The Mystery of Henri Pick

by David Foenkinos

  “So you think he plays less well in Paris?”

  “I didn’t say ‘less well’. It’s just different. In terms of intensity. And yes, I told him that, and he’s intrigued. You really have to know his music to its depths to sense the difference.”

  “That’s surprising. So you’re his biggest fan, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you probably know that he dedicated his last record to Marina…”

  “Of course. That’s his mother.”

  “And there was a rather enigmatic message too: ‘So that she can see me’.”

  “That’s lovely.”

  “Is it because she’s dead?”

  “No, not at all. She sometimes comes to see him. Well, to hear him anyway. She’s blind.”

  “Ah…”

  “They’re very close. He visits her almost every day.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “In a retirement home, in Montmartre. It’s called The Light. Her son got her a room with a view of the Sacré-Coeur.”

  “You said she was blind.”

  “So? Eyes are not the only way of seeing,” the small woman countered.

  Rouche looked at her and tried to smile, but he couldn’t manage it. She wanted to ask him why he was asking all these questions, but she didn’t. As the journalist had gathered all the information he was seeking, he thanked her and left.

  A few minutes later, Hugo Brücke came out and, once again, had his picture taken with his biggest fan.

  9

  The next morning, Rouche penetrated the beating heart of that building named The Light. It seemed like a symbolic name for the end of his investigation. A woman at the reception desk asked him the reason for his visit, and he explained that he wished to meet Marina Brücke.

  “Are you a relative?” the woman asked.

  “No, not exactly. I’m a friend of her husband.”

  “She’s not married.”

  “No, but she was. A long time ago. Just tell her I’m a friend of Jean-Pierre Gourvec.”

  While the woman went upstairs to see Marina, Rouche waited in the middle of a large lobby where he saw several elderly women. They waved to him as they passed. He had the impression that they did not consider him a visitor, but a newly arrived resident.

  The receptionist returned and offered to take him to Marina’s room. In the doorway, he saw Marina from behind. She was sitting at the window, which did indeed have a view of the Sacré-Coeur. The old woman swivelled her wheelchair to face her visitor.

  “Hello, madame,” said Rouche.

  “Hello, monsieur. You can put your coat on my bed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You should change it, you know.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your raincoat. It’s very old.”

  “But… how could you…?” Rouche stammered, incredulous.

  “Don’t worry, I’m just joking.”

  “Joking?”

  “Yes. Roselyne at reception always tells me something about my visitors. It’s a game we play. This time, she told me: ‘His raincoat is really old and worn.’”

  “Ah… I see. Yes. It’s a little scary, but it is funny.”

  “So you’re a friend of Jean-Pierre?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is he?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, but… he died several years ago.”

  Marina did not respond. It was as if she’d never thought about this possibility. For her, Gourvec was still in his twenties, and certainly not a man who might get old or die.

  “Why did you want to see me?” she asked.

  “Well, I don’t want to bother you, but I was hoping you might help me fill in a few blanks about his life.”

  “Why?”

  “He created a rather strange library, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about his past.”

  “You told me you were his friend.”

  “…”

  “Then again, he never did talk much. I remember lots of long silences. What did you want to know?”

  “You only stayed with him for a few weeks before returning to Paris, is that right? But you’d just married him. Nobody in Crozon knows why you left.”

  “Ah yes… I imagine they must have wondered about it. And Jean-Pierre never told anyone… that doesn’t surprise me. It’s so long ago, all of that. So, I can tell you the truth: we weren’t really a couple.”

  “Not really a couple? I don’t understand. I thought you wrote each other love letters.”

  “That’s what we told everyone. But Jean-Pierre never wrote me a single word.”

  “…”

  Rouche had imagined those impassioned letters as the ultimate proof of the book’s authorship. This news put him out, even if it didn’t necessarily change anything. Everything still pointed to Gourvec being the author.

  “Not a single letter?” he asked. “But did he write?”

  “Write what?”

  “Novels?”

  “Not as far as I remember. He loved to read, though. All the time. He would spend whole evenings with his head buried in a book. He muttered as he read. Literature was his life. I liked listening to music, but he cherished silence. That was why we were so incompatible.”

  “So that’s why you left?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Then why? And what do you mean when you say you weren’t really a couple?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you my life story. I don’t even know who you are.”

  “I’m someone who thinks that your husband wrote a novel after you separated.”

  “A novel? I don’t understand. You just asked me if Jean-Pierre wrote, when apparently you already knew the answer. This is all very confusing.”

  “That’s why I need your help—to understand.”

  Rouche pronounced these last words with intense sincerity, as he did every time he found himself at the heart of his investigation. Marina had developed an ability to hear the most private, the most real desires, and she had to admit that her visitor carried a very powerful feeling of hope within him. So she decided to tell him what she knew. And what she knew was the entire story of her life.

