Villa Triste

by Patrick Modiano

  Did she believe me? Halfway. Before going to sleep, she required me to tell her “fabulous” stories, full of titled people and movie stars. How many times did I describe my father’s trysts with the actress Lupe Vélez in the Spanish-style villa in Beverly Hills? But when I wanted her to tell me about her family in return, she’d say, “Oh … It’s not very interesting …” And yet it was the only thing I needed to make my happiness complete: the tale of a childhood and adolescence spent in a provincial town. How could I explain to her that to my eyes, the eyes of a man without a country, Hollywood, Russian princes, and Farouk’s Egypt seemed drab and faded in comparison with that exotic and nearly unapproachable creature, a little French girl?

  10.

  It happened one evening, just like that. She told me, “We’re having dinner at my uncle’s.” We were reading magazines on the balcony, and the cover of one of them, I remember, pictured the English actress Belinda Lee, who had died in a car accident.

  I put on my flannel suit. Since the collar of my only white dress shirt was worn threadbare, I was wearing an off-white polo shirt, which went very well with my blue-and-red International Bar Fly tie. I had a lot of trouble tying the tie, because the polo shirt’s collar was too soft, but I wanted to look well dressed. I accessorized my suit jacket with a midnight-blue pocket handkerchief I’d bought for its deep color. As to footwear, I hesitated among raggedy moccasins, espadrilles, and a pair of Westons, which were almost new but had thick crepe soles. I opted for the last, considering them the most dignified. Yvonne begged me to wear my monocle: it would intrigue her uncle, and he’d think I was a “hoot.” But that sounded exactly like what I didn’t want, and I hoped the man would see me as I really was: a modest, serious youth.

  She chose a white silk dress and the fuchsia turban she’d worn on the day of the Houligant Cup. It had taken her longer than usual to put on her makeup. Her lipstick was the same color as the turban. She pulled on her elbow-length gloves, which I thought a curious thing to do before going to dinner at her uncle’s. We set out, taking the dog.

  Some people in the hotel lobby caught their breath as we passed. The dog preceded us, performing his quadrille figures. He’d do that when we went out at times he wasn’t used to.

  We took the cable car.

  We proceeded along Rue du Parmelan, the continuation of Rue Royale. As we walked on, I discovered a different town. We were leaving behind us all the artificial charm of a spa resort, all that shoddy décor, fit for an operetta in which a very old Egyptian pasha falls asleep in the sorrow of exile. Food stores and motorcycle shops replaced the upscale boutiques. Yes, the number of motorcycle shops was unbelievable. Sometimes two of them adjoined each other, both with discounted Vespas out on the sidewalk. We passed the bus station. A bus was waiting, its engine running. On its side you could read the name of its company and the stops it made: SEVRIER-PRINGY-ALBERTVILLE. We reached the corner of Rue du Parmelan and Avenue du Maréchal-Leclerc. The avenue bore this name for only a short distance, because it was Route Nationale 201, which went to Chambéry. It was lined with plane trees.

  The dog was afraid and kept as far away from the road as he could. The Hermitage setting better suited his weary silhouette, and his presence in the suburbs aroused curiosity. Yvonne said nothing, but the neighborhood was familiar to her. There had certainly been years and years when she’d walked that road regularly, coming back from school or from a party in town (“party” isn’t the right word; she would have been to a “ball” or a “dance hall”). As for me, I’d already forgotten the lobby at the Hermitage. I didn’t know where we were going, but I was already prepared to live with her on Nationale 201. The windows in our bedroom would tremble as the heavy trucks roared past, like the windows in the little apartment on Boulevard Soult where I’d lived for a few months with my father. I felt light on my feet. Except for my heels, which my new shoes were chafing a little.

  Night had fallen, and on each side of the road, two- and three-story houses stood guard, little white buildings that had a kind of colonial charm. There were buildings like those in the European quarter of Tunis and even in Saigon. Every now and then, a house that looked like a mountain cabin in the middle of a minuscule garden reminded me that we were in Haute-Savoie.

