The Front Seat Passenger (8 page)

‘A little glass with your coffee, Monsieur Delorme?’

‘With pleas—’

A chasm opened up, a chasm in which he saw wounded angels dragging their wings. Madeleine had just called him by his name and was fixing him with her smile.

‘Why are you calling him that?’

‘Because his name is Fabien Delorme, isn’t it?’

Fabien looked in vain for the prompter. He had lost his place in the script. Madeleine put the bottle down meaningfully in front of him.

‘Madeleine, what does this mean?’

‘It means, my dear Martine, that you see before you the husband of the woman who was in the car with Martial.’

‘That can’t be true!’

‘Ask him.’

Should he deny it? Deny everything, deny the whole earth and his presence here, or just say yes. He only seemed to have two words at his disposal and he could enunciate neither one nor
the other. Just like at school in front of the blackboard, he felt his ears going as red as the neon ‘Tabac’ sign. At that precise moment he felt about eight years old.

‘Oi, I’m speaking to you! Are you the husband of the slut who was with that bastard Martial?’

‘Fabien, say something!’

He had decided to make bread balls that he was piling into an ever-higher pyramid on his plate amongst the remains of the brown-coloured sauce.

A whack on the neck forced him to turn towards Madeleine. She was pointing a revolver at him and it was only a few centimetres from his head.

‘Tell her! Tell her!’

The words seemed to come from the barrel; he had never seen a gun so close up, he could smell metal and grease.

‘Madeleine! What are you doing? You’re nuts!’

‘Not in the least. Haven’t you understood yet? Why did you think he came with us? Did you think it was for your bonny blue eyes? … He doesn’t give a shit about those; he wants to take us down, that’s it, isn’t it? You want to take us down?’

Fabien didn’t take his eyes off the weapon that was trembling at the end of Madeleine’s outstretched arm. He could barely unclench his teeth to say, ‘Madeleine, it’s not what you think … I was going to tell you everything …’

‘So there we have it! You follow us for weeks, all the way to Spain! Then you seduce Martine and alienate her from me and all for nothing. It’s just a game to you! You think I’m a fool?’

‘No, Madeleine, no, I don’t take you for a fool. I … I think I just couldn’t bear to be on my own.’

‘Is that all you can come up with? I’d expected better. I can tell
you what you were after. You were after revenge. I don’t know how, but you knew it was me who caused the accident, but as you didn’t have any proof you thought you would win over Martine and get her to spill the beans.’

‘That’s not true! I didn’t know, and what’s more I don’t care. I wasn’t in love with Sylvie any more; I wanted a new life!’

‘Liar! You’re just like Martial, just like all the others; you lie, you take, you jettison, you break …’

‘Madeleine, stop! You’re not going to kill him?’

‘Why not? At least that would be one bastard less! You think I’m going to let him turn us in?’

‘Don’t do it, Madeleine. I’m not going to say anything to anyone. I don’t care about it. Don’t do that, you mustn’t—’

Something released in him like a spring, something that didn’t want to die and which gave him the courage to grab Madeleine’s wrist. He felt the nails of her other hand tearing at his ear, seeking his eyes, but he didn’t loosen his grip. They looked like a couple of dancers engaged in a grotesque tango. Fabien succeeded in grabbing the gun; his fingers squeezed the trigger. The shot fired as they both collapsed on the table in a shower of broken crockery. Fabien rolled on the ground, his hands clutching his left leg below the knee.

‘Shit! That hurts! That hurts, damn it!’

Between the table and chair legs he saw Martine pick up the revolver and Madeleine sitting on the ground, her face covered in blood, surrounded by shattered glass.

‘Fire, fire! Finish the fucker off!’

Fabien didn’t hear the second shot; he’d already passed out.

He didn’t dare open his eyes, expecting to see his left leg swollen up like an elephant’s and suppurating like a dead beast. Each tiny movement had the effect of an electric shock, making him groan and want to bite something. Something limp and damp was placed on his forehead. Martine’s face, incredibly pale, almost phosphorescent, swam into view.

