Villa Triste

by Patrick Modiano

  I immediately recognized André de Fouquières, whose photographs I’d seen on the covers of his works (my father’s favorite books, which he’d recommended to me, and which had given me great pleasure). Fouquières wore a Panama hat with a navy blue silk band. His chin rested on the palm of his right hand, and his face expressed elegant weariness. He was bored. At his age, all these summer holidaymakers in their bikinis and their leopard-skin swimsuits looked like so many Martians. Nobody here to talk to about Émilienne d’Alençon or La Gándara. Except for me, had the occasion arisen.

  The man in his fifties with the leonine head, blond hair (did he dye it?), and suntanned skin: Doudou Hendrickx, for sure. Talking nonstop to his neighbors, laughing loudly. He had blue eyes and emitted an aura of healthy, dynamic vulgarity. A woman, a brunette very bourgeois in appearance, was smiling knowingly at him: the Chavoires golf club president’s wife, or the tourist office president’s wife? Madame Sandoz? Gamange (or Gamonge), the cinema man — that must have been the guy with the tortoiseshell glasses and the business suit: gray with narrow white stripes, double-breasted jacket. If I make an effort, a personage of about fifty, with wavy gray-blue hair and a greedy mouth, appears before me. He kept his nose in the air, and his chin too, doubtless wishing to look energetic and supervise everything. The sub-prefect? Monsieur Sandoz? And what about José Torres, the dancer? No, he hadn’t come.

  Already a garnet-red Peugeot 203 convertible was proceeding up the drive. It came to a halt in the middle of the rotary, and out stepped a woman wearing a puffy dress and carrying a miniature poodle in one arm. The man remained behind the wheel. The woman took a few steps in front of the jury. She was wearing black shoes with stiletto heels. A peroxide blonde of the type supposedly preferred by ex–King Farouk of Egypt, about whom my father had spoken so often and whose hand he claimed to have kissed. The man with wavy gray-blue hair announced “Madame Jean Hatmer” in a toothy voice, molding each syllable of the name. She let go her miniature poodle, which landed on its paws, and began to walk, trying to imitate runway models in fashion shows: eyes vacant, head afloat. Then she got back into the Peugeot. Feeble applause. Her husband had a crew cut. I noticed how tense his face was. He backed up and executed a deft U-turn; you could tell he considered it a point of honor to drive as well as possible. He must have polished his Peugeot himself, to make it shine so bright. I decided they were a young married couple, the man an engineer from a respectable upper-middle-class family, the woman of humbler origins, both good at sports. And following my habit of setting everything somewhere, I imagined them living in a “cozy” little apartment on Rue du Docteur Blanche, in Auteuil.

  Other contestants followed in their turn. Alas, I’ve forgotten all but a few of them. The thirtyish Eurasian woman, for example, with her fat, red-haired escort. They were in an aqua-green Nash convertible. When she got out of the car, she took one robotic step toward the jury and then stopped. She was seized with nervous trembling. Her panic-stricken eyes darted all around her, but she didn’t move her head. The big redhead in the Nash called to her: “Monique … Monique … Monique …” and it sounded like a lament, an entreaty meant to soothe an exotic and mistrustful animal. He too got out of the car and took her by the hand. He pushed her gently down onto her seat. She burst into tears. Then they roared away, wheels spinning in the gravel, nearly sideswiping the jury when they turned. They were followed by a nice sexagenarian couple whose names I remember: Jackie and Tounette Roland-Michel. They drove up in a gray Studebaker and presented themselves to the judges together. Tall and red haired with an energetic, equine face, she was dressed in tennis clothes. He was of medium stature, with a little mustache, a substantial nose, a mocking smile, and the physique of a real Frenchman as imagined by a Californian film producer. An important couple, for sure, because the guy with the gray-blue hair announced: “Our friends Tounette and Jackie Roland-Michel.” Three or four members of the jury (among them the brunette and Daniel Hendrickx) applauded. As for Fouquières, he didn’t even deign to honor them with a glance. They inclined their heads in a synchronized bow. They looked quite fit, the two of them, and most pleased with themselves.

