Stifling Folds of Love

by John Brooke

RL: I hate Raymond Tuche. Ever since…(Silence).

  AN: Since?

  RL: Since forever! He has always been a complete and utter —

  AN: What do you mean, forever?

  RL: Since the Lycée. (Silence) We grew up together.

  AN: I see.

  RL: Do you? Good. Now let me out of this fucking cell!

  AN: And you grew up with these other men.

  RL: Yeah. Except Duteil, obviously.

  AN: Is that why you’re so angry, Remy?

  RL: I am not angry.

  AN: Because you grew up with them and you were better than them at all the games, but now you have to work for them? Is that it?

  RL: She belongs with me! Not them. OK? It is very simple. And wrong. (Smashing sound.)

  AN: Then why isn’t she with you?

  RL: Oh, fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this! (Sound of head banging steel.)

  AN: We need to understand the nature of your friendship with Madame Serein, and your relationship to these men.

  RL: I teach them how to play tennis! I work for them!

  AN: And do you work for Madame Serein?

  RL: No…

  AN: You give her free lessons.

  RL: We hit some balls together sometimes.

  AN: So you are friends.

  RL: I’ve only told you this about a thousand times.

  AN: But you are looking beyond that.

  RL: (extended silence.)

  AN: Monsieur Lorentz, you do sound like a friend in a certain kind of way. But I have to tell you it does not look good. Your attitude. Your basic outlook here.

  RL: Are attitudes against the law now?

  AN: No, but you are incriminating yourself, at least circumstantially, especially as regards Raymond Tuche. You were also dangerously near the scene of Bruno Martel’s death. You seemed very interested in the residence of Madame Guntz. Why was this?

  RL: None of your business.

  AN: You really ought to disclose everything you can that can mitigate your circumstances here.

  RL: Oh Jesus…Because we had a thing, all right? After her marriage, before she fell in love with that fat phoney. It’s natural to look to see if she’s around when I do my run…I’ve explained all this!

  AN: Is it natural to climb her fence and go into her garden?

  RL: She used to leave her back door open…

  AN: And Monday morning. Our information leads us to believe this entire matter starts with Monsieur Belfort, Madame Serein and yourself.

  RL: I was her lover! (Another sound of steel banging, rattling.) But we broke up…She hated me — for selling her. (Sound of another very bitter laugh.)

  AN: Selling her?

  RL: For God’s sake! Pearl and I were playing, Didi Belfort comes moping along looking for someone to hit with, I told him I’d rent him my partner… It was one of those crazy things that just happen sometimes…a whim, a dumb joke, it just popped out. She didn’t think it was funny…maybe it wasn’t. She went to play with him. It caused a fight and we were both holding out, not speaking, you know the way you sometimes do? Belfort suddenly calls her up from out of the blue and asks her for another game. She said yes — just to get me. And that was it. She was gone.

  AN: How much did you sell her for?

  RL: Does it matter?

  AN: It could.

  RL: I sold her to Belfort for a thousand francs.

  AN: That’s four times your regular rate.

  RL: More like five back then.

  AN: Are you sure Pearl Serein is your friend? Now, I mean. (Silence) …Monsieur Lorentz?

  RL: (Silence)…It was such a shame. I mean a shame that she would be with him. What a waste.

  AN: Monsieur Lorentz? Your relationship at this time?

  RL: She’s wasting her life. Look. Proof’s in the pudding. None of them last. Pearl’s lost in that world. (Silence…) It breaks my heart.

  AN: She does seem to have that effect. (Silence) Did you know where she might be?

  RL: No.

  AN: Would Tommi Bonneau hide her?

  RL: Bonneau? A total geek. She wouldn’t go near the likes of him with a barge pole. (Silence.) It’s me. Pearl belongs with me. It’s just a matter of time.

  AN: Please explain that. What would cause her to —

  But the judge stopped reading here…

  27

  Constructing a Deeper View of Tommi

  ‘I went to see Sophie Glarr. I got a demonstration from her friend.’

  ‘And so?’

  AdrénalineAlors! Her own adrenaline had been pumping hard just watching him perform. It was like a performance, the fluid scaling of the walls, the bursts of pure speed, the elegant leaps across precarious space. The touch-down. The backflips and handsprings were just for show, but they had looked like magic set against the rich blues and pinks of dusk. She had gazed up at his sweat-shiny face gazing down. No smile — it was a steely look of proven pride. Then he’d loped off into the night… ‘Says they can go anywhere. Says it depends how brave you are.’

