Theory of Remainders (35 page)

At first Roger’s acquiescence enraged the older man, but eventually it left him without anything to push against. Like a bug turned over on its back, Suardet slowed down, and when he tired of thrashing, he stopped. The two men left his office convinced they would never be welcomed back, but almost certain that Suardet wasn’t calling the authorities. Of course, Hervé would hear about it, and what action he might take was another story.

Nineteen

At the beginning of his stay Philip had sworn to be discreet, but it was hard to imagine how he might have done a worse job of making good on that promise. He and Roger were barely out of Rouen before their cell phones started ringing. Yvonne’s home number showed on the screens, but Roger warned against answering. It would be Hervé on the other end, he was sure.

As the car eased into the countryside, Roger pressed for the report. “So. What did you learn?”

Philip hesitated. The answer could go in multiple directions. “It’s hard to say,” he replied. “More word games. I’ll need to listen to the conversation again before I know if was worth it.”

This visit had also taught him something he didn’t mention now: Roger would back him up, at least in these circumstances. Wherever Roger’s story led, it was separate from that of Édouard Morin. The more he learned, the more confused Philip became.

When they arrived in Yvetot, Roger urged him to camp out at the Aubert home, where no one would think to look, but Philip refused. All his papers were at the hotel. “Besides,” he said, “what’s the worst that can happen?”

“The worst? How about the best? At the very least, Hervé will have called the police in Rouen, and Rouen will call the police in Yvetot. It could be very unpleasant.”

Philip pictured the same gangly officer arriving at his hotel room door—the one who’d brushed aside the vandalism of his car as well as the beheaded rooster dangling from his light. He wouldn’t mind having it out with that fellow.

Miraculously, though, Yvetot was quiet upon their arrival. Father Cabot was sweeping the walk in front of Saint-Pierre, shoppers had queued up at their preferred butchers and bakers, strings of teenage girls strolled arm in arm.

No police waited for them at the hotel—just Monsieur Bécot watching a soccer game in the back office. And as Philip creaked open the door to his room, he found his affairs untouched, free of feathers, blood, and body parts. Roger left to fetch sandwiches, but still no one came to his door. He wasn’t so naïve as to believe he’d gotten off scot-free. Some response would be in the works, and the longer it took, the more horrible it would be. He needed to move quickly now.

The faint recollection of an obligation nagged at the back of his mind—another task to attend to, one he was forgetting. But for now he worked at the wobbly desk in his room, playing the conversation back on the voice recorder, twice, then a third time, trying to note every detail that snagged on the barbs of his attention. In many respects, this last encounter with Morin had been the same as all the others: the bizarrely buzzing pronunciation, the pain in the mouth, the recurring questions. But Philip’s understanding of these repetitions had evolved. At the first meetings, he had taken Morin’s haughty tone as a sign of indifference or insensitivity. Then it came across as a kind of fearlessness. Even an invitation to violence. However, if Édouard suffered from crushing guilt, why would he need someone else to punish him? He was smart enough. The hospital might use blunt utensils, might not hand out shoelaces, but Morin could have found a way.

He tipped back on his chair and studied the clouds through his open window. A mottled one in the shape of a rabbit slid into view.

I’m doing my best
, Morin had said.
I’ve been telling you all along
. Should such a statement be taken at face value, or was Morin playing more games? Toward the end, when Philip had threatened to leave, real urgency had tinged Morin’s words. But even after the jumble of painfully expressed phrases, he’d denied having told him anything at all:
I have said everything I have to say—which is perfectly nothing
.

That perfect nothingness amounted to six phrases, which Philip transcribed one after the other on a page of the blue diary:

The kernel of our grief.

I am the boy of my father.

The apple fell near the tree.

A king gave law by an oak.

We each carry a burden.

The Calvary, a likely mount.

They read like aphorisms. And each one had made Édouard wince with its telling, as though from the pain in his tongue. What made these phrases so important? Certain themes resonated with other topics dear to Édouard: his father, of course, but also religion and grief. And under it all, wasn’t there the same preoccupation with
evenness
, each phrase pairing two elements—kernels and grief, kings and oaks, apples and trees? The images struck out in different directions, but they were also connected, different articulations of similar ideas. It was the logic of this sameness that he would need to understand.

His cell phone rang. This time it was Yvonne, calling from the university. Hervé was furious, she said, had flown off the handle when he heard about the stunt at the hospital, had stormed about the house. He’d even accused her of being involved.

But that wasn’t her main concern. “What did you find out?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. I’m working on it.”

“And where are you? Hervé says the police haven’t been able to find you.”

Philip looked about the room as though something might have changed to cloak his presence. Everything was in its place: the ratty curtains, the gaping armoire, the grim mini-bar. He’d not gone invisible. “I wasn’t even aware I was hiding,” he replied. In fact, the hotel had been oddly quiet.

He promised to call her as soon as he knew anything more, and after a silence meant to sound tender, he signed off. He thought of Margaux. She was the one he was working to help now.

This reminded him of his other task: Linda was supposed to reach Melanie, and she should have contacted him with the details for their next session. He sent another text message to Boston.

