Five in the afternoon. Sunlight, great curtains of silence falling over the square. I thought I saw a shadow at the only window where the shutters were not closed. Who is living at No. 3 bis now? I ring the bell. I hear someone on the stairs. The door opens a crack. An elderly woman. She asks what I want. To visit the house. Out of the question, she snaps back, the owners are away. Then shuts the door. Now she is watching me, her face pressed against the windowpane.
Avenue Henri-Martin. The pathways snaking through the Bois de Boulogne. Let’s go as far as the Lower Lake. I would often go out to the island with Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. Ever since I pursued my ideaclass="underline" studying people from a distance — the farthest possible distance — their frenetic activity, their ruthless scheming. With its lawns and its Chinese pavilion, the island seemed a suitable place. A few more steps. The Pré Catelan. We came here on the night I informed on the Lieutenant’s ring. Or were we at La Grande Cascade? The orchestra was playing a Creole waltz. An old gentleman and an elderly lady sat at the table next to ours. . Esmeralda was sipping a grenadine, Coco Lacour was smoking his cigar. . All too soon the Khedive and Philibert would be plaguing me with questions. A ring of figures whirling around me, faster and faster, louder and louder, until finally I capitulate so they will leave me in peace. In the meantime, I didn’t waste those precious moments of reprieve. He was smiling. She was blowing bubbles through her straw. . I see them in silhouette, framed against the light. Time has passed. If I had not set down the names — Coco Lacour, Esmeralda — there would be no trace left of their time on this earth.
Farther to the west, La Grande Cascade. We never went that far: there were sentries guarding the Pont de Suresnes. It must have been a bad dream. Everything is so calm now on the path around the lake. Someone on a barge waved to me. . I remember my sadness when we ventured this far. It was impossible to cross the Seine. We had to go back into the Bois. I knew that we were being hunted, that eventually the hounds would flush us out. The trains weren’t running. A pity. I would have liked to throw them off the scent once and for all. Get to Lausanne, to neutral territory. Coco Lacour, Esmeralda, and I on the shores of Lake Geneva. In Lausanne, we would have nothing more to fear. The late summer afternoon is drawing to a close, as it is today. Boulevard de la Seine. Avenue de Neuilly. Porte Maillot. Leaving the Bois de Boulogne we would sometimes stop at Luna Park. Coco Lacour liked the coconut shy and the hall of mirrors. We would climb aboard the ‘Sirocco’, the whirligig spun faster and faster. Laughter, music. One of the stands bore the words in bright letters: ‘THE ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE.’ On the podium lay a woman and above her bed was a red target which marksmen would try to shoot. Each time they hit the bull’s-eye, the bed teetered and out fell the shrieking woman. There were other gruesome attractions. Being the wrong age for such things, we would panic, like three children abandoned at the height of some infernal fairground. What remains of all that frenzy, the tumult, and the violence? A patch of waste ground next to the Boulevard Gouvion-Saint-Cyr. I know the area. I used to live there. Place des Acacias. A chambre de bonne on the sixth floor. Back then, everything was perfectly fine: I was eighteen, and — thanks to some forged papers — drawing a Navy pension. No one seemed to wish me ill. I had little human contact: my mother, a few dogs, two or three old men, and Lili Marlene. Afternoons spent reading or walking. The energy of boys my age astounded me. They ran to meet life head on. Their eyes blazed. I thought it was better to keep a low profile. A painful shyness. Suits in neutral colours. That’s what I thought. Place Pereire. On warm evenings I would sit on the terrace of the Royal-Villiers cafe. Someone at the next table would smile at me. Cigarette? He proffered a pack of Khédives and we got to talking. He and a friend ran a private detective agency. They suggested I might like to work with them. My innocent looks and my impeccable manners appealed to them. My job was tailing people. After that, they put me to work in earnest: investigations, information-gathering of all sorts, confidential missions. I had my own office at the agency’s headquarters, 177 Avenue Niel. My bosses were utterly disreputable: Henri Normand, known as ‘the Khedive’ (because of the cigarettes he smoked), was a former convict; Pierre Philibert, a senior police inspector, had been drummed out of the force. I realised that they were giving me ‘morally dubious’ jobs. But it never occurred to me to leave. In my office on the Avenue Niel, I assessed my responsibilities: first and foremost, I had to provide for maman, who had little enough to live on. I felt bad that until now I had neglected my role as the main wage-earner in the family, but now that I was working and bringing in a regular salary, I would be a model son.
