Ясмина Реза - Babylon

Jean-Lino says again, “We could have taken Rémi to the mosquitoes.” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, slides one up to his mouth. He is small, frail. His long nose tilts toward the floor, the yellow spectacles don’t go with the hat. We could still laugh over that. The smoke trails along the suitcase and envelops us. It envelops the pitted skin, it envelops the thoughts, the world becomes one immense vaporous mass. We heard the sound of voices from outdoors, and knocking against the glass. I stood up. I stepped out from the service stairs. They were there. Three guys outside the lobby door. “They’re here, I think,” I said, and I went to open up. Three men came in, dressed more or less like Jean-Lino without the poetry. Police. They right away went to speak to Jean-Lino, who had just appeared at the back of the lobby. He had taken off his hat, he was holding it in one hand, his arm folded in an awkward position. “You’re Monsieur Manoscrivi?” said one of the officers.

“Yes . . .”

“You’re the one who called the Emergency Police?”

“Yes . . .”

Uniformed cops arrived on their heels. A girl and two guys, in their caps.

“You’re the one who killed your wife? . . . Where is she, your wife?”

“In the suitcase . . .” He pointed to the stairwell and some of the officers went to take a look at the valise.

“Don’t you move. We’ll be taking you in to the station. And you too, madam.”

They handcuffed us. The girl patted down my whole body and searched the pockets of Lydie’s coat. There were some coins, a Kleenex, and the half-cigarette I had smoked up at Jean-Lino’s. Oh my god. But no, no problem, I said to myself, you could have smoked it at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the cops. A patrolman said “Come, madam, we’ll have a little talk.” He took my arm and led me out of the building. I said, “Where are we going?”

“Into the squad car.”

“Can I change my clothes?”

“Not for the moment, ma’am.”

The girl was speaking into a walkie-talkie. I heard, “We entered the lobby, the suspect confirmed that he killed his wife. She is apparently inside a suitcase. There was another person with him. We have begun questioning the two persons. We’ll need an OPJ when we get in.” I asked, “Where are we being taken?”

“To the police station.”

“Will we be going together?” I said, pointing to Jean-Lino.

The cop drew me along without answering.

“I’m wearing bedroom slippers!”

“Slippers are fine. At least that way you won’t have to take out any shoelaces.”

Jean-Lino was no longer visible among the men.

“Will I be with him over there?”

“OK, OK, time to leave now.”

“Will I see him later?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

The man was losing patience. I called out, in a voice I didn’t recognize, a sharp wrenching cry that emerged after an effort I was unused to and that hurt me, “Jean-Lino, see you later!” The cop turned me around, he slid a hand beneath my left arm and pushed me outside by pressing my shoulder. I thought I saw some commotion among the men at the rear of the lobby, I thought I saw Jean-Lino’s face for a moment, I even thought I heard my name, but I’m not sure of anything. Supported by the man’s grip, with my head lowered I walked onto the wet parking lot, my checkered pajama pants sliding down, they were too big for me but I couldn’t pull them up. The police car was right out front, parked crosswise on the driveway. He had me get in through the right rear door. He came around to sit on the other side. He took out a pen and a notebook. He asked me my name, address, date and place of birth. He wrote them down carefully and slowly. On a third of the page, in white on a black square, there was the drawing of a key with the words bruet inc. —Locksmith and Glazier . I said, “Who’ll tell my husband?”

“We’re going to take you into custody and read you your rights.”

I wasn’t too clear what that meant. Nor what it had to do with Pierre. But I was too tired to try to understand.

“You’re connected to a locksmith business?”

“Companies give us these freebie pads to advertise.”

“Oh, I see . . .”

“On actual cases, we work with some contract outfits. That doesn’t stop other ones from sending stuff over all the time.”

“What does a glazier do for you?”

“Nothing. The companies do both kinds of things. They give us pens and calendars too . . . the calendars are a good deal because they work as stationery too. It’s smart!”

He dug into a chest pocket and pulled out a blue and white Bic pen with a different logo printed on it. “Pen from the competition . . . I won’t give it to you, there’s no point because they’ll be taking everything away from you at the station anyhow.”

“The company’s looking to get outside customers that way?”

“Bah—no idea. It’s advertising . . . Wait, I’ve got another one . . . The point is to advertise. That’s fine with us, seeing how we don’t get any more equipment than the police force in like Moldavia or someplace . . .”

I liked this boy’s placid way, his indifference to my situation. A plumpish young man the age of Emmanuel, with beardless skin and a shaved scalp. He had big light eyes, slightly reddened. He did me good. I was tempted to drop my head on his shoulder. Through the window, I tried to make out the door of the building. The angle was bad and the streetlight made it hard. I looked up, toward our apartment. There was still a light on in the Manoscrivi place. In our flat everything was dark, but I couldn’t see the bedroom window, it looks out the other side. I thought about the cat slapped down somewhere in there, and wondered where I should put the useless glasses lined up on the buffet. How to explain that insanity with the glasses? Once I’d calmed down about enough chairs I’d felt compelled to run through Deuil-l’Alouette and take the bus to the discount store to buy five packs of wineglasses, two of them large size, specifically for Burgundy reds, plus two boxes of champagne flutes when I already had the Elegance flutes in the house. The glasses waiting on a silly little tablecloth, those glasses made for multiple uses as if we spent our time with people who were sticklers on matters of etiquette and whom my acquired bourgeois standards demanded that I satisfy, those glasses that would never find any space in any cabinet, not to mention all the ones that would be coming out of the dishwasher—those glasses assailed me, coagulated into a monstrous image and formed a mass of anguish. It was, I thought as I scanned the busy parking lot, that insanity of worry and anticipation that attacks the elderly. Getting stressed out by a hypothetical problem. My mother used to take out her bus ticket two blocks before she got to the stop. She would walk with the ticket held out in front of her, pinched in the fingers of her woolen glove. Same thing for her money on any line in a shop. It could happen to me, doing that. Got to prepare for all eventualities, map the terrain. When my mother went to spend a few days with her cousin in Achères (a direct ride from Asnières) the suitcase was already on the floor, open and carpeted with a few items a week ahead. I do that too, on a scarcely more sensible schedule. Two cars arrived at almost the same time. Some men got out. A sort of cluster formed around the door. I said, “Who are they?”

“The criminal justice officer and the PTS.”

“The PTS?”

“The forensics police.”

The cluster came apart. Two uniformed officers headed over toward us. The others went into the building. The guys in jeans and leather jackets came right back out, they hurried toward the unmarked car. I caught a glimpse of Jean-Lino, smaller than the rest of them, in his Zara jacket and his pleated trousers. The doors slammed and the car took off with the lights and the noise.