‘Hello, Frank. Don’t feel you have to open the door for me.’ Helena got into the car and raised her face to Frank, still standing at the open door.
‘I’m not just being polite.’ Frank nodded towards the front of the Mégane. ‘This is a French car. Without a certain savoir faire, it refuses to start.’
Helena seemed to appreciate his attempt at levity and laughed. ‘You surprise me, Mr Ottobre. Men with a sense of humour are an endangered species.’ Frank thought her smile more precious than any jewel. So close to it, he suddenly felt alone and disarmed.
As he started the engine, he wondered how long that kind of banter would last before they came to the real reason for their meeting. He also wondered which of them would have the courage to bring it up first.
He glanced at Helena’s profile, a blend of light and darkness in the early evening. She turned and they exchanged a look. The attempt at cheerfulness disappeared from her eyes and the sadness returned. And Frank realized that she would be the one to press the START button.
‘I know your story, Frank. My father forced it on me. I have to know everything he knows, just like I have to be everything he is. I’m sorry. I feel like an intruder in your life and it’s not a pleasant feeling.’ Frank thought of the popular belief that men are hunters and woman their prey. With Helena Parker, the roles were somehow reversed.
‘The only thing I can give you in exchange is my own story. There is no other justification for the fact that I am with you and that I represent a series of questions for which you cannot find the answers.’
Frank listened to Helena’s voice and drove slowly, following the flow of traffic as they rode down from Roquebrune towards Menton. Life buzzed all around them. Bright lights. Normal people walking along the bright stretch of coast in search of frivolous amusement, whose only motivation was the perhaps futile pleasure of the search itself.
There are no treasures, no islands, no maps. Only their illusion, so long as it lasts. And sometimes the end of the illusion is a voice that murmurs two simple words: I kill . . .
Without realizing what he was doing, Frank put out his hand to turn off the radio, as though he feared an unnatural voice would call him back to reality. The light music in the background fell silent.
‘The fact that you know my story doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the story itself. I hope yours is better.’
‘How can you compare the misery of two people?’ Helena’s voice was suddenly very gentle. It was the voice of a woman in the midst of turmoil who sought peace and offered it in return. ‘What was your wife like?’
Frank was surprised at the spontaneity of her question. And by his own straightforward answer.
‘I don’t know what she was like. She was two people at the same time, like all of us. I could tell you how I saw her, but that’s useless now.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Harriet.’
Helena absorbed it like an old friend. ‘Harriet. I feel like I know a great deal about her, although I never met her. You’re probably wondering why I’m so presumptuous.’ There was a short pause, and then Helena’s voice again, full of bitterness. ‘A fragile woman can always recognize another.’
Helena looked out of the window. Her words were a journey that was coming to its destination.
‘My sister, Arianna, was the stronger one. She understood it all and she left – she fled our father’s madness. Or maybe she just wasn’t interested enough to lock herself in the same prison. I couldn’t escape.’
‘Because of your son?’
Helena hid her head in her hands. Her voice was muffled by her fingers, covering her face in a tiny prison of grief.
‘He’s not my son.’
‘He’s not your son?’
‘No, he’s my brother.’
‘Your brother? But you said—’
‘I told you that Stuart was my son,’ Helena said, looking up. Nobody could bear all that pain without dying, without having died long ago. ‘He is. But he’s also my brother.’
As Frank held his breath and tried to understand, Helena burst into tears. Her voice was a whisper, but in the tiny space of the car it sounded like a scream of liberation held in for far too long.
‘Damn you. Damn you to hell, Nathan Parker. May you burn for a million years!’
Frank pulled in to a parking spot beside the road. He turned off the engine, leaving the lights on.
He turned to Helena. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the woman slid into his embrace to find protection: the fabric of his jacket for her tear-streaked face, his hand to stroke the hair that had hidden a face full of shame for so long. They stayed that way for what seemed an eternity.
A thousand images flew through his mind. A thousand stories of a thousand lives, mixing real with imaginary, the present with the past, the true with the plausible, light with dark, the sweet scent of flowers with the stench of rotting earth.
He saw himself in his parents’ home. He saw Nathan Parker’s hand as it stretched out to his daughter. Harriet’s tears with a dagger raised over a man tied to a chair. The flash of a blade in his nostril and the blue-eyed gaze of an innocent ten-year-old boy living among depraved beasts.
The blinding light of hate in Frank’s mind slowly became a silent scream that smashed to pieces all the mirrors where human evil could be reflected, all the walls that could hide it, all the closed doors where the fists of those seeking desperately to escape their torture pounded in vain.
Helena wanted only to forget. And that was exactly what Frank needed. Right there in that car parked next to the empty road. In that embrace. In the meaning of that encounter, which he had needed for so long and which had come, finally.
Frank couldn’t tell who withdrew first. When their eyes met again, they both knew with the same incredulity that something important had happened. They kissed, and in that first kiss their lips joined in trepidation, not love. The fear that it was only desperation disguised as love, that loneliness had led to these words, that nothing was as it seemed.
