Forgetfulness

by Ward Just

  I know that's come between us in the past.

  A job that got out of hand. A betrayal.

  That's usually the way.

  So we have to consider all the possibilities, disagreeable as they may be.

  We have to consider this. Other people have long memories and carry them around like you'd carry cards in your wallet. So this is the possibility that cannot be overlooked, someone from your past deciding to make payback. Bottom line: what happened to Florette may not be random at all. Nothing random about it, bad luck, bad weather, Florette in the wrong place at the wrong time et cetera, assaulted by persons unknown, probably smugglers. But what's to smuggle on the trail of Big Papa in St. Michel du Valcabrère? Don't you see? It all adds up. And Thomas had replied, That idea is insane, not bothering to enumerate the reasons why because the reasons why were obvious. Bernhard, offended, had said what he always said in defense of coherence, his word for conspiracy.

  Well, it's possible, isn't it?

  Coherence demanded that Florette die for Thomas's sins, the message conveyed from one place to another, the document read upside down on the interior minister's desk, the surreptitious drawing of the valet attending the Saudi banker, the seascape drawn to scale at Antibes, boats in the harbor, one boat in particular. The yachtsman bought the painting and invited Thomas on board for a drink and dinner and he stayed for a week, the vagabond artist-in-residence watching the comings and goings aboard ship. His odd jobs were like that, the small change of snooping, though Bernhard preferred the word "espionage." Look, can you do us a small favor, won't take much time, no danger involved, we'd be grateful ... And there was excitement in it, the technique similar to portraiture, slipping into an alter ego of your own making, a not-quite-authentic doppelgänger, observing closely, enjoying the performance for the most part, assured that the consequences, whatever they might be, were not momentous. Meaning: no one will get hurt. Meaning: you are not responsible. Naturally he was not fully informed but there were advantages to that, too. Meanwhile, there was nothing at all to be done about Bernhard in his search for coherence. His suggestion was monstrous but that would not keep him from full pursuit because in the world he lived in, anything and everything was possible and if you did not believe that, you were a naif who subscribed to a child's history of the world. Only chaos was inadmissible.

  Thomas stood in the chill of the evening, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. This tiny domain, a smallholding in a remote province, was what was left of his world. In his lifetime he had visited all the continents and had traveled the great oceans and seas, and he knew this place better than any of them, perhaps because there was less to know, perhaps because village life was lived on a subterranean level, life at its most personal. In any case, he had lived longer in St. Michel du Valcabrère than anywhere else in his adult life. His traveling days were ended and he had difficulty remembering how he had managed it, traveling and working, now here, now there, moving from hotels to rented studios; truly a vagabond's life, entertaining as far as it went, a life without strings. Thomas strained his eyes, squinting, and made out the wan glow of the town square. He imagined the café, crowded at this hour, its windows misted over and tearing, the villagers playing cards and the pinball machine, gossiping all the while. Surely they would have words to say about Florette's funeral, her American husband and his American friends alone in the front pew. Monsieur Railles did not move during the service. He sat with his eyes fixed on the plain pine casket yet at the same time did not appear to be engaged; no doubt his mind was elsewhere. When the service ended, his American friends had to nudge him twice. It's over, Thomas, time to go to the cemetery. It was true he had been elsewhere during the formalities, remembering the patients in his father's waiting room in LaBarre and how Bernhard Sindelar seemed to enjoy watching the hands of those who were very ill, not long for the world. Years later one of his father's patients actually did die on the examining table. She had said she was not herself, feeling tired and unusually forgetful. Why, some mornings she could barely get herself out of bed, and when she did she was out of breath. The doctor was scanning an x-ray and when, alarmed at what he saw, he turned to speak to his patient, she was gone. It took him a minute to understand what he was seeing; and when he did, and rushed to his patient's side, he was too late. Three days later they went to the funeral and the woman's husband, now widower, refused to shake the doctor's hand. Thomas, then seventeen and big for his age, had to intervene to prevent a scuffle. Sitting in the front pew of the church at St. Michel du Valcabrère, staring at his wife's coffin, Thomas remembered the awful look of grief on the widower's face and noticed also his fists lifeless at his side. His wife was dead and someone would have to own up to the responsibility because she had left for the doctor's office in perfect health and returned in a hearse. But in the end the old man only shook his head and walked away to his car, where his young children waited for him.

  Thomas watched a shooting star fall and disappear. The night was peaceful, no wind and the prospect of a bright morning. He had forgotten the day of the week. Was it Friday? Yes, Friday. Each day was associated with a specific event. Florette died on Sunday and her body was not found until early Monday and even that was a sort of miracle. One of the men had stepped off the trail to take a leak and, moving his flashlight, he had spied her through the trees, an unnatural shape in the woods, a spot of color, curled up like an animal.

  Oh God, he said, and everyone went still.

