Forty-Two

There were forty-two of them in a room that held a hundred.

Étienne had arrived at twenty to eight, because he always arrives twenty minutes early and has never learnt to do otherwise, and had then driven round for forty minutes looking for a space, which cancelled the early start and put him in a bad mood. The courthouse stood at the end of a square, grey stone, with steps that were too high and a handrail added on one side. There was a security arch and two men in uniform making people empty their pockets.

Inside, it smelt of wax and paper.

They had been seated in the public gallery, on the left, and given a form to fill in with name, occupation, address. Étienne wrote heating engineer, then hesitated, then added self-employed, director, and felt ridiculous.

Around him: a woman in her sixties in a navy cardigan who had brought her knitting and did not take it out; a boy with a site rucksack, very young, looking at the ceiling; a man in a golf shirt explaining loudly to his neighbour the difference between the assize court and the criminal court, in the tone of a man explaining the sea to a sailor; a woman with a hospital badge still clipped to her lapel; another, small, in a windcheater, holding her bag in both hands on her knees as if on a night train.

Forty-two people whose Friday had been taken from them.

At ten past nine a man came in wearing a black robe without ermine, and everybody stood up without knowing why; he gestured for them to sit. He said he was the presiding judge of the assize court, that his name was Alain Trénel, and that he was going to explain precisely what was about to happen, because he had found that it was never explained enough.

He explained it for twenty-five minutes, and Étienne, who had spent his life listening to people explain simple things badly, was surprised.

This was not an ordinary trial, the judge said. It was an appeal. A man had already been tried once by an assize court, in another department, and convicted. He had exercised his right of appeal, and the law required that everything be tried again, entirely, from the beginning, as if nothing had been done.

— I insist on this point, said the judge. You are not here to check the work of your predecessors. You are not a review board. You are trying this case for the first time. What another court decided binds you in no way at all, and I shall ask you, so far as is humanly possible, to forget it.

Étienne noted forget in his head, with a question mark.

On appeal, the judge went on, the court is made up of three professional judges and nine jurors. Twelve people who will vote, and whose voices carry exactly the same weight.

— Mine is worth yours, he said. That is not a politeness. It is the law, and you will see that it is true.

Then he explained the draw. Names would be taken from an urn, one by one. At each name, the accused, through his counsel, and the prosecution could challenge without giving any reason: four challenges for the defence, three for the advocate-general. Challenged, you went home. Not challenged, you went up and sat down.

— Do not look for meaning in a challenge, said the judge. There is not always any. People challenge an occupation, a look, a hunch. Nobody will think the less of you for being set aside, least of all me.

The accused was not there. Étienne looked for him and did not find him, and understood later that they bring him in afterwards.

The draw began at a quarter to ten.

It was slower than he had expected. The clerk drew a slip, unfolded it, read out a name and an occupation, and then three or four seconds passed during which forty-one people did not breathe and one person stood up.

— Madame Kermarrec, Sylvie, food-processing worker.

The small woman in the windcheater stood up clutching her bag, waited three seconds that must have felt long to her, and went up. Étienne saw that she was shaking.

— Monsieur Vasnier, Patrick, estate agent.

— Challenged, said a woman's voice, on the left, without standing.

The man in the golf shirt, because it was him, stayed on his feet two seconds too long. He gave a small laugh to show it made no difference to him, and left by the back, letting the door bang harder than he needed to.

— Madame Aubrit, Denise, retired.

The woman in the navy cardigan put her knitting away in her bag, stood, smoothed her skirt. Nothing came. She went up and sat down next to the previous one as though the seat were hers by right.

A man in his fifties, Monsieur Delaroche, followed without anyone catching his occupation. Then two women were challenged one after the other, and the defence counsel said “challenged” the second time with a second's hesitation that turned heads.

— Monsieur Bouhafs, Tarek, maintenance technician.

The boy with the rucksack stood up all at once, as if waking.

After that it ran on: a school nurse, a man with a straight back who climbed the steps without touching the rail, then two more challenges, one from each side.

Étienne began to hope he would be challenged. It was not fear, it was arithmetic: the 8th for the bakery, the fourteen service calls, Charlot. His mouth was dry. He told himself that a self-employed tradesman with a two-man business would be thrown out at once, that nobody wanted a man who was going to spend thirteen days thinking about his jobs.

— Monsieur Mazière, Étienne, heating engineer.

He stood up.

He looked straight ahead, at the back wall, because he did not know where one looks at such a moment. He counted in his head, one, two, three, and he had reached four when the judge said:

— Thank you, monsieur. Please take your seat.

He went up. The steps of the jury box were wooden and made a noise. The clerk wrote something, and Étienne sat down in the place he was shown, the third in the upper row, against the panelling.

It was as he settled in that he saw the small card slipped into the groove of the desk in front of him, printed in black figures.

Seven.