Next Episode (11 page)

Stopped here along a cantonal road in the serene and sunlit countryside, facing my various futures, covered with shame and the past definite but stirred once more, even if only by a wave of unawareness, I decide by unilateral revolutionary decree to put an end to the ataraxia that has kept me pinned to the front seat of the little blue Opel all this time. And if I still can’t make out what route to take in the future, except
perhaps in the image offered to me by this road as it turns towards the village of Echandens and the chateau, I realize that I just have to start moving again, follow the handwritten curves, and reinvent my story. Indeed there’s nothing now to prevent me from having already crossed the village without seeing a soul, parking the car in the garage, going inside the chateau of Echandens and positioning myself at a window in this delightful period prison (since I’m here in any case), after crossing the village without seeing a soul and putting the car in the garage. I’ve also checked out the property, Mauser in hand, to make sure there was no procurator hidden in one of the chateau’s many rooms. It’s completely deserted; and during this visit, a hasty one it’s true, I’ve unearthed no mysterious object: no radio transmitter, hidden microphone, or intercom system. On my way down the cut-stone staircase, I took the precaution of opening the inside door that goes from the vestibule to the garage. It’s my emergency exit in a way. To escape with a flourish, I can simply go through that narrow doorway, work the handle that lifts the garage door, hop into the little blue Opel, and turn the key I’ve judiciously left in the ignition.

I
T’S STRANGE
, being all alone in this grand residence. In every room I race through, I keep discovering
objets d’art
, displayed more or less conspicuously. Just now I’m in the main salon where, this very morning, I had a bad encounter with H. de Heutz. In better shape now to look calmly at what’s around me, I admire a two-tiered Louis
XIII
buffet. It’s a remarkable piece: the upper tier, much narrower than the base, opens by means of a single roundel door on which a naked warrior is depicted. Made of amber-coloured wood, its surface decorated with bas-reliefs and friezes seduces me like the skin of an unknown woman. I open the door, which creaks as it moves on its rat-tail hinge. Suddenly another sound is superimposed on the creaking. I stop and listen. If this new sound points to an enemy presence inside the chateau walls, it must be accompanied by other sounds which, added up, would indicate its source, unless my own silent wait is met with either an attempt at silence or an attempt to identify the screeching sound produced when I opened the door of the Louis
XIII
buffet. Nothing happens. And I quickly attribute my brief auditory hallucination to a perfectly reasonable case of nerves. I go on turning the door: inside the upper tier of the buffet there’s absolutely nothing. Strange. I sound the body of the naked warrior: very handsome! I admire his
slender form in unstable balance and the majestic way he holds his head. Against whom is he hurling himself like that, brandishing an extravagant lance as his only weapon? Circling the roundel, a carved frieze serves as the warrior’s triumphal arch. Two caryatids frame the door so that the upper tier resembles a secular tabernacle set on its altar. There, the solitary warrior is god. Yes, this buffet is truly remarkable. I’m in ecstasy before its closed mass, which stands at the entrance to the salon; I hadn’t even seen it this morning because I’d had my back to it so I could face H. de Heutz. I let my fingers brush the smooth bulbs of the caryatids and I caress the carved garments on this empty buffet. Here is where I would truly like to live. The profusion of furniture and
objets d’art
, the entire room now strikes me with all its luminosity. To think that H. de Heutz lives here! His story about children abandoned in Liège is nothing but a secondhand imposture, a kind of monologue drawn at random from the first draft (my own, as it happens), then taken to the limit of improbability in an attempt to make it plausible, for once the man has embarked on his complicated epic, it would be hard to change either plot or character without setting me against him.

