The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (2 page)

‘Are you waiting for someone?' he asked when it became apparent that she was not going to add anything. It was none of his business what she was doing, but again he could think of nothing else to say. And what if she replied that, no, she wasn't waiting for anyone. What would he do then? Invite her to his apartment or to one of the bars in town that stayed open late and about which he knew nothing?

Before she had the chance to answer, and to Manfred's relief, a young man pulled up on a scooter. He nodded curtly in Manfred's direction. Manfred acknowledged him and bid goodnight to Adèle.

‘Good night, monsieur,' she replied.

As he walked off, Manfred stole a glance over his shoulder in time to see Adèle throw her leg over the seat of the scooter. He imagined the young man asking who he was.
Some guy from the restaurant,
would be her likely response.

Manfred lived ten minutes' walk away, on the top floor of a four-storey 1960s apartment block set back from Rue de Mulhouse. The apartment consisted of a small kitchen, a bedroom, a living room that Manfred rarely used, and a small shower room. The kitchen overlooked a small leafy park surrounded by other similar apartment blocks. There were benches for the residents
and a children's play park. There was a small balcony outside the kitchen window, which caught the sunlight in early evening, but Manfred rarely sat out for fear that the other residents might think he had an unhealthy interest in the play park below. People often thought ill of single men in their thirties, especially those who chose to keep themselves to themselves. Manfred kept his apartment scrupulously clean and tidy.

Once home, Manfred poured himself a nightcap from the bottle on the kitchen counter and knocked it back. He poured himself a second and took it with him to bed. He lifted the book from his bedside table, but did not open it. His encounter with Adèle had left him unsettled, excited even. It was not just she had used his first name, so much as the fact that when her companion arrived, she had reverted to ‘monsieur', as if concerned to give the impression that there was nothing between them. Manfred had never thought there
was
anything between them, but she could easily have bid goodnight without using either form of address. It was a deliberate act to conceal the intimate moment they had shared from her boyfriend.

Manfred recalled the sight of Adèle tottering on the pavement in front of him, adjusting the ankle-strap of her shoe. He masturbated with greater vigour than usual and fell asleep without mopping up his emission.

S
AINT
-L
OUIS IS A TOWN
of around twenty thousand people nestling at the very edge of the Alsace, separated from Germany and Switzerland by the width of the Rhine. It is a place of little note and aside from a handful of the picturesque oak-beamed houses characteristic of the region, there is little to detain visitors. Like most border towns, it is a place of transit. People pass through on their way elsewhere, and the town is so lacking in points of interest it is as if the townsfolk have resigned themselves to this. The brighter young people of Saint-Louis up and leave for college, most likely never to return.

The town centre, inasmuch as Saint-Louis can be said to have a centre, is a miscellany of unattractive post-war buildings peppered with a few more traditional dwellings that have survived the passage of time and town-planning. The signs above the shops are faded and the window displays are uninviting, as if the proprietors have abandoned the idea of attracting passing trade. The word that most often springs into the minds of those passing through, if they notice the town at all, is nondescript. Saint-Louis is nondescript.

Yet for three hundred years the town has sustained a population. It is a population somewhat less educated, less well-off and more inclined to the political right than the majority of their countrymen, but this mediocre tribe still requires, now and then,
a new pair of shoes or an outfit of clothing, they need their hair cut, their teeth attended to and their ailments cured. They must withdraw and borrow money. They require places to eat, drink, gossip or simply postpone returning home. Their streets must be cleaned, refuse collected, law and order must be kept. Their houses require the attention of plumbers, electricians, joiners and decorators. Their children must be schooled, the aged nursed and the dead buried.

In short, the people of Saint-Louis are exactly like people elsewhere, in towns equally drab or markedly more glamorous. And like the inhabitants of other places, the townsfolk of Saint-Louis feel a certain chauvinistic pride in their municipality, even as they retain an awareness of its mediocrity. Some dream of an escape, or live with the regret that they did not get out when they had the chance. The majority, though, go about their business with little or no thought to their surroundings.

Manfred Baumann was born on the Swiss side of the border to a Swiss father and a French mother. Gottwald Baumann was a brewery worker from Basel. He was a short, exceptionally swarthy man with a glint in his eye. Manfred's mother, Anaïs Paliard, was a high-spirited girl cursed with a sickly constitution, from a well-to-do Saint-Louis family of lawyers. Manfred spent the first six years of his life in Basel. He remembered little of these years, yet Swiss-German remained the language with which he felt most at home. He had hardly spoken it since his early childhood, but hearing it still transported him to those hazy early years. Manfred had only two memories of his father from this period of his life. The first was of the rancid smell that emanated from him when he returned from an evening at some bar, coupled with the bristle of his stubbled chin as he leaned over to kiss him goodnight.

