Sundays in August

by Patrick Modiano

  We saw the Neals again. I remember meeting them at the bar of the Negresco Hotel one day at around three in the afternoon. We sat at a bay window waiting for them. It framed a patch of sky whose blue was much more distant and clear than this semidarkness we found ourselves in.

  “What if Villecourt comes?”

  I always called him by his family name.

  “We’ll act like we don’t recognize him,” Sylvia said. “Or else leave him with the Neals and disappear for good.”

  That word “disappear” in Sylvia’s mouth sends chills up my spine today. But that afternoon I laughed at the thought of the Neals and Villecourt sitting at the same table, without knowing what to say to one another, growing more and more anxious at our prolonged absence.

  Anyway, Villecourt did not come.

  We took a walk with the Neals along the Promenade des Anglais. That was the day when the photographer stationed in front of the Palais de la Méditerranée raised his camera toward us and slipped a card into my hand giving the address of the store where we could go buy the photos of ourselves in three days.

  The car with the diplomatic plates was parked by the Jardin Albert I carousel. Neal told us that he was going to “hop over” to Monaco with his wife to “take care of some business.” He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and the old suede jacket from the first night; Barbara Neal was in jeans and a sable-fur jacket.

  Neal pulled me aside. We were in front of the slowly turning carousel. There was only one child, sitting on one of the red sleds being pulled by white wooden horses for all eternity.

  “This reminds me of something from my childhood,” Neal told me. “I must have been ten . . . yes . . . it was 1950 or ’51. I was on a walk with my father and a friend of his. And I wanted to ride this carousel. My father’s friend got on with me . . . Do you know what his name was, that friend of my father’s? Errol Flynn. Does that name mean anything to you? Errol Flynn?”

  He put his arm protectively around my shoulder.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the diamond. It’s almost Barbara’s birthday. I’ll give you a down payment as soon as I can. A check from my bank in Monaco. An English bank. Is that all right with you?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I’ll have the diamond set in a ring. Barbara will love it.”

  We rejoined Sylvia and Barbara. The Neals kissed us on the cheeks before getting in their car. They were a beautiful couple—so it seemed to me that day. And sometimes the air is so mild on the Riviera in winter, the sky and the sea so blue, life so easy on a sunny afternoon along the Villefranche corniche road, that anything seems possible: checks from an English bank in Monaco that someone stuffs into your pockets, Errol Flynn riding slowly round the carousel of the Jardin Albert I.

  “Tonight we’re taking you to dinner at Coco Beach!”

  Neal’s voice rang out on the phone. It had not the slightest American accent, even when he said the words “Coco Beach.”

  “We’ll pick you up at your hotel sometime after eight.”

  “Why don’t we meet out?”

  “No, it’s much easier to get you there. We might be a little late . . . Sometime after eight, at your hotel. We’ll honk the horn.”

  There was no point in arguing. Never mind. I said it was fine. I hung up and stepped out of the phone booth on Boulevard Gambetta.

  We left our room window open to hear the horn. We were both lying in bed, because that was the only piece of furniture in the room we could wait on.

  It had started raining a few minutes before dusk—a soft rain, not beating on the tin roof but a kind of drizzle that gave us the illusion of being in a room in Le Touquet or Cabourg, in the north.

  “Where is this Coco Beach?” Sylvia asked.

  Near Antibes? Cap Ferrat? Or even farther? Coco Beach . . . The name had the sound and the scent of Polynesia, associated in my mind more with the beaches of Saint-Tropez: Tahiti, Morea . . .

  “You think it’s far from Nice?”

  I was afraid of a long car ride. I never liked these late-night escapades hopping from one restaurant or nightclub to the next until, at the end of the night, you have to rely on the goodwill of one of your companions to drive you home, and he’s drunk, and for the whole drive you’re at his mercy.

  “What if we stand them up?” I said to Sylvia.

  We would turn off the lights in the room. They would push open the gate of the Saint-Anne Pension and cross the lawn. The owner would open the French doors to the lobby. Their voices on the veranda. Someone knocking repeatedly on our door. Our names being called. “Are you there?” Silence. Then would come the relief of hearing their steps get softer and farther away and the garden gate close. Alone at last. Nothing would equal that bliss.

  Three blasts as loud as a foghorn. I leaned out the window and saw Neal’s silhouette waiting outside the gate.

  On the stairs, I said to Sylvia, “If Coco Beach is too far, we’ll ask to stay in the neighborhood. We’ll tell them we need to come home early because we’re expecting a phone call.”

  “Or we’ll just give them the slip,” Sylvia said.

  It had stopped raining. Neal waved his arm wildly. “I was afraid you hadn’t heard the horn.”

  He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and his old suede jacket.

  The car was parked on the corner of Avenue Shakespeare. A black car, roomy, I didn’t know what kind. German maybe. No diplomatic plates, but ones from Paris.

  “I had to switch cars,” Neal said. “The other one broke down.”

  He opened one of the doors for us. Barbara Neal was sitting in the front seat in her sable-fur jacket. Neal got behind the wheel.

