The Same River Twice (53 page)

Odile rolled her hands in a gesture to Groot, urgently signaling him to go on.

“Hold on a moment,” he called. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. Now that we’ve got the engines working, we thought we’d take a shakedown cruise, to see that everything’s shipshape, so to speak. We’ll be gone a few days. So don’t let anybody steal our berth, okay?”

“What do you take me for, Dutchman? I’ll blow them out of the fucking water if they even try.”

“Many thanks, my friend. Sleep well.”

“I never sleep well.” He spat into the river. “But I rest.”

“That’s all that really counts, isn’t it. Good night.”

The neighbor retreated, muttering to himself.

“Now,” Groot said, turning back to the others. “I must remind you that I’m captain of this vessel, and you’ll have to do things my way as long as you’re on board.” He waited for objections, but there were none. “First, I think we can assume the other passengers”—he meant Gabriella and the doctor—“heard everything that just happened. Still, that’s no reason to bring it up or offer unnecessary explanations. The less said, the better.”

Again no objections.

“Second, Monsieur Colin, will you please rejoin them now? I’m certain they’ll find your presence reassuring.”

Thierry tossed his cigarette overboard and went below.

“Finally,” Groot said, “we’ll have to give this unfortunate object”—he was referring now to Turner’s body—“a head start on us. Otherwise it will trail us right down to Le Havre.”

“But what about the nets?” asked Odile. “Aren’t there underwater nets just outside the city limits, to catch debris?”

“The authorities had to take down the nets, because there was too
much
debris. Anyway, they’ll find the body soon enough, once it begins to bloat. I myself have seen three since moving here.” He turned to Rachel. “My love, will you please go get that big duffel bag from the storage locker, along with maybe thirty feet of nylon line? Thank you.”

Max was going through Turner’s pockets, laying out on deck his wallet, pen, phone, keys, magnifying loupe, notebook, business cards, and whatever else might identify him.

Odile came over and crouched beside him. “Max. Let me do that. You should be filming.”

He looked at her in perplexity. “Filming?”

“The
Nachtvlinder’s
about to set sail. You don’t know when you’ll see her again, let alone your two costars. So this, as they say, is it.” She scooped up Turner’s personal effects in her arms.

“Odile?”

“Yes?”

“You’re a pretty cool customer.”

“Cool
customer?”
She frowned and wrinkled her brow in vexation. “Excuse me, I don’t know this expression.”

“I love you,” he said.

“That one I know.” She showed him a pallid smile, then headed off with Turner’s possessions.

Max went to get his camera.

Dumping her former lover’s personal effects on the hibachi grill, Odile began soundlessly to cry. Although she wasn’t entirely sure why she’d done what she had, she knew it had been necessary. There were good reasons and bad reasons, as there were for nearly every action. As it happened, she’d come to believe in the doctor and the potential implications of his work. Of course it was convenient to tell herself that hundreds of thousands of lives would be saved at the sole cost of Turner’s, and that such a trade alone must surely justify what she’d just brought about. Certainly everyone present—everyone but Max—would gladly agree without her ever having to utter a word. In fact, the time would most likely come when,
force majeure
, she herself would believe this explanation, or at least accept it. But she knew the truth was more complicated than that. At best, this was half the truth—not false, just incomplete. And then the memory came to her of how, shortly after returning from Moscow, still toweling herself dry from her first bath in days, she had thought,
Very possibly nothing happens at all until it happens again
. Nothing. And what would her life be like, really, had she not met Max that night when she was fleeing his predecessor? Nothing.

She didn’t know when she’d stopped crying. Reaching for the can of lighter fluid, she lifted it high above her head and set about drenching Turner’s items, watching the thin, clear stream spatter down upon the things that he’d carried with him daily, the things that constituted proof of his identity, of himself. When the can was empty, she found some matches, lit one, and tossed it on the pile. A fire leapt up, much larger, strictly speaking, than was needed, but at the same time one suited to the purpose. For a few seconds she watched it burn. Then she walked past Jacques’s camera to join the others.