They had to kiss again and keep kissing before they could believe it. And the suspicion became a tiny hope, for neither of them could yet afford the luxury of certainty.
Afterwards, they looked at each other, breathless. Helena recovered first, caressing his face.
‘Say something silly. Something silly and alive.’
‘I think we lost our table reservation.’
Helena embraced him again and Frank listened as her giggles of relief were lost in tiny tremors against his neck.
‘I’m ashamed of myself, Frank Ottobre, but I can only think well of you. Turn this car around and go back to my house. There’s food and wine in the fridge. I can’t share you with the rest of the world. Not tonight.’
Frank started the car and drove back along the same road. When had this happened? Maybe an hour or maybe a lifetime ago. He had lost his sense of time. But there was one thing he was sure of. If he had seen General Nathan Parker at that moment, he would have killed him.
EIGHTH CARNIVAL
Hidden in his secret place, the man is lying on the bed. He has drifted off to sleep with the gratifying sensation of a boat going back out to sea. His breath is calm and peaceful, barely audible, the sheet rising only enough to show that he is alive, that the white fabric thrown over him is a blanket and not a shroud.
Beside him, equally motionless, the wizened corpse lies in its glass coffin. He is wearing Gregor Yatzimin’s face with what seems like pride. This time the removal was a masterpiece. Instead of a mask, it looks like the mummified skull’s real face.
The man lying on the bed is asleep and dreaming. Indecipherable images agitate his sleep, although the figures that his mind attempts to disentangle never manage to disturb the perfect immobility of his body.
First, there is darkness. Now a dirt road with a construction site at its end appears in the soft light of a full moon. It is a hot summer night. Step by step, the man approaches
the outline of a large house barely visible in the shadows, calling to him with the familiar scent of lavender. The man feels the crunch of gravel beneath his bare feet. He wants to move forward but at the same time he is afraid.
The man notices the muffled sound of heavy breathing; his anxiety eases and evaporates when he realizes that the breathing is his own. Now he is quiet. He is in the courtyard of the house, where a stone chimney rises up from the roof like a finger pointing at the moon. The house is wrapped in a silence that feels like an invitation.
Suddenly the house dissolves and he is inside, climbing a flight of stairs. He raises his head towards the dim light from above. A light shines from the landing at the top of the stairs, casting shadows into the stairwell. A human figure is outlined clearly against the light.
The man feels his fear return like a collar that is too tight, but he continues his slow ascent in spite of it. As he climbs reluctantly, he wonders who is waiting at the top, and realizes that he is terrified to find out.
A step. Another. The creaking of wood beneath his feet can be heard, along with his breathing, heavy again. His hand on the wooden banister is slowly illuminated by the light from above.
As he is about to climb the last flight, the figure turns and goes out the door where the light is coming from, leaving him alone on the stairs.
The man climbs the last steps. There is an open door before him, with bright, flickering light pouring out. He slowly comes to the threshold and crosses it, bathed in the light, which is also noise.
There is a man standing in the centre of the room. His body is naked, graceful and athletic, but his face is deformed. It is as though an octopus had wrapped itself around his head, erasing his features. Two pale eyes bulge from the monstrous tangle of fleshy growth and observe him pleadingly, begging for his pity. The unhappy creature is crying.
‘Whoareyou?’
He doesn’t recognize the voice as his own. But it cannot be that of the deformed man before him, because he has no mouth.
‘Who are you?’ repeats the voice, and it sounds as if it is coming from every corner of the room, from the blinding light that surrounds them.
Now the man knows, but is loath to know. He sees, but is unwilling to see.
The figure extends its arms to him. He transmits real terror, although his eyes continue to seek the pity of the man facing him, just as they sought the pity of the world, in vain. And suddenly the light turns to fire. High roaring flames devouring everything in their path, fire straight from hell that has come to purify the earth.
He wakes without a start, merely opening his eyes and substituting darkness for the glare of the flames. His hand reaches for the lamp on the bedside table. He turns it on and a dim light spreads through the bare room.
The voice comes at once. Since they are forever at rest, the dead never sleep.
What’s wrong, Vibo, can’t you sleep?
‘No, Paso. I’ve slept enough for now. These days I have a lot to do. I’ll have time to rest afterwards.’
He did not add the rest of his thought: when it’s all over.
The man has no illusions. He knows that the end will come, sooner or later. Every human endeavour has an end, just as it had a beginning. But for now, everything is still open and he cannot deny the corpse in the coffin the sensation of a new face, and himself the satisfaction of a promise kept.
There was a broken hourglass in the fog of his sleep, time buried in the sand that spread through his memory. Here, in real time, the hourglass continues to turn on its axis and no one will ever break it. Illusions would be shattered, as they always are, but not that unbreakable hourglass. It will go on forever, even when there is no one left to contemplate the time it marks.
The man feels that the hour has come. He gets out of bed and begins to dress.
What are you doing?
‘I have to go out.’
Will you belong?
‘I don’t know. All day, probably. And maybe tomorrow.’
