Chapter 18
If Nathan were more confident about wine, he would have bought a nice bottle of red. But, convinced every French kindergartener is schooled on the fine art of wine selection, he opted for something more in his purview.
He went to a little hole-in-the-wall shop famous among American expats for its eclectic collection of homeland goods. Betty Crocker brownie mixes, bags of Hershey’s chocolate chips, and bottles of ranch dressing sat alongside boxes of crunchy taco shells and jarred salsa. The shop was small with an awkward floor plan and the items seemed shelved without any obvious organizing theme. When he finally found what he was looking for, a bored teenager rang up his single item, and Nathan headed for the home of his French friends.
Marc and Annette lived with their children on the other side of the Swiss-French border. While Switzerland was part of Europe’s free-trade Schengen-zone, it was not a member of the European Union, which meant it could preserve its distinct currency and, in theory, set its own economic and social policies. In practice, it meant having the pleasure of designing exclusive bills, but the Swiss franc was so tightly intertwined with the euro, it could hardly be seen as an independent currency. And although Switzerland had the theoretical freedom of adopting or ignoring European policies, in order to preserve the European free trade on which the country’s ecosystem depended, the Swiss government necessarily adopted nearly every policy passed by the EU. But despite being landlocked by Europe on all sides, the air of independence permeated their alpine-island nation with the crispness of the thin altitude of the Alps.
The strong Swiss economy meant that border cities like Geneva had a substantial commuter differential. Swiss jobs were highly sought after, but Swiss rent and groceries were avoided. Marc and Annette used their Swiss francs from Swiss jobs to renovate a small farmhouse in a hamlet near the foot of the Saleve, a mountain with a broad plateau on top that provided excellent scenic outlooks over the Swiss city.
Nathan took the bus to the Swiss border at Croix-de-Rozon, then walked on foot the last couple kilometers to their farmyard gate. It From the road he could see the dim flickering light of a kitchen fire playing on shadows of paper snowflakes taped in the windows. There was no snow to speak of, and the late afternoon was already turning to dusky night when Annette opened the warm kitchen door and bid him enter.
The bereft American felt like he’d walked into a storybook home, dimly lit with candles and an actual fire in the hearth next to the kitchen table. Lights hadn’t been turned on for the night, and the shadows of fire and darkness played over the room. The air was filled with the smell and sound of home—the giggles of children playing and a stew cooking on the stove. In the hall, where he removed his coat and shoes was the perfume of wood fireplace and warm woolen sweaters. Annette gave him a pair of felted wool house slippers, a custom he wasn’t familiar with, and brought him into the kitchen. Two small girls with the golden curls of Raphael’s cherubim played with wooden building blocks in the corner of the kitchen. At a glance, they seemed to be lying them out like a game of dominos.
Annette invited Nathan to sit at the kitchen table, a rugged farmhouse affair of thick boards with decades of scrapes and knife marks, and apologized that she must host him from the stove where she was in the middle of preparing dinner.
“I don’t know how to pick a wine here—” Nathan said, holding out his gift for the hostess, “—so I brought you something I was much more confident about.”
Annette took the purchase.
“Peanut butter?” she said, laughingly, “I’ve heard about it from American sitcoms, but I have no idea what to do with it!”
Nathan gestured to the girls, “When I was their age, peanut butter and jelly was a breakfast staple. I must have made myself a PB&J every morning from when I was 6 well into university.”
“Jam with peanut butter? This sounds terrible!” she chuckled, a warm and nonjudgmental laugh. “But we’ll try it. Something to drink? A glass of wine?” Annette spoke with a heavy French accent but her English was perfect.
Nathan took a simple glass of water.
“Marc called just before you arrived. He is late. Usually he does not have long hours when he is in Geneva, but—” she threw up her hands, “of course the evening we expect a guest is the exception.”
“I don’t mind waiting. In fact, it’s just as well. I mostly needed to talk to you anyway.”
“Me?”
The two girls were having a disagreement in the corner. Nathan couldn’t determine from their French what the tiff was about, but the younger, no older than three, was clearly not following the rules as the older had set them out and, convinced she was in the right and frustrated at her inability to fight back on equal ground, started to emit high-pitched protests between sobs.
Their mother momentarily forgot her guest and went over to settle the confrontation. Annette ended the dispute with directing the older girl to a chair near the sink. The younger, she hugged, but spoke to with equal seriousness. When order, but perhaps not yet harmony, was restored, she returned to Nathan.
