Agenda:
Candlelight Descent. Dec 19.
HS XMAS dinner. (Café Pont Bessières.) Dec 15?
1974 Charitable Events:
Winter Olympics—Funds to Orphanage Lousanna—5 votes. International Women’s Club of Lausanne—2 votes
“There’s nothing interesting,” Raf says, with disappointment.
But when Kersti turns the page, she discovers another Polaroid jammed into the spine of the book. “It’s Amoryn Lashwood,” she murmurs, her voice a whisper. She removes it and has a hard time looking at young Amoryn naked in Hamidou’s bed, her expression frightened and confused.
On the next page, another Polaroid. “Cressida,” Alison says, turning away. The picture is similar to the one that was left for Kersti at the hotel; the pose might be slightly different, but it’s the same bed, the same angle of her body.
There are at least half a dozen of them. Stuffed between the pages, photos of Cressida, compromised in every possible way. Naked, wearing underwear, touching herself.
Alison sits down on the base of the statue, her face in her hands. Noa and Raf are standing on either side of Kersti, both of them now shining their flashlights on the journal. They’re sniffling. Kersti can’t bring herself to look at them. She turns another page.
“Oh God!” Noa cries.
Kersti slaps the ledger shut before the image can burn itself into her brain.
“What?” Alison asks from where she’s sitting. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Kersti says. “Just more of the same.”
She doesn’t have the heart to tell her it’s a photograph of Hamidou—explicit, grotesque. Something Kersti wishes she could unsee, the incontrovertible evidence that would have ended Hamidou’s career and destroyed her life if anyone had ever gotten hold of it.
Alison, clearly traumatized, is the first to leave. Raf and Noa decide to go for a drink at a nearby brasserie, and Kersti begs off, telling them she’s exhausted.
She walks a few blocks by herself, needing to clear her head. She’s not exhausted at all. That was a lie. She’s charged with adrenaline. At the corner of Rue Centrale, she flags a passing cab and impulsively tells him to take her to 14 Rue Béthusy.
Hamidou’s apartment is in one of those early seventies buildings with a white stucco fa?ade and frosted green balconies. It probably looked futuristic in 1972 and now looks like something out of The Jetsons. Kersti dials Hamidou’s apartment code, surprising her. She buzzes her in and Kersti rides up in the elevator feeling strangely calm, almost possessed.
“Kersti,” Hamidou says, opening the door. “What a surprise.”
She’s wearing a navy velour robe that exposes her thin white legs. There’s a package of Gauloises sticking out of the pocket. Kersti’s skin crawls imagining Hamidou dropping her robe for Cressida, revealing that scrawny, boyish body. She tries to get the image out of her head.
Amoryn, Alison, Lille. How many others? How many were there over forty years?
Kersti steps inside the apartment. It reeks of smoke. There are Persian rugs on the linoleum floor, some mismatched antique chairs, and two lamps made of silver samovars sitting on a carved mahogany sideboard, none of which suit the dated apartment, with its Formica kitchenette, low ceilings, and vertical blinds. A clunky old air conditioner rattles from a picture window overlooking the back courtyard.
“What brings you here so late?” Hamidou asks her. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes, something’s wrong,” Kersti says.
“I was just about to my brush my teeth—”
“I found the ledger.”
Hamidou’s left eye twitches. “What ledger?” she asks, trying to sound offhand.
“You know what ledger,” Kersti tells her. “How many girls were there?”
“What are you talking about?” Hamidou says, tightening the sash of her robe around her narrow waist.
“I’ve seen pictures,” Kersti tells her, not recognizing the cold, threatening tone of her own voice. “I know about Amoryn, Alison, Cressida, Lille. I’ve read your disgusting letters to Cressida. I know what those girls spray-painted on the statue and why you got them expelled.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Hamidou says softly, unfazed.
“I’ve seen you,” Kersti tells her. “Naked. I’ve got the Polaroid.”
Hamidou is quiet, probably trying to figure out her next play.
“There’s no point denying anything,” Kersti says wearily. “Alison’s already come forward. There’s too much evidence.”
Hamidou sits down on her couch. She crosses her legs, rests her hands on her lap. “What did Alison tell you?”
“That you sexually abused her and many others. I told you, I’ve seen all the Polaroids.”
“Did she tell you she loved me?” Hamidou says.
“As a matter of fact, she did.”
“So then. How do you come to call it abuse?”
Kersti sits down on the armchair facing Hamidou. “They were kids,” she says, disgusted. “You were an adult. That’s the very definition of abuse.”
“I disagree.”
Kersti shakes her head. “You disagree?” she repeats, incredulous.
“I’m not the one who instigated the affairs.”
“The affairs?”
“That’s what they were,” Hamidou says, her tone unrepentant. “I loved each and every one of them, and they loved me in return.”
“Like a mother!” Kersti points out. “Not like a lover.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Hamidou responds calmly. “We were lovers, Kersti. All my relationships were mutual and consensual. They wanted me as much as I them.”
“Alison was eight!” Kersti cries. “You manipulated and brainwashed them. They grew up confusing maternal love with sex. They were lonely. We all were. We missed our families, we felt abandoned, we were vulnerable. And that’s when you preyed on them.”
“I did no such thing,” she says, indignant. “If they felt attracted to me and they expressed it, I merely responded. Perhaps I shouldn’t have—”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have?” Kersti cries.
“I suppose I could have turned them away,” she reflects. “But I didn’t want to hurt them any more than they were already hurting. They were all so sensitive and eager to please.”
“You’re sick.”
“I was in love with all of them. They were my lovers. I didn’t just ‘abuse’ random students; otherwise it would have happened to you. I had relationships when I had feelings for someone.”
“Children!”
“They were not children,” Hamidou argues. “Cressida, Lille, Alison. They all had old souls. They were wise on a level you would not understand. The spirit has no age, Kersti. Society labels us with a number. Fourteen. Forty. Sixty. But the soul has no age.”
Kersti doesn’t even know how to respond.