by John Brooke
“Yes, you have to try. What about Vivi?”
“Vivi has a chance now. A chance to succeed where I’ve messed up at everything. She’ll make her own offering in her own way, and it’ll be a strong one...in a different time.” This is a prophesy as she rises and goes to the refrigerator. “Do you want a beer or anything?”
“No thanks...I already had one.”
Colette opens one for herself and lights a cigarette. “It wasn’t easy writing those letters. Some of them are disgusting, I know that...I had to push myself to get them across the park and into the mailbox. A couple of nights I didn’t make it back...just sat down and passed out on a bench. You can bet those little pricks out there were looking up my skirt while I was snoring.” Another big sigh. “Poor Vivi, having a mother like me... Poor Flossie. But I won’t bother her any more. I got it done...” Nodding into her beer with some hard-earned self-satisfaction.
“How long have you known Flossie?”
“Since school.”
“Here?”
“Up the road...Colmar.”
“What’s so great about her?”
“She’s strong...she’s smart...she knows what’s right. I looked up to her. Like a sister.”
“Smart? She got caught selling hashish in Saint Michel...and she threw a stone at the Pope. That’s not so smart.”
“I was there,” says Colette, grimly triumphal. “If he hadn’t had that stupid bubble she’d have dropped him like Goliath. You should have seen him freeze. I clapped and some old nun smacked me. God, I laughed!”
“But it wasn’t a joke.”
“Not at all. She hates him.”
“Hates?”
“When she was ten...eleven, twelve — it went on for a while, she watched her mother have a breakdown trying to have a love affair with this priest who thought he loved her...but then he just couldn’t...but then he had to...but then he was so guilty, and so was she. It tore her apart. And what could Flossie do?...I heard all about it, every day, piece by piece. She hates him.”
“And so you hate him too?”
“She was my friend. I loved to hear her talk. She went off to Paris...I went off to Paris.”
“School?”
“No, just jobs,” shrugging away her life. “She was the leader. Flossie was always the leader. So serious. And needing to know. And the best of it, she was completely fearless when it came to finding out... One day, we were five or six — at the very beginning...she led a group of us off, away from school one morning, tracing the stream along the gutters, head down...marching, marching, marching...” Colette’s fingers go marching across the table, her face mimicking the expression of a determined little girl; “...for hours, not the least bit worried about getting lost, just dead set on finding the source of all that water. She’s always been like that, has Flossie. She was trouble, but she was the most exciting person to be around.”
“Now she’s a prostitute.”
“Doesn’t matter. If there’s no love, it’s just a machine — might as well put it to work. It’s the way they live that’s the important thing.”
“Why aren’t you there?”
“I met a man — what else? We always have to meet a man, don’t we? ...Had Vivi. Got in one mess after another. He walked out, we ended up here. After that...I guess she and Louise got together and...well, we’ve been losing touch. And they never had a place for me. It’s always nine.”
“Why always nine?”
“Because there were nine virgins on Sein, guardians of Mari Morgan’s island... Flossie says you have to have imagination...a story — if you want to carve out a little space to live in.”
“Sein...off the coast?” North of her parents’ holiday home on Belle Île.
Colette nods, her bottle stuck in her mouth. “Mmm, somewhere out there.”
“They’re hardly virgins,” says Aliette, for want of commiseration. I feel pity for this woman but I can’t like her. A halfway intelligent sheep. Mmm, the worst kind...
“Virgin has nothing to do with a bit of membrane. Originally it referred to a woman who was separate, self-contained, strong. It’s more an adjective than a noun... It’s about the soul. There’s something else the Pope and his helpers have stolen from us and perverted: Couldn’t control the integrity of the soul so they put it all on the body. How desperate can you get? Vivi would never listen to me about these things, but Flossie will get through... She’ll be fine in this damn world.”
Aliette seems to remember the nuns telling her something about the sanctity of the flesh and the holiness of matter. We believe because God became Man... Was that it? “Did you know Manon?”
“Nope...” — she burps; “but whoever she was, my Vivi’s better.”
Now she strikes another match...restokes the dish of twigs. Smoke curls up.
The inspector withdraws. Colette Namur closes her eyes and sits with her small offering.
6
Sunday
On Sunday Procureurs and Chief Judges of Instruction take their families to mass, have a nice pastis followed by a large lunch with the in-laws, snooze, poke around in their gardens... The wheels of justice rest. A solitary inspector will call her parents to check on the weather back home, go for a run, go to the market, do some laundry, wash the kitchen floor, have a beer and read a book. Or go back to the lock-up to find out more.
A guard has been cajoled into supplying a cigar. Watching its smoke curl through the pin-like mote afforded by his meagre window, the prisoner tells her, “They came from over near Nevers, but I never knew much about them at all. I only knew their father. Jean. It seems our mothers shared him.”
“Shared?”
“In a manner of speaking. I mean, he was the one with the job with the railway, some kind of bookkeeper till he quit, travelling around on a certain route each month helping the station masters manage their costs and profits. And when he wasn’t travelling he was always home, with Maman, helping her run the house. Always. I knew he wasn’t my father — my father was Gros Paul, but as far back as I could remember, Jean would get off the train and he’d be home until he left again. Same story at the other end: Jean the bookkeeper went back and forth between the two. You wouldn’t think it possible if you knew him... My mother was just as surprised as theirs was when it came to light.”
