Now his tone was more aggressive. He kept hopping from one foot to the other in front of us.
“We still have some things to take care of, don’t you think? If we don’t, there’re other people who will take care of them for us.”
This time he was ready to come to blows. I pictured the people on the street in a circle around us, a circle we would never be able to break free of; someone would call the police and the police van would emerge from a cross street . . . That must have been Villecourt’s plan.
I shoved him again. Now he was walking alongside us, at the same rapid pace. The blood dripped from the bottom of his chin.
“We need to talk. I have a lot of things to tell you.”
Sylvia took my arm and we tried to move away, but he stuck to us like a leech.
“You can’t just ignore me, I exist too. There are problems we need to take care of, or else other people will get involved . . .”
He grabbed my wrist with a grip that he tried to make seem friendly. I gave him a sharp elbow in the side to get free. He grunted.
“You really want me to make a fuss on the street? You want me to start screaming ‘Stop, thief!’?”
He grinned a strange grin, twisting his whole face.
“You’ll see me everywhere. Let’s at least try to talk it out. That’s the only way to keep the others from getting involved.”
We broke into a run. He was caught by surprise and we got a big head start. He pushed someone aside and ran after us, but two men stepped in and challenged him. We rushed through a carriage door, down an alleyway, and through a courtyard, making it back to the Promenade des Anglais.
In the phone booth on Boulevard Gambetta I dialed the Neals’ number again. It rang and rang without anyone answering. We didn’t want to go back to the pension and were hoping the Neals would invite us over. There we would be out of Villecourt’s reach.
But after a while, on the sunny sidewalk, amid the groups of people strolling past toward the sea, the whole incident started to seem faintly ridiculous. There was no need to take precautions. We could enjoy this mild winter day the same as everybody else. Villecourt, despite all his efforts, would not be able to meddle in our new life. He was a thing of the past.
“But why was he hopping up and down in front of us?” Sylvia asked me. “He wasn’t acting normal.”
“No. He didn’t seem normal.”
The way he was following us, the threats he was making without seeming to entirely believe them himself, showed how much weaker he had become. He was hardly real anymore. Even the blood that had spurted from his lip and covered his chin seemed less like real blood than a special effect in a movie. And it was a bit disconcerting how easily we had gotten away from him.
We picked a bench in the sun in the Jardin d’Alsace-Lorraine. Children were sliding down the green slide, others playing in the sandbox, still others astride the seesaw going up, down, up, in a movement as regular as a metronome that eventually numbed us. If Villecourt passed by here, he wouldn’t spot us among all the people watching their children. And even if he did, so what? We were no longer in the murky environment along the banks of the Marne, with the stench of mud rising up from the stagnant water. The sky was too blue, that afternoon, the palm trees too tall, the buildings too pink and too white—a ghost like Villecourt could never withstand the summer colors. They would finish him off. He would vanish into the air with its lingering scent of mimosa.
I sometimes walk past the villa where the Neals lived. It’s on Boulevard de Cimiez, on the right, some hundred and fifty feet before the corner with the old Regina Hotel looming over it. It’s one of the few detached houses surviving in the neighborhood. But doubtless these vestiges will be gone soon too. Nothing can stand in the way of progress.
I was thinking about it the other morning, coming back from a walk I had taken up the hill to Cimiez, all the way to the Jardin des Arènes. I’d stopped in front of the villa. For some time a building had been going up in the abandoned part of the garden. I wondered if they would eventually tear down the villa itself, or preserve it, as a side building to the new one. It had a chance to survive: it wasn’t run-down at all, and it looked a little like a 1930s-style Petit Trianon, with its arched French windows.
You could hardly see it because it overhung the boulevard; to see it properly over the high wall with its railing you had to stand on the opposite side of the street, at the corner of Avenue Édouard VII. An entrance with a cast-iron gate was cut into the base of the wall, and behind it a grand stone staircase led up the side of the embankment to the stone landing.
The gate is always open to give access to the construction site. There is a white sign on the wall giving the name of the construction company, the architect’s firm, the management company, and the date of the permit. The new building will be named after the villa: Château Azur. Proprietor: S.E.F.I.C., Rue Tonduti-de-l’Escarène, Nice.
I went to that address one day to find out the name of the person from whom S.E.F.I.C. corporation had bought Château Azur. I was given information I knew already—the villa, among other buildings, had belonged to the American embassy, which had rented it out. I realized that further efforts would seem inappropriate, even suspect, to the company’s agent who was talking to me, a friendly blond man. So I didn’t press the matter further.
And why bother? Even before S.E.F.I.C. acquired Château Azur and started building, I had spent a long time trying to find out about it. Just as in the office on Rue Tonduti-de-l’Escarène, my questions had remained unanswered.
Almost seven years before, the villa still looked unchanged. No construction site, no sign on the large railed wall. The entrance gate was closed. Parked on the sidewalk was the gray car with the CD plates, the same car the Neals had used to drive Sylvia and me back to the Sainte-Anne Pension on the night we’d met. I rang the bell at the gate. A brown-haired man, about forty, in a navy blue suit, appeared:
“What do you want?” he said rudely, with a Parisian accent.
