Cemetery of Swallows (29 page)

Everything in Marie's home is period. Her furniture, her radio, her clothes, and her makeup.

Her sadness, too.

Her Jean-François loved her like that, so she has remained that way. Plucked and redrawn eyebrows, powder and Guerlain foundation in generous layers, mauve eye shadow, like her eyes, and a bright scarlet mouth whose redness age has caused to wander into the vertical wrinkles of her upper lip.

Everything is old-fashioned here, even the beige memorial plaques surrounded by red ribbons and lace.

The walls are hung only with the past, as well.

Photos of relatives, dead friends, and, of course, her fiancé. A handsome young man in black and white, enlarged and retouched, embellished like his memory. Frozen on the ramparts of memory, there he is in civilian clothing, in a tennis outfit, in a dinner jacket too big for him, and in uniform, with a white scarf around his neck.

Nothing but him and no more than him for a whole wretched life of tears and sorrow.

 

Mallock comprehends and Mallock has compassion.

He feels even more awkward than usual with his big clumping shoes planted right in the middle of this doll house. So he hesitates. Why not simply drink his tea and leave, excusing himself for having bothered her? But once a cop, always a cop. And then he absolutely needs to stock up new facts, whether to corroborate Manu's crazy ideas or to find something to confound him.

Once he is seated in an armchair as old as it is uncomfortable, he asks Marie's permission to record their conversation. She agrees with a nod of her head. Her gray hair, perfectly lacquered, does not budge by a millimeter. Mallock thanks her and turns on the little digital recorder that he always carries with him. He taps the microphone, looking at the needles of the meter. Finally something that works in this damned case.

He sets it carefully on a lace doily in the center of a pedestal table surrounded by a gilt railing. Then he says:

“Sunday, December 15, 10:17. Interrogation of Mada . . . Mademoiselle Marie Dutin. Recording made with her authorization.”

He clears his throat.

“Dear Mademoiselle, please excuse in advance the involuntary coarseness of some of my questions. I am probably going to stir up some very cruel memories, but—”

“Oh! I'm failing in all my duties. I believe I promised you some tea, did I not?” Marie asks, hanging her head.

“That's very kind of you, but if you have no objection, I'd prefer to tell you first what brings me here.”

Marie waits silently. Something she knows how to do marvelously well. That and tea, like a kind of compulsory vocation.

Mallock finally begins:

“I was very mysterious on the telephone and I beg you to pardon me for that.”

Marie smiles at him, her two hands folded on her flowered dress.

“In the framework of a police investigation, I have come to know of the existence of your fiancé, Lieutenant Jean-François Lafitte. The circumstances of his tragic death, which remain rather obscure for me, could perhaps help me understand better another event . . . that concerns . . . It's really very hard to explain. How can I tell you?”

“Ask me your questions, Superintendent. I'm not made of porcelain.”

Mallock smiled gently before saying:

“So far as you know, was Lieutenant Lafitte actually buried?”

Because the superintendent thought he'd received authorization to handle the porcelain a little, he's surprised to see the old maid's eyes fill with tears. But those little pearls were never far away, and knew the way to the outside only too well. Tears share the same memory with the soul. And some of them are able to reach the ocean, like so many baby turtles, with their eyes closed.

Feeling sorry for her, he leaves her all the time she needs to regain her composure.

“We didn't even find him, Superintendent. His family and I would have so much liked to give him a decent burial, but that was not possible.”

She then takes out a microscopic handkerchief to dry her eyes. This tiny bit of lace, delicately folded into a triangle, is gently placed to drink up the little lake that has formed on the inside of her eyelid.

Mallock, unflinchingly assuming the thankless role of the big workhorse, perseveres:

“A well in the middle of a clearing, or the forest of Biellanie, do those mean anything to you?”

“No, nothing at all, but why do you ask me that?”

“It's much too complicated for me to bore you with that story. Let's just say that I, too, would have liked to find Jean-François's body.”

