Such Fine Boys

by Patrick Modiano

  In those days, Harriet Strauss beauty products were displayed in the windows of perfume shops, and I admired them while thinking of my old schoolmate. Those products have since disappeared, but in the summer of the McFowleses’ honeymoon, Harriet Strauss lipstick and foundations still sat beside their rivals from Max Factor and Elizabeth Arden on the makeup counter. They ensured a comfortable living for Bob, to whom, on his twenty-first birthday, his grandmother had transferred all of her shares in Harriet Strauss.

  We were lying on the lawn in our bathing suits, Bob, Anne-Marie, and I, and McFowles was sipping orangeade through a straw.

  “Too bad,” he said. “The only thing missing in this place is the sea . . .”

  And in fact, under the strong sun, the white façade, the tables with their red umbrellas, the French doors running along the gallery, and the orange canvas awnings made the hotel look like a seaside resort.

  “Don’t you think, old man, that the only thing missing is the sea?”

  At the time I didn’t pay much attention to McFowles’s remark, or to his dreamy expression, but it was from that afternoon that the “malaise”—I can’t think of another word for it—began to weigh on us.

  And yet, McFowles was in a charming mood over lunch on the hotel terrace. He had invited Mr. Lebon, his father-in-law, a man with white hair and a mustache, also very French, whose delicate face could have been painted by Clouet. McFowles clearly intimidated him, and Lebon articulated his syllables when speaking to his son-in-law, as if talking to a foreigner. But Bob’s extreme kindness slowly put him at ease. My classmate asked about his business and listened attentively. This was the Robert McFowles I’d known at Valvert, moody but able to engage with others and win their affections with his warm gaze and his thoughtfulness. Anne-Marie seemed delighted by how well her father and Bob were getting along.

  Coffee was served. McFowles made a wide sweep of his arm that took in the terrace, deserted except for us, and the hotel lawn.

  “I think there’s only one thing missing here,” he said to Anne-Marie’s father. “Guess what it is, Dad.”

  Lebon gave an abashed smile.

  “I . . . I’m not sure . . .”

  Anne-Marie no doubt recalled Bob’s declaration from the day before. She burst out laughing. That laugh, when I recall the subsequent turn of events, makes my blood run cold.

  “Yes . . . There’s something missing here,” McFowles said in a serious voice.

  “Guess, Daddy,” Anne-Marie insisted.

  Lebon knit his brow.

  “No . . . Honestly . . . I can’t see anything.”

  “It’s missing the sea,” said McFowles, in a grave tone that surprised the three of us.

  “Oh, indeed,” said Lebon. “It’s the perfect weather for the seashore.”

  “But sadly, there is no seashore in Versailles,” said McFowles.

  He suddenly seemed devastated. Lebon shot me a puzzled glance.

  “Bob really likes the sea,” I stammered.

  Anne-Marie looked mortified.

  “Anyway, we’re planning on going to the seashore at the end of the month,” she said.

  But Bob had raised his head and his face was lit with a childlike smile.

  “You can’t ask the impossible, right, Dad?”

  A few days later, an old, green American convertible pulled to a halt at the edge of the lawn, in a loud crunch of gravel. It was McFowles’s car, which two friends had brought over from Paris. He introduced them to me: James Mourenz, a boy our age with a blond brush-cut and Swiss nationality, McFowles’s teammate for the bobsled championships that he competed in every winter; and Edouard Agam, a short, dark-haired man of about fifty. I could never tell whether he was Lebanese, Egyptian, or a Syrian living in Egypt, which would have accounted for his flawless French and Christian first name. Agam had led a dance band on the Riviera. McFowles had met him in Geneva, when his career was on the wane.

  Those two men were Bob’s parasites, but ingenuous Anne-Marie hadn’t the slightest suspicion. They never left my friend’s side, like two bodyguards or court jesters. James Mourenz’s laugh, his scars, his habit of clapping you on the shoulder, of getting defensive and hopping around you like a boxer, amused me at first. And I was susceptible to Edouard Agam’s courtesies. Bob had confided that they were his two best friends—his “pals,” as the American expression put it.

