I'm Gone Read online

  In the general calm, he observed some occasional activity. Two provident individuals, taking advantage of the thaw, were digging holes in the momentarily movable earth with an eye toward burying those of their loved ones who would die in the coming winter. Two others, surrounded by prefabricated materials, were assembling their house kit, carefully following the instructions with the help of an explanatory video; smashing the silence, a generator powered the VCR in the open air. Three children were bringing empties back to the supermarket. Near the port, an old metal church overlooked the shore where two iron-gray Zodiacs, having forged a passage in the channel, unloaded in hiccups twelve passengers wearing anoraks and large shoes. The lake’s frozen lid had begun to come undone in huge plates with simple outlines, like pieces of an elementary jigsaw puzzle for beginners, and, beyond that, streaming under the pale sun, a hundred or so large and small icebergs waddled along. Heading back to his lodging, Ferrer again came across the two men building their house. No doubt to take their mind off things, to take a break, they had swapped the builder’s video for another of pornographic character, which they pondered gravely, standing, immobile and meditative, without a word.

  For the first several days, Ferrer took his meals alone in his room and did not try to communicate with anyone except the manager. But the manager’s conversation, even after he seemed to be reassured, was not all that scintillating. Besides, talking only in gestures gets tiresome. During his brief excursions, the few locals he met always smiled at him, and Ferrer smiled back, but that’s as far as it went. Then, two days before his departure, as he was trying to peer through a yellowed window at the inside of a house, he saw a young girl in the background who smiled at him like the others. He smiled back, but this time the girl’s parents joined in. Jovial, apparently having nothing better to do, they invited him inside for a drink. To chill the whiskey, they sent the girl to chip some ice off the nearest ice floe, then they drank hard while chatting in broken English; soon they insisted he stay for dinner, seal mousse and baby whale steaks. But first they showed him around the house: well insulated, telephone and television, large stove and modern kitchen, cheap white-wood furniture of the Nordic variety, which can be found almost anywhere, even in the outskirts of Paris.

  So Ferrer fraternized with the entire Aputiarjuk family. At dinner, he had some difficulty making out the father’s profession before he understood that the latter had none. The recipient of unemployment benefits, he preferred to hunt for seal in the great outdoors rather than sweat in some tiny office, large kitchen, or huge ship. Even fishing, in this man’s eyes, was just a horrid livelihood: nothing like seal hunting, the only true sport that gives you any real pleasure. Ferrer gave a little toast like the others. They drank copiously to seal hunting, affectionately to the health of seal hunters, enthusiastically to the health of seals in general, and soon, succumbing to the alcohol, they invited him to spend the night if he wanted; no problem with sharing the girl’s room and in the morning they would tell each other their dreams as was customary in these parts, in every family, every morning. Ferrer found it hard to refuse; the lamp shed a soft glow and the radio was playing Tony Bennett, it was warm, the stove rumbled, everyone was laughing, the girl was smiling at him, ah, let’s hear it for Port Radium.

  15

  So after his visit to The Flounder the other day, it was on a fold-down subway seat that Baumgartner returned to his new address; then a good week went by. This apartment is located not far from Rue Michel-Ange, behind a gateway cast off from Boulevard Exelmans: three 1930s villas are scattered there smack in the middle of a large garden, at the back of the Vietnamese embassy.

  Now, you can’t imagine how pretty the 16th arrondissement can be seen from inside. You probably imagine that it’s as sad and gray as it appears at first glance, but you’re very wrong. Conceived as ramparts or masks, these austere boulevards and mortiferous streets only look sinister: actually, they conceal houses that are remarkably welcoming. It’s just that one of the most ingenious ruses devised by the rich consists in making you believe that they’re bored in their neighborhoods, so much so that you might even begin to pity them, feel sorry for them, and commiserate over their fortune as if it were a curse carrying with it an inescapably depressing lifestyle. Yeah, sure. Forget about it.

