The Madonna of Notre Dame

by Alexis Ragougneau

  The magistrate rolled her eyes to the sky while the policeman stared at his suspect in the rearview mirror. “I bet your mom enjoys watching TV, doesn’t she, Thibault? I bet she saw you come out of the cathedral on the one o’clock news. She must have thought, ‘But that boy, there, with handcuffs and a jacket over his head, that’s my boy!’ Then she’ll have watched the eight o’clock news just to make sure. Tell me, Thibault, do you think your mom will have recognized you despite the jacket over your head?”

  Landard turned and repeated his question while looking his suspect straight in the eye. Gombrowicz, whose hamburger and fries were slowly finding their way back up, against all digestive logic, unclenched his teeth to admonish his superior. “Putain! Keep your eyes on the road, Landard, before you drive us into a lamp post!”

  They drove around a line of cars entering the westbound highway and headed toward Saint-Cloud. A few minutes later, they stopped, straddling the sidewalk, outside a 1970s building. White as a sheet and his face glowing with sweat, Gombrowicz got the blond angel out of the car, holding his arm, while Landard was already walking into the building, closely followed by Claire Kauffmann.

  In the elevator, they refrained from talking, the four of them crammed like sardines in a can. Claire Kauffmann could smell the odor of cold tobacco absorbed by Captain’s Landard’s jacket, and the scent of cheap deodorant wafting from Lieutenant Gombrowicz’s moist armpits. She could also hear the young suspect’s breathing quickening as they rose and drew closer to his mother’s door.

  A little woman in a robe, with thinning hair and a stooped, sickly form, opened the door. When she saw her handcuffed son, she began to moan, her eyes wide and panic-stricken. With a hand deformed by arthritis, she covered her mouth, which was wide with surprise. She would not close it again—or barely—for the rest of the search.

  What struck Claire Kauffmann when she first walked into the hallway was the stuffy smell: How long had it been since the windows had been opened? The blinds were closed. By the window, she noticed that strips of wide, brown Scotch tape had been stuck over the Venetian blinds, preventing light and air from coming in between the slats. A glance around the place informed her that all the other openings in the apartment had suffered the same treatment. The blond angel and his mother lived in a veritable tomb consisting of a kitchen, a bathroom, two bedrooms, and a small living room.

  An old-looking television set was blasting a commercial for an insurance company. Landard had estimated the time of his arrival well. “Is Thibault’s father not here, madame?”

  “He passed away, inspector. He died twenty-one years ago, in a car accident on the road to Satory. He was a soldier. I was six months pregnant when it happened. Thibault never knew his father.” She turned to her son and put her fist in front of her mouth again. “Thibault ... The police ... What have you done now?”

  Claire Kauffmann pulled the file out of her bag. “Madame, your son has been arrested as part of a murder investigation. He will remain in custody until noon tomorrow, unless his custody is extended by twenty-four hours. These police officers are here to search your son’s room in order to help their investigation. Do we have your permission?”

  “Good Lord! Thibault! So it was you on TV. It was you at Notre Dame. What have you done now?”

  “Will you permit us to see your son’s room, madame?”

  With a hesitant hand gesture, she showed them a door at the end of the corridor. Landard headed there first, walking along walls with faded wallpaper patterned with flowers that seemed to have wilted years earlier. Touching the door handle, he turned to the young suspect, whose arm Gombrowicz was still holding.

  “All right, Thibault, my boy? Do you mind if we take a look? Now do pay attention to where we search and what we take away because at the end you’ll have to sign a little piece of paper for us. All right?”

  He leaned on the handle and opened the door. Inside, there was the same stifling air as in the rest of the apartment. Landard groped for the switch on the wall. Once the light was on, he couldn’t stop himself from swearing.

  The young man then entered, followed by Gombrowicz and Claire Kauffmann. The magistrate and the two policemen stood for a moment, taken aback, their eyes sliding along the walls, shelves, cupboard, and display cabinets. Gombrowicz, who’d turned even paler because of the lack of oxygen in the place, turned to his superior. “Honestly, Landard, have you ever seen anything like it?”

