Antoine is no longer thinking, he moves forward. Several times he loses his balance and grabs for whatever he can, almost falls, rips his shirtsleeve, but he forges on, Rémi’s head bangs against a tree with a dull thud . . . Twice, the boy’s arms get caught on thorns and Antoine has to tug them free.
Finally, after a fierce battle, he is ready to set to work.
Two metres away, beneath the thick beech trunk, is the gaping maw of the burrow. Like a cave. To reach it he has to negotiate a steep mound of earth.
Antoine gently sets the body at his feet, crouches and begins to roll it. Like a carpet.
The child’s head bumps and bangs, Antoine squeezes his eyes shut and keeps pushing. When he opens them again, he is halfway up the slope. He is frightened by the yawning crevasse, like the entrance to a furnace. The mouth of an ogre. No-one knows what is inside, whether it is deep, nor what exactly made this chasm? Antoine always assumed it had been left by another tree uprooted when the great beech fell.
There. He has made it.
Antoine does not feel reassured by this fact. Remi’s little body lies at his feet, on the edge of the crevasse, the vast beech trunk louring above them both.
Now the time has come to push him in, Antoine cannot bring himself to do it.
He clutches his head in both hands and howls in pain. Wild with grief, he leans against the fallen trunk, slides his right foot beneath the child’s hip and gently lifts it.
He turns his face towards the sky and gives a swift kick.
The body rolls slowly, at the very edge of the crevasse it seems to hesitate then, suddenly, it tips and drops away.
The last image burned onto Antoine’s memory is of Rémi’s arm, of his little hand seeming to clutch at the soil, trying to stop himself falling.
Antoine stands, rooted to the spot.
The body has disappeared. Struck by a nagging doubt, he kneels, stretches out his arm, fearfully at first, plunges it into the crevasse and gropes around.
He can feel nothing.
He gets to his feet, dazed. There is nothing now. No Rémi, nothing, everything has disappeared.
Nothing but the image of that tiny hand with its curled fingers slowly disappearing . . .
Antoine turns and, with a giant stride, mechanically steps over the brambles.
When he comes to the edge of the bank, he hurtles down the hill, he runs, he runs, he runs.
The shortest route home means having to cross the road twice. Antoine crouches in a thicket beside a bend in the road that makes it impossible to see any approaching traffic, he listens intently but can hear nothing above his pounding heart . . .
He stands, glances quickly to the left and right, then goes for it. He dashes across the road and is diving back into thick woodland just as Monsieur Kowalski’s delivery van appears.
Antoine throws himself into the ditch and freezes. The van roars past.
Antoine does not wait, he sets off again at a run. Three hundred metres from the town he pauses for a moment in a copse, but he knows he has no time to think, he must decide, and quickly. He emerges from the woods and walks on in what he hopes is a poised manner; he catches his breath.
Does he look normal? He runs his fingers through his hair. There are a few scratches on his hands, nothing too obvious, he hurriedly brushes the dirt and the twigs clinging to his shirt, his trousers . . .
He had thought he would be afraid to go home, but no, on the contrary, the boulangerie, the grocer’s, the gates of the mairie, the familiar landmarks make the nightmare seem remote, they welcome him back to everyday life.
To hide the tear in his shirtsleeve, he fumbles for the cuff and grips it in his clenched fist.
He looks down.
He has lost his wristwatch.
3
It was a diver’s watch with a black dial, a fluorescent green strap and an impressive number of functions: a tachymeter, a bezel with notches indicating time zones around the world, a stopwatch, a calculator . . . It was a big watch, much too big for Antoine’s wrist, but that was precisely what he liked about it. He had had to nag his mother for months to get permission to buy it, and even then she conceded only in exchange for a long list of additional commitments and chores and after a lengthy sermon about the concepts of thrift, necessity, futility, deferred gratification and various other notions that were obscure to him but which his mother had read about in magazine articles dealing with childhood and education.
