“I know you don’t like me,” he said. “But I’m ready to make amends. I’ve changed . . . I realize now what I did wrong, especially to Sylvia. I’m the only man she really loved . . . We’ll talk more about Sylvia next time, right?”
He looked me up and down, head to toe.
“That coat looks great on you.”
Then he rolled up the window, keeping his eye on me. Suddenly, just when the van started moving, his face froze in amazement: I hadn’t been able to keep from flipping him off—a gesture incomprehensible from someone as reserved as I was.
People were going into the Forum Cinema for the nine o’clock showing. I was tempted to go too and sit on a red velvet seat in the old auditorium. But I wanted to get rid of that coat, which pinched my shoulders and made it hard for me to breathe. In my hurry to get it off, I tore off a button. I folded the coat and put it on a bench on the Promenade, then walked away feeling like I had left behind something compromising.
Was it the dilapidated façade of the Forum Cinema? Or Villecourt’s reappearance? Whatever the reason, I found myself thinking back to what his mother had told me about the mysterious murder of the actor Raymond Aimos on a barricade in the Gare du Nord area during the liberation of Paris. Aimos had known too much, had heard too many conversations, rubbed shoulders with too many dubious characters in the hotels of Chennevières, Champigny, La Varenne. And the names of all those people Madame Villecourt had told me about made me think of the slimy water of the Marne.
I looked at his card:
Frédéric Villecourt, Sales
Back then, his name would have been embossed in black. Today it was printed in orange, like the words of a simple brochure, and to anyone who knew the Frédéric Villecourt from the Marne the modest job title, “Sales,” showed that a few years had been enough to strip him of his pretentions. He had written his address on the card in blue ink: 5 Avenue Bosquet, Antibes. Tel.: 50.22.83.
I walked down Boulevard Victor-Hugo, having decided to go back home on foot. No, I should never have tried to talk to him.
The first time, on the Promenade des Anglais, when I saw him walking by with his heavy gait and that ridiculous little leather shoulder bag, I did not feel the least desire to talk to him. It was a Sunday, in the gentle autumn sun, and I was sitting at an outdoor table at the Queenie. There he was, stopping to light a cigarette. He stayed where he was behind the stream of traffic for another moment. Had he crossed at the light he would have found himself just where I was on the sidewalk. Then he could have easily spotted me. Or else he might have stayed there unmoving, until night fell, and his silhouette black as India ink would stand out against the sea, before my eyes, forever.
He kept walking, toward the Ruhl casino and Jardin Albert I, leather bag on his shoulder. All around me men and women, stiff as mummies, drank their tea in silence, eyes fixed on the Promenade des Anglais. Maybe they, too, were on the lookout for silhouettes from their past amid this crowd passing before their eyes.
To get back to where I was living, I had to walk through what used to be the dining hall of the old Hotel Majestic, at the bend in Boulevard de Cimiez. Now it was just a large room available for meetings or conventions. All the way in back, in the semidarkness, a choir was singing hymns in English. The sign at the foot of the staircase said, in English: “Today: The Holy Nest.” I could still hear their high-pitched voices when I closed the door to my room on the third floor. Christmas carols, apparently. It was the season. My furnished room, an old hotel room with a bathroom, was cold. The room number was still on a copper plate inside the wardrobe: 252.
I turned on the small electric heater, but it gave off so little warmth that I eventually unplugged it. I stretched out on the bed without taking off my shoes.
The Majestic building has three- and four-room apartments, formerly the hotel’s suites or else single rooms connected to one another during the renovations. I always prefer living in a single room. It’s less sad. You can keep the illusion that you’re staying in a hotel. The bed is still the one from Room 252. The night table too. I wonder if the dark wood bureau, fake Louis XVI, was part of the Majestic’s furniture. The carpeting hadn’t existed during the time of Room 252: gray-beige wall-to-wall, worn in places. The tub and sink were new too.
