A King Alone Read online

  Everything I’ve been recounting from the moment Frédéric II grabbed the first nail and left the ground until now lasted no more than a minute. He remained face-to-face with that other, very white face for barely a few seconds. The span of one hundred thousand years. He thought he was dreaming, seeing the enameled face of the shepherdess on the clock. And yet he said, “Dorothée, Dorothée dead!”

  For it was the well-known face of Dorothée, Dorothée whom he’d seen twenty minutes earlier in the lit window. When those few seconds jumbled up his dream and the enameled face of the shepherdess, he realized that the monstrous thing had just taken place; that Dorothée had woken up first to make the coffee, must have gone out to collect wood, and . . . disappeared! No, this time she had not disappeared; she was there, he saw her. He even ventured to touch her. She was so familiar. Dorothée! So, the man? It was the man!

  Frédéric II found himself at the foot of the beech tree without realizing it, following the man’s tracks behind the bushes, then in the meadow that went up the hill; through the fog, his tracks were clear, isolated, fresh, and Frédéric was not hoping to catch up to him, oh no, no! But he followed him.

  He passed the Carles meadow. The tracks were still so fresh that in some of them the frozen snow, dislodged by the shoe tip, was still crumbling into the footprint. He passed the Bernard meadow. It must have been about eight in the morning then and the fog had slowly begun to recede. In spots, it thinned out enough to allow the trees by the road to be seen. In these gaps in the fog, Frédéric II could make out the man climbing unhurriedly in front of him. It was indeed that unfamiliar appearance of his: that jacket, that fur hat, that steadfast gait; Frédéric was directly in the line of his tracks.

  Frédéric II crouched behind a hedge and let the man get a bit of a lead. When the man started melting bit by bit into the swathes of fog, Frédéric II began walking again. He headed straight for Le Jocond, like the time of Ravanel, when Bergues had followed and then given up in the cloud. Frédéric II knew that he would not give up. It was not a question of courage: it was about curiosity (if there’s curiosity when you’re entranced).

  The snow was completely virgin, except for those very fresh footprints.

  The man headed very intelligently toward the Burle woods. After a moment, the forest edge began to darken the fog. The man entered the forest.

  Right then Frédéric II should have called it quits and headed diagonally toward the woods. It was the prudent thing to do, in case the other man was lying in ambush, but Frédéric II thought only of placing his footprints in the footprints before him. Besides, when he reached the forest edge, the fog, sifted by the thick needles of the fir trees laden with snow, allowed him to catch a glimpse, through gray half-light, of the back and the hat and the leisurely gait of the man.

  Leisurely but firm; that is, steady. A man accustomed to walking across vast spaces.

  The man continued climbing; came out of the woods; approached the pastures of L’Archat. With a great deal of assurance, he climbed right where the path lay buried, even though the great masses of snow made everything look the same.

  At those heights, there was a lot of light. As they were nearing the summit of L’Archat, Frédéric II had the good sense to stop and let the man gain a little ground. Someone with all his wits about him would have let him get a good hour ahead. In that region, in that season, that man was surely the only person out and about. His tracks were clear, as if carved with a knife; there would be no losing him. But Frédéric II will say, “I had to lay eyes on him.” He stopped two hundred meters below the man and the man, having reached the summit of L’Archat, also stopped.

  He was like a silhouette up there. (“Like a target,” Frédéric II will say.) There was no longer a thick layer of fog above them and, above the fog, clouds must have been passing because, from time to time after their big shadows went by, long shafts of white powder whirled in the mist. On the other side of L’Archat, those long arrows of light must have pierced the vast stretches below that go all the way to the Negron pass, to Rousset, to unimaginable, far-off places: the wide world! Entirely covered in fog: an ocean of barley syrup with slumbering waves, in which those bursts of white light must have made the archipelago of the mountain peaks suddenly appear, like pale islands studded with black. The geography of a new world.

  The man was up there, calmly regarding this creation, when Frédéric II, on his slope, noticed he was still carrying the two little sheets of walnut under his arm.

