I won’t accept that what was being made ready on that particular June 24 won’t come about. An apocryphal sacrament joins us inextricably to the revolution. The project we’ve started we shall finish. To the very end I’ll be the person I began to be with you, in you. These things happen. Wait for me.
9
I FLOOR THE gas pedal. There’s a quiet place I know near the Château de Coppet. I can get there in a few minutes. I’ve already wasted too much time. As soon as I’ve finished with my passenger, I’ll leave the Opel near the Coppet station and take the omnibus-train to Geneva where I’ll get my Volvo back; this time, I’ll take the expressway so I’ll be on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre at half-past six to join K. Better yet, I’ll take the train to Lausanne, I’ll get a taxi at the station, and I’ll be at the Hôtel d’Angleterre three or four minutes later. I’ll abandon the Volvo immediately and gladly and report the incident to the Bureau, a mere formality. After all, I’m not going to travel around in a car that’s already been identified. Here I am at Coppet, ravenously hungry (it’s already past twelve-thirty), but I’ll eat when it’s over. I’m anxious to be done with H. de Heutz and all the rest. Before I board the train that will take me to Lausanne, I’m sure I’ll have a few minutes to munch a croûte zurichoise at the station restaurant, washed down with white wine from the Valais. While I wait and as I make my way through Coppet en route to the Château, I concentrate on the problem of von Ryndt-de Heutz. The minute the trunk is open, I’ll bring him out at gunpoint and haul him into the forest. It won’t be hard to find the clearing where I picnicked with K one beautiful Sunday afternoon. Here is Necker’s chateau already, with its worn-out romanticism and its princely iron gate. Now I just have to turn left. Yes, that’s it. I stay in second gear. All around me there’s nothing and no one. I’m perplexed. This bit of road doesn’t lead to the little forest, at least I don’t think it does. I stop the car, letting the engine idle. I decide to go on. I advance a few hundred feet: already the broader landscape looks familiar. Yes, I’m here. I advance cautiously, nearly at a walk; if I take anyone by surprise I can always claim I’m a tourist exploring the area around the chateau. All that’s missing is an edition of Benjamin Constant’s diary. I know where I am now. The edge of the forest. Will I have trouble finding the entrance we used in the parchment-green Renault we’d rented for nine days? I still can hear the melody of “Desafinado.” It’s following me, a lyrical germ of my state of mind and of my desire to escape by hiding in this woods near the Château de Coppet, and in the piece of writing that is taking me back to Switzerland and helping me get over my hunger while I drive my passenger into the forest, brushing against the branches of the Jurassic pines that fill this woods where other exiles have ventured before me.
I turn off the ignition. A religious silence surrounds the little blue car. The air feels good, very mild. The only sound is the peaceful murmur of nature. Nothing suspicious. I take the gun from the waistband of my trousers; I turn the cylinder, check the safety, the trigger, the number of cartridges. Everything’s in order. Still nothing around. I can make out the hum of a train in the distance: most likely it’s the fast train between Zurich and Geneva that departs the Lausanne station at 11:56. I study the ground around the car: no trap, no unexpected difference in level, and, all things considered, enough clear space to give me room to play with my favourite banker. Now is the time. Not a sound from inside the trunk; I press my ear against its sun-warmed wall and hear absolutely nothing: it’s as if I’ve transported a corpse. Really, there’s no sign of life in the little overheated coffin. But surely H. de Heutz hasn’t disappeared by magic. This is getting on my nerves. I lift the licence plate that acts as a double panel and insert the key to unlock the trunk.
Ever since I got up this morning I’ve been fighting a constantly renewed emotion. It’s Sunday. A beautiful day. And on highway 8 between Pointe-au-Chêne and Montebello, I see a beige car travelling without me. There’s something thrilling about the countryside as you leave Pointe-au-Chêne to go up the Ottawa River towards Montebello and arrive at Papineauville. I like that winding road, the lazy twists and turns of the Ottawa, the elegant hillsides along our border — secret undulations stamped with intimacy and a thousand memories of happiness. I also like this extreme landscape where there is still room for me. When all this is over, I’ll settle there in a house set back from the road, not on the shore of the Ottawa but in the hinterland with its lakes and forests on the road between Papineauville and La Nation. That’s where I’ll buy a house, close to La Nation, near the entrance to the big estate on Lac Simon where you can portage all the way to Lac des Mauves and La Minerve. And I’ll cry because it’s taken me so long to find the house between Portage-de-la-Nation and La Nation or between La Nation and Ripon or on the Chénéville road between La Nation and Lac Simon. I’m terribly afraid I’ll die hanging from the bars in a penitentiary cell with no time to return to La Nation, lacking the freedom to go there and stretch out in the warm summer grass, to run along the edge of the great forests filled with deer, to gaze at the enormous sky above the house where one day I’ll live a sweet life without tears. Where is the country that resembles you, my true and secret native land, the country where I want to love you, where I want to die? This morning, a Sunday flooded with childlike tears, I cry like you, my child, because I’ve not yet arrived at the sunny fields of the countryside around La Nation that spreads out in the warm light of the country we’ve come back to. The next hours will break me. A few more hours would give me time to get on highway 8 at Saint-Eustache, where our brothers died, then go up the Ottawa through Oka, Saint-Placide, Carillon, Calumet and Pointe-au-Chêne, and from Pointe-au-Chêne to Montebello and on to Papineauville, where I’ll head for La Nation by way of Portage-de-la-Nation and Saint-André-Avelin. A few hours would bring me to La Nation, near a house set back from history which I’ll buy one day. Will I be there a few years from now? Let me go back to that summer Sunday deep in the countryside I love. Let me lie down again on the warm earth of the country, my love, and in the vulnerable bed that awaits us. The sun lights up a house that I don’t know, that I won’t be able to get to before night, not tomorrow or the day after or any other day before my appearance at the courthouse before the Court of Queen’s Bench, where I’ll have to answer for the gloom that postponed my journey to La Nation, to that house of sun and sweetness where we’ll live one day. Before the judge, I’ll have to answer for the night and exonerate myself of the suicidal eclipse of an entire people; I’ll have to answer for my brothers who took their own lives after the defeat at Saint-Eustache and for those who imitate them, while a screen of melancholy prevents them from seeing the sun that’s lighting up La Nation at this very moment. I can’t break the hoops that are tightening around me and go on to the house that awaits us on the winding road from Papineauville to La Nation, to make my way towards you, my love, and towards the few days of love I still dream of living. But how am I to get out of this situation? It’s impossible.
And how can I get rid of H. de Heutz? The lid of the trunk springs open a crack. I jump back. My passenger, who’s curled up inside, is well and truly alive. He looks all around him, then unfolds himself suspiciously. He’s obviously numb. Now he’s standing here outside the trunk.
“Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”
Now he is looking at me. He’s as solemn as a Buddha minus the smile. I could shatter that image as I grip the 45 firmly in my right hand.