The captain of the Green Pavilion was our gym teacher, Mr. Kovnovitsyn, whom we called “Kovo.” He didn’t want any cadets under him, and no one inspected our rooms. We could turn out our lamps when we pleased. The only danger was that Pedro, on his nightly patrol of the grounds, would notice the light in our window and let go with a shrill whistle blast, like an air raid warden.
Kovo, a former tennis trainer, would give his favorite pupils one of his old business cards:
KOVNOVITSYN
Licensed Tennis Instructor
8 Villa Diez-Monin
Paris 16
A tall man with slicked-back white hair and a classic profile, he wore white cotton trousers and had a Labrador retriever named Shoura that sometimes came to visit us in our rooms. Unable to sleep, Kovo spent his nights wandering about the school’s great lawn. I had watched him from my window at around two or three in the morning, slowly crossing the yard, his Lab on a leash. His cotton trousers glowed in the dark. He sometimes let go of the leash and the dog must have run off, for after a while we would hear him calling:
“Shoooooooooo-raaa . . .”
And that call, endlessly repeated until dawn, sometimes near, sometimes far, echoed like the wail of an oboe.
I don’t know whether Captain Kovnovitsyn still walks his dog at night. I saw only one of our teachers again, a decade or so after leaving school: our chemistry teacher, Lafaure. I heard, Edmond, that you, too, ran into Lafaure . . .
Yes, I did. That evening, the audience had been no better or worse than in the other provincial towns where our touring company stopped. At intermission, in the minuscule dressing room I shared with Sylvestre-Bel, someone handed me a calling card:
Dear Edmond Claude, your former chemistry teacher at the Valvert School,
LAFAURE,
requests the pleasure of your company, if possible, for a light supper after the show.
“An admirer?” Sylvestre-Bel asked.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that yellowed card, in the middle of which the name LAFAURE was engraved in ash-gray letters.
“No, an old friend of the family.”
And when it was my turn to go onstage, for my few minutes and five lines, I heard in the silence a murmur from the front rows: “Bravo! Bravo!” I recognized it immediately: Lafaure’s sepulchral voice, which we used to make fun of in class and because of which we had nicknamed him “Death’s Head.”
Five soft but distinct taps on the door of our dressing room. They sounded like Morse code. I opened it. Lafaure.
“Am I disturbing you?”
He stood there with his white crew cut, stiff and shy in a navy blue suit with peg-leg trousers that stopped well above the ankles and exposed two huge black rubber-soled shoes. He used to wear shoes like that at school, and those clodhoppers of his gave him the sluggish tread of a sleepwalker.
His face had grown gaunt and wrinkled, but his skin was the same chalk white as ever.
“Do come in, Monsieur Lafaure.”
In that cramped dressing room, Sylvestre-Bel was sitting on our one rickety cane chair, removing his makeup over a cardboard washbasin, while I stood pressed against Lafaure, who had closed the door behind him.
“This is my former chemistry teacher . . .”
Sylvestre-Bel turned around and gave Lafaure a supercilious nod. Out of vanity, he had not yet removed his stage toupee, which made him look even younger: at sixty, he could pass for thirty-five, like certain Americans who, with their sunbathing, diet, and skin care, are like youthful mummies.
“Sir, you were outstanding,” Lafaure said to him.
He pulled the program from his jacket pocket and leafed through it. Large portraits of our star and our director in the front, followed by smaller photos of Sylvestre-Bel and the other cast members; mine was the size of a postage stamp.
“I would be most grateful if you would autograph this,” Lafaure said to Sylvestre-Bel, handing him the program open to the page with his photo.
“With pleasure. And your name . . . ?”
“Lafaure. Thierry Lafaure.”
And while my friend laboriously penned his inscription: “For Mr. Thierry Lafaure, with best wishes from Sylvestre-Bel,” Lafaure and I hovered over his shoulder.
“Thank you.”
“The least I can do,” said Sylvestre-Bel, puffing out his chest.
So as not to keep my old teacher waiting, I didn’t bother removing my makeup. We left the theater. A misty rain was falling.
