by John Brooke
Willem’s eyes were waiting.
Tommi said, ‘They’re going to run it. And Tommi will respond.’
Willem shifted a glass to a more symmetrical angle and considered it.
Tommi put two great hands on the waiter’s spindly shoulders. ‘Willem, this city will know that you were a tragic kind of man — one of the little people, but special, a big imagination, a true sense of romance.’ Willem tried to free himself, jerking violently, in silence there in the lonely Rembrandt. But Tommi’s grip was absolute. ‘Don’t worry, my readers will forgive you. I’ll make sure of it. You’re one of us, after all… You’ve proved it beyond any shadow. No?’
Willem was struggling to breathe as he confronted the ravaged eyes. ‘Forgive me for what?’
‘For killing them. All of them. Pearl’s boys.’ Tommi held the waiter tighter and recited from Guillaume Apollonaire: ‘Pity us who fight always in the front lines/ Of the limitless and of the future/ Pity our errors, pity our sins…Eh, Willem? That’s you and me, surely it is.’
Willem gasped, ‘Would you let me go, monsieur!’
Tommi shook his head. Can’t do that. Not now. Lifting Willem like the lightest bride, he carried him up the apartment stairs and out to the small makeshift terrace on the back roof. ‘Nice here.’ It was: a fine place to be alone with the sun or the moon, some wine and a dream. You could see Pearl’s building, monolithic, jutting into the sky. ‘Willem, there’s something you have to see, my friend — something that will make it all make sense.’ Standing at the edge that evening, the captive was advised, ‘Don’t say a word or all you’ll be is another wretch with a broken neck, robbed and killed and left in an alley. D’accord, my Willem? Better to go out big than small.’
Like Anne-Marie, Willem had to ask, ‘But why?’
‘Because you’re right. It’s too late. Pearl’s dead. This thing can’t go on. Tommi has to end it.’
Pure and spontaneous, Willem wept. He didn’t know Tommi meant the story, not the lady.
But there wasn’t time for tears. Dragging Willem by the wrist, Tommi led him down the fire stair and into the murky alley. ‘Come on.’ And they moved off.
Tommi loped, Willem was compelled to follow, clamped in a relentless grip, leaping to keep pace, up and down the alleys, from one street to the next. Emerging momentarily into the glow of a friendly street lamp, any passing citizen would smile to see two great pals, hurrying hand in hand.
The glow of a street lamp could not show Willem van Hoogstraten pushing the boundaries of fear’s delirium as Tommi Bonneau pulled him onward, toward the highest place.
Memories are hunting horns/ Whose sound dies out along the wind.
Another pearl from Apollonaire. But a sad one…always sad as the beautiful thing recedes.
Long before Tommi Bonneau had taken to adventuring across the city’s rooftops in dead of night, Tommi (the boy) had fastened on to quality ideas. He loved stories. He heard things that sounded right. Perfect love casts out fear. A priest read it, Tommi heard it, sitting at mass beside his mother. It sounded right and he believed it. He was happy to believe it. But: Perfect love. What was it? One clue: the way to find out was not to be afraid. If perfect love casts out fear, by not being afraid perhaps one would arrive at perfect love. Tommi was far from the brash self-conscious man the geeky camera-toting adolescent would become. He was only ten. That was when he learned to be unafraid to cross the rooftops. What a great time! And for part of it, Pearl (the girl) was happy to open her window and follow her friend. Together they moved along the rooftops of the quarter, unseen, discovering ways to go almost anywhere, never touching ground.
Pearl took the same precarious paths as Tommi. Tommi liked it that Pearl was brave.
It did not last long. Pearl soon found other things to do. One perfect day in May, a sunny Wednesday (no school on Wednesday afternoon is a tradition in France; we do Saturday mornings instead), Tommi sat perched above the neighbor’s top room, signaling to Pearl. When she came to her window two floors below and signaled back, Sorry, I can’t come today, he knew it was over. It was the end of the thing they’d shared.
But not the end, because they both still shared it, and always would. If they wanted to.
