She had left the magazine open next to her and I could make out the black-and-white photo of a naked woman, seen from behind, hair tied in a ponytail, left leg extended, right leg bent, her knee resting on a mattress.
“Interesting reading matter you’ve got …”
“No, those aren’t mine … They belong to a friend of my father’s.”
She bit into an apple and poured herself some whiskey.
“What have you got in that suitcase?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing much … Some personal effects …”
“It was heavy. I thought it was stuffed with gold bricks.”
She gave me a sheepish smile. She explained that she lived in a house not far from Paris, near Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, but the owners had come back unexpectedly last night. She preferred to leave, as she didn’t really get along with them. Tomorrow she would go to a hotel, until she could find a permanent place to live.
“You can stay here as long as you like.”
I was sure that Grabley, after his initial surprise, would have no objections. As for my father, what he thought no longer mattered.
“Are you getting sleepy?”
I intended to give her the upstairs bedroom. I would sleep on the office couch.
I led the way, suitcase in hand, up the small inner staircase to the fifth floor. The room was as sparsely furnished as the office. A bed shoved against the back wall. The nightstand and bedside lamp were gone. I switched on the fluorescent lights in the two display cases, on either side of the fireplace, where my father kept his collection of chess pieces, although these had disappeared, along with the small Chinese armoire and the fake Monticelli canvas that had left a discoloration on the sky-blue paneling. I had consigned those three objects to an antiques dealer, a certain Dell’Aversano, for him to sell.
“Is this your room?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I had set the suitcase in front of the fireplace. She went to the window, like before, in the office.
“If you look all the way to the right,” I told her, “you can see the statue of Henri IV and the Tour Saint-Jacques.”
She gazed distractedly at the rows of books between the two windows. Then she lay down on the bed and removed her shoes with a casual flick of her foot. She asked where I was going to sleep.
“Downstairs on the couch.”
“Stay here,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
She had kept on her raincoat. I turned off the lights in the display cases. I lay down next to her.
“Doesn’t it feel cold to you?”
She moved closer and gently rested her head on my shoulder. Lights and shadows shaped like window grates slid across the walls and ceiling.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The tour boat passing by.”
~ ~ ~
I awoke with a start. The front door had slammed.
She was lying against me, nude inside her raincoat. It was seven in the morning. I heard Grabley’s footsteps. He was making a phone call in the office. His voice grew louder and louder, as if he was arguing with someone. Then he left the office and went into his room.
She woke up as well and asked what time it was. She told me she had to be going. She had left some belongings in the house in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt and wanted to collect them as soon as possible.
I offered her breakfast. There was still some instant coffee in the kitchen and one of the boxes of Choco BN biscuits that Grabley always bought. When I returned to the fifth floor with the tray, she was in the large bathroom. She emerged, dressed in her black skirt and pullover sweater.
She said she would call me early that afternoon. She didn’t have any paper on which to jot down my number. I took a book from the shelves and tore out the flyleaf, on which I wrote my name, address, and phone number: DANTON 55–61. She folded the paper in four and shoved it in one of her raincoat pockets. Then her lips brushed mine and she said in a low voice that she was grateful and was looking forward to seeing me again.
She walked along the quay toward the Pont des Arts.
I stood at the window for a few minutes, watching her distant silhouette cross the bridge.
I stashed the suitcase in the storage closet at the top of the stairs. I laid it flat on the floor. It was locked. I lay down again and breathed in her scent from the hollow of one of the pillows. She would eventually tell me why they’d questioned her yesterday afternoon. I tried to recall the names of the two people the detective had mentioned, asking whether I knew them. One of them sounded something like “Beaufort” or “Bousquet.” In whose address book had they found my name? Was he just trying to get information about my father? He’d asked which foreign country my father had gone to. I had covered his tracks by answering Belgium.
The week before, I had accompanied my father to the Gare de Lyon. He was wearing his old navy blue overcoat and his only luggage was a leather bag. We were early, and we waited for the Geneva train in the large restaurant on the upper level, from which we overlooked the lobby and railway tracks. Was it the late afternoon light? The golden hue on the ceiling? The chandeliers that shone down on us? My father suddenly seemed old and tired, like someone who has been playing “cat and mouse” for far too long and is about to give up.
The only book he brought with him for the trip was called The Hunt. He had recommended it to me several times, because the author mentioned our apartment, where he’d lived twenty years earlier. What a strange coincidence … Hadn’t my father’s life, in certain periods, resembled a hunt in which he was the prey? But so far, he’d managed to elude his captors.
We were facing each other over our coffee. He was smoking, cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips. He talked about my “schooling” and my future. As he saw it, it was all well and good to want to write novels, as I intended, but it was safer to earn a few “diplomas.” I kept quiet, listening to him. Words like “diplomas,” “stable situation,” “profession” sounded odd in his mouth. He pronounced them with respect and a kind of nostalgia. After a while, he fell silent, exhaled a cloud of smoke, and shrugged.
We didn’t exchange another word until he climbed onto the train and leaned out the lowered window. I had remained on the platform.
“Grabley will live with you in the apartment. Afterward, we’ll make a determination. You’ll have to rent someplace else.”
But he had said it without any conviction. The train for Geneva lurched forward, and at that moment it felt as if I were seeing that face and that navy blue coat pull away forever.
At around nine o’clock, I went down to the fourth floor. I had heard Grabley’s footsteps. He was sitting on the office couch in his plaid bathrobe. Next to him was a tray carrying a cup of tea and a Choco BN. He hadn’t shaved and his features were drawn.
“Good morning, Obligado …”
He called me by that nickname because of a friendly wager we’d had. One evening, we had arranged to meet in front of a cinema on Avenue de la Grande-Armée. He had told me to get off at the Obligado metro stop. The stop was really called Argentine, but he refused to believe it. We had made a bet, which I’d won.
“I only got two hours’ sleep last night. I made my ‘rounds.’”
He stroked his blond mustache and squinted.
“Same places as usual?”
“The very ones.”
His “rounds” invariably started at eight o’clock at the Café des Deux Magots, where he had an aperitif. Then he crossed over to the Right Bank and stopped at Place Pigalle. He stayed in that neighborhood until dawn.
“And what about you, Obligado?”
“I put a girlfriend up last night.”
“Does your father know?”
“No.”