  And things might have gone differently, the days might have followed each other without a care, if it hadn’t been for the sea. McFowles talked about it constantly. “Didn’t you see the sea? I’m sure it’s high tide. What color is the sea today? Can’t you smell the sea?” Mourenz and Agam, aiming to please, had immediately joined in. Agam sang us Charles Trenet’s “Beyond the Sea,” strumming a guitar. Mourenz claimed that the sea reached to the edge of the hotel terrace and wanted us to admire his dives. He, too, wore a leopard-skin swimsuit and, standing on the balustrade, he took deep breaths that swelled his chest. Then he dove headfirst onto the lawn, jerking himself upright at the last instant.

  “Too cold?” asked McFowles.

  “No, this morning it’s fine,” Mourenz answered, shaking his arms and slicking back his hair as if he’d just plunged in. “The water’s perfect.”

  A casual observer might have taken this for a simple gag, but nonetheless felt some concern the day when Mourenz, deeming that the terrace balustrade made too low a diving board, decided to plunge from the hotel’s main portico. This plan won McFowles’s and Edouard Agam’s enthusiastic endorsement; Anne-Marie and I didn’t dare object.

  “Go ahead, jump right in,” said McFowles. “The water’s deep at that spot . . .”

  With a stepladder, Mourenz hiked himself onto the upper terrace, which was more than nine feet above ground. Agam, poker-faced, hummed “Beyond the Sea.” The hotel porter and one of the bellboys followed the scene, spellbound.

  “I will now perform for you the swan dive,” said Mourenz.

  He grimaced defiantly. McFowles had told me that his daring, at the bobsled competitions in Saint-Moritz, had earned him the nickname Suicide James.

  “Go on,” said McFowles. “The waves have died down. It’s like a swimming pool. Show us your swan dive.”

  Mourenz, standing stiffly on the portico railing, lips pressed tight, took a deep breath. With a sudden lunge, he launched himself up high, arms outstretched. You would have sworn he was going to break his neck, but in a fraction of a second he clutched his knees to his chest and fell onto the soft grass in the “egg position” that the skier Jean Vuarnet had illustrated so effectively in the early sixties. We applauded. Only McFowles remained stone-faced.

  “Next time, you’ll dive from higher up and when there are waves,” he said coldly.

  From then on, every morning, Suicide James dove. Jackknife, from a table he had set up on the hotel terrace; gainer flips; reverse dives. And each time, these demonstrations concluded with the usual quips—“the water’s fine,” “you should come in, too”—until the day when he slightly fractured his forearm. He wore the arm in a sling, a white silk scarf that McFowles had given him, and from morning till night his entire outfit was that scarf and his leopard-skin swimsuit.

  “You won’t be able to swim anymore, poor fellow,” said McFowles. “It’s really a shame, in this heat . . .”

  But even with his arm in a cast, Mourenz had not lost his enthusiasm. He wanted to send away to Paris for an outboard and water skis that they could use in the Grand Canal of Versailles. McFowles had an orange-colored beach tent, and he obtained the hotel manager’s permission to set it up on the lawn. The five of us stood around the tent.

  “It smells like the sea,” said Mourenz.

  “Shall we take advantage of low tide to go for a walk?” asked McFowles.

  He leaned toward Anne-Marie.

  “I’m going to gather you some lovely shells, darling . . .”

  She gave him a worried look. I could tell the joke was beginning to frighten her. No doubt she
would have preferred to spend some time alone with Bob on their honeymoon.

  A kind of bitterness and lassitude overcame McFowles. The good-natured banter had given way to ill-tempered remarks, like, “You think we’re going to have to wait much longer for that fucking sea?”

  He turned to Mourenz.

  “So, you’re not diving today? You chickening out?”

  I suggested we visit our old Valvert School, right near Versailles.

  “Fine, as long as there’s some ocean.”

  One evening I’d managed to get them to take a walk along the Grand Canal, and we had arrived at the far end, where the meadows begin. Cows were grazing. The horizon was unobstructed, and it was as if those meadows overlooked the sea. I couldn’t help saying so to Bob.