At his desk he focused on the accumulation of notes in the pages of the blue diary. Somewhere in this book lay what he needed to know. How, though, was one to recognize it? A phrase like
I am the boy of my father
was of sound logic at the same time that it revealed nothing. After all, every son is the boy of his father. And yet, by stating the obvious in slightly unusual terms, Morin had conferred upon it an air of mystery.

Perhaps Morin’s aphorisms were distractions from more important messages that were not even verbal—such as the grimace that occasionally rippled across his face as he spoke, reminiscent of the tortured look captured by the newspaper photographs in 1993. These expressions might be nothing more than the sign of his own distress, the slipping of the mask of his composure, or even the result of the pain in his mouth. But perhaps they were flashes of guilt, synchronized with particular words.

Roger showed up with sandwiches. “This town,” he cried. “Finding lunch in the mid-afternoon is akin to an Olympic feat.”

“I spoke with Yvonne,” he said, halting Roger in his tracks. “Hervé called the police, but no one has come knocking. How do you explain that? I thought they’d be delighted to run me out of town.”

Roger fluttered his hands. “The authorities work in mysterious ways. Perhaps we have not yet reached the critical moment.” He settled into the musty armchair, his feet up on the bed.

Philip studied him. Never had he understood so clearly how much trust was a function of necessity. Yesterday at this hour he’d been questioning Roger’s motives, his very character. Although not a single one of his questions about his brother-in-law had been answered, he now saw those doubts as luxuries to be indulged at another time.

He showed Roger what he knew, replaying the latest conversation on the recorder as he walked through his notes. They both were drawn to the six cryptic phrases at the end. Morin claimed to have said nothing, but he’d taken a great deal of care in saying it.

So they debated the function of these pronouncements, wondering whether they offered anything more than a simulacrum of meaning. It was possible for utterances to point in two directions at once, Philip insisted, and Morin’s own diversions provided a fair illustration: Sorquainville, Malamare, and Adonville had led to Sophie at the same time they pointed away from her, like a form of misdirection.

Such doubleness was part and parcel of Morin’s language.
I am eager to help you
, he had said, only to contradict himself in the next breath:
I have said everything I have to say, which is perfectly nothing
. How could both of these statements be true?

Roger sputtered with exasperation. “It reminds me of learning my catechism as a child. The less you understood, the more important it was supposed to be!”

The deliberate obscurity of the wording made the phrases heavy and dense. Moreover, they felt linked. What was a kernel if not a kind of seed—or a seed if not a kind of son? And then came the idea of the apple falling from the tree—sons tumbling from fathers—which led in turn to the phrase about a king giving law by an oak.

“Yes,” Roger mused. “That’s a royal image, and a saintly one at that.”

Philip paused. “Saintly? How so?”

Didn’t Philip know? Roger rubbed his hands together, delighting in American ignorance. The reference was common knowledge to every schoolboy in the country: it was Saint Louis, one of the kings of France, doling out justice at the foot of an oak tree.

“And what was he sainted for?” Philip asked.

Roger shrugged. “What were any of them sainted for? Some terribly virtuous act, I’m sure—tagging along on crusades or burning heretics at the stake. Or, more likely, he produced a fortune for the pope. You know, the standard ways.”

They examined the rest of the phrases in this light.
We each carry a burden
clearly evoked crosses to bear. The reference to the Calvary—“a likely mount”—suggested both innocence and sacrifice.

“It’s all tipping in the direction of religion,” Philip summarized. “Another of his obsessions.”

Roger pulled back as if from something abhorrent. “I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise. Many years ago I served as an altar boy—pressed into service by my mother until I managed to get myself drummed out of the corps.”

Philip put down his pen. “We need help.”

Roger puckered his lips. “I hate to say this, but where does one usually turn for questions pertaining to salvation?”

Philip ran his hand through his beard. “You’re not suggesting . . . ?”

“I’m afraid so. And I’d urge that we speak to him before lunch, as he’s much less attentive after he’s had a glass or two.”

At Saint-Pierre they marched through the barrel-shaped building and crossed the altar to the sacristy. No one answered their knocks at the locked door. Roger’s voice echoed as he called out for Father Cabot from behind the lectern. They checked the confessionals and side chapels. While Roger clomped down the stairs to peek into the meeting rooms in the basement, Philip waited above, standing in the middle of the nave.

This modern building was too fresh, contained too little knowledge of suffering to be of any use to him. No, Philip preferred the old churches—those that Yvonne had taught him to love. The ones with bodies buried under the slabs of the nave, names chiseled in the walls of the apse, and actual relics in the crypt. It wasn’t so much religion he yearned for. It was history.

He studied the windows: Mary, Joan of Arc, Saint Peter, Saint Valery, Saint Wandrille, Saint Remi, Saint Audoin. It seemed that every saint in the book had made it here. Except for Saint Louis.

Roger came back up, shaking his head. “Off on some mission of mercy, no doubt. Or else home with his feet up. I doubt that man has ever been accused of working too hard. When France went to a shorter workweek, I don’t think it dipped low enough to affect the priesthood.”