Blood Wedding (21 page)

Sophie pushes the wheelchair with admirable altruism. She is calm, she stares straight ahead. Her gestures are a little mechanical, but that’s understandable, she has a lot on her mind. What I love about her is that, even in such tragic circumstances, she doesn’t lapse into mawkishness, she doesn’t adopt the martyred air of a nun or a nursemaid. She simply pushes the wheelchair. Though she must be wondering what she is going to do with this human wreck. As indeed am I.

October 18

It is heart-rending. The Oise is not a cheery region to say the least, but we seem to have reached rock bottom. This vast mansion and this forlorn young woman who, at the first ray of sunshine, drags her husband’s wheelchair out onto the front porch, her husband who takes up all her time, saps all her energy. It’s terribly moving. She wraps him in blankets, pulls a chair up next to his and chatters to him while she chain-smokes. It’s impossible to tell whether he understands what she is saying. He nods constantly, whether she is talking or not. Through the binoculars I can see him drooling, it is painful to watch. He tries to express himself, but he cannot
speak – by which I mean he can no longer articulate words. He lets out little cries and grunts, they both do their utmost to communicate. Sophie is so patient with him. I couldn’t do it.

Otherwise, I am very discreet. It’s important not to overdo it. I come by during the night, between 1.00 and 4.00 a.m., I slam one of the shutters and half an hour later I smash an outdoor lightbulb. Once I see a light go on in Sophie’s room, then on the stairs, I can go home in peace. The important thing is to maintain the atmosphere.

October 26

Winter has arrived a little early.

I have discovered that Laure has dropped the charges against Sophie. She even came round to visit. Things may never be the same between them, but Laure is a good person at heart, she is not one to hold a grudge. Sophie is so pale she is almost translucent.

I visit about twice a week (I adjust her medication, read any opened letters and carefully put them back), the rest of the time, I keep up to date by way of her e-mails. I have to say I don’t like the turn events are taking. We could languish in this listless depression for months, for years. Something needs to be done. Sophie is trying to get herself organised, she has requested a home help, but they are hard to come by around these parts, and obviously I’m against the idea. I intercepted her letters. I have opted for a more fitful approach, I am counting on the fact that, given her age, regardless of the love she feels, Sophie will get bored, she will start to wonder what she is doing here, how much longer she can stand it. I can tell she has been looking for solutions: she has considered buying another house, she is thinking of moving back
to Paris. Personally, I’m not fussed. What I don’t want is to have the human vegetable hanging around much longer.

November 16

Sophie never gets a moment’s peace. When he first came home, Vincent would sit in his wheelchair like a good little boy, and she could get on with other things, checking on him every now and then. But as time went on, things became more difficult. Recently, they have been very difficult indeed. If she leaves him out on the front steps, within minutes his wheelchair has rolled forward and is liable to topple over. She had someone come and install a ramp and protective rails anywhere he is likely to venture. She does not know how he does it, but sometimes he makes it all the way to the kitchen. Now and then, he manages to get hold of some implement that could be dangerous, or he starts screaming. She quickly rushes to his side, but can never work out what it is that has set him off. Vincent and I are old friends now. Every time I show up, his eyes grow wide, he starts to grunt. He is visibly afraid, he feels terribly vulnerable.

Sophie writes to Valérie, telling her about his misadventures. Valérie keeps promising to visit, but – surprise, surprise! – she never quite gets around to it. Sophie is having trouble coping with her anxiety, she is taking all sorts of medication, she has no idea what to do for the best. She seeks advice from her father, from Valérie, she spends hours on the internet looking for a house, an apartment, she feels completely helpless. Her father, Valérie, everyone she has talked to suggests that she put Vincent into residential care, but she will not hear of it.

December 19

The
second home help has just quit. She did not even give a reason. Sophie worries what to do, the agency has written to say it will be difficult to find anyone else.

I did not know whether her husband still had urges, whether he could still function and, even if he could, how she might go about it. Actually, it’s quite simple. Obviously, Vincent is not the strong, masterful hunk he was a year ago on their (now infamous) Greek holiday. These days, Sophie “services” him. She does her best, but it is evident that her heart is not in it. At least she doesn’t cry while she’s doing it. Only afterwards.

