“I don’t think I’m up to going to your friends’ house,” Neal said to his wife.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll just cancel with them.”
He gulped down a third coffee. “That’s better. It really is nice to be back on solid ground. I hate flying.”
Sylvia and I exchanged a look. We didn’t know if we should say goodbye or stay with them. Did they want to get to know us better?
The lights in the glassed-in café went out with a click of a switch, but those in the restaurant room stayed on, leaving us in semidarkness.
“It looks like they’re trying to tell us something,” Neal said.
He rummaged in his jacket pockets.
“Damn. I don’t have any French money.”
I started to pay for our drinks, but Neal’s wife had already taken a wad of bills out of her handbag and negligently put one down on the table.
Neal stood up. In the dim light, fatigue cut lines into his face.
“We need to go home. I’m about to fall over.”
His wife took his arm and we followed them.
Their car was parked a little way off down the Promenande des Anglais, by the Iranian bank that, judging from its dusty window, had been closed for a long time.
“I’m so glad to have met you,” Neal told us. “But it’s funny, I feel like we’ve met before.”
And he stared at Sylvia. That I remember very well.
“Do you want us to drop you off somewhere?” his wife asked.
I told them it wasn’t worth the trouble. I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get rid of them. I thought about those drunks who cling to you and try to get you into every bar for one last drink. They get aggressive sometimes. But what did the Neals have in common with such vulgar types? They were calm and sophisticated.
“Where are you staying?” Neal asked.
“Off Boulevard Gambetta.”
“That’s our street,” his wife said. “We can drop you off, if you want, it’s no trouble.”
“Yes,” Sylvia said.
I was surprised at her decisive tone. She took my arm as though trying to drag me into the Neals’ car against my will. We ended up in the back seat, with Neal’s wife driving.
“I’d rather you drive,” Neal said. “I’m so tired I might send you flying through the windshield.”
We drove past the Queenie, where all the lights were now out, then the Palais de la Méditerranée. Its arcades were fenced off, the windows dark, blinds down, as though the building was about to be demolished.
“Are you living in an apartment?” Neal’s wife asked.
“No, we’re staying in a hotel at the moment.”
She had taken advantage of a red light at Rue de Cronstadt to turn back toward us. She smelled a little like pine, and I wondered if it was her skin or her fur coat.
“We live in a villa,” Neal said, “and we would be delighted to have you come over.”
Exhaustion made his voice sound thick and his slight foreign accent was more audible.
“Are you staying in Nice long?” Mrs. Neal asked.
“Yes, we’re here on vacation,” I said.
“Do you live in Paris?” Neal asked.
Why were they asking all these questions? Back at the café they had not shown the least bit of curiosity about our situation. I felt increasingly uneasy. I wanted to give Sylvia a sign. We would get out of the car at the next red light. But what if the doors were locked?
“We live near Paris,” Sylvia said.
Her calm tone of voice made my fears evaporate. Neal’s wife turned on the windshield wipers, since it was still raining, and their regular movement reassured me as well.
“Anywhere near Marnes-la-Coquette?” Neal asked. “My wife and I used to live in Marnes-la-Coquette.”
“No,” Sylvia said. “We lived east of Paris, along the Marne.”
She said it defiantly, like a challenge, and smiled at me. Her hand slid into mine.
“I don’t know that area at all,” Neal said.
“It has its own particular charm,” I said.
“Where, exactly?” Neal asked.
“La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire,” Sylvia said in a clear voice.
And why shouldn’t we answer their questions perfectly naturally? Why should we lie to them?
“But we’re not planning to go back,” I added. “We want to stay on the Riviera.”
“Good decision,” Neal said.
I was relieved. We hadn’t spoken to anyone for such a long time that we were starting to circle around in this city like animals in a cage. But no, we weren’t contagious, we could have a normal conversation with someone, even make new friends.
The car turned down Rue Caffarelli, and I pointed out the gate of the Sainte-Anne to Mrs. Neal.
“That’s not a hotel,” Neal said.
“No, it’s a furnished pension.”
I was immediately sorry I said it, since it might awaken their suspicions. Maybe they had a prejudice against people who lived in furnished rooms.
“Is it nice there?” Neal asked.
Apparently it didn’t bother them; if anything, they seemed to feel a certain sympathy for us.
“It’s only temporary,” Sylvia said. “We’re hoping to find something else.”
The car had stopped in front of the Sainte-Anne. Mrs. Neal turned off the motor.
“We might be able to help you find another place to live,” Neal said absentmindedly. “Don’t you think, Barbara?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Neal said. “We’ll have to see you again.”
“Let me give you our address,” Neal said. “Call us whenever you want.”
He took a wallet out of his pocket and a card out of the wallet, and handed it to me.
“Goodbye . . . Hope to see you soon.”
Mrs. Neal had turned to face us. “It was very nice to meet you.”
Did she mean it? Or was she just being polite?
They looked at us in silence, in the same position, turned to face us. I didn’t know what to say and Sylvia didn’t either. I think that they would have thought it was perfectly normal for us to stay in the car and that it didn’t matter to them. They would have agreed to whatever we proposed. It was up to us to decide. I opened the door.
