In the living room, Louis saw that the furniture was gone. There was nothing left but the large sofa and two chairs. The bookshelves had been emptied out, too, and the books were stacked in piles against the wall.
“I’m going to liquidate the apartment,” Bejardy said. “If you’re interested in any of these books…”
They went over to the sofa. Nicole Haas, in riding pants, was lying there asleep. Her cheek was pressed against the arm of the sofa, and Louis was moved by the relaxed face, the slightly open mouth. Bejardy tapped her softly on the shoulder. She opened her eyes and sat up when she saw Louis.
“Sorry…”
“Nothing to worry about, darling.”
The wind was billowing the gauze curtains through the open French windows, the same as on the day when Odile and Louis had met Nicole Haas for the first time.
“You should make the most of the nice weather, Coco,” Bejardy said. “What are you doing this afternoon?”
“I need to go see the horses.”
“Louis can take you in the car. I need to stay here. I have some work to do.”
The telephone rang and Bejardy went to the other end of the room to answer it. Louis sat down facing Nicole Haas. She didn’t say anything but she smiled at him, her face still a bit sleepy. And that smile, those bright eyes fixed on him, the dreamlike undulation of the curtains in the wind, the sound of a boat’s motor — it all made up one of the moments that remained in his memory.
•
On rue de la Ferme, in Neuilly, she told him to stop in front of a low building with a bar that filled the whole ground floor: the Lauby. Wood walls. Semidarkness. Photographs of horses and riders. Stirrups. Whips. The smell of leather.
A man at one of the tables stood up and came over to kiss Nicole Haas’s hand. He was in riding clothes too: a small man, very stiff, with black hair and a black mustache, looking a bit like a wax dummy. The words got scrambled in his mouth — this syllable delayed, that one swallowed, the next stammered — and he imitated the halting pronunciation of certain Anglo-Saxons so perfectly that you ended up wondering if he was even speaking French. Nicole Haas told Louis that this man was a marquis, and that during a long stay in America he had married a movie actress and become her “manager.” On returning to France, he had taken over the stables across the street from the Lauby. The only thing he had brought back from America was the title of “manager,” which now appeared on his calling cards and which he valued more than his title of nobility.
“So, you’re leaving your horses for a while again, Nicole?”
“Yes. Another month.”
“And then Argentina? It’s decided? Tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“You must tell me before you go. I have very good friends there. Dodero, Gracida… Pierre Eyzaguirre… No, he’s Chilean. One can never tell them apart, all those gauchos.”
The marquis’s voice had taken on a very shrill tone when he said his friends’ names.
“Something to drink? Would you like one? Scotch? Coffee? Tea? Tell me.”
He twirled his hands in strange circles, as though his shirt cuffs were bothering him.
“Do you ride?”
“No,” Louis said.
“Why not?”
“He hasn’t had free time to learn yet,” Nicole Haas said.
“You simply must start,” the marquis said gravely.
They left the Lauby and walked through the stable gates.
“I will leave you here,” the marquis said. “I have to give a riding lesson to Robert de Unzue’s daughter. See you very soon, Nicole. And be sure to tell me about Argentina, yes? I also need to know so I can take care of the horses…”
The marquis waved goodbye with an abrupt movement of his hand, and they crossed the sand-covered courtyard to the stables. Nicole Haas wanted to show Louis her horses. She had two, a dappled gray and a bay. They stuck their heads out of their stalls and she stroked their heads.
Above the stables there was a kind of dovecote covered with ivy.
“I have a room up there. Do you want to see it?”
They climbed a tiny spiral staircase. Nicole Haas opened the door to a little room wallpapered with toile de Jouy, with a narrow bed covered with pale blue velvet.
“I come here a lot. It’s the only place where I feel good. I’m near the horses.”
She opened the window halfway, then lay down on the bed.
“I always wondered why you work with Roland.”
“Just one of those things,” Louis said.
He sat down on the floor with his back against the side of the bed.
“And what are you going to do when he leaves?”
“I don’t know,” Louis said. “What about you?”
“Whether it’s him or someone else, what matters is that I find someone who will let me feed my horses.”
She pressed her kind and stubborn face into the hollow of Louis’s shoulder.
“He wants to take me to Argentina. What am I supposed to do in Argentina?”
He felt her breath on his neck.
“Did you know that Roland is a murderer? That’s right, a murderer… There were articles in the paper. Why am I going to Argentina with a murderer? You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying, Louis. Me, all alone down there with that killer…”
How long did they stay there in that room, on the narrow bed? She had a scar on her shoulder, in the shape of a star, that Louis couldn’t help but run his lips over. A souvenir of a fall from a horse. It got dark. They could hear the clattering of hooves, a whinny, and the high-pitched voice of the marquis giving orders at more and more distant intervals, like a motif on a flute, clear and desolate, returning again and again.
~ ~ ~
WE WERE slipping toward summer. Bejardy had less and less work for Louis, who spent most of his days with Odile. They met Brossier and Jacqueline Boivin at Cité Universitaire sometimes, and picnicked on the great lawn or strolled to Parc Montsouris. More often, Mary came to Montmartre. She had discovered a little place, “lease for sale,” for her “Couture Fashion” boutique.
At night, they walked slowly along the median to place Blanche and Pigalle. They went to see Jordan, who had managed to get a gig in a cabaret on rue des Martyrs and who always wore the stage dress Odile and Mary had made. Or else they simply went up rue Caulaincourt to avenue Junot and then back the way they had come. The lights were on all night in the entrance to the Hotel Rome on rue Caulaincourt, like a lookout post.
On avenue Junot, they saw a big man walking an Irish setter on a leash, and nodded a greeting. The dog seemed to feel a spontaneous affection for Odile and Louis.
That night, on the terrace of the Dream, this same man was sitting at a table next to theirs and his Irish setter had put its chin on Odile’s knee.
“My dog isn’t bothering you, is he, mademoiselle? If he is, please don’t hesitate to tell him.”
He hardly moved his lips, but his bass voice carried far.
“No, he’s not bothering me at all,” Odile said, petting the dog.
“Do you live in the neighborhood?”
“Yes,” Louis said. “A little farther down, on this street.”
“What building?”
“Eighteen bis.”
“Which floor?”
Louis hesitated a moment before answering. “The sixth.”
“No, impossible! In the studio?”
“Yes.”
“May I?”
He moved over to join Odile and Louis, clearly deeply moved. His short gray hair, his puffy face, his powerful brow, and his build, emphasized by his velvet courduroy jacket, made him look like a former boxer. He gave off a smell of old leather and cold ashes.