Honeymoon Read online

  He seemed amazed that in such circumstances I should concern myself with him. And yet I would have liked him to talk about the expedition he was planning to the Indian Ocean to search for the wreck of a Dutch galleon, and to share his dreams and illusions with me.

  "And you?" he asked. "Are you counting on staying here long?"

  He pointed despairingly at the Boulevard Soult outside the café window:

  "Then I can tell Annette to come and see you?"

  "Tell her not to come just yet … She wouldn't find me … We mustn't rush things."

  He frowned again, in the same studious way as before. He was trying to understand. He didn't want to thwart me.

  "Tell her to leave a phone message, or write me a note from time to time. That'll be enough for the time being. Just a message … Or a letter … Here, at the Dodds Hotel … or at the Fieve Hotel … Or at the other hotels on the list … She knows them all …"

  "I'll tell her …"

  "And you, Ben, don't hesitate to come and talk to me about your projects, since you and Annette are the only ones who know I'm still alive … But don't let anyone else know."

  •

  Ben Smidane went off in the direction of the Avenue Daumesnil, and I noticed a phenomenon that doesn't often happen to a man: several women turned round as he passed them.

  I was alone again. Naturally, I was expecting to get a message from Annette shortly. But I was certain that she wouldn't turn up unexpectedly. She knew me too well. For twenty years she had found me a good teacher in the art of concealing oneself, of avoiding bores, or of giving people the slip: cupboards you hide in as a last resort, windows you climb out of, back stairs or emergency exits you take at the double, escalators you race down in the wrong direction … And all those far-off journeys I had gone on, not to satisfy the curiosity or vocation of an explorer, but to escape. My life had been nothing but evasion. Annette knew that she mustn't rush things: at the slightest alert I was likely to disappear – and this time for good. But I would have been touched to receive a message from her from time to time, in all these places where we had lived in the old days and which I have now come back to. They haven't changed much. Why, when I was about eighteen, did I leave the centre of Paris and come to these suburban regions? I felt at ease in these districts, I could breathe here. They were a refuge, far away from the bustle of the centre, and a springboard to adventure and to the unknown. You only had to cross a square or walk down an avenue, and Paris was behind you. It was a pleasure to feel myself on the outskirts of the city, with all these lines of escape … At night, when all the street lights came on in the Porte de Champerret, the future beckoned to me.

  That was what I had tried to explain to Annette, who was amazed that I wanted to live so far out. She had finally understood. Or had pretended to. We had lived in several hotels on the outskirts of Paris. I spent my days vaguely dealing in antiquarian books, but she earned more than I did: two thousand francs a month as a model for L., a famous couture house in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Her colleagues were all fifteen years older than she was, and didn't forgive her for it.

  I remember that the models' dressing room had been relegated to the far end of a back yard. Annette often had to be on duty all day in case a client came to choose a dress. And she had to be on her guard to see that the other models didn't trip her up or scratch her face, and to avoid their stiletto heels, because when the collections were shown she was always the one who wore the wedding dress.

  We had lived in the Dodds Hotel for a few weeks, but after all this time I've forgotten the number of our room. The one I'm in today? In any case, my position hasn't changed: I'm lying on the bed, my arms crossed behind the back of my neck, and I'm staring at the ceiling. I used to wait like this on the evenings when she was on duty at the couture house. We would go out to a restaurant and then to the movies. And I can't – incorrigible scribbler that I am – prevent myself from drawing up a rough list of a few places we used to patronize:

  ORNANO 43

  Chalet Édouard

  Brunin-Variétés

  Chez Josette de Nice

  Delta

  La Carlingue Danube Palace Petit Fantasia Restaurant Coquet

  Cinéma Montcalm

  Haloppé

  Just now, going back to the hotel, I had the feeling that I was in a dream. I was going to wake up at the Cité Véron. Annette would still be asleep. I would have returned to real life. I would suddenly remember that we were supposed to be dining with Cavanaugh, Wetzel and Ben Smidane. Or else it would be the fourteenth of July and we would be about to entertain all our friends on the terrace. Then Annette would wake up and, thinking I looked odd, would ask me: "Have you had a nightmare?" I would tell her everything: the false departure for Rio, the journey from Paris to Milan and back, my visit to the flat as if I were now no more than a ghost, my surprise that she should be with Ben Smidane in the locked bedroom, the long afternoons spent at the zoo and around the Porte Dorée, toying with the idea of emigrating to the other peripheral districts she and I had known twenty years ago. And of staying there for good. Annette would say:

  "You do have funny dreams, Jeannot."

