~ ~ ~
I could see the café lights shining from the other side of the Seine, at the corner of the quay. Was the man already there? I wished I had a very powerful pair of binoculars to watch him with. He, too, from the café, could check whether the lights were on in the apartment windows. And that thought caused me a sudden stab of anxiety, as if a trap had just closed on me.
“What are you looking at?”
She was lying on the couch. Her skirt and pullover were thrown on the coffee table.
“I’m watching for the tour boat,” I told her.
I cracked open the window. The Quai de Conti remained empty for a long while, the time it took for the traffic lights to turn green, over toward the Pont-Neuf. And before the next few cars appeared, there was silence, no doubt the same silence my father had known on evenings during the Occupation, behind this same window.
At that time, the café opposite didn’t shine and the Louvre Colonnade was shrouded in darkness. The advantage, today, was knowing where the danger lay: that light across the Seine.
I looked at my watch. A quarter to ten.
“I have to go to my appointment.”
She was sitting on the edge of the couch. She leaned her chin in the palms of her hands.
“Do you have to go?”
“If I don’t, he’ll only call back … Might as well get rid of him once and for all.”
I repeated that he was a former associate of my father’s. I was tempted to tell her the truth, but checked myself in time. She wanted to come with me, rather than stay in the apartment by herself. We went out with the dog. She had thought we might walk to the café, crossing via the Pont des Arts. But I said it would be better to take the car.
As we were about to turn onto the Pont du Carrousel, I almost asked her just to keep driving, keep following the river. Then, once on the Right Bank, as we got closer to the café, I thought better of it. I was ready for this meeting now. I was even eager to see this man’s face.
We stopped at the corner of Rue du Louvre, in front of the café entrance. Only one customer, sitting near the window. He was reading a newspaper spread out on the table and hadn’t noticed our car. I felt Gisèle’s hand grip my arm. She was staring at the man, mouth half-open. Her face drained of color.
“Don’t go, Jean … Please, I’m begging you.”
I was struck that she’d called me by my name. She held on to my arm.
“Why? Do you know him?”
He was still reading his paper beneath the fluorescent lights. Before turning a page, he moistened his index finger on his tongue.
“If you go, we’re done for … I’ve had dealings with him before …”
An expression of terror was twisting her features. But I felt completely calm. I gently caressed her forehead and lips. I felt like kissing her and murmuring comforting words in her ear. I simply said:
“Don’t worry about a thing … This guy CAN’T HURT US …”
She tried again to hold me back, but I opened the door and got out of the car.
“Wait for me here. And if it goes on too long, go back to the apartment.”
For the first time in my life, I felt sure of myself. My timidity, my doubts, that habit of apologizing for my every movement, of deprecating myself, of taking the other person’s side — all that had vanished, fallen off like dead skin. I was in one of those dreams where you meet the dangers and torments of the present but avoid them at every turn, for you already know the future and feel invulnerable.
I pushed open the glass door. He raised his eyes from his newspaper. A man of about forty, brown hair, bald spot like a monk’s tonsure. He was wearing a tan coat.
I planted myself in front of him.
“Mister Guélin, I presume?”
He fixed me with a cold stare, as if gauging how much he was going to make me pay for my apparent nonchalance.
“We’ll be better off in back …”
His voice was even more metallic than on the phone. Standing in his coat, with his bearing and stocky outline, that baldness over a brutal face, he looked like an ex-soccer player.
We went to sit in back, he on the red imitation-leather bench. There was no one there but us. Except a man in a suit at the counter where they sold cigarettes. But he didn’t seem to know we were there.
He sat leaning on the table, elbows spread, still giving me his cold stare, chin slightly raised.
“You did the right thing coming here … Otherwise, your situation could have gotten much more difficult …”
He tried to make me look away. But he didn’t succeed. I had even moved my face closer to his, as if in challenge.
“Something very serious happened yesterday afternoon, in Neuilly … You know what I’m talking about?”
“No.”
“Really? You’re a smart boy and you’d do better to level with me …”
I still didn’t lower my eyes, and our faces were now so close that our foreheads nearly touched. His breath smelled like anise liqueur.
“First off, you’re a minor … And your girlfriend has been turning tricks for some time now …”
The words had been spoken in a toneless voice, but he was watching for my reaction.
I forced myself to smile at him, a wide smile that must have looked more like a grimace.
“She’s a regular at an apartment at 34 Rue Desaix … I know the place well, and the madam … and even most of the clients … As do you, I suppose?”
I remembered the other evening, when I’d waited in front of the buildings. The viaduct of the elevated metro at the end of the street. And the endless wall of the Dupleix barracks. I had seen her come out of one of the buildings and walk toward me.
“I imagine you also know your girlfriend’s husband?”
“None of these things are my business.”
I had adopted a dreamy, absent tone.
“But of course it’s your business. And you are going to tell me in detail what happened yesterday afternoon.”
The newspaper was folded in the pocket of his coat. Earlier, I had asked Gisèle to bring me back the same evening paper, but she had forgotten.
“Nothing happened yesterday afternoon.”
I had pulled away from him so as not to smell his anise breath. I leaned back against the chair.
“Nothing? You must be joking …”
He had folded his arms.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the newspaper in his pocket. Perhaps he was going to unfold it and show me the photo of the man we’d seen getting into Ansart’s car, tell me they had fished his body out from under the bridge at Puteaux. But the thought of it left me cold. It was only later, around age thirty, that I started feeling some remorse when recalling certain episodes from my past, like a tightrope walker who feels dizzy retrospectively, after he has crossed over the abyss.
“You’re coming with me to see some friends. And I advise you to tell us everything, or you’ll be in a world of trouble …”
His tone brooked no objection and his hard eyes were still fixed on me. I could feel myself losing my footing, so to pluck up my courage, I said:
“Anyway, who are you, exactly?”
“I’m a very close friend of Mister Samson.”
What was he trying to insinuate? That he was with the police?
“What does that mean, a very close friend?”
He was taken aback by my question, but then he recovered:
“It means someone who can land you in jail just like that.”
And then a strange phenomenon occurred: I still hadn’t looked away, and this man was losing his composure. Little by little, he started reminding me of those dozens of individuals who would meet my father in hotel lobbies or cafés just like this one. I often accompanied him. I was fourteen at the time, but I watched all those people under the fluorescent lights. In even the most elegant of them, the ones who at first seemed the most respectable, a cornered street hawker always showed through.