Chloe Aridjis - Asunder

I had listened in fascination, and Daniel too, neither of us stirring, oblivious to the cold that penetrated coats and walls.

It was only once the guide finished speaking that we realised Pierre was no longer with us. After a startled exchange of glances the three of us searched the rooms downstairs with a growing sense of alarm. We peered through doorways and windows, tapped the scarred walls as if they might give way to secret passages. Dust reconfigured wherever we went. In the peaceful garden a large magpie had come to perch on one of the bare lindens, but no Pierre. Nor was he in the car. Our guide suggested we try upstairs.

Back up the tight stairwell, this time Daniel leading the way, I grabbed on to the balustrade with a sense of urgency but, feeling it falter, withdrew my grip. I could tell by the near disappearance of his limp that Daniel was starting to panic but fortunately we did not have to look much further, for there in the first large room to the right, the one with the metal crib, stood Pierre face to face with the chatelain.

It was like a scene from a dark children’s book. Pierre in his suit with his hair perfectly combed, his expression undisturbed, looking straight at the chatelain, who only a few inches away stared back at him with sunken eyes, his cheeks caved inwards, the hollowness that consumed his face and body scarcely hidden beneath his baggy, rumpled clothes. His coat reached down to the floor; it was impossible to tell whether he wore shoes. An intriguing scar ran down the length of his right cheek, a ruin within a ruin within a ruin.

The noble poet and the noble clochard , awake at the same time. Pierre with the ring on his little finger and Cointe with coal-black grime under his long split fingernails. Pierre with his white, clean-shaven, heart-shaped face, a dandelion from the garden emerging from his lapel, opposite the chatelain’s angular diamond face, lost in the foliage of his beard. The heart and the diamond, a final hand in a game of cards.

‘ Pardonnez-moi? ’ Pierre was saying.

‘Hic, hic, hic,’ said the chatelain.

‘ Pardonnez-moi? ’ Pierre repeated, leaning forward.

‘Hic, hic, hic.’

Pierre produced his cigarette case and held it out. ‘ Fumez-vous? ’

‘Hic, hic, hic,’ the chatelain said a third time, and grabbed a cigarette, one more thing to burn.

He shoved it between his lips and was turning towards the door when he spotted me. To this day I find it hard to describe the look in his eyes as he took in my presence, as if in my face he’d caught a glimpse of someone from his past and was perhaps reliving a moment that struck out from the others. It was an expression of astonishment and nostalgia, of someone faced with a sight he’s no longer used to beholding, and he went completely still, staring at me as if he had never seen a woman in his life.

And I couldn’t help but stare back, twin currents of excitement and terror braiding through me as I registered his face more closely. His high forehead, marked by pensive grooves, rose proudly away from the cavernous eyes, penetrating in their gloom, and his finely drawn mouth twitched a little at the corners. It was hard to know what to focus on, the combination of his features or on each individually, the same crisis I used to have with paintings. Landscape or detail; in this case, they were equally compelling.

All of a sudden Marc Cointe turned and hurried out of the room, his steps scarcely audible on the stone floor. Without a second thought I ran after him, leaving the others behind. The fugitive black figure moved almost soundlessly, his laboured breathing louder than his steps, a great ball of dust tearing through the darkened rooms of his home, fleeing me and whatever else he might’ve imagined was chasing him.

I had rarely felt so catalysed, the whole of my being driven by a surge of morbid desire, desperate to be face to face again with this man and see what would happen. And so I pursued him from room to room, through doorways and past walls with cracks, gouges and burns, never losing sight of my target as if my life depended on it, stumbling once over a raised tile but quickly regaining my balance, and when he took a sharp turn round a corner into a small annex containing a narrow tower, I followed.

He was about to start climbing, one foot already on the pitted stair, when I reached out and grabbed the back of his coat. The look of terror when he turned around was horrific, as if I had shattered a hard-won peace and now the entire façade would splinter into a million pieces and scatter on the stone around us. His thin lips were tightly pursed; the cigarette must have dropped out during our chase. The moment I saw his expression I released my grip on his coat, so sooty it had already turned my fingers black, and took a step back, renouncing my pursuit.

Yet before disappearing into the dusk of the tower, the chatelain thrust out an arm, releasing a wave of dust, and scratched my face. One deep scratch with the claws of a frightened cat, yet they weren’t claws but long, grimy fingernails that dug into my right cheekbone and dragged their way down. And then he was gone.

Holding a hand up to my stinging cheek and the other in front of me as if clearing a path through the fusty air, I staggered back to the first room, where no one, it seemed, had moved so much as an inch. Pierre was rooted to the same spot where I’d last seen him. He had lit a new cigarette, the rivulet of smoke curling up towards the ceiling. A few feet away stood Daniel, also in the same position as a few minutes earlier, his hands deep in his pockets as if trapped in a thought he couldn’t find his way out of.

Someone released the pause button. Daniel freed his hands and his gaze wandered from Pierre to me. It must’ve been the line of blood down my check, as he did a double take and rushed over.

‘What happened?’

‘I scraped my face against a wall.’

He frowned and said it looked like a scratch, then pulled a handkerchief from his jacket and pressed it against my broken skin, which made it sting even more. I pushed him away and said I’d be fine.

‘But where’d you go?’

‘I ran after him.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. He disappeared up a turret.’

The guide was waiting for us in the garden. When and why he’d left the room, nobody knew. In a worn-out voice he called Daniel over to the pond to show him the family of newts that had been living at Challement for centuries.

Pierre, meanwhile, remained near the walls of the chateau. Every now and then I saw him glancing expectantly up at the windows, as if hoping for another encounter with the chatelain. And I too began to glance up, hoping that Marc Cointe would reappear there above like a Green Man carving, branches and foliage snaking out of his mouth, so that I could at least fire off a response with my eyes.

But there was to be no encore.

I felt I had admired a painting, stepped into it, and been cast out. From the looks of it, so did Pierre. For the first time I saw a glimmer of expression pass over his face, a small cloud of unease that moved across his features and dissolved. With the tail end of one cigarette he lit another and turned away, just as Daniel and the guide were returning from the pond.

We drove to the station in uncomfortable silence, Daniel in the front seat beside our guide, neither wearing a seat belt, and I in the back next to Pierre. I was anxious for water and a mirror.

On the platform, a polite And if you ever come to … farewell. The guide avoided eye contact when shaking my hand and seemed much more concerned with whether my companions had enjoyed their trip. Once on the train, I found the nearest bathroom and inspected my scratch in the mirror. To my surprise it was very thin yet rather deep, like a hairline fissure in a bed of rock. I washed it with soap and water and patted it dry with a rough paper towel. Only after a few minutes of inspection did I realise it was in nearly the same spot as the chatelain’s own scar, a long line bisecting his right cheek, starting from below the eye down to somewhere beneath his beard.