“What’s your name?”
“Josiane.”
“Your nickname is Jo?”
She smiled, and this gesture hollowed out two wonderful dimples that hung on to her smile.
“Sometimes.”
I kept on asking: “You’ve been working here for a long time?”
“Yes … I mean, no … I help my mother out from time to time.”
“Do you often serve guests in their rooms?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you at all afraid?”
“No … The guests are always nice to me. And then, before long they become harmless.”
I didn’t get the meaning of that remark. I was wondering if this child was really all right in the head.
“What do you mean, harmless?”
“Umm … Yeah, after a few days here, all they usually think about is resting. Yes, that’s what I mean. Are you going to stay in the hotel a long time?”
“I don’t know yet. Why?”
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
For every answer, she was now asking me another question. What a funny girl. I thought I could detect a small note of alarm in her voice. Her eyes were staring at my face with touching attention and her question almost resembled a prayer. No, I really didn’t understand the coded language of this sweet child. I continued to doubt her mental capacities. Living year-round in this desolate environment, serving all kinds of guests in their rooms, could shake up a young mind.
“No, not tomorrow, Josiane. I’m here on assignment, unfortunately.”
Josiane sighed and turned her eyes away. The situation was becoming stranger and stranger. I continued to eat, thinking all the while. The atmosphere of this place had weighed on me as soon as I arrived. I kept trying to reason with myself, but I couldn’t quite get rid of that feeling. And now, this girl in my room. I picked up the glass of rum on the rocks from the tray and took a good swallow. Here I was, Commissaire Vanel, a career police officer, awarded medals by the high command, shut up in a strange hotel room in the middle of nowhere with a girl with exciting breasts and a deranged mind. When I got the envelope with the official seal on it yesterday—the envelope of my disgrace—I had absolutely no idea what was waiting for me.
The same torpor I’d felt after my shower took over again. My limbs were growing heavy, my joints seemed made of cotton. I finished eating and drank the rest of my rum. I thought Josiane was going to clear the table and I went over to the bed. When I sat down, she walked right up to me, very close. Now I was surprised by the passivity of her features. She was acting like an automaton. Deliberately, this child-woman was indicating that the time had come to stop the little game of Q&A. She was putting herself at my disposal.
A violent perfume was coming up from her armpits and provoking chain reactions under my skin. She was standing directly in front of me with her nipples brushing my face. She took my head by the nape of the neck and pressed my face between her breasts. I was progressively losing consciousness.
Thoughts of prudence did flash through my mind—she must surely be a minor—but no argument in the world could stand up against the tide that was sweeping me away. I wanted to touch her, my fingers were burning to caress her dream of a body, but she stopped my hands every time. She wanted to be the only one in charge.
“You want me,” she whispered. Her desire was of no importance; perhaps she felt none at all. All I had to do was let her do what she wanted. Was this service included in the price of the room? My eyelids were getting heavier and heavier, and as I threw back my head, the big mirror on the wardrobe showed me the picture of a child kneeling as if in prayer before my erect virility.
I woke up relatively early. Roosters were still crowing. From my room I could see the main entrance. My car was in the same spot. The brilliant sunshine reflecting off the stones of the street burned my eyes. The trees were rare and stunted in this place. There was something like a bit of life animating the main street. Doors on the side streets opened and a few people with dull looks on their faces were leaving their homes. I freshened up and put on a pair of jeans and a green T-shirt. I didn’t think it necessary to wear my uniform. First I wanted to take an inventory of the place, more or less, and transmit my report to the high command. I wanted to call Roland again, but my cell still wasn’t getting any signal; it remained strangely dead.
I got the idea of taking a discreet little tour around the property. The uneasiness I had felt the night before was persisting. I wanted to get a better idea of the Paradise Inn. I slipped my .38 under my belt. My room, number 6, gave onto the stairway at the end of a long corridor that connected the different accommodations. I tiptoed by them. When I reached the first landing, I opened the little door that closed off the corridor. It opened onto another series of steps leading to the ground floor at the back of the house. Might as well learn what was happening down below, stage left.
I came upon a vast courtyard. The place seemed dead; everything was covered by a thin layer of dust. The courtyard faced a garden overgrown with brambles. Empty pans were waiting around the dry basin of a fountain. I couldn’t see anyone but I remained vigilant. I would have preferred to see people: the silence and desolation of the spot were giving me the shivers. I heard a noise and my heart started pounding wildly. In my whole career as a policeman, it was really the first time I’d been that scared inspecting a place. I couldn’t foresee what kind of enemy I was going to be faced with. The lady upstairs had turned on the radio. Suddenly I realized that the whole time I’d been there, I hadn’t heard the humming of a generator. I glanced at the roof. No solar panels. They couldn’t have a system that worked on batteries when there was no current to recharge them. So? And yet everything seemed to work on electricity at the Paradise Inn.
The backyard of the hotel was uninhabited. No staff, no life, no smell. I continued my tour, hugging the walls as I walked along. I opened a door. It made an eerie sound, amplified by the emptiness of the place. A bedroom with closed windows bathed in a red half-light. I didn’t go in, but I looked around. Cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. The place smelled stuffy. There were many mirrors hanging on the walls, in all dimensions. Most of them were covered with big, dark veils. I made out the shape of a motionless body in a large bed, and I could hear regular breathing.
