He’d fallen for Violette the first time he’d seen her behind the bar. He had been attracted by all the sugar she seemed to be sprinkled with. Like a colorful lollipop at a fun-fair stall. It was nothing like what he had felt, and would always feel, for Françoise, but he’d wanted that particular girl. Her voice, her skin, her smile, her feather-lightness. Her tomboy looks, her fragility, her way of giving herself without restraint. That’s why he had got her pregnant so soon, he wanted to keep her for himself, all to himself. Like a pastry you don’t want to share. That you gobble in a corner, even if you end up covered in crumbs. And his mother had caught him red-handed, him, the child who could do no wrong, sweater smeared in grease. And a bun in the girl’s oven, to boot.
In August of 1996, so nine months after the trial that sent Edith Croquevieille to prison, Violette had left to spend ten days in Marseille at Célia’s chalet. That woman he couldn’t stand, and he sensed the feeling was mutual. He’d said that, during that time, he would go biking with friends from Charleville, friends from before. Friends he no longer had. Not before, not now.
He had set off for Chalon-sur-Saône, alone. Alain Fontanel worked in a hospital over there. The Sainte-Thérèse Hospital, built in 1979, where he took care of electrical maintenance, plumbing, and paintwork with two other colleagues, since losing his job at Notre-Dame-des-Prés. Philippe Toussaint didn’t know how he was going to tackle him. Should he speak nicely to him, or beat him up until he came clean? Fontanel was about twenty years older than him, not hard to overpower, put in an armlock. He hadn’t planned anything, apart from having a one-on-one with him. Asking the questions that no one had asked him during the trial.
Philippe Toussaint had gone into the hospital, asked at reception to speak to Alain Fontanel, and been asked, “Do you know his room number?” Philippe Toussaint had stammered, “No, he works here.”
“He’s a nurse? An intern?”
“No, he does maintenance.”
“I’ll find out.”
As the receptionist was picking up her phone, Philippe Toussaint spotted Fontanel entering the ground-floor cafeteria, about fifty meters away. He was wearing gray overalls. Philippe Toussaint felt just as disturbed as at the trial, he couldn’t stomach this guy. Without thinking, he walked very fast toward him, until he was standing behind his back. Fontanel was carrying a tray and waiting in line at the self-service counter. Philippe Toussaint stayed behind him, took a tray himself, and requested the daily special. Fontanel went over to a window, alone. Philippe Toussaint joined him and sat opposite him, not asking if he minded.
“Do we know each other?”
“We’ve never spoken, but we do know each other.”
“Can I help you?”
“No doubt.”
The guy cut his meat as if everything was perfectly normal.
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“I usually have that effect on women.”
Philippe Toussaint bit his cheek hard to remain calm, not get carried away.
“So, I don’t think you said everything at the trial . . . Your testimony, it goes around in circles in my head, like a wildcat in a cage.”
Fontanel showed no sign of surprise. He studied Philippe Toussaint for a minute, doubtless trying to remember him from the trial, to place him there, and then he mopped up the sauce from his plate with a hunk of bread.
“And you think I’m going to add something, just like that, for your pretty face?”
“Yup.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because I could become a lot less nice.”
“You can do me in, I don’t give a damn. To tell you the truth, it would suit me. I don’t like my job, don’t like my wife, don’t like my kids.”
Philippe Toussaint clenched his fists so tight, his hands went white.
“I don’t give a damn about your life, I want to know what you saw on that night . . . You’re lying through your teeth.”
“The Magnan woman, do you know the Magnan woman? She’s my wife.”
“ . . . ”
“At the trial, she pissed herself every time she laid eyes on you.”
The moment Fontanel said her name, he saw Geneviève Magnan again in the school corridors, with sleep in her eyes, running after him like a bitch in heat. He saw himself again screwing her, always in the same place, feet in the mud, in the headlights of his motorbike. It made him heave. Fontanel, the smell of food and hospital combined . . . Had she set fire to the room to take her revenge? That question tormented him.
“What actually happened, for Chrissake . . . ”
“It was an accident. Nothing more, nothing less. A fucking accident. Don’t bother looking, you’ll find out nothing more, I’m telling you.”
Philippe Toussaint leapt over the table, grabbed him, and laid into him as if he’d gone crazy. In the face, in the stomach, he was hitting in all directions, randomly. He felt like he was pounding a mattress dumped on a street corner. He struck out, ignoring the cries all around him. Fontanel didn’t defend himself. He let it be done to him. Someone pulled Philippe by the arm, to stop him from going further, tried to restrain him, get him on the floor, but he fought back, with superhuman strength, and then took off. His fists were stinging and bleeding, he’d hit that hard.
As he had expected, Fontanel had said nothing, hadn’t lodged a complaint for assault and battery. He had stated that he didn’t know the identity of his assailant.
64.
Sleep, Daddy, sleep, but may you still hear
our childish laughter in highest Heaven.
Bron Cemetery, June 2nd, 2017, blue sky, twenty-five degrees, 3 P.M. Funeral of Philippe Toussaint (1958–2017). Oak coffin. Gray marble tomb. No cross.
Three wreaths—“Beautiful flowers for beautiful memories that will never fade”—white lilies—“Accept these flowers as testimony of my deepest sympathy.”
Funeral ribbons that read: “To my companion,” “To our colleague,” “To our friend.” On a funerary plaque, beside a golden motorbike: “Gone but never forgotten.”
Around twenty people