I did not feel like eating. I turned off the light, closed my eyes, and let the distant voices of the English choir sing me to sleep. I was still stretched out on the bed, in the dark, when the phone rang.
“Hello. It’s Villecourt.”
His voice was very soft, almost a whisper.
“Am I bothering you? I found your number in the phone book.”
I didn’t say anything. He asked me again: “Am I bothering you?”
“Not at all.”
“I just wanted things between us to be clear. When we said goodbye I got the impression you were angry at me.”
“I wasn’t angry at you.”
“But that gesture you made . . .”
“I was only joking.”
“Joking? You have a strange sense of humor.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s just the way I am.”
“It seemed very hostile . . . Is there something you’re mad at me about?”
“No.”
“I didn’t approach you, you’re the one who came looking for me, Henri. You were standing there waiting for me at the Boulevard Gambetta display.”
“My name’s not Henri.”
“Sorry. I was mixing you up with someone else, the guy who always gave tips on the races. I don’t know what Sylvia saw in him . . .”
“I don’t want to talk to you about Sylvia.”
It was truly painful having this conversation over the phone in the dark. The voices of the English singers still reached me from the hall, reassuring me that I wasn’t completely alone.
“Why not?”
“Because we’re not talking about the same person.”
I hung up. The phone rang again almost immediately.
“Hanging up on someone is not very nice, but you can’t get rid of me just like that.”
He tried to sound ironic.
“I’m tired,” I said.
“Me too. But that’s no reason not to talk. We are the only people left who know certain things . . .”
“I thought you’d forgotten everything.”
There was silence.
“Not really . . . That bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“Get it through your head that I was the person who knew Sylvia the best. It was me she loved. I’m not trying to avoid responsibility for what happened, see?”
I hung up. Several minutes passed before the phone rang again.
“Sylvia and I shared a very strong bond. Nothing else mattered to her.”
He talked as though he found it perfectly natural to have just been hung up on, twice. “I’d like to talk to you about all of that, whether you want to or not. I’ll keep calling until you give in.”
“I’ll disconnect the phone.”
“Then I’ll wait for you outside your building. You can’t give me the slip that easily. After all, it’s you who came looking for me.”
I hung up again, and again the phone rang.
“I haven’t forgotten certain things . . . I can still cause you lots of problems. I want to have a serious talk with you about Sylvia.”
“You forget that I can cause serious problems for you too,” I said.
This time, after hanging up, I dialed my own number and then shoved the receiver under the pillow so that I couldn’t hear the busy signal.
I got up and went over to press my forehead against the window, without turning on the light. The Boulevard de Cimiez down below was deserted. A car drove by every so often and, every time, I wondered if it was going to stop. The sound of a door. He would step out, raise his head toward the façade of the Majestic, looking to see which floor still had a light on. He would step into the phone booth at the bend in the stre
et. Would I leave the receiver off the hook? Or would I answer? The best thing to do would be to wait for it to ring and then pick up and hold the receiver to my ear without saying a word. He would repeat: “Hello? Are you there? Hello, are you there? I’m right near your apartment. Answer me, answer me . . .” To this more and more uneasy, more and more plaintive voice I would offer only silence. Yes. I’d enjoy giving him the same feeling of empty space that I feel myself.
The choir had died down a long time ago, and I stayed at my post by the window. I was waiting for a shape to appear, down below, silhouetted against the white light of the boulevard, the way it had been the other Sunday on the Promenade des Anglais.
Late the next morning I went down to the garage, which you reach by going down a cement staircase from the ground floor. You have to go down a hall at the back of the dining room, open a door, and turn on a light on a timer.
It’s a vast space below the Majestic, which must already have been a parking lot when the Majestic was a hotel.
No one there. The three employees were off for lunch. In truth, there was less and less work to do. Someone rang the bell at the service station attached to the garage. A Mercedes was waiting there, and the driver asked me to fill it up. He gave me a big tip.