Josiane was lying in the middle of a mess of dried flowers, veiled mirrors, and spiderwebs. Her perfume reached me despite the strong smell of mold. I was chilled to the bone. What was Josiane doing in this sinister setting? How could people live in a place without leaving any trace of life? Who were these people?
I moved on. Two other rooms had the same dusty, abandoned appearance—what used to be a kitchen and a pantry in brown ceramic tile. I thought I’d seen enough.
Yet I still didn’t know what to make of my tour of inspection. It was all muddled up in my mind. What conclusion could I draw from what I’d seen? Everything seemed frozen, fossilized. What energy was feeding this façade of life?
The lady at the reception desk greeted me as coldly as before. She suggested fried eggs and boiled bananas for breakfast. I agreed. The room was empty. No employee was bustling about to serve up the meal. My landlady appeared to do it all herself. I walked over to a table—number 5. I stumbled on something that seemed to be a foot stretched out right next to the table, but I couldn’t get a good look. I stumbled again and tried to pull out a chair to sit down, but it resisted. I looked around. What do you know? The receptionist was watching me from behind her desk. Then I remembered what she had told me and walked back to table 6, rather embarrassed. I sat down with no problem. I had to keep my eyes open. Something very fishy was happening here. I was facing extremely tough enemies. Instinctively, I felt for the gun stuck between my skin and belt.
When my hostess brought over my breakfast, I decided to have a little conversation with her.
“I saw your daughter last night,” I said.
There was no strong reaction from her. She looked me right in t
he eye as she answered, “Oh, yes. Were you happy with her services?”
The impudence of the question threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting such audacity from the woman. I answered, as naturally as possible, “Yes, she does her work very well. But doesn’t she help you with the service? I noticed you don’t have much of a staff.”
The woman smiled. An ironic smile that stung me to the quick. “Josiane only works in the evening. She takes care of room service. She has to save her energy for certain guests. Tell me, Commissaire Vanel, aren’t you satisfied with our service so far? The room doesn’t suit you?”
“Uhh, yes. I have no complaints.”
“So don’t worry about a thing. The staff here is competent and efficient. But I do thank you for your interest, Commissaire Vanel.”
I decided not to continue the conversation. I had just received a lesson in authority, in all due form. The woman was chilling. She left me powerless.
I was hungry and ate greedily.
Like the previous evening, I noticed leftovers on the other tables, but no guests. The customers of the Paradise Inn were as discreet as could be. By the time coffee came (which was very sweet, strong, and hot), I felt myself overwhelmed by the same weariness as the night before. If this went on, I’d just laze around in bed. The air of the hotel must have soporific vapors, for I couldn’t explain the lifelessness of my limbs and my will. I had to force myself to get up and head out to my car. It was time to take a drive around the town and locate the police station.
The two right tires of the jeep were flat and the vehicle was leaning to one side. This was hardly surprising: the road I’d gone down the night before could disable a tank on treads. I had to find someone who could repair the tires. There are always one or two people like that on the main street of every small provincial town. If I took the street back from the hotel, I’d surely find someone to help me. I walked for a good fifteen minutes. The whole town of Gokal was composed of one main street lined with little low houses with wooden lace cornices, all of them in disrepair and saturated with the surrounding gray dust. The road gave onto a little public square that I’d crossed the night before without realizing it. In the middle of this space rose the only tree worthy of the name, and around it was a church, a general store whose shelves seemed empty, and a few other houses in the same style as the main street. A little farther on, slightly behind the square, an open space must have been used as an outdoor market. The darker ground in this place suggested that the sale of charcoal must still support the dying economy of the town. I couldn’t see any sign of a police station. Didn’t the high command know that nothing—but nothing—happened in Gokal? On my way I only met a child carrying a bucket of water on his head, two old men sitting under the covered passageway of a rickety house, and a crippled woman squatting in a doorway. No able-bodied man in view. The situation seemed bad.
I was sweating profusely. The best thing to do was to go back to the hotel and ask my hostess for help. I didn’t like the idea. I felt I was at this woman’s mercy. But she had to know the resources of the town.
I found her sitting at the reception desk. “Look,” I immediately went up to her, “I’m sorry to bother you, madame, but I really need you to help me.”
“How may I help you, Commissaire Vanel?”
Once again I felt like a child who’d been caught out, scrutinized by an adult. What was happening to me? Normally I was the strong one. I was the one who asked the questions, doubted, pushed, intimidated people. I was the police officer, the expert sleuth. I represented authority. People were afraid of me. I knew all the methods of persuasion. What was happening to me? Why did this woman have such a strong hold over me?
I forced myself to go on. “Well, here’s the situation: I have two flat tires. So I have to find a repairman. I’m also looking for the local police station. My transfer happened pretty fast and I haven’t had time to bring myself up to speed on the town of Gokal.”