  “Number 32. Mademoiselle Yvonne Jacquet and Doctor René Meinthe.” I thought I was going to faint. At first I couldn’t see anything, as if I’d suddenly jumped up after spending the whole day lying on a sofa. And the voice that pronounced their names reverberated on all sides. I gripped the shoulder of someone sitting in front of me and realized too late that it was André de Fouquières. He turned around. I stammered some feeble excuses. It was impossible for me to remove my hand from his shoulder. I had to lean back and bring my arm to my chest, little by little, tensing my body to combat the heavy torpor I felt. I didn’t see them drive up in the Dodge. Meinthe stopped the car in front of the jury. The headlights were on. My faintness gave way to a sort of euphoria, in which my perceptions became abnormally sharp. Meinthe sounded the horn three times, and several judges looked somewhat astonished. Fouquières himself seemed interested. Daniel Hendrickx had a smile on his face, but in my opinion it was forced. Besides, was it really a smile? No, a frozen sneer. They didn’t budge from the car. Meinthe was flashing the headlights on and off. What did he think he was doing? He turned on the windshield wipers. Yvonne’s face was smooth, impenetrable. And suddenly, Meinthe jumped. A murmur ran through the jury, the spectators. There was no comparison between this jump and the one he’d made at Friday’s “rehearsal.” Not content with clearing the door, he bounded up over it, rose into the air, spread his legs crisply, and made a nimble landing, all in one fluid movement, a single electrical discharge. And I could sense so much rage, nervousness, and fanciful provocation in his gesture that I applauded. He walked around the Dodge, stopping from time to time and standing stock-still, as though he were crossing a minefield. Every member of the jury was watching him, openmouthed. He seemed to be in certain danger, and when he finally opened the door, some judges breathed a sigh of relief.

  She got out in her white dress. The dog followed her languidly. But she didn’t march up and down in front of the jury as the other contestants had done. She leaned on the hood of the car and stood there gazing at Fouquières, Hendrickx, and the others while an insolent smile curled her lips. Then, with an unforeseeable gesture, she pulled off her turban and tossed it nonchalantly behind her. She ran a hand through her hair to spread it out over her shoulders. The dog jumped up on one of the Dodge’s fenders and immediately assumed his sphinx position. She caressed him with a distracted hand. Behind her, Meinthe sat at the steering wheel and waited.

  When I think about her today, that’s the image that comes back to me most often. Her smile and her red hair. The black-and-white dog beside her. The beige Dodge. And Meinthe, barely visible behind the windshield. And the switched-on headlights. And the rays of the sun.

  She slowly slid toward the door and opened it without taking her eyes off the jury. Then she got back into the car. The dog leaped onto the rear seat so casually that when I evoke the scene in detail, I seem to see him jumping in slow motion. And the Dodge — but maybe one shouldn’t trust one’s memories — exits the rotary in reverse. And Meinthe (this gesture is also in slow motion) tosses a rose. It lands on Daniel Hendrickx’s jacket. He picks up the rose and stares at it dumbfounded. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t even dare place it on the table. At last he breaks into a stupid laugh and hands the rose to his neighbor, the brunette whose name I don’t know but who must be the school board president’s wife, or the Chavoires golf club president’s wife. Or, who knows? Madame Sandoz.

  Before the car reenters the drive, Yvonne turns and waves to the jury. I even think she blows them all a kiss.

  They deliberate in undertones. Three of the Sporting Club’s swimming instructors have asked us politely to move a few meters away so as not to violate the privacy of the discussion. Every judge has a sheet of paper with the names and numbers of the various contestants. As each couple passed, they were s
upposed to be given a grade.

  The judges scribble something on bits of paper and fold them. Then they put the ballots in a pile and Hendrickx shuffles and reshuffles them with his tiny manicured hands, which contrast so strongly with his build and his thickness. He’s also in charge of counting the ballots. He announces names and numbers — Hatmer, 14; Tissot, 16; Roland-Michel, 17; Azuelos, 12 — but it’s no use straining my ears, I can’t make out most of the names. The man with the wavy coiffure and the gourmand’s lips writes the numbers in a notebook. Then there’s another animated confabulation. The most vehement talkers are Hendrickx, the brunette, and the man with the gray-blue hair. This last-named individual smiles incessantly, in order — I suppose — to display two rows of superb teeth, and he imagines he’s charming the company by looking around and batting his eyes and trying to appear ingenuous and surprised at everything. Pouty, impatient mouth. A gastronome, without a doubt. And also what’s called in slang a “lech.” There must be an ongoing rivalry between him and Doudou Hendrickx. They compete for women, I’d lay money on it. But for the moment, they affect a solemn, responsible air, like company directors at a board meeting.

