Stifling Folds of Love

by John Brooke

  ‘I know they make me feel…um, special?…when I go for my run.’

  ‘Good word, Inspector. And just as that feeling overrides any physical discomfort you may have when you run, we now think the dying body knows the end is imminent and that for the last time those peptide hormones — endorphins, as they’ve come to be called — are released and attach to the cells responsible for the pain. And mitigate it. And so the body composes itself for death. It’s remarkable. Only fair too,’ he averred, ‘after all the pain some go through to reach that final point. And it may even be more than that. An awareness. A sense of moving through…a final bath in beauty? These men may have gone that way. A heart attack might provide the mind with that same kind of window in its final moments. One of these days someone will let us know.’

  ‘Their final thoughts for Pearl?’ mused Aliette, leaving the bodies, turning back to the trays,

  There was a silent moment as they stared down at six hearts which had suffered.

  Then, vague and flustered, the inspector thanked the doctor and left.

  Gilles Conan accepted more coffee and a biscuit. He shared a quiet secret with Raphaele. ‘Who knows what a man or a bird is feeling when they die? Ideas like that are really just people like me trying to think in the opposite direction of all the hard knowledge.’ Sipping his coffee, crunching biscotti. ‘Half of what I told her is no more than an educated guess.’

  ‘She really does have to find hard evidence, or this is just for practice.’

  ‘Of course she does and I think she will.’

  ‘Then why tell her things like that?’

  ‘It can’t do any harm when you’re stuck at zero, can it?’

  ‘I don’t know… I don’t understand how she works.’

  Gilles Conan said, ‘I enjoy watching her think, your Inspector Nouvelle.’

  Monique knew a frustrated inspector when she saw one. She was solicitous, offering Friday afternoon tea and a cookie with two more memos. Chief Magistrate Gérard Richand’s response to her request for an Article 9 regarding Tomas Bonneau and/or Le Cri du Matin was No.

  ‘Merci, Gérard.’

  And Strasbourg had called. They had received her package containing the same request, plus copies of the columns that prompted it. Divisionnaire Fauré would drive down to meet with Inspector Nouvelle on Monday morning.

  ‘Oh, Lord…Nothing beyond that?’

  There was mention of lunch together. Did the inspector know of an enjoyable spot?

  Boggled, Aliette took the notes, declined the tea, collected her things and went home.

  30

  Tracking Instincts

  Local Scene: Our police have failed us twofold. Once: through uncooperative communications and non-results. And twice: in a policeman’s patent inability to keep Pearl from running. By inability I do not mean the force of his office, but the power of his love. His arms could not hold her, his net cannot drag her back in. This man’s failure looks bad on all of us…To all my gentle readers: Keep your eyes (and hearts!) peeled for Pearl. If you have a clue, we’d love to hear it. Love is the operative word. And you could win a romantic weekend in Paris for two, courtesy Le Cri!

  Unbelievable. Aliette gulped her coffee, burning her throat, dreading Claude’s reaction.

  Maybe he was being wise and avoiding the back page. Or strong? One could only hope.

  When her breakfast had settled, she put on her cheap disguise and went out. One does not cease being a cop on Saturday — especially when there is nothing else to do. Stupid life! And surveillance is mundane and deadly repetitive, a true test of a cop’s commitment. But Aliette was not the hooded jogger tracking Claude Néon on Thursday night. She had, wisely, left that job to Captain Deubelbeiss, who’d assigned it to an officer whom Claude wouldn’t know from Adam.

  She had jogged past the house in the north end the evening of his suspension. Too painful.

  Too confusing, how the endorphins could make her forget anger, leave judgement suspended, passing…and re-passing the house in the north end, gazing surreptitiously, protectively, the endorphins working chaotic magic on her mood, visualizing Claude Néon’s long body meshing with hers — how she missed it! — while freeing a more inner voice telling her to let it go, knock on his door, kiss and make up. Take him straight up to their bed. Yes, their bed. Exclusive territory of Claude and Aliette. The body remembers longer than you want it to. It was getting bad, this need. But Aliette Nouvelle resisted. Today she jogged toward the east side, in a silly hoodie, further concealed by wrap-around shades, pink beach-chick beach cap and Walkman headphones.