  That’s when he became conscious of things. Surely, if the village had been a few steps away, he would have gone running back there to raise a hue and cry. But, on discovering himself standing on the summit of L’Archat with his wood under his arm, he said to himself, “Shit! What the hell am I supposed to do with this wood?” And he stuck it in the snow to free his hands, all the while watching the silhouette, the target up there, and as a frozen rod spread through his spine and stiffened his hair, he saw at one and the same time, growing larger, exploding outward like a wheel of white fireworks, the superimposed faces of the enamel shepherdess and Dorothée. In the stomach-turning haziness of a split-second thought, he wondered if the hole for the key to wind the mechanism was in the shepherdess’s eye or in Dorothée’s. (He’ll say, “Anger had me by the throat . . .”)

  The man began to climb down on the other side of L’Archat. Frédéric II followed his tracks on all fours. The summit of L’Archat is not wide: about fifteen meters. Frédéric II inched over to the edge.

  Down below, the man was walking along the invisible path as precisely as before; that is, descending in zigzags as he ambled ahead. There was no question of Frédéric following him out into the open like that: there wasn’t fog enough to hide him now. He would have to wait until the man entered the woods. Frédéric II was clever enough to stay a meter or two below the summit on his side of the mountain, dodging and weaving to reach a corner of a fir forest that he could vaguely make out below, the name of which he didn’t know because here he must have been within the bounds of I don’t know what commune; maybe Lucettes. From time to time, so as not to take any chances, Frédéric II looked over the top of the other slope. There was nothing to fear: the man was walking down calmly, like someone out for a stroll (which makes a real impression on people from here, because to them that’s a sign of contentment, wealth, prefect, boss, millionaire), so that Frédéric II had to go over in his mind the whole long path from the beech tree to here, where there had been but a single track in the snow, just that one, sole and unique: the track of this man strolling along.

  Who now entered the woods. Frédéric II gave him time to enter rather deeply; then, going around the edge of the woods, he met up with the man’s tracks. (Later he will say, “I was afraid to lose him.”) Now, in fact, he stuck to the trail for reasons different from those that had brought him there. Perhaps even a bit ashamed to have come this far for reasons he didn’t understand; he had become a fox. He was using all his cunning. Not a hair on his head was thinking of anything but cunning. As fat as he was, he had become silent and airborne; he moved like a bird or a spirit. He went from copse to copse without leaving a trace. (With his primitive sense of the world, he will say, “Without touching the ground.”) Completely different from the Frédéric II of the sawmill dynasty; no longer on land, where he needed to saw wood to earn enough to feed Frédéric III; Frédéric II was also in a new world where you needed an adventurer’s abilities. Happy in an extraordinary new way! (That, he won’t say. At first he only understood it confusedly; but, even if he had understood it quite clearly, he wouldn’t have said it, he would have hidden it forever, even at the final moment when he in turn would become a hunted man on the move.) Happy in an extraordinary way, just to imagine (no, that’s too strong a word: to know instinctively) that this new world was vast and limitless, similar to that archipelago of pale islands dotted with black that suddenly appeared through the shafts of luminous white powder on the far side of L’Archat.
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  The man, however, all the while maintaining his steady pace, obdurately heading toward a precise goal, went on his way, unhurried and unfaltering. He knew exactly what he was doing. He went as far as the valley, followed the stream on the left of the mountainside back up, crossed at the exact spot where one had to cross to find oneself at the exact spot where the path continued along the right side of the mountain. Not making a sound, Frédéric II moved like a shadow but, even if he sometimes got down on all fours, he couldn’t prevent the lower branches of the pines from brushing against his jacket and making a terrifying noise in a silence so charged that, far in the distance, you could hear the snow crackle on the trees as they stretched their branches. But the man never looked back. Once, just after fording the stream, he continued precisely along the path buried beneath more than two meters of snow—and made an abrupt turn. Frédéric II, out of the woods in the open, saw a white splash flash out from under the fur hat: the man’s face. Frédéric II stood still. (He’ll say, “Just then, I said: I’m a goner!”) But, while the motionless Frédéric II was trying to look like a tree trunk, the man went on walking with his steady, calm gait, as if he had long and often been in places where he knew that no one would ever catch up to him.

