Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

Mathilde had stopped eating.

‘You really impress me, Charles. You come out with all this stuff like a book, but you just listened to him for an hour this morning.’

‘I’ve developed the sense instincts of a dog,’ said Charles bitterly. ‘A dog that hears what people don’t hear, and smells what they can’t smell. Some wretched hound that will travel a thousand kilometres as the crow flies, just to get back home. So I go about things a different way from Adamsberg, but I’ve got some knowledge too. That’s all we have in common. I believe I’m the most intelligent person on the planet, and my voice is like a metal-cutter. It slices things up, it twists them and my brain operates like a machine, sorting out data. And for me there are no destinations or estuaries any more. I don’t have the strength or purity now even to imagine that cyclones have eyes. I’ve given up all that, I’m too tempted by the nasty little tricks and ways I can find every day to compensate for what I can’t do. But Adamsberg doesn’t need any distractions in order to stay alive, do you understand what I’m saying? He just gets on with his life, letting it all swill about, big ideas and little details, impressions and realities, thoughts and words. He combines the belief of a child with the philosophy of an old man. But he’s real and he’s dangerous.’

‘You do impress me,’ repeated Mathilde. ‘I can’t say I’ve dreamed of having a son like you, because he would have driven me up the wall, but you impress me. I’m starting to see why you don’t give a damn about fish.’

‘You’re probably the one who’s right, Mathilde, because you find something to love in slimy creatures with round eyes that aren’t even good to eat. But it wouldn’t bother me if all the fish in the sea were dead.’

‘You certainly have the gift of giving me impossible ideas for a section two of the week. You’ve even upset yourself – look, you’re sweating. Don’t get so steamed up about Adamsberg. He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Charles. ‘He’s a nice guy all right. He says nice things, does Adamsberg. And I can’t understand why that doesn’t worry you.’

‘You do impress me, Charles,’ Mathilde repeated.

STRAIGHT AFTER LUNCH, ADAMSBERG DECIDED TO TRY SOMETHING.

Inspired by the little diary they had found on the dead woman, he bought a small notebook that he could slip into his back pocket. So that if he was struck by some interesting thought he could write it down. Not that he was hoping for any miracles. But he told himself that when the notebook was full, the overall effect might be relevant and perhaps provide him with some insight into himself.

He felt that he had never been living so much from day to day as at this moment. He had already noted on many occasions that the more pressing anxieties he had, harassing him with their urgency and seriousness, the more his brain seemed to want to play dead. In response, he did his best to live by concentrating on little things, as if he were some stranger who cared about nothing, wiping out any thoughts and qualities, keeping his spirit a blank, his heart empty and his mind fixed entirely on short wavelengths. This state, a stretch of indifference which discouraged all those around him, was well-known to him now, but he found it hard to control. Because when he was in this uncaring mode, having rid himself of all the worries of the planet, he felt calm and on the whole happy. But as the days went by, such indifference insidiously caused internal damage so that everything became colourless. People began to become transparent to him, all identical, since they were so distant from him. And this lasted until, coming to some end point in his informal disgust with the world, he felt that he himself had no density, no importance at all, letting himself be ferried along by other people’s daily lives, being all the readier to carry out a host of little kindnesses since he had become completely detached from them. His body’s mechanisms and his automatic responses enabled him to get through the day, but he wasn’t there for anyone. At this stage, almost out of his own existence, Adamsberg felt no anxiety, had no thoughts. This disinterest for the world did not even have the panic-inducing fear of nothingness. His spiritual apathy did not bring with it the dread of ennui.

But God in heaven, it had happened very quickly this time.

He could perfectly well remember the extreme distress which only yesterday had struck him when he had imagined that Camille was dead. And now even the word ‘distress’ seemed meaningless to him. What could distress mean? That Camille was dead? But what did that matter now? Madeleine Châtelain had had her throat cut, the chalk circle man was still on the loose, Christiane was pusuing him, Danglard was depressed, and he had to deal with the whole bloody mess, but what was the point?

So he sat down in a café, took out his notepad and waited. He surveyed his thoughts as they proceeded through his head. They seemed to have a middle, but no beginning and no end. So how could he write them down? Disgusted but still calm, after an hour he wrote:

‘Can’t think of anything to think’.

Then from the café he telephoned Mathilde. Clémence Valmont answered the phone. The old woman’s grating voice brought him a sense of reality, the idea of doing something before he completely lost touch with things and passed out. Mathilde had returned home. He wanted to see her, but not at her house. He gave her an appointment for five o’clock at his office.

Unexpectedly, Mathilde arrived on time. She had surprised even herself.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It must be the effect of “helping the police with their inquiries”.’

Then she looked at Adamsberg, who was not drawing but was sitting with his legs outstretched, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other holding a cigarette in his fingertips and seeming so disorganised and nonchalant that it was hard to know how to approach him. But Mathilde sensed that he was quite capable of doing his job, even looking like that, or perhaps especially when looking like that.

‘I get the feeling this isn’t going to be as much fun as last time,’ said Mathilde.

‘You could be right,’ said Adamsberg.

‘It’s ridiculous going to all this performance of getting me called to the station. You would have done better to come to the Flying Gurnard, and we could have had a drink and a bite to eat. Clémence has made a repulsive sort of dish, her local speciality, she says.’

‘Where’s she from?’

‘Neuilly.’

‘The Paris suburbs aren’t exactly exotic. But I’m not staging any kind of performance. I just needed to talk to you and I didn’t want to sit cosily in the Flying Gurnard or anywhere else you might have in mind.’

‘Because a policeman doesn’t eat dinner with his suspects?’

‘On the contrary, that’s just what he does do,’ said Adamsberg wearily. ‘Being on matey terms with the suspects is precisely what the books recommend. But over in your house, it’s like a railway station. Blind men, batty old women, students, philosophers, upstairs neighbours, downstairs neighours – you have to be one of the Queen’s courtiers or you’re nothing at all, isn’t that right? And I don’t like the choice of courtier or nothing. But I don’t know why I’m bothering to say all this, it’s not important.’

Mathilde laughed.

‘I get it,’ she said. ‘In future we should meet in a café or on a bridge over the Seine, some neutral territory where we’d be on equal terms. Like two republican French citizens. Mind if I smoke?’

‘Go ahead. That article in the 5th arrondissement newsletter, Madame Forestier, did you know about it?’