The Confidant
Praise for The Confidant
“The Confidant is an impressive blend of historical precision, high suspense, and sharp-sighted psychological truths. A gorgeous, captivating novel with brilliant storytelling. It’s a novel that will stay with me.”
—Amanda Hodgkinson, New York Times bestselling author of 22 Britannia Road
“Captivating and haunting, the passion and heartache absolutely leap off the page in Hélène Grémillon’s The Confidant. The first thing you’ll want to do after finishing is to flip to the first chapter and start reading it all over again, combing for overlooked clues.”
—Sarah Jio, author of Blackberry Winter and The Violets of March
“Hélène Grémillon tells her heartrending tale of human frailty, cruelty, and love in prose of subtle elegance, and her flawed, fascinating characters stayed with me long after I’d finished the book. This is poised and beautiful storytelling.”
—Margaret Leroy, author of The Soldier’s Wife
“Succumb to a very French story and allow yourself to be seduced by Hélène Grémillon’s serpentine tale of wartime passion and revenge. As the past intensifies its grip on a young woman’s present, shifting perspectives exert an irresistible pull. Direct, unsettling, and atmospheric.”
—Deborah Lawrenson, author of The Lantern
“The Confidant is a must read for anyone who loves intrigue. It will keep you guessing until the very last page—beautifully written, original, and thoroughly engaging.”
—Sandra Smith, translator of Suite Française
International praise
“A riveting story that is both thriller and historical tale. This first-time novelist has produced a highly mature text that displays an extraordinary mastery of narrative and a feel for suspense that is worthy of the best films.”
—Le Figaro Littéraire (France)
“Hélène Grémillon takes us into the heart of a family secret: unspoken love, hidden hatred, and revenge with dire consequences. A novel written in two time frames, with two voices, which rewards us twice over, by going straight to the heart.”
—Elle (Paris)
“This most assured first novel is structured like a series of matryoshka dolls; as we start reading, stories within stories are revealed until we are finally faced with the gem at the centre. Grémillon’s conclusion to what is both mystery story and romance is an absolute crackerjack.”
—The Age (Melbourne)
“Sensitively written, it is a suspenseful, absorbing tale about the power of history and how it plays on the present.”
—Herald on Sunday (Auckland)
“A complex plot, crystalline writing—Hélène Grémillon’s talent explodes in this first novel, as much in her historical precision as in the suspense that lasts until the final paragraph.”
—Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris)
“A truly compelling read.”
—Grazia (Australia)
“Exempt from judgment and full of wisdom, The Confidant examines men and women, our lives riddled with truth and falsehood, where love and fear are both criminal and redemptive.”
—Le Point (Paris)
“Step back in time with this intriguing French mystery. . . . Grémillon expertly builds the psychological suspense.”
—Courier Mail (Queensland)
“A novel about the complicity between history with a small ‘h’—the characters’ stories—and History with a capital ‘H.’ As in Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, nothing is more moving than to witness characters as castaways shipwrecked by History.”
—BSC News (France)
“The cinematic rhythm is thrilling. A triumph.”
—Paris Match Belgium (Paris)
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE CONFIDANT
Hélène Grémillon was born in France in 1977. She worked in journalism and advertising before becoming a full-time writer. The Confidant is her first novel and has been sold in twenty territories. She lives in Paris with singer-songwriter Julien Clerc and their child.
Alison Anderson is an American writer and translator based in Switzerland. Her translations include Amélie Nothomb’s Hygiene and the Assassin, J. M. G. Le Clézio’s Onitsha and Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa
Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Australia by The Text Publishing Company Pty Ltd 2012
Published in Penguin Books 2012
Copyright © Plon, 2010
Translation copyright © Alison Anderson, 2012
All rights reserved
Originally published in French as Le Confident by Hélène Grémillon in 2010 by Plon
First published in English by The Text Publishing Company Pty Ltd in 2012
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Grémillon, Hélène.
[Confident. English]
The confidant / Hélène Grémillon ; translated by Alison Anderson.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-60362-8
I. Anderson, Alison. II. Title.
PQ2707.R47C6613 2012
843’.92—dc23 2012028555
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.