How would he explain the sudden disappearance of the watch? Because his mother would be sure to notice and ask about it, she had an unerring eye for such things.
Should he retrace his steps? Where could he have lost it? Maybe it had fallen into the crevasse beneath the giant beech tree . . . But what if he had lost it on his way back . . .? Maybe even on the road? If it was found, might it not lead the search party straight to him? Worse still, it might be used as evidence against him.
Preoccupied by these questions, Antoine did not immediately notice the unusual commotion in the Desmedts’ garden.
A certain restiveness was agitating a group of six or seven people, most of them women: the grocer, who was scarcely ever in her shop, Madame Kernevel, Claudine, and even old Madame Antonetti – so thin she was literally fading away, who trembled as she turned her beady witch’s eyes on you and who was vicious as a stoat, to boot.
This gaggle of women hid the figure of Madame Desmedt, whose voice could be heard only faintly – a somewhat nasal drawl. She seemed to have a head cold from one end of the year to the other. “Hayfever,” she would insist knowledgeably, “I’m allergic to the dust from the sawmills. Not much I can do about it living round here, now is there . . .?” And she would let her arms fall and slap against her thighs to show what a martyr she was to her suffering.
When he saw the commotion in the garden, Antoine slowed his pace. He heard hurried footsteps behind him; it was Émilie. She was about to draw alongside him, panting and out of breath, when a voice shouted:
“There he is, there’s Antoine!”
Elbowing her way through the scrum, Madame Desmedt emerged from the garden clutching a handkerchief and ran towards him. The whole group raced after her.
“Do you know where Rémi is?” she said breathlessly.
In that split second, he knew he would not be able to lie. His throat tight, he shook his head. No . . .
“But . . .” Madame Desmedt said.
This single syllable, uttered as a strangled cry, was filled with such pain that Antoine almost burst into tears. It was only thanks to the grocer’s intervention that he managed to hold back:
“So he wasn’t with you?”
Antoine swallowed hard and looked around. His eyes fell on Émilie, frozen in her tracks watching the scene intently. He managed to say in a low voice:
“No . . .”
He was on the verge of collapse when the grocer said:
“Where did you see him last?”
He was about to say that he hadn’t see Rémi all day. The blood drained from his face and he nodded vaguely towards the garden. The clamour of chattering voices started up again.
“For God’s sake,” the grocer snapped, “the child can’t have vanished into thin air!”
“If he went through the town someone would have seen him . . .”
“Maybe, maybe not . . .”
Madame Desmedt was still staring at Antoine, but she seemed to be looking straight through him, coming to terms with what was happening. Her bottom lip trembled, her eyes were blank. Her agony was like a knife in Antoine’s heart.
He turned slowly and, without even looking at Émilie, set off towards his own house.
Before he opened his front door, he turned. Madame Desmedt looked to him like Monsieur Préville’s wife, who sometimes managed to give her home nurse the slip only to be found in the middle of the road, eyes wild, howling for her only daughter who had been dead for more than fifteen years. Next to her grief, her anguish, the blonde, fresh-faced figure
of Émilie made a terrible contrast.
As he stepped inside the house, Antoine felt a rush of relief. In the sitting room, the Christmas tree glittered and twinkled like a neon sign.
He had lied and they had believed him. But was he out of the woods?
And what about his watch . . .
His mother was not home yet, but she would not be long. He went up to his bedroom, pulled off his shirt, rolled it into a ball and stuffed it under the mattress. He pulled on a clean T-shirt as he walked over to the window and cautiously parted the curtains to watch the lumbering figure of Monsieur Desmedt coming home from the factory, heading towards the garden where the little group was still gathered. He radiated such power, such brutality, that Antoine took a step back . . . The very thought of having to face the man made his stomach churn. He suddenly felt sick. He clapped his hand over his mouth and just had time to dash to the toilet and lean over the bowl . . .
Sooner or later, they would find Rémi’s body and they would come back to question him.
