Mister Memory Read online

  He doesn’t knock, but tries the door and finds it locked. As the handle clicks he hears muffled sounds from within, a scurry, and hushed voices.

  Petit bangs on the door.

  ‘Baraduc?’

  Some more hushed tones from inside trigger something in Petit that he didn’t know existed in him: sudden rage. Without reason, he kicks at the frame of the door, by the lock, causing the cheap wood to splinter and the door to swing open.

  He is in an outer office of some kind, containing a desk, a couple of chairs, and a very sizeable safe on short but sturdy metal legs. He sees immediately that the source of the noise lies beyond the wooden door leading to the studio itself. As he enters, the sounds suddenly cease, and then he hears a floorboard squeak. He crosses the room in two steps and flings the door wide, to find a fat man pointing a pistol at him, and a young woman sitting, perched on the end of a couch, her hands frozen in the act of pulling on a boot. The room is furnished sparely. Aside from the couch, there are a chair or two, a large camera on a tall wooden tripod, a flash pan on another tripod and, in the corner of the room, rolls of what Petit assumes are backdrops, like the one of a meadow that hangs behind the girl.

  Petit looks at the pistol, but doesn’t think to worry. He can see immediately that the man is scared, and perhaps a little confused too. The girl looks from Petit to Baraduc, and still does not pull on her boot.

  ‘Baraduc?’ Petit asks, and the man gives the faintest of nods, almost without realising he has.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asks, and something in his intonation implies he had perhaps been expecting someone else.

  ‘Petit. I’m from the Sûreté.’

  The gun lowers slightly.

  Then rises again.

  ‘You force your way in. You have no—’

  ‘I’ll pay you for the door,’ Petit says, surprising himself as he does so. I will? he thinks. Maybe I will. Maybe it’s part of the business of being an inspector. For God’s sake, if they have to buy their own revolvers and ammunition, if they have to cover the cost of bribes to informants, he may as well pay for a damn doorframe.

  Petit pulls out his Sûreté ID and cautiously proffers it to Baraduc, who squints at it and then lowers his gun completely.

  ‘What do you want? I’ve had enough of you people.’

  ‘You people? Which people?’

  ‘You’re vice squad, right?’ says Baraduc, and then, seeing the blank look on Petit’s face, adds, ‘You’re not vice squad. So who are you? You have no right to barge in here like this. I’m done with that stuff now. I’m just making a portrait for this young lady here . . .’

  He waves a hand at the young woman. She’s clothed, but it’s clear to Petit that she was recently unclothed. He wonders how undressed she was before his knock on the outer door, and if the answer is ‘considerably’ then he’s very impressed with the speed at which she can throw her garments back on.

  Petit catches him giving her a look that means ‘for heaven’s sake take your hands off your boot, or put the damn thing on.’ It takes the girl a moment or two to get his meaning, and then she does the smart thing and pulls this second boot into place. She stands, straightening her blouse, and from the loose way her breasts move beneath it, Petit guesses that her undergarments are elsewhere in the room. In fact, yes, there they are, hanging over a screen in the corner behind him.

  Baraduc sees where Petit’s eyes are focusing, and laughs a small and nervous laugh.

  ‘There is nothing amiss here,’ he says. ‘Merely a standard portrait session for this young actress. She must have some shots, after all. Inspector, shall we perhaps make ourselves comfortable in the office?’

  He holds a hand out towards the outer room. Petit is thinking to himself that the man must have a lot to hide for him to relent so easily about the broken door when there is a commotion in the stairway and the sound of voices. A second passes before a man staggers happily into the room with a young woman draped over each shoulder. All three are evidently drunk, and in high spirits, giggling at something only they know, until the drunken man sees Petit.

  In an instant, he appears to sober up. At least, he stops giggling, and glares at Baraduc.

  ‘Hey!’ he announces. ‘You said it would just be me this time. No men. Just me giving it to the girls, right? That’s what you said, and—’

  Baraduc is on him in a moment. He waves the pistol in his face, not in any threatening way, but enough to shut him up.