  I pinched my arm. I shook my head. I opened my eyes wide. But I couldn't wake up. I stood motionless in that square, contemplating the water in the fountains and the groups of tourists going into the former Colonial Museum. I wanted to walk to the big café in the Avenue Daumesnil, sit down on the terrace and talk to the people next to me to dispel this feeling of unreality. But that would only further increase my malaise: if I got into conversation with strangers, they would answer me in a different language from mine. Then as a last resort I thought of phoning Annette from my room in the Dodds Hotel. No. I wouldn't be able to get through to her from that room we may perhaps have occupied twenty years ago, the call would be jammed by all those years accumulated one on top of the other. It would be better to ask for a token at the counter of the first café I came to and dial the number from the booth. I abandoned the idea. There too my voice would be so far away that she wouldn't hear it.

  I went back to the hotel. I hoped to find a message from Annette there, but there wasn't one. Then I told myself that she would telephone me, and that only the sound of the phone ringing in my room could put an end to my dream. I waited on the bed. Finally I fell asleep, and had a real dream: A summer's night, very hot. I was in a convertible car. I sensed the presence of the driver but couldn't make out his face. We were going from the centre of Paris to the Porte d'Italie district. Now and then it was daytime, we were no longer in the car but walking through little streets like those in Venice or Amsterdam. We crossed an undulating meadow in the town. Then it was night-time again. The car was going slowly down a deserted, badly-lit avenue near the Gare d'Austerlitz. The name: Gare d'Austerlitz, was one of those that accompany you in your sleep and whose resonance and mystery vanish in the morning when you wake up. At last we came to an outer boulevard which sloped gently downwards and where I noticed some palm trees and umbrella pines. A few lights in the windows of the big blocks. Then zones of semi-darkness. The blocks gave place to some warehouses and the perimeter of a stadium … We turned into a road bordered by a fence and some foliage that hid a railway embankment. And posters advertising the local cinemas were still on the fence. It was such a long time since we'd been in this neighbourhood …

  •

  For several days I was on the lookout for a message from Annette. In vain. I left my room as little as possible. One evening, at around seven, I no longer felt the need to wait. Her silence didn't worry me any longer. Perhaps she wanted me to take the first step, but that was unlikely, knowing me as she does.

  I went down the hotel stairs and felt as if a weight had been lifted from me. I walked towards the brasserie in the Avenue Daumesnil where I had decided to have dinner, to change my habits a bit. I began to think about Rigaud. I knew in advance that he wouldn't stop occupying my mind the next day and the following days. If he was
alive, and in Paris, I would only have to take the métro and pay him a visit, or even dial eight digits on a telephone to hear his voice. But I didn't think it would be as simple as that. After dinner I went to the booth in the brasserie to consult the Paris phone book. It was eight years old. I read the long list of Rigauds more carefully than I had the first time. I stopped at a Rigaud whose Christian name wasn't mentioned. 20, Boulevard Soult. 307–75–28. Phone numbers that year still had only seven digits. 307 was the former DORIAN code. I wrote down the address and number.

  None of the other Rigauds in the directory seemed to me to be the right one, because of their profession or their address in Paris, or because of the simple indication: M. and Mme Rigaud. What had struck me was the absence of a Christian name, and the address in the Boulevard Soult.

  I went out of the brasserie, intending to walk to 20, Boulevard Soult. The sun had disappeared but the sky was still blue. Before the street lights went on, I would take advantage of the moment, the time of day I like best. Not quite daylight. Not yet dark. A feeling of respite and calm comes over you, and that's the moment to lend an ear to echoes that come from afar.