  We passed a brick church, and I asked Yvonne its name: Saint-Christophe. I would have loved to know if she’d made her first communion there, but I didn’t dare ask the question for fear of being disappointed. A little farther on was a movie house called, in English, the Splendid. With its dirty beige façade and its red porthole doors, it looked like all the cinemas you notice in the suburbs when you cross the Avenues du Maréchal-de-Lattre-de-Tassigny, Jean-Jaurès, or du Maréchal-Leclerc, just before entering Paris. She must have gone to the Splendid too, when she was sixteen. That evening it was showing a film from our childhood, The Prisoner of Zenda, and I imagined us going to the box office and getting two balcony seats. I’d known that theater forever, I could see its interior, the seats with their wooden backs, the panel with local advertisements in front of the screen: Jean Chermoz, florist, 22 Rue Sommeiller. LAV NET laundry & dry cleaning, 17 Rue du Président-Favre. Decouz, Radios, TV, Hi-Fi, 23 Avenue d’Allery … We passed one café after another. Through the windows of the last one, we could see four wavy-haired boys playing table soccer. There were green tables outside. The customers sitting at them observed the dog with interest. Yvonne had taken off her long gloves. The thing was, she was returning to her natural setting, and you might have thought she’d put on her white silk dress to go to a local fête or a July 14 dance.

  We walked past a dark wooden fence nearly a hundred meters long. Posters of all sorts were glued to it. Posters for the Splendid cinema. Posters announcing the parish festival and the arrival of the Pinder circus. Luis Mariano’s head, half torn off. Old, barely legible slogans: FREE HENRI MARTIN … RIDGWAY GO HOME … ALGÉRIE FRANÇAISE … Arrow-pierced, initialed hearts. The streetlamps that had been installed out there were modern, concrete, slightly curved. They projected the shadows of the plane trees and their rustling foliage onto the fence. A very warm night. I removed my jacket. We were in front of the entrance to an imposing garage. To the right, a little side door bore a plaque with a name in Gothic letters: JACQUET. There was also a sign: SPARE PARTS FOR AMERICAN VEHICLES.

  He was waiting for us in a ground-floor room that did double duty as a living and dining room. The two windows and the glass door overlooked the garage, which was an immense hangar.

  Yvonne introduced me, noble title and all. I was embarrassed, but he seemed to find it perfectly natural. He turned to her and asked gruffly, “Does the count like breaded veal cutlets?” He had a very pronounced Parisian accent. “Because I’m making cutlets for you.”

  He kept a cigarette — or, rather, a butt — stuck in the corner of his mouth and screwed up his eyes as he spoke. His voice was very deep and raspy, the voice of a big drinker or heavy smoker. “Sit down …”

  He pointed at a bluish sofa against the wall. Then, with little swaying steps, he walked into the next room: the kitchen. We heard frying sounds.

  He came back carrying a tray, which he placed on an arm of the sofa. On the tray were three glasses and a plate of those cookies known as langues de chat. He handed glasses to Yvonne and me. They held a vaguely pink fluid. He smiled at me and said, “Try it. A hell of a fine cocktail. Liquid dynamite. It’s called a Pink Lady … Try it.”

  I wet my lips with it. I swallowed a drop. And immediately began to cough. Yvonne burst out laughing.

  “You shouldn’t have given him that, Unky Roland.”

  I was touched and surprised to hear her say “Unky Roland.”

  “Dynamite, am I right?” he said, his eyes sparkling, practically bulging. “You have to get used to it.”

  He sat in the armchair, which was covered with the same tired bluish fabric as the sofa. He stroked the dog, dozing at his feet, and sipped his cocktail.

  “Everything all right?” he a
sked Yvonne.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. Maybe he didn’t feel like talking in front of someone he was meeting for the first time. He was waiting for me to launch the conversation, but I was even more intimidated than he was, and Yvonne gave us no help at all. On the contrary: she took her gloves out of her purse and slowly pulled them on. He followed this bizarre and interminable operation out of the corner of one eye and got a little sulky around the mouth. There were some long minutes of silence.

