‘OUT! OUT! RAUS! RAUS!’
Kohler dragged the woman up and grabbed Louis by the overcoat collar. She gasped and rolled her dark eyes in panic. ‘My heart,’ she managed, placing the flat of a be-ringed, pudgy hand on her heaving chest.
He shoved, and the ripple on the staircase behind them reversed itself as they raced upwards, pushing the woman ahead of themselves. Couples began to leave their rooms, only to hesitate, some clutching their clothes or a bedsheet, others trying to get dressed until …
‘Violette, no! No, do you hear me?’ shrilled Madame Morelle.
They had reached the fifth floor, were right at the top of the stairwell. Wild-eyed and desperate, the schoolgirl, her white shirt-blouse torn open down the front, her breasts hanging out, the dark blue pleated skirt and kneesocks stained and dishevelled, faced them. Arms out, feet out and planted, panic in her deep brown eyes, the shaggy mop of dark brown hair now braided so that she looked not twenty-three years old or seventeen but no more than thirteen or fourteen.
‘Violette …’ said Madame Morelle, catching a breath and trying to hold the detectives back. Everyone was watching. No one made a sound. ‘Violette, chérie, come to mother.’
With the back of a hand the girl wiped her mouth and spat furiously to one side before repeating the gesture. ‘You’re not my mother.’
‘Don’t jump. Please don’t. It’s too far even for angels.’
‘I want my little farm, damn you. I want to leave this place and raise flowers and birds to sell in the market. I want to taste honey, not cloud-custard. I’m sick of men jerking off into my mouth.’
‘Chérie, please don’t do it. Please. I swear I’ll take you to Spain with me. From there you can go to Provence, to your little farm if you wish.’
‘Father Eugène has the money. He really has it, hasn’t he? Tell me, damn you! Tell me he hasn’t stolen it all.’
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ, why did she have to ask? demanded Madame Morelle of herself. There were only the two of them facing each other in this impasse. The child climbed up on to the railing and clutched a support. It was a long way down the spiral of those stairs, and as all looked up at her and craned their necks to watch their little bird fly, Violette looked down at them.
She’ll push me, said Violette to herself. She’ll have to do it.
‘Madame,’ breathed St-Cyr, ‘please step aside.’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ hissed the woman, her bulk stubbornly blocking their way, all lace and flesh, perfume, jet-black beads and dangling jet-black ear-rings. ‘Darling,’ she crooned to the child, ‘be sensible. Take me by the hand and come down from there.’
Perhaps five metres separated them and this was clear, except for the open doorway from which the schoolgirl had come.
‘You did it,’ she said. ‘You killed that girl who was pregnant. You pumped air into her passage de Vénus and she died from the shock. How did it feel to have her die so suddenly?’
‘Don’t be silly, chérie. I did no such thing. These men, they speak lies.’
‘Where is Father Eugène? Why isn’t he here to tell them that you owed him money, mother, and that, with one bold stroke, one gamble, all your debts to him would be erased? Is he the Sandman, do you think, messieurs?’ she taunted. ‘Is he the one who violates little girls like me and then kills them?
Little girls …
Frantically Kohler searched for a way to get at her. Had her clients beat it? he wondered. Was that room of hers now empty, that schoolroom? Was there another way into it?
‘She’ll see you leave,’ confided the Sûreté softly. ‘This matter has, unfortunately, to be settled by the two of them.’
The girl looked down, and as she did so, she dragged off one of the elastics from her braids and let it fall.
There was a hush that only got deeper and deeper. ‘If I could undress, I would,’ she said, ‘so as to be that much closer to heaven. I’ve done nothing that can’t be forgiven-my sister tells me this constantly, messieurs. “You will be accepted into the Kingdom of Everlasting Love,” she says, “but only if you ask for His forgiveness instead of praying He will fuck you.” The grand frisson of frissons, eh? The one a girl would feel all the way up her spine and into her brain if only she could feel anything at all At all!’
Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu …
‘She thinks all girls of my age have the devil in their bodies, messieurs, but please, is it not the devil in the minds of men to which she refers? Is it not they who want to undress and violate girls like me? Ask her. Ask Céline. See what she says. Tell her that’s what the father we shared did to me. To me! — at the age of eight. Have her anoint my naked body before she drives the skewer into my heart.’
Plunged into darkness, the house waited a split second, its breath held for the shrill scream that lasted long after the floor below had been solidly struck and the rain of wooden balusters had ceased. Everyone cried out. A great, sad sigh went up. They began to move, to panic in the darkness. Someone shouted, ‘The electricity has gone off!’
Arrondissetnent by arrondissement, the Occupier could do such a thing without notice.
‘The SS,’ breathed Kohler, moving forward with Louis’s shoulder under one hand. ‘The railing’s gone. Ah merde, Louis … L … O … U … I … S!’
Dragged back, they lay there propped against the wall. Candles were lighted. Matches struck. One by one these tiny lights grew into a softly fluttering glow that filled the stairwell.
The property in Spain, the bank accounts, too, would be of little use. Madame Berthe Morelle, blood gathering in a large dark pool about her head, was spread-eagled on the floor. Her wig had flown off. Her head was totally bald. The ripples on the back of her neck were pale and flaccid.
‘Louis, the schoolgirl …’
‘Across the roof-tops, I think.’
‘Ah merde … It’s too icy.’
Ice or not, there she was caught momentarily in the beam of Hermann’s torch and then fixed more firmly, perched up by the chimney pots, daring them to follow.
Pale, greeny-blue beneath the ice and encrusted snow, the copper sheathing sloped steeply past another flimsy skylight to her feet. Walls separated the houses. Some roofs were higher, others lower. The wind was increasing, the cold was fierce. Above them the stars climbed into the heavens. Smoke from the coal fires of the brothel drifted past.
When they found a torn patch of skin, they knew she had clutched an iron pipe. When they saw her again, she was trapped against a dividing wall, the roof between them sloping away on either side while that behind her rose up a storey higher.
‘Father Eugène does things for the SS,’ she shouted tearfully. ‘He is a spy for them. A spy! He hears the confessions of the really sick ones they send him. You should talk to some of those, messieurs. Ask them about schoolgirls. Ask what they’ve done in the past and still want to do. He doesn’t send them to me. He says I’m not suitable, that we must be discreet. They’re officers. Officers, damn you!’
Blood was frozen to the bare flesh of her left palm. Her skirt clung to her thighs. Louis started forward, balancing. Kohler kept the light on her as best he could. ‘Mademoiselle,’ began the Sûreté. ‘Please, it’s over. We desperately need information …’
‘Over, is it?’ she cried. ‘The SS are using him. He reports to them!’
Half-way along the crown of the roof, the ice was thick. Louis slipped. He went down hard and cried out. She screamed and, turning, nimbly climbed the wall, to look back once and then to cry out, ‘I SAIL TO HEAVEN!’