  “You’re right,” he stated, “but it’s a mirage. The farther you go, the more the water recedes.”

  Agam, behind us, was playing the accordion. Mourenz now had only a cast on his wrist. Anne-Marie was anxious.

  That night, at around three in the morning, I was awoken by the telephone. Anne-Marie. She said that Bob was prostrate in the hotel lobby and wouldn’t come up to bed. From the sound of her voice, I could tell she was crying.

  We both went downstairs to find him. He was sitting on one of the couches in the grand hall. We sat beside him.

  “You’ll have to forgive me . . . I’m still waiting for that goddamn sea. It’s really no fun, you know . . .”

  He burst out laughing, but there was something forced about that laugh. Anne-Marie flashed me a desperate look. No, he wasn’t drunk, as she thought. He didn’t need alcohol to put himself in that state.

  I could see that with all her love for McFowles and all her kindness, she was searching for an explanation. What could I tell her? That Bob wasn’t a bad man—far from it—but a sensitive, guileless boy who was looking for stability, otherwise he wouldn’t have chosen a girl like her? Unfortunately, we, the veterans of Valvert, were prone to inexplicable bouts of melancholy, waves of sadness that we tried to ward off each in our own way. As our chemistry teacher Mr. Lafaure used to say, we all had a “touch” of it.

  The sun rose. I watched the dappled light on the walls of the grand hall, gently caressed by the shadows of the foliage. A fly had come to rest on Anne-Marie’s white trousers, just above the knee.

  V.

  Every other Saturday at 9 p.m. we would assemble in the Swiss Yard before filing into the small movie theater, where we could choose our places from among the dark wooden folding seats in the orchestra and balcony.

  Pedro needed two new projectionists to step in on short notice for the former team of Yotlande and Bourdon, who were in eleventh grade. My friend Daniel Desoto and I had volunteered, and for several afternoons our two older classmates had taught us how to use the equipment. Then Yotlande was expelled and Bourdon also left school, so Desoto and I found ourselves permanently assigned to our new jobs.

  The students would sit in the small auditorium with its ochre walls, which looked just like some neighborhood cinema. The screen, attached to a removable panel, concealed the stage where, once a semester, a theater troupe performed a show, and where at the end of the year Pedro gave out the scholastic achievement awards.

  After a moment, Mr. Jeanschmidt made his entrance, followed by Kovnovitsyn and his Labrador on a leash. Two seats were permanently reserved for them, fifth row orchestra, near the aisle. Pedro and Kovo’s entrance was greeted in silence, sometimes broken by discreet applause. Kovo’s dog lay down in the middle of the aisle, in a stiff sphinxlike position, head slightly raised toward the screen.

  Desoto and I, in the projection booth, waited for Pedro’s signal. He raised his left arm and brought it down sharply, as if swatting away a fly. The show could begin.

  A documentary or cartoon, to start. I turned the lights back on. The folding seats clacked shut. The students went out for a moment to the Swiss Yard, but Pedro, Kovo, and the dog remained in their places. A few friends joined us in the projection booth. I rang the bell to announce the end of intermission. And once more, Pedro’s imperious gesture.

  We watched The Man in the White Suit, Passport to Pimlico, and other films whose titles I’ve forgotten, but the one that appeared on the program most often—at least once a semester—was Archer’s Crossing.

  A manor, a blonde countess, her little daughter, the gamekeeper’s lodge, a painter in love with the countess, the sound of a harmonium in the night, a wolf baying at the moon . . .

  Kovnovitsyn’s Labrador, its ears pricked up, answered with a plaintive bark.

  The child who played the part of the countess’s daughter was called Little Jewel, or at least that was her name in the credits. The first time Archer’s Crossing was shown in our movie theater, Pedro and Kovnovitsyn were with a man of about forty, to whom Pedro occasionally gave an affectionate pat on the shoulder. When the show was over, our principal asked everyone to remain seated. He stood and gestured toward the man next to him.

  “I’d like to introduce you to a former student of this school. He has come specially this evening because he knew one of the actresses in the film.”

  From then on, every time we showed Archer’s Crossing at Valvert, the man attended the projection. On those Saturdays, his car was parked in front of the Castle and he ate in the dining hall at Pedro’s table.

