“No, she didn’t have any family left.”
I got up. He gave me an anxious look. He remained seated on the sofa.
“It’s time I get going,” I told him. “It’s late.”
I smiled at him, but he seemed surprised that I wanted to take my leave of him.
“I’ll call you as soon as possible,” I told him. “I hope to be able to give you some news before too long.”
He got up in turn, with the same trancelike movements he had used to guide me to the living room earlier. One final question came to mind.
“Did she have any money when she left?”
“No.”
“And when she called you, once she had left, did she give you any indication as to how she was getting by?”
“No.”
He walked towards the front door with his stiff gait. Would he still be able to answer my questions? I opened the door. He stood behind me, frozen. I don’t know what it was that came over me, what disequilibrium or rush of bitterness, but I said to him in an aggressive tone: “I’d imagine you had hoped you would grow old together?”
Was this to wake him from his torpor and depression? His eyes widened and he stared at me with fear. I stood in the doorframe. I stepped closer to him and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t hesitate to call me. Any time of day.”
His face relaxed. He managed a smile. Before closing the door, he waved goodbye. I remained a long moment on the landing, and the automatic lighting went out. I imagined him sitting alone on the sofa, in the position he had occupied earlier. Absentmindedly picking up a magazine from the stack on the coffee table.
•
It was dark outside. I couldn’t pull my thoughts away from this man in his ground-floor apartment, sitting under the stark light of the lamp. Would he have something to eat before he went to bed? I wondered if he had a kitchen in there. I should have invited him for dinner. Perhaps, without me asking him questions, he might have said something, an admission that would have put me on the trail of Jacqueline Delanque more quickly. Blémant often told me that there comes a time for each individual, even the most stubborn, when he “spills the beans.” That was his motto. It was for us to await this moment with the utmost patience, while trying, of course, to provoke it, but in an almost imperceptible manner, as Blémant said, “with delicate little pinpricks.” The fellow must feel as if he is before a confessor. It’s tricky. That’s the job. I had reached the Porte-Maillot and I felt like walking for a while yet in the mildness of the evening. Unfortunately, my new shoes were really hurting my insteps. And so, back on the avenue, I went into the first café and selected one of the tables nearest the bay windows. I untied my shoes and removed the left one, the one that was causing me the most pain. When the waiter came, I didn’t even try to resist a brief moment of forgetfulness and relaxation, and I asked for an Izarra Verte.
I took the envelope from my pocket and I pored over the pictures for a long while. Where was she now? In a café, like me, sitting alone at a table? Doubtless the phrase he had spoken earlier had given me this idea: “It’s all about trying to create ties.” Encounters in the street, in a Métro station at rush hour. We ought to shackle ourselves to each other at that moment. What connection can resist the tide as it carries you away and diverts your course? An anonymous office where you dictate a letter to a temp typist, a ground-floor apartment in Neuilly whose white, empty walls evoke what some would call a “showroom apartment,” where there would be no trace left of your stay. Two photo-booth snapshots, one facing the camera, one in profile. And that’s what we’re supposed to forge links with? There was someone who would be able to help me with my search: Bernolle. I hadn’t seen him since my Blémant days, except for one afternoon about three years ago. I was on my way to the Métro and I was crossing the square in front of Notre-Dame. A tramp came out of the Hôtel-Dieu and our paths crossed. He was wearing a raincoat with torn sleeves, pants that stopped above the ankles, and his bare feet were wedged into a pair of old sandals. He was unshaven and his dark hair was too long. And yet I recognized him. Bernolle. I followed him with the intention of speaking to him. But he was walking too quickly. He went in the front door of the police headquarters. I hesitated a moment. It was too late to catch him, so I decided to wait right there on the sidewalk. After all, we had grown up together.
He came back out of the same door in a navy blue coat, flannel pants, and black lace-up shoes. It was no longer the same man. He seemed nervous when I approached him. He was freshly shaven. We walked the length of the quay without saying a word. Once we had taken a seat at a table a bit farther down, at the Soleil d’Or, he confided in me. He was still employed digging up information, oh, nothing big, some work as an informant and a mole where he played the part of a tramp to better see and hear what went on around him: staking out building fronts, the various flea markets, Pigalle, around the train stations, and even in the Latin Quarter. He had a sad smile. He lived in a studio in the sixteenth arrondissement. He gave me his telephone number. Not for a moment did we speak of the past. He had placed his travel bag on the bench next to him. He would have been rather surprised if I had told him what it contained: an old raincoat, pants that were too short, a pair of sandals.
•
The very evening I returned from the meeting in Neuilly, I telephoned him. Ever since we had reconnected, I occasionally turned to him for information I required. I asked him to find me some details concerning one Jacqueline Delanque, married name Choureau. I didn’t have much else to tell him about this person, other than her date of birth and that of her marriage to a certain Choureau, Jean-Pierre, of 11, avenue de Bretteville in Neuilly, an active partner with Zannetacci. He took notes. “That’s all?” He seemed disappointed. “And nothing on either of them in the criminal records, I suppose,” he said in a disdainful voice. “No rap sheets?” Criminal records. Rap sheets. I tried to picture the Choureaus’ bedroom in Neuilly, the bedroom I ought to have taken a look at out of professional conscientiousness.
A bedroom empty forevermore, a bare mattress stripped of its sheets.
•
Over the course of the following weeks, Choureau telephoned me several times. He always spoke in an expressionless voice and it was always seven o’clock in the evening. Perhaps at that particular hour, alone in his ground-floor apartment, he felt the need to talk to someone. I told him to be patient. I got the feeling that he had given up and that he would slowly begin to accept his wife’s disappearance. I received a letter from Bernolle:
My dear Caisley,
No jacket on file in the criminal records. Neither under Choureau nor Delanque.
But chance is a strange mistress. A tedious statistical assignment that I’ve been working on within the police station logs of the 9th and 18th arrondissements led me to find you a bit of information.
On two separate occasions, I came across “Delanque, Jacqueline, 15 years old.” The first time, in the logs of the Quartier Saint-Georges police station, from seven years ago, and a second time, several months later, in that of Grandes-Carrières. Grounds: Juvenile Vagrancy.
I asked at Leoni if there might be something concerning hotels. Two years ago, Delanque, Jacqueline, lived at the Hôtel San Remo, 8, rue d’Armaillé (17th) and the Hôtel Métropole, 13, rue de l’Étoile (17th). In the logs from Saint-Georges and from Grandes-Carrières, it indicates that she lived with her mother at 10, avenue Rachel (18th arrondissement).
She currently lives at the Hôtel Savoie, 8, rue Cels, in the 14th arrondissement. Her mother passed away four years ago. On her birth certificate from the city hall in Fontaines-en-Sologne (Loir-et-Cher), of which I am sending you a copy, it indicates that she was born to an unknown father. Her mother was employed as an usher at the Moulin Rouge and had a friend, a Guy Lavigne, who worked at the La Fontaine Garage (16th) and who helped her out financially. Jacqueline Delanque doesn’t seem to have steady employment.