“Goodbye,” I said. “And thanks for the ride.”
Before opening the gate, I turned back toward them and glanced at their car’s license plate. The letters CD made my heart skip a beat: they stood for CORPS DIPLOMATIQUE but for a second I confused it with the license plates of police cars and thought we had been caught in a trap.
“We borrowed the car from some friends,” Neal said, sounding amused.
He leaned his head out the open car window and smiled at me. He must have noticed my surprised expression on seeing his license plate. I was already pushing on the gate but it didn’t budge. I turned the handle again and again and finally gave the gate a shove with my shoulder, and it opened abruptly.
We closed it behind us and couldn’t help but look back at them one more time. They were sitting in the car, next to each other, frozen in place, like statues.
When we got back to the room it had the same musty smell. Usually when we came back at the end of another empty day, we felt such loneliness that the moisture and moldy smell went right through us. We would press close together on the bed, whose frame and bedsprings squeaked; eventually, it felt like the odor had seeped into our skins. We had bought sheets that we perfumed with lavender. But the smell never left.
That night, everything was different. For the first time since we had arrived in Nice, we had broken out of the magic circle keeping us isolated, strangling us little by little. Suddenly the room seemed temporary. We didn’t even need to open the windows to air it out, or wrap ourselves in the lavender-scented sheets. We could keep the smell at a distance.
I pressed my forehead against the window and waved Sylvia over to me. Beyond the garden fence, the Neals’ car was still parked with the moto
r off. What were they talking about? What were they waiting for? That gray, motionless car—was it some kind of threat to us? Well, we would see how things went. Anything would be better than this lethargy we had fallen into.
The motor started, and after another long moment the car pulled out and disappeared around the corner of Rue Caffarelli and Avenue Shakespeare.
Now I’m sure of it: Villecourt turned up after we first met the Neals. The event took place the following week. We hadn’t seen the Neals again, because a good ten or twelve days went by before we could reach them by phone and set up a time to meet.
Event: here, too, it’s the wrong word. All we had to do was wait for Villecourt to cross our path.
On sunny mornings, we used to read our newspapers on a bench in the Jardin d’Alsace-Lorraine, near the slide and the swings. There, at least, we wouldn’t be noticed. For lunch we’d have sandwiches in a café on Rue de France. Then we’d take a bus up to Cimiez or down to the port and stroll through the grass of the Jardin des Arènes or down the streets of the old town. Around five o’clock, we’d buy used mystery novels on Rue de France. Since the prospect of going back to the Sainte-Anne oppressed us, our steps always led us down to the Promenade des Anglais.
The fences and palm trees in the Masséna Museum garden, framed by the bay window, are silhouetted against the sky. The crystalline blue sky or the pink sky of sunset. The palm trees slowly turn into shadows, before the streetlight on the corner of the Promenade and Rue de Rivoli shines a cold light on them. Again I go into the bar through the massive wooden door on Rue de Rivoli, so I won’t have to cross the hotel lobby. And I sit facing the bay window. Just as on that night with Sylvia. We wouldn’t take our eyes off that bay window. The bright sky and the palm trees contrasted with the semidarkness of the bar. But after a while, I would feel uneasy, like I was suffocating. We were trapped in an aquarium, looking through the glass at the sky and the vegetation outside. We would never breathe in the open air again. It came as a relief when night fell, darkening the window. Then all the lights in the bar would come on, and under the bright lights my nervousness would disappear.
Behind us, all the way in back, an elevator’s metal door slid slowly open and let out hotel guests coming down from their rooms. They would sit at the bar tables. Every time, I would watch them appear and glide slowly and silently past, the way I would follow the movements of a clock, reassuring in their regularity.
The metal door opened to reveal a silhouette in a dark-gray suit that I recognized at once. I didn’t even dare make a sign with my head to Sylvia, so that she, too, would see who was coming out of the elevator: Villecourt.
He turned away from us and headed toward the hotel lobby. He passed the entrance to the bar and there was no more risk that he would see us. I whispered to Sylvia: “He’s here.”
She kept her cool, as though prepared for this eventuality. I was too, for that matter.
“I’ll go see if it’s really him.”
She shrugged, as though it wouldn’t make a difference.
I crossed the lobby and looked out the glass front door. He was standing on the sidewalk, on the corner of the Promenade des Anglais and Rue de Rivoli, where the large rental cars are parked. He was talking to one of the drivers. He took something out of his pocket but I couldn’t see what it was—a notebook? a photograph? Was he asking the driver for an address? Or showing him photos of us, hoping the weasel-faced driver would remember having seen us?
In any case, the driver nodded and Villecourt slipped him a tip. Then he crossed the street at the light. He walked nonchalantly away down the Promenade, to the left, toward Jardin Albert I.
From the phone booth on Boulevard Gambetta, I called the Negresco Hotel.
“May I speak to Monsieur Villecourt, please?”
After a moment, the concierge replied: “There’s no one by the name of Villecourt staying here.”
“Yes there is. I just saw him at the bar. He was wearing a dark-gray suit . . .”
“Everyone wears dark-gray suits, sir.”
I hung up.
