Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  “If you mean a wedding ceremony,” gruffed the butcher, “then it is out of the question.” Later Charles complained to Félix about his prospective father-in-law’s “insensibility.” Félix remarked that he did not blame Hélène’s father at all. Charles was holding the girl in his hands like a just caught bird.

  “But if I don’t hold her,” said Charles, “she will fly away. Then I would kill myself.” Félix sighed, long since bankrupt of appreciation for adolescent love talk.

  Porto spent several days raising 5,000 francs and with his copains hatched a plan both primitive and basic. He would pay Charles for the blueprints, then return in the dead of night, slice his throat, retrieve the money, commit the burglary, and spend the rest of his life wrapped in silk. He took the Métro to Charles’ apartment and learned from the concierge that his quarry was out for the evening.

  It was early August 1968. Charles picked up Hélène in a sports car that he had “borrowed from a friend.” They drove leisurely to Deauville, where Charles planned an evening at the casino. En route, he spoke of a new urgence to his desire for marriage. Very soon he would be leaving for the Far East. His father was dangling an alluring partnership in an import-export business in Saigon. This news would have been a revelation to Sobhraj the Tailor, for he had written recently a letter to Félix declaring that under no conditions would he welcome his son to Saigon. The war there was intensifying, Lyndon Johnson was sending in what seemed to be tens of thousands of new soldiers every month, business was unpredictable. But most important, wrote the tailor, “I do not trust my son. His mother did not bring him up right.”

  Charles pleaded with Hélène. “I cannot leave Paris without you,” he said. And once again Hélène begged for more time. She was working on her father, but the situation was complicated. Her mother had a failing heart. A family confrontation might kill her.

  At the Deauville casino, Charles gambled recklessly, Hélène hovering behind him, fascinated by men and women in Paris couture who with seeming boredom won and lost thousands of francs. By mid-evening, Charles had run a stake of a thousand francs up to six thousand, half a year’s wages for Hélène. “Stop, chéri,” she whispered. He hissed her quiet. His face was so rapt that for the first moment since they met she felt like an intruder. Within half an hour, Charles lost his stake, even the fifty francs in Hélène’s purse that she had pinned to the lining like any good French girl.

  On the drive back to Paris, Charles was morose. He blamed Hélène for his losses. No wonder that his luck soured; his head was so confused by Hélène’s dalliance with his heart that he was lucky to escape with the clothes he was wearing. Angrily he shoved the accelerator to the floor, the car rocketing along the autoroute toward Paris. A light mist was falling, turning the pavement into glass. Hélène begged Charles to slow down, but his answer was to snap on the radio with deafening music to drown out her fearful cries. “All right, you win, I’ll marry you,” she finally shouted. And with that, Charles laughed and lifted his foot from the pedal. At that moment he noticed the police car behind him, siren screaming.

  Swearing, Charles pushed the accelerator down again, turning off the autoroute, twisting through the quiet peace of a sleeping village, losing control, clipping a fence, spinning end over end until the crushed little car came to shuddering rest in a newly plowed potato field.

  When the police hurried in, guns drawn, to arrest this dangerous fool for stealing a car, speeding, reckless driving, and having a stolen permit, they discovered Charles holding a young woman, trying to kiss the blood from her face, weeping like a bereaved old woman, his howls protesting the fates that smote him.

  Porto waited in an alley near Charles’ apartment until midnight, then he found a cafe and drank red wine until he passed out and the owner threw him into the street.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The sentence was eight months, in a prison at Rouen, with an attendant comment from the judge that probably he was being too lenient. On the bench was a now thickening dossier for Charles Sobhraj. Someone, a policeman or a court official, had scrawled in warning red letters across the twenty-four-year-old felon’s name, “EXTREMEMENT DANGEREUX.”

