Fatale

9

On the day of her return, Aimée slept for a good many hours. Eventually she picked up the newspaper she had bought the day before, cut out the article concerning the death of Roucart, and filed it along with other clippings referring to other deaths: a factory owner in Bordeaux, five months earlier, asphyxiated on account of a faulty heater; a Parisian doctor drowned at La Baule in the early summer; and several more. Aimée used the remainder of the newspaper to line the kitchen trash can. That evening she ate no dinner. Using a little machine, she made copies of twenty or so keys that she had taken from the Bléville station luggage lockers. This was the second time she had copied keys in Bléville. By the time she finished, around ten o’clock, she had duplicates of keys to all the station’s self-service luggage lockers.

“One of your neighbors has complained, Madame,” said the girl at the reception desk the next morning as she was leaving. “Last night late, there was an electrical sound coming from your room.”

“An electrical sound? Ah, yes,” replied Aimée. “My hair dryer. It won’t happen again.”

“I am so glad you were able to come,” said Lindquist later that day, in midafternoon. “But this is nothing really special. Just wait till summer, when I get you acquainted with our village festivals!”

Aimée nodded her head as though intrigued. Unusually, it was sunny and dry. The sea air was fresh and bracing, but people were well wrapped up, wearing scarves. In front of a main house two long tables with white tablecloths had been set up and laden with masses of hors d’oeuvres, cold cuts, and pastries, as well as a good many corked liter bottles of cider. The guests strolled on pastureland planted with apple trees. Variegated cattle could be seen in the distance. Once again Bléville’s elite were assembled. The occasion was the baptism of a new addition to a filthy-rich family of graziers. Aimée had not been invited, but Lindquist had taken it upon himself to bring her.

“There is an especially beguiling game they play,” the realtor was saying. “Young girls from the region, pretty ones preferably, are put in a paddock and blindfolded. Then a greased piglet is released among them. The girls are supposed to catch it if they can. But of course it’s very hard with the slippery animal. The little pig squeals, and the little girls squeal too. It’s quite captivating.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“And speaking of piglets,” Lindquist exclaimed, “just look at that one!” He pointed to a six- or eight-month-old mite in a countrywoman’s lap.

The woman was forcing baby food into the mouth of the red-faced tot. The tot was shrieking at the top of its lungs and struggling. Suddenly it burped loudly and threw up everything it had swallowed.

“You disgusting little brat!” cried the woman furiously.

“Not to mention the egg-and-spoon race,” Lindquist was saying now. “And the belote tournaments! For sheer entertainment you can’t beat it!”

“I can hardly wait, dear Maître Lindquist,” replied Aimée, who was watching Sinistrat and Mme Lenverguez slipping away towards the barns on the far side of the crowd.

By this time the baby was dead, though its mother had not yet noticed the fact. Mme Lenverguez and Sinistrat disappeared. Lindquist and Aimée went on chatting for a few minutes, bumping into and greeting the Tobies, the Moutets, and various other guests. Sinistrat’s wife was sitting on a chair with her back to the wall of the main house and rubbing her ear morosely. All of a sudden, from the middle of the pasture, the countrywoman whose baby had vomited set up a mad, endless wailing and began beating herself about the head with her fists.

A great deal of commotion and shouting ensued. Some people crowded around the dead baby and the wailing mother. Others drew away as quickly as they could, vociferating, falling over their feet, waving their arms, and shaking their heads. Cries for help went up: “Sinistrat!” “Doctor!” After a moment Sinistrat arrived from the direction of the barns and pushed his way through the people. Aimée noticed that he had misbuttoned his fly. He undid the clothing of the tiny corpse, sounded the chest, and attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he could not revive the child.

“He’s dead,” declared Sinistrat.

The mother’s cries redoubled. She had to be pacified. All the groups of guests had broken up. People were banging into one another. Between two shoulders Aimée caught a brief glimpse of the dead baby’s red face. She immediately experienced a violent stomach cramp and her teeth began to chatter.

“I want-I want to leave,” she said to Lindquist.