She knew it too, as perfectly as he did. It hurt. In a moment of innocent revelation Tommi Bonneau saw this most sweet and perfect thing beaming back from the eyes of Pearl Serein. He saw her awareness of that moment. It was shared, and this was signaled — Pearl instinctively knowing the importance of signaling to Tommi, all of her heart in that moment of moving on, and Tommi knowing enough to be grateful for her being there so he could see and know. It seemed the best possible thing to know. To feel. That was the thing of revelation, knowing and feeling combining as he sat up there above the city, signaling goodbye to Pearl. Even if he did not understand it, Tommi believed in that moment — because Pearl did too. He knew she did.
Pausing on the far side of the traffic circle, gazing at Pearl’s diving tower up there beneath the moon, Tommi told Willem van Hoogstraten, ‘I kept my revelation. I refused to let time dull it.’
Sure, he knew what the psychologists might say about that. Very boring. Tommi was more interested in how Dante would react. As new trees are renewed when they bring forth new boughs, I was pure and prepared to climb unto the stars. Tommi knew his moment on the roof had been a clear glimpse of the best part of being alive, and it was rare. He told Willem, ‘If we’re lucky, we’re given glimpses of perfection when we’re young because it’s when we’re able to see it clearly and believe it. After that, as this life gets so grim and gray, it’s our duty to remember, to live by it if we can. Eh, Willem?’ Could Willem understand how Tommi was a man shaped by a single moment when everything came together?
An original moment, you could say. Later, Tommi would see it in every view of Pearl:
Something full — full of life, yet incomplete. Forever waiting for completion. It bothered him, he felt a profound unease that no man seemed able to transform it, to move that gentle thing to where it seemed to want to go. So it was that Tommi chronicled the loves of Pearl Serein.
And Tommi told Willem, ‘I never wanted her, not physically. I wouldn’t know where to start. To have her body would ruin it. That’s not my role. I only wanted her back in my story. But that pute Rose Saxe and the connasse cop who put her up to it are just so far from it, so completely wrong. It’s not right.’
Not right that a cop playing a cheap game as an anonymous source would lower the quality by trying to insinuate Tommi into the frame as some frustrated lover incapable of letting a memory go. No! Exactly the opposite. It was pure inspired love. Something wordless. A history made from one moment of connection. One moment — as near as you can get to being out of time. Seen. Remembered. Cherished. Nurtured…against all odds, the odds that time will stack against you.
Willem managed to whisper, ‘What cop?’
‘Just some — ’
‘Aliette.’ Desperate, Willem called, ‘Alie — !’
‘Please.’ Draping a powerful arm, comrade-like, around his captive’s quaking shoulder, Tommi placed a huge hand over Willem’s pale white mouth. ‘Or I’ll pound your face till they won’t know you.’ Staring into Willem’s frozen eyes. ‘And they have to know you, Willem. So they can love you. That includes your sneaky friend, Aliette Nouvelle, damn her… No way, not right at all…You know Tommi gives his all for his gentle readers. Will you tell me that you do?’
Willem couldn’t answer.
Tommi stood there, rueful, brooding on the flow of cars, the splaying roundabout of light. He finally said, ‘But at the heart of it, the real Tommi is alone. And now it’s too late. This story is running out of space. I know that.’
Then Tommi took away his hand. Willem couldn’t speak. Tommi advised, ‘Don’t be afraid. Focus. Move past fear. This is what life is all about, Willem. Especially at the end of it. OK?’
Willem barely nodded.
Then there was gap in the flow and Tommi bolted, wit
h Willem flying behind. In a blink they were past the door to Pearl’s building, back in the shadows. Tommi held Willem’s hand as he raised a long leg and smashed the door to the service stairs.
And so they continued, on and up to Pearl’s.