  20, Boulevard Soult was a group of blocks in depth, access to which was by a side path. I had been afraid that the name Rigaud might be that of a shop, but I didn't see any at that address. The windows of the block facing the street were not yet lit up. I was reluctant to venture into the side path for fear a resident might ask me what I was doing there. Of course I could always say: "I'm looking for Monsieur Rigaud."

  I contented myself with sitting on a bench outside number 20. The street lights came on. I didn't take my eyes off the façade, or the entrance or the side path. On the first floor, one window was now lit up, both halves thrown wide open because of the heat. Someone was living in that little flat, which I imagined consisted of two empty rooms. Rigaud?

  I thought of all the travel stories I had found so gripping as an adolescent, and in particular of one book by an Englishman: he described the mirages he had been a victim of in his travels across the desert. On the jacket there was a photo of him dressed as a Bedouin, surrounded by a group of oasis children. And I felt like laughing. Why go so far, when you can have the same experience in Paris, sitting on a bench in the Boulevard Soult? Wasn't that lighted window, behind which I was persuading myself of Rigaud's presence, just as great a mirage as the one that dazzles you in the middle of the desert?

  •

  The next morning, at about ten, I returned to 20, Boulevard Soult. I went through the front door of the block facing the street. On the left, a little notice was hanging on the door knob of the concierge's lodge. On it was written: "Please enquire at the service station, 16, Boulevard Soult."

  Two men were chatting by the petrol pump, one in blue dungarees, the other in a white shirt and grey trousers. The first looked like a Kabyle, the other had white hair combed back, blue eyes and a blotchy complexion. He looked about seventy, and the Kabyle about twenty years younger.

  "Can I help you?"

  It was the Kabyle in the blue dungarees who had asked this. "I'm looking for the concierge of number 20."

  "That's me."

  The white-haired man greeted me with a very brief nod, his cigarette in the corner of his lips.

  "I just wanted to ask you something … About a Monsieur Rigaud …"

  He paused for thought.

  "Rigaud? What do you actually want with him?"

  He was holding his cigarette between his fingers.

  "I'd like to see him."

  His fixed look made me feel ill at ease. The Kabyle too was looking at me curiously.

  "But he hasn't lived here for ages …"

  He treated me to an indulgent smile, as if he were in the presence of a half-wit.

  "The flat hasn't been lived in for at least thirty years … I don't even know whether Monsieur Rigaud is still alive …"

  The Kabyle in the blue dungarees seemed totally indifferent to Rigaud's fate. Unless he was being tactful and pretending not to listen to us.

  "And anyway, I'd rather not know … I have the impression that the flat belongs to me … I have the key, and I do the cleaning …"

  "Did you know Monsieur Rigaud?" I asked, my heart beating.

  "Yes … Do you know how long I've been the concierge here?"

  He stuck his chest out slightly, looking hard at us one after the other, the Kabyle and me.

  "Guess …"

  The Kabyle shrugged his shoulders. I remained silent.

  He came nearer, until he was almost pressing himself against me.

  "How old would you say I am?"

  He was still sticking out his chest, and looking me straight in the eyes.

  "Guess …"

  "Sixty."

  "I am seventy-five, Monsieur."

  He stepped back from us after this revelation, as if to check on the effect he had produced. But the Kabyle remained unmoved. I forced myself to say:

  "You really look much younger … And this Rigaud – when did you know him?"

  "In 1942."

  "Did he live here alone?"

  "No. With a young lady."

  "I'd very much like to visit the flat."

  "Are you interested in it?"

  "It's a real coincidence. I thought a Monsieur Rigaud rented out a flat here … I must have read the name and address wrongly in the advertisements in the paper."

  "Do you want to rent a flat in the district?"

  "Yes."

  "And you'd be interested in Rigaud's flat?"

  "Why not?"

  "Would you be prepared to rent it until February? I can't let you have it for a shorter period … I always rent it for a minimum of six months …"

  "Until February, then."