Rachel had just returned from below with the duffel bag and the rope. She’d changed into a black bathing suit. “Do we want weights, too?” she asked. “I’m thinking of your dumbbells.”

“No. Unless the body is anchored to the bottom, it will surface in a couple
of days anyway, because of the bloating. Besides, we don’t really want it here, in our spot, do we. Better to let it float downstream.”

Max had set up and was filming this discussion.

Thank God the girls aren’t here
, Odile thought.

Groot stripped down to his undershorts. Rachel went back to mopping up the blood. There was so much of it. How fortunate that the deck had just been revarnished. There would be no stain.

From below came the sound of a woman weeping. Gabriella must have realized it was Turner, her boss and unofficial mentor, who’d taken the bullet. Odile was wondering why Thierry didn’t just shut her up, when, abruptly, the crying ceased.
Good
, she thought.

Turner’s body, which had been driven back against the rail by the impact, had gradually slumped over sideways until it now lay faceup on deck. Taking it by the feet, Groot dragged it away from the main pool of blood in the vain hope they could pack it up without themselves being drenched in gore. Determined to see this grisly task finished as soon as possible, Odile unrolled the duffel bag, unzipped it, and laid it alongside the body. Then she thought, to her horror,
But he’s too tall. He won’t fit
.

Stripping to her underwear, she crawled along the top of the duffel bag, smoothing it out as she went. When she got to the end, she saw that her fears were unfounded. Those fears, anyway. The bag would do.

“Rachel,” Groot said. “We need you here.”

She threw the mop aside and came.

Max and Jacques were shooting the scene from different angles. Life was continuing.

“What we must do is roll him over on top of the bag and then pull it up around him. Rachel, you go there, by the shoulders. Odile, by the calves. I’ll get the middle.”

They took up their positions and, on the count of three, rolled the corpse. Though the physical exertion involved was slight, Odile felt faint afterward and had to rest. When she was ready, they pulled the edges of the bag up around Turner, tucking him into his riverine cocoon. Odile pulled the zipper closed along the length of the bag with a savagery that surprised her. Then she staggered to a chair and vomited as quietly as she could into the geranium planter.

Groot, taking up the coil of fluorescent orange rope that Rachel had brought from below, trussed the bundle tightly along its length in a zigzag pattern, which he finished off with a surgeon’s knot. The pattern of the rope against the black nylon bag reminded Odile of something she’d seen
before, something important, but she couldn’t quite bring it to focus and soon stopped trying.

After about a minute, as if by prearranged signal, they all three went back to the bundle, picked it up, and carried it around to the river side of the boat. There they balanced it on the railing, at what would be the small of Turner’s back, then quietly slipped him headfirst into the water. The bundle sank partway down and, still dimly visible, performed a slow-motion roll before the current carried it soundlessly, definitively, and miraculously away.

“We’ll give him thirty minutes before we cast off,” said Groot.

They cleaned what still needed it. It was decided that Jacques would accompany the
Nachtvlinder
to England after all, then fly back with his footage. They might need some transitions or postscripts. He and Max, taking one of the cameras with them but leaving the sound boom behind, went up to street level to get more video cartridges out of the Citroën.

Hugging herself, arms across her breasts, Odile walked slowly back to the river side of the boat and stopped there to stare into the whiteness. The lights on the Eiffel Tower had been switched off some time ago.

What she needed now, she thought, was to rest for a moment, find some small place of peace where she had no duties and no fateful decisions to make. She put her clothes back on over her bloodstained underwear and moved over to the quarterdeck, where the chairs were clustered. She sat down, a sigh escaped her, and, for just a second, she closed her eyes.