44
Georgette Makes Her Move
Georgette Duguay did not believe Willem was not hiding Pearl Serein in his apartment. It was exactly the kind of thing a dreamer like Willem was prone to do. Georgette had been lurking, keeping an eye out, sipping more pastis in the seedy brasserie across the street from the Rembrandt. Not for a glimpse to confirm the lie. But because Anne-Marie was worried and somewhere in her cranky heart, Georgette cared for Willem’s safety. That Tommi person was a monster. She’d seen it in an instant. Anne-Marie’s love life was her own sordid business. But Willem was too much like a child at heart. When Georgette saw the monster come in, confront Willem, and then go upstairs with Willem in his arms, she left her vigil in a hurry and pounded on the Rembrandt door. But Willem did not come down. She hurried around back, arriving in time to see two men, hand in hand it appeared, disappear round the corner at the far end of the alley. She knew it must be them. But Pearl Serein? …The kitchen door was open. Georgette went in and rushed up the back stairs.
There was no Pearl. Had she fled from Tommi Bonneau? Was she making a run for home?
Standing baffled on Willem’s tiny terrace, it occurred: they could only be headed for the shrine-like apartment in the sky where Pearl Serein was said to live. Georgette forgot to worry about being late for her drawing group as she hurried toward the park.
From the edge of the park she could see two figures, perched on the tower beneath the moon.
And then one of the figures did a backflip straight into the sky.
Georgette Duguay was experiencing fear. Fear for Willem! She had to get up there.
But the man in the ridiculous coat who guarded the entrance to Pearl’s building was a problem. Running into the building with a breathless claim of two men in Pearl’s penthouse garden wouldn’t work. Nor would desperately trying to convince a flabby flic she might find on the street.
Georgette sweated freely as she stood on the edge of the park, fathoming her next move.
As Georgette waited, among the people she saw enter Pearl’s building were Norbert Fauré with Rose Saxe on his arm. They were key to what would follow, but Georgette did not read newspapers and had no idea who they were. The only person who really mattered to Georgette’s plan (to Georgette’s fate) was Miriam, a low-rent junkie hooker, who happened to be passing by, having just earned some cash in a private spot behind the public washrooms farther up the park. One hundred francs le pipe (blow job) was Miriam’s basic rate; about twelve euros now, depending on where the greenback stands. Whatever; it was enough to get Miriam more of what she needed and she was heading home…
The man who guarded the bridge to Pearl’s castle was also a low-rent type, despite the fancy get-up. He saw Miriam. He was a man who spent his days watching the street pass by his door and he knew exactly what she had to offer. He stepped out of his elegant foyer, caught her eye, motioned her over, had a word. Georgette observed as he led the pute around to the back of the building. To the same place, in fact, where Didi Belfort was discovered — which discovery had opened a door for Pearl Serein. Which led her to Willem. Which now brought Georgette to this moment. It’s incredible, the subtexts and synchronicities underlying a case like this. But Georgette had no idea of that either, and at the moment couldn’t care much less. The pute was none of her business. What mattered was the lobby — now unguarded.
Georgette Duguay saw her chance and went.
There were keys behind the counter. She tried them, and finally one of them worked.
Stepping out of the lift into Pearl’s domain, Georgette did not experience the quiet thrill almost every other visitor did. It was not in her nature to be impressed by high-end sound or Argentine leather. Never having come anywhere near possessing things like these, how could she be? On the rare occasions she had money to spend, she would buy herself a decent pair of wool trousers. Or a sweater from Italy. That was about the extent of a poor artist’s model’s shopping. But as she passed through the place in search of a less direct entry onto the terrace than that afforded by the salon door, she paused in Pearl’s bedroom. Georgette never read much either. She did her work, she walked, she sometimes stopped to drink pastis. But reading?…she took the book on the bedside table… Yes, it was open at the verse Willem had recited when he’d told his story of his night with Pearl Serein.
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.
Georgette Duguay’s world was limitless in the sense that a naked body is boundless and her naked body was her basic tool. And her world was compressed inside the tightest shell in the sense that, fifty years after the fact, Georgette remained obsessed with her mother — who had flown from a trestle bridge on the wings of wifely despair. This was at the core of everything. And the flying pose, to which the moody artist’s model had been turning more and more in the dark aftermath of her estranged sister’s sordid murder, was her soul’s only way of resolving her life’s choices — a puzzling figure flying away: it was all she knew, all she could see, all she could show.
The rest of life — money, library cards, people mainly, had been receding, as if down a widening whirlpool. As if into the mists of a bottomless gorge.
