promise me you won’t do anything to them. Don’t be like her.”
Promises. Here we go again. Max had had enough of them. He got up and rushed out of the restaurant. He didn’t want to give his brother the opportunity to make him soft, to turn him into a man without convictions, or memory. Philippe was too down to try to stop him. He probably despised himself, cursing his magnanimous spirit. Max felt as if he’d lost his one and only friend.
Philippe was right. Kavanagh wasn’t doing so well. He was working as a cashier at a plant nursery, earning barely enough to support Solange and their daughter.
Max sat in his car for hours watching Kavanagh through the store window, surrounded by climbing plants in clay pots. What should he do: listen to Philippe or his own tortured conscience? One day, Solange came to pick Kavanagh up from work. Max hadn’t seen her for centuries, and it was like staring at an old photo. Missing her? Maybe. Love? Definitely not. Philippe was right, though. You couldn’t hurt all three of them. No point lowering yourself that far. Then Solange started laughing, the same laugh as that night when she’d tried to order them to follow her and they had clung to Gilbert instead. A defiant laugh that still carried a chill. He started the car. He’d made up his mind.
Tricky business, ruining a rich guy. A poor one like Kavanagh would be child’s play, a no brainer. Max could do it with his eyes closed. In the end, Max didn’t have the stomach for it. A touch of shame at the last minute? No, more like doing as his brother had asked him. Ruining Kavanagh and tossing Solange out on the street wouldn’t be worth losing Philippe’s respect. Still, he had to justify what he was doing — or rather, not doing — to the one who had been most affected.
The Melchior Residence on Viau Boulevard. The small pension afforded by Castor Bricoleur wasn’t enough to cover Gilbert’s costs — uniformed nurses, meals in his room, a huge garden — but Philippe (and Max, too, though discreetly) sent the necessary amounts.
Gilbert was sitting in a wheelchair looking out the window, as always, as Max knelt down and told him what he’d found out about Kavanagh, Solange’s cruelty and vengeance. Gilbert listened religiously without reacting. He no longer had the slightest idea who Stéphane Kavanagh was or what he’d done. He didn’t even recall owning a hardware store or dreaming of dominion over the northern suburb. Even having loved a woman named Solange and wanting to give her the moon escaped him. No, Max’s retelling of their misfortunes was for Max’s ears alone, to put an end to it all, to close the book on it. For good.
Why was this painful episode coming back to him here and now, a bare few metres from David’s home in India? Perhaps it was the bougainvilleas at the entrance that brought the greenhouse to mind again, and with it his mother’s laugh, followed by his determination to put an end to it once and for all. Jayesh’s Maruti was parked diagonally by the wall that encircled the only unlit house in the street. Max would love to get his hands on the things that Walkins had taken from the High Commission and then handed over to the Indian police, but even Jayesh with his roll of rupees couldn’t buy him that. But David’s residence, now that was another story. This was an open book.
The two of them climbed out of the car, and though the sentry box and the entrance gave the impression of constant surveillance, Jayesh had found out the guard had been sick for a week with malaria. The police had emptied the house, and it was no longer of interest, so Max and Jayesh would have free run of the place.
The kitchen door was locked, but Juliette had given Max the key before he left Montreal. They couldn’t turn on the lights for fear of alerting the neighbours, but Jayesh swept the place with his flashlight beam unnecessarily, as the immense moon cast a glare over the room, enough for them to make out the contents of the house. They could tell the police had been through every nook and cranny, leaving no drawer, closet, or cupboard untouched.
Max had never been invited here, or to Philippe’s home. And it felt strange being here tonight, as though he were an intruder, a stranger, yet one who recognized certain objects, like a trinket that once belonged to Philippe. Here was David’s privacy spread out before him, and his presence felt almost indecent. Especially now that he knew certain intimate things about the couple, like Juliette’s pregnancy.
On the wall behind the sofa was a collection of photos, again both familiar and foreign: David and Juliette in one another’s arms, so obviously in love. Then there were older ones of David as a teenager standing in between Béatrice and Patterson. Some, even older, were of Philippe and Béatrice at the award ceremony for the French high school in Bangkok, or of David shivering by the pool at their house in Ottawa. Then, there they were, all three of them, on a ride at a fair in some country or other. He couldn’t tell. Max felt himself being overtaken by an immense sadness. His nephew’s life, like his brother’s, had unfolded without him. Béatrice’s orders at the funeral home on O’Connor had been respected by her son. Max had no longer existed, had just disappeared, completely obliterated and shut out of the lives of both his nephew and brother.
Yet Philippe had always been there, discreet but faithful, despite the Kavanagh episode, often showing up when Max least expected. You thought he was on the other side of the world, and then suddenly he’d be there at the penitentiary with the right words of encouragement, as usual. Max asked for nothing, but Philippe gave him everything. Why was that? Out of love, but also out of guilt, Max figured. Philippe mistakenly felt responsible for what had happened to their father. Perhaps he’d promised himself never again to make the same mistake. Two brothers united forever like the folded blades of a pocket knife.
One day, when he was in Ottawa for a meeting of the Asian bureaus — he was posted to Ankara at the time — Philippe received a message from a Turkish businessman who absolutely insisted on meeting him at the Château Laurier. Max waited with Pascale in Room 506. He was proud to introduce his wife and apologized for not having informed his brother of the wedding: “It all happened so fast!”
Philippe had hugged Pascale and welcomed her into the family. And into a normal life. Almost.
“Hey, look at that, yaar!” Jayesh exclaimed as he crouched next to the stairs, facing the wide-open safe beneath the lowest step, its door wedged under the bottom of the banister. Max knelt down for a look while Jayesh swept the inside with his flashlight. Documents such as insurance policies had been removed from their plastic sleeves, so had a copy of the lease on the house, various expired passports belonging to David and Juliette, a marriage certificate, and an airline ticket.
Max took a closer look. The latter was for David via Paris on Air France to Montreal. That would have been for the conference. The dates matched. He took a closer look, especially at the cover it was in — a sort of wax-paper envelope — where David or someone else had scribbled some notes. But the ink had run because of the paper, and the words were illegible. Maybe they had been jotted down quickly while on the phone and copied somewhere else later on. Using Jayesh’s flashlight, he could make out one word, Tourigny, and some digits, perhaps a phone number.
There was something else inside the envelope: a coin that rolled out onto the floor. Jayesh trapped it with his foot.
“Rupee?” asked Max, coming closer.
“Yes, but Nepalese.”
Kathmandu again.
Next morning, the bellboy with the Texas accent brought breakfast to Max’s room sporting the smile of one who expects a huge tip. On the tray were a teapot, toast, porridge, and the daily edition of the Times of India. Page one had an account of the previous night’s clashes in Kashmir, as well as the latest Bollywood gossip and releases from the international press.
There was a photo of David: DIPLOMAT DIES.
Part