  Fouquières, for his part, is completely uninterested in it all. He scribbles on his sheet of paper, his knitted brow expressing ironic disdain. What does he see? What scene from his past is he dreaming about? His last meeting with Lucie Delarue-Mardrus? Hendrickx leans toward him, very respectfully, and asks him a question. Fouquières replies without even looking at him. Hendrickx next goes over to query Ganonge (or Gamange), the “filmmaker,” who’s sitting at a table in the back on the right. Then he goes back to the man with the gray-blue hair. They have a brief altercation, and I hear them say the name “Roland-Michel” several times. Finally, “Grayblue Waves” — that’s what I’ll call him — steps up to a microphone and announces in an icy voice: “Ladies and gentlemen, in one minute, we are going to give you the results of this year’s Houligant Elegance Cup.”

  I feel faint again. Everything gets blurry around me. I wonder where Yvonne and Meinthe can be. Are they waiting in the place where I left them, alongside the tennis court? What if they’ve abandoned me?

  “By five votes to four” — Grayblue Waves’s voice gets higher and higher — “I repeat: by five votes to four cast for our friends the Roland-Michels” (he stresses our friends, hitting the syllables hard, and now his voice is as high-pitched as a woman’s), “who are well known and appreciated by all, and whose good sportsmanship I cannot commend enough … and who deserved — in my personal opinion — to win this Elegance Cup …” (he bangs his fist on the table, but his voice breaks more and more) “… the Cup has been awarded” (he marks a pause) “to Mademoiselle Yvonne Jacquet, escorted by Monsieur René Meinthe.”

  I admit it, I had tears in my eyes.

  They had to make one last appearance before the jury to receive the Cup. All the children left the beach, joined the other spectators, and waited with great excitement. The musicians of the Sporting Club orchestra had taken up their usual position, under the big green-and-white striped canopy in the middle of the terrace. They were tuning their instruments.

  The Dodge appeared. Yvonne was half reclining on the hood. Meinthe drove slowly. She jumped to the ground and walked very timidly toward the jury. There was a great deal of applause.

  Hendrickx came down to her, brandishing the Cup. He gave it to her and kissed both her cheeks. And then other people gathered to congratulate her. André de Fouquières himself shook her hand, and she had no idea who the old gentleman was. Meinthe rejoined her. He glanced around the terrace of the Sporting Club and spotted me at once. He called out, “Victor … Victor …” and waved vigorously. I ran to him. I was saved. I would have liked to kiss Yvonne, but she was already quite surrounded. Some waiters, each carrying two trays of glasses filled with champagne, tried to make their way through the press. The whole crowd was toasting, drinking, chattering in the sun. Meinthe remained at my side, mute and impenetrable behind his dark glasses. A few meters away, a very agitated Hendrickx was introducing the brunette, Gamonge (or Ganonge), and two or three other people to Yvonne. She was thinking about something else. About me? I didn’t dare believe that.

  Everybody was having more and more fun. They were laughing, calling out, pressing against one another. The orchestra leader asked Meinthe and me to tell him what “piece” he ought to perform in honor of the Cup and “its lovely winner.” We were stumped for a minute, but since my name was provisionally Chmara and I felt I had a gypsy heart, I asked him to play “Dark Eyes.”

  A “soirée” had been arranged at the Sainte-Rose to celebrate this fifth Houligant Cup and Yvonne, the conquering heroine. For the occasion, she’d selected a lamé dress the color of old gold.

  She’d put the Cup on the night table, next to the Maurois book. The Cup was, in reality, a statuette of a dancer en pointe on a little pedestal engraved in Gothic letters: HOULIGANT CUP. 1ST PRIZE, with the year inscribed below.

  Before we left, she caressed it with her hand and then flung her arms around my neck. “Don’t you think it’s marvelous?” she asked.

  She wanted me to wear my monocle and I agreed to do so, because this was an evening unlike any other.