He stumbled back to his bedroom, his legs gave out and he fell to his knees.
In less than an hour, maybe, if they found his wristwatch on the path, if they realised that he had lied.
A detachment of police officers would surround the house to make sure he did not escape. Three, maybe four of them would slip into the house. Armed to the teeth, they could creep up the stairs, hugging the walls, while outside an officer with a megaphone would bark orders for him to surrender, to come out with his hands up . . . There would be nothing he could do. They would clap him in handcuffs. “We know you murdered Rémi! Where did you hide the body?”
Perhaps they would cover his head with a jacket to spare him the humiliation. He would be dragged down the stairs, past his grief-stricken mother sobbing “Antoine, Antoine, Antoine . . .” Out in the street, the whole town would be waiting, there would be shouts, screams, bastard, murderer, child-killer! The gendarmes would bundle him into a police van, but just at that moment Monsieur Desmedt would loom up and whip the jacket from his head so that Antoine could see him grip the gun at his hip and fire.
Antoine felt a piercing pain in his belly, he felt a desperate urge to go back to the toilet but stayed kneeling on the bedroom floor, rooted to the spot with fear by the sound of his mother’s voice:
“Antoine, are you home?”
Quick, throw her off the scent.
He struggled to his feet and went to sit at his desk.
His mother was already standing in the doorway.
“What’s going on? What’s all the fuss over at Bernadette’s?”
He gave a feeble shrug, how would I know?
But he had talked to Madame Desmedt, he could not pretend he did not know what was happening.
“It’s Rémi . . . they’re looking for him.”
“Really? They don’t know where he is?”
This was so like his mother.
“If they’re looking for him, obviously they don’t know where he is, Maman, or they wouldn’t be looking.”
But Madame Courtin was not listening, she had stepped into the room and moved to the window. Antoine stood behind her.
More people had gathered in the garden now that Monsieur Desmedt had arrived, friends from the bar, his workmates from Weiser. Steel-grey clouds scudded across the overcast sky. In this twilight glow, the group clustered around Monsieur Desmedt looked like a baying mob. He felt a shudder run through him.
“Are you cold?” his mother said.
Antoine gave an exasperated shrug.
Down below, all eyes turned to the mayor as he strode into the garden. Madame Courtin opened the window.
“Wait up, wait up,” said Monsieur Weiser, who had a tendency to repeat himself.
He was holding an outspread hand up to Monsieur Desmedt’s chest.
“You don’t just go bothering the gendarmes like that!”
“What do you mean, ‘like that’?” roared Monsieur Desmedt. “So my missing son is nothing, as far as you’re concerned?”
“Missing, missing . . .”
“I suppose you know where he is, do you? A six-year-old boy that no-one’s seen for . . .” – he checked his watch, frowning as he made a quick calculation – “nigh on three hours. Does that not count as missing in your book?”
“Right, so where was he last seen, this child?” Monsieur Weiser said, manifestly attempting to be helpful.
“He walked his father part of the way back to his work, didn’t he, Roger?” Madame Desmedt said, her voice quavering.
Monsieur Desmedt gave a curt nod. He always came home for lunch at noon and, when he set off for work again, Rémi would usually walk a little way with him, then turn and trot back home.
“So where were you, then, when he turned back?” asked the mayor.
Monsieur Desmedt seemed not best pleased to have the owner of the factory where he worked setting himself up as judge and jury. Next thing you know he would be telling him how to raise his family. There was a barely concealed fury in his response.
“Don’t you think maybe it’s the gendarmes that should be doing this job, not you?”
He was a head taller than the mayor and had stepped closer so that he towered over him. He was speaking in a booming voice and Monsieur Weiser had to make a visible effort not to give any ground. It was an affront to his authority and his dignity. The women had retreated, the men had stepped closer, he was more or less surrounded: they were all workers, or fathers or brothers of the workers at Monsieur Weiser’s factory. This unexpected confrontation rekindled the fear of unemployment that was weighing heavily on them. It was difficult to tell whether Monsieur Desmedt’s anger stemmed from his role as Rémi’s father, or as Weiser’s employee.