  At the top floor of one of those villas, Baumgartner is renting a very large studio for a very large sum of money. The stairway leading to it is dark green, almost black. As for the studio itself, its walls are made of brown marble, the fireplace of white-veined marble, and spotlights are embedded in the ceiling. Long, practically empty shelves, long table with a dirty plate on it, long sofa draped in a blue slipcover. The room is vast enough for a huge Bechstein piano pushed into a corner to be a mere detail, for the giant television lodged in another corner to look like a minuscule porthole. No other unnecessary furniture: only a gargantuan closet housing a considerable wardrobe composed of new-looking clothes. Tall windows are prolonged by a balcony bordered by a narrow, hollowed-out guardrail, full of earth that hosts the spiritless growth of weeds and other plant life, including a dandelion.

  In the few days he has lived there, Baumgartner has gone out as little as possible. He runs few errands and orders his food by phone for delivery. Removed from the world, he seems to be awaiting his final hour. He does almost nothing all day long. He tips the delivery boys generously. Organized like a bachelor, he apparently knows how to fend for himself. Still, he is not a bachelor. The proof is that he’s calling his wife.

  The cordless device lets him move around the studio as he talks. “Yes,” he says while passing from the Bechstein to the window, “I mean, you know what it’s like when you’re alone. Mostly frozen dinners,” he specifies while manipulating the TV remote, muting the sound and flipping through the channels: sitcoms, documentaries, game shows. “No,” he says, “I forgot the vitamins, you’re right. In any case,” he nuances without finishing his sentence, turning off the image to look out the window: clouds, morning glories, magpies.

  “Fine, but I haven’t seen any drugstores around here. In any case,” he resumes, walking to the Bechstein, sitting down at it and adjusting the bench to his height. Pressing the mute pedal, he plants on the keyboard the only third chord he knows. “Oh, yeah, you heard that, did you? No, it’s a baby grand. Anyway, listen, it would be good if you could find out as soon as he gets back,” he says, standing up, moving away from the piano. As he walks by a flowerpot, he pulls out the little metal wire that he stuck in there the other day: he wipes off the dirt and twists it into the shape of several things: spiral, lightning bolt, television antenna.

  “How the hell should I know!” Baumgartner suddenly explodes. “Make eyes at him or something. Stop, yes, right, of course you know,” he smiles while massaging the wings of his nose. “But I think it would be better for me to get away for a bit. I don’t want to risk running into anyone. I’m keeping the studio but I’m going to spend a few days in the country. Of course I’ll let you know. No, I’m leaving this evening, I prefer driving at night. Naturally. Of course not. Yeah, love you too.”

  He ends the call, restores the dial tone, then punches in the number, known to him alone, of the cell phone entrusted to The Flounder. It rings for a good while before the other answers. “Yeah, hello?” says The Flounder. “Who’s this? Oh, right, evening, Mr. B.” On first impression, The Flounder’s voice is not daisy fresh; it’s a slow, torpid pulp, flat and vaguely somnolent, in which vowels heavily drag consonants behind them.

  And at The Flounder’s, where the light is as always very dim, the silhouette of the large fellow in dark clothes that Baumgartner met in the hallway is fiddling with God knows what on a pocket mirror using a Gillette razor blade, standing near the cassette player. We can’t see a thing. The large, dark fellow smiles a hard smile while fiddling.

  “What,” says The Flounder, “what’s wrong with my voice? No, of course I’m not on anything, I was just sleeping, that’s all, I’m never alert wh
en I just wake up. Are you?” (The large, dark fellow silently mimics disproportionate hilarity, nonetheless making sure not to expel any air for fear of scattering the two thin white rails before his eyes.) “The problem is that I’m going to need a bit more cash.” (The dark fellow nods energetically.) “What do you mean, no way?” (The fellow knits his brow.) “But, oh, wait a minute! How do you like that, he hung up on me.”

  After hanging up, Baumgartner packs his suitcase. As he spends some time meticulously choosing his garments, each one as a function of the others, and as he takes advantage of the situation to examine his entire wardrobe, the operation takes him over an hour, but he has all the time in the world: he’s not leaving Paris until early evening. He’ll follow the belt road up to the Porte d’Orléans exit, which will lead him to the highway, and so on toward southwestern France via Poitiers, where he’ll spend the night.