“I recognized my friends’ car,” I said, pointing to the gray automobile. “I wanted to say hello.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Neal.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken. That is Mr. Condé-Jones’s car.”
He stayed behind the gate and watched me closely, trying to tell if I posed any danger.
“You’re sure,” I said, “that it’s his car?”
“Absolutely sure. I’m his chauffeur.”
“But my friend lived here.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, sir. This house belongs to the American embassy.”
“But my friend’s American . . .”
“The American consul lives here. Mr. Condé-Jones.”
“Since when?”
“Since six months ago.”
He looked at me from behind the gate as though I were a little crazy.
“Could I speak to the consul?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but I’m an American citizen and I need to ask him about something.”
The American citizenship I had given myself made him suddenly trust me.
“In that case, you can see Mr. Condé-Jones now, if you want. It’s his visiting hours.”
He opened the gate and stepped aside with all the respect due an American citizen. Then he led me up the stairs.
On a white wooden chair next to the empty swimming pool in front of the house, a man sat smoking, his face turned slightly to one side, as though he were trying to expose it to the sun’s weak rays. He did not hear us approaching.
“Mr. Condé-Jones . . .”
The man looked up at us and gave an attentive smile.
“Mr. Condé-Jones, this gentlemen wishes to see you. He is an American citizen.”
At that he stood up. A short man, fat, black hair combed back, a moustache, big blue eyes.
“What can I do for you?” he asked in French, without a trace of an accent, in a voice so gentle it w
as like a balm to my soul. The phrase he’d used expressed not just politeness but a tactful attentiveness. At least that’s what I thought I heard in his voice. And it had been a long time since anyone had asked me what they could do for me.
“I was just looking for some information,” I mumbled.
The chauffeur had withdrawn, and it felt strange finding myself by the side of this pool.
“What kind of information?”
He looked at me kindly.
“I lied to get in to see you . . . I said I was American.”
“American or not, my friend, it doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I was looking for some information about the people who lived in this house before you.”
“Before me?”
He turned around and shouted: “Paul!”
And the chauffeur appeared in an instant, as though he’d been hiding right next to us, behind a tree or a wall.
“Could you bring us something to drink?”
“Right away, sir.”
Condé-Jones gestured for me to take a seat in one of the white wooden chairs, and sat down next to me. The chauffeur placed a tray at our feet with two glasses full of a milky liquid. Pastis? Condé-Jones took a big sip of his.
“Go ahead, I’m listening. Tell me everything.”
He seemed happy to have company, no matter who. The position of consul in Nice clearly left him a lot of free time to fill.
“I used to come here a lot, a while ago. I was visiting a couple who said they owned this house.”
There was no way I could tell him everything. I’d decided not to tell him about Sylvia.
“What were these friends’ names?”
“The Neals. He was American and she was English. They also drove your car, the one parked on the street.”
“That’s not my car,” Condé-Jones told me after downing the rest of his pastis. “It was there when I got here.”
But before long the car was gone. Every time I went up the hill to Cimiez, I hoped it would be parked in front of the villa. But it wasn’t there. One afternoon I rang the bell, just to be sure of things. No one answered. I decided that Condé-Jones must have left, with his gray diplomat’s car, and that no other consul had come to replace him at Château Azur. Later, the S.E.F.I.C. company sign appeared on the railed wall, which meant that the villa no longer belonged to the American embassy and that there would surely not be any villa at all soon.
The last time I’d seen Condé-Jones, it was a late afternoon in April. I had left him my address and he had been kind enough to send me a note, inviting me over and saying he had ready for me all the information I wanted about Château Azur—information, he said, that I would find very interesting.
He was sitting in the same place as when we’d met: next to the empty swimming pool, its bottom lined with dead leaves and pine needles. I had the feeling he’d been there, without moving, ever since “assuming his duties”—as he’d put it once, with a little self-mockery. Even if he could boast the title of consul, his “duties” in Nice were rather vague. He knew that the post was nothing but a place to park someone relegated to waiting for his official retirement date.
And now the date had come. He was heading back to America after more than twenty years of faithful service to the U.S. embassy in France. He had wanted me to come by that day so that he could give me the information I was interested in, but also to “raise a glass in farewell” (he often used idioms that he got slightly wrong).
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll give you my address in Florida, and if you ever happen to be visiting there, I would be delighted to see you.”
He was especially kind to me, even though we had seen each other only three or four times since the day I had rung the bell at the gate of his villa—maybe I was the only person who had ever intruded on his diplomatic solitude.
“I’m sorry to be leaving the Riviera.”
He cast a thoughtful glance at the empty pool and the overgrown garden smelling of eucalyptus.
The chauffeur had brought us a drink. We were seated side by side.
“Here’s all your information.” He handed me a large blue envelope. “I had to ask the embassy in Paris.”
“Thank you so much for taking all that trouble.”
“Not at all. I found it very instructive . . . You should read that document very carefully. It’s worth your time.”
I put the envelope on my lap. He gave me an ironic smile.
“You did say that your friend was named Neal, right?”
“Yes.”
“How old was he?”
“About forty.”