“I am sorry. They can play house together for hours, but there is always a dispute about who must play the father. Louise, being older, always tries to convince Marie it is her duty as the subordinate.” Annette laughed, “A marriage is doomed to a fast and miserable death when power struggles begin to play.”
“Perhaps Louise should play the father?”
“Yes, Louise is two years older, so the role would be appropriate for her. But she is also much more persuasive. I sometimes feel bad for Marie, but she must learn to stand up for herself.”
Nathan looked at the older daughter on her chair. Her legs still didn’t touch the floor and her arms were crossed hard over her chest, probably mimicking her adult mentors, but not folded into themselves as adults do. He wanted to laugh at the exaggerated drama of her expression and posture, but he held back. When she saw Nathan looking at her, she twisted toward the window to examine the white paper snowflakes still taped up from Christmas. Nathan smiled, remembering his own sister’s determined stubbornness in their play as children.
Annette was already back at the stove, stirring a large orange pot. “What is it you needed to discuss, then?” she asked, keeping pace with their original conversation, as if she were quite used to jumping between topics and distractions.
“Did you hear about the small boy that—” Nathan realized the conversation may not be appropriate for the girls and glanced at the younger one, now talking to a doll she was arranging among what Nathan realized was the floorplan of a house, made with the blocks.
“They speak almost no English,” Annette said, understanding his concern. “Don’t worry about them.”
“—the small boy that was murdered at Plainpalais a few days ago.” She nodded gravely. “I’m concerned the investigators are charging the wrong person.”
“I see.”
Nathan told her about how he’d become involved in the initial investigation, and how he had met the nanny. He told her about the monster the girl had mentioned, and how it was dismissed by the inspector as a desperate but flimsy plea in an open and shut case. Annette laughed when he described the posters he’d put up, but grew solemn when he explained what had come of his efforts to follow through with the lead they had provided.
“You probably thought Geneva was a safe city!” she half-joked. “I suppose you are safer than in an American city where everyone has guns. But we have monsters!” He smiled and shrugged off the cliché.
Then he told her about meeting William’s doctor, and the problems the man had faced with the horned beast, which Nathan assumed to be the same monster.
Annette nodded, stirring the pot without seeming to pay any attention to the motion.
“Dr. Wollstonecraft doesn’t know William was killed by anyone in costume. The police have not released that information to the public, because the nanny’s testimony isn’t being taken seriously. People who could have been frightened by Dr. Wollstonecraft’s harasser don’t know that this person may have graduated his attacks from fear-mongering to actual violence.”
“To murder,” Annette said, her thumb and middle finger pinching her lower lip together.
Nathan nodded.
“Other people could be in danger.”
“Other children. Wollstonecraft’s clients are primarily small children. If this beast of a human thinks the doctor’s stance is morally wrong, William is unlikely to be the only target.”
“All those children are carriers for what this person sees as dangerous science.”
“Exactly. The problem is, I can’t legally share this information with anyone. I am under a non-disclosure agreement with the Genevan police department. Even the conversation we’re having here is beyond my legal privilege.”
Nathan involuntarily looked around the room and out the windows into the black night. He knew it was silly—nothing outside would be visible from the warm and dimly lit kitchen. But it was a reflexive act he couldn’t stop. Annette noticed the action and moved to the windows. To Nathan’s surprise, she opened the window with the handle latch on the side like a door, leaned out, and pulled closed the shutter first on one side, then the other. Then she shut the window again. When Annette turned, she laughed at Nathan’s expression. “I think in the US you use shutters only for decoration. But in France, where nighttime in the middle ages was for marauders and pillagers, shutters were to keep people safe, and not just from bad weather. They have been passed down the generations since.”
She’d no sooner closed the window when something stirred near the table, disturbed by the rush of cool air she’d let in. Nathan realized a small baby had been sleeping in a cot so peacefully, he hadn’t even noticed it. It could have been one of the girls’ dolls and he would have been none the wiser. He suddenly recalled his conversation with Helene at the Chinese restaurant, about Annette expecting her third baby and was surprised it had already arrived. Helene must have had her timeline off. Annette went to the Moses basket and picked the tiny baby up, cooing softly. She sat in a nearby dining chair and, turning slightly to one side, arranged the baby to nurse.
Nathan had few friends with kids or babies, but watching Annette move so fluidly from making dinner, to mediating for the girls, to nursing her baby, all while continuing an adult conversation, he was impressed with how naturally she transitioned between tasks.