  The house in Rue Pontbriand was quiet, curtains drawn. The old VW van was parked across the street. Aliette thought of Anne-Marie. Somehow her friend had hooked up with Tommi Bonneau, found the next exciting thing for her aimless life and latched on. Resisting the urge to strongly advise the wayward waif was almost as hard as not running straight back to Claude. Almost. Was Anne-Marie a friend? Not really. She was Georgette’s friend, who was Aliette’s friend, sort of — an odd nexus of companionship forming around a shared link to Jacques Normand. But the Normand affair was fading into history and the ties that bound the three women were fragile, verging on disappearing, harder each day to see the point. At least for Aliette. Life moved on from one case to the next. This thing called friendship tumbled like shards in a kaleidoscopic box.

  But as a woman? Aliette was concerned for Anne-Marie.

  What would it be like being with a man so completely (so publicly!) devoted to someone else?

  Aliette did a few slow circles of the block. At a certain point she saw Anne-Marie leave the house, climb into the van and drive off. Alone.

  She mulled the possibilities — and was about to knock on Tommi’s door (in total disregard for the magistrate’s order) when the man appeared, stepping out on a Saturday, camera bag slung over his rangy shoulder. The inspector followed Tommi Bonneau. He headed into the old quarter, a popular Saturday destination. There was no need to run. She had only to stay at a discreet distance as Tommi wandered up one street and down the next — tight old streets, charming in their old-world colors, flower boxes, half-timbered vaulted roofs, and filled with Saturday people enjoying their warm authenticity. But Aliette Nouvelle was working and it looked like Tommi Bonneau was too, stopping people, camera at the ready, asking them something, getting them to smile, snapping a shot, then moving on, acting on their information, going in and out of a hundred doors. Thus she followed him to the Rembrandt Café. Where she had to pause to parse more possible ramifications.

  Aliette knew Willem van Hoogstraten was another hard-core devotee of Pearl Serein. The day she’d lunched with Swiss FedPol Agent Woerli, Willem had offered a dessert called Chocolate Pearl, proudly described on the menu as ‘inspired by the lady of my dreams.’ Just chocolate pudding laced with Kir — very tasty, but what did that make Willem to a man like Tommi Bonneau? And there was the fact that Willem and Anne-Marie were very regular friends. Confronting Tommi in front of Willem might force Anne-Marie into a dangerous position. At the very least, Anne-Marie would be lost forever as a possible source. Or at least till the end of her love affair.

  The inspector stood there in the street, trapped in a game of hurry up and wait.

  The Pearl effect? It was ridiculous that Pearl Serein had created this conundrum.

  But Tommi Bonneau came back out in short order and ambled off.

  She followed. No more pictures. No more ducking in and out of doors. Tommi retreated back to his home. Deduction: Whatever he’d been looking for, he found it at the Rembrandt.

  She would talk to Willem. Alone. Not today.

  She called it quits, exhausted, not physically, but spiritually, instincts on the blink.

  Aliette Nouvelle didn’t really care where Pearl was. With luck, she might stay gone.

  PART 3

  It is enough that you are able to take this view of life, and see this decadent, sullied and vulgar world purified and beautiful in the
camera of your innermost soul.

  — Soseki,

  The Three-Cornered World

  31

  Pearl’s Kiss

  Question: How do you get from a media-engorged police escort to this lost place?

  Answer: You run. As everyone is sucked toward the ghastly fact of a dead Didi Belfort wrapped in newsprint, you run, blindly, panicked, no idea where, till suddenly you’re in the Rembrandt Café, at a corner table in the shadows, cowering, face in your hands, weeping, struggling to control it. Thank God it’s the kind of place where people keep to themselves.

  And then there’s Willem, concerned, gentle, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, ‘I’m very confused. All I want is privacy.’

  ‘Come.’ Guiding her into his kitchen, where he left her alone with a bowl of chocolate pudding, still warm. It calmed her. Of course it did. Everyone loved Pearl’s Kiss.

