They both left. I was still turned around, underpants around my ankles. A collapsed puppet. My mouth was pressed against the little rock. The taste of the stone in my mouth, a bit of moss, I thought it was blood.
After that, I moved house, the two kids in tow. Never saw him again.
Someone’s knocking on my door, must be her. She didn’t go to the funeral. Didn’t go to the trial. She was bound to end up going somewhere.
58.
It’s the words they didn’t say
that make the dead so heavy in their coffins.
June 1996—I’d been visiting Sasha every other Sunday for six months. I’d just left him, still had soil under my fingernails. I put their address on my dashboard. A place known as La Biche aux Chailles, just past Mâcon. I drove for about half an hour, got lost in the small roads, kept going forward, kept reversing, cried with rage. I finally found it. A small house covered in roughcast that was shabby and grubby, stuck between two others that were bigger and more imposing. It looked like a poor little girl between her two parents dressed in their finest.
Both of their names were on the letterbox that hung on the door: “G. Magnan. A. Fontanel.”
My heart started racing. I felt nauseous.
It was already late. I thought about how I’d have to drive at night to get back to Malgrange, and how I hated doing that. With my stomach churning, I knocked several times. I must have knocked hard. I hurt my fingers. I saw the soil under my fingernails. My skin was dry.
It was she who opened the door. I didn’t instantly make the link between the woman standing before me and the one posing in a ridiculous hat at a wedding, in the photo Sasha had slipped in the envelope. She had seriously aged and put on weight since that photo had been taken. In the picture, she was badly made-up, but she was made-up. In this late-afternoon light, her skin was marked by the years. She had purplish shadows under her eyes and red blotches down her cheeks.
“Hello, I’m Violette Toussaint. I’m the mother of Léonine. Léonine Toussaint.”
Saying the first name and surname of my daughter in front of this woman chilled my blood. I thought: She probably served Léo her last meal. I thought, for the thousandth time: How could I have let my seven-year-old daughter go to that place?
Geneviève Magnan didn’t respond. She remained stony-faced and let me go on without opening her mouth. Everything about her was double-locked. No smile, no expression, just her sticky, bloodshot eyes staring at me.
“I would like to know what you saw on that night, the night of the fire.”
“What for?”
Her question astounded me. And without thinking, I replied:
“I don’t believe that, at seven years old, my daughter went into a kitchen to heat herself some milk.”
“Should have said that at the trial, then.”
I felt my legs shaking.
“And you, Madame Magnan, what did you say at the trial?”
“I had nothing to say.”
She whispered goodbye to me and slammed the door in my face. I believe I remained like that for a long while, breath taken away, in front of her door, looking at the flaking paint and their names written on some plastic tape: “G. Magnan. A. Fontanel.”
I got back into Stéphanie’s Fiat Panda. My hands were still shaking. I had sensed, when speaking to Swan Letellier, that something wasn’t clear about the sequence of events on that night, and my “meeting” with Geneviève Magnan had merely confirmed it. Why did these people all seem so elusive? Was it me who was imagining things? Was I going crazy? Even more crazy?
During the return journey, I went from lightness to darkness. I thought of Sasha, and of the staff at the château of Notre-Dame-des-Prés. I decided that, next time, the Sunday after next, I would go to the château. I had never felt strong enough to go past it. And yet it was only five kilometers from the Brancion cemetery. And I would return to the home of Magnan and Fontanel, and I would kick their door until they finally spoke.
I arrived outside my house at 22:37. I just had enough time to park before lowering the barrier for the 22:40 train. When I opened the door, I saw Philippe Toussaint, who had dropped off on the sofa. I looked at him without waking him, thinking that I had loved him, a long time ago. That if I’d been eighteen with short hair, I would have thrown myself on him, saying: “Shall we make love?” But I was eleven years older and my hair had grown longer.
I went to lie down on my bed. I closed my eyes without finding sleep. Philippe Toussaint came and slid into the bed in the middle of the night. He grumbled, “So, you’re back.” I thought: Lucky I am, or who would have lowered the barrier for the 22:40? I pretended to sleep, not to hear him. I sensed that he was sniffing me, that he was seeking the smell of someone else in my hair. The only smell he must have found was the air freshener from the Fiat Panda. He was soon snoring.
I thought of a story about seeds that Sasha had told me. He had