  “Next stop, Coco Beach!” he said, lurching into a U-turn.

  He drove down Rue Caffarelli much too fast for my liking.

  “Is it far?” I asked.

  “Not far at all,” Neal said. “Just past the port. It’s Barbara’s favorite restaurant.”

  She had turned to face us. She smiled at us, giving off her scent of pine trees.

  “I’m sure you’ll like it,” she said.

  We detoured around the port, and then passed Vigier Park and the Nautical Club. Neal turned off onto a winding street parallel to the coast. He stopped by a landing with a lit-up sign.

  “Coco Beach, everybody out!”

  There was a certain forced cheeriness in his voice. Why was he trying to play the clown that night?

  We crossed the landing. Neal held his wife close and had his other arm around Sylvia’s shoulders. A gust of wind blew and he said: “Careful, don’t fall overboard!”

  We went down a narrow staircase with a thick white braided cord for a banister, and over a gangway leading to the restaurant’s main room. A maître-d’ in a white outfit and yachtsman’s cap appeared and said, “What name is your reservation under, sir?”

  “Captain Neal!”

  A large bay window ran the length of the room, which looked out over the sea some forty feet below. The sailor led us to a table next to the window. Neal wanted Sylvia and me to sit where we would have a panoramic view of Nice. A few scattered customers were talking in low voices.

  “It’s really busy here in summer,” Neal said. “They take off the roof and make it al fresco. Would you believe it was my father’s old gardener who built this restaurant, twenty years ago?”

  “Is he still the owner?” I asked.

  “No. Unfortunately. He’s dead.”

  This answer disappointed me. My mood was not good that night, and I would have liked to meet Neal’s father’s former gardener. It would have reassured me that Neal really was from a rich and honorable American family.

  Following the maître-d’s lead, the waiters were dressed in white blazers with brass buttons and white pants, but no caps. There was a white life preserver above the entranceway with blue letters around the ring spelling “COCO BEACH.”

  “Great view, don’t you think?” Neal said, suddenly twisting his body around.

>   The whole Baie des Anges lay spread out before our eyes, with its brightly lit areas and shadowy patches. Spotlights shone on the cliffs and the monument to the dead like a giant wedding cake at the foot of Château Rock. The Jardin Albert I down below was lit up, along with the white façade and pink dome of the Negresco.

  “It feels like we’re on a boat,” Barbara said.

  It was true. The crew in white moved smoothly and silently between the tables; I saw they were wearing espadrilles.

  “You don’t get seasick, do you?” Neal asked.

  The question made me slightly anxious. Or was it the drops of rain on the windows and the wind, which was making the white flag clatter against the Coco Beach sign mounted on the pontoon in front of the restaurant like the prow of a yacht?

  One of the waiters in white handed out menus.

  “I recommend the bourride,” Neal said. “Or, if you want, they make an aioli here like you’ll never find anywhere else.”

  Americans are gourmands sometimes, and with their goodwill and their seriousness they can become well-informed connoisseurs of French cooking and French wine. But still, Neal’s tone, the mimicry of his face, the sharp gesture of his thumb, and the way he had sung the praises of the bourride and the aioli made me think of very specific other places. I suddenly sensed coming from Neal the stench of La Canebière, or Pigalle.

  Sylvia and I kept exchanging glances during the whole meal. I believe we were thinking the same thing: it would be so easy to ditch them there . . . But the idea of having to get back to the port stopped me. From the port, we could easily lose them in the streets of Nice, but to reach the port you had to walk down a long empty street and in their car they would easily catch up to us. They would stop and ask us to explain what we were doing. To answer them, to make excuses, or even to tell them to go to hell—none of that would help because they knew our address. I felt they were as clingy as Villecourt. No, it would be better to take things slow.

  My bad mood worsened during dessert when Neal leaned over to Sylvia, brushed the diamond with his finger, and said: “So, still wearing your rock?”

  “You learned argot at your school in Monaco?” I said.

  His eyes narrowed and there was something hard in his look. “I was only asking your wife if she was still wearing her rock . . .”

  Usually so friendly, he was suddenly aggressive. Maybe he’d had too much to drink during dinner. Barbara looked embarrassed and lit a cigarette.

  “My wife is wearing a rock,” I said, “but you can’t afford it.”

  “Oh really?”

  “I know it for a fact.”

  “Says who?”

  “A little bird told me.”

  He gave a loud laugh. His gaze softened. Now he was looking at me with an amused expression.

  “You’re mad at me? I was just joking . . . a bad joke. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too, I was just kidding,” I said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Well, if you were both joking,” Barbara said, “then everything’s fine.”

  He insisted we have some kind of plum or pear brandy, I’m not sure what. I brought the glass to my lips and pretended to take a sip. Sylvia drank hers in a single gulp. She had stopped talking and was nervously rubbing her “rock” between her fingers.

  “You’re mad at me too?” Neal asked her in a humble voice. “Over this thing with the rock?”

  His faint American accent was back and he was a different person. There was something shy and charming about him now.