‘All right?’

‘No. Shit, it hurts!’

Trembling from head to foot, running with sweat and tears, he gripped Martine’s arm. She removed his fingers one by one and proffered two pills and a glass of water.

‘Take those, they’ll help.’

‘What are they?’

‘Co-proxamol. That’s all I could find.’

It took Fabien three goes to swallow the tablets. The water
spilt down his freezing-cold chin. The tips of his fingers brushed his leg under the covers.

‘Where are my trousers?’

‘I had to take them off to clean the wound. The bullet went through your calf. I think it’s good that it’s not still in there.’

‘Are you an expert?’

‘No. I cleaned it and put a bandage on.’

‘Did I lose a lot of blood?’

‘A fair bit.’

‘You’ll have to call a doctor.’

‘Oh no. That’s not possible at the moment.’

‘Because of Madeleine? She’s not letting you … She wants me to die here, is that it?’

‘No. She’s dead. I killed her.’

‘Oh, God …’

‘She was mad. She would have done away with both of us, and herself afterwards. She had to be killed.’

She might as well have added: ‘Obviously.’ Her face expressed neither fear nor remorse. Fabien didn’t know if he should rejoice or worry at the news.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve bunged her in the freezer in the meantime.’

‘In the freezer?’

‘I couldn’t leave her on the carpet, could I? Are you hungry? Do you want to sleep?’

‘No, I’m not hungry, just thirsty. Martine?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why did you kill her and not me?’

‘It could have been you. I’ll go and fetch some water.’

When she came back again, Fabien had fallen asleep, his cheek resting on the damp facecloth.

Through the window Fabien, propped up in bed with a large pillow, could see a big slab of blue sky marbled with pink, the outline of a russet forest and a triangle of green meadow where some cows grazed. Paradise so close at hand yet so inaccessible. Oh, to be a great fat cow, eating all day, giving milk to little children, sleeping in a warm stable, snuggled up with other cows, and then do it all over again the following day, for ever …

He looked about for the ashtray to stub out his cigarette, but Martine must have taken it away with his breakfast tray. He extinguished the butt on the wooden bedside table. Why should he care? Everything was a mess … An ill-advised movement to pull himself up made him cry out in pain. How could such a little hole cause such agony? But why should he be surprised? Madeleine was in the freezer, Martine was doing the washing up, he was rotting away in a grandma bed and cows were grazing peacefully in a meadow. Everything was interchangeable; you could have put Madeleine in the meadow, the cows in the freezer, and … He burst out laughing. His wound reacted immediately. The pain would not let go, a dog whose teeth were planted in his calf. Martine had said it would get better, that he needed to let the wound heal, but he had seen the growing, blackened areola spreading out around the hole when she had changed his dressing. But she refused to hear of calling a doctor.

‘Fabien, you know full well why it’s impossible. A bullet wound, in this godforsaken dump, would be reported straight away to the police.’

‘So what? It was legitimate defence, wasn’t it?’

‘Don’t push it. Everything will sort itself out.’

‘Sort itself out, my arse! You’re worse than Madeleine! You want me to die!’

‘Had I wanted to kill you, I could have done that ages ago.’

‘So why haven’t you?’

‘Because you told Madeleine you wanted a new life. I understand that; I might have said the same.’

Fabien didn’t know what to think any more. He had said nothing and she had left with the tray. But before going out she had turned back to him. ‘The hyacinth in the pot, the moved furniture – that was you, wasn’t it?’

He had hesitated before nodding, a child caught out in a naughty deed.