  The blond angel’s room was a veritable museum devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Lined up against walls papered with the same wilted floral pattern, from floor to ceiling and everywhere in between, there were statuettes of all shapes and sizes that seemed to be watching the three visitors with searching eyes. In the few unoccupied gaps on the shelves, childlike drawings, framed under glass, had been fixed to the wall. They all had the same subject: Mary, in all her forms, all her representations, was ever-present and celebrated.

  One picture in particular caught Gombrowicz’s attention, perhaps because the drawing was more imposing than the others, or because it was the only one in color, or perhaps because it had been hung opposite the bed. It was a Virgin Mary wearing a crown, her skin deathly pale, surrounded by red and blue angels, holding a ruddy, chubby-cheeked baby Jesus on her left knee. There was something chillingly erotic about the drawing, not just because of the Virgin’s beautiful face, but because her left breast was protruding from her bodice, and that breast, rounded, full and extremely pale, drew the eye more than anything else in the drawing.

  “Beautiful, isn’t she? It’s a fifteenth-century French painting. I had to go all the way to Antwerp to see it. It took me three days to reproduce it. Remember, Mom?”

  Without looking away from the drawing, Gombrowicz gave a whistle of admiration. “Did you do this? And all the other things on the wall?”

  In a voice that was suddenly more confident, the young man’s mother answered instead of him. “Thibault’s drawings are extraordinary, inspector. He’s working toward getting into the École des Beaux-Arts.”

  “Mom!”

  “You’ll get into the Beaux-Arts, my son, I’m sure of it. And through your art you’ll celebrate faith in Mary and Jesus Christ.”

  Landard, who’d already opened the only cupboard in the room and was in the process of emptying its drawers, suddenly pulled out a stack of sketches and waved them over his head. “What about these, Thibault? Are they also for the Beaux-Arts?”

  He laid out the sheets of paper on the bed one by one, and his suspect’s face gradually dropped as he lined up a series of pornographic sketches featuring a Virgin Mary with full lips, her dress pulled up, wearing fishnet tights and stilettos, and spreading her legs to reveal her most intimate parts.

  “If you don’t mind, Thibault, I’m putting these in my favorite order. Is that all right? Ladies and gentlemen, look here carefully. The first masterpiece produced by our friend Thibault in anticipation of his admission to the Beaux-Arts Academy: The Virgin gently masturbates and finally reaches ecstasy. Very beautiful, very pure. Still, there’s a soupçon of Saint Theresa about it. Be careful about getting your saints mixed up, Thibault, otherwise, there’s no Beaux-Arts this year. Second masterpiece in anticipation of Thibault’s admission into the Beaux-Arts: In order to preserve her precious virginity, naughty Mary pleasures herself in the behind with the help of a ... a ... What is it you’ve stuck up your Virgin Mary’s ass, Thibault? Gombrowicz? Your opinion? Madame? Any idea? Never mind. Let’s proceed with the visit.”

  Claire Kauffmann was increasingly uncomfortable as the grotesque exhibition went on. She was slightly dizzy and felt the blood draining from her head. Was it the lack of air in this hermetically sealed room? Was it the obviously sadistic pleasure Landard took in humiliating his suspect? Was it the mask of shame Thibault wore on his face? His mother’s severe expression? Or did the obscene sketches drawn by this libidinous teenager propel her back to memories that were older, more painful, more personal?

&nbs
p; Gombrowicz, who had laughed at the first drawing, was not laughing anymore. A vaguely complicit smile had lasted for a moment but now it had vanished, and his sad, uneasy eyes were now darting from his boss to the sketches, then from the sketches to his boss.

  Still, Landard carried on with a glee he was not expressing by chance. From the moment of the arrest, he had gathered that the suspect’s weak spot was his relationship with his mother. He managed more or less to keep to the same version of the events with the police, but Landard sensed that, in the presence of his mother, he was a vulnerable child at the mercy of a terrible judgment, bordering on panic. So he laid it on thick until the very last drawing, the one that obviously interested him most for his investigation.

