Outside, the blackout. What if the Khedive and Philibert came back with their cars? Decidedly I was not made to live in such troubled times. To ease my mind, I spent the hours until sunrise going through every closet in the house. Monsieur de Bel-Respiro had left behind a red notebook in which he jotted down his thoughts. I read and re-read it many times during those sleepless nights. ‘Frank le Harivel lived at 8 rue Lincoln. This exemplary gentleman, once a familiar sight to people strolling along the Allée des Acacias, is now forgotten . . .’ ‘Madame Mylo d’Arcille, an utterly charming young woman who is perhaps remembered by devotees of the music halls of yesteryear . . .’ ‘Was José de Strada – the hermit of La Muette – an unsung genius? No one cares to wonder nowadays.’ ‘Armande Cassive died here, alone and penniless. . . .’ Monsieur de Bel-Respiro certainly had a sense for the transience of things. ‘Does anyone still remember Alec Carter, the legendary jockey? Or Rital del Erido?’ Life is unfair.
In the drawers, two or three yellowing photographs, some old letters. A withered bouquet on Madame de Bel-Respiro’s desk. In a trunk she left behind, several dresses from Worth. One night I slipped on the most beautiful among them: a peau-de-soie with imitation tulle and garlands of pink convolvulus. I have never been tempted by transvestism, but in that moment my situation seemed so hopeless and my loneliness so great that I determined to cheer myself up by putting on some nonsensical act. Standing in front of the Venetian mirror in the living room (I was wearing a Lambelle hat adorned with flowers, plumes, and lace), I really felt like laughing. Murderers were making the most of the blackout. Play along, the Lieutenant had told me, but he knew perfectly well that one day I would join their ranks. Then why did he abandon me? You don’t leave a child alone in the dark. At first he is frightened; then he grows used to it, eventually he shuns the daylight altogether. Paris would never again be known as the City of Light, I was wearing a dress and hat that would have made Emilienne d’Alençon green with envy, and brooding on the aimlessness and superficiality of my existence. Surely Goodness, Justice, Happiness, Freedom, and Progress required more effort and greater vision than I possessed? As I was thinking this, I began to make up my face. I used Madame de Bel-Respiro’s cosmetics: kohl and serkis, the rouge it is said that gave sultanas their youthful, velvety complexion. I conscientiously even dotted my face with beauty spots in the shapes of hearts, and moons and comets. And then, to kill time, I waited for dawn and for the apocalypse.
Five in the afternoon. Sunlight, great curtains of silence falling over the square. I thought I saw a shadow at the only window where the shutters were not closed. Who is living at No. 3 bis now? I ring the bell. I hear someone on the stairs. The door opens a crack. An elderly woman. She asks what I want. To visit the house. Out of the question, she snaps back, the owners are away. Then shuts the door. Now she is watching me, her face pressed against the windowpane.
Avenue Henri-Martin. The pathways snaking through the Bois de Boulogne. Let’s go as far as the Lower Lake. I would often go out to the island with Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. Ever since I pursued my ideal: studying people from a distance – the farthest possible distance – their frenetic activity, their ruthless scheming. With its lawns and its Chinese pavilion, the island seemed a suitable place. A few more steps. The Pré Catelan. We came here on the night I informed on the Lieutenant’s ring. Or were we at La Grande Cascade? The orchestra was playing a Creole waltz. An old gentleman and an elderly lady sat at the table next to ours . . . Esmeralda was sipping a grenadine, Coco Lacour was smoking his cigar . . . All too soon the Khedive and Philibert would be plaguing me with questions. A ring of figures whirling around me, faster and faster, louder and louder, until finally I capitulate so they will leave me in peace. In the meantime, I didn’t waste those precious moments of reprieve. He was smiling. She was blowing bubbles through her straw . . . I see them in silhouette, framed against the light. Time has passed. If I had not set down the names – Coco Lacour, Esmeralda – there would be no trace left of their time on this earth.