How fine it must be to live here, to have access to this big room lit by the valley of the Rhône, to rest here from the hideously overcrowded cities. Life here surely doesn’t consist of the same actions repeated wearily, lethargically: it must be altogether different! Here is the big Italian armoire I’d noticed this morning – a masterpiece! The marquetry angels are enchanting: I love them, I really do. Outside, the bright afternoon fills everything with a blinding light that renders the alpine meadow diffuse when I look at it through the thin muslin curtains over the French doors. I sit in an officer’s chair, low-slung and very comfortable. From this wide-angle perspective, the salon that so delights me seems even more enticing. It’s hard for me not to comply with this interior which encourages one to rest. The fury that drove me from Ouchy to
Château d’Oex, from the Col des Mosses to the Jean-Jacques Rousseau bridge, from the narrow streets of Carouge to this salon and then from Echandens to Geneva and Coppet, seems at the very least inappropriate to this delightful setting I’m studying lazily. I let myself go: it’s not dangerous either, because at the slightest click of a lock a few steps will take me to the door in the vestibule that leads to the garage. I fire at H. de Heutz and jump into the car. It’s a simple matter of speed and precision and where that’s concerned I’m confident.

Yes, I can let myself go a little, as long as I never leave the ground floor. In fact since I checked the two upper floors and concluded with certainty that there’s no one in the chateau, I can take up my position in this grand salon with equanimity, staying here with unflagging pleasure. I wait. It’s a matter of time. H. de Heutz and the blonde woman who’s come to save him must have begun by circling the area around the Baroness de Staël’s chateau, certain that I wouldn’t get very far on foot. After a few patrols in the area, they’ve probably broadened their range of surveillance, tirelessly criss-crossing the village of Coppet; at least one of them must have done that while the other was posted at the federal railway station. But before they could even refine their police methods, I had time to cross the woods next to the chateau, rest on the promontory for a few moments, get back on the Grande-Rue and take a seat at a table in the Auberge des Émigrés with an uninterrupted view. Just as H. de Heutz and this woman were carrying out their intensive surveillance of the area around Coppet, I was tucking into crêpes with ham and Emmenthal cheese and sipping my second glass of Réserve du Vidôme. By choosing to stop for a bite to eat at a time so inappropriate for relaxation, I foiled my adversary’s plans; I demolished the most erudite theories one can draw up to trap a fugitive who’s moving within a restricted circumference. The time I took to enjoy my lunch at the Auberge des Émigrés only mystified them more, so much so in fact that ultimately, to
get some peace, H. de Heutz and his woman friend must have accepted the fact that I was nowhere to be found and then, without a word, they’ve gone back to wait for me in Geneva on Place Simon-Goulart, thinking I’d have to touch down there to get my Volvo back. Wrong! Simon Goulart himself could have been resurrected and the Banque Arabe could have risen up into the air before I went back to that little square encircled by the Alps. As for me, I’m waiting for H. de Heutz, seated in this Louis xv armchair that positions me just above the surface of the lake I can see sparkling in the distance through the cloud of the curtains. H. de Heutz is looking for me, and I’m waiting for him. I have a better chance of meeting him here than he does of spotting me on a bench on Place Simon-Goulart. I relish my position.

The more I look at it, the more I’m enamoured of the lacquered chest of drawers, covered with dalmatics, where a battle is being fought by two soldiers in armour in an explosion of shades of blue and vermilion. On the chest sits a book bound in grainy leather:
History of Julius Caesar: The Civil Wars
, by one Colonel Stoffel, published by Casimir Delavigne, Paris, 1876. I take the precious volume back to my chair, but instead of opening it, I gaze at the magnificent lacquered chest, fascinated by the violent yet peaceful battle adorning this exquisite piece. The two warriors straining towards each other in complementary positions have been immobilized in a kind of cruel embrace, a duel to the death that serves as a luminous veneer for the dark chest. Everything here is astonishing. Every object H. de Heutz has chosen appeals to me. I notice that just above the chest of drawers he’s hung a very rare engraved reproduction of “The Death of General Wolfe” by Benjamin West; the original, which belongs to the Marquis of Westminster, hangs in the Grosvenor Gallery. This print is now worth more than the large canvas. It’s a genuine masterpiece printed from his original by the painter himself: the few copies include those in Buckingham Palace, the Musée de
Québec, and the collection of Prince Esterhazy. H. de Heutz is one of those unlikely individuals, millionaire or connoisseur, who never makes a mistake. This brilliant copy of “The Death of General Wolfe,” which was purchased by George III some centuries before H. de Heutz bought his, thrills me! For that matter the remarkable luxury and good taste throughout this chateau fill me with a kind of haunting memory I’ve never known before: the pleasure of living in a house can then resemble the bewildered complacency I experience in this sweeping, majestic salon. H. de Heutz lives in a kind of altered universe that’s never been available to me, while I carry on my chaotic exile in hotels where I never really live. Through the casement of the French window the exuberant landscape spreads all the way to the misty cliff faces of France across the lake. Ah, how I would love to live in this refuge with all its mellow pleasures, amid the expression of an ancient will to live that has not been lost. A confident power hides behind these well-chosen objects. Draped in its periods and styles, this salon secretly reveals itself to me. Yes, the peeled gilding in the dark texture of Benjamin West’s work and the panelling above the parquet floor holds a disturbing riddle. Between Regency and Henri II, in this burst of festooned mouldings and evocations, I try to catalogue the components of a man I’ve sworn to kill. In vain I attempt to decipher the luminous crypt he lives in, but the beauty of this place fills me with emotion.

