“The first time I met Dressel . . .”
“The first time you met Dressel,” I repeated eagerly.
“. . . was in 1942, in Aiglon . . . He was leaning against the bar . . . an archangel . . .”
“Is that true?” I said.
“What’s it to you?”
“Do you have other memories of him?”
His face lit up with the shadow of a smile.
“When Harry went into a café, he always sat near the window, in the sun, to get a tan . . .”
“Is that true?”
“He also used some kind of product to make his hair even blonder.”
Jansenne knit his brow.
“How silly . . . I can’t remember the name of it . . .”
He suddenly looked exhausted. He fell silent. If he stayed silent, who else could tell me about Harry Dressel? How many people were there in Paris who could have said that a man named Harry Dressel had existed? Just him and me. And Denise.
“I’d so like to hear more about him,” I said.
“It’s all so far in the past . . . Oh, here . . . I remembered the name of the product Harry always put in his hair . . . Bright & Shine . . . That’s it . . . It was Bright & Shine . . .”
Around us, customers were making the most of the first sunny afternoon in April. Young people, mainly. They were wearing lightweight clothing in the latest fashions. Today, those clothes seem outmoded as well, but that afternoon, it was Jansenne’s outfit—a very long coat with padded shoulders and a frayed-looking flannel suit—that gave the impression, by comparison, of belonging to a bygone era. I thought that if Harry Dressel were to sit at our table, he might cut the same ghostly figure as Jansenne.
“I served as his impresario toward the end,” Jansenne murmured. “At the time of his departure for Egypt . . .”
He didn’t answer all my questions, but according to him, no one would ever get to the bottom of what happened in Egypt. He had a very precise idea on the subject, and as I kept prodding him, he insinuated that Dressel had been murdered. That timid confession was the last thing I was able to drag out of him. He advised me half-heartedly to talk to a certain Edmond Jahlan, who, during Dressel’s time in Egypt, was in King Farouk’s entourage. Later, I searched for that Edmond Jahlan. In vain. So where are you, Jahlan? Get in touch.
He ordered a peppermint cordial and stared straight ahead with vacant eyes.
“What was Harry Dressel’s act like?”
“He sang, mister. He was also a tap dancer.”
“What songs did he sing?”
He knit his brow, as if to recall the titles.
“German songs. He had a signature tune:
“Caprio-len . . .
“Ca-prio-len . . .
“Capriolen . . .”
He tried to find the melody and his voice cracked. Long ago. So long ago.
“And he lived in Square Carpeaux, is that right?” I asked.
He shrugged and said in an exasperated tone:
“No, sir. Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg.”
“Did you know he had a daughter?”
“No, now give it a rest . . . That’s the second time you’ve said that . . . You’re kind of a joker, aren’t you?”
He squinted and looked at me, a grimace playing on his lips.
“He was too fond of men.”
His voice frightened me.
“I believe that’s everything . . . I have nothing more to tell you . . .”
He stood up. So did I. We walked next to each other on the sidewalk of Place Victor-Hugo.
“Why do you want to stir up the past?”
He planted himself in front of me, almost threateningly, with his worn-out face and coat, his faded hair, his albino eyes.
“Can’t you just leave us alone once and for all? Can’t you?”
He turned on his heel. I stood there and watched him head toward Avenue Bugeaud. He didn’t look back. A vague human shape, a puff of steam that could dissipate at any moment. Capriolen.
It was a long-term project. I explained this to Denise, in the evenings when she ventured into my “study.” First I had to gather material proofs of Harry Dressel’s passage on this earth. And that would take time. Already, combing through a stack of old newspapers, I had come across an advertisement for the Vol de Nuit nightclub, Rue des Colonels-Renard, that mentioned him by name. At the bottom of the “entertainments” page of another newspaper, another ad, but written in tiny characters: “The singer Harry Dressel is currently appearing at the Cinq à Neuf, Rue de Ponthieu. Tea—Aperitifs at 5pm—Dinner—Show at 8:30. Open all night.” I clipped these documents and pasted them into a large sketchbook. I studied them under a magnifying glass for hours, so much had I come to doubt Harry Dressel’s very existence. I also drew up long lists of people who, if still alive, could possibly tell me about him. And that required collecting scores of old phone directories. But the phone numbers no longer answered and my letters came back stamped “Addressee Unknown.”