“I reserved a table at the Armes de la Ville,” Lafaure said. “It’s the only place that stays open after ten.”
We walked, he with the same stiff gait he’d had at the school and I with my head bowed, for fear my makeup would run in the drizzle. The sucking noise of his rubber soles and his pale yellow raincoat made him seem positively ghostly.
“Which hotel are you staying at?” he asked me.
“The Armoric.”
“And are you leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes. On the tour bus.”
“A pity you can’t stay longer . . .”
His pace quickened, like a windup toy that had just been given another twist, and I feared I might lose him. The yellow coat and rhythmic squeaks of his shoes would be my only reference points in the dark. Suddenly, we came upon the glass front of a large, empty restaurant, its mirrors, woodwork, and leather shining under the globe-shaped lights.
“I reserved a table for two,” Lafaure said in his graveyard voice to a man with a brown mustache behind the bar.
The man gestured grumpily toward the empty tables.
“Take your pick.”
Lafaure pulled me toward a table in the back.
“We’ll have peace and quiet here,” he said.
Farther on, through an open swing door, came clouds of smoke, shouts, and laughter. Now and then a silhouette armed with a pool cue flitted by the doorway.
“Sometimes I play that game,” Lafaure said sadly. “There isn’t much to do around here.”
I had a hard time imagining Lafaure playing pool. Stiff as he was, how could he bend over? I pictured his body snapping at a ninety-degree angle with a sound like a car jack and him bracing his chin on the pool table so he could keep in position long enough to take the shot.
“I think I’ll go for the onion and anchovy pizza,” he said. “How about you?”
“I’ll have the same.”
“They’re excellent here.”
A young man of about twenty, with blond ringlets and green eyes, had stationed himself next to our table and was waiting to take our order, arms folded, gazing sardonically at Lafaure.
“Stéphane, bring us two onion and anchovy pizzas.”
“Very good, Monsieur Lafaure.”
Stéphane nodded ceremoniously, his exaggerated gesture radiating insolence.
“A nice boy,” said Lafaure. “He’s trying to improve his mind. I’m giving him history books to read. He has an artistic streak, like you. He’d like to be a film actor . . .”
His features tensed. Apparently, this was a sensitive topic.
“Maybe he can break into the movies. Don’t you think he has a face like an angel?”
So much anxiety showed through the question that I didn’t dare answer. I sensed something sordid and hurtful between that boy and Lafaure.
“Anyway, Edmond, I’m very glad to see you again.”
So he remembered my name.
“How long has it been? Let’s see . . . Thirteen years, I think . . . Thirteen years already . . . Well, you haven’t changed a bit . . .”
“Neither have you, Monsieur Lafaure.”
“Oh, please . . . !”
He let out a sigh and rubbed his brush-cut hair. Under the harsh neon lights, his face was even gaunter and more creased than in the dressing room, and his skin dotted with age spots.
“Ever since I retired and left the Valvert School, I’ve been living here with my older sister. I would gladly have invited you to the house,
but my sister is an early bird and she gets very cranky . . .”
“Do you still keep in touch with Valvert?”
“There is no more Valvert. The property was sold to a real estate developer who tore down all the buildings. It’s sad, don’t you think?”
I took in the news with detachment, but the next day it left me feeling empty, like the silence and dust above a demolished wall.
“Mr. Kovnovitsyn writes me now and again. He lives in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. Do you remember him?”
“Of course. A really good guy . . . Kovo . . .”
“Right, Kovo. And I know you used to call me ‘Death’s Head.’”
He smiled, apparently with no hard feelings—a wide, skeletal grin that justified our nickname for him.
The young man with green eyes brought our pizzas.
“They’re not overcooked, are they, Stéphane?”
“No, no, certainly not, Monsieur Lafaure.”
“Stéphane, this is a friend of mine from Paris. He’s an actor. He was in a play tonight in town . . . I’m asking if he has any pointers for you.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Lafaure.”
He gave Lafaure such an insolent stare that I felt bad for the man.
“And now, Stéphane, let us get back to our conversation . . .”
