The Snow Kimono (29 page)

See, there’s nothing left.

Maybe you shouldn’t have come up. Why don’t you go back down? We’ll be there in ten
minutes.

No, she said. The cabin’s unbearable now.

She looked pale, exhausted. He glanced down to where the breeze was circling her
body. He could see the impress of her dress, the small bow of her growing belly.

You’re beginning to show, he said.

I know.

She held the fabric against her stomach with her splayed fingers.

There’s no going back, is there? she said, half-smiling.

She put a hand up to shield her eyes. Didn’t you say that
there would be someone
waiting for us?

Yes, he said. After we’ve been through passport control.

I don’t see anyone, she said.

He had already scanned the wharf himself. There will be, he said. We should go down
and pack.

I’ve already done it, she said.

He turned towards her.

What else was I to do?

And then she said something he would never forget: Home, she said, looking up at
the looming city. I can hardly wait.

The engines gave one last fitful rumble, churned briefly, then died away. The deck
stilled with a half-hearted heave.

So, this is it, he said.

This is it, Madeleine said. She took a breath. This is it.

Passport. The French civil service—they had forgotten how uncivil it could be. But
who knew where allegiances lay these days, now the war had begun. The black-capped
face looked at Madeleine’s passport, her photograph, at her. Tapped the folded passport
on his palm. Handed it back. Took Jovert’s. Jovert saw him hesitate. The registering
of his name. Thank you. Sir. But the cap did not look up, its uniformed arm was already
reaching out for the passport behind him.

It was young Thibaud who had been assigned to him. He was, as had been arranged,
waiting for them on the
wharf, standing by the car. Jovert carried their two suitcases.

God, I can’t believe how much it’s changed, she said. She took his arm unsteadily.
So,
mon capitaine
, what do you think?

He surveyed the white arc of houses that stretched up the hillside around him.

It’s not Marseille, he said. But I can see what people mean, about the light.

They were almost at the car.

Thibaud stepped forward, his hand out.

Good to see you again, sir, he said.

But when he saw the look on Jovert’s face, his hand dropped. Jovert reached out.
Took Thibaud’s hand in his.

Good to see you, Corporal Thibaud. Permit me to introduce you. Thibaud, this is
my wife—Madeleine,
ma chère
, Corporal Thibaud.

Madame. Thibaud inclined his head. Jovert could almost hear the faint click of his
heels.

Thibaud had already read the unexpected news the breeze brought with it. At least
he was thinking now.

Here, let me take your bag, Madame.

No, it’s fine. Thank you, Corporal, she said. I’m happy to keep this one with me.

You can help me with these, Corporal, Jovert said.

He was at the rear of the car. He was smiling. Two suitcases at his feet.

Thibaud went to open the boot. Picked up the bags.
Merci
. You’re welcome, sir.

Then they were on their way, across the clattering wooden wharf, and up through the
maze of streets to the house which awaited them, the one he had inspected, the one
he had prepared for them, three months before.

In the library, Jovert begins to retrace the route they had taken from the wharf,
or, at least, the one he thinks they took, up through the tangle of the streets to
the house they had shared, worked in, lived in, made love in, died in, during those
fateful fifteen months, thirty years earlier.

And so begins the process of prompting, probing, of resisted stimulation, to force
his memory to surrender what he has spent decades trying to forget.

He knows what he has to do. Even if it breaks him.

Memory, he had once believed, was our real refuge. It was who we were. What we returned
to. A somehow sacred place. Our cells might die, be replaced, but not their secret
synaptic codes. That was the paradox. Memories were our sanctuary. What bound us
to each other. But he knew now that that was an illusion. Memories could change,
be destroyed, be rewritten.

Now, in the library, he
would
remember. He would force himself to recall
all
the
pain, to give up those things he wished he could have left buried. He would overcome
his own resistance. After all, how many nameless people had he helped in the past
to do just this? How many people, struggling against
inescapable odds, had he helped
to see clearly? To recall things they might have otherwise forgotten. Or said they
had.