Then I headed for my office inside the garage. A room with a tile floor, light-green walls, and glass dividers. Someone had left an envelope with my name on it on the white wooden table. I opened it and read:
Don’t worry. You won’t hear from me again.
From Sylvia either. —Villecourt
To satisfy my conscience, I took his card out of my pocket and called his Antibes number. No answer. I tidied up my office, where old invoices and files had been piling up for several months. I sorted them and put them away in the metal cabinet. Soon there was nothing left to do. The building manager, who had gotten me this job running the garage, had recently warned me that they were about to turn it into a basic parking lot.
I looked through the glass pane: an American car was waiting there, roof down, with a flat tire. When the others got back I would have to check and make sure they hadn’t forgotten about it. But would they come back? They too had been told that the garage was about to be closed, and they had probably found another job somewhere else. I was the only one who hadn’t taken any precautions.
Later, in the afternoon, I tried calling Villecourt’s Antibes number again. No answer. Only one of the three garage workers had come back, and he fixed the flat tire. I told him that I’d be out for an hour or two and asked him to look after the service station.
It was sunny on Boulevard Dubouchage, with a carpet of dead leaves on the sidewalk. While I walked I thought about my future. I would get severance when the garage closed and I could live for a while on that. I would keep my room at the Majestic—the rent was almost nothing. I might be able to convince Boistel, the building manager, to let me not pay rent at all, in return for my services. Yes, I would stay on the Riviera forever. What was the point of a new horizon? I could take up my old job as a photographer and stand with my Polaroid on the Promenade des Anglais, where the tourists walk by. What I had thought when I saw Villecourt’s business card applied to me too: a few years was enough to bring an end to my pretentions.
Without realizing it, I had reached the Jardin d’Alsace-Lorraine. I turned left onto Boulevard Gambetta and felt a slight clenching of the heart. I wondered if I would find Villecourt back at his display stand. This time, I would watch him from afar so that he wouldn’t notice me, and leave before too long. It would be a relief to watch this guy peddling jackets, who was no longer the old Villecourt, and who had never played any role in my life. Never. A harmless hawker like you find everywhere on the streets of Nice as Christmas approaches. Nothing more.
I made out a shape moving behind the display stand. As I crossed Rue de la Buffa, I saw that it wasn’t Villecourt but a tall blond with a horsey face and a plaid jacket. I slipped to the front, just like the first time. He was not using the platform, or the microphone; he spoke his patter in a loud voice and reeled off the various goods he had on offer: beaver fur, lambskin, rabbit, skunk, plain or fur-lined leather boots . . . The display had many more items on it than yesterday, and this blond had attracted a bigger crowd than Villecourt. Much less leather. Lots of fur. Maybe Villecourt wasn’t thought worthy of selling fur.
He was offering the beaver-fur and short-fitted lambskin jackets at twenty percent off. Lambskin? There were all colors: black, chocolate brown, navy blue, metallic olive green, fuchsia, lilac . . . and a bag of roasted chestnuts with every purchase. He spoke faster and faster until I started to get dizzy. Eventually I took a seat at the outdoor café next to the stand and waited almost an hour until the crowds dispersed. It had gotten dark a long time ago.
He was alone, behind the display stand, and I went over to him.
“It’s closed,” he said. “But if you want something, I have jackets at very good prices. Thirty percent off. Long soft-wool jackets . . . taffeta lining . . . sizes 38 to 46 . . . I’ll give it to you for half price . . .”
If I hadn’t interrupted him he would have never stopped. His momentum just kept him going.
“Do you know Frédéric Villecourt?” I asked him.
“No.”
He started stacking up his furs and jackets.
“But he was here yesterday, in your place.”
“We have lots of France Leather salesmen on the Riviera, you know.”
The van stopped next to the display stand, and the same driver got out and slid the door open.
“Hello,” I said. “We met last night, with a friend of mine.”
