Page 104 of Where the Snakes Sleep

Madness would mean something happened to him.

A break. A disease.

He has simply become comfortable.

Comfortable with dishonesty.

Comfortable with other people paying the price for his ambition.

Comfortable deciding that if a law obstructs him, the law is foolish; if a colleague objects, the colleague is weak; if a person becomes inconvenient, then their inconvenience is a moral failure rather than his.

There was no descent, only repetition. Something terrible done once and survived. Then done twice. Then enough times that it became ordinary.

* * *

21 August 2002

Nadia came to me today. She closed the laboratory door before speaking. I have never seen her frightened before. Angry, yes. Frustrated frequently. Exhausted almost constantly.

But not frightened.

She asked if I knew about the accounts. I pretended not to understand, but then she stared at me for so long that I became ashamed, and said, “Alberte, please.”

I hate those two words now.

She had found discrepancies between materials leaving Le Mas and the projects supposedly receiving them. Payments routed strangely. Records altered after the fact.

Things I already suspected. Things I had carefully avoided arranging into one coherent picture.

She asked whether Henri was selling research materials privately. I said I did not know. That was technically true, though it was also cowardice.

She said she intended to keep copies, and that frightened me more than anything else.

I told her to be careful.

She asked, “Of Henri?”

I could not answer.

Before she left, she mentioned her son, Camille. He is seven now.

How has so much time passed?

Nadia said she cannot risk something happening to her because her son needs her. I nearly told her to leave Le Mas tonight. Instead, I told her we would speak again tomorrow.

I despise myself for that.

* * *

4 January 2003

Henri knows someone is copying records.

He asked me directly, and I lied. He knew I was lying. Still, he poured us wine, and we drank together beside the fire as though we were still the men we had been in 1978. At one point he said, “You would tell me if someone here intended to betray me.”

I asked what he would do if someone did betray him. He smiled almost sadly and said, “I would hope they remembered how much I had given them before they decided to take from me.”

I could not sleep beside him afterward, so I came here instead. He called twice, but I did not answer.