Martine was lying beside him in the dark. She had brought a radio upstairs, and nightclub music was playing softly. In a few words she had summed up her insignificant life, her childhood in Aurillac, her pharmacist parents, depression at sixteen just to try it out, then highs, men, lows, drugs, until Madeleine whom she’d met at a narcotics anonymous meeting. Madeleine had immediately adopted her and later introduced her to Martial. He and Madeleine detested each other, and Martine had served to give new vigour to a hatred that was dying down and which they could not live without. She had let herself be manipulated
by both of them because she didn’t know how else to live than to let others act for her. Besides she didn’t care about either of them. Martial had beautiful teeth; he was almost always away; Madeleine mollycoddled her and proved more than generous to her. One day when they were spending the weekend here, they went to Dijon and spotted Martial on the arm of rather a pretty woman – Sylvie, no doubt. Madeleine had not unclenched her teeth for the entire journey home. That evening she had gone off and not returned until very late. She had woken Martine and told her, ‘It’s all sorted. I’ve killed him.’ Later she explained how she had gone about it. Martial always took his conquests to Le Petit Chez-Soi; he’d taken Martine. She had waited on the route she knew he’d take and had driven straight at him when she recognised the car by its wonky headlamp. Martine could have come too; perhaps she would have preferred …

Fabien listened without asking questions and without interrupting, as though following a news item on the telly, someone else’s story, always so far removed from us. The pills he’d just swallowed for the night were beginning to kick in. The dog biting his leg was slackening its grip. He curled a strand of Martine’s hair round one finger and wondered if the cows were sleeping in the meadow or if they had been taken in for the night.

Pain had become a full-time occupation that he practised with all the seriousness of the honest artisan. It had settled inside him, he had settled inside it. He followed its every meander and the accompanying spikes of fever with the fervour of a martyr and was joyously happy when it eased following the ingestion
of tablets. He couldn’t honestly have said whether he preferred the highs or lows of this roller coaster of suffering; each state was enriched by its opposite. He lived in the absolute present, simplified to one of two conditions: I’m in pain/I’m not in pain. It was a minimalist way of living, just like the bedroom décor of bed, chairs (two of them), bedside table, window, door. It was largely sufficient to make a life. There was night, day, inside and outside. What more could he want? He could always read the wallpaper (bouquets of three button roses in staggered rows), and the damp stains on the ceiling, the cracks in the walls and the slats in the wood kept him absorbed for many hours.

The window was reserved for major outings, that’s to say when he felt strong enough to contemplate a space without walls, the undulating infinity of hills and clouds. And then there were the cows, whose saga he followed assiduously. He was sure they knew he was there in the bedroom, because often they lifted their muzzles dripping with slaver and uttered in unison a long lowing as comforting and profound as the guttural litanies of Tibetan monks.

The door belonged to Martine. It was through it that she would appear bearing a full tray and would disappear with the empty one. Everything she brought him was delicious, but she made clear that it was nothing to do with her. Madeleine was an excellent cook and Martine had had to clear space in the freezer. Fabien didn’t like her to refer to the freezer; it brought him back to reality and caused him a pain more excruciating than his wound. Then time continued on its way with its before, its afterwards and its myriad problems to resolve.

‘Martine, we can’t stay here for ever, can we?’

‘Why not? It’s peaceful.’

‘Soon someone will worry about her absence.’

‘You really think so? She was such a pain in the neck, no one wanted to see her any more.’

‘But you don’t just disappear like that from one day to the next.’

‘Hundreds of people a year do! I heard that on the telly. You’re not finishing your dessert?’

‘No.’

His leg was hurting badly and he retreated within himself again, sheltered from interrogation and waiting for the hour of the cows.

Martine was redoing his dressing sitting on the edge of his bed. A ray of sunlight splashed on his knees. Fabien was washed and shaved, his sheets changed. A morning the way he liked it.

‘Martine, what do you do during the day?’

‘Today, do you mean?’

‘No, what do you do whilst I’m asleep, when you’re not here in the bedroom?’

‘Nothing in particular. The cooking, the dishes … I look out of the window. I’m content.’

‘So is that it, your new life?’

‘Perhaps. I’m going to have to go into town. There’s no more co-proxamol, or alcohol, or cigarettes, or … I’ve made a list. I’ll be gone for at least an hour, maybe two. I can’t go to the little village nearby.’

‘You mean you’re going to take the car?’

