I stood stiffly, straining to articulate the syllables as clearly as possible.
“Ansart?”
His face expressed the discomfiture of someone being reprimanded when and where he least expected it.
“He wants to see me right now?”
“Yes.”
He glanced anxiously toward the entrance.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said to his two companions. “I just have to go say hello to a friend who’s waiting outside.”
The other two gave me a condescending once-over: was it because of my extreme youth and careless attire? It occurred to me that I could be identified later. Had they noticed Gisèle’s presence?
He stood up and slipped on his navy blue overcoat. He turned toward the blond man and said:
“Book a table for tonight … There’ll be eight of us …”
“That’s silly,” the woman said. “We could have dinner at my place …”
“Nonsense … Back in a minute …”
I remained standing firmly in front of them. He said to me:
“So where is this car?”
“I’ll show you.”
I walked ahead of him to the exit. Gisèle was waiting, standing by our table with the dog. He seemed surprised by her presence. I held the door and let the two of them pass.
The car pulled up. They had parked on the corner of Rue de Longchamp. Jacques de Bavière was standing, leaning slightly against the carriage. Ansart got out, leaving the front door open, and waved his arm at us. The street was brightly lit. In the cold, limpid air, the car stood out starkly against the building façades and sections of wall.
The man walked toward them, and we remained in place on the sidewalk. He had forgotten us. He, too, raised his arm, waving at Ansart.
He said:
“This is a surprise …”
He and Ansart chatted in the middle of the street. We could only hear the murmur of their voices. We could have joined them. It would only have taken a few steps. But I sensed that if we went toward them, we would be entering a danger zone. Besides, neither Ansart nor Jacques de Bavière was paying us the slightest attention. Suddenly, they were far away, in another space — I’d say, in another time — and today that scene has frozen forever.
Even the dog, which wasn’t on its leash, stood still, at our sides, as if he, too, could sense an invisible boundary between them and us.
Jacques de Bavière opened one of the rear doors and let the man get in, then sat next to him. Ansart took his seat in front. The one at the wheel hadn’t left the car and I couldn’t make out his face. The doors shut. The car made a U-turn and headed down Rue de la Ferme toward the Seine.
I watched it go until it disappeared around the corner of the quay.
I asked Gisèle:
“Where do you think they’re going?”
“They’re taking him to Rue Raffet …”
“But he told his friends he’d be right back …”
And yet, they hadn’t forced him into the car. It was probably Ansart who had persuaded him to go with them, during their brief conversation in the middle of the street.
“Maybe I should go tell the other two not to wait,” I said.
“No … Let’s not get mixed up in this …”
I was surprised by her categorical tone, and I got the distinct impression she knew more than I did.
“You really think we shouldn’t tell them?”
“No, of course not … They won’t trust us … and they’ll ask questions …”
I pictured myself standing next to their table, explaining that their friend had left in a car. And the questions would rain down like blows, increasingly numerous and insistent:
You’re sure you saw him leave? Who with?
Who gave you this message?
Where do these people live?
Who are you, anyway?
And I, unable to flee the avalanche of their questions, my legs leaden as in a nightmare.
“We shouldn’t stay here,” I said to her.
They could have come out at any moment to look for their friend. We took Rue de la Ferme toward the Bois. As we passed by the Charells’ old building, I wondered what Alain would have thought of all this.
I felt uneasy. A man had taken his leave of two people, saying he’d be “back in a minute.” Instead, he had been made to get in a car that had headed off toward the Seine. We were, she and I, witnesses but also accessories to this disappearance. It had all happened in a street in Neuilly, near the Bois de Boulogne, a neighborhood that reminded me of other Sundays … I used to walk in the alleys of the Bois with my father and one of his friends, a very tall, thin man, who had retained, from a time of former prosperity, only a fur coat and a blazer, which he wore according to the season. At the time, I had noticed how threadbare his clothes were. We would walk him home in the evening, to his hotel in Neuilly that looked like a boardinghouse. His room, he said, was small but adequate.
“What are you thinking about?”
She had taken my arm. We skirted the clearing with the umbrella pines. Had we bisected it, we would have arrived faster at the place where the car was parked. But it was too dark and only Boulevard Richard-Wallace was lit.
I was thinking about that man’s outline, his smile and well-preserved face. But after a while, you noticed that he had become one with the threadbare blazer and fur coat, and that his spirit was broken. Who was he? What had become of him? He had certainly disappeared, just like that other man, a little while ago.
She started the car and we drove toward the Jardin d’Acclimatation. I looked at the lights in the apartment windows.
She had stopped at a red light on Avenue de Madrid. She was frowning. She seemed to be feeling the same unease as I was.
The building façades paraded by. It was a shame we didn’t know anyone there. We could have knocked at one of those quiet apartments. We would have been invited in to dinner, along with distinguished and reassuring company. I remembered what the man had said:
“Book a table for tonight … There’ll be eight of us …”
Had they made the reservation anyway, after vainly waiting for his return? In that case, the seven guests had gathered and were still waiting for the eighth to show. But the chair would remain empty.
A restaurant open on Sunday evening … We used to go to one, my father, his friend, and I, near Place de l’Etoile. We would go early, around seven-thirty. The diners would start arriving when we had finished eating. One Sunday evening, a group of very elegant people came in and, even at age eleven, I had been dazzled by the beauty and vivaciousness of the women. The gaze of one of them suddenly fell on my father’s friend. He was wearing his threadbare blazer. She appeared stunned to see him there, but after a moment her face regained its smooth composure. She went to join her dinner companions at a table far from ours.
He, on the other hand, had grown very pale. He leaned toward my father and said something that has been etched in my memory:
“Gaëlle just went by … I recognized her immediately … But I’ve changed so much since the war …”
We had reached the Porte Maillot. She turned to me.
“Where do you feel like going?”
“I have no idea …”
We both felt disoriented, helpless. Should we go to Ansart’s to find out what had happened? But it wasn’t really our business. I would have preferred never to see those people again and to get out of Paris right away.
“Now’s when we should leave for Rome,” I said to her.
“Sure, but we don’t have enough money.”
I had on me the seven thousand five hundred francs that Dell’Aversano had given me, plus the four thousand from Ansart. It was more than enough. I didn’t dare ask how much money she had.
I repeated that I’d been promised a steady job in Rome and that we wouldn’t have any problems. I ended up persuading her.