Consequences (2 page)

Nevertheless, the first thing he did after shoving the young woman's body over the edge—keeping his ears needlessly pricked—was to light one up. His Winstons were on his team one hundred percent. Add fresh air scented with snow-covered grass, and you almost had bliss: he could testify to it. Half smiling, he studied the reddening tip. Right now, the silence around him was so profound that he could hear the faint crackle of the tobacco burning. You could hardly believe the silence of these vibrant winter woods covering the surrounding mountains.

No matter how many times he wore his good Galibier walking shoes, his socks always got drenched, and so were the bottoms of his trousers, which had changed from light beige to dark brown. What's more, he'd gotten pretty dirty during the climb. He'd slipped twice on sheets of ice, and had to force his way through a difficult passage between blocks of stone and low branches while still weighted down by his burden. There wasn't enough time to go home and change. How stupid of him. He should have realized he wouldn't be able to clamber
all the way up with that girl on his shoulder and come back down fresh as a lily. (A memory of himself as barely a teenager, in shorts, covered with dust and dried mud passed fleetingly through his mind.) He and Marianne. Ushered directly to the bathtub. Manhandled under the shower by that horrible woman.

B
arbara. He'd remembered her first
name two days later, when things started to develop. Barbara. That perfectly stupid name he'd hurried to forget, since it didn't do justice to the girl who hadn't taken long in class to reveal quite a few talents, and whose writing wasn't half bad. He'd spotted her immediately. Blond and shy, well-behaved—that was the type—but with a heart burning like a handful of hot coals. He got up and looked out his office window. He was moved by her memory. Rare were students you could get any work out of, students with promise. During all these years, he'd seen so many of them go by, but he could count on the fingers of one hand the ones who'd be able to produce solid work. You needed a minimum of a gift for it. Either you had it or you didn't. And he didn't. He'd ended up a hair's breadth from terra firma, a millimeter short of the other shore. But without a smidgen of the gift to start with, insisting was useless. Such was always the subject of his first lecture at the beginning of the year, when he cautioned them against too much optimism or self-confidence, based on the number of elect among the new arrivals. Even second fiddles were rare. Even good screenplay writers. In about fifteen years, he'd only come across two or three of the truly talented, just two
or three who'd brought a touch of brilliance to his classes. Tiny drops in the bucket. Such rarity was staggering—it made you humble when you taught writing and fell upon a gem.

His eyes followed the detective, who'd left his card and was now walking across the parking lot reserved for tenured professors and the disabled. The temptation had been strong for a brief moment; he'd been tempted to tell the truth, admit that they'd left the party together and ended up in his bed. But he'd come to his senses in time. The truth alone wouldn't have done anyone any good.

The trees were beginning to bud. The detective made a noisy, jittery half-turn in the parking lot and drove back across the campus at fifty an hour. Not that he'd been disturbed by their talk. On the contrary, they'd hit it off; but then the detective had gotten a message on his radio about a ram-raiding car smashing into the window of a jewelry store a few minutes from the city center, and taking millions of euros with it.

What a fascinating profession. The arrival of spring obviously made such work even more fun—you drove with one elbow resting on your open window, could stop to have a drink without owing anybody an explanation, could even tail pretty ladies, eat lunch with all expenses paid, carry a gun, etc., as the detective had explained. A profession all about adventure in the open air.

At any rate, nobody had seen the famous Barbara and him leaving together that night. It was a basic precaution he'd always taken, from the time he'd begun having these kinds of relations. Sleeping with a student was still very badly perceived; more often than not, you were gambling with your job if you ended up before the disciplinary committee. Usually, he broke it off before
complications intervened, before they were caught in flagrante delicto, before his safety measures started getting sloppy. He was used to it here, had no desire to put his job in danger for what he saw as recreation, fringe benefits.

The sky was ablaze. He pulled together his belongings, shoved a bundle of papers under his arm, and headed for the exit as the sun was nearing its zenith. He gulped down a sandwich in the cafeteria, because Marianne probably hadn't bothered to make them a pot-au-feu. At times—right now, for example—Marianne lived exclusively on cottage cheese, fat content, zero percent. He couldn't explain why any more than she could but that wasn't very important.