Don’t make me worry, Vibo. You know I’m anxious when you’re not here.
The man goes to the crystal cabinet and smiles affectionately at the mummy inside.
‘I’ll leave the light on. Do you like your present?’
He reaches for the mirror and holds it over the face in the coffin so that it can see its reflection. ‘Look . . .’
Oh, it’s magnificent. Is that me? Vibo, I’m gorgeous! Even more handsome than before!
‘Of course you are, Paso. And it will get better and better.’ There is a moment of silence, a silence of inner emotion that cannot be expressed.
‘I have to go now, Paso. It’s very important.’
The man turns his back on the body and goes to the door. As he leaves, he repeats, perhaps only to himself: ‘Yes, it is very important.’
And the hunt begins again.
FORTY
Nicolas Hulot took a right at the sign for the exit to Aix-en-Provence. He drove slowly down the sliproad, behind an articulated lorry with Spanish plates and TRANSPORTES FERNÁNDEZ written on the side. The truck pulled over in the layby and the inspector passed by and stopped in front of the information booth. He pulled the map of the city from the glove compartment and opened it across the steering wheel.
Hulot checked the map where he had already marked Cours Mirabeau the night before. All told, the city was not very complicated and the street he was looking for was right in the centre.
He restarted the Peugeot and continued driving. He reached a roundabout and followed the signs that said CENTRE VILLE. As he drove along the hilly road with regularly placed speed bumps, Hulot noticed that the city was clean and active. The streets were full of people, mostly young people, and he remembered that Aix was a university town and that there was also a spa going back to Roman times. That explained why there were more than the usual summer tourists milling around.
He made a few wrong turns, passing several times in front of a row of hotels and restaurants. Finally, he found Place du Général de Gaulle, the beginning of Cours Mirabeau. He put money in the parking meter and stood for an instant, admiring the large fountain in the middle of the plaza. A sign bore its official name, FONTAINE DE LA ROTONDE. As always, the sound of the falling water made him want to pee.
He walked over to Cours Mirabeau looking for a cafe, thinking it was funny how a full bladder could make you want a cup of coffee.
He crossed the avenue where there was construction and repaving going on. A worker in a yellow helmet was talking to the site manager about some missing materials, insisting that he was not responsible, that it was the fault of a certain Engineer Dufour. Under a plane tree typical of Provence, two alley cats were eyeing each other with stiffened tails, deciding whether they should start a fight or opt for a tactical retreat to save their dignity. Hulot decided that he was the darker cat and the other one was Roncaille. Leaving the animals to their battle, he went inside and ordered a café au lait then went to the bathroom.
The coffee was waiting for him when he got back. As he unwrapped two cubes of sugar, he called the waiter over, a young man who was chatting with two girls drinking white wine at a nearby table.
‘Could you give me some information, please?’
‘Sure, I’ll try.’ If the young man had been reluctant to leave the two girls, he didn’t show it.
‘Do you know if there is, or was, a record shop called Disque à Risque here on Cours Mirabeau?’
‘I don’t think I ever heard that name, but I haven’t been in Aix very long,’ said the young man, who had short fair hair and a thin, pale, pimply face. ‘I’m a student at the university,’ he added. The boy obviously wanted people to know that he wasn’t planning on being a waiter for ever, but that sooner or later he would fulfil much loftier goals. ‘But there’s a news-stand further up on this side of the street. Tattoo might seem a little strange, but he’s been there for forty years and he can tell you anything you want to know about this town.’
Hulot thanked h
im with a nod and started drinking his coffee. The boy felt dismissed and went back to his interrupted conversation. Hulot paid and left the change on the marble counter. When he went out, he saw that the Hulot-cat was no longer there and the Roncaille-cat was sitting peacefully under the plane tree, watching the world go by.
He walked down the shady avenue paved with large stone slabs and lined by tall plane trees on either side. There was an endless series of cafes, shops and booksellers.
A hundred yards further down, he found Tattoo’s news-stand, the one the waiter had told him about, next to a shop selling antiquarian books. On the street, two men were playing chess at a table, sitting on folding chairs in front of the open door of the bookshop.
Hulot went over to the news-stand and spoke to the man inside, surrounded by magazines, books and comics. He was around seventy, with deep-set eyes and unkempt hair, and looked as though he’d been dragged off the set of a John Ford western.
‘Good morning. Are you Tattoo?’
‘That’s me. What can I do for you?’
Nicolas noticed that he had a couple of teeth missing. His voice was in keeping with his appearance. He had it all – a shame that he was stuck in a news-stand in Aix-en-Provence instead of on a Wells Fargo stagecoach heading towards Tombstone.
‘I need some information. I’m looking for a record shop called Disque à Risque.’
‘You’re a few years too late. Not there any more.’
Hulot barely restrained a grimace of irritation. Tattoo lit a Gauloise and immediately started coughing. Judging from his convulsive hack, his battle with cigarettes had been going on for quite some time. It was clear who the eventual winner would be, but for the moment the man was sticking it out. He waved towards the street.