  10

  Marina Brücke was born in 1929 in Düsseldorf, Germany. She was raised to love her country and its chancellor. She spent the war years in a happy, golden bubble, surrounded by nannies. Her parents were hardly ever around: they were busy attending parties, travelling and dreaming. Each time they returned, Marina was ecstatic; she played with her mother and listened to her father’s advice on how to behave. Their presence was rare but precious, and every evening Marina fell asleep with the hope that her parents would give her a kiss to last her through the night. But their attitude changed drastically; they seemed suddenly anxious. When they saw their daughter now, they paid her no attention. They became irascible, violent, lost. In 1945, they decided to flee Germany, abandoning the sixteen-year-old Marina to her fate.

  In the end, she was placed in a boarding school run by French nuns; the convent was strict, but no worse than what she had known before. She quickly learnt to speak French fluently, and put all her energy into expunging all trace of her German accent. From snatches of conversation, she put together the truth about her parents, the atrocities they had committed. Hunted down and arrested, they were now in prison in a suburb of Berlin. Marina realized that she was the fruit of a love between two monsters. Worse, they had tried to stuff her head full of lies, and she felt soiled by the existence of such thoughts in her mind. She was disgusted by having been their child. Convent life gave her a chance to drown her personality in a relationship with God. She woke at dawn and worshipped a higher power, reciting the prayers she had learnt by heart. But she knew the truth: life was nothing but darkness.

  When she turned eighteen, she decided to stay at the convent. In truth, she didn’t know where else to go. She didn’t want to become a nun; she just wanted to stay there until she had found some meaning in life.
The years passed. In 1952, her parents were released, as part of the country’s reconstruction. They immediately came to see their daughter. They didn’t recognize her: she was a woman now. She didn’t recognize them: they were shadows. She didn’t listen to their regrets; she ran away—from them, and from the convent.

  Marina wanted to go to Paris, a city that the nuns had spoken about as a place of wonders, and which had always appealed to her. When she arrived, she went to the offices of a Franco-German association she’d heard about. It was a small organization that attempted to create a link between the two countries, and to offer aid. Patrick, one of the volunteers, took the young woman under his wing. He found her a job, in the cloakroom of a large restaurant. Everything went well until the boss discovered that she was German; he called her a “dirty Kraut” and fired her on the spot. Patrick tried to get the boss to apologize for his actions, which made him furious: “What about my parents? Did they apologize for what they did to my parents?” This kind of attitude was common at the time. It was only seven years since the war had ended. Living in Paris, while constantly being associated with Germany’s past, was still very complicated. But Marina couldn’t imagine going back to her homeland. So Patrick made a suggestion: “You should marry a Frenchman, and your problems will be over. You speak French without an accent. With the right papers, nobody would ever know you were foreign.” Marina agreed that this was a good idea, but she didn’t see whom she could marry; there was no man in her life; in fact, there had never been a man in her life.

  Patrick couldn’t volunteer because he was engaged to Mireille, a tall redhead who would die eight years later in a car accident. But he thought of Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre Gourvec. A Breton man he’d known when they were doing military service together. A slightly odd guy, very introverted, chronically single, an unusual man who spent his life in books—he seemed exactly the kind of person who might agree to such a proposition. He sent him a letter explaining the situation, and Gourvec took no more than ten seconds to agree. As his friend had anticipated, the temptation was just too big: marrying an unknown German woman was such a novelistic thing to do.

  The agreement was sealed. Marina would go to Crozon, they would marry, stay together for a short while, and then she would leave whenever she wanted to. They would tell anyone who asked that they had met through a lonely hearts ad; they’d fallen in love through writing to each other. To start with, Marina was worried. It seemed too good to be true; what did this man want in return? To sleep with her? To make her his maid? She was apprehensive as she travelled to the west of France. Gourvec welcomed her quite casually, and she realized immediately that her fears were unfounded. She found him charming and shy. As for him, he thought she was incredibly beautiful. He hadn’t even wondered about her appearance; he’d agreed to marry a stranger without asking for a physical description. After all, it wasn’t real; it was a marriage in name only. But he was overwhelmed by her beauty.

  She moved into his small apartment. She thought it gloomy and too full of books. The shelves looked fragile. She didn’t want to die, crushed by the collected works of Dostoyevsky, she told him. Those words made Gourvec laugh; a rare event for him. The young librarian told his two first cousins (the only family he had left) that he was going to get married. The mayor asked Jean-Pierre and Marina to say yes, and they did, playing it for laughs. But white is still a colour, and they both felt an unexpected tremor in their hearts.

  11

  The newlyweds started living together. Marina soon showed signs of boredom. Gourvec, who often ate at the Picks’ pizzeria, had noticed Madeleine’s pregnancy; he suggested that his wife help them at the restaurant, and so it was that Marina worked as a waitress for a few weeks. Like Gourvec, Pick was not a very chatty man; thankfully, Marina could talk with his wife. She quickly admitted that she was German. Madeleine was surprised—she would never have guessed from Marina’s accent—but what intrigued her most of all at the time was the bride’s joyless face; she imagined she didn’t like living in the wilds of Finistère. Her expression changed whenever she mentioned Paris, its museums, its cafés, its jazz clubs. It wasn’t difficult to guess that she would soon be gone. Yet she always spoke fondly of Gourvec, and even admitted one day: “He’s the kindest man I’ve ever met.”

