The Same River Twice (54 page)

“An experiment.”

“Yes. I wanted to see if something as substantial and complete as one of those films could support a different outcome entirely and still be—still seem inevitable.”

“Seem or be?”

“Be,” he said.

There was a silence. His own answer seemed to surprise him, and, a second later, depress him utterly. But he forced himself to recover.

“What is La Peau de l’Ours?” said Odile, ratcheting up the pressure.

“It’s many things. I probably know only some of its aspects.” He’d begun to sweat. “But one
can
safely say that it is a conglomeration of criminal enterprises. The DVD operation was theirs, a relatively minor arm, I think, though very profitable. As you know, that’s how I was paying back my—”

“But only the DVDs whose endings you altered list La Peau de l’Ours as the copyright holder. On the packaging.”

“I needed a way to distinguish them from the others. I wanted to be able to track them. It was an experiment, I told you. Shit!”

“Who’s in charge of this organization? Kukushkin?”

“Yes, him.” Again he looked troubled.

“But?”

“But La Peau may be part of something much bigger, I don’t know. From time to time I’ve had hints.” He shook his head vexedly. “Only hints, though. I can’t be sure.”

Odile sighed at his performance, if that’s what it was. But of course she couldn’t tell.

Passing by, heading to the bridge, Rachel said, “We’ll be starting up the engines in just a minute. I won’t be able to engage the clutches until you’re safely off the boat, Odile, and the gangway’s back on board. Okay?”

“Sure. I’m almost done.” She turned back to Thierry. Studying him unhappily, she couldn’t shake the sense that, as witness to the killing, he now presented a new kind of risk. She swallowed hard and moved still closer to him, her face in his, his back against the rail, the river beyond, the white fog everywhere.

“Thierry, you saw what my husband did for me earlier. Of course you did, or you wouldn’t be here now. He was all set to shoot you—and believe me, he would’ve done it without a qualm—but I told him to hit the other guy instead. Do you understand?”

“Of course. As you say, I wouldn’t even—”

“And did you hear Max ask me why he should shoot that man rather than you? Did you hear him ask me anything at all?”

“No,” Thierry admitted. “Nothing.”

From the bridge, Rachel shouted down to Groot in the engine room. “Ready on starboard!”

Odile waited out the diesel lag. When the starboard engine rumbled to life, she went on with what she had to say, raising her voice just enough to be heard. “You see, Thierry, Max trusts me completely—loves me and trusts me, no questions asked. And I’m the same with him, naturally.” She shrugged. “The point is that such trust presumes responsibility on the part of the one trusted. That’s its nature.”

“Indeed. But what does that have to do with me?”

She turned and walked a short distance away. After contemplating him for several seconds, she came back and resumed her former position in front of him.

“Your status has changed,” she said. “You are now a witness to what happened on board tonight. What’s more, of the six people present at the time of the shooting, you’re the only one whose loyalties are—how to put it?—uncertain. From our point of view. So that makes you a loose end. Understand?”

Thierry’s eyes widened slightly at this suggestion. “But Odile, you don’t think … How could I possibly—I’m going to England this very moment, thanks to you, and I’m never coming back.”

She stepped away again, waving her hand back and forth in the air between them as if to disperse an unpleasant smell. “Yes, yes, I’m sure. But I have to think of Max, and of how seldom, in the long run, ‘never’ really means ‘never.’ You know?”

“Listen. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about, Odile. Why? Because absolutely nothing happened. I didn’t see anything at all. Period.”

“This is difficult,” Odile said. “To trust you or not?”

“Trust me,” Thierry answered firmly. “You have no reason not to.”

From the bridge, Rachel again cried out to Groot below. “Ready on port!”

Waiting for the diesel particles in the port engine cylinder to mix with the compressed air and ignite, Odile reflected that nothing about the human heart was as impressive as its ability to deceive itself. Such resourcefulness, so much intelligence, all in the service of … of what? It was impossible to know.

With a prolonged shudder, the port engine kicked in. Odile made up her mind.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s my signal to disembark. So I’ll say goodbye now, Thierry.”

