—He had a fairly serious accident while getting out of his car … I’ve just come from the hospital, and he’s asked me for all sorts of things … It’s a crazy list. There are things on it I don’t even understand!
This allusion to mystery whet the curiosity of the rarebook hunter, whose eyes lit up.
—What kinds of things?
Gabriel refolded the paper meticulously and slid it into his pocket.
—I won’t bother you with that; I’ll manage … As far as you’re concerned, he asked me to draw up a list of all the books he’s ordered from you … He can only remember the last one, by Délteil …
The finder of unfindable things opened the top drawer of his desk to remove an imposing black register with a gold edge, which he consulted, wetting the tip of his index finger with his tongue.
—Délteil! Joseph or Gérard? You must specify, there are many Délteils now.
—It was Joseph … An odd little book …
He smoothed down a page with the palm of his hand.
—Voilà! André Sloga, 2 Rue Jeanne d’Arc … This will go quickly: his first request, by mail, was three months ago … He began with The Rubble by Lucien Rebatet, Fascist Socialism and With Doriot by Drieu la Rochelle, the second edition of the Nouvelle Révue Française from 1943 with a dedication from the author to the chief of the special delegation for Saint-Denis. He then got Trifles for a Massacre by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and last month I sent him the Path and Terroir reissue of The Five Senses by Joseph Délteil.
Gabriel was dumbfounded.
—Thank you … Do people often request these sorts of books?
The bookseller in the garret could not repress a satisfied smile.
—More and more … These are authors who are coming back into vogue.
7
SERBO-BOSNIO-CROATO-SLOVENES
From the sentry booth in front of the hospital, a clone in a familiar white shirt was busy screening the crowd of visitors, and Gabriel crossed the pavilions of the Pitié unimpeded all the way to the library. Balanced on a small aluminum stepladder with a feather duster in her hand, the well-read nurse was swiping gently at the tops of the shelves, which bowed beneath the weight of masses of tattered books. Her outstretched arms caused the back of her smock to rise, revealing a sizable portion of her thighs, still bronzed from a recent summer holiday. Gabriel enjoyed the show for the time it took her to dust two meters worth; then, suddenly conscious of a presence, she spun around and tugged futilely at the bottom of her smock.
—Hello …
She remained perched on the ladder, the feather bouquet aimed at the ceiling, her eyes exactly level with Gabriel’s.
—Hello … I was passing by, and I stopped to see if there was any news about André Sloga.
She rested her elbow between two volumes of the Petit Robert dictionary.
—The news is good … At least, better … He left intensive care early this afternoon, and he’s in the trauma unit now, resting …
—Do the doctors have a prognosis?
—From what I’ve heard, none of the damage is irreversible. He’s sturdy for his age. It will take some time for his constitution to recover. On the other hand …
She paused. Gabriel chewed the inside of his cheek.
—On the other hand?
—The projections are more reserved when it comes to the effects of the attack on his psychological state.
—What does that mean, exactly?
—We have plenty of examples of victims who are fine physically, but who refuse to reintegrate into the harsh reality of the world. They refuse by way of aphasia, amnesia, madness … Your friend is showing all of the symptoms of this phenomenon.
Gabriel shook his head.
—Do you think it might be possible for me to see him?
—Not officially, but he’s in the Galbérine wing, on the second floor. If you take the service elevator you won’t have to pass reception … You didn’t hear it from me.
She waved goodbye from her ladder with the feather duster.
Two West Indian orderlies were arguing about the civil war in Yugoslavia, one accusing the Serbo-Bosnians and Serbo-Croatians of ethnic cleansing, rape, and summary executions, and the other charging the Bosnian Serbs and the Croato-Slovenes with the same evils. Gabriel waited for a moment next to an ambulance, ducking into the freight elevator as soon as the echoes of the argument moved away down the corridor. He tripped over the mountains of dirty linens that sat in piles on the second floor, regaining his balance thanks to a fire extinguisher that nearly detached from the wall under the force of his weight.