The realtor looked at her impatiently, not understanding and making no reply. Aimée walked around him and crossed the orchard on the diagonal. She ran into Sonia Lorque, who tried to take her arm. Aimée stamped her foot on the grass, pulled free of the blonde-haired woman, and hastened towards the end of the paddock. The cries of the mother had ceased after an injection from Sinistrat. Behind the tables with their tablecloths and unopened bottles, women in gaily colored clothes were all weeping. As she went through the open gate, Aimée was striding firmly, almost running.

She covered a kilometer before fully collecting herself. She was still trembling a little. She looked out for a roadside distance marker. The sky was clouding over. After a while she found what she was seeking: a stone marked BLÉVILLE 3.5 KM. She kept on walking, rubbing her arms. She was wearing a flower-patterned silk dress that came down to just below the knee and a white wool jacket with her shoulder bag slung across her chest. It began to rain, just a little at first but then heavily. In a few minutes the young woman was soaked and her curls all gone. An ancient black Renault 4CV came along, its wings dented and dappled with dull orange paint. The car braked, and water sprayed across the crumbling roadway. At the wheel was Baron Jules. He opened the door and signaled to Aimée to come over. She did so without thinking about it. The man got out of the 4CV and went around to open the front passenger door. He held it open as Aimée stood immobile.

“I won’t eat you,” said the baron.

Aimée got into the car. In the confined interior she was obliged to pull her knees up high, exposing them. She pulled at her dress to cover them once more. Baron Jules was back behind the wheel. The 4CV set off again.

“The baby died,” said Aimée.

“What’s that you say?”

“A baby died. Not the one being baptized. Another baby. Belonging to a peasant woman. He vomited and then died.”

“Calm yourself,” said Baron Jules. “Take deep breaths.”

He speeded up while on the highway, then slowed and turned into a narrow, graveled minor road running straight across fields of stubble. The suspension of the 4CV was very poor and its wiper blades very worn. Through the rain clusters of trees and an oddly spiral church steeple could be vaguely discerned. They reached a hamlet. Baron Jules braked and drove the 4CV through a white double gate, which was open, and down a broad drive. The whitewash on the gate was flaking badly. Beyond lay a very large garden and a kind of manor, a tiny manor burdened down with Lilliputian pepper-pot and pinnacle turrets. The garden had once been in the French manner but had clearly not been kept up for many years. With a squealing of tires on gravel, the 4CV drew up before a double staircase flanked by a pebble-dash balustrade.

“I want to go home,” said Aimée. She shook herself. “I don’t feel well. Take me back into town.”

“You’ve had a shock,” said Baron Jules. “You need to drink something. You need to dry off. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

The man got out of the car and went up the steps. Aimée got out too and followed him. They passed through a dim hall and entered a vast, very cluttered room with bow windows giving onto both the front and the rear of the residence.

“I have some calvados, and I must have the rest of a bottle of fairly decent scotch,” said the baron. “And perhaps you would like some tea?” Aimée nodded. “I’ll make tea. And let me find some towels so you can rub yourself down.”

The man left through a small white door. Aimée took a few hesitant steps in the enormous room, which must have measured at least sixty or eighty square meters. It was crowded with sideboards, tables, cupboards, seats, sofas, knickknacks, and large cardboard boxes bearing such legends as BLACK AND WHITE and HÉNAFF LUNCHEON MEAT-JACK TAR’S TREAT. The pale paint on the walls and the plaster on the ceiling were all scaling off. The ceiling bore dirty brown circles above the shaded lamps. The furniture was thick with dust, and old breadcrumbs lay on the filth-ingrained Persian carpets. The baron returned carrying a tray laden with glasses and bottles. Slung over one shoulder was a hand towel with the logo of the SNCF, the French National Railways. He set the tray down and tendered the towel to Aimée. As the young woman rubbed her head he poured spirits from a crystal decanter into glasses bearing Mobil and Martini logos.

“When I break this decanter of mine,” he said, “I’ll replace it with one with advertising on it.” He held out one of the glasses to Aimée, who reached for it with one hand as she continued toweling her hair with the other. “I am very interested in promotional items and free gifts,” continued the baron. “Also in trash. I have no income, you see, and a man with no income is bound to take a great interest in free gifts and trash.” He took a sip of brandy and clicked his tongue appreciatively. “Given the present state of the world, don’t you know, with the increase of constant capital as compared with variable capital, a whole stratum of the poor is bound to be unemployed and live off free gifts and trash, and occasionally off various government subsidies. Do you know what I am saying?”

