The Snow Kimono (31 page)

Once. A sun-filled, insect afternoon: Tell me what you think, Jo-Jo.

He thought of his uncle. His father’s brother. Who had done so well. Of his ant-heap
balding patch descending the stairs. Who was older. A lot older than she. Whose first
wife had nailed him to a cross, when she found out. Although he’d seen his hands.

His uncle—who never spoke to him.

Do you think I should? He loved her voice, when she talked to him. When she was this
close.

Marry him, she meant.

Not everybody was happy. About the wedding. His grandmother: She’s not even French.
She’s from Madrid! Her grandmother was a seamstress! Thank God she’s not here. At
least
she
did the right thing. Last year.

He so, so liked her. And her name. Lina. Carolina—semiquavered, like her laughter.
He lay on his back on the outside bench. Ca-ro-li-na. Carolina. The faster he said
it, the faster it slipped off his pebbled tongue.

He fought them off. In her absence. Standing at the top of the table. When she wasn’t
there to defend herself. When cruel things crawled out of his grandmother’s mouth.
Slid down her chin.

No, don’t say that! That’s not true! Why are you so mean? She’s
nice
. She’s beautiful.
She talks to me. She sees me. I love her.

He went out to see the tables in the sun. Thirteen of them. Under the olive trees.
The cicadas already thrumming. Thick white linen tablecloths hanging to the ground.
The complex coded silverware all laid out. Face all the little tadpole spoons towards
the edge. There, that’s better. Flowers on the biggest table. The magic space underneath
a long-tunnelled tent. He lay on the ground in his new white world. The white cloth
sides undulating like gills. Like sails. They could be moving. A little kick or two
just to keep up.

In the corner of his newfound ceiling, a blue-pen love heart, an arrow:
Céline loves
Jules
. Up on his elbows. A closer look. No, not Jules. Julie.
Céline loves Julie.
He wondered what it meant. Now voices from the house. Coming. What’s happened here?
These
spoons. Two polished black-leather shoes under each white hem. Moving in step.
The glasses clinking. This one’s chipped. Here, let me see. The flat black cockroaches
stopping. Then on their sideways march again. Towards him. Lie quickly on his side.
Here they come. Here-they-come! Their beetle-belly laces done up tight. A sprinkle
of grass on each black toe. Past him now.

Okay, that’s it. One to go.

The screen door slams.

Jo-Jo. Jo—Jo? Have either of you seen Jo-Jo?

Who’s that?

The boy, my fiancé’s nephew.

No.

Did she look around, did she look his way?

Jo-Jo. Jo—Jo.

Through the creviced flap. Carolina. In her white, held-up wedding dress. Her feet
bare. Returning to the house. The wooden steps.

He sees the screen door close, and close, and close.

He never got to ask her. Why she came out. What she wanted. What she had to say.
She was gone forever when he went inside, to all those silent faces turned his way.

Later, he told himself he would never make the same mistake. How, he wondered, even
then, had it happened? How did you end up leaving someone you must once have loved?
Loved!
What had to happen in between?

When he was nine, they told him. It was the jack-in-a-box that never went away. Here,
Auguste, open this. But what were these words he found inside? Separation. Divorce.
Unhappiness. He had thought that all parents just fell silent.

For a long time he kept a box of photographs of them beneath his bed. He would get
them out, sit cross-legged on his bedroom floor, go through them one by one. Take
them in his hands. There was one he kept coming back to—his parents on their wedding
day. His father’s hand guiding his mother’s, holding the polished knife blade just
above the untouched cake. His parents laughing, his mother, in her wedding dress,
bent forward, her pearl necklace reaching up to her like a tiny tender arm, her left
hand on the table, her face lit by an iced ellipse.

There were other photographs of them: on the beach at La Baule, photos he had taken,
photos of them at his uncle’s, his father’s brother, who had done so well, who never
remarried; photos of them around an oval dining-room table, with their friends, in
an apartment he’d never seen.

