Concerto to the Memory of an Angel (16 page)

President Morel interpreted her words as a wish to recover and, full of pity for a dying woman who went on hoping, he thought it wise to break off the discussion.

Adjacent to a proud grove of oaks was a tall white building, half manor house, half château, with wide steps flanked on either side by sculpted lions, and doors bearing coats of arms. The director of the establishment, a blonde woman, was waiting for them by the entrance, her personnel standing on the steps in the manner that had once prevailed in châteaux, where all the servants lined up neatly to attend their master's return. Repeatedly she told the President and his first lady how “very honored” she was, conferring an atmosphere of official visit upon the sordid reality—so much so that Henri and Catherine winked at each other as she led them to a buffet of local produce with the pride of a woman who has just invented the petit-four, and they almost succumbed to uncontrollable laughter, something that had not happened to them for years.

Catherine was settled into a spacious room with windows that looked out onto the garden, then the President left to attend to his duties. He kissed Catherine on the forehead and promised he would be back soon.

 

For three days, despite his sincere desire, he was unable to find a moment to visit. His campaign was heating up, and he had to devote his time and energy to this new combat. But as he received updates every two hours, he learned that Catherine had requested a blank notebook and had started writing.

He realized what was happening.

“That's it, she's writing a confession in order to harm me. I have to go soon, and often, to see her. The less often I go, the more she will condemn me.”

He was convinced that his presence would limit her venom, but for all that he did not manage to find the three hours in succession necessary for a visit, neither that day nor at any time during the three that followed.

On Sunday, it was a helicopter that took him to La Maison de Rita.

The obsequious director, dazzled by such a profusion of means, led him, simpering, to his wife's room. When she opened the door, he gasped.

Sitting at her table, bent over her notebook, Catherine had changed; while throughout her lifetime she had been not so much beautiful as pretty, graced with a charming little face, now the disease had ravaged her, leaving her with shadows around her eyelids and a waxy complexion. Nevertheless, she wore a mask of great beauty, a slow, noble, priestly, expressionless beauty, more impressive than it was pleasing. And while he had not noticed anything when he could see her on a daily basis, Henri now realized how greatly she had been transformed. To some degree, this woman had already shed her mortal coil and left the world of the living behind.

“Hello, my dear.”

She took several moments to react—everything was slower with her, now—then she turned around, saw Henri, and smiled. Her welcome seemed sincere to the President.

But as soon as he went over to her, she placed her hands on the pages she had just finished so that he would not see them, then closed the notebook and wedged it between her legs.

This reaction caused Henri to lose heart. So, he was right: she was taking her revenge.

For an hour he conversed with her, justifying his absence by telling her in detail and with humor everything he had had to do that week. In spite of her fatigue she listened attentively and although she could not laugh, during those moments when she normally would have burst out laughing she did screw up her eyes.

As he added one anecdote to the next he could still think of nothing but the notebook. Why didn't he have the guts to snatch it from her? Or at least talk to her about it?

Suddenly he pointed at it.

“Are you writing?”

Catherine's face lit up.

“And what are you writing, if you don't mind me asking?”

She hesitated, searching for her words, then she was pleased in advance with what she found to say.

“It's a secret.”

He insisted gently, with no hostility: “A secret you can share with me?”

She seemed troubled, turned her head, and as she stared out into the garden at the setting sun she said slowly, “If I share it with you, it will no longer be a secret.”

He swallowed his saliva and held back his irritation, then said confidently, “May I read it some day?”

There was a flash in Catherine's eyes. She pursed her lips, bitter.

“Yes.”

The silence thickened. Outside, night was falling. The window was wide open and they could hear a golden oriole chirping and the sound of his beak against the bark. They were far away from everything, in the repose of a natural garden where the air radiated calm.

Henri did not turn on the light but allowed the darkness to fill the room. It was as if this twilight reflected their love: what had once been luminous had become cheerless and drab; the darkness was crushing them.

He kissed her on her forehead and left the room.

On Monday morning at 6
A.M
., with the utmost discretion, he sent for one of the heads of the Secret Service, General Reynaud, and shared his concerns in the utmost confidence, exaggerating things somewhat: he was afraid that his wife, who was sick, and drugged, might write things that would be misinterpreted, or even used by his enemies. The general immediately sent someone to the institution to get hold of the incriminating pages.

Reassured, presidential candidate Morel returned to his duties.

In the weeks that followed he was swamped, constantly in demand, rushing from meetings to television studios, and always ready to participate in stormy debates with his adversaries, so he did not manage, although he was racked by guilt, to visit her more than three times. With each visit he felt so bad that he behaved in an abrupt manner, and not tenderly enough; when he saw how much she had declined he became even more distraught. Although she did not seem to be offended, he knew he must annoy and irritate her, thus driving her to greater revenge in her writing.

The day of the election came. In the first round, Henri Morel obtained forty-four percent of the ballot, which was insufficient to win but augured well for a second round, because his opponents were divided and had no clear leader, as each one had garnered only ten percent of the votes. These scores encouraged Henri to believe that some of the voters would go over to him in the second round.

He pursued the battle energetically, particularly as the activity distracted him from Catherine's dying days and their imminent consequences.

On the Sunday of the second round, Henri Morel won the presidency with fifty-six percent of the votes: a landslide! At his headquarters they were exultant, his party rode a wave of jubilation, people rushed out into the streets to sing and dance and wave banners. He himself was obliged to drive down the Champs-Elysées, and to proclaim his gratitude from the open roof to the euphoric crowd.