“That’s what I thought. It’s a real case of . . .” And he paused, looking for the right word. He spoke perfect French but every now and then—probably a typical diplomat’s habit—he hesitated, looking for the most precise term.
“A case of revenants.”
“Revenants?”
“Yes, back from the dead. You’ll see.”
To be polite, I didn’t want to open the envelope in front of him. He was drinking his pastis in big sips, contemplating the garden before us bathed in the last rays of sunlight.
“I’ll be bored in America. I’ve grown to like this house. A very strange house, though, if you believe what it says in that document. Anyway, I never heard anything suspicious while I was here. Never saw any ghosts in the night. I have to admit, though, I am a very heavy sleeper . . .”
He gave me a friendly pat on the arm.
“You’re right to want to find out more about the mysteries of these old houses along the Riviera, my friend.”
Inside the envelope were two sheets of paper, the same blue color, with the letterhead of the American embassy. The information, gathered and typed in orange characters, was as follows: Château Azur, Boulevard de Cimiez, had belonged in the 1930s to one E. Virgil Neal, American citizen, owner of Tokalon perfume and beauty products, with offices in Paris (7 Rue Auber and 138 Rue de la Pompe) and New York (27 W. 20th Street). In 1940, at the start of the Occupation, Neal had returned to America but his wife had stayed in France. “Mme Virgil Neal, née Bodier, as a French citizen, had been able to take over her husband’s business, the Tokalon perfume and beauty product company, and avoid provisional confiscation by the German authorities after the United States entered the war.”
The situation had grown more complicated in September 1944, due to the fact that “Mme Virgil Neal had maintained very close relations during the German Occupation, in Paris and on the Riviera, with one Ladd, André, b. 30 June 1916, last known place of residence 53 Avenue George-V, Paris VIIIe, convicted in absentia on 21 March 1948 of passing intelligence to the enemy and sentenced to no less than twenty years hard labor, twenty years exile, confiscation of all goods and property, and loss of full citizenship rights.”
The embassy’s report stated that the Château Azur villa had been sequestered in September 1944, “following a French federal investigation of the man known as Ladd, André, intimate of Mme Virgil Neal.” The villa was then requisitioned by the American army. An agreement followed in July 1948, according to which “M. Virgil Neal, chief executive of Tokalon, Manufacturing Chemists and Perfumers, transferred ownership of his villa, Château Azur, to the American embassy in France.”
The report also specified that “M. and Mme Virgil Neal had no children.” Condé-Jones had underlined this sentence in green ink and written in the margins: “There are only two possibilities. Either your friends were revenants, or else Monsieur and Madame Virgil Neal possess an elixir of eternal youth manufactured in the labs of Tokalon, Manufacturing Chemists and Perfumers. I am counting on you to solve the mystery. Best regards.”
But I wasn’t dreaming. His name really was Virgil Neal. I’d kept the card he gave me at our first meeting, where he’d written his phone number at the villa. In the phone booth on Avenue Gambetta, I used to take the card out of my pocket before dialing the number. I checked it again last night—it really was embos
sed with the names, without any address: Monsieur and Madame Neal.
The only evidence of our having met the Neals—but can I call them that, without believing, as Condé-Jones suggested, in either revenants or fountains of youth?—the only remaining proof that I wasn’t dreaming are that card and a photograph of the four of us, the Neals and Sylvia and me, taken by one of the photographers who wander up and down the Promenade des Anglais, waiting for tourists.
I still run into him every time I walk past his post at the old Palais de la Méditerranée. He greets me but doesn’t raise his camera toward me. He must realize that I’m not a tourist, that I’m part of the landscape, practically blending in with the city.
The day he took our picture, neither Sylvia nor the Neals noticed him. He slipped his brochure into my hand. I went to pick up the picture three days later in a little shop on Rue de France, without even telling Sylvia. I always go pick up that kind of photograph—traces left by an ephemeral moment when a person was happy, taking an afternoon stroll in the sun . . . You shouldn’t underestimate these sentinels with their cameras on straps, ready to capture you in an instant—these guardians of memory patrolling the streets. I know what I’m talking about. I used to be a photographer myself.
I want to write down the details of our relations with the Neals as though writing up a police report or answering questions from a well-intentioned detective, someone looking out for me, with a paternal solicitude I can feel, trying to help me clear things up a little.
I must have reached this Virgil Neal by phone during the week that followed Villecourt’s reappearance. He was “delighted” to hear from us, he said. He and his wife had been out of town for two weeks “on an unexpected business trip.” But they would be “thrilled” to see us for lunch, as early as the next day, if that would work for us. He gave me the address of the restaurant where we should meet them between twelve and twelve-thirty.
It was an Italian restaurant with a garnet-colored roughcast façade on Rue des Ponchettes, at the foot of Château Rock. Sylvia and I were the first to arrive. We were seated at the table for four that Neal had reserved. No other customers. Crystal. Starched white napkins. Guardi-style paintings on the walls. Cast-iron grates on the windows. An enormous fireplace, with a fleurs-de-lys escutcheon carved inside on the back. Invisible loudspeakers were playing orchestral versions of popular songs.
Sundays in August Page 5