  ‘Be quiet! How dare you? The inspector here has come to pay us a visit. So why don’t you take the girls, all of them, down to Louis’s and have another drink or two and then we’ll take all your portraits later, when the inspector and I have finished chatting? Yes?’

  The first girl has emerged from the studio now, and takes one look at the drunken man and sighs.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘I’ll explain downstairs.’

  When they are gone, and Baraduc has finished experimenting with trying to close his broken door properly, and has slid the gun into a desk drawer, he slumps into a seat behind his desk. He looks very tired and old.

  Petit points at the chair across the desk from Baraduc and raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says Baraduc. ‘My apologies.’

  Petit sits and considers where to start, but the pornographer starts for him.

  ‘So, you’re not vice squad? Then what do you want?’

  There is no point pussying around, Petit thinks. The time for subtlety ended when he put his foot to the door.

  ‘One of your girls. Your models. From a while back. I don’t know when. She’s dead. Murdered. No, calm yourself. I’m not accusing you, we know who did it. I just want to know who she was.’

  Baraduc listens to this and is silent for a few moments, during which he clearly attempts to work out if there is some trick or deception or plan behind the inspector’s words, something that could incriminate him. He doesn’t know what it could be; but Baraduc is perpetually guilty; he’s made a living from the exploitation of people’s fears and lusts, and most of that work has been illegal as well as immoral.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ he asks finally, having ascertained that that question at least can do him no harm.

  ‘Ondine Després. She would have been Badiou when you knew her.’

  Baraduc’s face does not change. ‘I don’t know her,’ he says flatly.

  Petit rubs his forehead with thumb and forefinger, takes a deep breath. ‘Monsieur Baraduc. I am not the vice squad. But I very easily could be. Their office is just down the hall from mine. On my way back to give my report this afternoon I could spend two minutes telling them that you appear to be continuing in your work, work that you have been imprisoned for twice, I believe?’

  He stops, and knows he need say no more.

  Baraduc looks down, he holds up a hand. ‘Yes. Ondine. What do you want to know?’

  Petit shakes his head. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Everything.’

  So Baraduc tells him.

  It takes half an hour, during which the first girl appears in the doorway again, and is waved away by Baraduc once more. Mostly, he concentrates on his story, and it is not a pleasant one.

  He tells how Ondine came to Paris when she was a young girl. Her mother was dead, her father was a rough drinking man. Nothing remarkable about either of those two things, or in a young person coming to the city to seek a better life. And like so many migrants of this kind, they arrive only to find they are in competition with so many other wastrels and vagabonds. Those are the actual words Baraduc uses, but Petit doesn’t smile even to himself, inside. He merely nods and allows Baraduc to go on. The photographer seems to relax a little, as he explains that Ondine had the dream that she would become an actress, become a rich and famous actress, adored throughout Paris, and maybe even beyond. There was only one problem, Baraduc says. ‘She couldn’t act. I saw her attempts myself once. Terrible.’ But what she lacked in dramatic talent was amply compensated for in oth
er ways.

  ‘You saw her?’ Baraduc asks.

  ‘I saw one of your photos of her, in fact,’ Petit says, and notices that Baraduc colours a little at this. Petit lets him dangle for a moment before pulling out the portrait of Ondine from her room, her respectable portrait.

  ‘This is one of yours, isn’t it?’ Petit asks.

  Baraduc nods.

  ‘I presume there were others in which she was unclothed?’

  Baraduc does not move, nor say anything. Time moves, and memories flood into his mind, none of which he chooses to share with the policeman.

  ‘You see for yourself, then?’ he says at last. ‘Everyone wanted her. Every man, I should say. Most of the girls hated her. Jealous. Of her looks. The effect she had on men. Yes, Paris is full of girls, and many of them are very lovely. Very lovely.’

  Baraduc winks at Petit, who finds that Marie has returned to his thoughts. Just put one foot wrong, he thinks, just say one word too many, and I will climb across this desk and throttle you with my bare hands, just as someone did to my fiancée.

  He takes another breath, and points at the photograph. ‘Ondine?’