“But what could you want from me?” she asked, the baby now settled, her top gracefully concealing enough to be modest and her attention back with Nathan.
Nathan explained what he was looking for and his hope that she had the connections he needed.
“Non.” Annette said firmly, shifting away from him and sticking her chin up, making her nose point straight toward the ceiling. Her arms still held the baby, but if they had been vacant, he was sure she would have crossed them over her chest. He was surprised how quickly and sternly she refused to help. “Absolument non. The only person I know is not the type of businessman you would want to be working with.”
“All I need is a photo printed on the cover of his tabloid. Surely a scoop like this, the actual image of the mask of the murderer of one of Geneva’s royals, would be worth its weight in gold. He’ll be the only one with the scoop. And such a sensational scoop it will be. This is hardly a favor!”
“Peut-être. But he’ll know what it’s worth to you. He’ll sense that you need this and will bargain against your need. You smell of guilt as strongly as a ripe Roquefort. I don’t know why you’re so attached to this project or need to solve this particular case so badly, but if your need is so obvious to me, it will stink of opportunity to him.”
Nathan sighed and brought both hands up to his face as if to wash away his disappointment. He slowly dragged his hands downward , pulling his cheeks with his palms and stretching the skin around his eyes.
“I do need this. And I really don’t care about the cost. It doesn’t matter anymore. What have I to lose? I’m a single guy with no family or secrets. What can he do to me?”
Annette gave a humorless laugh. “Just because you’re a bit broken down now, doesn’t mean you can’t be more broken. Be careful what you say.”
They sat in silence for a moment. The baby had fallen asleep. His mother rearranged her top but continued to cradle it in her arms, softly patting his bum and back.
“I think it is a very bad decision,” she said. “A person does not voluntarily put themselves at the mercy of another. Even for a good reason.”
“I’m not sure why you would think me so weak, Annette,” Nathan countered, brushing a small wrinkle out of the white tablecloth in front of him. “I’m not as vulnerable as that.”
“I do not think you are so weak. But I think M. Bonnet is that terrible.”
Nathan rolled his eyes.
“You should listen to me,” Annette said. “I’ve been lucky to avoid much interaction with him personally. But the stories people have told make my skin crawl.”
“I’ll be fine,” Nathan smiled. He had seen too often how a person might bolster their reputation as bloodthirsty and ruthless by the help of the grapevine and gossip. Now that he knew most of Annette’s concern was borne from third-[arty sources, he was even less worried than before.
“You will not be fine. And I won’t be part of this. I know you need to get the drawing published. But this isn’t the way.”
“I don’t need your help. I thought you might be able to introduce me or shorten my query time. But these places have websites too. I can email the paper and go the long way. I need to get this printed, and will do it with or without your assistance. Although I wish you would help me.”
Annette pressed her lips together and looked at him as if he were a darling puppy, but one which had peed on the carpet and walked through it multiple times. She gave a heavy sigh and stood, returning the baby to its basket and keeping her back to him. “It’s a very bad idea,” she said, returning to the stove.
As if on cue, the door to the kitchen opened and Marc entered from stage left. The two girls shrieked with joy and ran to greet him.
Chapter 19
Empty bowls of stew sat in front of them, crumbs of bread dusting the table like glitter from a child’s craft set. Annette pushed back her chair and stood as she started to gather up the used dishes and bring them to the sink. Mark dusted the crumbs from his portion of the table into his hand and tipped them into his bowl just as she lifted it away. Because the children’s English was still primitive, neither Marc or Annette had been guarded or avoiding the topic of Nathan’s current work. Nathan couldn’t be specific about many things, and had kept to public knowledge and his own speculation, but there had still been plenty to discuss.
After Annette had cleared the table, she called the girls to put them to bed. They gave goodnight kisses to their father and smiled shyly at Nathan as they left the kitchen. “Continue your conversation,” Annette said, “I will return shortly." Annette looked at the moses basket next to Marc, as if she were unsure if she should bring the infant with her.
“Leave him,” Marc said, reading her thought. “He sleeps fine just so.”
Annette nodded and brought the girls out, closing the kitchen door behind her.
“Humans are designed to weather hardship,” Marc said, readjusting in his seat. “To some extent, maybe we even require it to develop properly. But evil. There is nothing in us designed to deal with real evil—we don’t have a natural mechanism to respond to a force that acts on us with the intent to destroy us, purely for the purpose of destroying us.
