Once she’d pointed out this aspect of her husband’s character, I could discern it in the photographs. René was always in the background, a strange and not entirely convincing little smile on his face, as if he were embarrassed to be there; more a shadow than a man. Once again, she told me about René’s passion for his work. He had adored the RATP. He knew every story about the metro stations; nothing excited him more than line extensions. The day they announced that Line 7 would go all the way to Villejuif … that had been his moon landing. According to Madeleine, the source of this rectilinear obsession could be traced directly back to his childhood. She repeated the anecdote about him having to hide in a cinema, stressing that this had happened on many occasions. He had grown up with the terror of always having to hide, never sleeping in the same place, his guts twisted in fear. In the end, his mother had been arrested after being denounced by a member of her own network. She had died soon afterwards, probably while being tortured; but that was only a theory. His family had never been able to find out the truth. Madeleine felt certain that it was during this disjointed, unsettled childhood that René’s love of the straight line had been born. An odd theory, but not implausible. The metro is, after all, the path from which one can never stray. It is the reassuring journey par excellence; an antidote to all wanderings and hunts.

Unsurprisingly, René hated change. Their life together was marked by regular rhythms and familiar settings. Every summer, they would go on holiday to the same place: a campsite in Vichy. ‘For its thermal spas,’ she made clear, having guessed from the look on my face that I associated that city with wartime collaboration. I did think it strange that a man who had lost his mother during the war would want to spend all his holidays there. The more she told me about her husband, and his taste for the predictable, the more disconcerting I found it. There is something fantastical about ordinary life. Furthermore, most psychopaths lead existences as orderly as a Bach concerto. I didn’t share this insight with Madeleine, of course, but she seemed happy that I found her husband interesting. It was as if I were offering him some sort of posthumous glory.

1. 6. It’s incredible how well black and white suits certain situations; it emphasises the colourlessness of some occasions.

23

Although Madeleine sometimes appeared to be roaming through a parallel world, lost in some unimaginable sensation from her past, she looked me straight in the eyes when she told me: ‘René was a good husband and a good father, but the man I loved most was called Yves. I met him when I was twenty-two, and for three years we had a wonderful relationship. But then he suddenly left me. He went to live in the United States. I was in agony. That was the most painful period of my life …’ Abruptly she stopped speaking. Some stories have to end that way, as if guillotined by emotion. I didn’t know what to say. Naturally I wanted to question her more about this man, to understand what lay behind their separation, but above all I felt moved. She had spoken about him with such intensity. And I was touched by her trust in me. I was a stranger, yet she was revealing to me the most heart-rending part of her life.