  It is a fox memory that Frédéric II will retain from this pursuit. When he’ll speak of the countryside behind L’Archat, he’ll speak about it in the same way Columbus must have spoken about the East Indies. His view of things was structured around new necessities. He saw the trees in relation to the trunks that could hide him; noticed whether they were positioned more or less judiciously behind the man; if they would allow his pursuit to proceed with more or less difficulty. (He will say how in many places he was either concealed or exposed in the valleys and combes, on the slopes, and how these concealments or exposures fit together: the spots in the woods where he could advance more quickly; the clearings where he could slip round the edges hidden behind the fir trunks; the open spaces where he had to wait a good long time before entering; and all the while strange information that he was obliged to interpret instantly and put to use immediately—which to his total astonishment he understood—reached him from the snow, the silence, the blackness of the branches, and even the distant anise scent of damp tree bark.)

  He will not say that, by the time he was quite certain the man would never look back, he had stopped thinking about Dorothée’s frozen face. It was as ancient as the deaths of Joan of Arc or of Louis XVI, from which so many thousands of people have since quietly benefited.

  The man passed through a woods, went down into a valley, climbed back up the other slope, walked along a ridge, passed through another woods even vaster than the first—a full two valleys of copses through which, unfazed, the man calmly teased out his path. He continued up a long hillside and arrived at a forest trail. He began to go down it. Little by little, he left behind the larch woods, the fir woods, the beech woods, the oak woods, and came upon willows, poplars, then hedges that barely emerged from the snow, then undulating fields. Two hundred meters behind the man, Frédéric II stopped short: A quarter of a league in front of the man, over there, lay a farm with a single window winking beneath a heavy white beret. A frail feather of blue smoke rose from its thick roofs.

  (Frédéric II will say, “Right away I thought . . .” He won’t say what he was really thinking about because it was at this point that he had to strip off a fox skin—almost a wolf skin.) Out of breath, he waited a long moment for the roof and the smoke to reconnect to each other, while the man, who doesn’t make such a big deal about things, goes down, passes the farm, and continues to head downward.

  Now the footpath has become a small road streaked with sleigh tracks. The road winds across snowy fields squared off by kitchen-garden fences. The moist tips of two or three rows of cornstalks stick out like the hairs of a beard. A scent of soup, soot, and horse manure. The man disappears behind a ridge that must be at the top of a sloping meadow. Now Frédéric II begins to run. This is how he suddenly comes upon a village, one that the man is about to enter.

  Frédéric II will say exactly what he thought and what he did. Calmly, one behind the other, they follow the street; it has to be called Main Street because this village is more substantial than ours. There are three grocery stores, a tobacco shop, a hardware store, and these shops have windows through which you can see people under lamps in aisles filled with watering cans, padlocks, twists of tobacco, and jars of mustard. If the man were to attack someone, a single cry (Frédéric’s) would bring twenty people outside. But the man, after Main Street, crosses the church square. He goes down another street, very lovely, clean and wide; the houses are grand. He simply heads toward one of these houses, ambling along, as if he’d just gone out for a breath of fresh air; the same gait he had this morning when he left the beech tree, the one he’s maintained the whole way. He knocks on the door to one of these houses and, when someone opens it, scrapes the soles of his boots on the scraper. Then, on the threshold, unwrapping his scarf from his neck, he goes in: all very human. Noon bells were ringing.

  Frédéric II goes past the house innocently enough; through the windowpane he sees a lit ceiling lamp—the day is dark. Beneath the lamp, the table must be set. He went to sit on a doorstop by a barn door. Soon the church bells chimed one o’clock. A little boy came out of the house, running toward the church square. He comes back. He’s carrying a paper cone with at least four sous’ worth of tobacco in it.