Avenue de Wagram. Place des Ternes. On my left, the Brasserie Lorraine, where I had arranged to meet him. He was being blackmailed and was counting on our agency to get him off the hook. Myopic eyes. His hands shook. Stammering, he asked me whether I had ‘the papers’. Yes, I replied, very softly, but first he would have to give me twenty thousand francs. In cash. Afterwards, we’d see. We met again the next day at the same place. He handed me an envelope. The money was all there. Then, instead of handing over ‘the papers’, I got up and hightailed it. At first I was reluctant to use such tactics but in time you become inured. My bosses gave me a 10 per cent commission on this type of business. In the evening I’d bring maman cartloads of orchids. My sudden wealth worried her. Perhaps she guessed that I was squandering my youth for a handful of cash. She never questioned me about it.
Le temps passe très vite,
et les années vous quittent.
Un jour, on est un grand garçon. .
I would had preferred to do something more worthwhile than work for this so-called detective agency. Medicine appealed to me, but the sight of wounds and blood make me sick. Moral unpleasantness, on the other hand, doesn’t faze me. Being innately suspicious, I’m liable to focus on the worst in people and things so as not to be disappointed. I was in my element at the Avenue Niel, where there was talk of nothing but blackmail, confidence tricks, robbery, fraud, and corruption of all sorts, and where we dealt with clients of the sleaziest morality. (In this, my employers were every bit their equals.) There was only one positive: I was earning — as I’ve mentioned — a huge salary. This was important to me. It was in the pawnshop on the Rue Pierre Charron (my mother would often go there, but they always refused to take her paste jewellery) that I decided once and for all that poverty was a pain in the arse. You might think I have no principles. I started out a pure and innocent soul. But innocence gets lost along the way. Place de l’Étoile. 9 p.m. The lights along the Champs-Élysées are twinkling as they always do. They haven’t kept their promise. This avenue, which seems majestic from afar, is one of the vilest sections of Paris. Claridge, Fouquet, Hungaria, Lido, Embassy, Butterfly. . at every stop I met new faces: Costachesco, the Baron de Lussatz, Odicharvi, Hayakawa, Lionel de Zieff, Pols de Helder. . Flashy foreigners, abortionists, swindlers, hack journalists, shyster lawyers and crooked accountants who orbited the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert. Added to their number was a whole battalion of women of easy virtue, erotic dancers, morphine addicts. . Frau Sultana, Simone Bouquereau, Baroness Lydia Stahl, Violette Morris, Magda d’Andurian. . My bosses introduced me to this underworld. Champs-Élysées — the Elysian Fields — the name given to the final resting place of the righteous and heroic dead. So I cannot help but wonder how the avenue where I stand came by the name. There are ghosts here, but only those of Monsieur Philibert, the Khedive, and their acolytes. Stepping out of Claridge, arm in arm, come Joanovici and the Count de Cagliostro. They are wearing white suits and platinum signet rings. The shy young man crossing the Rue Lord-Byron is Eugene Weidmann. Standing frozen in front of Pam-Pam is Thérèse de Païva, the most beautiful whore of the Second Empire. From the corner of the Rue Marbeuf, Dr Petiot smiles at me. On the terrace of Le Colisée: a group of black marketeers are cracking open the champagne. Among them are Count Baruzzi, the Chapochnikoff brothers, Rachid von Rosenheim, Jean-Farouk de Méthode, Otto da Silva, and a host of others. . If I can make it to the Rond-Point, I might be able to lose these ghosts. Hurry. The gardens of the Champs-Élysées, silent, green. I often used to stop off here. After spending the afternoon in bars along the avenue (at ‘business’ appointments with the aforementioned), I would stroll over the park for a breath of fresh air. I’d sit on a bench. Breathless. Pockets stuffed of cash. Twenty thousand, sometimes a hundred thousand francs. Our agency was, if not sanctioned, at least tolerated by the Préfecture de police: we supplied any information they requested. On the other hand, we were running a protection racket involving those I mentioned above, who could truly believe they were paying for our silence, our protection, since Monsieur Philibert still had close ties with senior colleagues on the force, Inspecteurs Rothe, David, Jalby, Jurgens, Santoni, Permilleux, Sadowsky, Francois, and Detmar. As for me, one of my jobs was to collect the protection money. Twenty thousand. Sometimes a hundred thousand francs. It had been a rough day. Endless arguments. I pictured their sallow, oily, faces again: the usual suspects from a police line-up. Some, as usual, had tried to hold out and — though shy and softhearted by nature — I found myself compelled to raise my voice, to tell them I would go straight to the Quai des Orfèvres if they didn’t pay up. I told them about the files my bosses had with their names and their curricula vitae. Not exactly glowing reports, those files. They would dig out their wallets, and call me a ‘traitor’. The word stung.