Barbara's death had clearly curbed his appetite, but this morning he was feeling better. The self-control and composure he'd given proof of in front of the detective—his perfect performance—deserved some reward, even if the ordeal hadn't been very difficult to endure on his territory, behind his professor's desk, which automatically put the detective at a disadvantage.

He dug up some coins and walked to the coffee machine. Lit a cigarette. It wouldn't be his first fine for smoking in a public place; there was nothing he could do about it. He'd been poisoned by one of the strongest drugs, which caused the most powerful dependency. These people now under attack—the cigarette manufacturers—were agents of evil, authentic assholes, but pure geniuses, too, fantastic chemists.

While the machine ground his coffee and then released a cup and stirrer that looked like an ice cream stick, he turned his back to the room to watch the gulls flying over the lake. Then a hand grazed his shoulder.

It was truly rare to be able to finish a smoke without a
twenty-year-old girl rolling horrified eyes and remarking that she refused to come down with throat cancer because of him. Sighing and smiling faintly, he turned around, fully aware that he wasn't setting a good example yet bathed from head to toe in his cherished nicotine. Before him stood a fairly attractive woman, close to fifty. An unusual occurrence for this campus, but certainly a pleasure—sooner or later too many smooth faces caused an overdose.

“I'm Barbara's mother,” she said.

“Oh, sorry. Nice to meet you,” he answered, quickly extending a hand.

Few students could resist the temptation to confide in their moms—even if he asked them from the start to hold their tongues. For the most part, keeping a secret seemed well beyond their feeble powers. Once a mother had thrown her drink in his face as he was lunching peacefully at the pier. Any threats he'd come close to were from that sphere alone. So he put his guard up straight away.

Touching his arm, she said, “Can we sit down? May I speak to you?”

He raised his eyes for an instant, took her in. Even though there weren't many people around, she led him to the table farthest away. Outside, a cold wind was blowing; but behind these plate glass windows it was hot. “I don't want to bother you,” she said.

“Not at all. Not in the slightest. What are you having?”

They ordered coffee. “You're her teacher. She'd talk about you.”

He tried to interpret the look in her eyes. What was she after? What did she know? He tried to read her mind, and
couldn't; but in the process noticed what a graceful oval her chin formed. Amazing how women today managed to keep themselves in shape—Sharon Stone, for example.

“Talk to me about her. About my daughter. Barbara.”

“Talk to you about what?”

“Yes, talk to me about her, please.”

Later, as he was heading
home, driving sensibly—smiling at radar traps and faintly nodding at two frisky motorcycle cops as he let them pass—he went over his conversation with Barbara's mother. The poor woman was worried sick, wondering if there'd been some kind of accident.

He'd tried to reassure her, but without insisting too much or giving her too much hope. Unfortunately, you always had to prepare yourself for the worst, he'd murmured, as his hand encircled her wrist—a very shapely, very white one. “I'm pleased with her,” he'd hastened to add. “Thrilled to get this chance to tell you so. Very pleased with her. I expect a lot more from her.”

Was that all he could have said? Halfway home, he stopped and parked behind the still-frozen slope and inspected the area around the path he'd taken two days before with Barbara's body over his shoulder. He frowned a little as he recalled the image.
But when fate has you in its grip
, he thought,
what good does it do to resist?

It wasn't quite as cold as the last time. He could feel spring arriving at full gallop, spot a few snowdrop blossoms here and there.

“Tell you what?” he'd replied. “You must know her better than I do. Hah . . . hah, aren't I right?” he'd giggled nervously. A
lot of people would have assumed so—assumed that a mother knew her daughter better than the first professor who came along. Steam rose from the coffee in their cups and gleamed like something ephemeral.

“Well, no,” she said. “Actually, that's just the point. I don't know her.”

“Well, who really can boast about knowing them?”