  “I beg your pardon. I hope you’ll forget my asinine joke.”

  He pressed the palms of his hands together in a childish pleading gesture.

  “Do you forgive me?”

  “I forgive you,” Sylvia said.

  “I’m truly sorry about that ‘rock’ thing . . .”

  “Rock, no rock, I don’t care,” Sylvia said.

  Now it was she who was talking in an east-Paris drawl.

  “Is he often like that?” she asked Barbara, pointing to Neal.

  She was taken aback, and eventually mumbled, “Sometimes.”

  “What do you do to calm him down?”

  The question came down on the table like a guillotine. Neal laughed. “What a charming woman!” he said to me.

  I felt uneasy. I took a large sip of the brandy.

  “So how should we end the evening?” Neal said.

  It was just what I’d predicted. Our troubles weren’t over yet.

  “I know a nice place in Cannes,” Neal said. “We can have a glass of something there.”

  “In Cannes?”

  Neal gave my shoulder a friendly pat. “Come on, old man, don’t make such a face. Cannes is hardly a den of iniquity.”

  “We need to get back to our hotel,” I said. “I’m expecting a phone call around midnight.”

  “Come on . . . Come on . . . You can call them yourselves, from Cannes. We won’t let you go that easy.”

  I gave Sylvia a desperate look, but she was imperturbable. Eventually she came to my rescue.

  “I’m tired. I don’t feel like taking a long car ride tonight.”

  “A long car ride? To Cannes? You must be pulling my leg. Did you hear that, Barbara? A long car ride, to Cannes. They think it takes a long car ride to get to Cannes . . .”

  Another word and we would have been in the presence of a jackhammer that would never stop clattering: “To Cannes, to Cannes . . .” And if we contradicted him he would cling to us even more than before. Why are some people like chewing gum that we have to try to get off our shoe heels by scraping them against the curb?

  “I promise you we’ll be in Cannes in ten minutes. The roads are empty at this time of night.”

  He didn’t seem drunk. He was speaking in a quiet, normal voice. Sylvia shrugged. “Well, if you insist, let’s go to Cannes.”

  She kept her cool and gave me an almost imperceptible wink.

  “We’ll talk about the diamond,” Neal said. “I believe I’ve found you a buyer. Isn’t that right, Barbara?”

  She smiled without answering.

  The waiters in white maneuvered between the tables, and I wondered how they could keep their footing so well. Outside the windows, the lights of Nice seemed farther and farther away, more and more blurry. We stepped out into the fresh air. Everything was swaying around me.

  As we were getting into Neal’s car, I said: “I’d really rather you take us back to our hotel . . . I don’t want to miss that call.”

  He checked his watch, and his face broke into a large grin. “You’re expecting a call at midnight? It’s twelve-thirty. You have no more excuses for ditching us, old man . . .”

  Sylvia and I took our seats in the back. Barbara snapped her gold cigarette case shut and turned to face us.

  “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?” she asked. I was out.

  “Nope,” Sylvia said rudely. “No cigarettes.”

  She had taken my hand and she pressed it against her knee. Neal started the car.

  “Are you really going to insist on taking us to Cannes?” Sylvia asked. “Cannes is boring.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Neal said in a patronizing voice.

  “We don’t like nightclubs,” Sylvia insisted.

  “I’m not taking you to a nightclub.”

  “So where are we going, then?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  He didn’t drive as fast as I’d feared, and he turned on the radio with the volume low. Again we drove past the white Nautical Club building and Vigier Park. We were back at the port.

  Sylvia squeezed my hand. I turned toward her. I tried to signal with a movement of my arm toward the door that we could get out of the car at the next red light. I think she understood because she nodded.

  “I love this song,” Neal said.

  He turned up the volume on the radio and turned to face us. “Do you like it too?”

  Neither of us answere
d. I was thinking about the route we would have to take to drive to Cannes. There would definitely be a red light by the Jardin Albert I. Or else farther up, at the Promenade des Anglais. The best thing for us would be to get out on the Promenade des Anglais and disappear into one of the side streets running off it, where Neal couldn’t follow us because of the one-way streets.

  “I’m out of cigarettes,” Barbara said.

  We had reached Quai Cassini. He stopped the car.

  “You want us to stop and buy some?” Neal asked.

  He turned to me.

  “Would you mind going to buy some cigarettes for Barbara?”

  He made a U-turn, then stopped again at the end of Quai des Deux-Emmanuel.

  “You see the first restaurant on the quay? Garac? It’s still open. Ask them for two packs of Cravens. If you run into any problems, just tell them it’s for me. Madame Garac knew me as a child . . .”

  I looked over at Sylvia. She seemed to be waiting for me to decide. I shook my head no—it was not yet the right moment to escape. It would be better to wait until we were in the center of Nice.

  I tried to open the door but it was locked.

  “Sorry,” Neal said.

  He pressed a button next to the gear shift. This time, the door opened.

  I went into Garac and up the stairs leading to the restaurant. A blonde was standing behind the coat-check counter. A babble of conversations reached me from inside the restaurant.