And let’s not forget the illicit brothel at 73 Avenue Reille, on the edge of the Parc Montsouris. My father would gossip endlessly with the Madame, a blonde woman with a doll-like face. Like him, she was from Alexandria, and they would reminisce about the nights there, about Sidi Bishr, the Pastroudis Bar and various other places that have long since ceased to exist. . We would often linger until dawn in this Egyptian enclave in the 14th arrondissement. But there were other places that called to us on our odysseys (or our escapes?). An all-night restaurant on the Boulevard Murat lost among blocks of flats. The place was always empty and, for some mysterious reason, a large photograph of Daniel-Rops hung on one of the walls. A pseudo ‘American’ bar, between Maillot and Champerret, the gathering point for a gang of bookies. And when we ventured as far as the extreme north of Paris — the region of docks and slaughterhouses — we would stop off at the Boeuf-Bleu, on the Place de Joinville, by the Canal de l’Ourcq. My father particularly liked this spot because it reminded him of the Saint-Andre district, in Antwerp, where he had lived long ago. We would go south-east to where the tree-lined streets lead to the Bois de Vincennes. We would stop by Chez Raimo on the Place Daumesnil, invariably open at this late hour. A gloomy ‘patissier-glacier’, of the sort you can still find in spa towns that no one — except us — seemed to know about. Other places come back to me, in waves. Our various addresses: 65 Boulevard Kellermann, with its view of the Gentilly cemetery; the apartment on the Rue du Regard where the previous tenant had left behind a musical-box that I sold for 30,000 francs. The bourgeois apartment building on the Avenue Félix-Faure where the concierge would always greet us with: ‘Here come the Jews!’ Or an evening spent in the run-down three-room flat on the Quai de Grenelle, near the Vélodrome d’Hiver. The electricity had been cut off. Leaning on the window-sill, we watched the comings and goings of the elevated métro. My father was wearing a tattered, patched smoking jacket. He point to the Citadelle de Passy, on the far bank of the Seine. In a tone that brooked no argument, he announced: ‘One day we’ll have a hôtel particulier near the Trocadéro!’ In the meantime, he would arrange to meet me in the lobbies of grand hotels. He felt more important there, more likely to succeed in his great financial coups. He would sit there the whole afternoon. I don’t know how many times I met him at the Majestic, the Continental, the Claridge, the Astoria. These places where people were constantly coming and going suited a restless and unstable spirit such as his.
Every morning, he would greet me in his ‘office’ on the Rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul. A vast room whose only furnishing were a wickerwork chair and an Empire desk. The parcels we had to send that day would be piled up round the walls. After logging them in an account book with the names and addresses of the addressees, we would have a ‘work conference’. I would tell him about the book I intended to purchase, and the technical details of my dedications I planned to forge. The different inks, pens or fountain pens used for each author. We would check the accounts, study the Courrier des collectionneurs. Then we would take the parcels down to the Talbot and packed them on the back seat as best we could. This drudge work exhausted me.
My father would then make the rounds of the railway stations to dispatch the cargo. In the afternoon, he would visit his warehouse in the Quartier de Javel and from among the bric-a-brac, choose twenty or so pieces that might be of interest to our clients, ferry them to the Rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul and begin to parcel them up. After which he would restock with merchandise. We had to satisfy the demands of our clients as attentively as possible. These lunatics were not prepared to wait.
I would take a suitcase and head off on my own, to scout around until evening, in an area bounded by the Bastille, the Place de la République, the grands boulevards, the Avenue de l’Opéra and the Seine. These districts each have a particular peculiar charm. Saint-Paul, where I have dreamed of spending my old age. All I would need was a little shop, some small business. The Rue Pavée or the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, that ghetto to which I would be inevitably drawn back one day. In the Temple district, I felt my bargain-hunting instincts come to the fore. In the Sentier, that exotic principality formed by the Place du Caire, the Rue du Nil, the Passage Ben-Aiad and the Rue d’Aboukir, I thought about my poor father. The first four arrondissements sub-divide into a tangled multitude of provinces whose unseen borders I eventually came to know. Beaubourg, Greneta, le Mail, la Pointe Sainte-Eustache, les Victoires. . My last port of call was a bookshop called Le Petit-Mirioux in the Galerie Vivienne. I got there just as it was getting dark. I scoured the shelves, convinced that I would find what I was looking for. Mme Petit-Mirioux stocked literary works of the past hundred years. So many unjustly forgotten books and authors, we agreed regretfully. They had taken so much trouble for nothing. . We consoled each other, she and I, reassuring ourselves there were still fans of Pierre Hamp or Jean-José Frappa and that sooner or later, the Fischer brothers would be rescued from oblivion and on that comforting note, took leave of each other. The rest of the shops in the Galerie Vivienne seemed to have been closed for centuries. In the window of a music bookshop, three yellowing Offenbach scores. I sat down on my suitcase. Not a sound. Time had stood still at some point between the July Monarchy and the Second Empire. From the far end of the Galerie came the faint glow of the bookshop, and I could just make out the shadow of Mme Petit-Mirioux. How long would she remain at her post? Poor old sentinel.
Farther on, the deserted arcades of the Palais-Royal. People had played here, once. But no more. I walked through the gardens. A zone of silence and mellow half-light where the memories of dead years and broken promises tug at the heart. Place du Théâtre-Francais. The streetlights are dazzling. You are a diver coming up too quickly to the surface. I had arranged to meet ‘papa’ in a caravanserai on the Champs-Élysées. We would get into the Talbot, as we always did, and sail across Paris.
Before me was the Avenue de l’Opéra. It heralded other boulevards, other streets, that would later cast us to the four points of the compass. My heart beat a little faster. In the midst of so much uncertainty, my only landmarks, the only ground which did not shift beneath my feet, were the pavements and the junctions of this city where, in the end, I would probably find myself alone.
Now, though it grieves me, I must come to the ‘distressing incident at the George V métro’. For several weeks my father had been fascinated by the Petite Ceinture, the disused railway-line that circles Paris. Was he planning to have it renovated by public subscription? Bank loans? Every Sunday, he would ask me to go with him to the outskirts of the city and we followed the path of the old railway-line on foot. The stations along the route were derelict or had been turned into warehouses. The tracks were overgrown with weeds. From time to time my father would stop to scribble a note or sketch something indecipherable in his notebook. What was he dreaming of? Was he waiting for a train that would never come?
On that Sunday, 17 June, we had followed the Petite Ceinture through the 12th arrondissement. Not without effort. Near the Rue de Montempoivre, the track joins those coming from Vincennes and we ended up getting confused. After three hours, emerging dazed from this labyrinth of metal, we decided to go home by métro. My father seemed disappointed with his afternoon. Usually when we returned from these expeditions, he was in excellent humour and would show me his notes. He was planning to compile a ‘comprehensive’ file on the Petite Ceinture — he explained — and offer it to the public authorities.