Never has H. de Heutz seemed as mysterious as he does right now in this chateau he elegantly haunts. But is the man I’m waiting for the enemy agent I’m to kill in cold blood? It seems unlikely because the man who lives here transcends brilliantly the image of a victim I’ve composed. This man is defined by something other than his counter-revolutionary mission. His double identity is disproportionate to the role he fills: there’s something excessive about his cover, and that worries me. I’m grappling with someone I don’t understand. Is the man who purchased that two-tiered buffet, the officer’s
chair, the chest of drawers with the two warriors, the man who hung Benjamin West’s “The Death of General Wolfe” on the salon wall, is he the phony specialist in Scipio Africanus I took aim at near the Château de Coppet? And if it’s not H. de Heutz who lives here (or Carl von Ryndt or even the pathetic François-Marc de Saugy, what difference does it make!), who adorns his living space with all these objects, then who is the other person? His partner, his chief perhaps, or the blonde woman – and is she really blonde? – whom I spotted so close to me? How can I know? One thing is certain: K has put me on an absolutely amazing trail. In any event, her instructions have proven to be troubling. Now I’m bursting to tell her about everything that’s happened to me since yesterday and describe the unforgettable secret of this chateau deep in the Vaudois countryside. But first I must kill H. de Heutz – cleanly, unhesitatingly – and as soon as the deed is done, take the blue Opel out of the garage, turn right on the road that runs through the village, floor the gas pedal, and make my way to Lausanne, turning left at the Busigny fork.

While I gaze at the lacquered chest of drawers where two tawny-coloured warriors are locked together in death, I leaf mechanically through Colonel Stoffel’s book. This artistically bound volume has an anonymous
ex libris
on its flyleaf, something I’ve never seen except, of course, in stationery stores that sell
ex libris
with a blank space for the owner’s name. This one, though, is actually more indecipherable than anonymous. Where the owner’s name should be, there’s an intricate drawing that coils around itself in a series of loops and whorls that form a Gordian knot, a cluster of initials superimposed in every possible graphic layout. The deeper I plunge into these tangled tentacles that take the place of a stamp, the more I’m struck by the premeditated nature of this masterpiece of confusion. I count an endless quantity of articulations, and as I reconstitute the manifold designs of these lines, I think I can make out some Arabic letters. In this nest
of tracery I seem to recognize the scrolls and spiral serifs of the illuminated capitals that start the suras in certain Persian copies of the Koran. Yet as I peer at this hermetic code, I can see that, contrary to appearances, they’re not Arabic letters but the initials of the man who’s interested in Colonel Stoffel’s
History of Julius Caesar: The Civil Wars
. Between this work of military history and H. de Heutz’s presentation last night in Geneva on the battle between Caesar and the brave Helvetians at Genaba, there is an undeniable link – just as there’s a conclusive correlation between the man who lives in this impossible chateau and the spuriously anonymous
ex libris
in whose depths I’m trying to locate the key to a riddle. This holds true for the entire chateau which mystifies me not so much as a dwelling but as a code. For these engraved chests filled with nothing, these roundels that send back images of war, and this apparently forgotten book that tells of Caesar’s battles are just so many initial letters bound together inextricably in a haughty and fascinating knot. It all bears a signature, that of the man for whom I’m waiting.