  When he returned to prepare the next order, Pearl asked, ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘You have many admirers who believe your life is special.’

  Plain fact? Or yet more expression of a mass delusion? Just then she had no choice but to take it at face value. She huddled in Willem’s pantry, wretched and wary, till the mid-morning lull.

  When he spirited Pearl upstairs, he said, ‘You’ll be more comfortable here.’

  She insisted she should leave. He insisted, ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  And he didn’t really believe she’d still be there when he climbed up again at the end of the day.

  But she was. So Willem opened wine and cooked for Pearl. Asked her questions. Let her talk.

  That night she told him several times, ‘This is not who I am.’

  Which raised the question, Then who are you?

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ She asked, ‘Does one repay a kindness by indulging a lie?’

  Which left Willem confused. But Tommi said —

  Pearl touched his lip, to shush him.

  She asked Willem, ‘Do you believe your childhood was the best part of your life?’

  He didn’t know. He didn’t really think about it much…could barely remember it.

  Pearl told him, ‘Tommi Bonneau and I were friends.’

  Just friends? Willem’s wine worked on Willem too — of course it did — and some of Willem’s questions were not quite right.

  Pearl had flared. ‘We were children! We were best friends and then we weren’t. OK?’

  OK.

  ‘Suddenly our lives were changing. It was finished, our magic world. There are so many people in a life. Some go in different directions, you lose sight of them. You know how it can be, surely?’

  Willem did.

  ‘We haven’t said two words to each other since… I don’t know when. Years.’

  Then why did Tommi write these things about her?

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t encourage him. I try to ignore him. But I can’t hate him. I can’t sue him — that would only make it worse. And I don’t want to. It’s not about a court order or money. I’m not Brigitte Bardot…’ Trailing off, feeling guilty. Trapped. ‘It isn’t fair. I am not complicit in this!’

  Willem believed her. But he asked her about love. How could he not? The local goddess of love is sitting at your table, insisting she’s beholden to your kindness. And that she loves your wonderful dessert. ‘Merci.’ Willem poured more wine and asked.

  ‘I do try,’ Pearl promised. ‘You have to try… I don’t play games. It’s as pure as I can make it. And I believe in it. I do. I mean, c’est l’amour! Do you think I’d take a seventy-one-year-old banker to my bed just for money?’ Before Willem could answer, Pearl assured him, ‘There was a real charm there and I was attracted.’ Willem believed her. She told him, ‘They may not work out, but I am attracted to the good thing, not the bad.’ He sat silently as Pearl stared at her image in Willem’s kitchen window, and at the diving tower in the distance, melding with her reflection, enveloping her face. ‘All this death. Do you think anyone will ever come near me again?’

  Willem told her, ‘You don’t feel dangerous…What about that cop?’

  ‘Claude? He’s another man lost in a fantasy.’ Then on the strength of almost an entire bottle, Pearl recited, ‘From leaves of autumn flushed with love,/ A pearl of dew shakes free/ And falls to shatter on the earth beneath./ So too must I, to flee Love’s stifling folds/ Drop from the world.’

  Willem had toasted this effort. Bravo!…what was that?

  From a favorite book. A favorite passage. Passion…hopeless passion, the stifling folds of love, how impossible it can be. Which Willem naturally had loved to hear. This was Pearl Serein.

  Of course Willem never touched her. He just listened. Then put her to bed.

  And then?

  Then she was gone. Walked out the kitchen door after breakfast. C’est tout.

  32

  Saturday at the Rembrandt

  The weekend edition of Le Soir hits the street by noon. Regular readers were intrigued to see Rose Saxe’s byline on the front page. Many more not-so-regular readers had scooped up copies.

  Headline: Murky Link To Pearl’s Past. Subhead: Cri Columnist Should Come Clean.

  Is le vrai Tommi really telling all there is to tell? The question merits asking.

  A writer who neglects to disclose a key element of his main character’s past may well be hiding something crucial in the present. Is this fair in asking a reader to understand said character? Why didn’t Tommi Bonneau tell us he and Pearl Serein were childhood friends? Surely this matters, and all the more so now that ‘our’ Pearl has disappeared.