“When I first joined the WHO, I was sent to Sarajevo. Many fight because they are protecting a home, or their tribe, or the lad next to them. But war attracts other bad actors. People who come to the battleground because they like the blood. They enjoy the chaos and terror. In Sarajevo there was a place called Sniper alley. It was the clearest demonstration of malevolence I’ve ever witnessed. This street was a natural choke point in the city–the main drag of the whole city between two mountains, east to west. Crack-shot riflemen would come to Sarajevo and set up shop on a floor of some abandoned office building along that alley, and try to take out as many civilians as they could before they were run out. They weren’t picking off officers in combat or soldiers. They were doing nothing more than killing the poor mec stuck in the city who had no other wish in life than to get to the food or water on the other side of that street. That was malevolence–” he said, leaning back in his chair, one hand flat on the table, a point of balance on the chair that now pushed back on two legs. “The unpredictable evil on that one street wreaked more havoc on Sarajevo than the rotting death of the bubonic plague in any village I’ve ever worked in since. Of course, comparable to the population, they were doing fairly limited damage. Put next to the spread of bubonic plague, it was nothing. But those snipers were acting out evil. This is the spirit which humanity is not built to handle. This is the spirit that demands a paradigm of the world that includes both good and malevolence, because it is more than Darwinian survival.
“People continue to spout off about the moral superiority of not having children. I’m not sure if they think they’ll get rid of all those snipers by getting rid of all people. Sacrifice all human beauty and ingenuity for those few evil actors–”
Marc reached out and put a hand on his infant son’s swaddled chest as he slept in the cradle. The baby sighed and continued to sleep. “It is a leap of faith to have children. It always has been. Now that it is more than ever a choice, perhaps it is even more so a gesture of hope. Can I guarantee their safety or the quality of the world we will leave to them? Or that they won't be the ones to cause more terror? –I hope I can parent them better than that. But I cannot promise them any of these things. But this is no way to act for the future.”
“Don’t you get depressed, when you’re out there, in some disaster area?” Nathan asked, “Knowing that another disaster is just around the corner? Yeah, you saved some kids from bubonic plague, but what are the odds they survive malnourishment and malaria?”
“What I have seen, in overwhelming favor of hope, is that humanity has the ability to overcome great odds. Not just survive, but to thrive. It is cliche, I know,” Marc threw up his hands and grinned, “but clichés are born of truth somewhere. Somehow, people continue to overcome the forces that would have our species wiped out by viruses and natural disasters and chaos. Even Evil. What I see as hindering our progress is man’s inability to do what he knows to be right. Nature’s a bitch to live with—she catches you when you’re squatting over a ditch with your pants down and bites you in the olives. But we learned to build outhouses and engineer indoor plumbing. Now, not only are we safe to shit without snake bites, but we have hot water to wash our hands! We can handle her. It’s human’s malevolence that is the true cancer to the soul. Societies, eaten out by corruption and dishonesty, are what keep certain countries from clawing their way into progress. We can engineer our resources into an abundance our grandfathers would never have dreamed. We can organize ourselves to live in peace, on top of each other, in cities that—by all accounts—are far too crowded to be peaceful, because some societies have succeeded in establishing order. But even with this abundance–”
Marc had been stroking his infant son’s swaddled chest as he spoke, now he stopped talking and put the back of a finger against the sleeping babe’s warm cheek. The sleeping baby in the Moses basket opened it’s mouth, then closed it and suckled in its sleep. Marc looked up, put both hands flat on top of the table, as if preparing to stand, “We heat dessert, non?” His French accent returned by storm as if to break the conversation. “Annette is sometimes an unconventional cook, but I think you will not complain about what she serves after a meal.”
Nathan looked over at Annette, who had returned to the warm kitchen and started tidying dirty dishes while Marc was monologuing. She smirked and shook her head in mock insult. “Marc thinks that because I do not cook like his mother I am unconventional. Of course you will stay. And we will have a digestif. Marc, you will get the glasses.”
Before Nathan could protest, schnapps glasses were pulled out and an elegantly simple bit of cake dusted with snow-like sugar was placed in the center of the table. Marc excused himself to ‘powder his nose’, he joked, and left Nathan and Annette alone. Nathan had no other wish than to stay in that warm farmhouse kitchen filled with the smells of homemade dinner and the sounds of a family retiring for the night. There was something overwhelmingly attractive about the cozy chaos of the family home–a bit messy in the corners with childrens toys and unwashed dishes.