“After such a long time? You know,” she went on, “no matter what your reasons or your means, you won't find it. We tried everything at the time. Despite all our persistence, we received no response from his superiors. As for his companions in arms, Lucien de Marsac, his second-in-command, and the youngest of the group, Gaston Wrochet, called Gavroche, they both disappeared at the same time he did. For our misfortune, their mission was classified as secret and it long remained so once the war was over. We ran into a twofold wall, that of the administration and that of the military.”

Something strikes Mallock's attention, but it's too furtive and he can't quite tell exactly what it is. At the same moment, a jet plane passes overhead, making the windows vibrate.

“There's a military base four miles from the village,” Marie explains.

She conscientiously smoothes out her dress with her hands before going on:

“According to what I understood at the time, the French battalion's mission was considered a failure. Especially the intelligence-gathering phase, as well as the non-destruction of an important strategic objective. But whatever anyone says, it was an act of bravery, nothing of which the army could be ashamed. However, they decided to erase it from the official history. And I've never been able to get Jean-François's body back, or any of his effects. I have had only my own heart to remind me of him.”

Looking around him, Mallock notes that except for the photos and a lock of hair, there is no object that belonged to her fiancé. If that had been the case she would have put it in a velvet case or protected it under a glass globe.

“It was only in 1951,” Marie continues, “that we were finally officially notified of Jean-François's death, along with that of all his men. By persevering, we finally learned that they'd parachuted onto French territory in late May, 1944, but we were told nothing more except that their mission was to gather intelligence and probably organize acts of sabotage. As for my fiancé's body, according to them there were only two possibilities. Either Jean is buried somewhere on the French soil he loved so much, or he was deported to Germany and died in a prisoner of war camp. I'd so much like to know! But I no longer have any illusions.”

Mallock, aware that it's pointless to continue to torture the old lady, turns off his recorder.

But after having discreetly blown her nose, Marie Dutin picks up the thread of her memories, this time in a confidential tone:

“I remember everything, the smallest moment I spent with him. Every morning and every night. One day in particular, for many reasons. It was the day before he left for London, and then . . . ”

Marie blushed like a young girl.

In reality, Mallock sensed the blush more than he saw it. There was too much powder on the old maid's face.

“We'd gone to spend the day in Normandy, in a little village at the seaside, Saint-Aubin.”

Mallock jumped. Was that a coincidence? That village on the Côte de Nacre was very much in fashion at the time. Whence the fine dike and the city's gas system. Who had not spent a summer, at least once in his life, at Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer?

“My Jean-François had a little three-year-old sister, Marguérite, whom he carried lovingly in his arms. I had my dog, Icarus, with me. On that day there was, I don't know why, a parade on the dike, a whole crowd of young people dressed up as Romans riding on pasteboard chariots. The weather was wonderful. It was a last moment of happiness for me, and for so many others . . . But we didn't know it then.”

A stupefied silence, on Mallock's part.

Stunned.

He stares into space, wondering if he's dreaming or if he has really heard it. Especially these four words: Marguérite, Icarus, chariots, Romans? Words that sank into the wall like nails to attach a mysterious cross to it. Was it the cross from the well?

How the devil could Manu have known about that? His voice and his words resound in Amédée's bewildered brain: “There's blond silk in front of my eyes. It's the hair of a little girl in my arms. She's sucking on a strawberry candy. She's wearing a red dress with a big daisy embroidered on it . . . In front of us, there's a parade of soldiers and Roman chariots. Everyone's smiling . . . Icarus is barking.”

 

Mallock is still sitting there with his mouth open, frowning.

The ticking of a clock punctuates the silence.

Marie's index finger, extended under the white handkerchief, touches the inner corner of her right eye. The tears take refuge in it and make it transparent.