“He’s not staying at the Negresco,” I said to Sylvia.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Had he given special instructions to the concierge? Or registered under another name? It was terrible to not be able to fix him in place, to feel that he might be lurking around every corner.
We had dinner in the café next to the Forum Cinema. We’d decided to act as though Villecourt did not pose any danger to us. If, by any chance, we met him and he wanted to talk to us, we would pretend we didn’t know him. Pretend? We just had to convince ourselves that we were different people than the Jean and Sylvia who, once upon a time, had haunted the banks of the Marne. We had nothing in common with those two anymore. And Villecourt wouldn’t be able to prove otherwise. To start with, Villecourt: he was nothing.
After dinner, we looked for an excuse not to go back to our room right away. We bought two balcony tickets for the Forum Cinema.
And before the lights went out in the theater full of old red velvet, before the local ads were moved aside to reveal the screen, we signaled to the usher for her to bring us two ice creams.
But when we left, I felt the vague presence of Villecourt. It was like the musty smell in our room—something we would never get rid of. It stuck to our skin. Sylvia sometimes used to call Villecourt “the clingy Russian,” since he said that his father was Russian. Another lie.
We walked slowly back up Boulevard Gambetta, on the left-hand sidewalk. Passing the phone booth, I felt like calling the Neals. No one had answered when I’d called there before. Maybe we’d always tried at a bad time, or maybe they’d left Nice. I would have been almost shocked if they did answer, they were so hazy and mysterious in my memory. Were they real? Were they nothing but a mirage, brought about by our extreme solitude? It would have been a comfort to hear a friendly voice. They would make Villecourt’s presence in Nice less oppressive.
“What are you thinking about?” Sylvia asked me.
“The ‘clingy Russian.’”
“Who cares about the Russian.”
The gentle slope of Rue Caffarelli. No cars. No sound. Still some villas among the apartment buildings, and one of them, which looked somehow Florentine, surrounded by a large lawn. But there was a construction company sign on the gate saying that the villa was about to be torn down to make room for a luxury apartment building. One of the “model apartments” was already open for viewing at the back of the garden. I read on a crumbling marble sign: “Villa Bezobrazoff.” Russians had lived there.
I showed Sylvia the sign: “Do you think that was Villecourt’s family?”
“We’d have to ask him.”
“Perhaps,” I said in a solemn, chamberlain’s voice, “the elder Villecourt used to take his afternoon tea at the Bezobrazoffs’ when he was a boy . . .” Sylvia laughed.
There was still a light on in the pension lobby. We walked as quietly as we could, so as not to make the gravel crunch. I had left the windows open in the room, and the scent of wet leaves and honeysuckle was mixed in with the moldy smell. But little by little, the mold won out.
The diamond twinkled on her neck in the light of the moon. How hard and cold it was compared to her soft skin, how indestructible against her slender, touchingly fragile body . . . More than the room’s smell, more than Villecourt prowling around us, that diamond glittering in the half light suddenly became in my eyes the blazing sign of the evil fate hanging over us. I wanted to take it off her, but I couldn’t find the clasp on the chain at the back of her neck.
The incident occurred two days later, under the arcades on Place Masséna.
We were walking back from Jardin Albert I when we ran into Villecourt. He was coming out of a newsstand wearing the same dark-gray suit I had seen him in at the hotel bar. I immediately turned my head and pulled Sylvia away, holding her arm tight.
But he had recognized us among all the people walking by on that Saturday aftern
oon. He headed toward us, pushing his way through the people separating us, his eyes wide, gaze fixed on us. He was in such a hurry that he let drop the newspapers he’d been holding, folded, under his arm.
Sylvia made me slow down. She seemed perfectly calm.
“You’re scared of the Russian?”
She forced herself to smile. We turned onto Rue de France. He was thirty or forty feet behind us, blocked by a group of tourists leaving a pizzeria. Then he caught up.
“Jean . . . Sylvia . . .”
He spoke in a fake-friendly voice but we kept walking, ignoring him. He fell into step with us.
“What, you don’t want to talk to me? Don’t be ridiculous.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and then gripped harder and harder. So I turned around. Sylvia too. We faced him and didn’t move. He must have read something in my face that made him nervous, because he was looking at me with a kind of fear.
I would have squashed him like a cockroach if I could, of course. I would have felt like a swimmer reemerging into the air.
“Well then. Not even a hello?”
Yes, if we had been alone I would definitely have killed him, one way or another, but we were in a pedestrian zone on Rue de France, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, with more and more people around us who would have formed a crowd at the slightest incident.
“You don’t recognize your old friends?”
Sylvia and I started walking faster. But he kept following us, sticking to us.
“Just five minutes, come have a drink. Let’s have a little talk.”
We hurried on. He caught up to us, passed us, and tried to block our path. He was hopping back and forth in front of us like a soccer player trying to steal the ball. His smile infuriated me.
I tried to push him aside with my arm but accidentally gave him a bloody lip with my elbow. I felt like something irreversible had happened. Passersby were already stopping to look at Villecourt, who had a trickle of blood on his chin. But he was still smiling.
“You won’t give me the slip like that.”
Sundays in August Page 4
