Nick de Morgoli, 14 Square de l’Alboni
TROCADÉRO 65 81
Toddie Werner, 28 Rue Scheffer PASSY 90 90
Mary Tchernycheff, 30 Quai de Passy JASMIN 64 76
And again, 30 Quai de Passy: Alexis Moutafolo,
AUTEUIL 70 66
In the afternoon, out of curiosity, I went to some of these addresses. Again, the same pale façades with bay windows and large terraces, like 4 Avenue Albert-de-Mun. I assume these apartments were said to have ‘modern comforts’ and certain features: heated flooring, marble tiles instead of parquet, sliding doors, giving the impression of being on a stationary cruise ship in the middle of the ocean. And the void behind the luxury all too visible. I knew that since his childhood, my father had often lived in this type of building, and that he didn’t pay the rent. In winter, in the empty rooms, the electricity would be cut off. He was one of those transients who were forever changing their identity, never settling anywhere, never leaving a trace. Yes, the type of person whose existence one would have trouble proving later on. It was useless to collect precise details: phone numbers, letters of the alphabet marking different stairwells in courtyards. That’s why I felt discouraged the other night on Avenue Albert-de-Mun. If I went through the porte-cochère, it wouldn’t lead anywhere. It was this, rather than the fear of being arrested for prowling, that held me back. I was conducting a search around streets where everything was an optical illusion. My task seemed as vain as that of a surveyor trying to draw up a plan in an empty space. But I said to myself: is it really beyond me to track down this Jacqueline Beausergent?
~ ~ ~
I REMEMBER THAT night I had taken a break from reading The Wonders of the Heavens, in the middle of a chapter on constellations of the southern hemisphere. I left the hotel without handing in my room key — there was no one at the reception desk. I wanted to buy a packet of cigarettes. The only café-tabac still open was on Place du Trocadéro.
From the quay, I climbed the steps and, after passing the little station, I thought I heard the rasping voice of the parrot from La Closerie repeating: Sea-green Fiat, sea-green Fiat. There was light at the window. They were still playing their card game. I was surprised by how warm the air was for a winter’s night. It had been snowing over the previous few days and there were still patches of snow dotted around the gardens below, in front of the Musée de l’Homme.
While I was buying cigarettes at the bigger café-tabac, a group of tourists sat down at the tables on the terrace. I could hear their peals of laughter. I was surprised that tables had been put outside and for an instant I felt a kind of vertigo. I wondered if I hadn’t perhaps confused the seasons. But no, the trees around the square had indeed lost their leaves and there would still be a long wait before summer came around again. I had been walking around for months and months in so much cold and fog that I no longer knew if the veil would ever be stripped away again. Was it really demanding too much from life to want to lie in the sun, drinking orangeade with a straw?
I remained awhile on the esplanade breathing in the ocean air. I thought about the black dog that had come to accompany me the other night, the dog that had come from so far away, across all these years…How stupid not to have kept the phone number.
I headed along Rue Vineuse, as I had the other night. It was still dark there. Perhaps there had been a power cut. I saw the bar or restaurant with its illuminated sign, but so faint that I could only just make out the dark mass of a car parked just before the turn in the road. When I got to it, my heart skipped a beat. It was the sea-green Fiat. It wasn’t really a surprise; I had never given up hope that I would find it. I’d just had to be patient, that was all, and I felt I had huge reserves of patience within me. Come rain or snow, I was prepared to wait for hours in the street.
The bumper bar and one of the mudguards were damaged. There were probably a lot of sea-green Fiats in Paris, but this one certainly bore the signs of the accident. I took my passport out of the pocket of my sheepskin jacket. It contained the folded piece of paper that Solière had made me sign. Yes, it was the same licence plate number.
I looked in through the window. A travel bag on the back seat. I could have left a note under the windscreen wiper, giving my name and the address of the Hôtel Fremiet. But I wanted to get to the bottom of it there and then. The car was parked right in front of the restaurant. So I pushed the pale wooden door and went in.
Light fell from a wall lamp behind the bar, leaving the few tables arranged along the walls on either side in darkness. And yet, I can see these walls clearly in my memory; they are draped with very worn, red velvet that is ripped and torn here and there, as though, long ago, the place had been quite lavish, but no one went there anymore. Apart from me. At first I thought it was well after closing time. A woman was sitting at the bar wearing a dark brown coat. A young man, the size of a jockey and the look of one, was clearing the tables. He looked askance at me.
‘What can I do for you?’
It would take too long to explain. I walked towards the bar and, instead of sitting on one of the stools, I stopped behind her. I put my hand on her shoulder. She turned around with a start. She stared at me, astonished. There was a large graze across her forehead, just above the eyebrows.
‘Are you Jacqueline Beausergent?’
I was surprised by the detachment in my voice; I even had the impression that someone else had spoken for me. She gazed at me in silence. She lowered her eyes; they lingered on the stain on my sheepskin jacket, then lower down, on my shoe where the bandage was dangling out.
‘We’ve already met at Place des Pyramides…’
My voice seemed even clearer and more detached. I was standing behind her.
‘Yes…Yes…I remember very well. Place des Pyramides.’
Without looking away, she gave a slightly wry smile, the same — it seemed — as the other night, in the police van.
‘Why don’t we sit down…’
She gestured to the table closest to the bar, which was still covered with a white tablecloth. We sat opposite each other. She put her glass down on the tablecloth. I wondered what kind of alcohol it contained.
‘You should drink something,’ she said. ‘Something to warm you up. You’re very pale.’
She said the words with great seriousness and even a kind of solemn affection that no one had ever shown towards me until then. I felt embarrassed.
‘Have a margarita like me.’
The jockey brought me a margarita and then disappeared through a glass door behind the bar.
‘I didn’t know you’d left the clinic,’ she said. ‘I’ve been away from Paris for a few weeks…I’d planned on finding out how you were.’
It seems to me now, after decades, that it was very gloomy in that place where we’d found ourselves sitting face to face. We were in darkness, like in an eye clinic where they hold up lenses of different strengths in front of your eyes so that eventually you can make out the letters, over there on the backlit screen.
‘You should have stayed longer at the clinic…Did you escape?’ She smiled again. Stayed longer? I didn’t understand. The letters were still very blurry on the screen.
‘They told me to leave,’ I said. ‘A Mr Solière came to find me.’
She seemed surprised. She shrugged. ‘He didn’t tell me about it. I think he was afraid of you.’
Afraid of me? I would never have imagined frightening anyone.
‘You struck him as quite strange. He’s not used to people like you.’