Hubert Aquin - Next Episode

What happened was that as soon as I departed from H. de Heutz’s plan, he was neutralized and, who knows, maybe even helpless — for a few seconds anyway. Because it would be underestimating him to deny that he’d anticipated everything that might happen, even his own death! Consequently, the other person was already at my back, veiled by the curtains at a window. And that other person had watched me manoeuvre H. de Heutz, following a rather baroque protocol; when he saw me turn onto the road that runs through Echandens to Saint-Prex, he’d had time to pull on his jacket, secure his high-calibre weapon in an embossed leather holster, go to the garage from the inside, take out a big car and, unbeknownst to me, start tailing me, since I hadn’t taken the precaution of glancing inside the garage to check the make of the car. Now, since I knew neither the make of the car that was following me nor the identity of its driver, I didn’t even know if I was being escorted, because of course the other person — H. de Heutz’s friend — took the precautions necessary to avoid attracting my attention, constantly changing his position on the road, his angle of surveillance, and the distance between us. At one point he must have taken the liberty of coming within a hair’s breadth of the Opel and looking me in the eye just like that. The highway to Geneva is wide enough and busy enough to conceal the expert designs of a spy. When he passed, nearly touching me, how could I have known it was him? How can you unmask an enemy when, paradoxically, you’ve implicitly eliminated him and he doesn’t exist?

And so I drove from Echandens to Place Simon-Goulart in Geneva without thinking, even as a suspicious reflex, that throughout this enchanting journey the other person was on the road very close to me, travelling along in my wake — or was I in his? — passing me on the left or right, getting a solid lead over me (while keeping my reflection in his rear-view mirror) or impetuously letting me pass while never losing sight of me. In Geneva I went directly to Place Simon-Goulart, which in the transparency of daylight opens onto an expanse of mountains and eternal snow. Just as I was parking near the Banque Arabe, an innocuous-looking stranger was parking his car near mine, never losing sight of me. It was that other person! He observed me at leisure while I was listing all the reasons why I should clear out of Place Simon-Goulart where my Volvo was waiting. He may even have taken a position behind the great barred window of the Banque Arabe, pretending to fill out a form while keeping an eye on me as I hesitated, gracelessly and awkwardly, not too sure what to do with the Opel and the Volvo — one full, the other empty — while the morning sun illuminated the great belt of peaks and spires, plunging the layered flanks of Mont Maudit into shadow. There was no doubt about it: I’d been duped from start to finish. It had all started in the grand salon of the Château d’Echandens when I was sitting across from H. de Heutz and the three big windows that looked out on the chateau’s elegant grounds and the incantatory space of the great valley, where Lac Léman was lighted up by the first rays of sun which at that moment was at its apogee.

For twenty-four hours now I’ve hardly slept. At two a.m. I was still following a shadow that was following me, and at sunrise, around half-past five, I was facing my personal enemy number one, demoralized from listing the mistakes that had brought me to this sorry pass, unable to imagine anything to fill the conversational gaps except the story of a nervous breakdown: two children, abandoned wife, escape, my pitiful ambition to rob banks and my final resolution to make judicious use of my special Colt, blowing my brains out in a vacant lot in Carouge. Since yesterday I haven’t had time to recover except during a few hours of comatose sleep. And now in a sense I’m enjoying an infinitesimal intermission which will give me just enough time to figure out what’s happened to me and to prepare myself for what’s ahead, an infinite margin of obstacles and time separating me from our meeting on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre. The latest events surprised me so much that I have trouble recalling the order in which they occurred. I remember H. de Heutz leaning against the trunk of the car, overcome by suffering and constantly recalling his final hours with his wife and children in Belgium, somewhere in the former Austrian Netherlands. At the last moment, he told me, he’d hesitated between suicide in the Meuse and flight. He also told me that what hurt him most was his vague recollections of his two little boys, for he couldn’t clearly recall their features or the timbre of their voices. H. de Heutz wept abundantly as he described his appalling life.

And that was when I perceived a sign! Everything began to move at lightning speed; first, I ran through the Coppet woods, heading for what I assumed to be the very heart of the forest. After a few minutes of this frantic race I came to a promontory that looks down on the village of Coppet. There, in a dazzling landscape just above the turquoise water and facing the Roc d’Enfer that stands at the front of the tangled group of massifs, I pricked up my ear: no suspicious sounds, none I could make out at any rate. Groping in my back pocket, I realized that I still had the keys for the Opel. Oh well, H. de Heutz didn’t need them now: he’d simply got into the other person’s car. For a moment it seemed to me (but was I mistaken?) that the other person was a woman: no doubt the one who’d been walking on H. de Heutz’s arm through the streets of Geneva and had suddenly disappeared as if by magic. How could I be sure? I’d only caught a glimpse of the car: I hadn’t so much seen it as guessed at it. It had practically sprung up behind me, silently, on the small road. It was H. de Heutz’s smile that made me sense it, his gaze that made me react, even more than the tires gliding along the asphalt and the engine’s imperceptible roar. That was when I realized I was surrounded and therefore had no choice: his sudden intrusion was forcing me to execute H. de Heutz before a witness and, at worst, expose myself to a surprise shot by the intruder. I turned around, I saw the car slip behind the leaves, and I spied the other person at the wheel: a woman. I saw her blonde hair first. But could I trust such a fleeting sight taxed in advanced by such hallucinatory circumstances? The blonde hair was probably a side effect of the sun’s brightness and my own dazzlement, so that I couldn’t actually be sure the other person is a woman, one who improbably has blonde hair. A fleeting sight distorted by danger, what I remember is vague and uncertain, unless fear made my vision particularly keen! Anyway … When I heard a car door slam, I quickly realized that if I tried to get away in the Opel, I’d erupt into the middle of the woman’s field of vision and give her a moving target. I kept H. de Heutz in my sights while I walked around the car. Once I was in front of the grille I was in a better position. H. de Heutz was facing me, right in the middle of the historic space where the other person’s silhouette would soon appear. The seconds galloped by faster than my thoughts. I came within a hair’s breadth of pressing the trigger, spelling the end of H. de Heutz. But what would happen then? The other person, the blonde woman, was very close to me but I didn’t know exactly where: I could only sense her. If I had rushed to kill H. de Heutz, she’d have emptied her magazine into my head and I’d have collapsed inopportunely. Before I lost my way in this brisk current of possibles and imponderables, I made a hint of a movement of retreat, on tiptoe at first, keeping my gun pointed at H. de Heutz, who was looking at me; then, after I was far enough away that my footsteps were muffled, I started running towards what I thought was the heart of the forest — only to find myself, after a few minutes of an exhausting sprint, in the natural observatory that looks down on the village of Coppet, opposite the gutted temple of the Dents du Midi, alone at last, absolutely alone, not yet knowing if I was threatened or unpunished, but well aware that H. de Heutz was no longer within range of my gun and that though I’d narrowly escaped a second trap, I had failed doubly in my mission. H. de Heutz was still alive. And the deadline for my meeting with K, closer now, was haunting me.