The Three Evangelists

IX

VANDOOSLER WAS ON HIS WAY HOME FROM THE MARKET. HE WAS gradually taking over the shopping duties. He didn’t mind. On the contrary, he liked strolling through the streets, looking at other people, listening in to conversations, joining in, sitting on benches and chatting about the price of fish. Old police habits, reflexes of a one-time seducer, and of a lifetime’s wandering. He smiled. This new district was to his taste. So was the new lodging. He had left his old quarters without a backward glance, content to be able to make a new start. The idea of beginning afresh had always attracted him more than the notion of carrying on indefinitely.

Vandoosler stopped as rue Chasle came into sight, and reflected pleasurably on this new phase of his existence. How had he got there? By a succession of accidents. When he thought about it, his life seemed like a coherent whole, yet it had been made up of sudden impulses, inspired by the moment and melting away in the long run. Grand ideas, serious plans, yes, he had had those once. None of them had ever come to anything. Not one. He had always seen the firmest resolve melt at the first request, the most sincere commitments fade on the slightest of pretexts, the most passionate pronouncements fail before reality. That was the way it was. He was used to it now, and couldn’t really feel regret. You just needed a little self-knowledge. His moves had often been surefooted and even brilliant in the short run, but he knew he would never make a middle-distance runner. This rue Chasle, with its curiously provincial air, was just right. Another new beginning. But for how long this time? A passer-by stared at him. He was probably wondering what Vandoosler was doing, pausing on the pavement with his shopping bag. Vandoosler had no doubt that the passer-by would have been able to tell him exactly why he himself lived there, and even to predict his own future. Whereas he, Vandoosler, would have found it hard even to sum up his life so far. He viewed it as a great web of incidents, events, investigations, successful or not, opportunities seized, love affairs, a remarkable series of events, none of them lasting very long and leading in too many directions to make a single summary possible, and thank goodness for that. There had been some damage, to be sure. Inevitably. You have to put off the old to find the new.

Before going into the house, the ex-commissaire sat down on the low wall on the other side of the street. A ray of April sunshine is always worth stopping for. He avoided looking towards Sophia Siméonidis’ house, where three municipal workers had been digging a trench since the day before. He looked over to the other neighbour. What was it that St Luke called it? The Eastern Front. What an obsessive he was. Why did he care so much about the Great War? Well, each to his own poison. Vandoosler had made some progress on the Eastern Front. He had gathered some scraps of information here and there. The neighbour on that side was called Juliette Gosselin, and she lived with her brother Georges, a strong, silent type. Well, that was the story. For Armand Vandoosler, nothing was ever taken at face value. Yesterday at any rate the neighbour in the east had been out gardening in the spring sunshine. He had exchanged a few words with her, just to see. He smiled. He was sixty-eight years old and needed to be circumspect. He had no wish to be rebuffed. But it cost nothing to fantasise. He had made a close study of this Juliette, who seemed pretty and energetic, about forty years old, and he had concluded that she would not be at all interested in an ex-flic. Even one who was considered good-looking, though he had never been able to see that himself. Too thin, too angular, not enough purity of line for his own taste. He would never have fallen for someone who looked the way he did. But other people had, rather often. That had been quite useful when he was in the police, not to mention in private life. But Armand Vandoosler did not like his thoughts to take him in this fateful direction. That was twice in a quarter of an hour. Probably because he was changing direction yet again, changing his home and the company he kept. Or maybe it was because at the fish shop he had seen those little twins.

He shifted to move his basket into the shade. Thereby closer to the Eastern Front. Why the devil did his thoughts have to take him back there again, to the old bruise? He had only to look out for the next-door neighbour and think about the fish he had bought for the three workmen on the other side. He felt the old bruise once more. But dammit, he wasn’t the only one. True, he had been at fault. Especially towards Lucie and the twins, whom he had abandoned one fine day. The twins were three at the time. And yet he was fond of Lucie. He had even said he would stay with her always. And then in the end, no. He had watched them walk away from him on the station platform. Vandoosler sighed. He slowly moved his head back, pushing his hair out of his eyes. The little ones would be twenty-four now. Where were they? Oh God, what a mess, and what a fool he had been. Were they far away or near now? And Lucie? No point thinking about that. Never mind. Love affairs: there are plenty to choose from. It’s not important. None are any better than the others, absolutely not. Vandoosler picked up the basket and walked over to the neighbouring garden, Juliette’s. Still nobody around. What if he tried a bit harder? If his information was correct, she ran a little restaurant called Le Tonneau, a couple of streets further down. Vandoosler knew perfectly well how to cook the fish, but where was the harm in going to ask for a good recipe?