  “You must have guessed—you must have—which one I’ve chosen to complete the exhibition, Thibault. Look carefully, ladies and gentlemen, the masterpiece above all masterpieces, the major component of this cabinet of curiosities of my friend Thibault. Look carefully. This is what we’re going to call it: giving in to her dirtiest urges, hot Mary stuffs hot wax up her fanny.” Landard clapped. “My dear members of the Beaux-Arts judging panel, I would like to give a Special Mention to young Thibault in the religious pornography category. If the panel doesn’t agree, speak loud and clear now, or forever hold your peace.”

  Almost simultaneously, Lieutenant Gombrowicz and Deputy Magistrate Kauffmann felt the irrepressible urge to go out, to leave this unbreathable air, he in order to find a toilet and finally free his stomach of the burger and fries that had been torturing him for an least an hour; she—in order to crack open the nearest window in the living room. The faint draft that filtered through the sealed blinds did her a world of good, and Claire Kauffmann remained like this, holding the window handle, pressing her forehead against the blind.

  “My son has been taking refuge in religion for a long time, mademoiselle. For the past year or so his piety has been bordering on obsession. I’ve hardly seen him since the summer. He spends all day in Notre Dame. And yet trust me, mademoiselle, Thibault is not a murderer.”

  Claire Kauffmann took one last breath of oxygen, and turned to the suspect’s mother. “You must admit that your son has an odd concept of religion, madame, and a very dirty concept of women.”

  Thibault’s mother lowered her head and Claire Kauffmann, irritated by her silence, decided to start her interrogation. “What time did he come home on Sunday night? Do you remember?”

  “I go to bed at around eight. You see, I’m sick. I guess sorrow’s been eating away at me all these years. The death of my husband. I’m scared of everything. I don’t dare go out anymore. I get vertigo. Mademoiselle, if only you knew the kind of life I’ve had since my husband’s death. Raising a boy on my own, you know. You’re so attractive. Do you have children?”

  “Consequently, you didn’t hear your son come back in, right? Not even a vague recollection? A sound ... Something ... Please try to remember. It could be very important.”

  She looked at her with a lost, distraught expression that was an evident plea: What must I say to prove that my son is innocent? At what time must he have come home on Sunday night in order to be cleared once and for all?

  However, all that came from her lips was an inaudible whisper that turned into a sob.

  At the end of the corridor, Thibault was sitting on his bed, his face buried in his adolescent hands, surrounded by his madman’s pornography in black pencil. Landard put a finger on his shoulder. “Come on, Thibault, let’s go back to prison. You’ll spend the night there and you can sleep on it. You’ve got a decision to make, my boy. Tomorrow morning we’ll have another talk, you and I. Then we’ll take you before a committing magistrate and you’ll have to be a bit more talkative than you’ve been today. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s crunch time, Thibault. You really don’t have a choice now, so you’d better spit it out. Gombrowicz, put the cuffs back on. Let’s see what the magistrate’s up to and go home.”

  Gombrowicz leaned over the young man to cuff him. That was when he noticed, concealed behind the headboard, a switch that looked very homemade. He signaled to Landard with his chin. The captain reached out to the wall, but the blond angel immediately stopped him with his high-pitched voice. “Don’t touch that. You hear me? I forbid you to touch that! I forbid you to touch that switch.”

  “As if I’m going to stand on ceremony here, Thibault. Gombrowicz, get ready. You never know.”

  Suddenly tense from adrenalin, Gombrowicz placed a hand on the service weapon at his belt. Landard counted to three as the young man’s protestations grew louder, then pushed the switch. The room was plunged into a darkness made total by the thick Scotch tape over the blinds. Gombrowicz slowly pulled his weapon out of its holster.

  “Landard? Fuck, Landard, what’s going on?”

  Before his superior could speak, Gombrowicz got the answer. In the impenetrable darkness around them all, the three or four hundred Virgins lining the shelves suddenly started flashing in unison, turning the room into a carnival fun house.

  Facedown on his bed, Thibault was crying in the blinking light. In between sobs, he let out two childish syllables which he seemed ready to repeat for the rest of the night, “Mommy ... Mommy ...”