Version_4
The past wears
its armoured breastplate
and blocks its ears
with the cotton of the wind.
No one will ever be able to
tear its secret away.
THE PREMONITION
Federico Garcia Lorca Gremillon
Contents
Praise
About the Au
thor
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
Paris, 1975
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgements
I got a letter one day, a long letter that wasn’t signed. This was quite an event, because I’ve never received much mail in my life. My letter box had never contained anything but useless brochures and postcards informing me that the-sea-was-warm or that the-snow-was-good, so I didn’t open it very often. Once a week, maybe twice in a gloomy week, when I hoped that a letter would change my life completely and utterly, like a telephone call can, or a trip on the métro, or closing my eyes and counting to ten before opening them again.
And then my mother died. And that was plenty, as far as changing my life went: your mother’s death, you can’t get much better than that.
I had never read any letters of condolence before. When my father died, my mother had spared me such funereal reading. All she did was show me the invitation to the awards ceremony for his medal. I can still remember that bloody ceremony, I had just turned thirteen three days earlier. There was a tall bloke shaking my hand, a smile on his face, but it was actually a grimace. His face was lopsided and when he spoke it was even worse.
‘It is infinitely deplorable that death was the outcome of such an act of bravery. Mademoiselle, your father was a courageous man.’
‘Is that what you say to all your war orphans? You think a feeling of pride will distract them from their sorrow? That’s very charitable of you, but forget it, I don’t feel sorrowful. And besides, my father was not a courageous man. Even the huge quantity of alcohol he consumed every day couldn’t help him. So let’s just say you’ve got the wrong man and leave it at that.’
‘This may surprise you, Mademoiselle Werner, but I insist it is Sergeant Werner—your father—that I am talking about. He volunteered to lead the way, the field was mined and he knew it. Whether you like it or not, your father distinguished himself and you must accept this medal.’
‘My father did not “distinguish himself”, you stupid man with your lopsided face. He committed suicide and you have to tell my mother he did. I don’t want to be the only one who knows, I want to be able to talk about it with her and with Pierre, too. You can’t keep a father’s suicide a secret.’
I often dream up conversations for myself, where I say what I am thinking; it’s too late but it makes me feel better. In actual fact, I didn’t go to the ceremony in honour of the veterans of the war in Indochina, and in actual fact I only ever said it once, other than in my own head—that my father had committed suicide—and that was to my mother, one Saturday, in the kitchen.
Saturday was the day we had chips and I was helping my mother peel the potatoes. It used to be Papa who helped her. He liked peeling and I liked to watch him. He was no more talkative when he was peeling than when he wasn’t peeling, but at least there was a sound coming from him and that felt good. You know I love you, Camille. I always had the same words accompany every scrape of the knife as it sliced: you know I love you, Camille.
But that Saturday other words accompanied the scrape of my knife: ‘Papa committed suicide, you knew that, didn’t you, Maman? That Papa committed suicide?’ The frying pan fell, shattering the floor tiles, and the oil splattered onto my mother’s rigid legs. Even though I cleaned frenetically for several days, our feet continued to stick, causing my words to grate in our ears: ‘Papa committed suicide, you knew that, didn’t you, Maman? That Papa committed suicide?’ To keep from hearing them, Pierre and I spoke more loudly—perhaps to mask Maman’s silence as well, for she had hardly spoken at all since that Saturday.
The kitchen tiles are still broken. I was reminded last week while I was showing Maman’s house to a couple who were interested. And if they turn into a buying couple, every time that interested couple looks at the big crack in the floor they will lament the prior owner’s carelessness. The tiles will be the first thing they’ll have to renovate, and they’ll be pleased to get down to work. At least my horrible outburst will have been good for something. They absolutely must buy the house—whether it’s this couple or another one makes no difference to me, but someone must buy it. I don’t want it and neither does Pierre: a place where the slightest memory reminds you of the dead is not a place where you can live.
