He returned to France with a parrot and a dose of malaria. ‘What pisses me off about things like that,’ he told me, ‘is that no one comes to meet you at the station.’ He felt out of place. He was no longer accustomed to the bright lights and the bustle. He was terrified of crossing the street, and in a blind panic on the Place de l’Opéra, asked a policeman to take his hand and lead him across. Eventually he was lucky enough to meet another former Legionnaire who ran a bar on the Rue d’Armaille. They swapped stories. The bar owner took him in, fed him, adopted the parrot, and in time Marcheret began to enjoy life again. Women found him attractive. This was in an era — so distant now — when being a Legionnaire made women’s hearts flutter. A Hungarian countess, the widow of a wealthy industrialist, a dancer at the Tabarin — in fact ‘blondes’ as Marcheret put it — fell for the charms of this sentimental soldier, who turned a healthy profit from the swooning sighs. Sometimes he would show up in night clubs in his old uniform. He was the life and soul of the party.
Maud Gallas. I don’t have much information on her. She tried her hand as a singer — short-lived. Marcheret told me she had managed a nightclub near the Plaine Monceau that catered exclusively to female clients. Murraille even claimed that having been charged with receiving stolen goods, she had become persona non grata in Département de la Seine. One of her friends had bought the Clos-Foucré from the Beausires and, thanks to her wealthy patron, she now managed the auberge.
Annie Murraille was twenty-two. A diaphanous blonde. Was she really Jean Murraille’s niece? This was something I was never able to confirm. She wanted to be a great movie actress, she dreamed of seeing ‘her name in lights’. Having landed a few minor roles, she played the lead in Nuit de rafles, a film completely forgotten these days. I assumed she got engaged to Marcheret because he was Murraille’s best friend. She had an enormous affection for her uncle (was he really her uncle?). If there are those who still remember Annie Murraille, they think of her as an unfortunate but poignant young actress. . She wanted to make the most of her life. .
Sylviane Quimphe I knew rather better. She came from a humble background. Her father worked as nightwatchman at the old Samson factory. She spent her whole adolescence in an area bounded to the north by the Avenue Daumesnil, to the south by the Quai de la Rapée and the Quai de Bercy. It was not the sort of area that attracted tourists. At times, it feels as though you are in the countryside, and walking along the Seine, you feel you have discovering a disused port. The elevated métro line that crosses the Pont de Bercy and the crumbling morgue buildings add to the terrible desolation of the place. But there is one magical spot in this bleak landscape that inexorably attracts dreamers: the Gare de Lyon. It was here that Sylviane Quimphe’s wanderings always took her. At sixteen, she would explore every nook and corner. Especially the main-line departure platforms. The words ‘Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits’ brought colour to her cheeks.
She trudged home to the Rue Corbineau, reciting the names of towns she would never see. Bordighera-Rimini-Vienna-Istanbul. Outside her house was a little park, where, as the dark drew in, all the tedium and desolate charm of the 12th arrondissement was distilled. She would sit on a bench. Why had she not simply boarded some train, any train? She decided not to go home. Her father was working all night. The coast was clear.
From the Avenue Daumesnil, she glided towards the labyrinth of streets called the ‘Chinese Quarter’ (does it still exist today? A colony of Asians had set up shabby bars, small restaurants and even — it was said — a number of opium dens). The human dreck who prowl around train stations tramped through this seedy area as through a swamp. Here, she found what she had been looking for: a former employee of Thomas Cook with a silver tongue and a handsome body, living from hand to mouth doing shady deals. He immediately saw possibilities for a young girl like Sylviane. She longed to travel? That could be arranged. As it happened, his cousin worked as a ticket inspector aboard les Wagons-lits, The two men presented Sylviane a Paris — Milan return ticket. But just as the train pulled out, they also introduced her to a fat red-faced musician whose various whims she had to satisfy on the outward trip. The return journey, she made in the company of a Belgian industrialist. This peripatetic prostitution proved very lucrative since the cousins played their role as pimps magnificently. The fact that one of them was employed by the Wagons-Lits made matters easier: he could seek out ‘clients’ during the journey and Sylviane Quimphe remembered a Paris — Zurich trip during which she entertained eight men in succession in her single sleeper carriage. She had not yet turned twenty. But clearly miracles can happen. In the corridor of a train, between Basle and La Chaux-de-Fonds, she met Jean-Roger Hatmer. This sad-faced young man belonged to a family which had made its fortunes in the sugar and the textile trade. He had just come into a large inheritance and did not know what to do with it. Or with his life, for that matter. Sylviane Quimphe became his raison d’etre and he smothered her with polite passion. Not once during the four months of their life together did he take a liberty with her. Every Sunday, he gave her a briefcase stuffed full of jewels and banknotes, saying in hushed tones: ‘Just to tide you over.’ He hoped that, later, she would ‘want for nothing’. Hatmer, who dressed in black and wore steel-rimmed glasses, had the discretion, modesty and benevolence that one sometimes encounters in elderly secretaries. He was very keen on butterflies and tried to share his passion with Sylviane Quimphe, but quickly realised the subject bored her. One day, he left her a note: ‘THEY are going to make me appear before a board of guardians and probably have me confined to an asylum. We can’t see each other anymore. There is still a small Tintoretto hanging on the left-hand wall of the living room. Take it. And sell it. Just to tide you over.’ She never heard from him again. Thanks to this far-sighted young man, she had been freed of all financial worries for the rest of her life. She had many other adventures, but suddenly I find I haven’t got the heart.
Murraille, Marcheret, Maud Gallas, Sylviane Quimphe. . I take no pleasure in setting down their life stories. Nor am I doing it for the sake of the story, having no imagination. I focus on these misfits, these outsiders, so that, through them, I can catch the fleeting image of my father. About him, I know almost nothing. But I will think something up.
I met him for the first time when I was seventeen. The vice-principal of the Collège Sainte-Antoine in Bordeaux came to tell me that someone was waiting for me in the visitor’s room. When he saw me, this stranger with swarthy skin wearing a dark-grey flannel suit, got to his feet.
‘I’m your papa. .’
We met again outside, on a July afternoon at the end of the school year.
‘I hear you passed your baccalauréat.’
He was smiling at me. I gave a last look at the yellow walls of the school, where I had mouldered for the past eight years.
If I delve farther back into my memories, what do I see? A grey-haired old woman to whom he had entrusted me. She had been a coat-check girl before the war at Frolic’s (a bar on the Rue de Grammont) before retiring to Libourne. It was there, in her house, that I grew up.