This Maid of Nagara, this book, this story: perhaps it might shed light.
Georgette put it in her pocket and stepped outside.
45
Tommi’s Mistakes
Judge Richand handed Inspector Nouvelle a signed mandate stating that in his opinion there was legitimate cause for a search on the place and person of Tomas Bonneau. She thanked him, she thanked them all, and went calmly but quickly out with Inspector Patrice Lebeau. Then, blue light swirling, they raced to the north end, to the home of Procureur Michel Souviron. Opening the gate, she navigated her way around two bikes, a soccer ball and a Marseilles team jersey, and three stray training shoes strewn across the paving. Where was the fourth? …Where? No time to spot it — her knock was answered almost immediately. ‘Bonsoir, Inspector.’ Stepping inside, she found herself amid more kid-created clutter, balancing out but almost overpowering the tasteful bourgeois elegance. From above she heard a mother’s voice snapping bedtime orders, a child’s complaints, a door slamming. ‘Come into the kitchen.’ She followed Michel Souviron past yet more toys lying here and there — one of those remote-control robot things with tools for hands. Asking, she was informed, ‘Some science-fiction cop. American movie.’
‘Looks like fun.’
‘It’s good for about ten minutes, then they’re on to the next thing,’ He sat, opening his briefcase on the table. She took a seat opposite, in front of a cereal bowl displaying the brightly painted image of this same robot hero, and handed over the paper from Gérard Richand. After a minute’s close perusal, Souviron said, ‘All right, I’ll sign this, but,’ brandishing his pen, ‘I’m amending it to make sure everyone knows it applies to him and him alone.’
‘Fine.’
‘You cannot go into his office — ’
She understood Michel’s concerns and helped: ‘His office on the premises of Le Cri du Matin.’
‘You cannot name Le Cri du Matin.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘I mean it.’ The proc crossed out one of the judge’s lines, put a star beside it and scribbled something to replace it at the bottom. He initialed the correction, put his name beside Gérard’s, then took out one of his own forms and filled it in. By way of closing the transaction, Michel Souviron said, ‘Gets it away from institutions.’
‘Good. I don’t want there to be any chance of their shielding him.’
; ‘Not with this.’ Handing her the papers, noting with dry Proc candor, ‘The same would apply to Néon. One man against one other man. Makes for a cleaner case, if need be.’ To make it crystal clear, he added, ‘The Republic will not take the part of Monsieur Néon if worst comes to worst.’
‘I understand. Merci, monsieur.’ Rising to leave.
‘Any news on that front?’
‘Not lately.’ Unlike certain devious old cops, Michel would not ask if he already knew. Aliette felt safe in assuming the proc was assuming Claude was safe at home — about three blocks away.
He followed her out. ‘Good luck!’ Waving. Then locking his gate for the night.
Pulling away, Patrice relayed the news: Claude had suddenly skipped out of everyone’s sight.
‘Oh, merde. When?’
‘Half an hour? No one’s sure. Went to play tennis like he’s been doing. Car’s still in the lot. Somebody saw him jump the garden fence and take off. But they did not exactly run to report it.’ Stopping at the corner, Patrice asked, ‘Which way?’
She breathed. ‘Bonneau’s.’ Whatever Claude was up to, she had to keep going.
The house at 33 Rue Pontbriand was dark but the front door was wide open. Did that have to do with a lover’s quarrel? Or something more sinister? The Westfalia van was parked in front, a dim light shone inside it. Anne-Marie was sitting in the back, dully leafing through one of her fashion mags. When she noticed Aliette peering in at her, she nodded, with no hint of surprise, and gave the latch a kick. The side panel slid open. ‘What are you reading?’
She held up the new issue of Marie-Claire. Listlessly turning a page… ‘We had a fight.’
Voila. ‘Serious?’
Anne-Marie shrugged in the hopeless blasé manner that was her life’s only shield. ‘About his bird, about you, about Willem, Pearl. Lots of things.’ The inspector nodded, neutral, in the way she was trained to. Waiting. And so? Anne-Marie finally said, ‘I’m not too good at picking them, am I? Men, I mean.’