  Over the following weeks, Baumgartner will wander like a vacationer throughout the Aquitaine region, alone, changing his hotel every third night, sleeping rigorously alone. He will not seem to obey any particular design, act according to any specific plan. Soon, venturing less and less out of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques area, he’ll pass the time by exploring the few museums he finds, visiting churches every morning, running through all the tourist sites, and going in the afternoons to empty movie houses to see foreign films dubbed in French. Sometimes he’ll drive aimlessly for hours, scarcely looking at the countryside, barely listening to the Spanish radio stations, and stopping only to take a leak on the shoulder, against a tree, or into a ditch. Sometimes he’ll spend the entire day in his hotel room, facing stacks of magazines and TV shows.

  Baumgartner, who apparently has gone away out of discretion, who seems eager to pass unnoticed, will be careful to speak with as few people as possible; but, if only so as not to lose the use of language, he will still call his wife every evening and The Flounder every four or five days. Apart from that, whether in Clos Zéphyr (Bayonne), Résidence des Meulières (near Anglet), or the Hotel Albizzia (outskirts of Saint-Jean-de-Luz), he never approaches anyone.

  16

  Either a terrified rabbit running full tilt at dawn over a vast, flat, grassy surface. Or a ferret named Winston who is chasing this rabbit. The latter, spotting the entrance to his lair not far off, naively imagines that he’s out of the woods and that therein lies his salvation. But scarcely has he dived in, rushing all the way to the bottom to take refuge, than the ferret in hot pursuit catches him at this dead end, grabs him by the carotid, and bleeds him to death in the blackness. Then, taking his time, he drains him and stuffs himself on the other creature’s blood, as attested by slight crackings from fractures and obscene sucking noises. Sated, looking forward to a well-deserved nap, the ferret then falls asleep beside his prey.

  Or else two technicians of the Paris airports who are waiting near the entrance to the lair. When they decide that the nap has lasted long enough, they call the ferret several times by name. Winston reappears after a moment, eye heavy with reproach and dragging the body of the rabbit, in whose neck he has planted his incisors like staples. The technicians grab the corpse by the ears before shutting Winston the ferret back in his cage. Debating as always the questions of how to divvy up the rabbit, how to cook it, what sauce to make, they climb into a small electric vehicle and ride off between the airport runways, on one of which Flight QN560 arriving from Montreal has just landed, and from which Ferrer disembarks, aching mightily and stiff with jet lag.

  He’d had to stay longer than expected in Port Radium. Warmly adopted by the Aputiarjuk family, at whose home he had ended up taking all his meals and whose daughter, every night, came to join him in his bed, he had somewhat neglected the manufacture of his containers. For a few days, even, truth be told, such was the sweetness of the Aputiarjuk household that he had not really thought much at all about his antiques. Happy days in Port Radium. But once the containers were finished, he’d had to get ready to leave. Ferrer was a bit afraid to be disappointing, as usual, but the Aputiarjuk parents hadn’t put up a fuss when they understood he wasn’t going to be their son-in-law, and the farewells, all things considered, were fairly jolly.

  Loading a Twin Otter, of the small two-engine model used in polar regions; dealing with customs in Montreal—all that had taken some time. Then the day of his return to France had come and here he was. It was another Sunday, in the first weeks of July, early in the morning. The nocturnal labors of sweeping, cleansing, scrubbing, and polishing the airport had just ended; the escalators and conveyor belts started back up in a long concert of murmurs.

  At that hour, almost no one was working except for the customs agents and airport doctors, too busy with a party of pseudo-jewelers from Pakistan and so-called tourists from Colombia to get especially interested in Ferrer. X-raying these nationals, then gorging them with laxatives to make them expel their precious stones and pessaries of cocaine, and then, with sour faces, slipping on gloves to recover these objects, they also had occasion to track smugglers of trapdoor spiders and boa constrictors, cartons of blond tobacco buried in manioc flour, fissionable products, and contraband. Given the crowd that morning, Ferrer didn’t have too much trouble crossing the freight zone bottlenecked with suspect packages; he passed through ignored by barrages of policemen and Finance Ministry employees. Then, once his containers had been recovered, he had to call for a van to come load them. The fact that it was Sunday made it a bit complicated, but Rajputek, startled awake, finally agreed to come, though not without some grumbling. While waiting for his ride, Ferrer went back again to bide his time in the foyer of the Spiritual Center.