Dressel had had a dog. Denise remembered a Labrador named Mektoub. One night, when the “passive defense” sirens began to wail, they went down to the cellar, the Flemish woman, Denise, and the dog. At the Cinq à Neuf on Rue de Ponthieu, at the same hour, Dressel was just starting his act. In the cellar, the lights had gone out and they heard the thunder of the bombs, getting closer and closer. No doubt it was during the bombing of La Chapelle station. Denise hugged the dog tight and he licked her cheek. His rough tongue calmed the little girl’s terror.
She still recalled the afternoon when she and her father had bought the Labrador, in a kennel in Auteuil, on Rue de l’Yvette. I went back there. The owner of the kennel, a sentimental fellow, had kept copies of the pedigrees and a small identity photo of every dog he had sold over the past forty years. He showed me his archives, which filled a large room, and he found the pedigree and picture of the Labrador. It was born on a breeding farm in Saint-Lô, in 1938, and the names of its parents and four grandparents were mentioned. The kennel owner gave me copies of the pedigree and photo. We had a long conversation. He dreamed of creating a centralized filing system in which every dog would be listed at birth. He also would have liked to collect every document—photos, feature films and home movies, oral and written testimony—relating to missing dogs. His personal torment was to think of those thousands and thousands of dogs who died in total anonymity, without leaving any trace.
I pasted the Labrador’s pedigree and photo into the sketchbook, amid the other ephemera relating to Harry Dressel. Little by little, I began writing my book, in fragments. I had settled on the title: “The Lives of Harry Dressel,” as what Jansenne had said induced me to think that Dressel had actually led several parallel lives. I had no proof of this and my file was rather sparse, but I figured I’d let my imagination run with it. It would help me find the real Dressel. I had only to let my mind wander about the few elements I had gathered, like an archeologist who, faced with a statue that is three-quarters mutilated, mentally reconstructs it entire. I worked at night. During the day, Denise stayed with me. We got up at around seven in the evening. Under her red bathrobe, she had a scent that I’ve sometimes recognized fleetingly on a passerby. At such moments, I relive the bedroom in the gray light of late afternoon, the fluid, prolonged sound of cars on rainy days, her eyes with their glints of mauve, her mouth, and the magic of her pale buttocks. When we managed to get up earlier, we went for walks in the Bois de Boulogne, by way of the lakes or the Pré Catelan. We talked about the future. We would get a dog. Maybe we’d take a trip. Would I like her to cut her hair? She was going on a diet starting today because she had gained a pound. Later on, would I read her some of what I’d written? We went for dinner at a restaurant on Rue Malakoff, a large dining room with walls covered in wood paneling that needed a fresh coat of paint, as did the four dilapidated Corinthian columns standing in the corners. Silence. Amber light. I was always careful to choose a table for three, in case Harry Dressel, coming through
the door . . .
At around midnight, I sat down at my desk, in front of the writing pad. I was overcome by fatigue the instant I uncapped my pen. My dear Dressel, how I’ve suffered because of you . . . But I don’t hold it against you. I’m the guilty party. I’m certain you had doubts about your life, which would explain why I’ve found so few traces of it. And so I was forced to guess, to give a father to your daughter, whom I loved. From her bed in the next room, she would ask, “How’s it coming along?” and put on a record of Rimsky-Korsakov because she believed that music helps you write more easily.
At the beginning of May, Sr. Roberto Lorraine, her protector, arrived from Argentina accompanied by his nephew and the latter’s polo team. She told me we’d be seeing each other less often. I could continue to live at her place, and she would come visit me from time to time so that I could read her further installments of the book about her father. I worked all day long to console myself for her absence. I had written nearly fifty pages about Dressel’s early years, a period of his life about which I knew nothing. I’d made him into a kind of David Copperfield, and I skillfully mixed a few passages of Dickens in with my prose. His teenage years in Amsterdam were imbued with an “atmosphere” that owed much to the late, lamented Francis Carco. But from the moment when Dressel began his artistic career at the Casino de Paris and met Denise’s mother, I found a more personal tone.