‘Obviously. I’m not going to walk there.’

‘I don’t want you to.’

‘It can’t be helped. Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine – no one knows me in Châtillon.’

‘Yes, I know … But be careful anyway.’

Neither of them had been out of the house since their arrival. The door opening on the outside world had something disquieting about it. It seemed to him as if all the troubles in the world would take advantage of the moment it was opened to rush into their bubble. He felt a frisson down his back when he heard the car starting. The incongruous noise was the setting in motion of the cogs, crankshaft and pistons of an infernal machine. Watermarked in the wallpaper, as in the riddles of his childhood, (‘the ogre is hiding in the leaves on the tree – can you find him?’) the faces of Gilles, Léo, Fanchon, his father, Charlotte, Madeleine appeared, and with them a flood of all sorts of emotions that upset him. ‘You don’t remake your life, silly, you just carry on; there’s no refuge anywhere!’ Right, he was going to take stock calmly. He wasn’t feverish, and could reason lucidly. One: Was he sufficiently in love with Martine to trust his future to her? Answer: not sure at all. Two: What exactly was he guilty of? Answer: nothing! He hadn’t killed anyone; in fact he himself had been wounded. Three: How did he think he was going to escape from this? Answer: by convincing Martine to go to the police … Unlikely. By escaping at a hop across the fields … Possible, but in a few days when his leg was better … By calling for an ambulance!

Apart from a disagreeable feeling of guilt towards Martine and the multiple problems that would result from his return to
normal life, this last was probably the best solution, if not the most elegant.

Why had he not thought of it sooner? Simply because he had been in too much of a daze to sense the danger he was in. Six days buried in the countryside and he had forgotten about modern conveniences. If he remembered correctly there was a telephone in the hallway, on a little table. He had not been downstairs since the first fateful evening. He took a minute to recall the layout of the rooms and, leaning on the stick Martine had unearthed in the loft, levered himself up from the bed. Until now he had been no further than the bathroom. Getting downstairs was going to be tricky.

He succeeded, not without difficulty, but he succeeded. Downstairs it was pitch black. The shutters were closed. Probably just Martine being cautious. She always closed the bedroom shutters before turning the light on. He immediately spotted the little table with the telephone on it. He didn’t even need to hold it against his ear to understand that he would hear nothing. The wire had been cut ten centimetres from the receiver. Limping, he went over to the front door. He couldn’t blame Martine for being too careful, but that did not obscure the fact that he was well and truly held prisoner in this godforsaken dump. Now he would have to think again and he had gone through all those painful contortions for nothing. He swore and began the climb back up. It was much more difficult than coming down; he had to rest his entire weight on his right leg. By the time he reached the landing his thigh muscles were spasming like fish in a net. It was lovely to lie down on the bed again. Clearly he was in no state to jump out of the window and run across the field as he had briefly
considered. Back to square one. The expression seemed to him particularly apt since he could only move in little hops, like a pawn. A pawn …

A flash of lightning initialled the sky, immediately followed by a violent clap of thunder. The weather had turned; heavy clouds lowered over the cows huddled under the only tree in the meadow. Squally rain began to lash the window. It was very beautiful, but a bit frightening. Fabien turned on the radio for company. No sound. The telephone he understood, but to cut the power to the radio, that was mad! But the cable hadn’t been cut, and it was properly plugged in. The bedside lamp wasn’t working either … the freezer … It only took him a few seconds to work out that the storm had fused the electricity. Martine had been gone barely an hour. How long would it take Madeleine to defrost?

The thought of going down again to look for the meter in total darkness seemed too great an effort. It had been such nice weather this morning; everything had been going so well … Martine should never have left the house. Misfortune had got its foot in the door, like a grubby door-to-door salesman. It would never leave now.

The rain was still falling when he heard the car parking in the courtyard, then the key turning in the lock, followed by cursing and Martine’s footsteps on the stairs. She discovered him lying on the bed, his arms crossed over his chest, bathed in a dishwatery light like a recumbent effigy in a church.