He almost passed by André Sloga without recognizing him. The writer’s forehead had disappeared beneath bandages that blended into the white of the pillowcase, setting off his profile and the sunken depths of his eye sockets. He lifted the lids of his unmistakable silver eyes just as Gabriel was opening the door to the next ward over. After making sure no one was watching, he retraced his steps and went to crouch between the raised bed and the bedside table, which was covered in meds. He took the old man’s right hand in his, hoping to attract his attention.
—Monsieur Sloga, can you hear me? Monsieur Sloga … André …
After twenty of these tender caresses, Gabriel was rewarded with a sleepy groan. He wouldn’t be discouraged. Much later, after he had ducked down three times to evade the trained eyes of the floor wardens, a few scattered syllables began to punctuate the moaning. Gabriel straightened up enough to place his ear next to Sloga’s lips, while continuing to stroke his bony hand. The syllables became more numerous, then regrouped themselves to form words: “Square, loudspeaker, Max …” The same words the librarian had reported to him earlier that morning. Gabriel was preparing to accept the fact that this second visit was useless, when Sloga articulated a near-complete sentence.
—It’s Max, on the loudspeaker, the square …
It was as if the effort he’d expended to recall a semblance of grammatical logic had exhausted his last resources, for Sloga fell immediately into a deep torpor. Gabriel replaced the writer’s hand on the sheet and left, after giving him one last look.
The Peugeot was parked at the intersection of Jenner and Esquirol, in the neighborhood where the city’s shrinks have their offices, and Gabriel disposed of his third offense of the day Paris-style: with his windshield wipers. A police car was parked in front of 2 Rue Jeanne d’Arc, forcing him to abandon, for the moment, his plan to visit the writer’s apartment. He headed slowly back up toward the metro station at Nationale and found himself in front of Notre-Dame de la Gare, the only church in the capital designed by a railroad architect. He had seen photos of the nave, its form inspired by vast waiting rooms.
The sign on the corner copy shop drew his attention away from the monument: Docutec. He rifled through his pockets and took out one of the envelopes he’d fished out of André Sloga’s mailbox; it contained a bill for photocopies and office supplies totaling one hundred thirty-seven francs. His memory hadn’t deceived him: the logo and the sign matched. He pushed open the door to the store. A young trainee of about fifteen was loading a ream of paper into the Rank Xerox. She greeted him while bending down to lower the block of paper into one of the machine’s drawers. Gabriel unfolded the bill and placed it on the counter, between the Lettraset display and the Pilot pens, along with a two-hundred-franc note. She stamped “Paid” beneath the total before clumsily giving him his change. She blushed when he pointed out that there were ten francs missing from the change tray.
—I don’t have the hang of this yet … I’m here for two weeks, just until classes pick up again … I started at the beginning of the week …
He slid the two-tone coin toward himself and was about to make the mistake of asking for the manager so he could question him about André Sloga when, the bill in one hand, the student-employee turned to a series of filing cabinets that lined a portion of the wall, each marked with a letter of the alphabet. Her free hand stopped on the c
ard marked S and pulled out a shopping bag from Gallimard Jeunesse decorated with an apple cut into quarters, which she handed to him with a smile.
—Here you are, Monsieur Sloga. I hope you’re happy with it …
Gabriel was unable to hide his surprise. Words came to his rescue.
—A few more minutes and I’d have completely forgotten! See how you’ve distracted me …
He distanced himself quickly from the shop, expecting at each step to be called back by the owner emerging from his stockroom. It wasn’t until he was seated at the wheel, in the shelter of the Peugeot, that he opened the bag. A diskette in a plastic sleeve was taped to a cardboard box containing about a hundred sheets of paper covered in impeccable typescript. A title, in blocky, shadowed capital letters, extended to the edges of the flyleaf: MOON OVER THE MARSHES.
8
YOLANDA OF THE MARSHES
Gabriel Lecouvreur had installed himself at the back of the Pied de Porc to read what appeared to be André Sloga’s manuscript-in-progress while drinking a bottle of Tinchebray Amber, brewed in the Orne by someone vaguely related to André Breton.* Gérard prowled around the leatherette booth, sweeping up the floor, wiping down neighboring tables, cleaning the mirrors. He would peek at a few words over Gabriel’s bony shoulder as he passed, then find another pretext to return to his close proximity. Exasperated, Gabriel threw the sheets of paper down on the Formica before beginning the eighth chapter.
