And there it remains, even now, as my correspondent has made plain.
When I was finished, I dropped the tools and the bottle, now empty, over the parapet. Did I think then, standing there empty-handed over the river, that I had accomplished what I had come for? Did I believe that something was over and done with?
If such an illusion flitted at the corner of my sight, it lived only long enough to be crushed and swallowed by a paralyzing awareness: She was gone. There was no place to go. She was infinitely distant from everywhere. So I did not return to the train station. I did not leave Nevers that day, or that night. From the transit maps posted at the bus stops I had learned that there was a camping ground on the opposite bank of the Loire, just over the bridge. In a sporting goods store, I purchased a tent and sleeping bag. At the campground, a few RVs and camper vans with Dutch and German plates had docked themselves near the water hookups and canteen, but down in a grassy expanse along the river, none of the spaces were occupied, and I pitched my tent there. The sleeping bag, I discovered, had been made for a child, so I pulled it on top of me and drew up my legs. The sun made a cold white disk in the orange fabric of the tent. All that day and the following, a restless sleep came and went. Another day passed, and then another. A fifth day: it occurred to me that I had no intention of leaving this place.
—
In the evenings, I would make my way back up into the old town, threading my way up the ramparts above the Loire: Fountain Street, Break-Neck Street. The épicerie where I bought my vodka was on a cobbled pedestrian street between a pharmacy and a horse butcher. Each day, with neither salutation nor thanks, the grocer counted my money and handed me my bottle. Each night, the darkness found me seated on the parapet of the bridge, my feet hanging over the downstream side. Beneath the bridge the river shoaled and sheeted, composing itself again downstream, where the channel deepened. When the bottle was empty, I dropped it over the edge, just as I had done with the hammer and chisel. The roar of the water canceled any splash or sound of breakage, as though the bottle were falling and falling in endless space.
Why did I stay? Had I sentenced myself to a sort of purgatory, in the campground on the other side of the river? All I knew was that I was to wait, to stay where I was and await instruction. When it came, it would know to find me on the bridge.
And come it did, three or four days later, not in the evening but at noon. I had not slept the night before. Perhaps, I had thought, if I walked into town and around the park, by the time I’d returned I could sleep. Crossing the bridge, toward the city, I passed a group of teenagers loitering by the downstream parapet. A couple of kids tossed pebbles over the edge. One spat. A stray remark stopped me, and I leaned against the parapet at a distance but within earshot. One of the teenagers, a girl, barefoot in spite of the cold, had climbed up on the parapet, lifting her foot and pointing her toe, as a ballerina might.
“Was this where it happened?” someone asked.
“It was down there,” said the girl on the parapet.
“They pulled her out onto Tern Island.”
“No, they didn’t, shit-for-brains, they pulled her onto the bank.”
The girl said, “The water doesn’t look that deep.”
“Why don’t you dive down there and tell us?” said a boy.
“Why don’t you suck my dick?” said the girl.
“She would have died from the fall,” someone said.
“Especially chained to all that scrap iron.”
“She didn’t jump,” said the girl standing on the parapet. “She walked in from the bank. She drowned herself.”
“No way,” someone countered. “Everyone knows she jumped, or was pushed.”
“Oh, they do? The autopsy said she drowned,” said the balancing girl. “It was in the Journal du Centre today.”
“Oh, the Journal! Then it must be true.”
“It’s what the autopsy said.”
“It’s obvious,” said a boy. “Somebody threw her in.”
“She was knocked up and she drowned herself,” said the girl on the parapet. “My cousin said so. He works at the hospital.”
“Of course she was knocked up,” said the boy again. “All the more reason for someone to throw her into the river.”
—
It was in the Journal du Centre today. That was what the girl had said.
Noon: the kiosk at the corner of the park shut tight. Above it, the sun had stopped in the sky. The park was empty. I sat on a bench. Something in my brain had shut as well. I could not think. There was no thought. Just the silhouette of the barefoot girl, toe pointed, balanced on the parapet.
“It’s true she was pregnant,” the silhouette was saying.
It’s true she was pregnant. No thoughts, just the words, the silhouette. But then the kiosk had snapped open, and the air moved a little, lifting the corner of a newspaper under its paperweight.
“Help yourself,” the woman in the kiosk had said when I placed my coin on the tray. “It is sad, monsieur, this story of the drowned girl,” she said as the coin vanished into her hand. “And pregnant too, they are saying. La pauvre. Enfin, les pauvres. It is there inside the paper. Everything.”
Poor girl. Or rather: poor both of them.
Following the drowning of Miriam Levaux, reported in these pages last Monday…
Was monsieur not feeling well?
Was he sure?
Without doubt, monsieur, it is the fluctuations in temperature.
The inquest, concluded yesterday, confirmed suicide as the cause of death.
The fluctuations have been terrible.
Levaux, who had notified the police where her body could be located, had been six
