Talking to Ghosts (23 page)

Watching him walk away in the blinding sunshine, he envied this young man whose slight frame seemed almost to melt in the harsh light.

*

They had been driving for a while in silence.

Vilar could not get Morvan's last days out of his mind, imagining the torture, the terror and the abject despair of knowing death was inevitable while that psychopath prowled around him with his knife, thinking of new ways to inflict pain without killing him, keeping him on the brink, on that threshold where the heart still beats, where speech is still possible, the limbo that torturers the world over know how to prolong, pulling their punches, deferring their pleasure the better to enjoy it later, often with the collaboration of doctors, dishonourable rather than deranged, who live to a ripe old age and die peacefully in their beds surrounded by their families.

Vilar allowed himself to be overwhelmed by questions flooding his mind. Was the man they were looking for a skilled torturer? If so, at what

“school” had he learned his trade? Or had the need to persuade Morvan to talk been so urgent that he had used any means at his disposal? What could Morvan possibly have known that might pose such a threat?

After a moment, he slumped back in the seat and, somewhat dazed by the blast of warm air from the rolled-down window, he stared out through the windscreen at the ribbon of tarmac flashing past at 150 k.p.h., registering small changes in the landscape as they approached Bordeaux.

Pradeau dropped him outside his building, though not before trying to insist they stop off to eat at a trendy restaurant and then go hang out in some fashionable Cuban bar to check out the girls practising their salsa.

“Just to cheer us up, after all that,” he said.

“Come on, it'll take our minds off all that shit … Make a bit of a change to see living people who are a bit brainless because they think they're happy, instead of dead people who've suffered.”

Vilar almost accepted so as not to disappoint his friend or leave him to drink on his own, but he thought about the noise, the crowds, the heat and realised what he really wanted was the opposite; his head was heavy, fatigue spread through his body like a scalding liquid. He wished Pradeau good luck in not going to bed alone and said goodbye, then closed the car door and almost ran to his building.

The silence in his apartment surprised him. He stood for a moment in the doorway of the living room, dark because the blinds were drawn; he liked this neat, tidy room which contained no ornament, no superfluous object. He had settled on this spartan existence when he moved after his separation from Ana. Nothing hung on the walls, nothing sat on the few pieces of furniture. A magazine, maybe, or a newspaper left on a chair. Two racks of C.D.s next to the mini hi-fi system. The room that served as his office was exactly the opposite. There teeming confusion reigned, a private chaos in which he liked to lose himself at times.

He sighed, slipped off his jacket and hung it on the coat stand. He went into the kitchen, took a bottle of orange juice from the fridge and drank half of it, feeling a slight twinge from the cold on a sensitive tooth. His head was throbbing by now with a full-blown migraine.

He was thinking about nothing. In fact he could not manage to think about anything, his mind refused to function, filled as it was with the vision of Morvan's gaping corpse, the putrid stench of viscera still lodged in the back of his throat.

He took a cold shower, closing his eyes and leaning against the shower wall trying to control his rasping breath. He scrubbed himself with a mint-scented soap, dried himself quickly and almost
immediately felt the weight of the heat in the apartment settle on his shoulders. He swallowed a pill and drank long gulps of water directly from the tap. He pulled on a pair of shorts, decided against a T-shirt, splashed his face again with cold water. Pain throbbed in his temples and he went back into the living room to get a breath of air. He turned on the stereo as he passed and put on a C.D. Slumped on the sofa he listened as the energy of blues rock filled the room, the guitar tearing at the walls, sinking its steel claws into the carpet.

He stayed like that, half dozing, his mind blank, finally emptied of the nightmarish visions that recently had a tendency to find a home there, playing their grisly slide show. He was barely aware of this stillness, through which floated images of American highways, of horizons ringed by steep bluffs, of seedy roadhouses with an old pick-up truck parked out front and a pretty, sad girl behind the till. Every note of the music triggered some new image and he drifted into sleep as though slouched in a cinema seat.