  Hélène appeared at the hearing, a thin scar on her temple as the only souvenir from the accident. It did not mar her fresh beauty; she told the judge that she loved Charles and held no grievance against him and planned to marry him as soon as the matter was settled. Her soft voice and poised manner impressed the judge, as did the presence of Félix, who once again came to the aide of Charles, despite his better judgment that it was time to lock his doors. With money from his own pocket, Félix engaged a psychiatrist who, after consultation with Charles, wrote an encouraging report.

  “Fascinating case,” remarked the psychiatrist. “Obviously there is a psychological deformity of image here that could bring on psychopathic states. This has not yet happened. The boy is intelligent—highly so—and I believe that psychotherapy could help him, if not cure him.”

  Félix greatly assisted the therapist by presenting his own “psychological profile.” Knowing that it would take months to properly analyze Charles—“He is the most adroit liar you will ever encounter,” warned Félix—the prison visiteur prepared his own lay observations. They were compelling and accurate:

  —“Who is Charles Sobhraj? Why has he failed? Why does he wreck his life? Why one disaster after another?

  —“Charles is a human being with paradoxical qualities. He has an intuitive intelligence, fast comprehension, an ability to cultivate his mind. Yet he is introspective in a morbid way. He is pessimistic, often worried, doesn’t trust people easily, hides a very real lack of confidence in himself, has a tormented nature.

  —“He exploits one hundred per cent the weaknesses of those around him. Is capable of the blind fidelity of the Asiatic. Is hungry for money and success, considering these to be noble ambitions.

  —“He has a small conscience, if any. His vanity is extreme, with a passionate desire to be liked, but he never admits any vulnerability. He possesses the sentimentality and sexuality of Don Juan, in the pathological sense of the term. Is capable of politeness, but calculatedly so. Impulsive and aggressive.

  —“His life is a history of running away. His explanation is that he is trying to find a better life in a better atmosphere, but of course he is really running away from himself. Wants people to feel sorry for him. He is a judge administering punishment to himself, trying to make his friends and family feel sad and sorry.

  —“A brilliant actor, he is a poseur extraordinaire, always running away from reality.”

  All of this was placed before the judge, who perused it and then announced that he was not impressed by the character of the defendant. Indeed, were it not for the support shown by Hélène and Félix, he would make the sentence more severe than eight months.

  As a guard led Charles away in manacles, Hélène burst out of the spectator section and was permitted an embrace. “I will wait for you,” she whispered. “I will be a nun until the moment of your freedom.” The sentence was retroactive to the night of the accident. It was now mid-December, 1968, and Charles would be free by late spring.

  Charles shook off the girl’s embrace. He did not need her “pity.” She ran after him to explain the difference between love and pity, but for the moment it was too late. Engulfed in a sea of guards and prisoners, Charles was carried away like a bobbing cork, quite small, very insignificant.

  Petulant letters began arriving at Félix’s mailbox. Their tone was whining self-pity. Charles felt he was being unfairly treated by persecutive authorities. Félix decided it was time to hold a mirror up to Charles or, to use his metaphor, “lance the boil.” He wrote back a letter that slashed and ripped, calculated to shock the young prisoner into a more stable behavior pattern.

  “Perhaps you will shred this letter in rage,” wrote Félix at the beginning of 1969. “If so, too bad … One of the problems with you is that you are always, engaged in morbid introspec
tion. Morbid! Oh, an occasional intimate self-analysis is valuable. Everybody speaks to himself now and then; everybody steps aside to take a close look at oneself. I wonder what you see? This time you must look at the dirt. You cannot hurry past it any longer. I won’t let you. I am here to make you see it.

  “Charles, Charles, to be sure everybody leads something of a double life. But you lead God knows how many different lives and won’t take cognizance of it. You seem incapable of sacrificing, even though you talk about it sometimes. You let yourself be guided by random impulse, and it is going to take you down to catastrophe …

  “I want all these shocks to be the point of beginning for something new in your life. Only then can you really say ‘I love Hélène.’

  “Until then, I cannot believe you. Are your feelings perhaps twisted? Are you capable of real love? Or do you just hang onto someone in despair?”

