MORE THAN FIFTY-SIX years later, the buoyancy of youth long gone, he would make a telephone call to set in motion a series of events that were they to go smoothly or even just adequately would as in the last movement of a symphony unite disparate currents into one stream. Although he himself would never see the braiding of the threads, he hoped that they might save Luc; help Cathérine and David; punish the son-of-a-bitch, lying, dishonorable Jack and the crazy, son-of-a-bitch, lying, dishonorable Rich Panda; allow him to escape jeopardy for what he had done on the ?le aux Cygnes; and, finally, achieve at last his greatest ambition.
It would start with a telephone call from which everything else might cascade. Although somewhere south and east of Iceland, eight miles in the air over the darkest ocean, he had laid down the rough outlines of what he had to do, he went over it again and again to rehearse the details and anticipate the unexpected. The dangerous things he had done in his life he had done either in the heat of the moment or as a soldier without choice in the matter. Here, he had a choice, and passion could easily ruin what calculation might achieve.
Before he made the call, to steady himself, clear his mind, and create a kind of alibi, he re-established his routine. It was as if he were two people, one embarking upon something complicated and dangerous, the other quietly going about his business. He would retreat to the routine whenever he felt himself beginning to falter, but, when he regained his footing, go out again.
He began to run once more, gently. He had lost weight in America and now, because of Fran?ois’ revelation, perhaps only a claim, when he could not eat. Blood pressure and chemistry, pulse, and stamina had to be honed to near ideal levels for his age. He would sleep well, eat sparingly, and work as hard on his endurance as he could without pushing enough to trigger the end.
He placed his faith on the frequency of exercise rather than on its intensity or the length of a single session. This made him very, very busy, in that he would run, swim, and do calisthenics and weights four times a day. He ran so slowly that it was almost like fast walking. The swimming was low key as well, as were the calisthenics. In between sessions, he would nap. This regime was so demanding of his time that he had to take regular days off to attend to other business. He did, however, have a lot of time – on the long terrace, in the pool, before he slept, and as he sat in a café for lunch or tea – to work on his plan, which as it grew in detail he kept exclusively in his memory, with nothing written.
Neither tiring himself nor dropping dead, he passed into the new year, during which he would run ten kilometers and swim two every day, and do hundreds of abdominal, stretching, and weight exercises, with much rest, and civilized meals of small portions. He gave up reading the papers and hardly attended to his mail, which would accumulate as if on the desk of the kind of irresponsible person he had never been.
One did not need to read the papers to know about the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market, or the beatings, boycotts, divestments, and threats. Three years before, after the murder of Jewish children in Toulouse, Jules had come to a conclusion that others were not quite ready to adopt even at present. Now his answer to these events, as most people reacted with surprise, was to maintain a stoic silence and keep up the kind of program common to young musicians embarked upon pre-competition: epic, cloistered practice. What they did was like what Olympic athletes do, like the life of a ballet dancer, the charrette of an architect, or the self-isolation and Herculean work of a great scholar. Though Jules had something else in mind, he pursued it with similar devotion even if the months of discipline would no longer be necessary after one single unthreatening hour.
He didn’t have much to do with anyone except Cathérine, David, and a few waiters and clerks in Saint-Germain-en-Laye whom he had known for decades. The man at the swimming pool wouldn’t even look at him now. He said, once, and only once, after admitting Jules twice a day for a few months, “Congratulations, you now have the body of Arnaud Schwarzenaigre, but if you keep this up you’re going to drop dead.”
“Thank you,” answered Jules, as he tossed his towel into a bin and headed out into air so cold it froze the water left in his hair. But, warm and ruddy, he enjoyed the wind.
He still had not made the phone call, but he had the plan in his mind in as much depth and detail as if he had practiced it a thousand times. He had done the necessary research. All that remained to set it in motion was to press the buttons on the telephone. The new term had begun. He paid no attention, because he thought he had left that life behind. But he hadn’t quite done that, because no plan is perfect.
SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE that winter was paler, cleaner, and quieter than Paris. The stones had not been as darkened by soot. As the buildings were lower, more blue sky was visible, and, of course, as it was on a height, it was windier. Except during market hours, the streets were fairly empty, sometimes achieving the winter silence of a country village. Just as the great forest and the long views in all seasons brought the contentment of nature, so did the clarity of winter and the cold that swept cleanly through the town, quieting the streets and returning people to the stillness and assurance of home, with red coals in the hearth.
This kind of winter, the Christmas kind, of lights and joys in darkness, is then often subsumed in the raw, wet cold that kills off the season as it grows old. But rain and sleet can turn into beautiful white snow in the aftermath of which the ground is blinding, the air clear, and the sky blue.
One afternoon in February, Jules was between his penultimate and last exercise sets of the day. He would fall into a narcotic-like sleep in these interludes, and wake up flushed and freezing once he tossed the covers to the side. Going out into the sleet or rain was painful, but he did it time and again. It strengthened him so much that it was dangerous: he was not supposed to live like a young recruit in basic training.
Still in his running clothes, he was cold and he had the fever-like remnants of a nap in winter. Some stretching and calisthenics warmed him up and he was just about to go out when he heard a brutal knocking on his door. This had to be Claude the gardener, who knocked with an identifiable coarseness, as if the cold and wet outside were resentfully petitioning the comfort of a heated house.
It was indeed Claude, whose face was redder than Jules’ even though in winter he was not outside that much and spent most of his time in the gatehouse, looking at television and drinking the kind of red wine that comes in square cartons. He’d come through the fog and drizzle. “There’s a girl at the gate,” he said. “She says she has an appointment.”
“What?”
“There’s a girl at the gate. She said she has an appointment.”
“I don’t understand,” Jules said, mainly to himself.
But Claude took it literally. “A woman, a female. She’s standing near the gate. She says that she, the woman, the female, has an appointment – a meeting, a rendezvous – with you, Jules Lacour.”
“I got it.”
“You said you didn’t.”
“I mean, I don’t have an appointment with her. I don’t have an appointment with anybody.”
“I’ll tell her that.”
“No, no. I may have forgotten.”
“What should I tell her? She has a big case.”