  "Would you pay cash?"

  "I would."

  The Kabyle in the blue dungarees had offered me a cigarette, before lighting one himself. He was following the conversation absent-mindedly. Perhaps he had long been used to such discussions about the rent of Rigaud's flat.

  "I want cash, of course … How much would you be prepared to pay?"

  "Whatever you ask," I said.

  He screwed up his blue eyes. He gripped his shirt collar with both hands:

  "Mention a figure …"

  •

  The flat was on the second floor of the front building and its windows overlooked the Boulevard Soult. A corridor led to the kitchen, a corner of which had been converted into a shower, then to a small empty bedroom whose metal shutters were closed, and finally to what might be called the back bedroom, a fairly spacious room containing twin copper bedsteads pulled close together. Against the opposite wall, a mirrored wardrobe.

  The concierge had shut the front door and I was on my own. He had promised to come back later and bring me an oil lamp, because the electricity had been cut off long ago. The phone too. But he would get them reconnected very soon. The heat was stifling, and I opened the window. The sound of the cars in the boulevard and the sunlight flooding into the room projected this flat into the present. I leaned out of the window. Down below, the cars and lorries were stopping at the traffic lights. A Boulevard Soult different from the one Rigaud and Ingrid had known, and yet the same, on summer evenings or on Sundays, when it was deserted. Yes indeed, I was certain they'd lived here for a time, before they left for Juan-les-Pins. Ingrid had mentioned it the last time I had seen her on her own in Paris. We talked about these outlying districts that I used to frequent at the time – I believe she asked me where I lived – and she told me that she too knew them well, because she'd lived there with her father in the Rue de l'Atlas, near the Buttes-Chaumont. And even with Rigaud, in a small flat. She had got the address wrong. She'd told me Boulevard Davout, instead of Boulevard Soult.

  One after the other I opened the wardrobe doors, but there was nothing in it but some hangers. The sunlight reflected in the mirrors made me blink. There was nothing on the walls, whose beige paint was peeling here and there, except a m
ark above the beds which showed that a painting or a mirror had once hung there. On either side of the beds there was a small table in light-coloured wood covered with a marble slab, like those in hotel rooms. The curtains were wine coloured.

  I tried to open the drawer of one of the bedside tables but it resisted. I managed to force the lock with the key to my Cité Véron flat. There was an old brown envelope in the drawer. It was stamped: French State. The address was written in blue ink: M. Rigaud, 3, Rue de Tilsitt, Paris 8e, but this was crossed out and someone had added in black ink: 20, Boulevard Soult, Paris 12e. The envelope contained a typewritten sheet.

  18 January 1942

  NOTICE TO TENANTS

  The town house at present let out as flats, in the Place de l'Étoile with an entrance at 3, Rue de Tilsitt, will shortly be sold at auction.

  For further information, tenants are requested to apply to Maître Giry, solicitor, 78, Boulevard Malesherbes, and to the State Property Bureau, 9, Rue de la Banque, Paris.

  Once again I had the impression that I was in a dream. I held the envelope, I reread the address, I stared and stared at the name: Rigaud, whose letters remained the same. Then I went to the window to make sure that the cars were still going past along the Boulevard Soult, the cars and the Boulevard Soult of today. I felt an urge to phone Annette, just to hear her voice. As I picked up the phone, though, I remembered that it wasn't connected.

  There were identical tartan rugs on the twin beds. I sat down on the end of one of them, facing the window. I was holding the envelope. Yes, that was what Ingrid had told me. But you often dream of places and situations someone has told you about, and other details get added. This envelope, for instance. Had it existed in reality? Or was it only an object that was part of my dream? In any case, 3, Rue de Tilsitt had been Rigaud's mother's house, and it was where Rigaud was living when he met Ingrid: she had told me how surprised she'd been when Rigaud had taken her to that flat, where he lived alone, and where he would remain for a few more weeks, and of the sense of security inspired in her by the antique furniture, the carpets that muffled one's footsteps, the paintings, the chandeliers, the panelling, the silk curtains and the conservatory …