Anatomy of a Disappearance (20 page)

“A bientôt, Mademoiselle Benameur,” the waiter said.

I paid and left. I caught a glimpse of her turning in to another street. I ran after her. I looked back and saw the waiter standing outside the café in his long white apron, perfectly pressed in large square creases, his eyes on me. I did not run after that and made sure my steps were measured. I turned the corner after her. She was already a good way down. I tried to run again, but my shoes hammered loudly on the cobbled stones. It did not matter; my steps were faster than hers, and eventually I was an arm’s length away, inhaling deeply, trying to smell her. But I caught nothing, not even when she stopped to look at the time and I stood so close behind that, when I blew, the outer strands of her hair parted. She lit a cigarette and walked through the plume. I watched her cross the road. She rang the doorbell of an understated building that had a pale wooden door with a small brass plate. A Swiss flag hung from a mast at the second floor. The cloth was so large that its red corner brushed against the top of her head as she pushed the door and disappeared inside.

That night I could not sleep from the excitement, the possibilities. I decided that I would try to get to know her
without revealing my identity. I was worried that if she knew who I was she would be frightened away, like she had been ten years earlier.

The following day, walking across the Pont de la Machine under the white September sun, the lake opening and glittering toward the snow-patched mountains in the distance, I found a cluster of figures gathered, gloved hands on the railing, heads bent, a couple of them shouting instructions at the fully dressed man below who was desperately trying to climb out of the water.

He hugged the bridge column, managed to extract his torso from the fast current and then slipped again. He was looking desperately up at the bank beneath the bridge where I could see a woman kneeling over, her hair tied in a scarf as if she had just stepped out of a convertible. I could not see her face, but from the way she held her arm I suspected she had her hand against her mouth. His head was bobbing above the water. His nose began to bleed. He wiped it, threw his head back. For a moment his eyes looked up at us, but he seemed to take no notice of the anxious calls to hurry, to reach once again for the column, to not give up. His body was moving furiously beneath the water. No sooner had he brought his head upright than his lips and chin were covered in blood. He began another attempt at scaling the bridge. He slipped and splashed back into the waters. The woman under the bridge did not move.

“Call the fire brigade,” one man shouted.

“We have,” another told him. “A while ago.”

“Why are they taking so long?” the woman behind me said so softly that I felt obliged to look back at her.

The man in the water was working hard now, a new strength in his arms. The column was less than a meter away. He took hold of it and managed to make it up to the first beam. He was now out of view. The water looked darker without him. Being against the railing, I leaned over like the others to see. Whenever someone from behind asked whether the man had made it, we ignored them. I kept my eyes on the woman. She was still on her knees, but her hand had now left her mouth and was stretched out as if she was saying, “Stay there.” When he finally jumped onto the sloping bank, water jetting through the stitching of his black leather shoes, we all clapped. The woman opened her arms and the man fell into her, his head quickly finding her lap. She fingered his wet hair, combing it, tucking it behind his ears and, because from that angle she could not bend to kiss him, she pulled his palm to her face. She untied her scarf and collected it in a ball beneath his nostrils. Her hair relaxed into the air, as if it were breathing it, and fell thick and black. And now, as the distant siren grew nearer, the stillness of those around me seemed less an expression of concern and more a celebration. I walked hurriedly away toward the café, overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of recklessness and of hope.

It was lunchtime, and the café was nearly full. The only free table was by the window. The waiter watched me from the doorway without speaking. Eventually he came to my table. I ordered the steak, rare, as I remembered Father liking it. I thought of him sitting in this restaurant, in one of his dark-gray suits. I wondered if I would be able to locate his tailor. I remembered how I used to sit on a stool in the shop, watching him being measured. Perhaps I could order a three-piece in the style he preferred, I thought. The lunch crowd left, and I was the only one in the place. Béatrice Benameur never came. At one point I had the idea that the waiter was on the telephone with her. As he talked he glanced over in my direction then turned his back, whispering, nodding. I became certain he was taking instructions. When he hung up I waved for the bill.

I went to my room and remained in bed until the following morning, hardly sleeping. I wondered how she would react if I were simply to ring her buzzer and introduce myself. I thought of calling Taleb and asking what he suggested I should do. I thought of calling Mona, asking her to come. At nine in the morning I finally telephoned the office of Monsieur Hass. I had been meaning to call him as soon as I arrived in Geneva but somehow had not been able to face it. I got no answer. I redialed every five minutes until, at around 9:45, his secretary answered.

“Did you call before?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

She put me on hold, then returned to say, “Monsieur Hass would like you to come as soon as you are able. Can you come now?”

The ten years that had passed since I had last seen Charlie Hass had thinned his already slender frame; his suit hung a little loosely now. He seemed shorter somehow, and there was a slight hunch in the shoulders. His hair was no longer black. Thin strands clung to his scalp. But the most significant yet subtle change was in the eyes. They had become less certain, more wary. He seemed to have given way to the inevitability of his doubts.

We shook hands, then he held me by the shoulders.