  Prisoners often go berserk in the agony of their confinement, but after receiving Félix’s letter, Charles performed an act of violent disintegration that would be remembered for years in Poissy. Drawn by the cries of neighboring inmates, guards rushed down the corridor to discover Charles ripping apart his cell, pulling the cot out of the wall even though it was fastened with steel pins, shredding the thin mattress, tearing out chunks of plaster and rock from the walls. He tore off his clothes, stripping naked on the bitterly cold winter night. In his hand was Félix’s letter, crumpled and wet with tears, and when the guards seized him to lead him to cachot—solitary—he tore up the letter and ate it rather than surrender it to authority.

  For fifteen days, Charles reposed in solitary, brooding over the image that Félix had drawn. Upon his return to a new cell, Charles wrote back. None of the baroque romanticism that marked his previous letters was used. Charles threw Félix out of his life like a man putting out the cat.

  “Do not ever worry about me again,” wrote Charles. “Do not concern yourself with what I will do when I get out, or about my psychological makeup. Do not waste another breath on me. Now I and I alone will direct the destiny of my life … I will make my decisions, when and where and how I want to—and not how you want. I assure you that I am not the prisoner of an ‘outraged vanity’ as you once suggested. Rather I am perfectly calm and lucid and confident. From you, now and forever, I want no help, no contact, no material assistance. Not a centime! Nor will I ever set foot in your house for one minute.

  “On the day I leave prison—for the last time, incidentally—Hélène and I will become man and wife. The future is ours. Please stay out of our lives forever!”

  Promptly Félix fired back, professing sarcastic delight at Charles’ new independence. How happy he was that Charles was “healed” and possessed of enough confidence to write such a “deep” and “revealing” letter.

  “It shows your true side,” wrote Félix. “The same side you have displayed to your father, your stepfather, and to all those who care about you … I do as you wish. I leave you! Build the life that you want. Let us presume that it will be successful. Age will help, maybe even the hate and aggressiveness that you demonstrate so often will replace the same feelings you have for yourself … Whatever, you finally reveal yourself to be a petit salaud.”

  The term translates “little bastard.”

  The few months that remained of his sentence were used productively. Charles took a course in French law and wrote several eloquent papers, one of which merited a “Provocative! Well done!” from the instructor. A fellow prisoner asked Charles why he was so enamored of the law, as he had but a few months to serve. There was no need to act as jailhouse counsel in appeals or further trials. Charles smiled. “In order to break the rules, you must know them,” he answered, using a comment that he would make many times in years and places yet to come.

  And each night, each night, Charles poured out an overwhelming love and need for Hélène:

  My dearest—

  From the depths of my cell, I hear the other prisoners crying every night. Darkness is the lonely hour. Darkness is the moment when a man holds on the tightest to keep from going insane. I would be one of them were it not for you, for the memories that live in my heart.

  What a joy you are, what a marvel, what a wonder … I have just received your last letter, with three photographs enclosed. Do you know which one I prefer? Oh, little girl, you surely know. It’s the pose of you in the bathing suit, with all the perspectives of your beautiful body revealed. Let’s close our eyes and dream, dream, dream that we are lying next to one another. I must have your beautiful love until the last breath of my life, and then beg God to live it all over.

  God will protect our love, for it is an act of purity and perfection. I can see that you are making yourself beautiful for me when I return. I will find a beautiful little woman, so perfect that she will be like a deity, a goddess who dares present herself in front of me.

  Hélène did not find her lover’s words to be more overripe than penny novels. She treasured each, stuffing large stacks of correspondence in her purse and reading them on the Métro and during her lunch hour. Now and then a friend at the office would ask Hélène to accept a blind date, but she always refused, having invented the excuse that her fiancé was in the military and deserving of her unwavering fidelity. In her mind, Hélène was a war widow, and from the trenches came words from her hero that stirred passion. “You are so beautiful that I am fighting a terrible enemy—jealousy! I worry each moment that another man will take you away before I come back. Hélène! Do you know what I would do, if I could, this very moment? I would lock you up in a golden cage, plant flowers around it, and wrap you in silk until I return.”

