Trespass. Part 21

'What happened to me?' said Audrun.

'You're all right,' said the orderly. 'You're going to be all right. Want some sugar in your coffee?'

She tried to eat and drink. She found swallowing difficult. She thought that if she got a bit stronger, she might remember what had happened.

She slept and woke, slept and woke. p.i.s.sed in a bed-pan, holding on to the nurse. Slept again, her chest tight and aching. The light above her never changed.

Then she saw Marianne at her bedside. Marianne looked pale and tired and wore a cross expression on her face.

'How are you?' Marianne asked in a flat voice.

'I don't know,' said Audrun. 'My chest hurts. I don't know what happened. Did the canadairs canadairs arrive?' arrive?'

Marianne half turned away, seeming to draw in a long breath. Then she looked at Audrun and said: 'It's gone. I had to come and tell you. Someone had to tell you straight to your face. It's gone.'

'Gone?'

'Yes.'

'I don't know what you mean, Marianne.'

'The Mas Lunel. The fire took it. Parts of the walls are still standing, but they're black, absolutely blackened. It seemed to split open in the middle. I've never witnessed anything like that in my life! The heat made the stones just... explode. explode.'

Audrun said nothing. She closed her eyes. In her mind, now, she saw something new: Raoul Molezon running, running towards the dog pound, calling out that he was going to save the dogs. And she was following him, she was trying to run, too. But she didn't follow Raoul to the pound; she opened the damaged front door of the mas and went inside and stood in the kitchen, which was dark, with all the shutters bolted against the heat.

She laid her arms across Bernadette's oak table, which she'd been trying so hard to return to bare wood, to scour to perfect whiteness. Then, she began tugging and pus.h.i.+ng at the heavy table. Her arms and back ached.

She knew she was too light to lift up this ancient piece of furniture, too weakened by time. But she wasn't going to give up. She was Audrun Lunel. She was going to save what remained of her mother all the things Aramon had tried to despoil, but which now belonged to her; she was going to bring everything out before the fire came. She remembered that she could hear shouting in the hills above and the barking and wailing of the dogs, but she took no notice of these sounds...

'You were very lucky,' said Marianne curtly. 'Raoul Molezon risked his life to get you out.'

'Risked his life?'

'Yes, he did. You'd wedged the front door shut somehow. Raoul slammed at it with his shoulder, but it wouldn't move. The fire was terribly near and jumping from tree to tree. The firemen told him to come away, but he wouldn't. He helped one of the fire-fighters tear the door off its hinges. He carried you out.'

Audrun looked at Marianne, whose expression was still stern, but she didn't care. She didn't care at all. She couldn't prevent a smile from spreading across her face at the thought that Raoul Molezon had risked death to save her.

'He was always a good man,' she said. 'Always.'

Aramon Lunel was incarcerated in a prison above Rua.s.se while he waited for his case to come to trial. He knew that the trial was far away in time and that its outcome could be foretold, so he seldom thought about it.

He attempted to live his life one day at a time.

The prison buildings had once housed a regiment of the French Foreign Legion. They were cold in winter, but strongly built of stone. Aramon had been allocated his own cell. It was prison policy to keep murderers and s.e.x-offenders separated from petty felons. It had been stated by the governor that men who had taken lives, or blighted lives for ever, should be made to endure a certain degree of loneliness. But Aramon was impervious to this. He knew that he'd been lonely for thirty years.

The walls of his cell were painted white. The room had a small window, protected by an ironwork grille. Through the criss-cross of the grille bars, Aramon could see down the steep valley to the roofs of the town: the tilting, red-grey tiled roofs and boxy chimney flues of old Rua.s.se, the blank corrugations of the retail sheds, the water towers and TV masts of the high-rise blocks in the cheaply constructed 1970s suburbs they still called 'new'.

In one of these blocks, the girl Fatima had lived and died, and Aramon sometimes found himself thinking about her: the way she'd draped scarves over her lampshades, the better to conceal the shabbiness of her room; the way she tried to turn him on by rotating her belly. From time to time, he wondered whether after all he had had killed her. Killed her for her fat, gyrating stomach. Killed her for not being the person he loved. killed her. Killed her for her fat, gyrating stomach. Killed her for not being the person he loved.