“What happened?”
“She showed up in the drawing room one evening — I remember it was early, still light out — she just walked right in and made a scene. Somehow she finally found out about his life at the other end of the line and she came to confront him... It wasn’t the first time we’d watched a wife come in looking for a husband. I was, what?...fourteen, fifteen, but I’d seen it often enough to take it in stride. I came down from my room, saw a woman screaming at Jean in front of everyone... Poor Jean was embarrassed, Maman seemed surprised, but it wasn’t anything unusual and I went back up to my devoirs. Next morning, Jean was gone. Maman told me who she was and the sad thing that happened... She walked out of the house and straight down the tracks, as if she were going to walk all the way back to Nevers. But there was a trestle bridge just outside our town and she threw herself off it. Very sad...a long way down.”
And the inspector’s heart is beating like a bird’s. Georgette: her obsession with her flying pose?
“Jean came back in due time. Maman needed him, in her way, and she forgave him because he’d forgiven her — for me. I gathered there were two daughters in the picture, but with the war and everything, well, soon he was full time with us. I’d no idea till Georgette came to find me, here, almost twenty years later, back from Paris — her life there with all the artists...
“Why me? Because Jean was dead by then and they’d had no contact. Nor with each other for that matter. Georgette and Ondine. They’d both left. Even before the war they were both gone from Nevers...wanted nothing more to do with him. She needed to find out about her mother. What had happened that night. And I was someone who knew.”
“An
d Ondine?”
“Came back from the coast about five years later. Didn’t really know Georgette by then and it seemed she didn’t want to. She went to ask my mother the same questions. My mother answered as best she could and then sent her up here to me by way of helping her find some work and get established. Voilà... And then we had our time together. I wish I could help you, but she never talked about it much. Bits and pieces. She always said it was like another life... Yes, Sein. Some little island. Where Dorise comes from... No, no, Ondine was mostly in Quimper; worked in a shop... Dorise? — she showed up a few years later, all wet and thin and miserable. Had a letter of introduction Ondine had written all those years before. We took her in as our cook. Ondine felt obliged. She’d obviously had a difficult life. I hope they’re not all like that out there... No, never been out there myself.”
The inspector asks, “What do you mean — you hope they’re not all like that?”
“I mean, all like Dorise.”
2.
Georgette is another who’s pretty much at loose ends on a summer Sunday. Aliette entices her out of her basement to share an early supper at the Rembrandt Café. Tarte flambée. A local dish: take a filling of bread-and-milk sop, eggs, heavy cream, lard, onions and bacon...a pinch of nutmeg; bake as a bready pie; serve in large slices; eat with fingers. A mix of pizza and quiche. The inspector’s treat.
And some wine? “Please...”
Proprietor Willem van Hoogstraten presents and pours, then in his gracious way withdraws...
Georgette approves of the wine; but, “Do I need to tell you these things?”
“Yes, I think so.” Sharing. It’s what friends do.
“I never slept with him. And I never did that for my daily meal. Never.”
“Georgette, I never thought you did.”
Don’t lie, Aliette.
Sure enough: “Don’t lie to me,” mutters Georgette. “I know what you think.”
“But I wouldn’t!...I mean I won’t...”
How does she know what I think?
Everyone knows what you think, Aliette. It’s the nature of your life...
“She allowed herself to be seduced. Into his bed. Into that house, that business. I told her what I thought. She told me to leave her alone, so I did... Alone with him and them and her useless beliefs.”
“How do you know they’re useless?”
“Look where they left her. It ruined her life... You think my sister was involved in the killing of that woman?”
“I think it’s tied more to goddesses than to putes, and she’s the one who invited the goddess into Mari Morgan’s.” Aliette pours more wine for both of them.
They eat, they drink. Maybe it’s the wine. Georgette pats her lips clean and declares, “You don’t choose your siblings. You don’t have to like them...or love them.”
“I disagree with that,” says Aliette, and Lord knows she has a hard enough time with her own sister Anne. “At the end of it all, they’re likely to be the only ones you really know.”
“But I don’t know my sister,” counters the model. “She walked out of my life when I was eighteen...or maybe nineteen, and I didn’t see or hear of her for almost twenty years, then — ”
“But why would she even go out there in the first place?”
“Our mother was from out there, the Finistère... Our mother...” She gulps more wine, closes her eyes and sits back.
“I know, Georgette. He told me.”
“Ondine thought she could find an answer. Our mother used to tell us about it when we were young. Read us stories and verses. A different way of seeing things. Beautiful. At least for children. And childish people...”
“That red book...”
“It used to be mine. I’m the eldest and she gave it to me... We took it when we left that empty house, that feeble man who was our father, who was supposed to be her husband. When we split up, Ondine took it with her, kept heading back there, hoping she could make sense of it. Of what happened.”
“Why didn’t you go too?”