Not without sadness, she came forward and put her palms against his chest—a final gesture of camaraderie that began to change in nature as she increased the pressure she exerted on him, pushing him back against the rail until his footing on deck became precarious.
Can this be all it takes?
she thought, her surprise tinged with disappointment.
Nothing more?
Below, the Seine flowed ceaselessly seaward.

“Odile.”

She increased the pressure.

“Odile! Please. I can’t swim.”

Looking him in the eye, she saw that it was true. For some seconds they continued to exchange stares, their faces so close they might have been about to kiss. “What a shame,” she heard herself say. “You really should wear a life jacket, then. These channel crossings can be quite brutal.”

And with that she took her hands from his chest and turned away. She heard him release the breath he’d been holding. Without looking back, saying nothing more, she left him there.

As she trotted down the gangway onto dry land, Odile found herself watching Max film. After a moment’s thought, she looked back to see what, precisely, he was recording.

And then she realized that everything had happened in this way—exactly in this way—before. And now it had happened again. She blinked.

The
Nachtvlinder
had begun to ease from its berth into the river’s main current, headed for the downstream lane on the other side of the Île Saint-Louis. In the moonlit fog, the boat grew increasingly indistinct. Moment by slender moment, it was fading away.

She blinked a second time.

Whiteness.

MAX SUBMITTED the finished film, titled
Bateau ivre
for French distribution, to Cannes the following year. It was accepted, screened, and, after quickly becoming the talk of the festival, won the Jury Prize. Rumor had it that the version shown was only one of three, each so differently edited as to constitute another film altogether. No proof of this ever surfaced, and Max, when asked about it in interviews, always dismissed the notion out of hand. But nothing was the same after that.

Isabelle H. called him personally and begged him for the female lead in his next project, regardless of what it was. She’d been going through a divorce the year before, and in retrospect saw that she’d been insane with unhappiness and ire. She hoped—in fact
knew
—he’d understand. And he did.

Eddie handled the negotiations. By mid-July, they had thirty-four million in studio backing and a crew handpicked by Max, the best people he knew in the business. Jacques, not unexpectedly, had declined the position of assistant director of photography in favor of a project of his own that, after Cannes, had quickly gathered momentum. Meanwhile, Max’s new film was set to begin principal photography in mid-August, on location in Grasse. This time there was a solid script, and though Max wasn’t sure if he’d follow it or not, Isabelle H. had promised him she’d do it however he wanted. She pronounced him to be the future of cinema and added that she, for one, had no intention of being left behind with yesterday’s hucksters and starlets. Besides, the August light around Grasse flattered everything
it touched, even in the narrow streets of the mostly working-class town itself. Perhaps, Isabelle admitted, she was still a little vain.

On the second Friday of August, Max and Odile, along with Allegra, who’d returned from New York to spend the summer in their company, were flown down to Grasse, where a renovated villa had been rented for them some distance north of town, on a steeply set parcel of land at the southern foot of the Alps. The place was flanked by two large fields of flowers—one of jasmine, the other of tuberose—cultivated for the local perfume industry. The combined scent was intoxicating, ceaseless, and a bit unreal. From the villa’s veranda, looking down toward the sea, there was an impressive panoramic view of the French Riviera and its coastal resort towns.

After their arrival, when she and Max were done unpacking, Odile said, “I think, my love, that considering my present condition I’ll allow myself a nap.” Max kissed her, asked her how she felt, then left her alone. She was three months pregnant, easily tired, and definitely to be listened to. The pregnancy had been an accident, more or less, or anyway not a conscious decision, but immediately they’d seen the rightness of it, the eerie serendipity. Given all that had happened. Given all that hadn’t.

“Well,
I’m
going for a walk,” Allegra announced just as the kitchen’s screen door shut behind her. She had lately developed an air of romantic melancholy, by turns ironic and not. It was well suited to the environs and even to the diaphanous clothes she had brought along. The year had changed her more deeply than that, though; she had grown harder or, Max sometimes thought, less expectant. As she’d predicted the previous summer, her mother had indeed married the proctologist, and Max thought it likely that his own position had been strengthened by comparison. While Allegra no longer bore him or filmmaking any discernible ill will, he knew he was still on probationary status and that things might change at any moment. Nevertheless, the respite was welcome.