  Last Monday morning socialite Pearl Serein fled a police escort taking her for questioning concerning the suspicious deaths of seven former lovers. Madame Serein’s flight and disappearance capped a bizarre ten days of heretofore unexplained heart attacks. Police have so far remained tight-lipped concerning the cause and circumstances surrounding the deaths of Didier Belfort, Pierre Angulaire, Jerôme Duteil, Georges Pugh, Raymond Tuche, Jean-Guy Gagnon and Bruno Martel. The official line remains: No case to answer pending the results of ongoing autopsies. As of this writing, Madame Serein is still at large, the object of an intensive regional search.

  For the past few years a featured part of Le Cri du Matin columnist Tomas Bonneau’s column, known as ‘Le Vrai Tommi,’ has focused on the former teacher’s love life. The ongoing saga has made Madame Serein a much-admired, if unwilling, star. Madame Serein has consistently distanced herself from the press. This reluctance only seems to add to her attraction. Indeed, even as the city waits, Monsieur Bonneau continues to bang the drum, imploring his heroine to ‘come home!’

  A hiatus has prompted others to step back and wonder, Where did this come from? How did this all start? Since Pearl Serein first emerged on the local scene on the arm of Didier Belfort, no one has asked for, and — more strangely — no one has offered any substantive background behind this love fantasy. And yet there is a city full of readers who know that Pearl and Tommi go a long way back. Apart from the late Jerôme Duteil, all the players in our local drama do. This reporter’s notebook is filled with links and contacts stretching back to a schoolteacher’s earliest years in Rue Marianne. Why was this never mentioned? Are we really so thrilled that we’re afraid to ask and maybe break the spell? Something is out of kilter here.

  If Pearl Serein were indeed a fantasy figure — that is to say, a person in the business of being famous, leveraging her role in the Local Scene, whether through coordinated photo opportunities or, indeed, loudly publicized lawsuits under Article 9 — there would be no need for background. We would all understand the game. We would enjoy it, or ignore it. But Pearl Serein is not that. She is a schoolteacher who happened to meet a man. And then another. Seven boyfriends notwithstanding, Madame Serein has never said a word, positive or negative, to move this narrative along.

  Pearl Serein is no fantasy. But neither is she engaged.

>   What then? A victim? Co-conspirator? What gives? Who is she? We are all partly to blame for never pausing to ask these basic questions; indeed, for being too emotionally wrapped up in our Pearl’s amazingly romantic ride.

  But the major part of the responsibility surely rests with the man who ‘created her’ — out of nothing, as it were. Monsieur Bonneau has never claimed or implied any personal connection to the woman whose fortunes he has taken it upon himself to record. But it exists, and deeply so.

  And now our Pearl has disappeared.

  Where is Pearl? This is a crucial question.

  We might well also ask, What is Tommi trying to prove?

  Should we be worried? Should we feel like fools?

  Where is this story coming from? Where does it go from here?

  Ed’s note: This is the first of a series by Rose Saxe, a reporter with her finger squarely on the pulse of this town. In the coming days, Le Soir readers can look forward to these exclusives:

  Monday: Rose Saxe talks to teachers and friends

  Tuesday: A mother in Connecticut

  Wednesday: Tracking the transition from the birds to the stars

  Thursday: A chat with child psychologist J-P Blismes

  Friday: When stars are fading: A round table featuring four of the city’s most enquiring minds

  The regulars at the Rembrandt Café studied these words as they sipped their coffee, their beer, a Saturday afternoon pastis. They contemplated an accompanying grainy black and white photo of two smiling kids: a much younger Pearl and her friend Tommi. Engrossed, no one seemed aware of the presence of one of the two personalities at the heart of Rose Saxe’s provocative reasoning.

  Tommi Bonneau was moving slowly through the Rembrandt…pausing, looking up, as if to note the gentle dispersal of light through the vaulted windows. Some patrons briefly met his curious stare, then went on with their reading. They did not relate the nine-year-old on the front page of Le Soir to the ‘probing eyes’ icon on the back page of Le Cri du Matin. When Tommi wandered through to the kitchen, the door swung back and forth its usual four times behind him.