Perhaps it was the silence that roused him from his doze. Or the rivulets of sweat tickling his skin. It was pitch black outside and he could not tell what time it was. Through the half-open window he heard the soft murmur of his neighbourhood, the distant bustle of the city. He remained absolutely still, listening to this background noise like a man in a submarine might listen intently to the sonar so he can pinpoint the enemy.

Alone, he went back to the grave. He ducked and weaved through the vineyards, making sure he was not seen. At first he circled the path of bare earth without coming close, glancing about him as though the vines or the copses of trees here and there might shed some light on this mystery. Once, he was even tempted to dig, as he bent down and touched the soil, laying a bunch of wild flowers he had collected along the way. He scratched at the earth with his fingernails, then straightened up again, overcome with terror, because he knew it was not an animal buried there. It was a child. He was convinced of it. Probably a child Rebecca's mother had had in secret; hardly surprising given the number of men she'd spread her legs for. Stillborn maybe, or worse, a screaming baby suffocated by its mother and dumped into this hole. And Rebecca would come to visit this little creature who had barely lived, who may not even have had time to open his eyes. Her little bastard brother.

The rest of the day he hung around Marilou, unable to pluck up the courage to talk to her. She pretended not to notice his little game, or perhaps she was truly oblivious: she scarcely looked at him, besides she was busy making jam with Nicole. He lurked around on his own since Julien hardly set foot outside the garage these days, though his restoration job on the moped was making very little headway as he bounded like a dwarf on springs among the confusion of engine parts, one minute excited, the next discouraged.

That evening, Victor went up to Marilou, who was lying in the hammock playing on her mobile phone.

“I know about Rebecca.”

The girl sat up quickly and turned towards him, her legs dangling over the mesh of rope. She stared at him, trying to work out how to react.

“You know about what?”

“About her little brother.”

“Her little brother?”

Marilou was rigid, leaning her weight on her arms, her eyes wide.

Victor knew he had hit a nerve. She sat on the end of the hammock, clutching the ropes, her feet on the ground. Suddenly she looked as though she were carved of wood or stone.

“Can you just stop it about Rebecca? Leave her in peace.”

“Her little brother is buried at the other end of the vineyards, where the grove of trees is,” he said. “I saw the grave.”

“What grave? Where?”

“You know what I'm talking about. You've known all along. There's flowers on it and everything, just like in a cemetery.”

“I don't know anything about it, I don't even know where you mean.”

“I'll show you.”

Marilou got to her feet and glanced back at the house.

“Is it far?”

When they got to the grave, breathless and soaked in sweat after cycling in silence without stopping through the oppressive heat of the evening, Marilou took Victor's hand, squeezed it hard and moved so close to him that he could hear her breathing and feel her warm breath on his shoulder.

“We shouldn't go too close.”

“Why not? Are you scared?”

She did not answer, but pressed herself against him.

“What does Rebecca do when she comes here?”

“I only saw her once. She knelt down and put down some flowers and then she just stayed there.”

“You think she's praying?”

They were whispering now. A sudden breeze from the estuary almost drowned out their voices.

“I don't know any prayers – if I did I'd say one,” Marilou said softly.

“To pray there has to be a god, and you don't believe in God. You'd just be talking to yourself. Actually that's what people who pray are doing, because God is just bullshit.”

“No, but I could talk to him, to the little boy there. Tell the poor thing we're thinking about him. Sometimes they like it when you say things to them.”

“He probably wouldn't even understand what you said, I mean he died when he was only a baby, he wouldn't have been able to talk or anything.”

They stood there, pressed against each other, while the wind carrying its acrid smell of mud swirled around them like a spirit. They said nothing for a moment, because they could find no words, then Marilou started to sob. When Victor asked her why she was crying, she said she was thinking about Rebecca and the baby and she cried harder, letting go of his arm and turning away, her shoulders now shaking with sobs. The boy was silent for a minute, then he said that maybe they should head back now, because Nicole would wonder where they'd been and ask awkward questions.

When they got back to their bikes, Marilou put a hand on Victor's arm.