Fatima, the belly-dancing wh.o.r.e. He had no recollection of slitting open her body from sternum to pelvis. None. But then, he had no recollection of shooting Anthony Verey in the gut, either. He'd thought at first that it would all come back to him, that moment by the river. It would come streaming into his mind like a motion picture and then he would feel it feel it, feel in his being that he'd taken a life. But time went on and this didn't happen. There was no motion picture, no feeling: only fog and darkness.

It had been suggested to him by his lawyer, Maitre de Bladis, that his mind had 'blanked out' the terrible things that he'd done. Some killers, de Bladis had opined, found their feelings of horror and guilt 'too terrible to be borne'. They managed to achieve 'absolute mental suppression of their crime' and he was almost certainly one of them. He was subsequently informed that he had the right to psychiatric help, if he should request it.

His cell was four metres long by two and a half metres wide. It contained a wooden bed, narrow and low to the ground. The single pillow was surprisingly soft. Under the window, stood a wooden table and chair.

In the corner of the cell nearest the door were a lavatory and a washbasin, both cracked and stained, but serviceable. And in the night, when he needed to empty his bladder, Aramon often thought how convenient how almost enjoyable enjoyable it was to have this WC just a few paces from his bed. it was to have this WC just a few paces from his bed.

Sometimes, he didn't even bother to stand up, but just crawled to the toilet bowl (which was also set low to the ground) on his knees. Then he'd go back to his bunk and listen for the dawn outside the window and often sink into dreams of being a boy again, toiling along the onion rows before the sun came up behind the hills of La Callune.

When he'd first arrived at the prison, they'd put him into the hospital, because he couldn't keep his food down. He told the prison doctors that he thought he had stomach cancer. They showed towards him a surprising degree of sympathy and kindness. His body was scanned. He was informed that there was no cancer, only two bleeding ulcers.

'That figures,' Aramon said. 'I could feel that, pardi pardi: that bleeding inside. I think that's been going on a long time.'

He was put on a special alkaline diet. His cigarettes were taken away for a while. And when he came out of the prison hospital, he felt almost well again, well enough to stand up straight, well enough to crack a few jokes at mealtimes or in the exercise yard or in the wood shop where he worked making pallets.

He made friends with another murderer, an old Somali man called Yusuf, who had an infectious, high-pitched laugh. Yusuf claimed he couldn't remember his crime, either. The police had told him there was more than one, but he'd long forgotten what they were or why he might have committed them. He said to Aramon: 'It doesn't matter what they were. I may have been wicked a long time ago, I may even have slit a man's throat, or the throats of more than one man, but G.o.d has forgiven me. He has given me rest from toil. He has given me shelter in my old age. And now He's giving it to you, too.'

Shelter in my old age.

This thought made Aramon smile. It also made him take a certain pride in his cell. He cleaned it with care. At the Mas Lunel, he'd allowed everything to go to h.e.l.l, not caring not really noticing if the place stank, until it all got too disgusting and too complicated to be endured and he'd had to send for Audrun to sort it out.

Here in prison, he disinfected his lavatory bowl three times a week. He stretched the bed-sheets tight. He wished he had pictures or photographs to tape to the walls: views of places where he'd never been and never would go and which would therefore ask nothing of him. Niagara Falls. Mount Etna. The Great Wall of China. Venice. A lake in Somalia, where, Yusuf told him, men fished for eels under a crimson sunset. These pictures, he thought, would give his mind a resting place: somewhere to dwell.

Many of the inmates of the prison were young men Caucasian French, Somalis and North Africans, staying mainly in their own ethnic groups.

At mealtimes and in the yard, all the groups strutted and bragged and cursed. Sometimes, there were b.l.o.o.d.y fights and these amused Aramon. He could remember what it was like to be twenty years old and full of fury. But he admitted to Yusuf: 'I wouldn't want to be young again. It's too exhausting.'

One day, a group of young white men gathered around Aramon in the exercise yard and one of them, a boy called Michou, said to him: 'We heard you're the guy who wiped out that rosbif rosbif. The one in the newspapers, who went missing. Is that true?'