The second was Manfred's fondest memory of his father. For reasons he could not remember (perhaps it was his birthday), Gottwald took Manfred to visit the brewery where he worked. Manfred could recall the heady aroma of yeast and the thunder
of empty barrels being rolled across cobbles. The other brewery workers were, at least in Manfred's memory, short, swarthy, barrel-chested men, just like his father, who walked with their legs apart and their arms swinging outwards. As Gottwald led Manfred through the yard, the men spotted their workmate and shouted, ‘
Grüezi Gottli
.'

‘You know what that means?' Gottwald had asked. ‘Little God. Not bad, eh?
Little God
.' Manfred gripped tight on his father's hand and looked forward to the day when he too would work in the brewery.

When Manfred was six years old, the Restaurant de la Cloche came up for sale and Anaïs's father purchased it for his daughter and her husband to run. The restaurant's town centre location guaranteed a steady stream of trade from nearby shopkeepers and office workers, so, although evening meals were served, the bulk of its business was done during the day. M. Paliard must have thought that he was setting up his son-in-law in a failsafe venture, but he had reckoned without his son-in-law's brewery worker manners and rudimentary grasp of the French language. Gottwald's surly demeanour succeeded in alienating the establishment's clientele. He lacked the graceful manner and authority of the successful
patron
. As the business slid into decline, Gottwald spent every night on the wrong side of the bar, noisily decrying the stuck-up French who had taken their trade elsewhere.

After his father's death, the business was sold, but Manfred and his mother continued to live in the apartment above the restaurant until her delicate health obliged them to move back to the family home on the northern outskirts of the town. Manfred missed living above the bar; the smell of cooking and the sound of the day's debate drifting through the open window as he and his mother ate their evening meal. The bar was the hub of the town. At the family home, Manfred was isolated. To his grandparents, he was less a source of pride than a reminder of their daughter's lapse. Manfred inherited his father's graceless demeanour and his mother's sickly constitution, both of
which mitigated against falling into friendship with the ease of other boys. When they had lived above the bar, older men greeted him cheerfully when he returned home from school as if he was one of them. At weekends he would run errands for the regulars, earning a few centimes for his trouble. In the evenings he would sit at the window above the bar listening to the ebb and flow of conversation, mentally contributing his own sage remarks. At the Paliard house there were no voices to listen to and Manfred would sit in his room listening to the slow ticking of the grandfather clock that stood on the landing halfway up the stairs.

Throughout his schooldays Manfred was known as ‘Swiss' and the nickname had stuck. He loathed it. Lemerre still used it when inviting Manfred to join the Thursday card game. ‘You joining us, Swiss?' he yelled across the bar. Manfred wished his mother had reverted to her maiden name, but despite her husband's shortcomings, she remained devoted to his memory. After Manfred and his mother were obliged to leave the Restaurant de la Cloche, Anaïs would often call him to her bedside. Manfred disliked the smell of his mother's room. It was like a hospital. The dressing table was arrayed with brown bottles of pills. Towards the end, the doctor visited on an almost daily basis, a privilege afforded to families of the Paliard's standing. When Manfred entered the room, Anaïs would smile wearily and hold out her arm. Often she was too weak to raise her shoulders from the pillows that supported her. Manfred sat on the edge of the bed holding his mother's hand.

Anaïs kept a photograph of Gottwald by her bedside. He was standing next to a motor car parked in a lay-by on a twisting road high in the Swiss mountains. The car was a Mercedes which Anaïs's father had lent them for their honeymoon. Gottwald stood in his shirtsleeves, hands on his hips, chest puffed out, his thick dark hair slicked back in the style of the day, a study in virility.

Anaïs liked to tell Manfred the story of how she and his father had met. Gottwald had crossed the border for the Bastille Day
celebrations. There was a fete in the square next to the Restaurant de la Cloche. It was an unusually hot day, even for July. Anaïs was seventeen. She and a friend wandered round the stalls sampling the wares on offer. They had drunk two or three glasses of rough cider, which had gone straight to their heads. Anaïs's friend, Elisabeth, spotted Gottwald. He was standing at a stall, drinking a glass of beer and blatantly appraising the girls who walked by. Elisabeth insisted that they go over and talk to him. Anaïs was reluctant. She had no experience with men, but Elisabeth was already on her way. She stood shyly at her friend's shoulder as she introduced them. Gottwald kissed their hands and said, ‘
Enchanté, mademoiselles,'
in a heavy accent that made them both giggle. Soon they were strolling through the crowds together, Elisabeth gaily telling Gottwald all about herself. She was a striking, self-confident girl who, Anaïs suspected, had already had her share of men. Anaïs studied Gottwald closely. He was not handsome in the conventional way – he was too short for that – but there was something in his demeanour and in his twinkling black eyes that fascinated her. It was clear that Gottwald did not understand half of what Elisabeth was saying, but he kept his eyes intensely fixed on her. Anaïs found herself wishing that her friend would stop wittering so that Gottwald could turn his gaze on her.