He looked at me, brow furrowed, and seemed not to remember a thing.
“You came to get us at the Forum café.”
“Oh, right.”
“Load this all fast for me,” the tall horse-faced blond said.
The driver picked up the coats and jackets, one after the other, and put them on hangers before hanging them in the van.
“You don’t know where he is?”
“Maybe he doesn’t work for France Leather anymore.” He said this drily, as though Villecourt had committed a very grave error in forgoing the privilege of working for France Leather.
“I thought he had a permanent job.”
The tall blond with the horsey face, sitting on the edge of the display stand, was making notes in a little notebook. The day’s sales?
I took Villecourt’s card out of my pocket.
“You must have taken him home last night. 5 Avenue Bosquet, in Antibes.”
The driver went on arranging the coats and jackets in the van, not bothering even to glance at me.
“That’s a hotel,” he told me. “Where the France Leather salesmen stay. Then they’re told whether they’re needed in Cannes or in Nice.”
I handed him a lambskin coat, then a leather jacket, then a pair of fur-lined boots. If I helped him load the van, maybe he would deign to give me some more information about Villecourt.
“What makes you think I have time to get to know them all? It’s a revolving door, a dozen new guys every week. They’re here two or three days then they leave again. Others come and replace them . . . There’s no downtime with France Leather. We have stands everywhere in the area, not just in Cannes or Nice. In Grasse, in Draguignan . . .”
“So there’s no chance of finding him in Antibes?”
“Not a chance. I’m sure someone else is in his room by now. Maybe Mister . . .” And he gestured to the tall horse-faced blond, still writing in his notebook.
“There’s no way to find out where he is?”
“There are two possibilities. Either he doesn’t work for France Leather anymore, they fired him because he wasn’t a good salesman . . .”
He had finished hanging his coats and jackets in the van and was wiping his brow with the end of his scarf.
“. . . Or they sent him somewhere else. But if you ask the main office, they won’t tell you any
thing. Professional secrets. You’re not a member of the family, are you?”
“No.”
Now his tone was gentler. The tall horse-faced blond came over to us.
“All packed up?”
“Yes.”
“So let’s go.”
He got into the front of the van, while the other man slid the back door shut and checked to make sure it was locked. Then he got in on his side and leaned out the open window to look at me.
“Sometimes France Leather sends them abroad. There are warehouses in Belgium. If that happened, if they sent him to Belgium . . .”
He shrugged his shoulders and started the van. I watched it turn onto the Promenade des Anglais and disappear.
It was warm out. I walked to the Jardin d’Alsace-Lorraine and sat on a bench behind the swings and the sandbox. I like it there, with the umbrella pines and the buildings silhouetted so sharply against the sky. I used to come sit here with Sylvia in the afternoon sometimes. We were safe, among all the mothers watching their children. No one would come looking for us here in the park, and the people here paid no attention to us. After all, we might have had children here too, going down the slide, building a sand castle . . .
In Belgium. If that happened, if they sent him to Belgium . . . I pictured Villecourt at night, in the rain, selling key rings and old pornographic photographs on the street in the area around the Gare du Midi in Brussels. A mere shadow of himself. The message he’d left for me that morning in the garage had come as no surprise: “You won’t hear from me again.” I had had a premonition of it. The surprising thing was that he had written to me at all, this message that constituted physical proof that he was still alive. When he was standing behind his display stand last night, it had taken me some time to recognize him, to convince myself that it was really him. I had planted myself in the front of the group of onlookers and stared right at him, as though trying to remind him of himself. And he, under this insistent stare, was forced to turn back into the old Villecourt. He had played that role again for a few hours, had called me on the phone, but his heart wasn’t in it. Now, in Brussels, he walked back down Boulevard Anspach to the Gare du Nord and took a train at random. He found himself in a smoky compartment, filled with men travelling on business, playing cards. And the train departed for an unknown destination . . .
Sundays in August Page 2