His departure and time in Egypt in 1951 particularly inspired me, and my pen flew over the paper. Between Cairo and Alexandria, I was at home. The blue-and-gold nightclub where Dressel was master of ceremonies, near the Auberge des Pyramides, was called the Scarab, and the “artist” Annie Beryer appeared on its stage. King Farouk came to hear her sing and instructed his Italian secretary to bring Annie jewels of great value, but the secretary had copies made and kept the originals for himself. Other individuals haunted that establishment, survivors of who knows what shipwreck. And what about Harry Dressel? When was he last seen? In January, a few days before the fire, when Mme. Sazzly Bey had given a party to inaugurate her new mansion on the outskirts of Cairo, an exact copy of Tara from Gone with the Wind, with its cedar-lined driveway . . .
I read the chapters to Denise. She could no longer sleep with me on Avenue Malakoff. Sr. Roberto Lorraine had told her he wanted to marry her. He was thirty years older than she; she found him overweight and didn’t like men who used cosmetics . . . But he was—apparently—one of the three richest men in Argentina. I was in despair, but I hid it from her.
She sometimes paid me a brief visit at around two in the morning. She had managed to slip out of the Eléphant Blanc, where Sr. Roberto Lorraine and his nephew were waiting for daybreak. I showed her my latest pages and she never expressed any surprise at the twists and turns in the “lives of Harry Dressel.”
We had a few more lazy afternoons. She wrapped herself in the leopard skin and I continued to read her the thousand and one adventures of her father.
One evening, I returned to Avenue Malakoff, my arms laden with three large reels that I’d sneaked out of the cinema archives with the help of an employee. It was the first part of a film shot in 1943, The Wolf of the Malveneurs, in which Dressel had had a walk-on part. I planned to rent a projector and copy one by one the frames in which he was recognizable.
All the lights in the apartment were on, but no one was home. On my Empire desk, a hastily scribbled note:
“I’m off to live in Argentina. Keep writing the book on Papa. Love, Denise.”
I sat at the desk. I had set the three film reels on the floor, at my feet. I felt an emptiness that I had known since childhood, from the moment I’d understood that people and things will leave you someday, will disappear. As I walked through the rooms, the feeling grew stronger. The portraits of Dressel and his daughter were gone. Had she taken them to Argentina? The bed, the leopard skin, the blue satin vanity would furnish other rooms, other cities, or perhaps some closet, and soon no one would remain to know that these objects had been brought together, for a very brief time, in a bedroom on Avenue Malakoff, by the daughter of Harry Dressel.
Except for me. I was seventeen, and all that remained was for me to become a French writer.
XIII
At the end of the year, I got married. I spent the months preceding that remarkable ceremony with the woman who would become my wife, in Tunisia, her homeland. There, dusk doesn’t exist. Doze off for just a minute on the terrace of Sidi-Bou-Saïd and night has fallen.
We left the house and its smell of jasmine. It was the hour when, at the Café des Nattes, Aloulou Cherif and his pals started dealing hands of belote. We walked down the road that leads to El Marsa and overlooks the sea, which in the early morning hours is enveloped in silver vapor. Then, little by little, it takes on the color of an ink I used to love when I was a child because we were forbidden to use it in school: aqua blue. One last bend, one last road bordered by villas, and, on the left, the local depot. Shadows waited for the train. A lamppost on the platform weakly illuminated the station, its white façade, the old awning with its metal lacework. That station might just as easily have been in Montargis or Saint-Lô if not for the blue of the awning and the white façade that gave it away.