Aramon was leaning against the wire fence, smoking. The air was cold, under a leaden sky. He looked down at the expectant faces, and his pride, his manhood wouldn't let him tell these youths that he didn't know whether he'd been Verey's killer or not.

'Yeh,' he said. 'That's me.'

The boys began t.i.ttering. Michou's friend, Louis, said: 'You shot away his pallid face? Uhn?'

Shot away his pallid face...

Aramon said in a strong voice: 'He'd promised me money. A lot of money for some land. We had a deal. You see? He tried to back away from it. c.u.n.t. He tried to cheat me. But n.o.body cheats a member of the Lunel family!'

'What did it feel like? Blaff! Blaff! One foreigner less! Pretty f.u.c.king good, uhn?' One foreigner less! Pretty f.u.c.king good, uhn?'

'It felt all right,' said Aramon.

'Did you knock his head off with the first shot?'

'Not his head,' said Aramon. 'I shot him in the gut.'

He was about to brag that he'd killed Verey with one shot, but then he remembered: two two spent cartridges in the firing chamber and he stammered, 'I thought I'd get him first time, but my hands were shaking. I had to fire the second barrel.' spent cartridges in the firing chamber and he stammered, 'I thought I'd get him first time, but my hands were shaking. I had to fire the second barrel.'

'What, and then his guts spilled out?'

'Yeh.'

'You did OK,' said Michou. 'Foreigners are vermin. More and more each f.u.c.king year, swarming over us, like rats. And they just help themselves to what belongs to us. They try to cheat us all the time. You did good, old man.'

After that, this group Michou, Louis and three others began to 'look after' Aramon, out of respect, respect, they told him. They began by procuring extra cigarettes for him, and p.o.r.nographic magazines. At his request, they managed to find him a colour photograph of Niagara Falls, which he taped to the wall above his bed and stared at for long hours at a time. He knew that, in recent years, his life had had about it an absence of wonder. they told him. They began by procuring extra cigarettes for him, and p.o.r.nographic magazines. At his request, they managed to find him a colour photograph of Niagara Falls, which he taped to the wall above his bed and stared at for long hours at a time. He knew that, in recent years, his life had had about it an absence of wonder.

One day, in the yard, Michou told him he was looking tired, asked him, why didn't he try the other stuff, the beautiful stuff that took all your sorrows away?

'The "beautiful stuff"?'

'Yeh. c.o.ke. Crack. Whichever. Even Smack if you think you can handle it. Easy to get. Easy.'

'How would I arrange it?' Aramon asked.

Michou said this was easy, too. Deals were always done on the outside. Certain of the guards 'facilitated' it, because their own pay was so stingy. Easy as farting.

Aramon told Michou he would think about this. But really, he didn't have to think about it very long. Because this was what he ached for had ached for, for most of his benighted life the drug that would make the world seem wonderful.

Yusuf warned him not to do it, not to go anywhere near it. He warned him he would be putting fetters on himself, selling himself into slavery.

But Aramon had already begun dreaming about it. He clung to his soft pillow and conjured in his mind a substance of perfect whiteness which would allow him to feel what he'd felt long ago, before Bernadette died.

The thing she had sometimes, on summer evenings, described as happiness.

Snow fell on the charred ruins of the Mas Lunel.

Audrun, wearing her rubber boots and her old red coat, stood alone in the landscape and found herself wis.h.i.+ng that the snow would go on falling and falling until all the contours and edges of the building were blurred, and the mas became indistinguishable from all that existed around it: a small mound or hill among the greater hills.

She loved the whiteness of everything. Even the raw air she loved.

And the silence. This more than anything.

When the snow melted and the remains of the mas appeared again, in all their blackened ugliness, Audrun had to keep the blinds of the bungalow windows pulled down and barely ventured out of her door, so terrible did the proximity of this thing thing appear to her. appear to her.

When she realised she'd once again become a prisoner of her loathing, she called Raoul Molezon. She offered him pastis, which she served with cheese crackers. She told him she wanted him to demolish the Mas Lunel.

'Demolish it? And then what?' said Raoul.

Then what?

She remembered her father boasting about selling the stones when he'd torn down the two wings of the mas, long ago.

Then what?

