‘Noëlla,’ he said, standing up and walking around. ‘Look, you’re a beautiful girl, you’re fantastic, you’re cute, I like you a whole lot – but I am not in love with you. I’m married, and I love my wife. Forgive me, but that’s how it is.’
‘You’re lying. You’re not married at all. Shawi told me. And you love me.’
‘No, Noëlla. We only met a few days ago. You were sad, because of your boyfriend, I was lonely, away from home, and that was how it happened. But it’s over, now. I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s not over, it’s just beginning, for good. Here,’ said the young woman pointing to her abdomen.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Here,’ said Noëlla calmly. ‘Our baby.’
‘Now you’re lying,’ said Adamsberg dully. ‘You can’t know that so soon.’
‘Yes, I can. The tests give a reply in three days. And Shawi told me I would bear your child.’
‘That’s complete rubbish, Noëlla!’
‘No, it’s true. And now you can’t leave Noëlla, who loves you and who’s carrying your child.’
Adamsberg turned instinctively to the sash window. He pushed it up and jumped out.
‘See you on Tuesday, at the airport!’ cried Noëlla.
Adamsberg reached the cycle track and ran until he was back near the residence. Breathing rapidly, he got into his car and drove off towards the forest, hurtling too fast along dirt roads. He stopped at an isolated bar, and bought a pizza and a glass of beer. He ate hungrily, sitting on a tree stump at the edge of the forest. Trapped, caught like an idiot by that half-crazy girl, who had flung herself round his neck. So unbalanced that he was sure she really would turn up at the airport on Tuesday and insist on coming to his flat in Paris. He ought to have known, or sensed, when he had first seen her sitting on that stone, behaving in such a strange and direct way, that Noëlla was fantasising. He had indeed tried to avoid her for the first few days. But the damned quintet had thrown him, like a brute and a fool, into Noëlla’s tentacular arms.
The food and the night cold restored his energy. His panic turned into blind fury. For Christ’s sake, no one should have the right to trap a man like that! He’d throw her out of the plane! Or if they got to Paris, he’d throw her in the Seine!
Oh God, he thought as he stood up, the number of people he was ready to massacre was growing daily, with all these blind rages. Favre, the Trident, Danglard, the New Father, and now this girl. As Sanscartier would say, he was losing the plot. And he couldn’t make out what was happening to him. Whether with these rages or with the clouds which, for the first time, he had no taste for shovelling. The recurrent images of the dead judge, the trident, the claw marks of the bears, and the evil lake were beginning to weigh heavily on him and it seemed he was losing control of his own clouds. Yes, it was quite possible that he was losing the plot.
He made his way back to his room with a heavy tread, slipping in the back way, like a thief or a man trapped inside himself.
XXVI
VOISENET HAD GONE RUSHING OFF TO PINK LAKE WITH FROISSY AND Retancourt. Another two colleagues had made tracks to the bars of Montreal, dragging the scrupulous Justin with them, and Danglard was catching up on his sleep. Adamsberg meanwhile spent the weekend creeping around surreptitiously. Nature had always been his friend – with the exception of the sinister Pink Lake – and it was better to trust to it than to stay in his room, where Noëlla might turn up at any minute. He slipped out of doors at daybreak, before anyone else was stirring, and drove to Meech Lake.
There he spent long hours, walking across wooden bridges or along the lakeside, plunging his arms up to the elbows in the snow. He thought it wise not to return to Hull overnight, so he slept at an inn in Maniwaki, praying that the dreaded prophetic Shawi would not appear in his bedroom bringing his fervent disciple with him. On the Sunday, he tired himself out hiking all day through the woods, picking up birch bark and redder-than-red maple leaves, and wondering where he would find refuge that night.
Poetry perhaps. Maybe he should go and eat in the poets’ pub? The Quatrain didn’t seem to attract the young, and Noëlla would probably not think of looking for him there. He left the car some distance from the residence again, and went downtown via the big boulevard, not by the wretched trail.
Feeling worn out, and on edge, as well as short of ideas, he swallowed a plateful of French fries, while half listening to the poems being read. Suddenly, Danglard appeared at his side.
‘Good weekend?’ the capitaine asked, trying to be conciliatory.
‘What about you, Danglard? Did you get some sleep?’ said Adamsberg snappily. ‘Treachery can keep you awake sometimes, if your conscience is bothering you.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Treachery. I’m not speaking Algonquin, as Laliberté might say. Months and months of secrecy and silence, not to mention driving six hundred kilometres or more in the last few days, and all because the capitaine likes Vivaldi.’
‘Ah!’ murmured Danglard, laying his hands on the table.
‘As you say, ah! Applauding the concert, fetching and carrying, driving the lady home, opening the door. A proper little knight in shining armour.’
‘Well, after all…’
‘You mean before all, Danglard. You’ve taken his side. The Other One. The one with two labradors and new shoelaces. Against me, Danglard, against me.’
‘You’ve lost me, I’m sorry,’ said Danglard, getting to his feet.
‘Just a minute,’ said Adamsberg, pulling him back by the sleeve. ‘I’m talking about the choice you’ve made. The child, the handshake for the new father, and do come in, welcome to the happy home. That’s it, isn’t it, capitaine.’
Danglard rubbed his fingers across his mouth. Then he leaned towards Adamsberg.
‘In my book, commissaire, as our colleagues here might say, you’re a stupid bastard.’
Adamsberg sat at the table, in shock, letting Danglard walk away. The unexpected insult was echoing round and round his head. Customers trying to listen to the poetry made it clear to him that he and his friend had already disturbed them enough. He left the cafe, looking for the seediest bar he could find downtown, a men-only sort of bar, where crazy Noëlla would not find him. It was a vain hope, since in the clean and tidy streets there were no rundown old bars, whereas in Paris they grew like weeds in the cracks of the pavements. He ended up in a little place called L’Ecluse. Danglard’s words must have hit a nerve, since he could feel a serious headache coming on, something that happened only about once every ten years.
‘Commissaire, in my book you’re a stupid bastard.’
Nor had he forgotten the words of Trabelmann, Brézillon, Favre, or the imagined new father. Not to mention the scary conversation with Noëlla. Insults, betrayals and threats.
And since the headache was getting worse, the only thing for it was to treat an exception with an exceptional cure, and get well and truly wasted. Adamsberg did not drink much, as a rule, and could hardly remember the last time he had been seriously drunk: it was as a young man, at some village festival, with everything that went with it. But on the whole, from what he had heard, people thought it worked. Drown your sorrows, they said. OK, that’s exactly what he needed.
He installed himself at the bar between two Québécois who were already well-launched on beer, and for starters drank three whiskies in a row. The walls didn’t seem to be moving around, he felt fine, and the troubled contents of his head were now being transferred to his stomach. Leaning on the counter, he ordered a bottle of wine, having gathered from reliable informants that mixing drinks usually produced fast results. After drinking four glasses, he ordered a cognac to top it all off. Rigour, rigour and yet more rigour, no other way to succeed. Good ol’ Laliberté. What a chum, eh.