—Could I read in peace for five minutes! What’s with you, circling me like that since I got here!
The restaurateur pulled up a chair.
—Don’t be annoyed … Is that by the guy you were talking about this morning? The one who got thrashed …
—Exactly. And I have the strong impression that what’s written here is not unrelated to Sloga’s attack.
Gérard leaned in.
—The Tinchebray: is it good? How do you like it?
—It’s dry …
—But what else?
Gabriel took a swallow to refresh his memory.
—I would say it’s better than the pale Mora from Bonifacio that you served me last week, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the Micheline-Lambic from Clermont-Ferrand …
—You’ve always been unfair to the Corsicans …
—It’s Freudian. My mother was originally from Baraglioli, a godforsaken hole near Sartène …
—That only half surprises me … But what makes you think that what you’re reading explains the attack on your guy?
Gabriel skimmed the last lines of the unfinished manuscript and downed the final dregs of his beer from Orne before responding.
—Do you remember the murder of that nurse from Fontenay-le-Comte?
Gabriel scratched his head.
—Vaguely … Very vaguely, really … And it was all over the papers at the time … How long ago was that? Five years?
—Something like that … Sloga has used it as the basis for his novel. The hypothesis he’s come up with to explain the murder damned well holds its own, at least in the realm of fiction …
Gérard signaled for him to wait and returned to the bar, bringing back two Micheline-Lambics and a saucer filled with salted peanuts and pistachios.
—Because I know you love them … And what’s the nature of his explanation?
—First of all, you have to remember that the murderer of this woman, who in the book is called Yolanda, was never identified … The Poitiers police arrested and incarcerated a wild coypu breeder from Maillezais who they were forced to let go, a year later, when the charges against him came to nothing …
Gérard popped some nuts into his mouth.
—I remember the broad strokes, but the rest is a total blank … Coypus, I remember that, now that you mention it … They’re river rats, right? Like beavers—they do things with their tails …
Gabriel ignored the double entendre. He guzzled his Clermontian beer until not a drop was left, all the while admiring the consistent creaminess of the foam.
—The story is quite simple. At least at first glance … One morning in October, a peasant from the marshes who has taken a boat out into his fields discovers a woman’s body in a small channel at the end of the Bonvix river. Right away the body is identified as Yolanda’s … No, that’s the name Sloga gave her … She had a different name …
—Keep it, makes it easier …
—It’ll come back to me … Yolanda is the daughter of an industrialist in Fontenay-le-Comte: metal fabrication, vinyl windows, architectural ironwork … A man of importance to the whole region, who provides factory jobs to a good half of the male population of the cantons of Maillezais and Bonvix … At first, the police determined that the young woman was killed by multiple stab wounds to the heart, and they arrested a vagrant—an agricultural day laborer and borderline imbecile who admitted that the Laguiole knife found after days of dredging the nearby swamps was his. And this was before the judge had even established that it was the presumed murder weapon …
Gérard spit out some half-chewed pistachio.
—Is that some kind of joke? Seems to me it’s difficult to “establish that it was the presumed murder weapon” … If it’s being “established,” that means it’s bogus!
—Precisely … The farm worker languished in the clink for eleven months on the basis of a jurist’s conclusions that were unfounded from start to finish … Luscious Yolanda didn’t die from the spectacular array of knife wounds tattooed on her chest; she had simply been strangled, then stabbed after the fact … Post mortem …
—And why? Some kind of nut job who finally lost it completely?
—No. According to Sloga, the point was to make it look like a burglary … A year later, the investigation was assigned to a judge from Niort who deigned to make the trip to Bonvix only once. He didn’t want to get his hands dirty. The whole thing was stalled indefinitely, and to this day Yolanda’s real murderer runs free.
The Pakistani man who’d come in while Gabriel was talking had managed to sell his jasmine flowers to three couples seated in the back of the restaurant. Before leaving, he tucked a small, fragrant bouquet into the vase of roses Maria had placed on the end of the counter. Gérard gestured his thanks, then tapped the manuscript.