Farther to the west, La Grande Cascade. We never went that far: there were sentries guarding the Pont de Suresnes. It must have been a bad dream. Everything is so calm now on the path around the lake. Someone on a barge waved to me . . . I remember my sadness when we ventured this far. It was impossible to cross the Seine. We had to go back into the Bois. I knew that we were being hunted, that eventually the hounds would flush us out. The trains weren’t running. A pity. I would have liked to throw them off the scent once and for all. Get to Lausanne, to neutral territory. Coco Lacour, Esmeralda, and I on the shores of Lake Geneva. In Lausanne, we would have nothing more to fear. The late summer afternoon is drawing to a close, as it is today. Boulevard de la Seine. Avenue de Neuilly. Porte Maillot. Leaving the Bois de Boulogne we would sometimes stop at Luna Park. Coco Lacour liked the coconut shy and the hall of mirrors. We would climb aboard the ‘Sirocco’, the whirligig spun faster and faster. Laughter, music. One of the stands bore the words in bright letters: ‘THE ASSASSINATION OF THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE.’ On the podium lay a woman and above her bed was a red target which marksmen would try to shoot. Each time they hit the bull’s-eye, the bed teetered and out fell the shrieking woman. There were other gruesome attractions. Being the wrong age for such things, we would panic, like three children abandoned at the height of some infernal fairground. What remains of all that frenzy, the tumult, and the violence? A patch of waste ground next to the Boulevard Gouvion-Saint-Cyr. I know the area. I used to live there. Place des Acacias. A chambre de bonne on the sixth floor. Back then, everything was perfectly fine: I was eighteen, and – thanks to some forged papers – drawing a Navy pension. No one seemed to wish me ill. I had little human contact: my mother, a few dogs, two or three old men, and Lili Marlene. Afternoons spent reading or walking. The energy of boys my age astounded me. They ran to meet life head on. Their eyes blazed. I thought it was better to keep a low profile. A painful shyness. Suits in neutral colours. That’s what I thought. Place Pereire. On warm evenings I would sit on the terrace of the Royal-Villiers cafe. Someone at the next table would smile at me. Cigarette? He proffered a pack of Khédives and we got to talking. He and a friend ran a private detective agency. They suggested I might like to work with them. My innocent looks and my impeccable manners appealed to them. My job was tailing people. After that, they put me to work in earnest: investigations, information-gathering of all sorts, confidential missions. I had my own office at the agency’s headquarters, 177 Avenue Niel. My bosses were utterly disreputable: Henri Normand, known as ‘the Khedive’ (because of the cigarettes he smoked), was a former convict; Pierre Philibert, a senior police inspector, had been drummed out of the force. I realised that they were giving me ‘morally dubious’ jobs. But it never occurred to me to leave. In my office on the Avenue Niel, I assessed my responsibilities: first and foremost, I had to provide for maman, who had little enough to live on. I felt bad that until now I had neglected my role as the main wage-earner in the family, but now that I was working and bringing in a regular salary, I would be a model son.
Avenue de Wagram. Place des Ternes. On my left, the Brasserie Lorraine, where I had arranged to meet him. He was being blackmailed and was counting on our agency to get him off the hook. Myopic eyes. His hands shook. Stammering, he asked me whether I had ‘the papers’. Yes, I replied, very softly, but first he would have to give me twenty thousand francs. In cash. Afterwards, we’d see. We met again the next day at the same place. He handed me an envelope. The money was all there. Then, instead of handing over ‘the papers’, I got up and hightailed it. At first I was reluctant to use such tactics but in time you become inured. My bosses gave me a 10 per cent commission on this type of business. In the evening I’d bring maman cartloads of orchids. My sudden wealth worried her. Perhaps she guessed that I was squandering my youth for a handful of cash. She never questioned me about it.
Le temps passe très vite,
et les années vous quittent.
Un jour, on est un grand garçon . . .