  Symmetrical to the Business Center with respect to the Multistore, the Spiritual Center was located in the airport basement, between the elevator and the escalator. The foyer was rather cold and furnished with metal armchairs, display racks stuffed with brochures in seven languages, and troughs in which five varieties of plants grew. The flaps of three half-open doors were marked with a cross, a star, or a crescent, depending. Sitting in an armchair, Ferrer took stock of the other accessories: a wall phone, a fire extinguisher, a collection box.

  As few people were there that early morning, Ferrer hazarded three glances through the half-openings. The microsynagogue was all but bare, three chairs around a low table. Same thing in the microchapel, with the addition of a flowerpot, altar, portrait of the Virgin, guest book accompanied by a ballpoint pen and two handwritten notices: one mentioned the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the other bade visitors not to steal the Bic. As for the micromosque, it revealed a green carpet, a coat stand, and a mat next to which waited some Adidas, sandals, moccasins, and rubber overshoes from North African, Central African, and Middle Eastern believers.

  As the morning progressed, the clientele of the Spiritual Center appeared little by little. It was composed less of passengers in transit than of airport employees, maintenance and upkeep staff in blue overalls, and security men, often black and always well built, walkie-talkies and beepers around their necks. Still, some civilian users also passed through: a pretty Lebanese nun; a Bulgarian mother with her large son; a small young man, frail and bearded, with Ethiopian physiognomy, his red eyes expressing a horror of the void, a fear of airsickness. Before boarding he wished to receive the sacrament from a priest that, regretfully, Ferrer confessed he wasn’t.

  Rajputek’s van showed up toward the end of the morning. Once the containers were loaded, then unloaded at the gallery and carefully stocked in the studio, Ferrer returned to his domicile on foot. Leaving the gallery to head home, he cast a glance at the evolution of the construction site: it seemed that the foundations had been dug, they had installed metal huts to shelter the machines and men, they were beginning to mount two huge yellow cranes with the help of a superlative red crane. The noise level that week threatened to be infernal; we’ll see.

  In the meantime, on this summer Sunday, the silence of Paris was reminiscent of that on the ice floe, except that now it wasn’t ice
but tar that the sun superficially melted. As he approached his door, once at his floor, the absence of Extatics Elixir surprised him, as if the urban silence had made everything disappear, even decimating the tribe of perfumes. When he asked the concierge, he learned that in his absence Bérangère Eisenmann had moved out. So no more immediately available woman. Ferrer took it moderately well and, undoing his bags, he came across the fur recovered from the Nechilik. It was completely rotted. The hairs were falling off in batches from the skin which, in normal temperature, had mutated into old glue, purulent and stiff. Ferrer went to throw it out before attacking the mail.

  It was at first glance a mountain of mail but, once the bills were paid and the announcements, invitations, circulars, and magazines tossed, all that remained was a summons to court, three months away, on October 10, for a hearing with Suzanne in the context of their divorce proceedings. At that point, he would have no women left at all, but knowing him, this state won’t last. It shouldn’t be long now.

  17

  What do you know: not two days have passed and here’s one already. On Tuesday morning, Ferrer had an appointment with the appraiser, who arrived flanked by a man and a woman—his assistants. The expert appraiser was named Jean-Philippe Raymond, fifty-something, swarthy, sharp outline of a hunting knife draped in oversized clothes, confused elocution, dubious pout, and pointed stare. He moved with an unstable, unbalanced caution, steadying himself on the backs of chairs as on a bulwark during a Force 9 on the Beaufort scale. Having called upon the expert’s services two or three times in the past, Ferrer already knew him a bit. The male assistant walked with more assurance, to which he added the continuous extraction of roasted peanuts from deep within his pocket and the wiping of his fingers on a translucent Kleenex every five minutes. As for the female assistant, who must have been going on thirty, she answered coldly to the name of Sonia. Blonde with beige eyes and a handsome, austere face denoting ice or embers, black suit and cream blouse, her hands busied themselves nonstop with a pack of Bensons on one side, an Ericsson mobile phone on the other.