It’s a curious sensation to arrive in a strange city, knowing that there you’ll love with a love you’ve never experienced before. That’s how it was. We stopped at a little hotel on the river — I don’t remember the name of the river that runs by Limoges. The room had faded wallpaper and very ordinary furniture; in those years many hotels were like that; you’ve only to look at the films of Jean Gabin. Miriam asked me to say that she was my wife, she didn’t want to identify herself and the hotel didn’t ask for the papers of both members of a couple. From the room we could see the river, bordered by willows; it was a fine night and we fell asleep at dawn. “Who is it you’re running away from, Miriam,” I asked her. “What’s wrong in your life?” But she laid a finger across my lips.
An absurd route, as I said before. We went down to Rodez and then towards Albi and its vineyards, because of a landscape she wanted to see. I thought it was an outdoor view but it was a painting, and we found it. We skipped Toulouse and made for Pau, because her mother had spent her childhood there, and I lingered over the idea of her mother as a child, in a boarding school which we couldn’t locate. It was the first time I’d thought of the childhood of a woman companion’s mother, a new and strange sensation. We looked at the splendid square and at the houses, with their white attic windows suspended from tile roofs, and I imagined a winter in Pau, behind one of those windows. I was tempted to say: Listen, Miriam, let’s forget about everything else and spend the winter behind one of these windows, in this city where nobody knows us.
When we got to Biarritz it was Saturday; the rally was to be the next day. I thought we’d go to the Hotel des Palais and take two rooms there, but she chose to go elsewhere, to the Hotel d’Angleterre, and she signed the register in my name. In luxury hotels, too, they don’t ask to see a woman’s papers. She was hiding out, obviously, and I was haunted by the strange sentence she had pronounced on the day of our first meeting, a subject to which she refused to return. I put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes — we had gone down to the beach at sunset, seagulls were standing around, a sign of bad weather, they say, and some children were playing in the sand. “I want to know,” I told her, and she said: “Tomorrow you’ll know everything. Tomorrow evening, after the rally, we’ll meet here on the beach and go for a drive in the car. Don’t insist, please.”
The rally rules demanded that every driver be dressed in the style of the period of his car. I had bought a pair of baggy Zouave-style trousers and a tan cloth cap with a visor. “This is a show,” I said to Miriam; “it’s not a race, it’s a fashion parade.” But she said no, I’d see. Competition wasn’t the order of the day, but almost. The course ran along the ocean, a road riddled with curves hanging over the water: Bidart, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Donibane and, finally, San Sebastian. We set out three by three, our names drawn by lot, regardless of the type of car. The time was to be clocked and calculated according to each car’s horsepower. And so we started out with a 1928 Hispano-Suiza, called La Boulogne, and a bright red 1922 Lambda, a superb creation (suffice it to say that Mussolini had one). Not that the Hispano-Suiza was to be sneezed at; it was definitely elegant, with its bottle-green coupe body and long chrome hood. We were among the first to take off, at ten o’clock in the morning. It was a fine typically Atlantic day, with a cool breeze and clouds flitting across the sun. The Hispano-Suiza took off like a shot. “We’ll let it go,” I said to Miriam; “I refuse to let others set the pace; we’ll catch up when I feel like it.” The Lambda stayed quietly behind. It was driven by a fellow with a black moustache, accompanied by a young girl, probably rich Italians, who smiled at us and every now and then called out ciao. They remained behind us on all the curves until Saint-Jean-de-Luz, then they passed us at Hendaye, the border town, and began to slow up on the straight, flat road to Donibane. I thought it was strange that they should linger at this particular point. We had passed the Hispano-Suiza before arriving at Irun; now I meant to step on the accelerator and I expected the driver of the Lambda to do likewise. Instead, he let us pass with the greatest of ease. For a hundred yards or so we were side by side; the girl waved and laughed. “They’re out for a good time,” I said to Miriam. They caught up with us at the end of the straight, at which point there were two nasty curves in rapid succession. We’d tried them out the evening before, and they were imprinted on my memory. Miriam cried out when she saw them coming at us, pushing us towards the precipice. Instinctively I braked and then accelerated, managing to hit the Lambda. It was a hard, quick blow, enough to throw the Lambda off the road, to the left, where it slithered along the inside embankment for about twenty yards. I was following the scene in the rear-view mirror as the Lambda lost a fender against a pole, skidded towards the centre of the road and then back to the left where, having run out of all impetus, it bogged down in a pile of dirt. Plainly the passengers were not injured. I was drenched with cold sweat. Miriam clasped my arm. “Don’t stay,” she said, “please, please don’t stay,” and I drove on. San Sebastian was directly below us; no one had witnessed the incident. After passing the finish line I made for the improvised, open-air garage, but I didn’t get out of the car. “It was intentional,” I said; “they did it on purpose.” Miriam was very pale, and speechless, as if petrified. “I’m going to the police to report it,” I said. “Please,” she murmured. “But don’t you see that they did it on purpose?” I shouted. “That they were trying to kill us?” She looked at me, with an expression half troubled, half imploring. “You can take care of the car,” I said; “get the bumper straightened while I walk around.” And I got out, slamming the door; there was nothing seriously wrong with the car and the whole thing could have been just a bad dream. I wandered around San Sebastian, especially along the sea. It’s a fine city, with those white late nineteenth-century buildings. Then I went into an enormous cafe — the sort you find only in Spain, the walls lined with mirrors and a restaurant attached to it — and ate some fried fish.