I would had preferred to do something more worthwhile than work for this so-called detective agency. Medicine appealed to me, but the sight of wounds and blood make me sick. Moral unpleasantness, on the other hand, doesn’t faze me. Being innately suspicious, I’m liable to focus on the worst in people and things so as not to be disappointed. I was in my element at the Avenue Niel, where there was talk of nothing but blackmail, confidence tricks, robbery, fraud, and corruption of all sorts, and where we dealt with clients of the sleaziest morality. (In this, my employers were every bit their equals.) There was only one positive: I was earning – as I’ve mentioned – a huge salary. This was important to me. It was in the pawnshop on the Rue Pierre Charron (my mother would often go there, but they always refused to take her paste jewellery) that I decided once and for all that poverty was a pain in the arse. You might think I have no principles. I started out a pure and innocent soul. But innocence gets lost along the way. Place de l’Étoile. 9 p.m. The lights along the Champs-Élysées are twinkling as they always do. They haven’t kept their promise. This avenue, which seems majestic from afar, is one of the vilest sections of Paris. Claridge, Fouquet, Hungaria, Lido, Embassy, Butterfly . . . at every stop I met new faces: Costachesco, the Baron de Lussatz, Odicharvi, Hayakawa, Lionel de Zieff, Pols de Helder. . . . Flashy foreigners, abortionists, swindlers, hack journalists, shyster lawyers and crooked accountants who orbited the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert. Added to their number was a whole battalion of women of easy virtue, erotic dancers, morphine addicts . . . Frau Sultana, Simone Bouquereau, Baroness Lydia Stahl, Violette Morris, Magda d’Andurian . . . My bosses introduced me to this underworld. Champs-Élysées – the Elysian Fields – the name given to the final resting place of the righteous and heroic dead. So I cannot help but wonder how the avenue where I stand came by the name. There are ghosts here, but only those of Monsieur Philibert, the Khedive, and their acolytes. Stepping out of Claridge, arm in arm, come Joanovici and the Count de Cagliostro. They are wearing white suits and platinum signet rings. The shy young man crossing the Rue Lord-Byron is Eugene Weidmann. Standing frozen in front of Pam-Pam is Thérèse de Païva, the most beautiful whore of the Second Empire. From the corner of the Rue Marbeuf, Dr Petiot smiles at me. On the terrace of Le Colisée: a group of black marketeers are cracking open the champagne. Among them are Count Baruzzi, the Chapochnikoff brothers, Rachid von Rosenheim, Jean-Farouk de Méthode, Otto da Silva, and a host of others . . . If I can make it to the Rond-Point, I might be able to lose these ghosts. Hurry. The gardens of the Champs-Élysées, silent, green. I often used to stop off here. After spending the afternoon in bars along the avenue (at ‘business’ appointments with the aforementioned), I would stroll over the park for a breath of fresh air. I’d sit on a bench. Breathless. Pockets stuffed of cash. Twenty thousand, sometimes a hundred thousand francs. Our agency was, if not sanctioned, at least tolerated by the Préfecture de police: we supplied any information they requested. On the other hand, we were running a protection racket involving those I mentioned above, who could truly believe they were paying for our silence, our protection, since Monsieur Philibert still had close ties with senior colleagues on the force, Inspecteurs Rothe, David, Jalby, Jurgens, Santoni, Permilleux, Sadowsky, Francois, and Detmar. As for me, one of my jobs was to collect the protection money. Twenty thousand. Sometimes a hundred thousand francs. It had been a rough day. Endless arguments. I pictured their sallow, oily, faces again: the usual suspects from a police line-up. Some, as usual, had tried to hold out and – though shy and softhearted by nature – I found myself compelled to raise my voice, to tell them I would go straight to the Quai des Orfèvres if they didn’t pay up. I told them about the files my bosses had with their names and their curricula vitae. Not exactly glowing reports, those files. They would dig out their wallets, and call me a ‘traitor’. The word stung.
