Le Temps des Cerises (42 page)

Monsieur Lafayette, reaching the bottom of the steps, heard the shot ring out through the thin rickety building and stopped abruptly in his tracks. It sounded to all intents and purposes as if his rival had been literally and unceremoniously shot! It wasn't what he'd expected, wasn't even what he'd wanted. He'd wanted his rival put behind bars, not put to death; and for the first time in his life he felt the pinpricks of guilt and remorse, worse than stinging nettles. He wished he'd never told them he knew where Alphonse Duchamp lived, wished he'd never led them here, wished he'd never let his jealous streak get the best of him. If only he'd listened to the voice of instinct and descended straightaway upon the barricades like a god, like a Roman emperor, like Achilles… But maybe he wasn't too late after all. Maybe he wasn't too late to intercede.

All that was good in him suddenly rose to the surface and his eyes glimmered softly with the faintest of lights. He charged back up the stairs two at a time, carrying with him the crazy notion of bursting into the room to confront that stick insect of a captain and his ungainly little corporal for he wasn't afraid of either of them, not one iota, not one little bit. But at the top of the stairs he changed his mind and instead crept up to the very key­hole he'd had the dubious pleasure of peeping through one rainy winter's heart-soaked dawn. There was little to see, apart from a pair of crumpled legs, presumably those of his rival, and the broad, round-shoulder­ed back of the corporal swaying back and forth and evincing little glimpses (a leg here, a hand there) of the captain scuttling about his business – wrapping up his corpse no doubt. He had been too late after all.

The stinging nettles of guilt and remorse swept up and down his spine. To die victorious at the barricades was one thing but to be cornered like a fox, magnificent brush or otherwise, in its own dirty hole was a supremely unheroic death. Monsieur Lafayette saw ahead of him then the second most ferocious emotional tussle of his existence. How to break the news to Eveline. Whether to admit his own part in the affair or plead ignorance of the whole sordid escapade. He was doomed either way in any case for she would never forgive him for condemning Alphonse Duchamp to an untimely and unheroic death; and yet on the other hand the thought of not telling her the truth was suddenly anathema to him. Much to his own astonishment the thought of concealing the truth from another person was suddenly anathema to him. Hadn't he given up guilt many years previously, fondly remarking to people that it was a bad habit, like biting one's nails; and now here she was, a dominatrix of a mistress (worse then stinging nettles) calling him to heel, ordering him to admit to his misdemeanours, whispering in his ear that he must tell Eveline the truth though it would cost him her love. That clear shining love, not the muddied polluted furtive little loves he'd known before but that clear, good and shining one. Must he tell her the truth? He owed it to Alphonse certainly, to Eveline probably, but did he owe it to himself? To sacrifice that clear shining love for the truth? How could he bring himself to do it? Was the truth as important as all that? He struggled in the grip of the second most ferocious emotional tussle of his existence; and the floorboards creaked madly under him, summoning the spider swiftly and silently out of its web.

‘Did you forget something, Monsieur… Lafayette?' the captain asked silkily, poking his long neck out of the door which he held ever so slightly ajar. ‘Or did you want to join the party?'

‘You should not have shot him!' Monsieur Lafayette, taken aback, blustered foolishly. ‘You should not have shot him. I gather your orders were to place him under arrest, take him in for questioning, not shoot him unarmed in his own home.' He saw now that the truth was of the utmost importance. He had no time to waste. He had a soul to save at the barricades. A soul in jeopardy and he owed her the truth at the very least.

‘A little mishap with the pistol.' The captain gave an apologetic smile. ‘It is liable to go off at the drop of a hat.' And he demonstrated how wildly he'd been waving the firearm when it had gone off so unexpectedly, much to the consternation of the corporal who begged him to stop lest the experience be repeated.

‘Oh, why is that,
Herr Doktor
,' laughed the captain callously, describing ever more eccentric circles with the temperamental object. ‘Do you fear for your own Fritz giblets, is that what it is? Do you fear for your own Fritz giblets?'