  ‘Yes, Ondine. The fairest of them all. Or perhaps fair is the wrong word, but there was something about her eyes, you know. Something that seemed to promise things to men. Dark things. And those lips. And I need not draw the inspector’s attention to her physical figure.’

  No, you need not, thinks Petit.

  Finally, Baraduc seems to be able to move away from the subject of Ondine’s body. He relates how, unable to find work as an actress and finding herself unable to take a decent enough occupation – a waitress, a laundry girl, a flower-seller – she fell in with the kind of people who know what to do with a pretty girl.

  ‘She became a fille publique?’ Petit asks.

  ‘No!’ says Baraduc, almost with a trace of pride. ‘Never! Not Ondine. Not as far as I know, anyway. She never worked the streets. They had her in a maison from the off. And not just any maison. She was at Le Chabanais. The best! Perhaps you are unaware of the clientele there, Inspector?’

  Petit can find no way to answer that question that he likes, and so he chooses not to. Anyway, Baraduc is still not finished, and tells him how Ondine rapidly worked her way to a life as a high-class prostitute, a demi-mondaine no less, with wealthy lovers and a few, very well-paid assignations, at addresses that the young inspector might fail to believe.

  ‘So what happened?’ he asks. ‘When she died she was working in a cabaret. And not a good one.’

  ‘The Cabaret of Insults, yes,’ says Baraduc. ‘What times we live in.’

  Petit decides that Baraduc should get together with Boissenot so they could discuss the end of the world together.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, she grew too old. That’s all.’

  ‘Too old? She was twenty-eight. She’d been working the cabarets for a few years. She was too old?’

  ‘The circuit, if I may put it that way, in which she operated. They prefer their girls on the younger side. By twenty-five she was done. And unfortunately, in all those years, she never got any smarter, she never learned to be careful with money. She lost it as soon as she earned it. So at twenty-five she was faced with a choice: the streets, or the cabaret. And you know the rest.’

  ‘And how did you come to know her?’

  Baraduc hesitates again, and only relents when Petit reminds him of the vice squad.

  ‘I was invited to photograph certain occasions at which she was present.’

  ‘What occasions? With whom?’

  Another long pause, a very long silence indeed, ends when Petit bangs his fist on the edge of the desk.

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘Rich men,’ Baraduc mutters, ‘powerful men, even. There were some . . . gatherings. They wanted matters recorded. Photographically, you understand. I met Ondine, and offered her a series of portraits.’

  Petit understands. ‘Five with clothes, perhaps, and five . . . for your own commercial purposes?’

  Baraduc closes his eyes and nods.

  ‘And these assignations?’ Petit asks. ‘These gatherings. Who were they with?’

  Baraduc does not answer. He suddenly seems to have grown suspicious once again, more so than before, if anything.

  ‘Why do you want to know all this?’ he asks instead. ‘You know who killed her. I know who killed her. We read about it in the papers. It was the talk of the streets up here for a week or two. That husband of hers did her. Shot her all to bits, right? Then gave himself up. So why are you asking me questions, when she’s dead and the murderer is heading for the guillotine?’

  Petit does not bother correcting Baraduc on the inaccuracies in his account. And he has no answer for Baraduc as to why he is here. But it’s none of his business anyway, and it hasn’t escaped his attention that the wily pornographer is trying to change the subject.

  ‘Who were they, Baraduc? Who were they?’

  Petit does not get his answer, for despite every threat of the vice squad, of violence on his own part, every coercion and even bribe he can muster, Baraduc refuses to say more. He declares that Petit can set a torch to his workshop, and throw him in jail, it will not change the fact that he never knew the men’s names.

  And Petit knows that he is lying, and wonders what on earth scares Baraduc so much that he would risk losing everything, even his liberty, so long as it means keeping his mouth shut.

  AWAKE

  Still Morel worked with Marcel, when he could. There were good days and less good days, and on one exceptional day Morel learns something stunning about his patient.

  As Morel sits on the little stool, and notes that Marcel is ‘awake’, as he has come to call it, he notices that the French–Russian dictionary that he threw at him one angry day is sitting on the little shelf beside the window.

