I would find myself alone on the bench. Some places encourage reflection. Public gardens, for instance, the lost kingdoms in Paris, those ailing oases amid the roar and the cruelty of men. The Tuileries. The Jardins de Luxembourg. The Bois de Boulogne. But never did I do so much thinking as in the Jardins des Champs-Élysées. What precisely was my job? Blackmailer? Police informant? I would count the cash, take my 10 per cent and go over to Lachaume to order a thicket of red roses. Pick out two or three rings at Van Cleef & Arpels. Then buy fifty dresses at Piguet, Lelong & Molyneux. All for maman — blackmailer, thug, informant, grass, even hired killer I might be, but I was a model son. It was my sole consolation. It was getting dark. The children were leaving the park after one last ride on the merry-go-round. The street lights along the Champs-Élysées flickered on suddenly. I would have been better off, I thought, staying close to the Place des Acacias. Steer clear of junctions and the boulevards to avoid the noise and the unsavoury encounters. How strange it was to be sitting on the terrace of the Royal-Villiers on the Place Pereire, for someone who was so discreet, so cautious, so eager to pass unnoticed. But in life you have to start out somewhere. There’s no getting away from it. In the end it sends round to you its recruiting officers: in my case, the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert. On a different night, I might have made more admirable acquaintances who could have encouraged me to go into the rag trade or become a writer. Having no particular bent for any profession, I waited for my elders to decide what I would do. Up to them to figure out what they’d like me to be. I left it in their lap.
Boy scout? Florist? Tennis player? No: Employee of a phony detective agency. Blackmailer, informant, extortionist. I found it quite surprising. I did not have the talents required for such work: the cruelty, the lack of scruples, a taste for sleazy company. Even so, I bravely stuck at it, the way another man might study for a boilermaker’s license. The strange thing about guys like me is that they can just as easily end up in the Panthéon as in Thiais cemetery, the potter’s field for spies. They become heroes. Or bastards. No one realises they get dragged into this dirty business against their will. That all they wanted, all they cared about was their stamp collection, and being left in peace on the Place des Acacias, where they could breathe in careful little breaths.
In the meantime, I was getting into bad ways. My passivity and my lack of enthusiasm made me all the more vulnerable to the malign influence of the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert. I remembered the words of a doctor who lived across the landing in our apartment block on the Place des Acacias. ‘After you reach twenty,’ he told me, ‘you start to decay. Fewer and fewer nerve cells, my boy.’ I jotted this remark down in a notebook, because it’s important to heed the experience of our elders. I now realised that he was right. My shady dealings and the unsavoury characters I rubber shoulders with would cost me my innocence. The future? A race, with the finish line on a patch of waste ground. Being dragged to a guillotine with no chance to catch my breath. Someone whispered in my ear: you have gained nothing in this life but the whirlwind you let yourself be caught up in. . gypsy music, played faster and faster to drown out my screams. This evening the air is decidedly balmy. As they always have, the donkeys trudge down the path heading back to the stables having spent the day giving rides to children. They disappear around the corner of the Avenue Gabriel. We will never know how they suffer. Their reticence impressed me. As they trotted past, I once again felt calm, indifferent. I tried to gather my thoughts. They were few and far between, and utterly banal. I have no taste for thinking. Too emotional. Too lazy. After a moment’s effort, I invariably arrived at same conclusion: I was bound to die some day. Fewer and fewer nerve cells. A long slow process of decay. The doctor had warned me. I should add that my profession inclined me toward dwelling on the morose: being an informant and a blackmailer at twenty rather narrows one’s sights. A curious smell of old furniture and musty wallpaper permeated 177 Avenue Niel. The light was constantly flickering. Behind my desk was a set of wooden drawers where I kept the files on our ‘clients’. I catalogued them by names of poisonous plants: Black Ink Cap, Belladonna, Devil’s bolete, Henbane, Livid Agaric. . Their very touch made me decalcify. My clothes were suffused with the stifling stench of the office on Avenue Niel. I had allowed myself to be contaminated. The disease? An accelerated aging process, a physical and moral decay in keeping with the doctor’s prognosis. And yet I am not predisposed towards the morbid.
Un petit village
Un vieux clocher
A little village, and old church tower, these described my fondest hopes. Unfortunately, I lived in a city not unlike a vast Luna Park where the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert were driving me from shooting galleries to roller coasters, from Punch and Judy shows to ‘Sirocco’ whirligigs. Finally I lay down on a bench. I wasn’t meant for such a life. I never asked anyone for anything. They had come to me.