December 23

As Christmases go, it is pretty cheerless, especially as this is also the anniversary of Vincent’s mother’s death.

December 25

Christmas day! The fire started in the living room. Vincent seemed particularly calm, he was dozing. Within minutes, the Christmas tree had caught fire – it makes an impressive blaze. Sophie just had time to drag Vincent’s wheelchair away (he was screaming by this time) and douse the flames while she called the fire brigade. They were more shaken than hurt. But they were very shaken. Even the volunteer firemen, to whom she served coffee in the dank, charred remnants of the living room, gently advised her to place Vincent into care.

January 9, 2002

She
had only to make up her mind. I allow the letters containing the official paperwork to arrive unhindered. Sophie has found a residential home in the suburbs of Paris. Vincent is well looked after, he had first-class private health insurance. She drove him there, she kneels next to the wheelchair, takes his hands in hers, whispers softly, explains the advantages of the situation. He grunts something incomprehensible. As soon as she finds herself alone, she bursts into tears.

February 2

I have eased up a little on Sophie to give her time to get organised. I just mislay a few objects, juggle with her calendar, but she is so used to such things that she no longer finds them disturbing. She muddles through. And, in doing so, she begins to recover her strength. In the beginning she went to visit Vincent every day, but such good intentions never last. And then she finds herself crippled by guilt. It’s most obvious in her e-mails to her father: she cannot even bring herself to mention it.

Now that Vincent is safely installed in the suburbs, she has put the house on the market. And she’s flogging everything at knockdown prices. She has had a curious collection of people come by, vans show up at all hours with antique dealers, bric-a-brac merchants, the Emmaus Homeless Charity. Sophie waits for them and stiffly greets them at the top of the front steps; she is never around when they leave. In the meantime, they load up boxes and furniture, a whole pile of junk. It’s strange, when I saw those same things in her house the other night, I found them charming, but now, watching them being cleared out and packed up, they
suddenly seem ugly, damaged. Such is life.

February 9

Two nights ago, at about nine o’clock, Sophie jumped into a taxi.

Vincent’s room is on the second floor. He somehow managed to push the safety bar on the door that leads to the vast stone staircase and launched his wheelchair down the steps. The nurses are at a loss to know how he did it, but obviously he still had considerable strength. He took advantage of the general kerfuffle after dinner, when groups are getting together to play games and the pensioners are gathered in front of the television.

He died instantly. Curious that he died the same way as his mother. Talk about fate . . .

February 12

Sophie decided to have Vincent cremated. The ceremony was poorly attended: her father, Vincent’s father, a handful of former colleagues, a few relatives she rarely sees. It is at times like this you realise how completely she has cut herself off. At least Valérie showed up.

February 17

I expected her to be relieved by Vincent’s death. For weeks, she must have been imagining herself having to visit him for years and years. But in fact her reaction was completely different: she is tormented by guilt. If she had not “put him in a home”, if she had had the strength to care for him to the end, he would still be alive.
Despite Valérie’s e-mail saying that the life he was living was no life at all, Sophie is devastated. But I believe that, sooner or later, reason will prevail.

February 19

Sophie has gone to stay with her father for a few days. I didn’t feel I needed to tag along. Besides, she took her medication with her.

February 25

I have to admit that it’s a decent neighbourhood. It’s not one I would have chosen, but it’s fine. Sophie moved into a third-floor apartment. I will have to find a way to visit some day. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to find an observation post as convenient as I had back when Sophie was a radiant young woman. But I’m working on it.

She brought almost nothing with her. There cannot have been much left after her clearance sale in the Oise. The removals van she has rented is tiny compared to the one they used when they moved out of Paris. I’m not one for symbols generally, but even I can see it as a sign, and a good one, too. A few months ago, Sophie moved house with a husband, with tons of furniture, books and paintings, and with a baby in her belly. She has come back alone, with nothing but a small van. She is no longer the young woman who radiated life and energy. Far from it. Sometimes I look at the photographs from back then, her holiday snaps.