No, he knew he could do this. He had always had this gift. He knew every trick in
the book. Had invented some. It was why they had chosen him. So he sat there, in
the vast space of the Bibliothèque, looking at the maps spread in front of him. Two
from 1955. One from 1988.

She was even younger than he had imagined, the woman on the other end of the phone.
Twenty-four, maybe. Six. Welcoming—Ah, Inspector. The smile friendly. Her teeth perfect,
dazzling. Helpful. Even her glasses were chic.

Not far now, Thibaud says. Down the narrow worn-stepped alleyway. Thibaud behind
them, carrying one of their suitcases.

Here, this is it.

The house lay hidden behind a high white wall. An arched wooden gate painted blue.
Thibaud’s hand on the black wrought-iron latch. Convolvulus. The portico blue. His
memory hurries him through to the balcony off their bedroom where the two of them,
he and Madeleine, are standing, looking down over the flat white rooves that lie
before them, a pile of fallen white dominoes, to the still, blue harbour below. To
the north, the naval docks; to the south, the Terre-plein spit; the squat lighthouse
in between.

He pulled the map closer. Where exactly had the house been?
Young Thibaud, who would
be killed in an ambush a month after Jovert left, had stopped the car…here.

He marked the position with his finger. Drew an imaginary line towards the spit.

Later their luggage would arrive. Four shrouded Arabs suddenly in the courtyard,
sitting there as quiet as assassins. Smoking. The gate still open.

From the balcony, the dockyards. Nearby, the Villa les Tourelles. He holds his fingers
out. A reverse trigonometry. He draws a small circle on the map with his fingertip.
He leans down. Tries to prise the streets apart. But the map resists. It won’t give
up its secrets that easily to him.

He remembers the hundreds of aerial-surveillance photographs he had had at his disposal
at the Villa les Tourelles, where his best work was done. If only he now had access
to these. But that was impossible. Even if he had still been with the Special Operations
Branch, he could never have got to them. That part of his life had been wiped clean.
What had his contact said to him when he had asked after Haifa, the warning clear?
I thought that was ancient history
.

The house is off rue des Oiseaux, Thibaud says. They are in the car again. Thibaud.
Madeleine. Driving up from the port.

You’re lucky, the house faces east. You can see the old port from the balcony. He
pulls the car up around another bend.
Only to be trapped by a truck on the narrow
broken cobble-stoned street in front of them. The truck—old, blue-canopied, dirty—almost
stops. The gear change makes him wince. A river of half-dreamed men appears about
the car. Sleeping, sun-drugged dogs. Children staring.

It’s about a fifteen-minute walk to the harbour. There are gardens nearby.

He is standing on the balcony with Thibaud. The sound of retching comes to him from
the bathroom.

Your wife might find them comforting. There is a small viaduct off rue St Augustin.
A pharmacy on Place Randon, run by an Arab who trained in Paris. Here, here it is.
Just above his crescent-fingered nail. Place Randon! Perhaps you should see him—get
something for your wife.

Memories, shuffled, reshuffled from his past.

The first night, after their frugal meal, untouched by Madeleine, he told her.

I have to go out, he said. I don’t know what time I’ll be back.

Already?

Already. There is something I have to attend to.

He leaned down, kissed her on the forehead.

Will you be all right?

I’ll be fine, Auguste. Don’t worry. Fatima’s here. Tilde is calling by later.

Fatima, their live-in housekeeper. Mathilde, Madeleine’s teaching colleague, both
of whom she was watching over.

I’ll see you in the morning, she said.

If I’m back.

And he turned to leave her, to think again about the new baby that would soon be
with her, with him. And the new lives that awaited them.

Chapter 30

HE went downstairs into the basement. Through the concealed corridor that led underground
to the house below. It looked as lived-in as his own. He changed. Madeleine knew
about the house, but not about this other him. Out into the small courtyard. Through
its gated archway. And onto the street, where Thibaud was waiting for him in another
car.