  Meinthe had on a pale green suit, very soft, very new. Throughout the trip to Voirens, he made fun of the members of the jury. “Grayblue Waves’s” real name was Raoul Fossorié, and he was the head of the tourist information office. The brunette was married to the president of the Chavoires golf club, and yes, on occasion she flirted with that “big ox” Doudou Hendrickx. Meinthe loathed him. He was a character, Meinthe told me, who’d been doing his playboy-of-the-ski-slopes number for the past thirty years. (I thought about the hero of Liebesbriefe auf der Berg, Yvonne’s movie.) Hendrickx had ruled the night at L’Équipe and the Chamois in Megève in 1943, but now he was past fifty and looked more and more like “a satyr.” Again and again Meinthe punctuated his tirade by asking, in a tone heavy with irony and innuendo, “Isn’t that right, Yvonne? Isn’t that right, Yvonne?” Why? And how was it that he and Yvonne were so familiar with all those people?

  When we stepped out onto the pergola terrace at the Sainte-Rose, Yvonne was greeted with a little halfhearted applause. It came from a table of about ten people, with Hendrickx presiding. He made a sign to us. A photographer stood up and blinded us with his flash. The manager, the man called Pulli, pushed up three chairs for us and then came back with an orchid, which he offered with great enthusiasm to Yvonne. She thanked him.

  “On this great day, the honor is all mine, Mademoiselle. And brava!”

  He had an Italian accent. He made a bow to Meinthe.

  “Monsieur …?” he said to me, doubtless embarrassed at not knowing me by name.

  “Victor Chmara.”

  “Ah … Chmara?” He looked surprised and furrowed his brow.

  “Monsieur Chmara …”

  “Yes.”

  He gave me an odd look.

  “I’ll be with you right away, Monsieur Chmara …”

  And he headed for the stairs that led to the bar on the ground floor.

  Yvonne was sitting next to Hendrickx, and Meinthe and I found ourselves opposite them. Among my neighbors, I recognized the brunette from the jury, Tounette and Jackie Roland-Michel, and a man with very short gray hair and the energetic features of a former aviator or soldier: the golf club president, surely. Raoul Fossorié was at the end of the table, chewing on a match. As for the three or four other people sitting with us, including two very suntanned blondes, I was seeing them for the first time.

  There wasn’t a big crowd at the Sainte-Rose that evening. It was still early. The orchestra was playing a song much in the air back then, “L’amour, c’est comme un jour,” while one of the musicians whispered the words:

  Love, it’s like a day

  It goes away, it goes away

  Love

  Hendrickx had his right arm around Yvonne’s shoulders, and I wondered w
hat he thought he was doing. I turned to Meinthe. He was hiding behind another pair of sunglasses, this one with massive tortoiseshell earpieces, and drumming nervously on the edge of the table. I didn’t dare speak to him.

  “So you’re happy to have your Cup?” Hendrickx asked in a wheedling voice.

  Yvonne shot me an embarrassed look.

  “I had a little something to do with it …”

  But sure, he must be a decent guy. Why was I always so distrustful of everyone?

  “Fossorié was against it. Right, Raoul? You were against it …”

  And Hendrickx burst out laughing. Fossorié inhaled a lungful of cigarette smoke. He was affecting a great calm. “Not at all, Daniel, not at all,” he said. “You’re wrong …”

  And he molded the syllables in a way I found obscene. “Hypocrite!” Hendrickx exclaimed, without any malice at all.

  This reply made the brunette laugh, along with the two tanned blondes (one of their names suddenly comes back to me: Meg Devillers) and even the fellow who looked like an ex–cavalry officer. The Roland-Michels made an effort to join in the general mirth, but their hearts weren’t in it. Yvonne winked at me. Meinthe kept drumming on the table.

  “Your favorites,” Hendrickx went on, “were Jackie and Tounette, weren’t they, Raoul?” Then, turning to Yvonne: “You should shake hands with our friends the Roland-Michels, your unsuccessful rivals …”

  Yvonne did so. Jackie put on a jovial expression, but Tounette Roland-Michel looked Yvonne straight in the eye. She seemed angry at her.

  “One of your admirers?” asked Hendrickx. He was pointing to me.

  “My fiancé,” Yvonne boldly replied.

  Meinthe raised his head. The muscles of his left cheek and the corners of his mouth twitched. His tics were back. “We forgot to introduce our friend to you,” he said in a precious voice. “Count Victor Chmara.”