Monsieur Lafayette saw the look in the captain's eyes – as large and pale as his own were small and dark – and suddenly realising the precariousness of his situation, he stepped back a pace, fumblingly reaching for the banister behind him. ‘Old Lafayette can keep a secret,' he almost wheedled for old habits die hard, and a leopard rarely changes its spots. ‘He can be a dumb but eloquent witness. As quiet as the streets of Pompeii, of Thebes, the pyramids after centuries and centuries of...' But he never finished his sentence for something hit his ear with the oddly soft pop of a consonant, the force of which sent him tumbling down the stairs, somersaulting and catapulting over and over, two, three, four at a time, like an india rubber ball, until he lay at the bottom on the floor, spreadeagled and staring up at the ceiling. His eyes wore the astonished look of a boy for whom the lights had gone out too soon. The lights had gone out too soon.
So soon, so soon… Before he had time to
… And with the last rays of consciousness it dawned on him that the truth was always of the utmost importance and the only soul that had ever been in jeopardy was his own.

The corporal, following close at his captain's polished heels, was thinking that one mishap with a pistol could be deemed to be a fluke but two just didn't add up! He was missing something. Some hole in the knit of the captain's psychology. He had known there was a small tear certainly but now he was beginning to fear there was a gaping hole big enough to shove a fist, a head through. If so he must proceed with all caution, that's what his psychological skills were telling him now. He must proceed with all caution until he had unravelled that knit right down to the very last enigmatic stitch.

The captain was all contriteness of course, full of apologies and explanations.
He was having a bad day today and no mistake. What a dreadful mishap to happen again – the confectioner hurtling through the air like that… His cruel stomach-ache coming in waves like riding a stormy, seasick sea, making him forgetful, making him negligent… Perhaps he'd never cleaned the pistol properly, after its previous usage, he didn't know, couldn't remember… That scurrilous bunch at Brébant's feeding him snape as high as a kite. He wouldn't set foot in there again, not for all the tea in China!

‘Just looking at it reminds me of my own finitude,' he said quietly, placing the pistol on the iceman's writing desk, out of harm's way, much to the corporal's relief. ‘Or should I say rather my own infinitude, for that is what we all become a part of in the end – the infinitude. Look at him over there, seeping into that infinitude as we speak.'

The corporal looked – Alphonse Duchamp lay in a small pool of blood – and he was struck again by the profound sense of peace on the man's face. Dying was usually an unsavoury, guttural affair, not this quiet self-effacing act. He only hoped his own death when it came would be as calm and dignified as this strangely heroic one.

‘I hope my own passing is as easy.' He tentatively put his thoughts into words and the captain stared back in surprise. ‘I am sure it will be,
Herr Doktor
,' he smiled, almost forlornly.

There was something ignoble about searching the property of a dying man but despite some misgivings the corporal helped the captain continue his hunt for evidence. All they needed was a nametag or a signed document to prove that they had the right man. In the end the body would do but some documentation or revolutionary material would be helpful. They must have spent a quarter of an hour searching the premises, uncovering nothing but books belonging to and letters addressed to a certain Laurie Marçeau.

‘Who is this Laurie Marçeau?' the captain shouted angrily, suddenly losing his temper and flinging a bundle of letters on the floor. ‘Who is this wretched Laurie Marçeau?'

‘A friend perhaps?' the corporal replied soothingly in an effort to calm the captain down. ‘Or a pseudonym. He must have used a variety of names when you think about it to have evaded capture for so long. He was a master of disguise. There are probably hundreds of rooms like this and hundreds of identities.'