Then she was lost in a place where there was neither time nor even the memory of it, a place that was like a forest without paths. She pushed blindly through it, ignorant of all direction, determined only to keep going, heedless of the branches that tore at her face and forearms, undeterred by the half-buried rocks over which she repeatedly tripped and slid. Nearby, she knew, hidden among the trees, the people of this place were watching her in silence, wishing her neither good nor ill, simply waiting for her to be gone. The thought filled her with a bottomless sorrow that was like a kind of grief.
But where is Max?
she wondered. And then:
Am I fleeing something or chasing it?
Possibly it didn’t matter. She pushed on. A wind sprang up, quickly gaining force until it hurtled through the treetops like a freight train. She was looking around for shelter—a storm seemed imminent—when, unexpectedly, she came into a clearing. Startled by the sudden openness, she brought herself up short, then froze altogether. Not fifteen meters from where she stood, a large animal snuffled through the underbrush, browsing for food. She fell back a few steps, but too late. Catching her
scent, the bear jerked its head up to inspect her and immediately began to growl. The low, rasping sound, carrying with it intimations of far worse to come, frightened her very much. She tried to back away, but the brush seemed to have closed up behind her.
I’m finished
, she thought.
Done for
. She was still trying to make sense of her situation when the bear reared up, unleashed a terrible roar, and, with hallucinatory speed, launched itself directly at her.

Odile’s eyes fluttered open. At once she was restored to herself—a woman in a deck chair, aboard an admiral’s gig turned houseboat, set to depart for England at any moment. Whether what she’d just now experienced was sleep or some more esoteric synaptic event, she was at a loss to say. In either case, she now understood that one last bit of business was left for her to take care of, her and no one else. She got skittishly to her feet.

Jacques, emanating an air of deranged lucidity, bounded up the gangway with a canvas bag of fresh video cartridges. Rachel directed him to the companionway, and he disappeared below.

Odile had begun a slow survey of her surroundings when she sighted Max on the quai, setting up his camera. Everything was on track. The light had held.

Coming briskly around the wheelhouse, Rachel told her, “It’s almost time. You’d better get ready to go ashore.”

Odile could feel the blood sparkling in her veins.

“I just need a minute with Thierry before you go,” she explained. “Would it be possible for you to send him topside for me?”

Rachel let her blue eyes linger on Odile’s, then nodded and went.

Odile returned to the river side of the boat. Waiting there, she recalled a cryptic maxim—Maoist, she believed, dating from the time of the Cultural Revolution—that her father was fond of reciting. “If you are winning the race,” the adage went, “it is not because you are winning the race. It is because everybody else has stopped.” The thought, of course, was subject to a deliberately wide range of interpretations. She’d never quite been clear about which one Bastien himself espoused. Irritated by her own mind’s workings, she pushed the syllogism firmly from her consciousness.

Moments later, Thierry appeared on deck, newly confident, his carriage verging on the cocky. Odile let him come very close to her before she spoke. “I thought you might want to thank me,” she told him, “for saving your life.”

He smiled. “You know quite well, Odile, that there can never be words enough to thank you for such a thing.”

“I think you’re mistaken about that,” she said. “But let’s find out, shall we?”

“With pleasure.” He seemed genuinely happy, a new man alight with a new destiny. The slate wiped clean.

“I know, for instance, that you pirated my husband’s film for DVD,” she said, watching him carefully.

Thierry flared his lips and shrugged in a pantomime of contrition. “I offered to explain myself to him, but he didn’t choose to hear.”

“He has many things on his mind right now.” Wisps of ghostly white fog floated by. “So why don’t you explain yourself to me instead.”

“If you like.” He assumed the genial manner of a man recalling the details of someone else’s life, an individual with whom he’d once been quite close. “As you somehow know, I had gambling debts. They had to be paid off. My cousin—”

“I read your notebook, Thierry. The one you keep in that briefcase at your apartment.”

“You read my notebook.”

“Yes. So can we please skip the preliminaries?” A swell of anger passed through her. “Why did you change the ending of
Fireflies?”

For the first time since coming topside, he looked uneasy. “It’s true I changed the ending, but not just of
Fireflies
. Several other films as well.”

“Really? How very interesting, Thierry.” With a fierce gaze, she began to circle the man. “So you’re a director, then? Is that it?”

“No! Nothing at all like that!” He wheeled around, trying to catch her eye. “It was more a kind of private joke. No, not exactly a joke. More like an experiment.”