  In seconds they were all around her, staring dumbly at her body, the broken ankle and the thin line of blood frozen at her throat. Thomas forced his way through them but his arms were roughly pressed to his sides and one of the gendarmes stood in his way so that he was unable to step forward. Then Bernhard and Russ moved him away from the scene. He did not have the strength to resist, his bones turned to liquid, and so he stood passively as the men wrapped Florette in a blanket and lifted her off the slope and onto the trail. Her foot hung at a right angle off the edge of the stretcher until someone noticed and tucked it back under the blanket so that it made a tiny hill in the blue weave. Thomas did not move his eyes from the stretcher, so brilliantly illuminated by halogen flashlights as they manhandled it through the trees.

  Careful, one of them said. Careful.

  The senior gendarme came slowly back and put his hand on Thomas's arm and said how sorry he was, he had known Florette since school days. He opened his mouth to say something more but in the end said nothing and returned to his men, already commencing the descent. Thomas turned away when they were out of sight, and he immediately regretted that he had not gone with them, seen Florette down the mountain to the hospital or wherever they were taking her. He was not thinking straight. He somehow believed he should stay where she was found so that he would be available if they needed him. Russ remained with Thomas while Bernhard joined the two gendarmes examining the spot where Florette had died. Thomas shook free of Russ and stood on the perimeter of where Bernhard and the gendarmes were talking. One of them asked curtly if Bernhard was police and he said yes, he was a sort of policeman, a retired investigator familiar with violent crime, familiar enough to observe that the killers had spent some time on the slope. Probably they were wondering what to do with Florette. They were weighing assets and liabilities. Bernhard pointed out the cigarette butts, Gitanes, and pointed out that there were none in Florette's vicinity though Florette was a smoker. No doubt she had asked for a cigarette and they had refused. What does that tell you about them? Bernhard said, There were four of them, perhaps five, and they were careful, though not careful enough to dispose of the cigarette butts. There were remains of food also, something packaged. They were here for some time, worrying the problem of Florette ... The gendarme with the notebook wrote down every word. Bernhard's voice and manner commanded respect and his French was serviceable, except for his American accent.

  Thomas remained in the darkness, staring into the night, wondering where they were now. They could have foll
owed the trail south into Catalonia or north toward Toulouse and beyond, into the Dordogne. Their destination was unknown. The morning thaw had melted the snow and the bivouac had been well trampled by the boots of the gendarmes and the volunteers from the village. Thomas knew that Florette's killers would never be found, not by the authorities and most assuredly not by him. Bernhard Sindelar's "inquiries" would come to nothing, even though he was owed favors by half the security services of Europe, and these were people who routinely settled their debts. They lived by favors given and favors received—and then Thomas wondered how much he wanted to know. Was he avid for details, where they had found her and how far they had carried her? How her ankle was broken? Had she broken it in a fall or had they broken it for her? Had they spoken? Had they made her plead for her life? And what of the motive behind the killing? He supposed they were members of some despised minority, Basques or Chechens or Tamils or any one of the numerous Muslim tribes and brotherhoods. They would have souls full of grievance, over God or land or Western music or imperialism or women's provocative clothing. Nostalgia would play its insidious role—was it not true that the ancient world's greatest library was flourishing at Alexandria when the English were painting themselves blue? Perhaps none of the above. Perhaps they were psychopaths, only that and nothing more: American teenagers on the loose, killing Florette with less thought than they would give to shooting up a high school gymnasium. No, not likely. These killers were people who had been insulted and left behind, and some combination of these grievances or other grievances or just for the hell of it had taken Florette's life with a clean stroke of the knife, coup de grâce. They would have known no more of her than she of them. Probably she had asked for cigarettes and they had refused because a woman smoking tobacco was a blasphemy. Perhaps when they looked at her they saw a bourgeoise, an accomplice of the degraded ruling classes of the West. And when she looked at them? God knows what she saw. Whatever it was, she would have made a snap decision, friend or enemy with not much in between. Snap decisions were Florette's specialty and once made were rarely reversed. And what now? If Bernhard called to tell him they were dead, some preposterous shootout in a village no one ever heard of, a positive ID, he would be grateful. Fine, they're gone. Thank you, Bernhard, you're a good friend, a reliable friend, a friend who keeps his promises. But Florette was also gone. Their disappearance would not equal her disappearance. The two were not equivalent. The scales would not be in balance. However, his own heart would be a little less heavy—for a while. Grief was difficult to measure. Grief damages your faculties. Grief was not transferable. It had its own great weight and came and went like the ocean tides and in that way was uncontrollable.