  And it was true. Without being extravagant, Gourvec lavished his wife with small kindnesses. He slept on the sofa, so she could have his bedroom. He often made dinner, and tried to share his love of seafood with her. After a few days, she learnt to adore oysters, having previously thought that she couldn’t stand them. People can always change; their tastes are not fixed. Gourvec liked to watch Marina sometimes when she slept; it was one of his secrets. There was something enchanting about how childlike and innocent she looked when she was dreaming. For her part, Marina would sometimes read a book that Gourvec recommended; she wanted to join him in his world, attempting to bring a little reality to their shared life. She didn’t understand why he made no attempt to seduce her; one day, she almost asked him: “Don’t you find me attractive?”, but she didn’t. Their life together became the theatre of two opposing forces: a gradually growing attraction hindered by an impeccably respected distance.

  Even though she dreamt of returning to Paris, Marina did let herself imagine what it would be like to live in Brittany. She could stay close to this reassuring, even-tempered man. She could finally put an end to her fears, to her exhausting search for peace of mind. However, one day she announced that she would soon be leaving. He replied that it was what she’d planned to do. Marina was taken aback by this reaction, which struck her as cold and unfeeling. She would have liked him to beg her to stay a little longer. A few words can change a life. Gourvec had those words deep inside him, but he was incapable of uttering them.

  Their final evening was silent; they drank white wine and ate seafood. Between two oysters, Gourvec asked her: “What will you do in Paris?” She said she didn’t really know. She would leave the next day, but at that precise moment this was all she knew; her future was as hazy to her as a mirage in a desert. “What about you?” she asked. He told her about the library he wanted to create in Crozon. It would probably take months of work. The evening ended after this polite conversation. But before going to sleep, they hugged briefly. This was the first and last time that they ever touched each other.

  The next day, Marina left early, leaving a note on the table: “In Paris, I’ll eat oysters and think of you. Thank you for everything… Marina.”

  12

  They had loved each other, without daring to admit it. Marina waited in vain for a sign from Gourvec. The years passed and she ended up feeling completely French. Sometimes, she would add proudly: “I’m from Brittany.” She worked in fashion, was lucky enough to meet the young Yves Saint Laurent, and ruined her eyes spending hours embroidering sophisticated bustiers for designer dresses. She had a few adventures, but for ten years she didn’t have a single serious relationship; several times, she thought about going to see Gourvec, or at least writing to him, but she imagined that he probably had a girlfriend. In any case, he had never come to sign the divorce papers. How could she have imagined that Gourvec had never settled down with anyone after her departure?

  In the mid-1960s she met an Italian man in the street. Elegant and playful, he reminded her of Marcello Mastroianni. She’d just seen Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita, so she took this as a sign. Life could be sweet. Alessandro worked for a bank; its headquarters were in Milan, but it had branches in Paris too. He had to travel back and forth quite frequently. Marian liked the idea of being in an on-off relationship. For her, it was a way of gradually getting used to love. Each time he came to visit, they would go out, have fun, laugh together. He was like a prince who’d just come from his kingdom. Until the day when she discovered she was pregnant. Alessandro now had to accept his responsibilities and stay with her in France, or she could follow him to Italy. He told her that he would ask the bank to transfer him permanently to Paris, and he
seemed thrilled at the idea of having a child with her. “And I’m sure it will be a boy! My dream!” Then he’d added: “We’ll call him Hugo, after my grandfather.” At that moment, Marina thought of Gourvec: she would have to contact him to get her divorce. But Alessandro was against all conventions, and he considered marriage an outmoded institution. So she said nothing, and watched as her belly grew big and round, filled with promises.

  Alessandro’s hunch was correct: Marina brought a boy into the world. When she gave birth, Alessandro was in Milan, finalising the details of his transfer. Back then, it was customary for men not to attend the birth; he would arrive the next day, probably weighed down by gifts. But the next day, he arrived in another form altogether—a telegram. “I’m sorry. I already have a wife and two children in Milan. Never forget that I love you. A.”

  So Marina raised her son on her own—without any family, and without a husband. And with the constant feeling that people were judging her. A single mother was looked down upon at the time; whispers followed her wherever she went. But that didn’t really matter. Hugo was her courage and her strength. Their relationship was so close that it protected them from the rest of the world. A few years later, she started wearing glasses to correct her vision, but her ophthalmologist was pessimistic; tests revealed that she was gradually losing her sight, and would almost certainly end up blind. Hugo, then sixteen, thought to himself: if my mother can’t see any more, I have to exist in some other way inside her mind. That was what led him to start playing the piano; his presence would be musical.

  He practised and practised, and won first place in the entrance exam for the conservatoire, at more or less the exact moment that Marina became completely blind. As she couldn’t work anyway, she went to all her son’s rehearsals and concerts. At the start of his career, he decided to use Brücke as his stage name. It was a way of accepting who he was; this was his story, it was their story—his and his mother’s—and it belonged to them. Brücke meant “bridge” in German. Marina realized then that her existence was composed of scattered elements, without any real connection, like islands that must be bridged artificially.