  Captain Mathieu Deubelbeiss knew Inspector Nouvelle well enough to read her pauses. ‘But?’

  ‘Those kids could care less about Pearl Serein. That kid could easily get to our victims’ windows. But they are the exact opposite of the kind of people who have to have a Pearl Serein.’

  ‘Even so. Everyone’s inspired by somebody.’ The captain bent to his notes. ‘His name?’

  ‘No idea. I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell.’ She shrugged. ‘That was our deal for the demo. I just wanted to see what it is they do. And how they think.’

  Deubelbeiss put his pen aside, pushed a memo across his desk. ‘Richand’s releasing Lorentz.’

  Aliette nodded, not surprised. ‘Poor Remy. Doesn’t get much respect.’

  ‘We’ll watch him. Richand should have a chat with him.’

  He meant Tommi Bonneau, passing the inspector that morning’s Cri.

  Local Scene

  Dear Pearl, Wherever you are, the Law can’t touch you (and never stood a chance).

  Aliette agreed. ‘But he won’t. Gérard refuses to lower himself to allowing this as a factor.’

  ‘Factor or not, that gossipy ass is pushing his luck. Fucking disrespectful.’

  ‘He doesn’t mean you, Mathieu. He means Claude.’

  ‘I know. I mean Article 9. Néon screwed up, but he doesn’t deserve that.’

  ‘He might.’

  Deubelbeiss disagreed. ‘Néon is us, Inspector. Have you talked to him?

  ‘No. But I’ve talked to Tommi Bonneau.’

  ‘Why is he doing it?’

  ‘He needs a foil — for his story. For his readers? It’s about love. Not police.’

  ‘It says police and it reflects on all of us.’

  ‘Pretend you’re a duck, Mathieu. Let it roll off you. Any kind of reaction will only make it worse.’

  Aliette left Mathieu Deubelbeiss and knocked at the office of Commissaire Duque. ‘You say your sister used to mind Tommi Bonneau.’

  ‘Yes. They were up on the fifth. Father was something at Peugeot — a desk, not the line. His mother, I don’t know. Good enough people as far as I ever knew. Both gone now, I believe. Yes, Margie was up there often of a weekend at one point, earning a few francs.’

  ‘Would she…would you…mind if I gave her call?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He wrote a number, an address, presented it. ‘I’ll tell her you’re coming.’

  William Tell is a regional hero, shared on both sides of the border. Our Swiss neighbors have given his name to ProTell, the national anti-gun-control lobby, first-cousin, philosophically speaking, to the American NRA. Here in our burg we have honored the fabled archer with a life-sized painted plaster statue reminiscent of no one so much as that other American mainstay, Ronald McDonald. He stands forever dour, if not freezing, in short pants, crossbow in the at-ease position, at a corner along (where else?) Rue Guillaume Tell. And young Walter Tell is depicted sitting on a stump by his fathe
r’s knee, the famous apple waiting on his head. The inspector stepped down from the tram, paused a moment in appreciation of this elemental father/son moment, then walked a block and rang at the door leading to the apartments above the pharmacy.

  Madame Marguerite Dandurand was a less chiseled version of her brother. Same dolefully cavernous gray eyes and solid nose, the mouth that seemed forever tightly pursed, same fine gray hair… mainly, she shared the commissaire’s height, that rangy, knock-kneed presence. Her place was a large three-bedroom flat on the third, somber on the street side at this hour, and made more so by the bulky hardwood furnishings, so pervasive in pre-IKEA generation homes across the Republic. She shared it with her retired husband (a desk job with La Poste) who was ‘…off on his annual spring bicycle tour with his pals. The boys still need to let loose — who am I to tell him no?’ Aliette smiled, attentive. Three silver-framed photos, two girls, one boy, showed three sets of Duque eyes in slightly fuller paternal-side faces. Madame murmured, ‘One in Paris, one in Strasbourg. Three grandchildren… And one no longer with us.’

  One of the daughters.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Life brings many challenges.’