“I am not sure,” said Aimée.

“Nor am I,” said the baron. “But excuse me, please, I hear the kettle whistling.”

He went off again through the small white door, leaving it open behind him.

“I’m glad I picked you up on the road,” he shouted from the kitchen. “I wanted to see you again. I think you are mysterious. Are you mysterious?”

Aimée made no reply. The baron reappeared with another tray holding tea and cups.

“Alas, I have neither milk nor sugar at present,” he said. “I must apologize for the condition in which I first appeared before you, I mean to say with my prick in my hand. It is I who must seem mysterious to you.”

“Not really,” said Aimée. “No big deal.”

They drank their tea and glared at each other in silence, standing very close, with their noses in their cups.

“I am not mysterious,” declared the baron at last. “I am an astronomer. Come, let me show you.”

He went ahead of Aimée through the small white door and led her up a narrow staircase. They came to the second floor. Aimée, who had not finished her drink, an excellent calvados, was holding her glass. As they went down a passageway, the baron pointed into a bare room with a camp bed and covers, a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling, and cases of whiskey and cartons of cigarettes piled up against the walls.

“My bedroom,” he said. “I’m not going to invite you in there to copulate; we are not well enough acquainted for that.” And he continued on down the passageway. Here too there were boxes of spirits and cartons of cigarettes. “Would you like a few cartons of English cigarettes?” he asked. “I have various dealings with the Bléville seamen.”

“No, thank you,” replied Aimée.

“And I win stuff off them at cards,” added the baron as he started up a very narrow spiral staircase at the end of the corridor. “I’m a very good player. And, frankly, they let me cheat. Because I make them laugh.”

The spiral staircase led up an angle tower. Through leaded windows of colored glass Aimée looked down over the rear of the garden, where rabbits were running in and out of rain-soaked hutches. Then they came into a circular room directly beneath the tower’s roof.

“Didn’t I tell you I was an astronomer?” the baron cried triumphantly. Although they had climbed the staircase quickly, he was not out of breath. Nor was Aimée.

There were apertures in the roof, mirrors, a variety of glasses and telescopes, and, strewn on rolling enameled tables reminiscent of those used in hospitals, papers covered with notations in very tiny but very legible handwriting. So far as Aimée could tell, these were calculations and vaguely poetic thoughts on celestial bodies. Through a stained-glass window the blue-tinged rooftops of Bléville could be seen several kilometers away.

“It’s a fine pastime, astronomy,” said the baron, as he adjusted a telescope mounted at an almost vertical angle and pointing at an opening in the roof, a kind of skylight. “It’s a fine pastime that harms no one and corresponds to my social rank and tastes. I love to observe.” He looked at Aimée, who did not respond. He turned away and abruptly slapped the telescope down into a horizontal position. “Not just the stars, though-fine gentlemen too!” he cried. “Bléville is also worth observing. Not with this instrument, of course. But through cracks in the walls, through the chinks in people themselves, through keyholes.” The baron turned away from the stained-glass window. “I have been watching this town for dozens of years,” he explained. “I know everything there is to know about it.” His expression was now frozen, empty. Muscles pulled his lips taut against his teeth. “So just fight bravely on, most gracious masters of capital!..you shall be allowed to rule for a short time. You shall be allowed to dictate your laws, to bask in the rays of the majesty you have created, to spread your banquets in the halls of kings, and to take the beautiful princess to wife-but do not forget that ‘Before the door stands the headsman!’”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Aimée.

A little later, a little calmer now, as the pair went back down into the hall (on a wall of which hung a Weatherby Regency under-and-over double-barrel shotgun), Baron Jules further informed Aimée that, although the movements of men are not analogous to the movements of the stars, it sometimes seemed to him that they were, this on account of the posture that he had adopted, or rather that he had been obliged to adopt. These strange remarks made Aimée a little nervous, and she wanted to get away from this place. It was not long before the baron drove her back to Bléville. Yet when he left in his banged-up old 4CV, Aimée was sorry.