Annette was nursing the baby again, and Nathan took the opportunity to finally ask what he had come for.
“Helene said you worked for the Genevan Tribune,” he tested.
“Yes,” she smiled down at the boy in her arms, his face covered by a muslin cloth as he suckled, “but of course I am on maternity leave.”
“—but you still have connections with the paper.”
“Naturally.”
Nathan explained what he needed, pulling a plastic sleeve with a single leaf of paper from the forgotten bag at his feet.
Annette took the paper with her free hand and studied it.
“I see. I am not sure I could get this to the right people at the Tribune, but I have a good friend on the news desk. They cover local news events. My friend might be able to get what you're after. But I can’t promise anything,” she said, laying the sheet face down on the table in front of her. “I’ll try my best.” Marc was just returning to the room.
“Ah. So you were actually after my wife after all,” Marc joked as he sat down next to Annette. He noticed the paper in front of her. “What’s this?”
Nathan explained.
“But if you’re under contract with the inspector in Geneva,” Annette said, “doesn’t this breach your agreement? You could have some trouble.”
“None of this is information I got from them. It is personal only. According to the inspector, it is completely unrelated, if he even believes that it actually happened.”
Marc nodded.
“Put it away,” Annette said, handing it to her husband. “Put it under my laptop before the girls see it.” He rose and took the plastic sleeve over to a corner of the kitchen counter where a silver laptop was open.
“Digestive?” Marc asked at the table, not waiting for an answer. He brought an elegant glass bottle filled with a caramel-brown liquid to the table.
“I would have a teasane” Annette said, nodding toward the glasses.
Marc set the glasses on the table and turned to fill the electric kettle with water at the sink. While he prepared his wife an herbal tea, Nathan looked back to Annette.
“Do you miss your work, when you’re home?” The baby boy was now sleeping contentedly in her arms. She’d burped him but hadn’t moved to return him to the bassinet, happy to let him cuddle.
She shook her head, a smirk breaking out as if trying to hold back a laugh at the silly question. “Parenting is much harder than anything I have to do at the office,” she said, “but at least here I am the chief operating officer. It would cause our life too much stress to have two full careers with three children. But I enjoy the balance of working alongside my family duties. None of my bosses at work ever throw up on me or shriek at me when they don’t get what they want,” she laughed, “I love my family but it’s also a nice break to go to an office. I’m the boss at home, and it’s important work. But an office gives me a sense of individual productivity which isn’t tied to my role in the family.”
“Helene said you turned down a job in Paris at Le Monde.”
“She did,” Marc chimed in, “If it weren’t for raising my pups, she could have been a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist!”
“I might still be!” She turned back to Nathan, her voice more serious, “I did turn down a job at Le Monde. But it was nothing glamorous. And besides, we’d have had to move to Paris. I never wanted that life. Perhaps later when our family is older. But—” she gestured to the room around them, “this was my fathers house. He built it. I didn’t ever feel the need to wander about like a vagabond. I like my home. I was lucky enough to be born someplace lovely, surrounded by good people and close enough to all the culture and nightlife that I never have the time to see. This department of France is the best. Why would I want to take a job in a big city where I couldn’t afford a home half so pretty, without any friends, and hours away from the little family I have left?”
Nathan didn’t have an answer. He was used to the American spirit of adventure that often drove kids to new cities for university or jobs when they came of age. Not everyone left their hometown, but it was certainly a biased ideal that made people sometimes feel they weren’t an adult until they’d left their home and moved to a new state.
“I was offered the job a year after our eldest was born. Why would I leave then? My mother lives down the street. Marc’s parents are one town over. And Marc likes his work at the WHO.”
Then, something changed in her face. “Ah. I see.” She looked directly at Nathan, as if she had suddenly recognized a shadow that had been hidden behind his questions, that he hadn’t intended for her to perceive. He felt exposed, as if her motherly eyes had some power of discernment, honed when her children lied about doing their chores, or snuck chocolate from the pantry.
“Helene loves her work, no?” Nathan shifted on the wooden bench where many a child had been scrutinized before him. “—but there’s always one more disaster waiting beyond the current tragedy.”
Nathan didn’t deny or defend the discussion he had had with Helene that she had somehow divined. Marc saved him from further probing by setting an antique cup and saucer in front of his wife, breaking the focus Annette had centered on him.
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Author update :
Well, now that we’re done with those pesky resolutions, and back to real life —