Julia Deck - Viviane

Why have you made this choice?

You clench your fists, squash your spine against the back of the armchair and close your eyes. A tiny rain of rage escapes from the corners of your eyelids. You see yourself again, a month and a half earlier, hunched deep in the rocking chair in the Rue Louis-Braille apartment, facing your husband as he dismisses you, trying to keep calm by deciding on the spot to move out because it was your last chance to take him by surprise.

You snatch up your purse. Fumbling for some tissues, you feel the case of knives, which is rather heavy, but you were in such a hurry when you left your place, so uneasy at the idea of leaving your daughter alone, that you’d paid no attention to it. You find the tissues; the purse sits open on your lap.

I didn’t choose anything, it’s my husband who left me.

But we all make unconscious choices.

You’re suggesting that I pushed him out.

I’m not suggesting anything, you’re the one who’s saying that.

Your arms jerk up from the armrests and your hands begin to shake.

Listen, Madame Hermant, here’s what we’ll do. You’ll take these pills for me for a few months, you know, the antidepressants, plus the ones for when your nerves give way, they’ll help stabilize the hysteria. They worked rather well the last time, didn’t they, Madame Hermant? Here, I’m writing you a prescription. Be nice now, start the treatment again, come back to see me on Wednesday, and we’ll move to three sessions a week. Monday at eight, does that suit you?

Suddenly you are quite calm again. The doctor has found just the right word. Nice. You will never be that again. Your fingers rummage in the purse, find their way into the knife box, feel the blades and remove the largest knife from the ring securing it to the synthetic velvet lining. You take the knife out of the purse, stand up, step forward. The doctor is still smiling, waiting for what happens next as if he were at the theater. Naturally he doesn’t believe you’re capable of this, either. He has never seen you as anything but a colorless middle-class careerist, a run-of-the-mill neurotic to be brought to heel with blue or white pills. At last he will see what you’re made of. And in fact, as you close in, the sneering laughter dies down while his flabby features freeze. But when he realizes what’s coming, it’s way too late.

You’re only inches away, towering over him with your height and high heels. You raise the knifepoint to his stomach, clumsily, as if feeling your way, not quite sure if this will work. He opens his mouth wide; a cry gathers deep in his throat. Then you know you must not hesitate: you shove the knife in just below the lowest rib, up to the hilt. The viscera are as soft as butter. You move up toward the lung but already the little man is expiring, lying prostrate before the armchair from which he will no longer play the tyrant with anyone.

The bloodstain seeps into the blue shirt. Soon it’s a puddle on his left side, then a pool spreading to the rug. You move the toes of your shoes out of the way. You have nothing in mind, no strategy, but perhaps some memory of a film or crime novel prompts you to consider that it might be better not to be seen, in the next few minutes, leaving the doctor’s office looking haggard and splotched with blood. You wipe the knife on your pullover; the liquid soaks through the wool to wet the skin of your abdomen. In the pocket of your raincoat you find a plastic bag scrunched into a ball. The knife gets wrapped in that. You check to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything, leave the room and at least a thousand pieces of evidence behind but, overwhelmed, you couldn’t find them even if you stayed all night, having never thought of polishing up your skills as a murderess.

Rue de la Clef is as empty as it was a little while ago. The first person you come across is a young woman at the corner of Rue Monge, with a baguette under one arm, a little boy hanging on the other, and a grumpy Monday-night expression. You reach the intersection where the métro station is, as well as several brasseries with heated terraces and therefore dozens of customers who have nothing better to do than watch the traffic and note the most picturesque passersby. You dive into the subway.

On the platform, the electronic display shows a three-minute wait for the next train. You sit down on an orange seat, stealthily examining the nearest travelers: three young men in suits; two female students with studs in their noses, eyebrows, and the lobes of their pretty ears; an African man draped in an ample green native costume. You wait for them to unmask you. It must show in your face, that you just killed a man. And yet the African is absorbed in a free daily paper, the students are watching the mice scurrying around the tracks, and the others discuss the latest sales figures for the auto industry.

The train enters the station. The passengers press up against the windows until the doors open, pour out onto the platform, pour obediently back inside at the urging of the warning beeps, and the new arrivals elbow their way into the car. You move slowly into the heart of the crowd. A few men consider you absentmindedly, but your face seems to vanish from memory as soon as they look away.

At Stalingrad, the human surge throws you off the train and up to the surface, on Boulevard de la Chapelle. In five minutes you’re outside your building. You don’t see a single soul on your way up to the sixth floor, apart from the white cat on the third, who has finished his rounds and is waiting for someone to let him back into his apartment. Hunting for your keys in the outer pocket of your purse, you remember that you don’t need them, you didn’t lock the door. One twist of the doorknob and you hear the burbling coming from the cradle: the baby has only just awakened. You run to the washing machine to throw in all your clothes. Completely naked under the equally naked bulb, you clean the knife with dish detergent, bleach, and turpentine, then put it away with the others in its case. You warm the bottle; cradle the little girl; she feeds and falls asleep. Seated in the rocking chair in the middle of the bare living room, you forget.

The next morning, Tuesday, November 16, memory has completely returned. The digital clock down by the foot of the bed says 5:58. There are about two minutes left before the child wakes up, two minutes in which to find a solution, to clear away as much as possible of the debris strewn around by the previous day.

Viviane gets up and goes over to the cradle. With the tip of an index finger, she nudges the mobile attached to one edge by a curved metal stem. It’s a little merry-go-round of lions and giraffes, the former suspended one notch above the latter, which therefore seem safely out of reach. But if you nudge the mobile a bit harder, the animals now not only turn around but dance up and down as well, which means anything can happen. The child opens one eye. Surprised to see her mother already there, she forgets to cry.

After leaving her with the sitter, Viviane heads straight for Boulevard de la Chapelle. She’s wearing a houndstooth ensemble beneath her gray coat, the clouds are streaming away precisely parallel to the railway tracks, and everything seems very organized. She takes the 5 line in the métro, which drops her off six minutes later at République, where she switches to the 8 line bound for Créteil-Préfecture. It’s obvious: the murder weapon must go back where she found it. Of course one can simply get rid of it in the Seine, but it’s always when one goes to dispose of the incriminating evidence that a witness just happens to pop up, luckily for the law. Yes, the knife must go back to Julien’s place, to the shelf where it has slept ever since it arrived, instead of resting quietly in a kitchen drawer from which one would remove it, once a week, to dissect the Sunday roast.