  For the last two months of his sentence, Charles had few visitors, Félix being banned by letter from ever seeing him again. Hélène traveled to Rouen when she could invent an excuse that would fool her parents. They still did not know she was in love with a prisoner. Two other “friends” visited Charles regularly, a pair of Oriental men who presented themselves as relatives from Vietnam. As they pretended to speak little French and always dressed as impoverished immigrants, prison authorities accepted their credentials. In truth, police would later discover, one of them was Vietnamese, a former street friend of Charles when both hustled as youngsters in Saigon. The other, an older man with but two teeth in his mouth, both gold, and a stomach the equal of Buddha, was believed to be a resident of Hong Kong and who counted among his accomplishments the murders of five men. His name was Ling and each time he visited Charles he brought a container of stew in an insulated jug. In return, he was permitted to reclaim an empty jug from the week before whose contents had been gratefully devoured. But as soon as he left the prison and was in a safe place, Ling eagerly removed the false bottom of the jug and found the compactly drawn blueprint of a home in Paris worth burglarizing. The plans suggested possible approach and escape routes. When Charles neared the end of his sentence, he had almost fifteen thousand francs being held in escrow by Ling, proceeds of theft by proxy. Police believed that as many as four major burglaries were committed by the strange gang; its head in prison, its arms on the street.

  On becoming twenty-five years old in 1969, Charles had a woman who loved him, and money waiting. But he wanted more. He wanted Félix back as the anchor of his ship. On May 29, 1969, Charles wrote and beseeched his patron to forgive him:

  Only 23 more days until freedom! I count every minute. I look back on eight lost months, wasted months, months of falling down, months of thinking about a destroyed future, months of remembering a lost friendship of irreplaceable value. I need you, Félix …

  I want to confess my ungratefulness, so that I will not leave behind in your mind the image of an ungrateful person. With your blessing, Hélène and I will build our lives. We will find the joy and happiness that is due us. And to reclaim your friendship, I promise to put aside the superficial, the lies, and the cheating. Your son, Charles.

  Reading the latest in what seemed the two thousandth letter from Charles, Fél
ix on this occasion was not stirred by any feeling save déjà vu. He had heard this song before. He therefore did not travel to prison on the day Charles was released, nor did he accept an invitation to join the couple for a celebratory dinner. Félix was determined not to play the role of surrogate father any more, nor was he interested in being the maypole around which Charles and Hélène danced. Fortunately, the court was his ally, for a condition of the prisoner’s release was that he not set foot within the city limits of Paris, where he had committed robberies and consorted with known criminals. But the directive did not forbid the telephone, and Félix could not escape. It rang day and night. Nothing had really changed. Charles’ life had no more apparent purpose than the route of a firefly, but he felt it vital to tell Félix each time he applied for a job, each time he was rejected, each time he realized—usually at two in the morning—how much Félix had changed his life. Once, near dawn, grouchy and worn, Félix yelled into the telephone, “Cut me loose, Charles! I am not your brother, I am not your father. You have no more notion of how people behave toward friends than a street dog.”

  Abruptly Charles vanished for a few months, Hélène with him, and into Félix’s life fell wondrous peace. An occasional postcard drifted in now and then—“We are in Madrid at the Hotel Ritz. Business and love fill our days. Charles and Hélène.” Or, “Won a little last night at the Casino de Monte Carlo. Wish you were here to bring us more luck. Love, Charles and Hélène.” Félix wondered now only how Charles could afford travel of first-class character, but, more pertinently, how he even obtained a passport, trailing as he did a substantial criminal record. It would turn out that Hélène was not exactly sure either, because her questions were always met with protestations of titanic love, with shushing fingertips to her lips, with vague unfinished explanations that he was amassing capital for business and a marital nest egg.