“Come with me, I’ll take you. Jean-Claude and I will do a little more work. I brought the folders.”
“Of course, Roland,” Brossier said.
They had bright eyes and the fresh, energetic look of people who had just gotten a good night’s sleep, which surprised Louis.
The bedroom was next to the living room. Its light blue walls, thick carpet, fur bedspread, and the veiled light of a bedside lamp created a gentle, relaxing atmosphere.
“The bathroom is over here…”
Bejardy opened a door and turned on the light, revealing a bathroom with blue mosaic walls and floor.
“Good night. You’ll be able sleep through the night for once, my dear Louis. And tomorrow, we’ll meet at Pointare, one o’clock sharp.”
This was a restaurant near the garage, where Bejardy often had lunch.
When he had left the room, they stretched out on the fur bedspread, and as though she did not have the strength to undress herself, Louis took off her shoes, then the rest. They saw their reflection in a large standing mirror.
“Your friends are working some more?” Odile asked.
“Yes.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t really know,” Louis said.
They heard Brossier and Bejardy talking in the living room. Later, Louis woke up and heard them still talking, their voices joined by others. He listened to the uninterrupted murmur of conversation and felt himself relax.
Odile slept. Through the window, whose curtains they hadn’t drawn, he saw the Seine and the bright building of the Citroën factory on the opposite shore.
•
Bejardy gave him Saturdays and Sundays off. Brossier was free on weekends, too, and he suggested to Louis that they spend their “moments of leisure” together. He wanted to introduce him and Odile to his fiancée. By getting closer to Brossier, Louis would surely get more information about what had prompted Bejardy to entrust him with a job, and who exactly this Roland de Bejardy was.
He had received his salary the day before and managed to persuade Odile to join him. She would have to show up at the Auteuil cabaret-restaurant at around ten o’clock, and neither she nor Louis understood why Brossier had told them to meet him at the Cité Universitaire Métro station at the start of the afternoon.
The inner pocket of Louis’s jacket was bulging with fifteen hundred francs, and Odile would receive her fee after that night’s show. They were rich. And it was the first sunny day of the winter. In the train, on the Sceaux line, they felt like they were setting out on a trip.
~ ~ ~
BROSSIER was waiting for them on the platform at the Cité Universitaire station, as though they had just arrived on holiday and he, their friend, had come to meet their train. Plus, as he came up to them, he said “No luggage?” in a tone that left Louis confused, to the point where he wondered if they were really still in Paris, not at the seaside.
Even Brossier’s clothes were disconcerting. Still a Tyrolean hat with a red feather, but no boring, rumpled traveling salesman’s suit, no black socks and shoes. No. Instead, a print shirt under a white sweater, linen pants, and white sneakers, a monochrome look that Brossier seemed proud of. He hadn’t shaved. Or brushed his hair. Louis and Odile admired this new man. He walked them to the stairs leading out of the station.
“This way, my friends.”
They crossed the boulevard, led by Brossier, and entered the Cité campus.
“Here’s where I spend my weekends,” Brossier said with a smile. “Come with me, it’s this way.”
They took a path to the left between areas of grass, crossed the threshold of one of the massive buildings, and walked down a hallway, running into groups of students.
“My fiancée is waiting for us in the cafeteria. Here we are.”
The cafeteria was deserted at this early-afternoon hour. A beautiful black woman with harmonious Ethiopian features was sitting at a table all the way in the back, and Brossier walked over to her.
“This is Jacqueline, my fiancée. Odile… Louis… Jacqueline Boivin.”
She stood up and shook hands with them. She looked a little intimidated; she was around twenty years old and wearing a gray pleated skirt and a beige twinset: conservative clothes that didn’t match Brossier’s sporty look. He invited them to sit down at the table.
“I recommend the pan bagnats, they’re excellent here. Don’t you think so, Jacqueline?”
She agreed with an almost imperceptible nod of her head.
Louis and Odile said nothing while Brossier walked over to the counter. They both smiled at Brossier’s fiancée without daring to speak, and when Louis offered her a cigarette from his pack, she refused with a furtive gesture. Brossier rejoined them, carrying a tray piled high with pan bagnats that he handed out to them. After taking a bite of his own, he said, “Juicy, aren’t they? Maybe you’d like a little harissa to make it spicier? I prefer it without.”
And he dug into the roll.
“Yes, Jacqueline is a student, she lives here at Cité Universitaire. As for me…”
He rummaged through his jacket pocket and took out a card that he handed to Louis.
“Look, I managed to get a student ID printed up. You need it to eat at the university cafeteria… and to feel like you belong.”
Louis looked at the card. It was in Brossier’s name, with his photograph, and listed a college address. Odile examined it in turn.
“And you sleep here?” she asked bluntly.
“Every weekend.”
He liked being able to reveal his secret, and he put his arm around his fiancée’s shoulders.
Odile handed him back his student card, which Brossier looked at too. He handled it carefully, even though it was encased in a plastic sheath.
“I made myself a bit younger… Oh, just ten years or so…”
“What exams are you taking this year?” Odile asked.
“The generals in literature. What are they called again, Jacqueline?”
“Propaedeutics,” Jacqueline said in a pinched voice.
He pulled her closer, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“How did you get this card?” Louis asked.
“Bejardy knows someone. A Pole, who made false papers during the war.”
He said it unwillingly, as though it was a sore point and he was sad he wasn’t a real student.
“Jacqueline is a mathematician, just think… She’s taking courses at the Faculty of Sciences.”
“Where did you meet?” Odile asked Jacqueline.
“Here, in the cafeteria.” She had answered in a slow, soft voice. “I always saw him alone here in the cafeteria. He looked bored. So we started talking.”
“Yes, I’ve been coming here a long time,” Brossier said. “Especially when I felt low. I always liked Cité. It’s a different world… I would wander around the corridors of all the buildings, sit in the TV rooms. You know what I mean. This place has something about it.”
As he was talking, Louis started to see him in a different light. How could he ever have guessed that this man, as chatty and jokey as a guy hawking something on the street, and who, he had told Odile, “dealt in tires,” was strolling around in his time off under the shade of the trees at Cité, an Ethiopian on his arm and a fake student ID in his pocket?
“Does Bejardy know?” Louis asked.
“No, not yet, but I’m planning to tell him. Nothing surprises Roland, you know. We’ll invite him out here some night. Jacqueline has to meet him.”
They left the cafeteria. Brossier wanted them to see the Cité campus and wanted to point out all the various buildings, like the provinces of his kingdom.
“We were just in the Provinces of France building, the most important. I like the England building more, in front of you. It reminds me of a hotel in Aix-les-Bains. Before I met Jacqueline, I often used to spend the evening reading a newspaper in the England building.”