I would find myself alone on the bench. Some places encourage reflection. Public gardens, for instance, the lost kingdoms in Paris, those ailing oases amid the roar and the cruelty of men. The Tuileries. The Jardins de Luxembourg. The Bois de Boulogne. But never did I do so much thinking as in the Jardins des Champs-Élysées. What precisely was my job? Blackmailer? Police informant? I would count the cash, take my 10 per cent and go over to Lachaume to order a thicket of red roses. Pick out two or three rings at Van Cleef & Arpels. Then buy fifty dresses at Piguet, Lelong & Molyneux. All for maman – blackmailer, thug, informant, grass, even hired killer I might be, but I was a model son. It was my sole consolation. It was getting dark. The children were leaving the park after one last ride on the merry-go-round. The street lights along the Champs-Élysées flickered on suddenly. I would have been better off, I thought, staying close to the Place des Acacias. Steer clear of junctions and the boulevards to avoid the noise and the unsavoury encounters. How strange it was to be sitting on the terrace of the Royal-Villiers on the Place Pereire, for someone who was so discreet, so cautious, so eager to pass unnoticed. But in life you have to start out somewhere. There’s no getting away from it. In the end it sends round to you its recruiting officers: in my case, the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert. On a different night, I might have made more admirable acquaintances who could have encouraged me to go into the rag trade or become a writer. Having no particular bent for any profession, I waited for my elders to decide what I would do. Up to them to figure out what they’d like me to be. I left it in their lap.
Boy scout? Florist? Tennis player? No: Employee of a phony detective agency. Blackmailer, informant, extortionist. I found it quite surprising. I did not have the talents required for such work: the cruelty, the lack of scruples, a taste for sleazy company. Even so, I bravely stuck at it, the way another man might study for a boilermaker’s license. The strange thing about guys like me is that they can just as easily end up in the Panthéon as in Thiais cemetery, the potter’s field for spies. They become heroes. Or bastards. No one realises they get dragged into this dirty business against their will. That all they wanted, all they cared about was their stamp collection, and being left in peace on the Place des Acacias, where they could breathe in careful little breaths.
In the meantime, I was getting into bad ways. My passivity and my lack of enthusiasm made me all the more vulnerable to the malign influence of the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert. I remembered the words of a doctor who lived across the landing in our apartment block on the Place des Acacias. ‘After you reach twenty,’ he told me, ‘you start to decay. Fewer and fewer nerve cells, my boy.’ I jotted this remark down in a notebook, because it’s important to heed the experience of our elders. I now realised that he was right. My shady dealings and the unsavoury characters I rubber shoulders with would cost me my innocence. The future? A race, with the finish line on a patch of waste ground. Being dragged to a guillotine with no chance to catch my breath. Someone whispered in my ear: you have gained nothing in this life but the whirlwind you let yourself be caught up in . . . gypsy music, played faster and faster to drown out my screams. This evening the air is decidedly balmy. As they always have, the donkeys trudge down the path heading back to the stables having spent the day giving rides to children. They disappear around the corner of the Avenue Gabriel. We will never know how they suffer. Their reticence impressed me. As they trotted past, I once again felt calm, indifferent. I tried to gather my thoughts. They were few and far between, and utterly banal. I have no taste for thinking. Too emotional. Too lazy. After a moment’s effort, I invariably arrived at same conclusion: I was bound to die some day. Fewer and fewer nerve cells. A long slow process of decay. The doctor had warned me. I should add that my profession inclined me toward dwelling on the morose: being an informant and a blackmailer at twenty rather narrows one’s sights. A curious smell of old furniture and musty wallpaper permeated 177 Avenue Niel. The light was constantly flickering. Behind my desk was a set of wooden drawers where I kept the files on our ‘clients’. I catalogued them by names of poisonous plants:
Black Ink Cap, Belladonna, Devil’s bolete, Henbane, Livid Agaric. . . . Their very touch made me decalcify. My clothes were suffused with the stifling stench of the office on Avenue Niel. I had allowed myself to be contaminated. The disease? An accelerated aging process, a physical and moral decay in keeping with the doctor’s prognosis. And yet I am not predisposed towards the morbid.
Un petit village
Un vieux clocher
A little village, and old church tower, these described my fondest hopes. Unfortunately, I lived in a city not unlike a vast Luna Park where the Khedive and Monsieur Philibert were driving me from shooting galleries to roller coasters, from Punch and Judy shows to ‘Sirocco’ whirligigs. Finally I lay down on a bench. I wasn’t meant for such a life. I never asked anyone for anything. They had come to me.
The Night Watch Page 5
