Patrick Casati’s fatal swim

Patrick Casati’s fatal swim is the last time Hacine Bouali sees him alive: after the festivities, Patrick walks to the lake, enters the water, and swims into the darkness. Hacine watches from shore, unable to see what happens once Patrick disappears. The death is not explained as a deliberate act or an accident; its meaning arrives later, when Anthony tells Hacine that his father drowned in the lake exactly two years earlier. The scene’s obscurity is central to its force: Hacine witnesses the disappearance, but not its completion, and leaves carrying an object that links him to the man’s final night.

Setting and Approach

The scene unfolds as the celebration falls away behind the two men. Patrick walks quickly despite being drunk, and Hacine initially struggles to keep pace. They move south along the shore, at a distance of twenty or thirty yards from one another, with the noise of the festivities dwindling to a murmur. Patrick’s steady progress gives the walk an unsettling purpose, though the narration does not establish where he intends to go or what he means to do.

After about ten minutes they reach the end of the beach, where sand gives way to mud, rushes, brambles, and tall grass. Only then does Hacine look back and register how far they have come. Patrick sits on a flat rock facing the lake while Hacine approaches through the vegetation and watches. The distance, darkness, and sparse sounds leave Hacine observing rather than speaking to him; the scene gives no indication that the two men have agreed to meet or that Patrick knows he is being followed.

The Swim and Disappearance

Patrick appears to nod off, his head dropping onto his chest, then wakes again. Still muttering, he removes his shoes, clothes, socks, and underwear. He cautiously wades into the water until it reaches his waist, floats on his back, and then begins swimming away from shore. The sequence moves from a pause on the rock to an irreversible departure into the lake, but it does not disclose Patrick’s thoughts or give a reason for his decision.

Hacine stands to follow Patrick’s progress. He can make out the swimmer’s pale arms for a short time, then glimpses a whitish band before the figure vanishes against the water and night. Patrick’s disappearance from view is the only immediate evidence Hacine has of what has happened. The narration does not show a rescue attempt or establish the precise moment of death; it leaves the outcome suspended in the darkness that prevents Hacine from seeing farther.

Hacine’s Response

At the rock, Hacine finds Patrick’s clothes and belongings. He calls out twice, the second time in a childish manner, but the calls do not reassure him. He waits a long time, scanning the water. Although he would like to leave, he cannot bring himself to go at once; an inexplicable hope holds him there. That delay marks the difference between simply witnessing Patrick swim away and remaining at the shore after he has vanished.

Hacine searches the clothes and finds no watch or wallet, only the clothes and a hunting knife. He slips the knife into his belt and leaves through the woods toward the road. The narration states that he has nothing to feel guilty about, while also recording his sense that he has the soul of a killer and that the thought does not displease him. His response is therefore not presented as a confession that he caused Patrick’s death: the account supplies no such evidence. Instead, it places the taking of the knife beside Hacine’s troubling self-recognition, leaving his moral relation to the event unsettled.

Confirmation and Significance

On his way back, Hacine thinks about Patrick and Patrick’s son. The connection between the swimmer and Anthony’s father is confirmed later, when Anthony tells Hacine that his father died exactly two years earlier. Asked what happened, Anthony says that Patrick drowned; when Hacine asks whether it was in the lake, Anthony confirms that it was. Hacine remembers. The exchange turns the earlier disappearance into a death known to both men, while making clear that Anthony is telling Hacine something Hacine already witnessed in part.

The later conversation does not fill in the missing moment or settle Patrick’s intention. Instead, it changes the status of what Hacine saw: the indistinct swimmer, the unanswered calls, and the clothes left on the rock are now understood as the circumstances surrounding Patrick’s drowning. The hunting knife remains a concrete trace Hacine carried away from the scene. By joining that object and Hacine’s private reaction to Anthony’s belated disclosure, the narrative makes the swim consequential not through an explanation of Patrick’s motive, but through the unresolved knowledge it leaves between the two men.