When she came back from the ceremony for Papa, Maman showed me the medal. She told me that the guy who had given it to her had a lopsided face and she tried to imitate him, tried to laugh. Ever since Papa died, that was all she could do: try. Then she gave me the medal, squeezing my hands very tight and telling me that it was mine by right, and she began to cry; that was something she could do without trying. Her tears fell on my hands, but I pulled away from her abruptly; I could not stand to feel my mother’s pain in my body.
When I opened the first letters of condolence, my tears falling on my hands reminded me of Maman’s, and I let them fall, to see where they might have gone, the tears of this woman I had loved so much. I knew what the letters would have to say: that Maman had been an extraordinary woman, that the loss of a loved one is a terrible thing, that nothing is more wrenching than bereavement, etcetera, etcetera, so I didn’t need to read them. Every evening I divided the envelopes into two piles: on the right those with the sender’s name on the envelope, and on the left those without. And all I did was open the pile on the left and jump immediately to the signature to see who had written to me and who I would have to thank. In the end I didn’t thank a lot of people and nobody held it against me. Death forgives such lapses of courtesy.
The first letter from Louis was in the pile on the left. The envelope caught my attention even before I opened it: it was much thicker and heavier than the others. It was not the usual format for a letter of condolence.
It was handwritten, several pages long, unsigned.
Annie has always been a part of my life. I was two years old, just a few days short of my second birthday, when she was born. We lived in the same village—N.—and I often happened upon her when I wasn’t looking for her—at school, out on walks, at church.
Mass was a terrible ordeal, for I invariably had to put up with the same routine, stuck between my father and mother. The pews one occupied at church reflected one’s temperament: fraternal company for the gentler children among us, parental for the more recalcitrant. In this seating plan, which the entire village adopted by tacit consent, Annie was an exception, poor girl, for she was an only child, and I say ‘poor girl’ for she complained of it all the time. Her parents were already old when she came along, and her birth was hailed as such a miracle that not a day went by without them saying ‘all three of us’, in that way, whenever the opportunity arose, while Annie was sorry not to hear ‘all four or five or six of us’ . . . With every mass this unavoidable situation seemed to become all the more trying for her as she sat alone in her pew.
As for myself, while nowadays I hold boredom to be the best breeding ground for the imagin
ation, in those days I had ordained that the best breeding ground for boredom was mass. I would never have thought that anything could happen to me at mass. Until that Sunday.
From the moment of the opening hymns a deep malaise came over me. Everything seemed off-balance—the altar, the organ, Christ on his cross.
‘Stop breathing like that, Louis, everyone can hear you!’
My mother’s scolding, added to the malaise that would not leave me, called to mind a phrase I had tucked away, words my father had murmured to her one evening: ‘Old Fantin has breathed his last.’
My father was a doctor and he knew every expression there was for announcing a person’s death. He used them one after the other, whispering into my mother’s ear. But like all children I had a gift for picking up on what adults murmured to each other, and I had heard them all: ‘close one’s umbrella’, ‘die in his boots’, ‘give up the ghost’, ‘die a beautiful death’—I liked that last one, I imagined it did not hurt as much.
And what if I were dying?
After all, one never knows what dying is about until one dies for good.
And what if my next breath proved to be my last? Terrified, I held my breath and turned to the statue of Saint Roch, imploring him; he had cured the lepers, so surely he could save me.
It was out of the question for me to return to mass on the following Sunday, this time death would not pass me by, I was convinced of that. But when I found myself in the pew we occupied every week with my family, the malaise I was dreading did not descend upon me. On the contrary, I was overcome by a particularly sweet feeling, and I rediscovered with pleasure the smell of wood that was so peculiar to that church: everything was as it should be. My gaze was back where it belonged, focussed on Annie, although all I could see of her was her hair.
Suddenly I understood that it was her absence the previous week that had thrown me into such horrible turmoil. She must have been lying down at home, with a facecloth on her forehead to calm her spasms, or she had been painting, protected from any abrupt movement. Annie was subject to violent fits of asthma, and we all envied her because this meant she was exempt from the activities we found unpleasant.