The lady seemed embarrassed, like someone who had to give someone else a piece of bad news. She fidgeted on her chair, leaned her head to one side, then to the other. Finally she said: “There are no tire repairmen here, Commissaire Vanel. As you must have noticed, there are no cars in Gokal.”
“No cars?”
“None.”
“But what about the customers who live in your hotel? And market days?”
She made an effort to continue the conversation, which clearly annoyed her. I was reduced to a child bombarding an irritated adult with questions.
“The hotel’s guests are very special. Most of them are people who’ve come here to rest, men who want to get away from the craziness of city life. Among them there are a few policemen, like you. Once they’ve come here, they send their cars back so they can enjoy their isolation more fully. They rarely leave their rooms. As for the market, every Tuesday a few trucks do come to pick up the bags of charcoal that people in the country around here carry in by donkey. And that’s all the traffic there is.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. How could the high command send me to a place like this? Why me, an elite police officer? Little by little, I was beginning to realize that I had been exiled, abandoned. I thought over my last conversation with Froset just before I jumped into my car to come to this wretched town. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed particularly surprised by the news of my transfer. I was too happy about the hotel recommendation to pay attention to his lack of interest in my situation. And yet I regarded him as a brother. Once I had risked my own life to save his, during a clash with a bunch of gangsters. He used to tell everybody he was eternally grateful to me. With him in the high command, I felt I had some protection.
What was it he’d asked me on the phone? Oh, yes! He wanted to know what cases I was working on. Why had he asked me this question at that exact moment? And without thinking, I spontaneously told him I was working all alone on a big drug trafficking case involving someone close to the high command and that, after weeks of hard work, I was on the point of discovering this person’s identity. My investigation wasn’t taking place on the ground, but on the administrative level. I was trying to trace a network of fake customs documents to the top. Froset hadn’t said anything, but now I recalled that he’d seemed embarrassed as he peered at me for a few seconds. Then he suggested that I shouldn’t tell anyone about the results of my investigation. I could take it up again when my stay in Gokal was over. After that, he reassured me somewhat by telling me my posting there surely wouldn’t last long—three months at most. Then he’d back my investigation with everything he had. Now the connection between the investigation and my transfer stared me in the face. I’d let myself be fooled, like a beginner. Instead of coming out here, I should have headed for the border at a hundred miles an hour. You always think things like this only happen to other people. I was like a rat caught in an invisible net.
These ideas were whirling through my head. I had to lean on the desk for a moment to continue the conversation.
“Uhhh … can I use a phone, madame? My cell hasn’t worked since I got here last night.”
“Sorry, commissaire. The hotel phone hasn’t worked for ages.”
“Oh! So I’ll go phone from the police station.”
“There is no police station here.”
“You’re telling me there’s no police station here?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I said, Commissaire Vanel. Ever since President Belony’s administration, at the time when the town of Gokal was part of the Villefranche district, there has never been a representative of the law here.”
A question came to mind immediately: “But how do you know that, madame? President Belony’s administration goes back more than a century.”
This time she lost some of her composure. Her eyes clouded over and she stumbled on her words as she answered. “My parents told me. I am from here, you know, Commissaire Vanel.”
Her way of punctuating every sentence with a “Commissaire Vanel” was getting on
my nerves. But I decided to keep calm. This woman was the only one who could help me. Josiane was floating between intermediate worlds in an amnesiac room. I kept asking questions.
“Where else can I find a phone?”
“The closest telephone switchboard is in the city of Papay, about an hour away by car,” she answered sharply. My despair must have been evident on my face, because she softened up and said, “Come on, Commissaire Vanel, don’t get all worried. Things will be okay. I’ll serve you a good cup of coffee and you’ll see things more serenely.”
I walked over to table 6, surprised at my own obedience. The sensation of not being alone in the room bothered me for a moment, but I got rid of the feeling very quickly. My brain was being heated up by too many questions and too many sensations at once.
After some coffee, I did feel better, much better. My skin, my limbs, and my muscles pleasantly relaxed. All my worries seemed light to me. I was filled with a sweet sense of well-being. I watched the hotel owner move around and she seemed to float as she walked. I had a gentle smile on my face.
I spent the rest of the morning in bed. The effort of the morning’s investigation had drained me. I felt a strange new sensation: my body was being emptied of its substance. I was drifting, carried along by a languor that only my bed could soothe. First I had to get rid of my fatigue, I thought. Once I was back in shape, I could get things under control and consider the situation. My first goal would be to fix my tires and find a phone. The only family I had was my younger brother Roland, with whom I shared an apartment. He wasn’t in the capital at the time I left. I had left him a note to tell him what was going on. I had to call him, reassure him. I also had to call the high command, tell them about my situation, and wait for orders. But nothing seemed urgent to me now. I might as well take advantage of my forced vacation. After all, I had a hard life. To have a career as a police officer in a corrupt environment meant coming close to death all the time. Colleagues and friends kept dropping around me every day. Sometimes I had the feeling I was fighting shadows. The law watched impotently as convicts got out after just a few days in jail. Only the high command made real decisions. A thankless, risky job. This rest might actually be good for me.