Unmoved by the clash between Monsieur Desmedt and the mayor of Beauval, Madame Kernevel had decided to take the initiative, she had gone back to her house and picked up the telephone.
The arrival of the gendarmes was more than Madame Courtin could bear. She rushed outside.
Other neighbours began to appear, passers-by stopped to listen, the absent were summoned, and those who could not squeeze into the Desmedt’s garden stood gathered in the street, a milling crowd chattering and calling to each other, though their voices were low, a whispered susurration that sounded grave and anxious.
Antoine stared, spellbound, at the police van.
It often drove through the town and everyone knew the gendarmes by sight; they would call in to the café, ostentatiously order only non-alcoholic drinks and insist on paying. They would occasionally get involved in altercations, or deliver a summons; their arrival was invariably something of an event, the townspeople would wonder who it concerned and, if the van stopped nearby, would stroll over to see.
Antoine, who knew nothing about ranks, thought the senior officer looked very young. He felt curiously relieved.
The three officers parted the crowd and went into the garden.
The senior officer briefly questioned Madame Desmedt. As he listened to her answers, he took her by the arm and steered her back towards the house. Monsieur Desmedt trailed behind, turning to glower at the mayor who had tried to follow the group.
Then they disappeared. The door closed behind them.
The crowd split into various smaller groups according to their affinities: workers at the Weiser factory, neighbours who knew each other, parents of schoolchildren. No-one made a move to leave.
Antoine noticed that the atmosphere had changed. The arrival of the forces of law and order had elevated a minor occurrence to the status of an event. This was no longer an isolated incident, but something that concerned the whole town. Antoine could sense it. The low, serious voices, the anxious questions – it seemed to him, given that he was involved, that things were taking an ominous turn.
He hurriedly closed the window and raced back to the toilet. He sat on the seat, his body bent double, but nothing would come. His stomach heaved, racked by painful spasms. He braced his arms . .
. and then he heard a noise.
The pain subsided instantly, he looked up. He thought about a stag he had once seen in the woods, how he had watched it rear, turning its head from side to side, cocking its ears to hear what it could not see; sensing Antoine’s presence it had straightaway adopted the skittish, nervous demeanour of a hunted animal . . .
Antoine now realised that his mother was not alone, there was a clamour of voices, men’s voices. He stood up and, not stopping to buckle the belt of his jeans, ran back to his bedroom.
“I’ll go and get him for you,” his mother was saying, he could already hear her footsteps on the stairs.
Antoine moved as far away from the door as he could, he needed to put on a brave face, but he did not have time.
“It’s the police,” his mother said, coming into his room, “They want to talk to you.”
She did not sound worried in the slightest. Antoine thought he could detect a hint of satisfaction in her tone: her son, and therefore she, was a “person of interest”, they were being consulted, they were entitled to have a say in the matter. They were important.
“Talk to me . . .? About what?” Antoine said.
“About Rémi, of course . . . What do you think?”
Madame Courtin was almost shocked by Antoine’s questions. But both of them were caught off guard by the appearance of the gendarme.
“May I . . .?”
He stepped into the room slowly but authoritatively.
Antoine could not put an age on him, but he was younger than the officer in the garden. He looked at Antoine with a confident smile and glanced at the contents of the room, came over and knelt in front of the boy. His cheeks were impeccably shaved, his eyes bright and piercing, and his ears unnaturally big.
“Listen, Antoine, you know Rémi Desmedt, don’t you?”
Antoine swallowed hard and nodded in agreement. The gendarme’s hand reached out towards his shoulder but hovered in mid-air.
“There’s no need to be afraid, Antoine . . . I just wanted to ask when you last saw him.”
Antoine looked up, saw his mother standing in the doorway of his bedroom watching the scene with an air of satisfaction, almost of pride.
Three Days and a Life Page 3
