Before browsing through her pages of writing, it dawns on me that she knew her grandson for a few years. I wonder what kind of grandmother she was. How she had greeted Nathan’s birth. I work out that he was born one year after Gabriel’s death.
Irène’s and Gabriel’s love reminds me of the game Hangman, where you have to guess a word. And I haven’t yet found the one that defines that love.
When he had entered my house, Julien had brought his mother and Gabriel with him.
How will our encounters end?
76.
The family isn’t destroyed, it changes.
A part of it merely becomes invisible.
SEPTEMBER 1996
That morning, after promising Violette that Geneviève Magnan wouldn’t be buried in the Brancion cemetery, Philippe had first headed for Mâcon, but at the last moment, he’d kept going and descended to Lyons, and then Bron. He’d reached the Pelletier garage by mid-afternoon. He had parked far enough away not to be seen. The garage was just as he remembered it. White and yellow walls. He hadn’t set foot in there for thirteen years, and even though he was too far away, he could smell that blend of engine oils. That smell he loved so much.
Only the models and makes of the cars on show, seen through his visor, had changed. He had kept his helmet on his head for hours. He had waited a long time to see them.
At around 7 P.M., upon seeing Françoise and Luc, side by side, in their Mercedes, her at the wheel, him beside her, his heart had let rip like a crazed boxer. Its pounding had reached his throat. The car’s rear lights had long disappeared when Philippe thought back to the best moments of his life with them. Those moments when he had really felt loved and protected. Those moments when no one expected anything of him. Those moments far away from his parents. He hadn’t followed the Mercedes. He just wanted to see them, be sure that they were still there, alive. Just that, alive.
And then he had headed for La Biche-aux-Chailles. The wretched place where Geneviève Magnan and Alain Fontanel lived. He had driven through the night. He liked riding his bike at night, with the dust and the moths in the headlights.
He had parked outside their house. A light was on in a downstairs room. Despite the circumstances, Philippe hadn’t hesitated to knock on the door. Alain Fontanel was alone, and somewhat tipsy. The black eye Philippe had given him two weeks earlier had almost gone.
“Geneviève’s did herself in. You won’t be getting it off tonight.”
That’s what Fontanel had said to Philippe on finding him at the door. The words had knocked Philippe for six and made him heave. He had almost thrown up. How could he have sunk so low?
The man standing before him was the lowest of the low, but so was he. He was the one who’d had a thing with Magnan. Who had “lent” her to a pal one night, without a second thought.
Philippe felt queasy thinking about it. He leaned against the door frame. That evening, faced with this drunkard eyeballing him, Philippe grasped how much Magnan had suffered at the hands of the two bastards that had trashed her: him and Fontanel. And that suffering pierced him like an icy wind. As if Geneviève’s ghost had stabbed him with the blade of a long knife. Darkness crashed down on him.
Seeing him reeling, Fontanel smiled nastily and turned his back on him, without closing the front door. Philippe followed him down a dark corridor. Inside, there was that musty smell, that smell of staleness, grease, and dust combined that you get in places where the air is never let in. Where no duster or mop has ever been seen. Philippe had thought of Violette, who aired the house even in winter. Violette. As he followed Fontanel, Philippe felt an intense desire to hold her in his arms. To hold her tighter than he ever had. But as the old man at the cemetery doubtless had.
The two men sat at the dining-room table. A dining room with no dining, just dozens of empty beer bottles on a plastic tablecloth. Two or three empties of vodka and other spirits. And, as though the Devil had decided to keep them company between these wretched walls, they started silently drinking.
It was only much later that Fontanel had spoken, when Philippe’s eyes had fallen on, and been unable to leave, the portrait of two young boys. Two framed grins on the corner of an ageless, filthy sideboard. A special school photo of siblings together, so their parents had an extra memento.
“The kids are with Geneviève’s sister. Much better off with her than with me. Never been a good father . . . And you?”
“ . . . ”
“About the girls’ deaths, about your kid, Geneviève, she wasn’t to blame . . . I mean, she did nothing on purpose. Me, I only know the end of the story, when she came to wake me up. Sound asleep I was, thought I was having a nightmare. She shook me, like some madwoman. She was blubbering and hollering all at once, couldn’t understand what she was jabbering on about . . . She spoke about you, told me your daughter was there, about her supply job at the school in Malgrange, about fate, cruel as can be . . . She spoke of her mother, I thought she’d hit the bottle. She pulled me by the arm, screaming, ‘Come! Come quickly! It’s horrific . . . horrific,’ never said such things before, Geneviève hadn’t. When I got to that room downstairs, it was too late. . .”
Fontanel downed a bottle of beer in one go, followed by a glass of vodka. He sniffed loudly, and then spat out his words, staring at a tear in the plastic tablecloth, scratching at it with his nails.
“The boss, that Croquevieille, she paid me peanuts for doing maintenance. The electrics, plumbing, painting, the parks . . . parks, my ass. Grass and gravel. Geneviève, she did the shopping and cooking in the summer.
