the gaps in the shutters, and the keyholes. All those gaps had to be plugged with scrunched-up pages of newspaper. On one of them the distressing photo of Maryse L. crumpled and disappeared in her hands. As she went to plug one last slit in a shutter, Yolande had time to see the Germans hiding on the other side of the street and a handful of Resistance fighters springing from one dustbin to the next. They no longer had enough space outside to fight their war, now they wanted to do it in her house. In her terror she found cracks in every corner, one there, another one here! The daylight was pressing with all its might against the walls. She didn’t have enough arms to battle against the pressure from outside. There was cracking and banging on all sides. It was so powerful and she was so fragile. She rushed into Bernard’s room. A troop of rats fled at her approach. She began to lay into her brother with her fists.
‘Bastard! How can you abandon me now?’
Shaking with fury, she grabbed the cover from the bed, put it over her head and huddled down behind the door, arms wrapped tightly, so tightly round her knees, a mass of shivers. On the mattress the exposed corpse gave a toothy grin.
It was past nine at night, yet the lights were still on in the café. This was the only light in the darkness shrouding Place de la Gare. It looked like a fish tank filled with yellow oil, inside which Roland was darting back and forth, giving things a wipe down with his cloth, a bullfighter’s cape without a bull; it was lovely and idiotic at the same time, as he was alone amid the tables and chairs. A car zoomed away from behind the premises. Jacqueline was at the wheel. She hadn’t even taken off her apron, just put on a big woollen jacket on top. Her hair was a mess, there was anxiety in her gestures. In the rear-view mirror she glanced at her swollen right eye.
‘Lousy bastard!’
She could no longer remember what had started it, something insignificant as usual, a few centimes out on a bill, a disagreement over what to watch on TV, a word out of turn. In recent months she and Roland had been sitting on a powder keg, the tiniest spark was enough to blow it all sky high. That evening they’d reached the very end of the road. It wasn’t Féfé’s head Bernard should have put a bullet in, but that arsehole’s.
‘Just take a look at yourself, with your big fat beer belly hanging out everywhere, your furred-up tongue and your bulging eyes. What a handsome footballer!’
‘You’re having a go at me! Have you looked in the mirror lately? You’ve got tits like floppy flannels and hair like a floorcloth. Even those piece of shit Arabs building the motorway wouldn’t be turned on by you. You’re ancient, old girl, you’re ugly, and you smell of dishwater.’
‘Maybe not to everyone.’
‘All right, you bring that Bernard here, then, the poofter, and I’ll show him a thing or two. I may not be perfect, but at least I don’t rape young girls, kill women and murder kids!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m saying what I know. Young Maryse who’s never been found, the murdered woman on the building site, all that started at precisely the time Monsieur Bernard began prowling about the area.’
‘My poor Roland, you really should stop drinking, it’s sad …’
‘We’ll see about that. And what was your precious Bernard up to beside the warehouse when the kid got himself stabbed? I saw him! I was driving past and I saw him even if he did turn away when I slowed down. What’s your answer to that?’
‘You’re talking rubbish.’
‘We’ll see who’s talking rubbish tomorrow when I go to the police.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’
‘Watch me.’
‘Leave him alone. You know perfectly well he’s ill.’
‘Ill, my arse! He’s a dirty, lousy, two-faced fucking murderer! Ill or not, he’ll pay for it, just like his slag of a sister did, even if she did get off too lightly!’
‘Oh that’s right, when it comes to dishing out justice your family are the experts. Wasn’t it your father, who’d feathered his nest on the black market, that shaved her head? Right here in this room?’
‘Don’t you talk about my father like that, you slut. Tomorrow I’m going to the police and I’m telling them what I know!’
‘You’re a hero of the Resistance too, now, I suppose. You disgust me! Anyway, you won’t go, you don’t have the balls.’
‘So that’s what you think, is it?’
His fist had caught her full in the face. She’d just had time to fling a chair at his legs before making a run for it.
‘Bastard! Rotten bastard!’
And yet, though she wouldn’t admit it to herself, the accusations were eating away at her like a worm in an apple. In her shocked state and at night, anything became possible, question marks dangled from the stars like fish hooks. It would be good to pull in the net and find it empty but, to be honest, Bernard had been so strange lately it was as if he had a secret, something he was keeping to himself, something which, like all secrets, was just dying to burst from his lips. But that was his illness, nothing but his illness. It was unthinkable that Roland should poison his last days by setting the police on him. That scumbag would stop at nothing. Bernard, a killer?
It’s difficult to drive with only one eye, you only see half the world, the uglier half. She couldn’t really remember the way to Bernard’s, she’d only been there once or twice, a very long time before. A sombre, grey house – she’d had to wait outside.
‘I’m sorry, Yolande’s very fragile. Oh shit, my keys … It doesn’t matter, I always leave a spare set under the flowerpots.’
That had been a lovely day. Roland had gone off to Le Touquet for three days, to a café owners’ meeting, something she’d got out of without even having been invited. It was a Sunday, and there hadn’t been many for lunch. By three o’clock she was free. Bernard had taken her to the forbidden places of their childhood. They’d both been a little tipsy, had forgotten, for a few hours, who they were. And during those few hours they’d found they were unchanged, free of the little nicks in the skin at the corners of their eyes. They’d seen the sea tumbling pebbles on the beach, and imitated the gulls, turning their scarves into wings; they’d eaten chips though they weren’t hungry, drunk beer without a thirst, like any other couple trailing their Sunday behind them like an ornamental poodle. A few hours in which they could believe they were what they never would be. Roland wouldn’t be back until the next day. Like misers they counted out the hours, minutes and seconds they had left. Bernard had suggested the cinema.
‘Five minutes – I’ll be right back.’
She had seen him hunting around under the geranium pot which contained nothing but a spadeful of dry soil, then give three knocks on the door and disappear inside after turning the key. For the twenty minutes during which she had waited in the car, she’d wondered what Yolande would look like after so long. And what it was like in their house, and what it would have been like at Bernard and Jacqueline’s if life had had other ideas. She was on to the choice of wallpaper in the bedroom when he had emerged again, gaunt and looking sad.
‘I’m so sorry, Jacqueline, we’re going to have to call it a day. She’s not well. I’ll take you home.’
‘I