—It’s a classic story … Rustic setting, stagnant waters, innocent vagabond, impotent justice … I can understand why a writer would be interested, but I don’t see why a squad of commandos would come down from the swamps of Poitiers to prevent Sloga from writing a novel inspired by poor Yolanda’s murder!
—I had the same reaction, at first … I’m going to read you a bit of text, and you’ll soon change your mind.
Gabriel leafed through the manuscript and stopped on a passage he’d underlined in pencil during his first reading.
—Listen:
They entered the farmyard. An old man’s hovel with a chicken coop, rabbit hutch, woodshed, and duck pond. In the kitchen garden, near the leeks, cabbage, and potatoes, were a group of magnificent rose bushes and a large flowering magnolia. But the house itself was ugly and depressing, an ancient crumbling thing, patched up by its inhabitant, with walls that leaned like the tower of Pisa, and improvised gutters.
The interior was dismal and smelled of dust, old blankets, and cold ashes.
—Well, here you are! said Fernand. You haven’t been here before …?
—Never, said Yolanda.
—Can we call each other tu?
—Gladly …
She set her satchel on the heavy kitchen table, opened it, and sat on the bench to prepare her instruments.
—Pull down your pants, please …
Fernand turned around. His belt had ceased to hold in his belly. Yolanda lowered his underwear, revealing a fleshy, varicose rump. The alcohol-soaked cotton ball delineated a circle the size of a five-franc coin, in the center of which she injected the deadly poison. Fernand didn’t flinch. He turned, pants still around his knees, his sex roused, partially erect and pointing toward t
he nurse.
Gabriel put the manuscript down.
—What do you think of it?
The owner of the Pied de Porc à la Sainte-Scolasse dunked his lips in the thick foam of the Micheline-Lambic. He clicked his tongue, an expression of pleasure on his lips.
—I think you have a knack for stopping the moment things are getting interesting …
—Give me your opinion instead of joking around. I honestly want to know what it is you find interesting …
—You’re kidding, right? When he turns around and hoists his flag … You don’t find that interesting?
They had known each other for ten years, and Gabriel was very fond of Gérard: he was a faithful friend he knew he could count on in his darkest moments. But he was forced to acknowledge that the quantity of platitudes and inanity that gushed forth on a regular basis from Gérard’s clientele was beginning to clog his neurons.
—I’m sorry to disappoint you, but what struck me about the passage is this: “The alcohol-soaked cotton ball delineated a circle the size of a five-franc coin, in the center of which she injected THE DEADLY POISON.”
—That kind of thing, S&M, it just doesn’t sink in with me … In bed, just like at the stove, I’ve still a hopeless traditionalist … Pig’s feet prepared the classic way; missionary position …
—Have you lost it, or are you not following me on purpose?
Gabriel gathered up the first pages of the manuscript while Gérard went to ask the cook, Vlad, to take over at the bar. Vlad was an imposing, taciturn Romanian originally from Cioranu, a sinister region on the Moldavian border. Gérard only rarely put him behind the bar because he was militantly opposed to the consumption of alcohol, and when serving the customers he would mutter damning words between his teeth, which were as broad as spades. The boss came back to take his place next to his friend.
—I need pedagogical guidance. Go ahead, I’m listening …
—It couldn’t be simpler … André Sloga’s little book opens with the discovery of Yolanda’s body, the arrest of the vagabond by the Bonvix police, and the burial of the victim … It’s written as straight as a die, a provincial drama, a bit in the manner of Maupassant … Here, just a few lines and you’ll understand Sloga’s genius … This is how he describes the arrival of distant cousins to the cemetery. It’s as if you’re right there: “The villagers, too, cast them sidelong glances. The couple had the feeling they were being spied on. The woman wore a loose-fitting jacket with a small synthetic-fur collar and had her hands in her pockets. She was unsteady on her feet, like someone who had been traveling since dawn. Next to her, the man seemed tall, with a clean-shaven face, wide shoulders, a flat stomach, and well-groomed russet-colored hair, slightly rumpled from the journey.” Four sentences, and you’re part of the family! It’s good, right?
Nazis in the Metro Page 4
