Then boarding school, in Bordeaux.
It is raining. My father and I are walking side by side, without speaking, as far as the Quai des Chartrons to the family I stayed with outside term time, the Pessacs. (One of those patrician families in the wine and cognac trade I fondly hope will soon be ruined.) The afternoons spent at their house were among the bleakest in my life, so the less said about them the better.
We climb the monumental steps. The maid opens the front door. I rush to the box-room where I had asked permission to leave a suitcase stuffed with books (novels by Bourget, Marcel Prevost, and Duvernois, strictly forbidden at school). Suddenly I hear Monsieur Pessac’s peremptory voice: ‘What are you doing here?’ He is talking to my father. Seeing me with the suitcase in hand, he scowls: ‘You’re leaving? But who is this gentleman?’ I hesitate, then manage to blurt out: ‘MY FATHER!’ Obviously, he doesn’t believe me. Suspiciously: ‘Unless my eyes deceive me, you were sneaking away like a thief?’ This sentence is burned into my memory, because it was true that we look just like a couple of thieves caught red-handed. Confronted by this little man with his moustache and his brown smoking jacket, my father remained silent and chewed his cigar to give the impression he was calm. For my part, I myself think of only one thing: how to get out of there as soon as possible. Monsieur Pessac had turned to my father and was studying him curiously. At that moment, his wife appeared. Followed by his daughter and his eldest son. They stood, staring at us in silence leaving me feeling as though we had broken into this bourgeois mansion. When my father let ash from his cigar fall on the carpet, I noticed their expressions of amused contempt. The girl exploded with laughter. Her brother, a spotty youth who adopted ‘English style’ (much in vogue in Bordeaux), piped up in a shrill voice: ‘Perhaps Monsieur might like an ashtray?. .’ ‘Really, Francois-Marie,’ murmured Mme Pessac. ‘Don’t be so uncouth.’ As she said this last word she looked pointedly at my father, as if to make it clear that the adjective applied to him. M. Pessac maintained a disdainful equanimity. I think what had made them so unfriendly was my father’s pale green shirt. Faced with the blatant hostility of these four people, my father looked like a butterfly caught in a net. He fumbled with his cigar, not knowing where to stub it out. He backed towards the door. The others did not move, shamelessly revelling in his embarrassment. I suddenly felt a kind of tenderness for this man I barely knew, and went over to him and said in a loud voice: ‘Let me give you a hug, monsieur.’ And, having done so, I took the cigar from his hand and painstakingly crushed it on the inlaid hall table Mme Pessac so loved. I tugged my father’s sleeve.
‘That’s enough, now,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
We went to the Hôtel Splendid to collect his bags. A taxi took us to the Gare Saint-Jean. In the train, we struck up a conversation of sorts. He explained that ‘business’ had made it impossible for him getting in touch, but that from now on we would live together in Paris and would never be apart again. I stammered a few words of thanks. ‘I suppose. .,’ he said point-blank, ‘I suppose you must have been very unhappy. .’ He suggested that I not call him ‘monsieur’. An hour passed in utter silence and I declined his invitation to go with him to the restaurant-car. I made the most of his absence to rummage through the black briefcase he had left on the seat. There was nothing in it but a Nansen passport. At least he and I shared the same surname. He had two Christian names: Chalva, Henri. He had been born in Alexandria, at a time — I imagine — when the city still shimmered with its own particular radiance.
When he came back to the compartment, he handed me an almond cake — a gesture which I found touching — and asked if I was really a ‘bachelier’ (he pronounced ‘bachelier’ in a rather affected way, as though the very idea of passing the baccalauréat inspired in him a fearful respect). When I told him I was, he nodded gravely. I ventured to ask a few questions: why had he come to Bordeaux to fetch me? How had he tracked me down? His only answers were dismissive gestures and formulaic phrases: ‘I’ll explain later. .’, ‘You’ll see. .’, ‘Well, you know, life. .’ After which he sighed and looked thoughtful.
Paris — Austerlitz. He hesitated a moment before giving the taxi driver his address. (Later we would find ourselves being driven along Quai de Grenelle when in fact we were living on the Boulevard Kellermann. We moved so often that we got confused and only belatedly noticed our mistake.) At the time, his address was: Square Villaret-de-Joyeuse. I imagined the square to be a little park where birdsong mingled with the murmur of fountains. No. A cul-de-sac, with opulent houses on either side. His apartment was on the top floor and the windows overlooking the street had curious, small circular windows. Three low-ceilinged rooms. A large table and two shabby leather armchairs made up the furniture in the ‘living-room’. The walls were papered in a pink, imitation ‘Toile de Jouy’ pattern. A large bronze ceiling light (I am not entirely sure of this description: I tend to confuse the apartment on the Square Villaret-de-Joyeuse with the one on the Avenue Félix-Faure, which we sublet from a retired couple. Both had the same musty smell). My father nodded to the smallest room. A mattress on a bare floor. ‘Sorry about the lack of comfort,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, we won’t be staying here long. Sleep well.’ I heard him pacing the floor for hours. So began our life together.
To begin with, he treated me with a politeness, a deference that a son rarely expects from his father. Whenever he spoke to me, I felt as though he was carefully choosing his words, but the result was terrible. He resorted to increasingly convoluted phrases and circumlocutions, and seemed to be constantly apologising or anticipating some reproach. He brought me breakfast in bed with a ceremonious manner which jarred with our surroundings: the wallpaper in my room was peeling in places, a bare bulb hung from the ceiling, and when he pulled the curtains, the curtain rail would fall down. One day, he accidently referred to me by my Christian name and was mortally embarrassed. What had I done to earn such respect? I discovered it was the fact I was a ‘bachelier’, when he personally wrote to the school in Bordeaux to ask them to send the certificate proving I had got my baccalauréat. When it arrived, he had it framed, and hung it between the two ‘windows’ in the ‘living-room’. I noticed that he kept a copy in his wallet. Once, on one of our nightly wanderings, he present the document to two policemen who had asked for our identity papers, and seeing they were puzzled by his Nansen passport, he told them five or six times that ‘his son was a bachelier. .’ After supper (my father often prepared something he called rice à l’égyptienne), he would light a cigar, give an occasional, worried, glance at my diploma, then slowly sink into despair. His ‘business’, he told me, was causing him a lot of trouble. Having always been a fight, having known the ‘harsh realities of life’ at a very early age, he now felt ‘tired’, and the way he said: ‘I’ve lost heart. .’ moved me deeply. Then, he would look up: ‘But you’ve got your whole life ahead of you!’ I would nod, politely. . ‘Especially now you’ve got your BACCALAURÉAT. . If only I’d had the chance. .’ the words died in his throat, ‘the baccalauréat is really something. .’ I can still hear this little phrase. And it still moves me, like a forgotten melody.
At least a week passed without my knowing anything about his ‘business’. I would hear him leave early in the morning, and he only got back in time to prepare supper. From a black oilcloth bag, he would unpack the provisions — peppers, rice, spices, mutton, lard, dried fruit, semolina — tie an apron round his waist and, having taken off his rings, he would fry up the contents of the bag in a pan. Then he would sit facing the diploma, call me to dinner and we would eat.