  For days, Morel has even forgotten that he brought it to the cell, but someone must have picked it up and put it on the shelf. Perhaps that someone was Marcel. Perhaps he looked at it.

  More in hope than anything stronger, Morel stands and plucks the little book from the shelf.

  He holds it towards Marcel. ‘Did you look at this?’

  The way he asks makes it sound as if Marcel has been a somewhat mischievous urchin.

  Marcel looks at the book, and nods. ‘I did.’

  ‘Did you . . . read any of it?’

  ‘I read it all.’

  The doctor considers this remark. In anyone else . . . But Marcel is not just anyone else.

  ‘So you would . . . you should therefore be able to remember the words you read.’

  Marcel nods. ‘Perhaps,’ he says.

  ‘Only perhaps?’ Morel seems affronted. He opens the dictionary and chooses an easy word to start with. ‘Apple!’

  Marcel closes his eyes. ‘яблоко,’ he says.

  Morel does not speak Russian, but the dictionary has a phonetic transcription next to each word; it was his intention to test Marcel and see if the words he offered sound like the transcription.

  Morel thinks he might have been right, but is not sure.

  He tries another word. ‘Ginger!’

  ‘имбирь,’ says Marcel.

  That seems right too, but now he wishes he’d chosen an easier language. He wanted only to be sure it was a language that Marcel had no prior knowledge of.

  ‘River!’ says Morel.

  ‘река,’ says Marcel, and then stands up and delivers a speech to Morel, slowly, but entirely, in Russian.

  Morel curses himself, and he curses Marcel, and then he holds up his hands.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait. There’s an orderly. Miskov or Metkov or something. Born in Russia. Let me go to fetch him and don’t you forget a word of what you just said until I get back. Do you hear me, young man? Not a word!’

  About fifteen minutes later, Morel returns with a middle-aged man with a bemused look on his face.

  Morel instructs Miskov to wait.

 
; ‘Now, then, Marcel. Start again. You say what you said in Russian, and this fellow will translate for me. Go ahead.’

  So Marcel says what he said before. At first, the orderly frowns, shaking his head.

  Morel is hopping from foot to foot, growing worried and angry by turns.

  ‘Make him say it again,’ the orderly says to Morel, who snaps his fingers at Marcel in a most indecent manner. Then, with his head tilted to one side, the orderly begins to speak. ‘He is saying the words very badly,’ he explains to Morel.

  ‘Never mind that!’ Morel says. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Doctor,’ the orderly begins, falteringly. ‘Why do you . . . practise this method to check for me? You do not . . . convince you . . . to the memory? Nothing can be considered good for you?’

  Morel stares at Marcel.

  ‘You learned the language?’

  But Marcel is speaking in Russian again, and the orderly rushes to keep up.

  ‘Of course not. I just do not give a word for word and hope that the result is closer to reality. But reading the book, I remember those words. I suspect that your friend is suffering from the pronunciation of the natives, and I apologise for that.’

  Morel is about to demand a further display, but his patient is already speaking again, and once more, the orderly translates as he goes.

  ‘I do not understand you. I do not understand the lack of faith. Why are you wasting your time? I prefer you to help me. Are you a doctor, is not it? Why can you not find a way to free myself from the pain? I ask you to help me and the demons in my head. I cannot live in vain. Nevertheless frozen. To start help me find my way.’

  Morel stares at Marcel again. He stays that way for such a long time that eventually the orderly gives a small cough and enquires quietly if he should return to his duties.

  Morel barely nods, but the orderly takes his cue and leaves, whereupon Morel slumps back down on to the stool by Marcel’s bed.

  It has taken a while for the jumbled meaning of Marcel’s bad Russian to assemble itself in Morel’s head, but when he does, he finds that the struggle to understand has done something else: it has placed him in a position that is unfamiliar to him. In fact, it has made him feel something he has not felt in years: empathy for his patient. Empathy, for God’s sake. It was there once, in his work, so very long ago when he started out. It was covered up, slowly, piece by piece, as patients came and went, and as he no longer saw them, only the disease they presented. And yet now, in a moment, empathy has risen from its grave, looked him in the face and declared him to be a fool.