof of what you’re suggesting. These guys must have chucked your dog in the water? And why would they do that, Jérémie? Look at me. What’s the matter? Wait a second. Listen to me, girls. I’m not joking anymore.”

  While they set off in the direction of the airing cupboard upstairs, I leaned over toward him:

  “You went to bug them, is that it? Don’t tell me you did that, Jérémie. Look at me. Did you go to bug these guys? But what on earth got into your head? You see the result? Your father didn’t help you, as far as that’s concerned. I’m telling you frankly, he did you no favors.”

  His head dropped so low that I could no longer see his face. I didn’t know whether water was dripping from him or whether he was crying. A smell of damp dog now pervaded the house. A small puddle was forming at his feet. One more appalling story. A story of total wastefulness—for which the dog paid the price.

  “Listen to me. We can’t bury a dog in the forest in weather like this, absolutely not. That would be verging on madness, do you hear? Digging a grave in weather like this, you must be joking. Using the headlights, I suppose? In twenty inches of mud. In teeming rain.” They pointed out that the storm had died down. That the moon had dried the darkened fields as it rose.

  I helped him carry the dog to the trunk of my car while the girls searched the house, gathering up all the flashlights they could find; I could hear the cutlery flying around in the drawers, the cupboard doors slamming.

  As I went out, I had the feeling that I was diving into a pool of warm water. I left a message for Judith informing her of the predicament we had got into, were she to come home and find the house empty. If she ever did come home. Something I was never entirely sure about. “I don’t even know where you are,” I added in a tone of voice that struck me as plaintive.

  As time went by, I was becoming increasingly sentimental. If I went on like this, I would soon become ridiculous.

  Half an hour later, we pulled up in the middle of the forest. It was still raining quite hard. It was still dark. In the back, the little girls were still spluttering into their handkerchiefs. I turned round to them and made them promise not to move from there while Jérémie and I were working.

  Very quickly, our task became a quagmire.

  The earth was dark and thick. As we dug deeper, the hole filled with water. Through the misted-up windows of the car, the two girls were watching us open-eyed. The rain, all around us, was spitting like bacon in a frying pan. “I’m not going to go on asking you the same question until the end of time,” I said, almost yelling so that he should hear me. “Don’t count on it. So, one last time, I’m asking you, Jérémie, are you all right? . . . If not I’ll drive you to the emergency room right away to be looked after, OK? I recommend you find your tongue again quickly, OK?”

  To begin with, he nodded. I told him that wouldn’t be enough.

  “Yeah, it’s OK,” he muttered finally. “I don’t want to talk.”

  These types of windbreakers with hoods that we had brought with us, very fashionable with campers and tourists, were sticking to our skins the way transparent plastic film clings to vacuum-packed food.

  “They murdered my dog!” he grunted between his teeth before beginning to dig frantically again.

  I looked at him for a moment. “I can’t get over the fact that you could have done that,” I said to him eventually. “I’m flabbergasted. Your mother really will be pleased. I think she’ll be really proud of you. Doubly so. But for a start, you don’t know a thing. You accuse these people, but you don’t know a thing. You’ve no right to do that.”

  He stood up and looked at me fiercely, but no word came from his lips. H
e suddenly hurled his shovel to the ground and set off furiously to collect his dog.

  We had already talked about this, he knew what I thought and what my views were on the subject. Nevertheless, I had admitted that when it had to do with the father or the mother, it did not make things any easier for the child. I could understand his confusion. I could understand that things weren’t quite right inside this child’s head—and yet it wasn’t as if we were having to be protected from rabies or poliomyelitis or dyscalculia.

  He stood still for a moment, in front of the open trunk of the car, while torrential rain beat down on his head, before bending down to pick up his dog. Once again, I was happy to admit that the loss was tough for a young fellow who had just come out after six years in prison. In any case, all this was not very good for my coachwork; I didn’t know whether Audi treated the inside of the trunk with antirust.

  The following day, we were obliged to go back to put up a cross or risk dealing with a double nervous breakdown—Alice had brought them up very badly—and being labeled an infidel; Alice had managed to have them baptized and religion was already seeping into their young and hazy minds. Since when had people not been putting crosses on graves? What sort of a grandfather did they have after all?

  The weather was fine after the previous night’s storms. The sky was a washed-out blue. Imagining that we might use the opportunity to find a few cèpe mushrooms, I agreed—on condition that they didn’t expect me to be involved with preparing the thing, for I wasn’t in the mood for that.

  I was unsure whether to wake their father. I was having breakfast. I took a look at my mail. Since I was still writing a few stories for newspapers and had become unusually obsessive about proof corrections—I was well known for being the worst in the whole country, the kind who really did split hairs—I was still fairly busy, and this meant I could not devote my time to their games, their ceremonies, their fussy demands, and I had therefore left them in the garage, asking them to be careful not to injure themselves with any sharp tool or other.