They paused at a stall and Gottwald bought them each another cider. Elisabeth had to excuse herself for a moment. As soon as she was gone, Gottwald looked Anaïs straight in eye and said, ‘I'm glad she's gone. She talks too much, but I'd like to see you again.'

Anaïs felt a quickening in her throat. The idea that this swarthy foreigner preferred her to her more beautiful, charming friend was intoxicating. Before she knew it, she had agreed to meet Gottwald the following day. Nothing was said when Elisabeth returned.

That next day Gottwald and Anaïs went for a walk in the woods. It was cool beneath the foliage. They didn't talk much. Anaïs had no idea what to say to a man, but before the afternoon
was out, Gottwald kissed her. She had her back to a tree and felt overwhelmed by the weight and powerful odour of the man. She almost fainted with passion, she told Manfred. The relationship continued in secret – Gottwald was not the sort of man Anaïs would dream of introducing to her father – until it became impossible to conceal. That was when Gottwald asked her to marry him.

Anaïs finally died when Manfred was fifteen. She had not left the house for two years and had grown as thin and papery as an old woman. Manfred's grandfather came to talk to him one evening shortly after the funeral. At a certain age, he explained, a man had to make his own way in the world. Two years later, after Manfred had failed his
baccalauréat
, his grandfather summoned him to his study. This was a room on the first floor of the house which Manfred was normally forbidden to enter. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with legal volumes and in the centre of the floor was a large antique desk. There was a fireplace, but M. Paliard did not approve of unnecessary heating and even in the depths of winter he refused, as an example to the other members of the household, to light a fire, preferring to sit over his papers bundled in a hat and scarf in a fug of frosted breath and pipe smoke. Manfred was summoned to the study only to discuss matters of grave import.

Upon entering, Manfred remained standing in the centre of the room for a good five minutes while his grandfather reached the end of the document he was reading. This did not trouble Manfred. It was a matter of indifference to him how his grandfather treated him. M. Paliard removed his reading glasses and indicated with a gesture of his hand that Manfred should sit. He had a long, craggy face, with narrow pale blue eyes set under a heavy forehead. He was almost completely bald and had a wiry grey beard. Manfred had difficulty recalling an occasion on which he had seen him smile.

‘I have spoken to an associate of mine, a Monsieur Jeantet,' he began without preamble. ‘Jeantet is the manager of Société
Générale on Rue de Mulhouse. He has agreed to take you on, which, under the circumstances, is most charitable of him. You begin on Monday and will be paid after two weeks. I suggest you begin looking for an apartment right away. I will loan you the first month's rent and deposit.'

At the end of his little speech, M. Paliard did something he had never done before. He rose from his seat and poured two small glasses of sherry from a decanter sitting on a silver tray in the window recess. Manfred had never noticed the decanter there before and wondered if his grandfather had had it brought in specially for the occasion. Not only had Manfred never been invited to share a drink with his grandfather, he had never seen him pour a drink for himself. Normally the maid would be summoned for such tasks. Nevertheless, M. Paliard not only poured the drinks, but handed Manfred's to him, before resuming his seat. The two men (for the gesture was clearly intended to mark Manfred's passing into manhood) sipped their sherry in silence. Ten minutes later, M. Paliard stood up to, somewhat awkwardly, indicate that the audience was over.

The following day, Manfred's grandmother took him to Mulhouse to be fitted for a suit. As the tailor fussed around with his measuring tape, Mme Paliard insisted, to Manfred's embarrassment, that the suit should leave some room for growth. Nevertheless, Manfred took some pleasure in the experience. Wearing a suit bestowed gravitas. The image that looked back at him from the tailor's mirror was not the gauche schoolboy he so despised. Afterwards they went for lunch in a smart bistro. Mme Paliard chatted cheerfully through the meal about what a splendid opportunity his new job was. Manfred knew that in reality she was disappointed in him, but he said nothing to contradict her. They shared a bottle of wine, something they would never have done if Manfred's grandfather had been present, and at the end of the meal Mme Paliard burst into tears and told Manfred that he must still come to the house for his meals whenever he wished and that his room would always be
there for him. Manfred was fond of his grandmother and pitied her being left alone with his grandfather. He thanked her and promised to visit regularly.

When Manfred arrived at the bank on Monday morning, M. Jeantet immediately ushered him into his office. He was a round man with a red face and mutton chop whiskers. He wore an old-fashioned herringbone suit over a moth-eaten green cardigan. M. Jeantet cultivated an air of genial bonhomie. He greeted his clients with a vigorous handshake and much backslapping and fussed over them like long-lost friends. He habitually patted the female members of staff on the behind and enjoyed making saucy insinuations about their appearance or how they spent their weekends. This he did without discrimination of age or beauty, no doubt to avoid offending anyone he left out. At first Manfred was surprised at the good humour with which his new colleagues tolerated this behaviour, but he soon realised that behind his back they had any number of unflattering nicknames for the boss. It was difficult to believe that Manfred's grandfather regarded this man as an ‘associate'.