Perhaps my former teacher wanted to make the boy jealous, or earn his respect, by being seen with an “actor.”
“I often think about Valvert,” said Lafaure.
“Me too.”
We tried to slice into our pizzas, which were dry as rock gardens.
“These were baked way too long, but I don’t like to say anything. I’m . . . I’m a little afraid of him.”
He looked over at the other end of the room, where the young man was standing.
“I’ll tell him we met in Paris . . . Whatever you do, don’t bring up Valvert . . .”
The Valvert School. It seemed very far away in this deserted restaurant, sitting with our fossilized pizzas, in this dull provincial town where we didn’t even have a place to remove our makeup. An abandoned realm that one visits in a dream: The great lawn and the bunker in the moonlight. The leafy maze. The tennis courts. The woods. The rhododendrons. Oberkampf’s tomb . . .
“And have you heard from any of the other students?” I asked him.
“Six years ago I had a postcard from Jim Echevarietta. You remember him, right? A dark-haired boy. He went back home to Argentina . . .”
Apparently that fact made Lafaure deeply sad.
“Argentina is such a long way from here . . .”
Echevarietta. We used to sit next to each other in class. During math, he would furtively raise the lid of his desk and show me photos of his polo ponies, one by one.
“What about you, Edmond? Have you seen any of your old classmates?”
“Yes, McFowles . . . Daniel Desoto . . .”
“I don’t remember this Desoto.”
“Desoto was kind of like Echevarietta. His father used to give him a thousand francs a week in pocket money . . .”
“Yes . . . There were some strange fellows at that school. All of them damaged by their family situations. Don’t you think, Edmond?”
We gave up on eating our pizzas, which tasted like warm chewing gum.
“How did you hear I was in a play?”
“I get all the tour programs and I saw your name.”
My sorry little name, in tiny letters at the bottom of the poster, half the size of Sylvestre-Bel’s.
Lafaure squeezed my arm and, as with his laugh and voice, his grip was like a skeleton’s.
“I always thought you’d do something artistic . . . Already, back at school . . .”
The shouts of the pool players next door drowned out his voice. I cast a furtive glance in the mirror behind him. Despite my worries, I didn’t look like a clown, even if the foundation gave me a fake-looking tan, like someone who spent his days on a yacht, and my eyebrows were too black and too arched. But it wasn’t excessive, though I followed Sylvestre-Bel’s advice and put on my makeup the old-fashioned way, using Leichner grease sticks with their gaudy colors, and plenty of cocoa butter to take it off.
“Monsieur Lafaure, I apologize for the makeup but I didn’t want to keep you waiting . . .”
After all, he looked made-up too. His skin was white as a mime’s.
“Nonsense, Edmond, it suits you.”
He looked me over with such admiration. I would never have a better audience than that old chemistry teacher, for whom, already, back at school . . . Alas, with advancing age comes the realization that one won’t play major roles, but rather walk-ons, cameos. There is nothing dishonorable about being one of the profession’s obscure nobodies. Sylvestre-Bel often said so, he who had spent forty years specializing in minor parts: valet or maître d’. He flitted by, terse, elegant, erect, imperious like the sound of his name. His fleeting appearances were the secret of his eternal youth, or so he claimed.
“Do you know, Edmond, I still have that transistor radio . . .”
Lafaure had leaned toward me and whispered those words. It took me a few seconds to understand, then a memory came flooding back, with summery hues and the scent of underbrush.
It was the end of the academic term. We had teased our chemistry teacher mercilessly all year long and now felt bad about it. So we decided to pool our resources and buy him a parting gift, and our buddy McFowles had been deputized to bring back from the United States, where he often went with his grandmother, the best transistor radio he could find. We had presented it to Lafaure at the beginning of chemistry class. He was so moved that he suggested we skip class and go for a long stroll around the school grounds.
We walked in a group, Lafaure at the center, and McFowles showed him how to tune in the various French and foreign frequencies. At fifteen, McFowles was already nearly six-foot-three. He went in for hazardous sports, which would later cost him his life. But that day, with his gangly movements, he showed Lafaure how to use the radio.