March 7

Sophie has decided to look for work. Not in her own field, she
no longer has any contacts in P.R., and besides, she no longer has the ambition or the drive. Then there is the problem of why she left her last position. I watch from a distance. I’m not bothered one way or the other. She visits offices, arranges interviews. She obviously doesn’t care what she does. She barely mentions it in her e-mails. It is strictly utilitarian.

March 13

Well, I didn’t see that coming: a nanny. The advertisement was for a “child-minder”. The manager of the agency took a liking to Sophie. And it took no time at all to find her a position: that same evening, she was hired by “M. and Mme Gervais”. I will have to do a little digging about them. I saw Sophie with a little boy of about five or six. It is the first time I’ve seen her smile in months. I haven’t yet figured out her work schedule.

March 24

The cleaning woman arrives at about noon. Sophie usually lets her in. But since she lets herself in when Sophie isn’t there, I assume she has her own keys. She is a plump woman of a certain age who goes everywhere with a brown plastic bag. She does not clean for the Gervais on weekends. I watched her for days on end, I have learned her routine, her habits. I’m an expert. Before starting her shift, she stops at Le Triangle, the café on the corner, for one last cigarette. She is evidently not allowed to smoke in the apartment. Her big thing is the horses. I sat at the table next to her as she was filling in her betting slip, and then, when she went to give it in, I slid my hand into the brown plastic shopping bag. It hardly took
me a moment to locate the keys. On Saturday morning I went out to Villeparisis (it’s ridiculous how far the woman has to come to work), and while she was doing her shopping, I slipped the keys back into her bag. I’m sure it was a load off her mind.

Now, I have my access to the Gervais’ apartment.

April 2

Nothing much has changed. It was less than two weeks before Sophie lost her identity card, for her alarm clock to go on the blink (she showed up late in her very first week). I am piling on the pressure and waiting for the right opportunity. So far, I have been pretty patient, but now I’d like to move on to Plan B.

May 3

Although she loves her new job, for the past two months Sophie has found herself facing the same psychological problems she did a year ago. Exactly the same. But one thing is new: the furious outbursts. Even I have trouble understanding her sometimes. Her unconscious mind seems to be rebelling, driving her into wild rages. It was different before. Sophie was resigned to her madness. Since then, something inside her has snapped and I don’t know what. I see her getting angry, she has no self-control; she is rude to people, it’s as though she finds everyone infuriating, as though she no longer likes anyone. But it’s hardly anyone else’s fault that she is like this! I find her aggressive. It did not take long for her to get a terrible reputation in the neighbourhood. She has no patience. For a nanny, that is a serious drawback. And though I admit she has a lot to deal
with right now, she takes out her personal problems on other people. There are times when I think she is capable of murder. If I were the parent of a six-year-old kid, I wouldn’t leave him in the care of someone like Sophie.

May 28

I was dead right. I saw Sophie with the boy in place Dantremont. Everything was calm. Sophie was sitting on a bench, daydreaming. I don’t know what can have happened, but a few minutes later she was striding down the street in a towering rage. Trailing a long way behind her, the boy was evidently sulking. When Sophie turned and ran at him, I knew things would not end well. She slapped him. A vicious smack, the sort that is meant to hurt, to punish. The kid was dumbfounded. As was Sophie. As though she had woken from a nightmare. They stood for a moment staring at each other, not speaking. The traffic light turned green and I drove away. Sophie was looking around wildly, fearful that someone might have seen, that someone might say something. I get the feeling she hates this child.

Last night, she slept at the Gervais’ apartment. This is rare. As a rule, she prefers to go home, no matter how late it is. I know the layout of the apartment. When Sophie stays over, there are two possibilities, because there are two guest bedrooms. I watched the lights flicker on and off in the various windows. Sophie read the boy a bedtime story, then I saw her at the window smoking a last cigarette, the light went on in the bathroom briefly, then the apartment was dark. The bedroom. To get to the boy’s bedroom you have to go through the room in which Sophie sleeps. I’m sure
that when the nanny sleeps over, the parents don’t dare check on their son for fear of waking her.