Downstairs, on the villa’s stone veranda, Max found the housekeeper had laid out a pitcher of iced tea and that day’s
Nice-Matin
on a green metal table for him. With a sigh of relief, he sat down, poured himself a glass, and sipped it while gazing out over the downhill vista of fields, towns, coastline, and sea. After awhile he took off his dark glasses, leaned forward, and, for a minute or longer, considered more analytically the visible world laid out before him. Then he sat back and put his glasses on again. Isabelle H. had been right about the light, not that he had doubted her. Women who believed their faces were their fortunes took pitiless note of such matters
and were, of necessity, almost never wrong. Even though Isabelle was an actress, not just a face.

So all the platitudes were true. And everything was flux.

He and Odile hadn’t spoken once of that moon-scorched night in Paris. They had never spoken of killing Turner. They had never spoken of her affair, let alone with whom she’d had it. Nor had Thierry Colin’s name ever come up. All that was behind them now. The
Nachtvlinder
had set out, as planned. Max had filmed it, as planned. Jacques had returned from England with some essential sequences of Groot and Rachel, who, after much equivocation, had gotten married in Le Havre before proceeding to cross the channel amid unseasonably rough weather. Perhaps predictably, however, nothing had been heard firsthand from either the newlyweds or their passengers. No one knew if Rachel had seen the film, but Max was certain she’d eventually get in touch. So things had worked out, after a fashion.

As for Turner, his body had surfaced three days after his death, just as Groot had predicted. An investigation was launched, but it had never come to bear even remotely upon those aboard the
Nachtvlinder
that night, the perpetrators, witnesses, and fugitives. The big story of the day had been the escape from La Santé of three prisoners, none of whom had been apprehended, and in the public outcry over poor security at the prison, many other cases had been pushed aside or forgotten. As usual.

Pouring himself another glass of tea, Max let his thoughts turn to the new film, tentatively titled
Scentless
in a not-so-oblique reference to Grasse’s world-renowned perfume industry. The beauty of southern France was extraordinary, verging on the obscene, and he’d have to work against that to extract the most from it. No doubt he’d chosen the locale in part as an antidote to the ugly edges in
Bateau ivre
, but there was no surviving this business if you didn’t please yourself at the outset, when you still had the chance. More worrisome was the thought that now, as a prospective father of two and a contented, though watchful, husband, he was at risk of succumbing to mere happiness. All he needed to banish this troubling notion, however, was to remember Allegra’s infancy and the rigors it had entailed. Nothing, at least nothing he truly cared about, was predictable or easily contained by expectation. One might cite Odile in this regard.

She had recently announced her intention to expand her business once the baby was born, taking on a partner and turning out two carefully conceived clothing lines a year. Significant pieces of this plan eluded Max, most especially those relating to child care, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it except assume an attitude of cautious encouragement
and then embrace it fully. Which is what he would do. And in the end, what would be, would be.

Perhaps, he thought, it was he who was becoming a Buddhist.

The faint but ceaseless buzz of insects, the narcotizing scent of jasmine and tuberose, the heat of the midafternoon sun, the taste of crushed mint on his tongue, the mere thought of
Nice-Matin
—all conspired to send Max into a light doze. He dreamed, blessedly, of nothing.

When he woke, twenty minutes later, it was to the sound of gravel crunching beneath radial tires. Isabelle H. and Allegra were tooling up the villa’s semicircular driveway in a vintage sapphire-blue roadster, top down, and they were laughing like beautiful fools, actual tears streaming down their cheeks. In an effort to look directorial, he leapt to his feet, straightened his sunglasses, and put his hands firmly on his hips, as if he’d been awaiting them for some time.

“Look what I found,” said Isabelle in English, laughing and wiping the tears from her eyes as she pulled up before him. She shut off the engine. Allegra, still in the grip of hilarity, opened the passenger-side door and raced past him up the stairs and into the villa. Shortly, Odile could be heard laughing too, with no more restraint than the others.