We walked in the sun across the great lawn and followed a path bordered by clumps of rhododendrons. The fitness trail. The tennis courts. And we entered the woods . . .
The next day was the start of summer break. I can still hear the snatches of music from the radio, our voices, Lafaure’s marking time like the sighs of a bass, McFowles’s booming laughter . . .
“By the way, Edmond, before I forget, I wanted to get your autograph as well.”
Abruptly, Lafaure thrust the red-and-gold playbill at me. He furrowed his brow, and I could see there were tears in his eyes—strange, for that skeletal face.
My photo was next to Sylvestre-Bel’s, but so, so small . . . You could hardly make out my features. I wrote, “For Mr. Lafaure, in remembrance of Valvert, from his ex-student Edmond Claude.”
We got up from the table and crossed the dining room. Lafaure walked ahead of me with his mechanical stride, his coat carefully folded over his stiff arm. The young man who had served our pizzas was leaning gracefully against the bar. He fixed Lafaure with the same stare as before, as if confident of his power over the man. Lafaure bowed his head.
The rain was falling much harder now. I helped him on with his yellow raincoat. The lights inside the restaurant went off. We had no umbrella, and so Lafaure and I stood there, side by side, in silence, beneath the metal awning of the Armes de la Ville.
Well, Edmond, it so happens that one Christmas Eve, I was with my two small daughters at the entrance to the Rex cinema, waiting to see a Disney movie. The line was made up entirely of parents and children. Several feet ahead of us, a very stiff man with white hair caught my attention. He was alone, wrapped in a yellow raincoat and dust-gray scarf. He cast furtive glances at the children around him, as if searching for one in particular with whom he might start a conversation. Our eyes met. It was Lafaure.
He jerked his face away, like someone caught red-handed. I saw him discreetly leave the line. Was he afraid that too sudden a move
ment might draw attention and that someone might collar him? Had he recognized me? I would have liked to ask him—you know I would have, Edmond—but Thierry Lafaure was already fading like a ghost into the crowds on the boulevard.
III.
Every Thursday, Gino Bordin, our guitar instructor, arrived on the bus that left from Porte de Saint-Cloud. I’ve since learned that he lived in Montmartre at the time, at 8 Rue Audran, but that information doesn’t do me much good, as he’s no longer in the phone book.
Bordin always wore a midnight blue suit, embellished by a pocket square and a pale silk tie. He wore glasses with thin silver frames, and his hair, also silver, was slicked back, like Kovo’s. At around noon on Thursdays, he would walk quickly up the driveway to the Castle, brown guitar case in his left hand. He ate in the cafeteria, at a table in back. Sadly, I never managed to sit at his table, but all through the meal I watched him. He often had his tablemates in stitches. I knew all his stories by heart. He’d introduced Hawaiian-style guitar to France, which was his claim to fame.
Bordin had no classroom at his disposal. They didn’t even let him use the music room, on the ground floor of the New Wing. They had relegated him to a wooden bench in the foyer, in front of the monumental staircase that led to the Castle’s upper floors. There, in the drafts from outside and the dim light, he gave his half-tolerated lessons.
It was surely the limited number of Bordin’s students that kept him in such low esteem. For a long time, there were only two, Michel Karvé and me. But every Thursday afternoon at the end of class, at my urging and Karvé’s, a small group of acolytes would gather round to hear Bordin play: Edmond Claude, Charell, Portier, Desoto, McFowles, El Okbi, Newman . . . The other students were let outside on those afternoons, and they scattered over the lawn and playing fields. But we preferred to hang out with Bordin.
When it approached six o’clock, he would play a slow, poignant tune, “How High the Moon.” That meant it was time to leave. Karvé and I walked him to the bus stop: Pedro had given us special permission to exit through the gate with our teacher and linger awhile in the open air. The three of us waited on the sidewalk in front of the public park. Bordin absently stroked the neck of his guitar, which he leaned against his leg. He gave us each a friendly hug.
Such Fine Boys Page 2