He sat behind his desk and I in the small armchair opposite.

“You look like your father,” he said. “You hold yourself in the same way.”

The secretary’s arm stretched beside me and set a coffee cup on the desk. Hass waited until she left.

“So what brings you to Geneva?”

“Just passing through. Thought I should show my face, say thank you.”

“Everything is OK moneywise, I hope?”

I noticed a thin veil of moisture glistening on his brow. A new expression passed across his face then vanished.

“Living with his legacy, with what he had done, the path he had taken, must be difficult.”

I was sure he took the silence that followed as agreement.

“But you must not blame him. He certainly did make difficult choices, but you must not judge him. You must put all that aside and be proud of his bravery, his single-mindedness. A lesser man, especially with his intelligence and means, would have walked away, lived a provincial life somewhere.”

“I would not have minded that.”

He did not respond, but the droplets of sweat on his brow swelled.

“I remember him mentioning a town in northern California, a place he liked. Yes, I remember it now. He was sitting where you are, in the same chair, and said, ‘Charlie, I am thinking of taking my boy and moving to America. I have bought a place for the purpose. In Point Reyes.’ ‘Where is that?’ I asked. ‘Northern California,’ he said and I could not restrain myself. I’m glad to say he laughed too. The thought of your father relaxing on a Californian beach! But I think
he did feel torn, worried what his life might mean for you. Worried where things might end up. He was right to worry, of course.”

We both were silent. Hass let out a heavy breath.

“I took him out after that for a wonderful lunch—your father was famous for his long lunches—and he never mentioned California again.”

Suddenly everything in that room looked old, worn out: the desk and old sofa in the corner, Hass’s suit.

He looked down at his fingers, which were long and thin, and spoke softly, as if to himself.

“He really was a great man.”

I let my eyes rest on the gold irises linked round the inside lip of the small coffee cup. There was comfort in staring at the blackness of the coffee, the steam rising in gray breaths above the liquid.

“Whatever happened to Béatrice Benameur?”

His eyes here looked even more wary.

“Did you ever track her down again?”

“Yes. The years have been hard on her too.”

“I would like to speak with her. After all …”

For some reason I could not complete the sentence.

“Of course. I’ll try,” he said gently into the silence. “Leave it with me.”

I wrote down, slowly, the name of the hotel where I was staying, the room number.

I descended the Old Town to the lake’s edge and there sat on a bench. My mind set off imagining another possibility of myself: one who was more proactive, more courageous and more capable, one whose interrogations were less desperate and incomprehensible to himself. The shame and the regret nagged, and together they were as persistent as the cries of the seagulls that hovered now above the lake. The clouds were skipping fast. They cut the light into lines that traced the water and the craggy backs of the mountains that blocked the horizon. I felt dizzy, as if comprehending the scale of things for the first time and with it the vast yet intricate reality of the physical world and my precarious presence in it. I held my head and stared at the blades of grass at my feet. I counted the stitches round the leather of my shoes. I wanted this world to still. I wanted to fix it and be fixed within it. But everything was on the move, the clouds, the wind.

A boy was now sitting on the other end of the bench. How long had he been there? He watched me for a long time before he spoke.

“Are you sad?” he asked.

I tried to smile.

He looked down at his knees again. His legs were too short to reach the ground. Every so often he kicked the air. He turned around suddenly. How did he detect his mother approaching? She came and sat down between us, took out something wrapped in a paper bag and handed it to him. She took it back and peeled off the wrapping and handed it
to him again. They sat in companionable silence, eating their sandwiches, his mother turning now and then to wipe the crumbs from his chin.

I left them and climbed up into the maze of streets of the Old Town. I walked fast until the steep roads slowed me down. Night fell like a shutter. There was no moon. The streetlamps were on. It must have rained, too, because the amber light was reflecting off the wet cobblestones. I touched my hair, and my palm shone. But the air was wonderfully mild, and I felt no need to button my jacket. The trees and bushes, swollen with late summer, released their scent. I was alone. The streets were deserted. I looked at the time—at the watch my father had last worn in this very same city. It was half past eleven. I had been walking for hours. The stone buildings stood dimly in the night, and, looking at them, I felt a deep longing to inhabit their rooms. To make love and eat and bathe and sleep in there, to quarrel and make promises, to sit with friends and talk into the night, to listen to music, read a book, write a letter, consider the position of a new object, watch flowers in a low vase, watch them at different times of the day, clip their stems and replace their water daily, move them away from a harsh light, a drafty passage, draw out their time. It was then that I heard a man calling me. How strange it was to hear my name echoing in the vacant street. Then the clatter of hoofs. I turned, expecting to see a horse’s full and muscular chest approach. But I was mistaken. They were footsteps. Two people. One was Monsieur Hass. I would have recognized
him sooner were he alone. He looked far more relaxed than when I had seen him earlier that day in his office. A strand of silver hair fell over his forehead. His arm was intertwined with that of a woman. She had on the same pencil skirt. When I recognized who she was I took a step back. It felt as if all the air had gone out of my lungs. I could not speak.