“I didn’t like her. My mother... If suicides go to hell, then that was what she deserved for giving up and flying away. I wanted to be away from both of them — my father, my mother, that whole shameful lie. I told Ondine she was wasting her time... I left my sister and went to Paris to find my own way of seeing things. When she came back into my life I didn’t know her life at all. When she tried to tell me about it, I admired her even less. When she asked what I thought, I told her to get away from him... I have no idea what she found out there. I don’t want to know.”
Later, near the bottom of a second bottle, the last of the passion fruit sorbet, Aliette hears herself asking, “Is it something like being a falcon circling a ledge?...the flying pose? Georgette?”
Above it all, protected from it, seeing it all so clearly? That makes sense to me, Inspector...
But wine or not, Georgette can’t answer. The creaky wheels in her old heart lock.
That’s it for Sunday. Time to go home.
7
You Circle but Don’t Touch
Procureur Souviron opts for the assassination charge against Herménégilde Dupras.
Inspector Nouvelle requests a meeting with the Judge of Instruction. “I’m still asking for three interpellés and one body.” An interpellation order: a mandate for a background investigation; a citizen, not necessarily suspected or involved, can be legally compelled to speak to the police.
“Heading for?”
“Not sure...some kind of conspiracy.”
“This cult.” Gérard Richand smiles a here-we-go-again smile. Not snide; on the contrary, they used to sleep together, for about a year, boyfriend/girlfriend, when first arrived as lonely newcomers to their respective jobs in a faraway border city. Gérard has since married and produced two fine boys. But they still understand each other, more or less. Sitting a little straighter, focusing on the material; “...one body? There only is one body.”
“It’s been buried. I need it back... To smell the thing it’s wearing.”
“That would be...” shuffling his pages, “that would be a pearl-coloured camisole?”
“Yes.”
“It was thoroughly analyzed.” Flashing a page at her.
“One of the IJ people will attest to an unexplained odour. You’ve read my memo?”
“Oui, oui...” Shuffling deeper, pulling it out, adjusting his glasses. “We have a woman in an HLM burning twigs which produce the same alleged odour, who has been obsessed with and has now succeeded in placing her teenage daughter at Mari Morgan’s...” He glances across at her: not quite clear here, Inspector... “To do what?”
“B’en...to take the place of our victim. To be one of them.”
Gérard shakes his head: he never ceases to be amazed. “It’s the fathers who hit them and take them to bed, but I’m starting to believe it’s the mothers who are crazier.”
“Shh...” admonishing, “we can’t have judges who categorize.”
“Well it seems Herménégilde Dupras had a mother too.”
“She loves her little girl, Gérard — believe me.”
“Love!” The judge throws up his hands. “I don’t want to hear that word again, Inspector. The man’s totally amoral. Sociopath and then some, if ever I’ve seen it. Give me a good solid psycho any day. He’s so charmingly bereft of any shred of basic decency — I felt I’d lost my bearings.”
“I know, I know. But he’s not the one... Gérard, I need that camisole out of the ground to confirm the smoke. It didn’t happen in that room.”
“All forensics say it did.”
“And I need an order compelling Dupras’s ex-partner to talk to me.”
Back to his pages. “Ondine Duguay... Seamstress. Odd beliefs.”
“We’re dealing with a...well, a goddess. She brought it into the place.”
“Mmm.” Dubious.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Not against the law, though. Let’s stick t
o homicide,” suggests the judge.
“Gladly. One of the ways they honour their...their goddess...” Is it so difficult for you to say the word, Aliette? “...is by burning apple wood.”
“I see. Why?”
“Wisdom. Eternal life.”
“Those sorb apples make good jelly... I have a service tree in my yard.”
“So does Ondine Duguay.”
“Was she burning her tree unsupervised? That’s definitely in the books.”
Ha, ha... Listen to me! “No, but this other woman was. Not a tree...twigs.”
Gérard blinks. And with the slightest adjustment of his sightline, still at her, but now down a fraction, the judge acknowledges an inspector’s professional need; and his own position as arbiter of such. He taps his forefinger on the polished walnut desktop, like an egg timer, as he considers her thoughts. Yes, it’s why I’m here, but only as far as it goes. “...this Colette Namur.”
“Who is an estranged friend of the one who’s the boss — ”
“Dupras is the boss.”
“Dupras is the owner. Dupras is the doorman. Public relations. Beyond that...” shaking her head: you guys have missed it by a mile; “it’s Flossie Orain, and for the last sixteen months this Colette Namur has been obsessed with having her daughter accepted into the house.”
“To be a prostitute.”
“No — to be a member of the cult.”
“Is she a member of the cult...the mother?”
“No. But she believes in this goddess. The goddess, actually.” There!
“Is she a prostitute?”
“Strictly freelance and very low-end... It’s this cult, Gérard. Herméné Dupras knows nothing about it.”
“How could that be?”
“You were talking with the man. Didn’t you find him a little preoccupied with the things of the flesh?”
“Love, too,” mutters Gérard.
Poor man: law and order, family values, civility, the things upon which we build: Gérard is a true believer and the Mari Morgan’s killing seems to have affected him. “You seem disturbed.”