  He was a man of average height, with light brown hair and lively eyes. He worked in import-export. As luck would have it, I too sat at Pedro’s table that year. The two of them spoke about the past and various “alums.”

  “Do you find Valvert very different?” Pedro asked.

  “No. Valvert is still Valvert.”

  Several students had been lost during the war, among them a certain Johnny, of whom Pedro kept a fond memory.

  “Come back next month,” he said. “We’ll show Archer’s Crossing again.”

  I believe Pedro showed the film as often as he did to make his “alum” happy. The man had said, “It’s awfully kind of you to let me see Little Jewel again, Monsieur Jeanschmidt . . .”

  At the end of the meal, the alum offered us cigarettes. It was against the rules, but our principal, for once, turned a blind eye. And one evening when we asked him about Little Jewel, he agreed to satisfy our curiosity, and Pedro’s.

  Yes, I can say that my life, to this day, has been just a long, fruitless search for Little Jewel. I met her after I left Valvert, when I was taking acting lessons. Of all the students in the Marivaux Course, not one made a career in show business, except for this overweight fellow we used to call Pudgy.

  All my memories of Marivaux are set against a backdrop of winter and nighttime. I was eighteen, and three times a week I attended what our teacher called “group sessions.” She was a former member of the Comédie Française, and she’d set up the Marivaux Course in a storefront near Place de l’Etoile: “Your entree to theater and film, music hall and cabaret,” the brochure said.

  Against that backdrop of winter and nighttime, I can still picture those group sessions, from eight to ten-thirty in the evening. After class, we’d chat awhile, me, Pudgy, and the others, before dispersing into the blackout. One evening, on the street corner, I ran into Johnny, an old classmate from Valvert. He was looking for work in the film studios. I suggested he take the class with us, but I never heard from him again. I’m having a hard time trying to recall the others’ names and faces. The only ones I really remember are Pudgy and Sonia O’Dauyé.

  Sonia was the star of the Marivaux Course. She had attended only two or three of the group sessions, since she was taking private lessons with our teacher, a luxury that none of the rest of us could afford. A blonde with a narrow face and very light-colored eyes. She piqued our curiosity from the start. Though only twenty-three, she seemed a good ten or twenty years older than us. She claimed that her family was Polish aristocracy, and to our great surprise, she hadn’t been in the course more than a month before she was being mentioned in a magazine of the time. Word was,
she would soon be making her “theatrical debut.”

  Our teacher responded evasively to our questions about the “Countess”—or so we had nicknamed her—and this promising “debut.” But Pudgy, who had a bit more street smarts than the rest of us and already frequented the world of backstages, studios, and nightspots, told us that the Countess lived in a luxurious apartment on Cours Albert 1er. Pudgy sensed something fishy about this: No doubt about it, the Countess was a kept woman. She spent a fortune at the dressmaker’s and the jeweler’s. According to Pudgy, she reserved tables for ten at the fanciest restaurants, treated practically anyone to dinner, and handed out gifts like confetti; there were those who gladly accepted. Pudgy, meanwhile, was dying to join the Countess’s entourage.

  But today, none of this would matter any more than a crown of wilted flowers on a trash can lid if it weren’t for Little Jewel.

  I met her the day of the annual contest. Our teacher had set up a stage in the living room of her apartment, and among the fifty or so spectators sat a jury, composed of several personalities from the world of arts and entertainment.

  I was too recent a student to compete in this ceremony, and out of shyness I showed up at Rue Beaujon only after the contest had ended. In the “theater,” Pudgy and a few others were engaged in lively conversation.

  “The Countess took first prize for tragedy,” Pudgy told me. “I got honorable mention in variety.”

  I congratulated him.

  “She chose the Lady of the Camellias’ death scene, but she blew her lines.”

  He leaned in closer.

  “The whole thing was rigged . . . It’s a fix, old man . . . The Countess must have bribed the jury and Madame Sans-Gêne . . .”

  Madame Sans-Gêne—“Madame Shameless”—was our teacher’s nickname. She had shone in that role, once upon a time.