for the shot-riddled ‘Caution. Children’ sign on the way into the village), and now he was crying over his Féfé, half flattened by a lorry. A man who would swear on his deathbed that he loved animals. His own. He was a stupid, sad bastard, but at this moment Bernard could not bring himself to treat him as such. He knew he was a stupid bastard, a stupid bastard who hated him, but a stupid bastard who was weeping, the way the sky weeps, sometimes.
‘Why me?’
‘I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. Féfé and I … I just couldn’t. But you know death.’
‘Not yet, I don’t.’
‘You’ve seen it. I can tell you’ve seen it!’
‘You’re still drunk, Roland.’
‘True, but it’s because I’m suffering. You’re the only one who can do it. Bernard, please …’
‘Where d’your parents live?’
‘Over by Brissy.’
Black and white like an old Chaplin film, minus the laughs. The sky could not decide whether to be bright or not. Most annoying. They parked outside Roland’s parents’ place, a once elegant house, which had been revamped with garden gnomes and fake wells made from tyres, like something out of a bad novel. Roland emerged, carrying a .22 rifle.
‘Over there, by the bridge.’
Bernard parked. As they got out, Roland handed him the gun. They walked along the verge, the grass green against a backdrop of grey sky. It was a little slippery. In a dip in the bank, the tan and white dog, with a vacant look and his tongue lolling, was lying stretched out on his side. His back legs were now just a wet mush of hair and blood.
‘Oh damn! Kill him, kill him!’
Bernard aimed the barrel at the back of the animal’s ear, as it looked up at him, eyes growing dim. Why me?
It was a small rifle and the noise it made going off was no louder than a fart under the bedclothes. One click – and lights out. The dog’s head fell back on to the soft grass. A gully of green … foaming trough of light …
Behind Bernard, Roland was busy throwing up.
‘What do we do now?’
‘Bin bag. In the car …’
Bernard took charge of everything. The dog was nothing but a piece of rubbish.
‘What next?’
‘How should I know? Better dig a hole.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Bloody hell, you’re cruel!’
‘I’m a killer not a gravedigger. There’s a spade in the boot – off you go.’ Nowhere, here was nowhere. Unconsciously, while Roland was digging a hole for his dog, Bernard adopted the stance of the motorcyclist at the roadside. He smoked a cigarette; the sun was not there, however, and nor was the serenity which had made that moment special. At best, there was the complicity between two killers, one of them too cowardly to do the deed. The cigarette butt he flicked down on the wet tarmac was out in less than three seconds.
‘I’m done. We can go.’
Roland was green, the colour of goose shit. ‘That’s another reason you’ll have to be angry with me.’
‘What?’
‘I’m the person who killed your dog. Who will you have to complain about once I’m gone?’
‘There’s always someone. Do you think you’re the only man who’s screwed Jacqueline?’
Bernard smiled. If nothing else, humans were marvellously resourceful.
Getting out of the car outside the restaurant, Roland did not say thank you. He ran off, jacket up over his head, a hunched figure. People never said thank you to those who did their dirty work for them.
He already knew which dog he would buy next.
The same, no doubt. Roland always bought the same car, and if Jacqueline were to die he would find another one. A Nadine or a Martine maybe, but a Jacqueline even so. There are people like that, who think they can make things last for ever if they try hard enough.
For the past hour, Bernard had been driving around aimlessly, turning left here and right there, as luck or misfortune would have it. He had no idea where he was going but one thing he was sure about, he had no desire to go home, not straight away. Like a fly trapped under a glass he was looking for the way out while knowing only too well that none existed. As when he had left the station he felt burdened by the excess of freedom he was unable to use. Signposts pointed him in different directions: Lens, Liévin, Noeux-les-Mines, Béthune … but they were traps, leading only to fields of mud crushed under the weight of the impending dark. Occasionally he passed through villages, brown brick houses set out like Lego belonging to a child devoid of imagination, blank windows hung with lace curtains depicting a pair of peacocks face-to-face or else plump cherubs in the same pose, and roofs topped with TV aerials resembling giant dragonflies. Who could possibly stop off in one of them, unless he had broken down? And yet people lived there, had their joys and sorrows no less than those who lived in picture-postcard landscapes drenched in sunlight and azure. In those parts you would stop to buy regional pottery, local honey or to visit an old Romanesque church. Here there was nothing but home-brewed beer and war memorials of a soldier pointing his bayonet towards an indifferent sky, framed by four artillery shells with chains between them.
But you can’t continue going nowhere for long, especially when night is falling, and so Bernard convinced himself he felt like eating moules-frites beside the station in Lille. It was years since he’d done that. He smiled at his own audacity. There was Yolande, it was true, but how could he let her know since she never answered the phone? In any case, she wasn’t aware of the passage of time. And anyway, stuff Yolande, stuff Roland’s dog, stuff it all! Illness made you self-centred, that was its greatest advantage.
He didn’t order moules-frites but doughy, cheesy flammekueche. Inside Aux Brasseurs, once he had tucked himself away in a corner, he had felt so overwhelmed by all the noise, the belching and smoking throng – it was like something out of Breughel – that when the waiter had come to take his order he had asked for the same as the people at the next table, just to keep things simple. By now he was ruing his rashness. He hadn’t even got a newspaper to read to make him look in command of the situation. This was taking ages, he’d already looked through the menu a dozen times. The clientele here were groups of friends or at least couples. Hang on, there was another man on his own. He even thought he recognised him as the travelling salesman who was cutting a swathe through the area, persuading lonely housewives to buy lingerie on credit, much to their husbands’ anger. The man was eating mussels with no concern for the fact his loud slurping was getting on the other diners’ nerves. He had the dispassionate and ice-cool air of a bounty hunter in a western. Or maybe it wasn’t him after all. As a result of looking at people, since he had nothing else to do, Bernard ended up recognising everyone. That was odd, but not as improbable as all that. He had never left the area, and had seen a lot of people pass through the station. That said, no one recognised him. It was all an illusion, a whirl of faces seen here and there, a fug of beer and cigarette smoke. You rub shoulders with the whole world in a lifetime, but forget people again as you go along, like friends you make on holiday – you promise to keep in touch only to consign them to oblivion at once. How could it be otherwise? You’d need ten lifetimes to keep on top of all that. Besides, at the end of the day, we only need a few satellites to make up our galaxy. All stars are alike. That old pal Robert we were so fond of, who was lost in the mists of time, reappears one fine day calling himself Raoul or François or …
‘Flammekueche with lardons!’
‘For me, please.’
‘Another beer?’
‘Umm … all right.’
‘Excuse me, Monsieur, but there’s a lady on her own looking for a table,