'Then it will be gone,' she said. 'And the land will recover.'

Raoul was silent for a moment. Audrun noticed that he'd dropped a few cracker crumbs on his tartan s.h.i.+rt. Men, she thought, seldom see what's been dropped or spilled or just abandoned. They just hurry on...

'I've got a better idea,' said Raoul. 'With the insurance money, I could rebuild it for you. It would take a bit of time, but-'

'Insurance money!' said Audrun. 'Aramon won't see a cent of that. It's tied up in the courts. Insurers don't want to pay out to a murderer if they don't have to! Who can blame them?'

Raoul nodded. He sipped his pastis, with his face lowered. The word 'murderer' seemed to have disconcerted him.

After a while, Audrun said, 'I think it's better if the house is gone, Raoul. Better for me. Better for the land. Couldn't you just bring a bulldozer? I can pay you for the work. And you can salvage the stones.'

Raoul was silent again for a moment, then he said: 'What does Aramon want?'

'Who knows?' said Audrun. 'But it's of no importance. Aramon's going to die in prison. They say he'll get thirty years. He'll never set foot on this hillside again.'

Raoul arrived with his demolition team at the end of February. The days were grey and cold.

Audrun made coffee for the men. She reminded Raoul of her instruction to take away everything, drag it all away, every last stone and tile, every floor joist, every ancient run of piping, every piece of flaking plaster.

'What I want to see when you've finished,' she said, 'is flat ground. I don't want there to be anything left above the earth.'

Raoul told his men to go on up to the mas, but he stayed behind, sitting at Audrun's kitchen table, with his hands round his coffee bowl. His brown eyes looked not at Audrun, but down into the bowl.

'Audrun,' he said, 'I've been wanting to say this. I should have said it the last time I was here. I'm sorry for everything that's happened. We all are. Everybody in La Callune. We want to help you in any way we can.'

Audrun looked at him, the still-handsome man she could so easily have loved, if her life had been differently constructed, and felt towards him a sweet tenderness she knew time would never diminish.

'Thank you, Raoul,' she said. 'I'm sorry for Jeanne, too. That it had to be her to witness such a terrible thing... I'm sure n.o.body ever imagined that. And the little girl from Paris... on their picnic...'

He shook his head, as if to say that wasn't what he wanted to talk about. He moved the bowl round and round on the oilcloth. He still wouldn't look at Audrun, although she sensed that he had something else to say.

'I know...' he began, 'I know... that when we were young, your life was made very difficult by... by certain things that-'

Audrun stood up straight away, pus.h.i.+ng her chair away so violently that it fell over with a crash.

'A life is a life,' she said emphatically. 'I never dwell on the past. Never! Which is why it's going to be better for me when the Mas Lunel is gone. And look at the time, Raoul. Hadn't you better get started? They've forecast rain this afternoon.'

He stood up. He took his gloves out of the pocket of his work coat and slowly put them on. He nodded and went out.

Built over years, it was demolished in days.

True to Audrun's orders, Raoul and his men left nothing standing above ground. When their work was finished, where the Mas Lunel had been, there was only a rectangular declivity in the earth.

Audrun walked round and round this declivity, a clay and limestone wound, fancifully zippered together by the st.i.tching of the bulldozer tracks. The shallow rectangle appeared far smaller than the house itself had been and there was about it, thought Audrun, an embarra.s.sing pointlessness, as though, in the end, the beautiful hillside above La Callune had been dug out and levelled and terraced to no purpose. And this thought tore at Audrun's heart, tore at her sacred memory of Bernadette, standing at her sink or at her ironing table, keeping watch.

But then, hearing a blackbird singing in one of the holm oaks, Audrun remembered that spring was coming and that the seasons would bring their own, more kindly alteration. In the ruts left by the bulldozer tracks no less than on the bare mud and limestone, tiny particles of matter would accrue, swept down by the rain and the wind: filaments of dead leaves, wisps of charred broom. And in the air, almost invisible as spring came on, would be specks of dust, grains of sand, and these would slowly turn and fall and settle among the detritus, making a bed for the spores of lichen and moss. In one season, the scar of the Mas Lunel would begin to heal.

About this, she was not wrong.