‘And you, Monsieur Alexandre, what do you do in life?’
What should I say? My life? As storm-tossed as yours, ‘papa’. Eighteen months in Sarthe, as a school monitor, as I mentioned. School monitor again, in Rennes, Limoges and Clermont-Ferrand. I choose religious institutions. They afford more shelter. This domestic existence brings me inner peace. One of my colleagues, obsessed with Scouting, has just started up a troop for young people in the Forest of Seillon. He was looking for scout leaders and took me on. Here I am in my navy-blue plus fours and brown gaiters. We get up at six. Our days are divided between physical education and manual work. Communal sing-songs in the evening, round the campfire. A quaint idylclass="underline" Montcalm, Bayard, Lamoricière, ‘Adieu, belle Françoise’, planes, chisels and the scouting spirit. I stayed three years. A safe bolt-hole, just the place to be forgotten. Sadly, my baser instincts regained the upper hand. I fled this haven and found myself at the Gare de l’Est, without even taking the time to remove my beret and badges.
I scour Paris looking for a steady job. A futile search. The fog never lifts, the pavement slips away beneath me. More and more often I suffer dizzy spells. In my nightmares, I am crawling endlessly, trying to find my backbone. The garret I live in, on the Boulevard Magenta, was the studio of the artist Domergue before he was famous. I try to see this as a good omen.
Of what I did, at this time, I have only the vaguest memory. I think I was ‘assistant’ to a certain Doctor S. who recruited his patients from among drug addicts and gave them prescriptions for vast sums of money.
I had touted for him. I seem to remember that I also worked as ‘secretary’ to an English poetess, a passionate admirer of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Such details seem irrelevant.
I remember only perambulations across Paris, and that centre of gravity, that magnet to which I was invariably drawn: the préfecture de police. Try as I might to stay away, within a few short hours my steps would lead me back. One night when I was more depressed than usual, I almost asked the sentries guarding the main door on the Boulevard du Palais, if I could go in. I could not understand the fascination the police exerted over me. At first I thought it was like the urge to jump you feel when you are leaning over the parapet of a bridge, but there was something else. To disoriented boys like me, policemen represented something solid and dignified. I dreamed of being an officer. I confided this to Sieffer, an inspector in the vice squad I was lucky enough to meet. He heard me out, a smile playing on his lips, but with paternal solicitude, and offered to let me work for him. For several months, I shadowed people on a voluntary basis. I had to tail a wide variety of people and note how they spent their time. In the course of these missions, I uncovered many poignant secrets. . Such-and-such a lawyer from La Plaine Monceau, you encounter on the Place Pigalle wearing a blonde wig and satin dress. I witnessed insignificant people suddenly transformed into nightmarish figures or tragic heroes. By the end I thought I was going insane. I identified with all these strangers. It was myself that I was hunting down so relentlessly. I was the old man in the mackintosh or the woman in the beige suit. I talked about this to Sieffer.
‘No point carrying on. You’re an amateur, son.’
He walked me to the door of his office.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll see each other again.’
He added in a gloomy voice:
‘Sooner or later, unfortunately, everyone ends up in the cells. .’
I had a genuine affection for this man and felt I could trust him. When I told him how I felt, he enveloped me with a sad, caring look. What became of him? Perhaps he could help us, now? This interlude working for the police did little to boost my morale. I no longer dared leave my room on the Boulevard Magenta. Menace loomed everywhere. I thought of you. I had the feeling that somewhere you were in danger. Every night between three and four in the morning, I would hear you calling to me for help. Little by little, an idea formed in my mind, I would set off in search of you.
I did not have very happy memories of you, but, after ten years, that sort of thing doesn’t seem so important and I’d forgiven you for the ‘unfortunate incident in the George V métro’. Let’s deal with that subject once more, for the last time. There are two possibilities: 1) I wrongly suspected you. In which case, please forgive me and put the mistake down to my own madness. 2) If you did try to push me under the train, I freely admit there were extenuating circumstances. No, there’s nothing unusual about your case. A father wanting to kill his son or to be rid of him seems to me to be symptomatic of the huge upheaval in our moral values today. Not long ago, the converse phenomenon could be observed: sons killed their father to prove their strength. But now, who is there for us to lash out at? Orphans that we are, we are doomed to track ghosts in our search for fatherhood. We never find it. It always slips away. It’s exhausting, old man. Shall I tell you the feats of imagination I’ve accomplished? Tonight, you sit facing me, your eyes starting from your head. You look like a black market trafficker, and the title ‘Baron’ is unlikely to throw the hunters off the scent. You chose it, I imagine, in the hope that it would set you up, make you respectable. Such play-acting doesn’t work on me. I’ve known you too long. Remember our Sunday walks, Baron? From the centre of Paris, we drifted on a mysterious current all the way to the ring roads. Here the city unloads its refuse and silt. Soult, Massena, Davout, Kellermann. Why did they give the names of conquering heroes to these murky places? But this was ours, this was our homeland.
Nothing has changed. Ten years later, here you are the same as ever: glancing at the living room door like a terrified rat. And here I am gripping the arm of the sofa for fear of slipping off the dustsheet. Try though we might, we will never know peace, the sweet stillness of things. We will walk on quicksand to the end. You’re sweating with fear. Get a grip, old boy. I’m here beside you, holding your hand in the darkness. Whatever happens, I will share your fate. In the meantime, let’s take a tour of this place. Through the door on the left, we come to a small room. The sort of leather armchairs I love. A mahogany desk. Have you ransacked the drawers yet? We’ll comb though the owners’ private life and gradually begin to feel as though we are part of the family: are there more drawers, more chests, more pockets upstairs that we can rifle through? We have a few hours to spare. This room is cosier than the living room. Smell of tweed and Dutch tobacco. On the shelves, neat rows of books: the complete works of Anatole France and crime novels published by Masque, recognizable by their yellow spines. Sit behind the desk. Sit up straight. There’s no reason we can’t dream about the course our lives might have taken in such a setting. Whole days spent reading or talking. A German shepherd on guard to deter visitors. In the evenings, my fiancée and I would play a few games of manille.
The telephone rings. You jump up, your face haggard. I must admit that this jingling, in the middle of the night, is not encouraging. They’re making sure you’re here so they can arrest you at dawn. The ringing will stop before you have time to answer. Sieffer often used such ruses. We take the stairs four at a time, tripping, falling over each other, pulling, scrabbling to our feet. There is a whole warren of rooms and you don’t know where the light-switches are. I stumble against a piece of furniture, you feel around for the telephone. It’s Marcheret. He and Murraille wondered why we had disappeared.