  WEDNESDAY

  HE HAD COME IN THROUGH THE PORTAL OF SAINT ANNE ALONG with the first tourists of the day, with his customary camouflage-patterned bag over one shoulder and wearing, as he did every day of the year, in winter as well as in summer, his most valuable possession: a torn, filthy, wine-colored padded jacket that was constantly shedding feathers on the stone floor, allowing him to be tracked, so to speak.

  Once inside, he kneeled right in the middle of the narthex, directly in line with the central aisle near the western entrance, and crossed himself. He mumbled something into his long, blond, tousled beard, then got up again, clumsily, his left side dragged down by the weight of his bag and, since it was after 8 o’clock in the morning, a state of advanced drunkenness. Having more or less managed to pull himself up, he turned right toward the south pillar, where there was an embedded font that was three-quarters full. Then, with obsessive—almost coquettish—care, he dipped his fingers into the holy water and began washing inside his ears.

  “Krzysztof! Krzysztof, what are you doing? Not in the font, please. Have you really nowhere else to wash? What about the fountain in the square? For heaven’s sake, Krzysztof!”

  Krzysztof apologized in an incomprehensible blend of Polish and French, picked up his bag and headed for the exit. A few steps farther, however, he seemed to think better of it, looked around, somewhat disorientated, stared at the man who had gently chided him, and finally recognized Father Kern. Then his face, weary from drink and lack of sleep, lit up and he immediately approached, hammering the four points of the cross on his chest with fingers thick as sausages.

  “I tell you! I see! I tell!”

  Krzysztof divided his time between the Polish Catholic Mission in the 18th arrondissement and the cathedral of Notre Dame, where he’d now been coming for three years. Here, he found some warmth in the winter and some coolness in the summer. He would usually sit in a corner by himself and spend the whole day sleeping, his large, blond head rocking up and down in fits and starts, as he woke up and dozed off. Sometimes, he would take a seat beneath the large crucified Christ on the south side, near the jar, on one of the chairs reserved for the worshippers waiting their turn to confess. However, Krzysztof smelled very bad and his odor, a blend of grime and rancid alcohol, would chase away every last candidate for forgiveness. The latter, queasy and indignant, never failed to warn one of the cathedral guards who then had the task of removing Krzysztof from the building with a gentle but firm hand, protected, just in case, by a antibacterial latex glove. Invariably, Krzysztof would start shouting in that blend of languages only he knew, arguing that he had as much right to confess as the others, or to pray, or to sleep in peace slap bang in the middle of the cathedral. And the more he shouted, the more he was sur
rounded by guards—gloved, too—who would appear, as though by magic, from behind the pillars, and escort him to his principal place of residence: Square Jean-XXIII, which separated Notre Dame from the Seine and where every night, after avoiding the rounds of a member of staff of the municipal gardens, he unrolled his sleeping bag and lay down to sleep.

  Only once had Krzysztof dared go into the actual jar. Father Kern, who was on duty that day, had, contrary to custom, left the door open and switched on the fan built into the stained glass window of the chapel, in order to create a draft, then had taken the time to hear Krzysztof’s story—without understanding much of it—from his native Poland to the streets of Paris after quite a few detours, binges, and fights. Krzysztof had been grateful to him ever since.

  Krzysztof wasn’t mean. Only alcohol could make him a little aggressive, but seldom so, and his bouts of bad temper then made him look like a large bear dressed in a grimy red padded jacket. He would generally calm down as quickly as he’d flared up, looking around as he had just done with Father Kern, suddenly remembering he was in a church. And a church, he knew since his childhood in the outskirts of Kraków, was a place reserved for calm and prayer. A place from which shouts and alcohol must be banned; a place where violence, murder, and death had no place either.

  “I tell you, I see! I know!”

  “What do you know, Krzysztof? What do you want to tell me?”

  “Girl! I see!”

  “What girl, Krzysztof?”

  “Girl in white!”

  Father Kern took the Polish vagrant aside and gestured at him to keep his bear’s voice down.

  “When did you see her, Krzysztof? Try to remember. Which day and at what time?”

  “W niedziele, wieczorem.”