After a discreet little sniff, Marie goes on:

“I believe one should never complain. We just have to take what life gives us and put up with what it makes us endure. On that day, it brought me a great deal. Everything, in fact. All at once. What a marvelous day.”

How many times had Marie relived that day?

“In the late afternoon, we found ourselves all alone on the cliff. We had even succeeded in getting away from Gavroche . . . ”

She laughed.

“I was beginning to get cold. Jean-François wrapped his white scarf around my neck and told me that he loved me. That was when I noticed the scar from his wound.”

“What wound?”

Manu had never mentioned it. Maybe here he had a detail that could confound him?

“He'd been shot under the jaw during the Phony War. The military doctors had not been able to extract the bullet because it was too close to his spinal column, between the first and second vertebrae . . . ”

“Atlas and axis,” Mallock murmurs, almost automatically.

The research he'd done in entomology had also led him to perfect his knowledge of the human body. And then he'd found the names pretty.

Undisturbed, Marie Dutin continues:

“He was supposed to be discharged because of that, but the armistice came. And then there was General de Gaulle's appeal to the French. His friend Lucien who telephoned him just at the time when . . . Well! It was destiny, I suppose . . . ”

Marie Dutin heaves a deep sigh.

That's the effect destiny has on people, Mallock thinks. It makes them sigh, often because they're powerless. It suffocates them, wears them out. It blows over the human race, objects, and even the wind. An idiotic clown playing blindman's bluff, it strikes at random, by chance, or even on the off-chance. Like a child pulling off an insect's leg, destiny amputates human beings. Never maliciously, but often suddenly. A sudden blow in the solar plexus: the man pales, the woman collapses on the spot, a sad little heap of rags and skirts in tears.

But the old maid is like Mallock, she accepts sadness and melancholy, but not pity.

She smiles.

“In any case, on that day we made the most of being together. We made love to each other for the first time. It was marvelous. Before we separated, he gave me a little jewel he'd kept hidden in his pocket.”

Mallock held his breath. What was she talking about?

The old lady continued her story without saying what the jewel was:

“In time, and by remembering these moments, the colors have faded but not the feelings, the wind and love, the little blue jewel box, the smell of the grass and his cologne, like a single material that enveloped us. I wish all people could have such an experience. That and the birth of a child, no doubt.”

Another flight of the handkerchief toward the old lady's blue eyes.

Mallock wondered for an instant whether he really wanted to know what was in that box. He told himself that if Amédée didn't absolutely insist on it, the superintendent, Mallock, had to ask the question.

“It was a heart made of gold that opened up,” she answered without realizing how much she was disturbing Mallock. “Inside were our two photos. And it was also a music box. It played a melody that was sad but adorable . . . ”

“A piece by Erik Satie?” Mallock asked, in spite of himself.

“The third
Gnossienne
,” the old maid said. “How did you know that?”

“A lucky guess,” Mallock stammered. ‘Sad but adorable' made me think of it. Who else better deserves those two adjectives? But I suppose you still have it?”

“No, unfortunately, I'd so much love to have it. I often dream about it. I believe that it would console me more than anything. Well! You know that we . . . saw each other again, during the four years of the war. Six times in fact, on each of his missions in France. During our last meeting, I gave him back his gift as a talisman. He was supposed to give it back to me on his next visit. That was the last time that we would be separated, he was sure of that. He didn't tell me about the landing but he made me understand it. I was very frightened. But after all this back and forth right in the middle of the war, I'd ended up thinking he was invincible, my Jean-François.”

Another point for Manu. And a huge one. How could he have guessed this romantic story? It's almost eleven o'clock. Mallock doesn't want to make the old lady late for Sunday mass, so he decides to wind up the interview:

“I'm going take the liberty of sending you a bailiff and one of my men to officially record your statement. Don't hesitate to give them as many details as possible. They will take the opportunity to borrow a few samples of your fiancé's hair. That is a lock of his hair that I see in the frame with the miniatures of the Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor medal, isn't it?”