Bejardy came. Louis noticed a green and yellow ribbon on the lapel of his jacket.
“You’ve been decorated?” he asked.
“The Médaille militaire,” Bejardy said. “I earned it in Germany, under Marshal de Lattre. I was twenty-three. It’s the only good thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
He lowered his eyes, and it was clear he wanted to change the subject.
They had aperitifs in the studio. Then they had dinner nearby, at Chez Justin on rue Joseph de Maistre.
•
He no longer worked nights. From that point on, Bejardy entrusted him with “little tasks” to be carried out during the day, or else he would stay in the garage to greet visitors and answer the phone. These “little tasks” consisted in bringing letters to or from various addresses in Paris and the surrounding areas; Bejardy had told him he didn’t trust the mail. Often he would act as a chauffeur, driving Bejardy to his meetings in an old English car with a leather smell. His salary had been doubled, without Bejardy saying anything to explain why.
He felt vaguely uneasy. What was his “job” exactly? What “company” was he working for? And Bejardy? Why had he made him his right-hand man so quickly?
He rarely shared these doubts with Odile. On the contrary, his years of solitude, at boarding school and in the army, had given him the habit of not trusting anyone, concealing his worries. He forced himself to seem calm around her, and convinced her that his job was respectable. Bejardy’s protective attitude could be explained by the fact that he used to know his father. This was only a half lie: Bejardy had told him that he had been a cycling enthusiast in his youth and that he was delighted to be in a position to give Memling the cyclist’s son a job.
No, he couldn’t show the least unease around Odile. To do so would mean risking the fragile equilibrium of their life together. They no longer lived in a garret, after all, but in an apartment on rue Caulaincourt. And you could read, right there in black and white, on the list of renters stuck on the concierge’s window: “Mr. and Mrs. Memling.” Not bad for a twenty year old.
•
But he did let himself ask Brossier some questions. They were sitting in one of the booths at the Rêve, a café on rue Caulaincourt that Louis liked for its name: Café Dream. It amused him and Odile to say, “See you at the Dream at five.”
“You don’t trust Roland, do you?”
“No, it’s not that…”
“Roland is a good guy, old boy. Not everyone gets the Médaille militaire at twenty-three.”
“I know.”
“You’re doing very ordinary work. It’s boring. I don’t mean that as an insult. It’s a job like a messenger’s, or a bellhop’s. There’s nothing suspicious about that, is there?”
He gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder.
“I’m joking. You’re more like Roland’s secretary. Me too, for that matter. You think that’s anything to be ashamed of?”
“No, but what exactly does Roland do?”
“Roland is a businessman, with an interest in cars, and other things,” Brossier answered carefully, as though reciting a lesson.
“How did you meet him?”
“I’ll tell you someday when we have more time.”
They had left and were walking down the street. A crowd of children bursting out of the school yard jostled them. One of them was wearing roller skates and the others were chasing him.
“You’re nervous, I understand,” Brossier said in his husky voice, a little breathless, the voice he used to talk about matters close to his heart.
This was not the blustering Brossier anymore. How strange, Louis thought — that a person can have two different voices like that.
He was saying that at Louis’s age, one often has rather vague and boring tasks to perform; you have to make do however you can. Things get clearer later, but when you’re twenty they’re still in a rough and sketchy state. Everything is hazy. That’s life in the beginning, old boy. I myself… One day, I’ll tell you everything.
•
She tried to keep busy while Louis was out. She had kept a friend named Mary from her time at the cabaret-restaurant in Auteuil; Mary still worked there. She sang and danced for a few minutes, accompanied by a group of balalaika players and dressed in a “Ukrainian princess” costume, which looked more like an outfit from the Tyrolean Alps. But the folklore act was nothing more than a temporary way to earn some money. Her dream was to open a little fashion boutique. She discussed it with Odile and they made plans to go into business together.
In the meantime, Mary could work at home and build up a clientele. Odile wondered how they could pull together enough money to open the shop. They had already decided on its name, Chez Mary Bakradzé, thinking the strange name would work in their favor. Under “Chez Mary Bakradzé,” in capital letters, it would say “MODE — FASHION,” a label Odile had admired on the pediment of a store in the Saint-Honoré neighborhood.
Mary drew the patterns and knew how to cut the fabric. She had worked for a dressmaker, a friend of the family, when she was very young. Odile asked her about her parents but never got a straight answer: Sometimes Mary said her father and mother were separated and living abroad; sometimes they were living in a house in the south of France and would be coming to visit her any day now; sometimes they had disappeared. The one fixed point in the fog — the only member of the family who had left any visible trace — was Mary’s grandfather, a writer exiled to Paris, one Paul Bakradzé. He devoted his talents to portraying, in delicate brushstrokes, life in a military garrison in southern Russia. One of his novels had even been translated into French, and Mary piously kept a worn old copy of it.
She was blond, petite, with very fair, almost pink skin and pale blue eyes.
Odile and Louis saw her on Sundays. Mary lived in the area between avenue de la Grande-Armée and avenue Foch, a hybrid zone where the sixteenth arrondissement becomes solid and residential but the streets are still under the sway of the garages, stores selling bicycles or ball bearings, old dance halls, and the ghost of the old Luna Park.
The three of them would stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, from Porte Dauphine to the lakes. There, they would take a rowboat and paddle for an hour. Or else they would moor at the dock of the Chalet des Îles and play a game of miniature golf. When it got dark, they would go back to Mary’s apartment: three rooms, with the first two serving as anteroom and living room. The third, at the end of a long hall, was Mary’s bedroom.
When they arrived, ten or so people would be crowded into the living room. Older people, some of them quite elderly, playing bridge or chatting over tea. Mary hugged a woman of about sixty as she walked past — tall, moon-faced, with slanting eyes and the authority of mistress of the house. Her aunt, Mary told Louis and Odile.
The gathering talked or played cards in the dimly lit room. Every time, Mary would light the lamps and the chandelier, as though this task had been left to her because the others thought it was too hard to flip a switch, or beneath their dignity. Or maybe the idea never crossed their minds.
In Mary’s room, they listened to records and talked. Odile and Louis had found in her the carefree laziness that was actually natural to them both. They were all the same age, born the same year. They understood one another, and Odile and Louis often stayed the night.
Mary would bring them something to eat, a piece of cake or a bowl of soup. They would hear the murmur of voices in the living room through the half-open door. Little by little, the conversations would die out, the people would leave. A man would be talking on the phone in the hall. He would be quiet for long stretches, and they would think he had hung up every time, but then he would say something else, before falling silent again. This conventicle in an unknown language on the phone would go on for hours, often until morning.