‘I doubt it,' retorted the captain scornfully, marching over to the door where an old woollen dressing gown and winter scarf were hanging. There was something about his demeanour that worried the corporal – he must proceed with all caution – though even he felt a flicker of doubt. What if the iceman had covered his tracks so well that no evidence could be found at all? What if, in the end, nobody could identify the body? The iceman would have literally melted into the sunshine (as he always did) and nobody none the wiser. The search would have been in vain. There would be no reward money, no garden for his son to run around in, no new house for his pretty and unassuming wife, no box at the Odéon for the captain to throw peanuts from at the ordinary, the common or garden, the prosaic… That mishap with the pistol would have cost them dear indeed. No wonder the captain was angry, angry with himself no doubt. The way he was twisting that scarf in his hands – as if he were wringing someone's neck – told the corporal that; and it made him glad that the pistol was out of harm's way.

There was only one place left to look – the body. In a moment the captain would make him stick his fingers into pockets and crevices, handle the tepid flesh of the soon-to-be departed, feel the faintly fluttering pulse like a butterfly caught in the hand. He'd done it before as a medical man, of course, but now it seemed like a sacrilege, a violation, a profanity. He didn't think he could do it, not for all the tea in China as the captain put it, not even for the reward money; and he stared defiantly up at the captain.

‘I will not search the body,' he stated firmly in a pre-emptive strike and the captain who was pensively fingering the metal studs that decorated the edge of the fine woollen scarf, smiled benignly back at him. ‘Of course not,
Herr Doktor
. Why ever should you?'

The corporal tried valiantly to unravel the captain's enigmatic knit, more knotted and slippery, it seemed to him, than the head of a hydra. Was he, a lowly corporal, too squeamish a fellow to ever have made it in the medical profession? Is that what the captain implied? Is that what he hinted at? The way he'd said
Herr Doktor
was deeply unpleasant. There was an army of meaning behind the way he'd said it. It would have been italicised in the pages of a book the way he'd said it. The corporal was crushed by the weight of the words
Herr Doktor
and the army of meaning behind them.

There was only one thing for it. He would have to prove him wrong. He would have to grit his teeth and prove the captain wrong. Stepping over to the iceman, he knelt down beside him and only when he stared into the soft gentle face did he realise he'd fallen for the bait, fallen headlong into the trap. His own pride had tipped him into it. His own vanity and pride.

‘I'll need fifty-five per cent of the reward money for it,' he called over his shoulder in a determined voice lest the captain think he'd completely outwitted him. ‘Or you can search the body yourself. Or,' he threw caution to the winds, ‘fabricate some evidence.'

‘What a good idea,' came the captain's mild reply. ‘We can always try that if you are… unsuccessful.'

Rolling up his sleeves and gritting his teeth, the corporal set to work. If he really were a doctor it wouldn't be a sacrilege, he told himself, wouldn't be a violation or a profanity. It would be like conducting a simple post-mortem for it was far too late to save the patient. With due reverence and, making the sign of the cross in the air, he lifted the iceman's rapidly cooling wrist, feeling the small raggedy pulse like a butterfly caught between finger and thumb. He didn't hear the captain creeping softly up behind him, didn't hear a footstep or feel a thing until the noose was about his neck. And there he was suddenly staring into the hole in the knit of the captain's psychology – a void big enough to stick infinitude into, let alone a fist or a head. He didn't need to see the look in the cold pale eyes to know what the captain was thinking. He didn't need the corporal, had never needed the corporal, psychological skills or otherwise. He could fabricate the evidence, take the reward money for himself. The clues had been there all along, in the cruel curling mouth, unpredictable rages, lack of remorse, the veneer of sophistication for that was all it was, a veneer – underneath a brute, an ordinary brute to throw peanuts at… The clues had been there right under his nose but his psychological skills had failed him in the end. He had unravelled the knit a little too late and the noose was about his neck, its metal studs pressing into his poor aching throat. Never again would his wife bring him hot soup and cheese toast for his aching throat. He hoped she would be happy, hoped his son would thrive in the small backyard. He wondered what it was like to asphyxiate – running very fast perhaps and not being able to catch one's breath. He almost wished he'd never embarked on his medical training – he knew too much and yet not enough. Did life end with the brain or the breath, the lungs or the heart?