“I have to tell you something.”

She sniffled again, wiped her eyes with the hem of her T-shirt. Victor tried to meet her gaze, but she stared back at the place from which they'd come.

“The dead boy … he's not Rebecca's brother.”

Victor felt something stab him in the back, leaving him unable to breathe.

“It's her son. She had him when she was thirteen.”

Victor shook his head. He grabbed his bike by the handlebars then let it fall back onto the grass. The bicycle bell rang faintly and he stared at the little chrome casing, unable to move.

“It was her father, he … Ever since she was little he did things to her, you know what I mean … Her mother went to the police and now he's in prison. But Rebecca told me that Grandpa Georges used to try and touch her up whenever she went to his house, so now she doesn't go anymore, but she never told anyone about it. She says she wants to kill him herself. Anyway, he's just old paedo, everyone knows that. Apparently he got in trouble when he was younger and his wife even left him because of it.”

Victor managed to find a gulp of air and could speak again.

“How d'you know all this?”

“Rebecca told me. She tells me everything. We tell each other secrets, even really private things.”

“But she didn't tell you about the grave?”

Marilou finally looked at him, her eyes still glittering with tears.

“No. She told me she got an abortion … you know what that is? She had it in Lesparre from some woman.”

Victor nodded. His mother had explained it to him once.

“She didn't come to school much that year, her mother didn't want her going, said she was too ashamed. She never really cared about school anyway … Even in primary, she used to wind up the teachers and fight with everyone. Then, the year she got pregnant, well, that's when they came and arrested Christophe, her father.”

Without thinking about it, they had sat down side by side on a bank of dry grass, and Victor was almost shocked to find himself sitting there, dazed, with a buzzing in his head that made it impossible for him to hear Marilou's soft, droning voice. They had begun to whisper again as though the wind might carry their secret all over the village, but now they said nothing, hunched over, suddenly years older.

When finally they got to their feet and picked up their bikes, Marilou grabbed Victor roughly by the neck of his polo shirt.

“If Rebecca finds out I told you, she'll kill me, O.K.? And I'll tell her you showed me the grave and she'll split your skull. She can be really cruel, you know …”

“What do you take me for? You don't talk about stuff like this, you just don't.”

“All the same, I'm glad
we
talked about it. This way, there's two of us.”

Nicole was grappling with a supplier on the telephone and Denis was not home yet, so they did not have to find an excuse for being late. Marilou went to set the table and Victor ran into Julien on the patio.

“Where were you? Fuck's sake, been looking for you all over the place.”

“We went for a ride, we felt like cycling.”

The boy laughed and gave him a wink.

“Yeah, yeah, I believe you. Just the two of you, was it?”

“Don't say anything, will you?” Victor whispered.

“No sweat! I'll even lend you my moped. I'll have it working soon.”

*

Victor had trouble finding sleep, so overwhelmed was he by the confusion of sinister and violent thoughts and images. As dawn began to break, he felt that the sadness that had haunted him for weeks was now giving way to something that welded his jaws shut and made his heart pound so hard he could feel it in the pit of his stomach. It seemed to him that such evil could not go unpunished; he did not know how, did not know whether he would be capable, but he knew he could no longer make do with being sad.

It was while talking about old Georges with Julien that the two of them decided to catch vipers. There was a tumbledown house to the north, on the road that ran along the estuary. There were thousands of them there, Julien assured him. They spent the whole morning plotting, settling all the details of their expedition. The kid prepared by practising the intense concentration of great hunters, or of warriors in a movie before a decisive battle. He wielded his forked bamboo stick, tested the bottom of an old canvas bag he had found in a cupboard in the garage. Victor surprised him, off on his own, learning to control his breathing, swelling and emptying his bony ribcage.