Once, when he was older, he went to La Baule. He took a photograph with him. Sought
out the same rocky outcrop. Stood there himself, in exactly the same spot. In order
to inhabit them. Feel them. But they weren’t there. Time had erased all trace of
them. It was a conceit to think that he could have found them in this way. ‘Them’—the
empty, two-word word he used for them.

In the end, he had to put the box away. This is what photographs did to you, he
thought. This was their paradox. Their
melancholy truth. He knew these permanently
smiling faces, but not them.

He could not remember one word of tenderness his father had said to his mother. Not
one. They must have talked. In the beginning. But, in the end, their marriage had
outlasted the finite number of words that contained it. Perhaps they had exhausted
what they had to say to each other long before they had gone their separated ways.
He himself had never had a single serious conversation with his father.

After his father left, he never saw him again. Never heard from him. Not a word.
Years later, when he could, he had searched the police database. Ludovic Emile Jovert.

His father had died in Santiago in 1970. Santiago! Had life been so unbearable that
he had to seek refuge in the furthest corner of the earth? Vow never to see his son
again?

And what had his father’s other life been like? Did he have another son? One he loved?

Chapter 33

THE new girl’s laughter spoke to him from out of his past. Not that he could place
it at first. Or her. Amongst the new recruits. But he soon did.

He used his training. To cut her out. To let biology do its work. His status. His
impossible height. His useful smile.

Sometimes he hated this. How easily people could be led. How little he had to do.

In the beginning, he loved only her laugh. Then found he loved her. This smart, lean-limbed
girl, with her green eyes and dark skin. Her tripping laugh as sharp as swallows.
He loved her name—Madeleine. Sweet-sounding. Unforgettable. She wasn’t Carolina,
whose ghost had come back to him. But it didn’t matter. Not now. After the pieces
had fallen into place.

He would sometimes be gone a week. Sometimes longer.

In the beginning: Are you sure you will be all right?

Yes, I’m sure, Auguste. Don’t worry. Fatima’s here to help me.

But when he returned home, after the first absence, he found Madeleine lying on her
bed, her face to the wall, her eyes closed. He sat on the bed, put his hand on her
shoulder.

Is everything all right, my love,
ma chère
?

Yes, she said. Don’t worry, Auguste. I’m sorry. I’m just so tired. I’ll be glad when
all of this is over. All I want to do is sleep.

It won’t be long now, he said.

But when he squeezed her shoulder, he felt her body tremble. He leaned over her,
to see her face. There were tears, not just one, but a river of them, spilling from
her cheeks. He lay down beside her, pulled her close to him. But it was a long time
before she settled into sleep.

The first, soft knock nervous. A young corporal had come down from the barracks,
down through the twisted, late-night, blacked-out streets, to his house, his two
houses, at the centre of the village, its core.

Who is it?

Corporal Dumas, sir.

Just a moment.

From his bedroom window. The curtain cleft permanently
pinned. A solitary, shadowed
figure at his door. He saw the shadow man look down at his shoes, then into the silent
street. Corporal Dumas.

Then he was standing in the open doorway. They were not supposed to know. But they
knew it anyway. Half of it. Why he was here. His special gifts. It was he who interrogated
the prisoners they took in. Who got
so
much out of them.

He saw his reputation written on the young man’s face. Knew what uneasy thoughts
had kept him company as he walked down the hill to him through the empty curfewed
streets. Twenty minutes rehearsing in the walking dark, his only companion a formidable
ghost. What would he have thought if he knew there were two of him?

Capitaine Jovert. Have you met him yet?

There’s a message for you, sir. A telegram. Personal. The rules infringed.

He handed him the piece of paper.

Thank you, Corporal.

Madeleine in hospital. Mother and baby both well. Tilde
. A handwritten message scrawled
at the base:
Jovert—Congratula
tions. See me in the morning
. The signature illegible.

He re-read the message.

Tell the colonel I’ll be there at six. Thank you, Corporal.

Now, the thrust-out chest salute. Sir.

Both well.

But they weren’t both well. Madeleine hadn’t been well for months. That first night
crack was now an abyss.