  I was watching him stealthily. His hair was brown and thick and his complexion ruddy, but his large black eyes and long eyelashes gave his heavy face a certain languid charm. He must have been a beautiful young man, of a slightly stocky beauty. His lips, by contrast, were thin, humorous, very French.

  You could tell he’d dressed and groomed himself carefully to receive us. Gray tweed jacket too broad across the shoulders, dark shirt with no tie. Lavender cologne. I tried to spot a family resemblance between him and Yvonne. Without success. But I figured I’d manage it before the end of the evening. I’d place myself in front of them and examine them both at the same time. In the end, I was sure to notice a gesture or a facial expression they had in common.

  “So, Uncle Roland, do you have a lot of work at the moment?”

  She asked the question in a tone of voice that surprised me. It mingled childish naïveté with the kind of brusqueness a woman might use in addressing the man she lives with.

  “Indeed I do … These crap American cars … All these shitty Studebakers …”

  “No fun, right, Unky Roland?” This time you would have thought she was talking to a child.

  “No. Especially since the engines inside those goddamn Studebakers …”

  He left his sentence unfinished, as if he’d suddenly realized that technical details wouldn’t interest us.

  “Ah, well … And how are things with you?” he asked Yvonne. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, Unky.”

  She was thinking about something else. What?

  “Excellent. If everything’s all right, that’s all right … Shall we move to the table?”

  He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Hey, Yvonne, did you hear me?”

  The table stood close to the French window and the windows overlooking the garage. A navy-blue-and-white checkered tablecloth. Duralex tumblers. He indicated my place: the one I’d figured would be mine. Across from them. On his plate and Yvonne’s, wooden napkin rings with their names — “Roland” and “Yvonne” — carved in round letters.

  With his slightly swaying gait, he headed for the kitchen, and Yvonne seized the chance to scratch the palm of my hand with her fingernail. He brought us a bowl of salade niçoise. Yvonne served us.

  “You like it, I hope?”

  Then, speaking to Yvonne and stressing each syllable: “Does-the-count-real-ly-like-it?”

  I detected no malice in his words, just a very Parisian irony and geniality. Though I couldn’t understand why this “Savoyard” (I remembered a sentence in the article about Yvonne: “Her family is originally from the region”) spoke with the weary accents of Belleville.

  No, there was definitely no resemblance. The uncle didn’t have Yvonne’s delicate features or long hands or slender neck. Sitting by her side, he looked yet more massive and taurine than he had in the armchair. I would have dearly liked to know where she got her green eyes and her auburn hair, but the boundless respect I feel for French families and their secrets prevented me from asking questions. Where were Yvonne’s father and mother? Were they still alive? What did they do? As I continued — discreetly — to observe Yvonne and her uncle, however, I discovered that they shared some mannerisms. For example, they had the same way of holding their knives and forks, with their index fingers a little too far forward, the same slowness in bringing the forks to their mouths, and sometimes the same way of screwing up their eyes, which gave them both little wrinkles.

  “And you,” he said to me, “what do you do in life?”

  “He doesn’t do anything, Unky.”

  She hadn’t given me time to answer.

  “It’s not true, Monsieur,” I stammered. “Not at all. My work is … books.”

  “… Books? Books?” He was looking at me with incredibly vacant eyes.

  “I … I …”

  Yvonne fixed her gaze on me with a cheeky little smile.

  “I … I’m writing a book. There.”

  I was totally surprised by the peremptory tone in which I’d told that lie.

  “You’re writing a book …? A book …?” He frowned and leaned a little closer to me: “A … crime novel?”

  He looked relieved. He was smiling.

  “Yes, a crime novel,” I murmured. “A crime novel.”

  A clock struck in the next room. A scratchy, interminable chime. Yvonne listened to it openmouthed. Her uncle looked for my reaction; he was ashamed of that intrusive, distorted music, which I couldn’t quite identify. But then, when he said, “There goes that goddamned Westminster again,” I recognized in the cacophony the chimes of London’s Big Ben, but more melancholy and more disturbing than the real thing.

  “That goddamned Westminster has gone completely crazy. It chimes twelve times every hour … It’s going to make me sick, that Westminster bastard … If I get my hands on it …”

  He spoke of it as if it were a personal, invisible enemy.