  Frédéric II remembers the five-sou piece he always keeps in his fob pocket. If it’s there, that’ll be good. He pats and it’s there. From the beginning of this wide street with its grand houses, he counts: One, two, three, four houses; the man’s is the fifth. He counts again, carefully: Yes, it’s the fifth; besides, it’s the only house with two windows on the ground floor on either side of the door. After that, Frédéric II leaves. He has two more things to do: Find out the name of the village; what is this place? And eat a piece of bread. Since morning, he’s had nothing in his stomach but coffee. For the name, the easiest thing would be to go to the town hall because he’s not going into a café to ask: What is this place here? Normally, when you go somewhere you know where you’re going. In the town hall, he doesn’t need to go any farther than the corridor, where there’s a poster announcing an award: “Chichiliane Town Hall.” And now? To the Minimes Inn? No. Minimes Inn, five sous. No: a bakery where he’ll buy two sous’ worth of bread, and then to the café on the square where he’ll ask for two sous’ worth of brandy in which to dip it.

  He has to get back as quickly as possible and see Langlois. Four leagues—the weather is still dry—a good four hours. He sets off. And the weather is so dry that two or three fellows are out on the streets on their way—it has to be—to the stables, to the woodsheds. At the corner of the church square with the road to Clelles on one side and on the other, sure enough, the man’s street, he comes upon one of these fellows. And he asks him, “Say, that house over there” (they move a few steps to the side so they can see it well), “the fifth one, with the two windows; do you know who lives there?”

  “Yes, yes, Monsieur V.”

  •

  Frédéric II got back to the village at six o’clock. He must have struggled on the black ice and, as night fell while he carried his heavy secret, struggled even more during those final two hours. Everything was etched on his face; not to mention that two sous’ worth of bread and two sous’ worth of brandy don’t do much to revitalize a man who’s walked more than eight leagues without stopping to rest. He went straight to the Café de la Route and opened the door. Sausage was alone. She wheezed the wheeze of a cow and her eighty-eight kilos shook; she opened her mouth round and wide for at least twenty seconds before she let out a cry that made the lamp shudder. Langlois, rushing down from his room, landed on his two feet in the kitchen, a pistol in each hand. Then, after twenty seconds of sizing up Frédéric II in silence, all he managed to say, in a small, childish voice was, “So, you’re not dead?�
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  It was the stupidity of the question and the small child’s voice coming from Langlois that impressed Frédéric II most of all; he entered the room without a word and dropped heavily into a chair. They had thought he’d been abducted; they told him that Dorothée had disappeared at the same time as he had. Two in one day, right under their very noses! And Langlois had been upstairs, writing his letter of resignation, when Sausage had cried out.

  “I know where Dorothée is,” said Frédéric II, “and I know who put her where she is.”

  Just then Frédéric II’s wife arrived, and she began literally to scream. Langlois let go of his pistols and shook her like a plum tree; finally, as gallantly as could be, he slapped her twice, hard, and turning on his boot heels, grabbed Frédéric II by the arm. “Come,” he said. And took him upstairs to his room.

  When they came back downstairs, Sausage and Frédéric II’s wife were reviving themselves with two little glasses of stone-fruit brandy.

  “You,” he said to Sausage, “go find me five or six men. Six would be better. I want Coquillat, the two Ravanels, Pugnères, Bertrand, and Horatius. Don’t worry. You’re not in danger anymore. It’s over. You,” he said to Frédéric’s wife, “go make something to eat and leave the man in peace. You,” he said to Frédéric II, “be ready in an hour at most.”

  Coquillat, the two Ravanels, Pugnères, Bertrand, and Horatius were the strongest men around. There were three woodcutters among them. They went to fetch their ropes, some lanterns, and a small ladder (which is what they use here for a stretcher when someone is injured or dies in the fields).

  They found Dorothée nicely laid out in her nest of tree and fog. She was lying on bones, next to three skulls, the smallest of which must surely have been that of Marie Chazottes; the two others belonged to Bergues and Delphin-Jules, impossible to distinguish the one from the other.