Chapter 38
This is what Owen learned.
When he started to study everything about èze to prepare for tonight—the topography and the history and the village—he spent a lot of time learning about Nietzsche.
Or, maybe he should say, relearning Nietzsche.
Owen had been introduced to his work in the philosophy course he took his junior year at UT-Austin, the smug TA reading aloud full passages from The Antichrist that went right over Owen’s head.
He’s not sure how much more he ingested this time around.
But there is no denying that he had to try.
They are synonymous with each other in a way—èze’s most famous resident and the medieval village that helped shape him.
The village that helped shape Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s meditation on mortality.
On the physical world and government and power. On forgiveness.
Nietzsche didn’t believe in forgiveness. He believed it was a sign of weakness to attempt forgiveness, to ask to be forgiven. How did Nietzsche articulate it? I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to yourself, however—how could I forgive that!
Those words have been running through Owen’s head, on a strange recurring loop, especially in moments like this. In moments when Owen bumps up against most wanting the opposite to be true.
That, at the end of this, there will be a way for them to forgive him. There will be a way for him to start to forgive himself. Only that involves undoing what he did wrong. It involves making the right choice.
Finally, making the right choice.
But which way is the right choice?
There is one camera feed that is not on the tablet Hannah and Nicholas have—a feed that only Owen has—a feed telling him a different story.
It’s a feed coming from the camera on that open tablet, letting him see what is happening in that back room in èze.
Owen watches Nicholas go down as Hannah bends over him. Owen watches as Nicholas slowly gets back up.
Hannah standing there beside him.
Owen looks at the clock. It’s been nineteen minutes. Nineteen minutes and eight seconds. Time is about to be up.
He clicks over to his encrypted calls app, hovers over the numbers waiting to be activated. The number for the US consulate in Nice, and the number to Grady in Austin, and the number to the municipal police.
Owen’s contact at the municipal police is standing fifty feet from the awning of the hotel. And the restaurant. And that back room. He has five of his most trusted officers with him. They’re ready to race in, ready to save them.
Except that he and Nicholas planned for this. Even for this. Nicholas’s words racing to the forefront of his mind. Stay the course. What did they agree to? At the moment you think you can’t, that’s the moment you most need to.
Owen zooms in on Hannah’s face—her beautiful face. She doesn’t look scared, standing there. She looks certain.
And yet it undoes him. Because it all comes down to Hannah, doesn’t it? For Owen, it has come down to Hannah since the moment he met her, since that first moment when she turned toward him. And his whole fucking life began again.
Stay the course.
But which way is the course?
Which way does he move now, if he cannot hear her tell him?