  Thomas had never put much thought into vengeance. He had enemies as everyone had enemies but they had never done him serious harm. So while he got mad, he rarely got even; it was not worth the effort and was an insult to one's own integrity. Was that the attitude of a saint or an egomaniac? Thomas knew a man who had made his divorce a life's work. He believed he had been traduced by his wife and was determined to take his revenge. He intended, as he said, to screw her six ways from Sunday. Litigation, with the inevitable appeals, continued for five years. He could think of nothing else. Screwing her six ways from Sunday was his way of taming his own restless soul and when he finally achieved what he sought, that was not the end of it. The rest of his life he spent gloating, and he died, too young, still in full gloat. His honor was at stake, he said. His honor must be satisfied; and so that was his life. But Thomas thought him absurd. Vengeance might be solace for the seeker and perhaps rough justice for the sought but the object of it would remain—he supposed the word was unconsoled. Would you be consoled, chérie, to see them dead? To watch them die, hear their cries, perhaps spit on their corpses? Would your soul rest easier? Perhaps it would. To expel them from the earth would be a blessing, a civic virtue, because if they killed once they would kill again, kill without remorse or a second thought. When she looked at them she saw—strangers. Strangers certainly, no doubt speaking a tongue she did not understand. She would have been annoyed if they were not French, if their language had been some guttural Slavic or Middle Eastern speech. Eet waas 'orreeeble, Thomas, zee speech of animals. He smiled at that, heard her voice so clearly she might have been at his elbow. He saw her pout, upper lip closed over lower, her head tilted like a young girl's. She was flirting with him. Thomas was weary in his bones, his eyesight blurring and his thoughts thick as molasses.

  He turned to look at his house, ablaze with light. There was warmth inside and if he could pull himself together enough to light a fire, some cheer as well. He and Florette had always made a ceremony of Sunday lunch, a roast chicken or a leg of lamb or a cauldron of cassoulet either alone or with friends. They would sit together with a glass of wine after everyone had gone home, play dominoes, put something cheerful on the stereo, gossip about who said what and wasn't so-and-so clever, and always her complaint—it came as a partial non sequitur but that was the way with their after-lunch conversation—that Granger would not accept her invitations for a meal. She said, He is not comme il faut, your friend. I think perhaps he does not know how to enjoy himself with women. Women are a mystery to him. No, Thomas always replied, Granger just goes his own way. He is comme il faut in his own way. He is one who prefers the task of host to the task of guest. He likes to select his own bottle. When Thomas said that Granger lived a simple life of repetition, Florette said, Bah, he is selfish, that's the truth of it. She was innocent of the manner in which displaced persons got through life, their petty evasions and iron routine and the harmless lies that attended them every hour of every day. Now both Florette and Granger were gone in the space of one week. Neither would have to worry about the other. Granger always asked politely after Florette but he had no interest in prolonging the inquiry.

  Thomas stepped around the side of the house to the woodpile and selected a few sticks of oak and carried them to the doorway. He looked inside at the heavy-laden coffee table and the cold fireplace and the lunch things on the sideboard, books crowding the low shelves on either side of the hearth, his portrait of Florette in a square wooden frame above it, the portrait a profile, her chin raised in anticipation, perhaps of an afternoon puttering in the garden, dimly seen in the background of the painting. He remembered trying to enter the portrait so that he could see through her eyes, the subject viewing the artist; and he had succeeded, mostly. He drew the garden through her eyes, as she would see it, something unfinished, cubist in nature. Overhead a twelve-bulb chandelier cast a gray light. The room seemed to him in suspended animation, as if Florette had stepped away for a moment to fix her hair or pull on a cardigan against the evening chill. They habitually cleared away the glassware and the dishes after the domino game, an Italian opera turned low on the stereo. In a perfect world he would ask her now what she had thought when she came upon them on the trail. She would be disabled by her ankle, angry and in pain, cursing her bad luck, but grateful that these strangers had come by. How did they seem to you?

  And she would tell him what they looked like and what they wore, the language they spoke and whether they were comme il faut. Did they frighten her? And why did she go to the mountain alone when she and Thomas had agreed it was dangerous? But I called you, chéri, from the kitchen. I always call before I go out. I thought you heard me. Was Russ's joke really as funny as that? You were all laughing so, perhaps you didn't hear me. He watched the moon rise over Big Papa, clothing the valley in pale light, the mountain's contours brittle in the cold. In a perfect world she would now be walking up the drive, weary from her climb, though not so weary she did not have a swing to her gait, a kind of girlish lope. Her hand went up and she wiggled her fingers in greeting, giving a huge smile. All was well. She had been detained, a misunderstanding. She had tripped and if she had not caught herself in time—well, a broken ankle or worse. But the view was so lovely I could have stayed forever, and so I took my time walking down. I'm sorry to be la
te. Did you miss me? I hope you weren't worried.

  Did the boys make their train?

  Yes, he said aloud. I'm sure they did. You just missed them. They sent you their love.

  Oh, dear, she said. I wanted to say goodbye.

  They understand, he said. They were sad to go. But they were expected.

  They are not the sort of boys who miss trains, are they?

  No, they're not.

  The trains run on time and so do they.

  That's it.

  I suppose they had instructions for you.

  Of course they did, he said.

  How to live your life?

  Bernhard always knows best, he said.

  How lonely it will be here, and winter coming on.

  Yes, he said.

  And Bernhard offered his apartment?

  Bernhard the apartment, and Russ a weekend in Paris.

  Choose Paris, she said. I know you will. But not right away. Settle in. Give yourself time to adjust. I'll be watching. She turned away, suddenly in profile, her chin rising in anticipation, and laughed and laughed, her laughter so infectious he joined in at last, mockery of his hapless state.