The smaller boy forced his way through the brambles in rubber
boots so big his skinny legs disappeared into what looked like the mouths of subterranean monsters, then he stopped and balanced on the crumbled foundations of the ramshackle house, only one wall of which was still standing among the broken beams; he bent down, hands on his knees, forked stick tucked under one arm, to peer into the dark corners, stir up a mound of gravel with his stick, looking for any vipers nesting there. Victor stood a few metres away, legs slightly apart, clutching a piece of wood, vigilant, ready to repel anything that might appear, telling Julien to be careful, feeling a cold shudder run down his back in spite of the fire falling from the incandescent sky.

Suddenly, Julien started and seemed to plunge into the rubble. He poked about for several seconds that to Victor seemed interminable. All that was visible of him now was the curve of his back, the vertebrae poking through the faded T-shirt that had probably once been red.

“Got one! Quick, gimme the bag!”

Victor crept closer and saw the snake writhing between the supple tines of the forked bamboo. About fifty centimetres long, it was coiling and uncoiling itself furiously around the stick that held it captive. It had been trapped a few centimetres below the triangular head it was struggling to lift, its mouth wide, its tongue flickering in short, quick darts. Victor bent lower and saw the vertical pupils, like those of a cat, but lifeless, cold, and he felt an urge to trample the terror this lethal gaze inspired in him. It was the first time he had seen a snake up close without being protected by a wall of glass and his whole body quivered with an almost painful tremor and he thought that this might well be the feeling caused by the poison from the bite as it circulated through a living creature before it died. He felt sweat pour from him, saturating his T-shirt, trickling down his temples. He sucked as much air as he could into his lungs, grabbed the snake just behind the head and held it at arm's length, studying it. The long, tepid body coiled about his wrist, embracing it with a sort of gentleness that made him whimper with disgust. He tightened his hand around the neck of the beast and felt beneath his fingers the firm muscles harden and move beneath the rough skin.

Julien stared at him open-mouthed. He looked terrified.

“Careful! Don't let it go! Jesus Christ, you're mad, you are.”

His voice was choked, he seemed lost, swaying in his huge rubber boots, still balanced on the rubble.

“Open the bag,” Victor said in a low voice. “Move it!”

The kid did as he was told, pulled apart the edges of the jute sack, which as soon as Victor had dropped the viper into the bottom he quickly tied again with string.

They walked away from the ruins and sat on the parched grass. Julien set the bag down in front of him and stared at it as he took off his boots and wiggled his toes, red from the friction and the heat. Inside the bag, the serpent was still moving a little.

“One should be enough,” he said, wiping sweat from his damp ankles. “Why did you do that?”

Victor did not reply. He all but turned his back and looked through the trees and the swirling, foaming waters of the river. His legs were trembling and he pressed his knees together to control the shock wave that fear still sent shuddering through him.

“Me, I never touch 'em, I kill 'em. I only touch them when they're dead,” Julien said. “One'll be enough, won't it?”

He slipped his bare feet into an oversize pair of trainers, then jumped to his feet. The thick soles, doubtless designed to break world records or make one believe this was possible, made his spindly legs look like two matchsticks planted in pieces of chewing gum. He walked back to his bike, picked up his bag.

“We should go there, while the bastard's not in.”

Once on his feet, Victor found that his legs supported him without weakening. He grabbed the sack containing the snake and hung it from the handlebars. Then they headed off, riding breathless along the road towards Artigues where the old man lived.

They leaned their bicycles against an E.D.F. substation next to a vineyard and wiped their sweaty faces on their T-shirts. They gulped warm lemonade from the flasks they had brought, finding it delicious, then decided to keep some for later because the sun was beating down,
and a heat haze drifted above the rows of vines heavy with grapes which were already ripening here and there.

From where they were, all they could see of old Georges' house was the rooftop rising above the shrubs and trees of his garden. They had encountered the old man on his moped, a rifle slung over his shoulder, a juddering trailer hitched to the back. He was heading towards the estuary wearing a faded cotton sunhat. He often went down there to hunt river rats off the fishermen's wharf with his .22, then feed them to his dogs. They walked along the narrow deserted road, its tarmac melting in pools that Julien carefully avoided because he was afraid of getting stuck.