“Listen . . . I've only known Barbara for a few months.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Well, then, we have an exception here,” he said, in an attempt at humor.

He'd wanted to use a joking tone when this Myriam Thingamajig's declaration popped out so disconcertingly, but quickly he realized that the woman wasn't saying anything other than what she was saying.

“Things like this do happen, you know,” she said defensively. “Stop looking at me like that.”

Although he was traveling light this time, he was out of breath by the time he reached the top of the hill. It was the price of peace of mind, the assurance that the place wouldn't attract crowds. He'd sit down a moment, he decided, smoke a cigarette, which would be incredibly delicious mixed with the fresh air against the background of ice-covered firs. He felt calm, relaxed. What a full day. He could boast about having warded off potential suspicions that could have singled him out. Right now, he had no cares. Not a soul had seen them together. Not a soul knew the nature of their relationship, not even her mother. It looked like Barbara really had held her tongue. He could breathe. Indulge in the pleasure of this wonderful blond tobacco.

His heart was beating. He kept several feet away from the
dark, mossy crevice—a rift of frozen, silent darkness. But,
whew
, what a relief. He congratulated himself for sticking to a strict discipline, always taking certain basic precautions when it came to the students. Now he could breathe. His defense system had worked. His security creed had paid off.

You had to be flat on your belly to get near the edge and look down into that black well of the unknown. When he thought again about how he'd nearly fallen into it before, he got goose pimples. One day he and his sister had found the body of a roe deer stuck halfway down, on a narrow projection that had probably snapped its spine. The next summer there was nothing left, not even bone.

The same thing was happening to Barbara's corpse. Although it was in shadow down below, you could still make it out perfectly—stopped as it was in its fall by a narrow overhang of damp rock in the shape of a door handle.

He lay there on his belly for a moment longer, his head suspended above the pit, wondering what to do next. Obviously, the chances of a hunter's, hiker's, or anyone else's eyes falling on the student's remains were scant. But not null. For a moment, crows flying circles in the blue sky captured his attention, and then he began reconsidering the problem posed by some stray tourist's or obnoxious mushroom collector's discovery of the body.

There was a way to reach it. A way to go down into that crevice if you were careful where you placed your feet—as far as he remembered—and reach Barbara's body. Just being cautious would do, checking his points of support, taking his time on the way down. The same for getting back up. But the effort would be worth it.

You had to do it right. His instinct had led him to get rid of the body, and getting rid of the body meant making it disappear—concealing it from all eyes, even if they were improbable. And yet, just as he was starting to realize, just as he'd feared, his work was only half done. He folded his glasses and put them away, thinking,
This is what happens when you do things too quickly.
It's true he'd been running very late that morning, had gotten rid of the girl fast, and left without turning around to look, to go give his course on John Gardner and moral literature. But that was no excuse. He hadn't shown much competence, that's all; in the end you often paid the price for your blunders.

The inside surface was steep and slippery. Luckily, he was wearing a good pair of shoes and more or less understood how to go about it; he'd served in the mountain infantry. A few stones crumbled under his feet and went flying into the pit. To lower the risk factor, he flattened himself as much as he could against the side and descended cautiously. The willies came with age, he thought to himself as he inched toward her body, the willies came with the consciousness of death.

When he got a foothold on the cornice, he realized he must look like he'd been rolling in mud. He was a real mess, he thought, grimacing, before twisting toward the student's body, which had turned purplish gray. She seemed to be balanced on a kind of spur.

If he stretched out one leg, he could just reach her with the end of his foot. He pushed. With the tip of his foot. It was a matter of toppling her back onto her path toward the shadows, but the job wasn't as simple as that. Something was jammed. Stuck. Cold sweat flowed down the small of his back as he struggled to push the body to the bottom of the pit and swore
by all the devils, whimpered, gasped for breath. All of it shattered the silence of the forest, usually so serene except for the cry of a distant bird or the rustling of leaves—it was like a joke, set against the medley of grunts and moans that spewed from the bottom of the dark grotto, which had been transformed into an echo chamber.