  “Do you hear me, Yvonne?”

  “But I’ve told you, it was Mama’s … All you have to do is give it back to me and we won’t talk about it anymore …”

  Suddenly he was very red, and I feared he would fly into a rage.

  “It’s staying here, you understand me? Here …”

  “Of course it is, Unky, of course it is …” She shrugged. “Keep your old clock … your stupid old Westminster …”

  She turned to me and winked. But he wanted to recruit me as a witness for his side too. “You understand. It would make an emptiness in my life if I didn’t hear that crappy Westminster anymore …”

  “It reminds me of my childhood,” Yvonne said. “It used to keep me awake …”

  And I saw her in her bed, clutching a teddy bear, her eyes wide open.

  We heard five more notes at irregular intervals, like a drunkard’s hiccups. Then Big Ben fell silent, as if forever.

  I took a deep breath and turned to the uncle: “She lived here when she was little?”

  I spoke so fast he didn’t understand what I’d said.

  “He’s asking you if I lived here when I was little. Are you getting deaf, Unky?”

  “But yes, up there. Upstairs.” He was pointing at the ceiling.

  “I’ll show you my room in a little while. If it’s still the same, is it, Unky?”

  “It is. I haven’t changed anything.”

  He stood up, collected our plates and cutlery, and went to the kitchen. He came back with clean plates and fresh silverware.

  “Do you prefer yours well done?” he asked me.

  “However you want.”

  “No indeed. It’s however you want, YOU, your lordship.”

  I blushed.

  “Have you decided, then? Well done or rare?”

  I couldn’t utter a syllable. I moved my hand, a vague gesture to gain time. He was firmly planted in front of me, his arms crossed. He looked at me with a kind of amazement in his eyes.

  “Tell me, is he always like this?”

  “Yes, Unky, always. He’s always like this.”

  He served us the cutlets and green peas himself, specifying that they were “fresh garden peas, not from a can.” He also poured us some wine, Mercurey, which he bought only for “important guests.”

  “So you think he’s an ‘important guest’?” Yvonne asked, pointing to me.

  “But of course. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever dined with a count. You’re Count what again?”

  “Chmara,” Yvonne s
napped, as if she was angry with him for forgetting my name.

  “And Chmara, that’s what? Portuguese?”

  “Russian,” I stammered.

  He wanted to know more.

  “Because you’re Russian?”

  I felt infinitely despondent. I was going to have to tell the whole story again, the Revolution, Berlin, Paris, Schiaparelli, America, the Woolworth heiress, the grandmother on Rue Lord-Byron … No. I gagged.

  “Are you feeling ill?”

  He put a hand on my arm: a paternal gesture.

  “Oh, no … It’s been ages since I felt this good …”

  He appeared to be surprised by my declaration, and all the more so because I’d spoken distinctly for the first time that evening.

  “Come on, drink some Mercurey …”

  “You know, Unky, you know …” (she paused for a minute and I stiffened, knowing that a lightning bolt was about to strike me), “you know he wears a monocle?”

  “Oh, really …? No.”

  “Put in your monocle and show him …”

  She was speaking in a mischievous tone, repeating the words again and again, like a nursery rhyme: “Put in your monocle … Put in your monocle …”

  I rummaged in my jacket pocket with a trembling hand and as slowly as a sleepwalker raised the monocle to my left eye. I tried to screw the thing into my eye socket, but my muscles stopped cooperating. The monocle fell out three times in a row. The area around my cheekbone felt paralyzed. On the third attempt, the monocle fell into my peas.

  “Well, shit,” I growled.

  I was starting to lose my composure, and I was afraid I’d blurt out one of those horrible things nobody expects a boy like me to say. But I can’t help it, it comes over me sporadically.

  “Do you want to try?” I asked the uncle, handing him the monocle.

  He got it right the first time, and I heartily congratulated him. It suited him perfectly. He looked like Conrad Veidt in Nocturno der Liebe. Yvonne burst out laughing. And so did I. And so did the uncle. We couldn’t stop.