  The kitchen got the morning sun. And, for easy reference, a view of Pearl’s diving tower. ‘It is bizarre,’ said Madame Dandurand as she sat and poured their tea, ‘but then again, not so much. I mean, when I read this…this nonsense? — is that what it is? — I hear an echo of that little boy. I always enjoyed his bird column. But this strange thing, it reminds me of how he was.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘I don’t know if it’s nonsense either.’ Then ventured, ‘It couldn’t be, not if so many people follow it so religiously.’ Then asked, ‘What was he like?’

  Marguerite Dandurand, clarified, recalling as she dipped a Bastogne biscuit in her tea. ‘I don’t mean the nasty thing. Tommi was a polite enough child. And gentle, I suppose. Only child — hard to know. But it’s something else. I know this from my own. It’s…It’s what they hope for.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Children. He expresses that. Do you have children?’

  ‘No.’

  She stared past her kitchen, into the morning. Straight at Pearl’s. ‘Tommi was always staring out the window. I’d read to him. He loved his story. He would hear it — every word, but it always looked like he wasn’t. I remember that. It took me a few tries before I could get used to reading to a boy who did not seem to be listening. But then I’d get to a tragic part, a part where things weren’t right — D’Artagnan is left for dead, Rumplestiltskin mocking the miller’s daughter’s hopeless guessing — every story has to have a moment like that, and then he’d suddenly turn and demand, Why? Why did that have to happen? Very intense. I remember, so many times, trying to explain those parts had to be there, for the ending to be worthwhile.’

  ‘Did he believe you?’

  She shrugged. ‘He’d insist that I finish. I would offer to leave it — we could do something else. He always had to know the end. But he was rarely smiling when I put him to bed.’

  ‘Children are literal.’

  ‘Of course. It can be worrisome.’

  ‘Now he reads a lot of poetry. I went to see him.’

  ‘Say hello to him for me if you see him again.’

  Aliette looked beyond, toward the disembodied diving tower. ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Pearl? No, not really. I never sat for them. They were a few doors along. I saw her in the street with her American mother…an American mother was something interesting. Never really noticed Pearl. I was bigger. Looking after Tommi was a job — I mean, he was a handful in his little way, but then his parents came home, I got paid, I went back downstairs and carried on with my life till the next time. And you know, gradually, it just ends.’

  Aliette smiled. She’d done a bit of babysitting too. She began to finish her tea.

  Marguerite Dandurand was still mulling the fact of Tommi Bonneau. ‘I was happy for him when he got the bird column. And before that, sometimes you’d see his pictures. Then his name was there in the paper three times a week and I’d read it. Even started noticing some of the birds.’ Her gaze stayed in the distance. Her voice dropped a tone. ‘Then my daughter. Our eldest…She died. A love affair that broke her heart. She decided life was not worth it. And she left us. That was hard — the hardest thing ever. Such a happy-go-lucky child, the last person in the world you’d ever think could get so trapped in such darkness.’ She turned back to her guest. ‘Sorry. It was fifteen years ago. We’ve dealt with it, learned to live with it because you have to. But this Pearl story…this nonsense that isn’t nonsense, I find it often throws me back to that sad time. My daughter was the opposite of a Tommi Bonneau. She would be the one giggling when everyone else was dabbing their eyes. Including me. I noticed it. Of course. You notice everything. But she seemed to go along all right. School. Boyfriends. Work…She was in the Gendarmes, down near Doubs, following her uncle’s path. Then this one relationship fell apart and it was too much for her to bear. You just never know, do you?’

  All Aliette could do was shake her head.

  Marguerite Dandurand picked up another biscuit. ‘Tommi Bonneau still seems to be worried about that horrible line. Why and where the dark side starts. I don’t want to read him, but I do. I suppose I have to. I want to know — I need to, although I don’t really believe I ever will.’

  The inspector took this, plus some suggestions — the lycée was an easy walk, perhaps some of his or her old profs could shed some light? — and continued on. Along Rue Marianne, the doors Marguerite Dandurand had talked about were waiting. Doors with numbers. Then stairways. But Tommi’s parents had died. There were no more Duques — hadn’t been for years. Four doors along, Pearl’s father’s store was now notions — buttons and ribbons bedecking the window in the place of books. Sad, somehow, when a bookstore disappears. Crossing the street, the Papeterie Lorentz was still there, at least in name. She glanced in. A tired-looking man glanced back. Remy’s papa, no question. Used to be as beautiful as his son. And as angry? She smiled and walked away. Did not want to talk to him. Suddenly confronted with the chance, she wondered what good it could possibly do. Remy had told her everything she needed to know yesterday afternoon. Remy was peripheral. Not part of the story.