Then he had to appear before the news cameras to comment on the election, and he strove to keep a grave expression on his face, for he did not want anyone to reproach him for his joy when the time came, any day now, for Catherine's funeral. To his surprise he realized, moreover, that he was so absorbed that he was not finding it difficult to maintain this dignified, introverted stance. During the night he celebrated his victory with the militant members of his party.

At dawn, all alone in his apartments at the Elysée Palace, he stood before the mirror and examined his naked self with neither sympathy nor complacency, and spent a few minutes analyzing the feelings that were troubling him: he did not want Catherine to die, for as many good reasons as bad. The good reasons were that he felt deep sorrow, stronger than he ever would have thought, to see his wife destroyed by illness. The bad reasons were that Catherine's death meant that the truth would come out, the revelations regarding the attack on the Rue Fourmillon and other damning details, an explosion that would have infinite repercussions and could easily destroy his political future, however officially glorious it might seem at the moment.

 

When he arrived that afternoon at the Maison de Rita, Catherine had just gone into a coma. According to the redheaded nurse at her bedside, she had watched the images of his reelection on her television the night before, and then she had wept, and fallen asleep. By morning she had lost consciousness.

A physician came to confirm that she would not wake up; the fatal outcome was expected within the next forty-eight hours.

Henri went onto automatic pilot, registering the terrible information with a nod of his head. He was so shocked that in fact he felt nothing.

Once he had listened to the director repeating ad nauseam, in her curt voice and with her empty administrative authority, what everyone had already told him, he took advantage of a moment alone with Catherine to search the room for her notebook.

In vain.

Exhausted, he could only hope that General Reynaud's agent had done the housekeeping before him. How could he be sure?

That evening in Paris, he organized a discreet meeting with the general, who confessed that the agent whom he had planted in the kitchen at least a month earlier had not managed to get his hands on the notebook. Ordinarily, Catherine put it beneath her mattress, but this morning, after the news of her coma had spread, the man had not found it there.

Henri thought the ground would open beneath his feet.

The next day he went back to La Maison de Rita under the pretext of keeping vigil over Catherine, and at noon he created a scandal with the administration: where had his wife's logbook disappeared to? They were to deliver the notebook to him within the hour! A commando led by the servile director foraged everywhere for hours, searching the building and the staff's lockers from top to bottom, but failed to find anything. The president insisted on interrogating everyone: as a witness to the interviews, he realized soon enough that they would not find the slightest clue. After the last nurse had appeared before him, he thought he would fly off the handle; at that very moment the physician burst into the office to announce the death of his wife.

Catherine Morel was no longer of this earth.

From then on, Henri entered an icy corridor that he would not leave for weeks: he knew he was lost.

 

At the Elysée Palace he made the most of what people liked to call “his state of shock” to abstain from the organization of the funeral. Rigaud was very much at ease with this type of event, and he put together a lavish ceremony at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris which was rebroadcast on a giant screen outside the building itself and to every television in every home in France.

Surrounded by the Garde Nationale, who added the brilliance of their helmets and the thoroughbred nervousness of their horses to the spectacle, the coffin was conveyed to the main entrance by a carriage laden with white roses; then it entered the nave, carried by young visual artists. Cardinal Steinmetz, a man of iron faith with a bronze voice, led the mass, with choirs, a solo performed by the most eminent diva, and symphonic interludes. Called to the altar, President Morel, with modest glasses on his nose, delivered a speech that he was supposed to have written but which was actually concocted by a brilliant humanities graduate who was employed at the Elysée Palace; for once no one reproached her for her lyricism or sentimental effusions. As he read the final paragraphs, very moved himself by the writer's sorrow, infected with the emotion that reigned under the cathedral vault, Henri could not hide from the thousands of tearful guests the fact that he was struggling to keep his dignity. When their daughter, who was deaf and dumb, came to pay tribute to her mother with a speech consisting of signs, grimaces, and gestures, even though no one understood a thing everyone was deeply moved, for she was so very expressive; it was considered the emotional high point of the funeral, this silent child silently addressing a silent coffin. There was a smattering of applause. Somewhat ashamed, his head bowed, Henri thought that Catherine would have despised this exhibitionist display.

A few hours later, once the earth had covered his wife's body, Henri began to think of the problems that lay ahead: the revelation of his manipulative behavior, the loss of his honor, lawsuits, the annulment of his election.

Although he sent the Secret Service in search of the diary, the investigation did not turn up a thing. No matter how the agents combed the homes of those who had been close to her, including Charles the antique dealer and their hearing impaired daughter, the notebook could not be found.

Henri Morel had not told either Rigaud or General Reynaud how much he feared the devastating contents of the manuscript. He had also hidden his marital conflict from them, the months of struggle that had preceded then accompanied her dying days. Like millions of people, they still believed in the “perfect love story.”

One day General Reynaud asked to be received by the head of state.

Henri cleared his office of his advisers and welcomed him, feverishly.

“Well, General, do you have it? Do you have at last?”

“No, Monsieur le Président, but we have located it: it is in Canada.”

“What is it doing there?”

“It is about to be printed by a publishing house.”

“What?”

“I have consulted with the judicial experts: there is not a single loophole, everything is legal. The text was entrusted to the nurse who was looking after her, along with a letter signed by the late Madame la Présidente in the presence of a notary, who informed them of how to proceed, and validated each step of the way. The publication seems to be the execution of her last will and testament.”

“We must contest it, we must claim that it's a fake!”

“That's impossible. Every document is in her handwriting. And the staff of the clinic saw her writing it for weeks.”

Henri buried his head in his hands.

“The bitch thought of everything!”

Reynaud thought he must have been the victim of his own imagination: surely his dignified president could not have said such a thing about his beloved spouse. The old soldier coughed, blushed, and wriggled on his chair, ashamed that he had misunderstood.