Across the street, in the gentle breeze, people crushed in to drink pine nut tea or play dominos. We heard the murmur of conversations encouraged by the darkness. Now and again, the phosphorescent white of a djellaba. The movie theater was playing Roman Holiday, with, as second feature, an Arabic film starring Farid al Atrache. I own an old photo of that actor with his sister, the singer Asmahane. Both of them belonged to a princely family from Jabal al-Druze. The photo was given to me that year by an old barber in El Marsa whose shop was located in that street, to the right, after the theater. He had displayed it in his window, and I had been struck by the likeness between my wife and the strange Asmahane, who they said was both a singer and a spy.
We walked along the promenade by the sea, with its twin rows of palm trees. It was dark. Past the French embassy, we entered the residential quarter of El Marsa. We stopped at the crest of a street that heads down toward the water. We pushed open an iron gate and were in Borj, where my wife’s family lived.
We followed a path above the sloping garden, with the sea in the distance. A short surrounding wall covered in bougainvillea supported a small gate. We passed through another gate and arrived at a kind of patio.
They were all there, sitting around garden tables, speaking in low voices or playing cards: Doctor Tahar Zaouch, Youssef Guellaty, Fatma, Mamia, Chefika, Jaouidah, and others I didn’t know, faces half submerged in shadow. We sat down in turn and joined the conversation. In June, they had left Tunis and the regally sumptuous apartment on Rue de la Commission and settled in Borj for the summer. Every evening would be like this; we would come join them, chatting or playing cards around the table, in the blue light.
We walked down the garden steps with our dear friends Essia and Moncef Guellaty. At the bottom, a path marked the boundary of what had once been the estate of the Dutch painter Nardus: a large park stretching to the beach. They had split it into plots; a host of small houses, ringed by little gardens, replaced the shade trees of the park, where the blonde Flo, Nardus’s daughter, used to wander nude, so long ago . . . The pink marble villa with its turret hadn’t been demolished. When there was a full moon, we could make out Nardus’s bust, sculpted by him, rising white and solitary in front of the villa. The new owners had left it intact. It faced toward us, its plaster eye fixed on the beach. All that remained of the park was a clump of eucalyptus trees that perfumed the night.
Often, after our visit to Borj, we would take the Gammarth road. It ran alongside the sea. A little before Gammarth, we stopped in front of the Dunes inn.
A stairway. There was a terrace whose floor was made of marble with black-and-white diamond shapes. Most of the tables were sheltered by a trellis of foliage. We always chose the same one, on the edge of the terrace, from where we could see the beach and the
sea.
We listened to the surf, and the wind brought me the last echoes of Alexandria and, farther still, those of Thessaloniki and of many other cities before they were burned down. I was about to marry the woman I loved and I was finally back in the Orient that we never should have left.
XIV
As I was leafing through a newspaper, my eyes fell on the real estate ads and I read:
“Empty. Apartment Quai Conti—River view—4th floor. No elevator. Danton-55-61.”
My hunch was confirmed when I phoned. Yes, it was indeed the same apartment where I’d spent my childhood. I don’t know why, but I asked to see it.
The real estate agent, a fat, brilliantined redhead, preceded me up the stairs. On the fourth floor, he pulled a ring with about a dozen keys from his pocket and without any hesitation found the right one. He pushed open the front door and stepped aside:
“After you.”
A pang in my heart. It had been more than fifteen years since I’d walked through that door. A light bulb hanging from a wire lit the vestibule, whose walls still retained their pinkish-beige tint. To the right, the rack where my father hung his many overcoats, and the shelving on which we stored—I still remember—several old valises and a canvas hat for warm climates. The brilliantined redhead opened one of the vestibule doors and we went into the entrance hall that served as our dining room. As it was barely 7 o’clock on that June evening, a soft amber light flooded the room. He gripped my arm:
“I’m terribly sorry . . .”
Sweat was dripping down his temples. He seemed very nervous.
“I . . . I left my briefcase at a client’s house . . . Or at least . . . I hope it’s there . . . I need to go right away . . . I’ll only be fifteen minutes . . .”
His eyes were wide and he looked panic-stricken. What was in that briefcase to put him in such a state? What was he afraid of?
“Would you mind terribly waiting for me here?”
Family Record Page 12