  Was Remy peripheral back then? As she headed off toward the school, Aliette tried to imagine kids in this street at different times of their lives until their lives grew too different for this street, and for each other. Madame Dandurand’s words provided a frame: Tommi, intent and literal, vexed when things went wrong in stories; Pearl, vague beside an exotic American mother. But friends with Tommi? Remy’s nasty bitterness provided another view. Aliette trusted Pearl’s mother’s sentimental vision of two kids more than Remy’s juvenile anger. ‘They used to be such good friends.’ Why would she lie? …But then, kids do turn into adolescents, and some of them are good at tennis, and others definitely are geeks.

  The noisy energy of the school pushed away her useless thinking. Lycée F-A-Bartoldi, for Frederik-Auguste, another regional star, famous for giving the Americans their iconic statue in the harbor at New York. Inspector Nouvelle knew the place. Six weeks prior, she’d sat in an unmarked car monitoring the operation as Junior Inspector Bernadette Milhau had gone about busting two senior and very bright girl students known back at the office as the Hashish Twins. That had been a good day — the principal welcomed her warmly. Today’s business was entirely different. The woman was unsure if she should smile or scowl as she consulted with a secretary.

  Yes, one teacher from the time of Tommi Bonneau was still around.

  Monsieur Jean Gregoire. A thin, tobacco-pallid, graying philo teacher, he had supervised the student newspaper during his first years on staff. ‘Don’t do any of that volunteer work anymore. Now I just rehash my notes, I’m afraid,’ he told her, brash and cranky, ‘I’ll admit it to you, I admit it to anyone. Only way to protest the cutbacks… Two more years,
I’m gone.’

  Aliette said they experienced the same frustrations with the Ministry of the Interior.

  As for Tomas Bonneau, ‘Never said much in class, absolutely nothing memorable. About as logical as any run-of-the-mill teenager, I guess, but certainly never the philosophe in embryo one dreams of finding. But he was our go-to man when we needed a good photo for the paper. I got a feel for him there… Always brought in excellent stuff. Mainly birds, that was his passion. The boy did not mind climbing a tree to get his shot. I mean to the very top. You’d worry. But he’d get whatever you needed. In fact, I admired him. He understood how the light would work, used it perfectly. Total dolt with a camera, me — I’d no problem writing a letter recommending him when he went out looking for a job. Happy to. No need to go further in school. He’d found his talent.’ Jean Gregoire reached for the newspaper on the corner of his desk. It was open at the back page. ‘Can’t say I hold him in much esteem now. Silliness. He probably should have stayed with birds.’

  ‘You follow it?’

  ‘I feel I had a hand in these people’s lives. Deaths too. I mean, philosophically speaking, you understand.’ A flat smile behind his disclaimer. An old prof’s professional hazard.

  ‘But she’s not dead. Is she?’ Pearl. A rhetorical question.

  ‘She might as well be. Of course I’m speaking on a conceptual level here. If she’s not dead, she’s dying.’ Meeting the inspector’s quizzical gaze: ‘No more boyfriends. Yes? No boyfriends, no Pearl.’ Tapping the paper, ‘Bonneau knows this. In any case, I can’t remember her at all. Which doesn’t mean much. It’s a big place, I am just a lowly philosophy prof. You see?’

  It was somehow harder to respond to a philosophy prof who hated his life than to a woman whose child had destroyed herself because of love. But Monsieur Jean Gregoire graciously gave her the next name to try. Merci. And on she went, following a serpentine trail through the past in a city where she would always be a stranger, attempting to impute cause and effect into the vague nexus linking Pearl Serein and Tommi Bonneau and seven iffy heart attacks.

  But despite a city full of gentle readers, so many of whom had crossed paths with Pearl or someone that she’d loved…or hated — oh, yes, lots of people still carried grudges in this town — there was no tangible trace of her. There was only le vrai Tommi Bonneau, heedless, building the next arc in his grande histoire. Whether for business purposes or something more central to the soul of himself didn’t matter, the man could not leave it alone.