Villa Triste Read online

  The cable car stopped before it got to Saint-Charles-Carabacel. Some sort of breakdown, obviously, but nobody would be coming to fix it at that hour of the night. She was even more passionate than usual. I thought she must love me a little after all. Now and then we looked out the window and found ourselves suspended between heaven and earth, with the lake down below, and the roofs. Dawn was coming on.

  The next day there was a long article on page three of L’Écho-Liberté, under the headline, “Houligant Elegance Cup Awarded for the Fifth Time”:

  Late yesterday morning at the Sporting Club, a large crowd watched with interest the proceedings of the fifth Houligant Elegance Cup. The organizers, having awarded the cup last year at Megève during the winter, chose to make this year’s contest a summer event. The sun kept its appointment. Never has it shone so gloriously. Most of the spectators were in beach attire. Among them we noticed M. Jean Marchat of the Comédie-Française, here to star in several performances of Listen Up, Gentlemen at the Casino theater.

  As usual, the jury brought together a wide variety of well-known personalities. It was presided over by M. André de Fouquières, who was kind enough to grant this Cup the benefit of his long experience; indeed, we might well say that M. de Fouquières, in Paris as in Deauville, in Cannes or Le Touquet, has been both the epitome and the arbiter of the elegant life for the past fifty years.

  Seated around him were: Daniel Hendrickx, the well-known ski champion and the promoter of this Cup; Fossorié, of the tourist information office; Gamange, the film director; M. and Mme. Tessier of the golf club; M. and Mme. Sandoz of the Windsor; the sub-prefect, M. P. A. Roquevillard. The absence of the dancer José Torres, detained at the last minute, was regretted.

  The great majority of the contestants did honor to the contest; M. and Mme. Jacques Roland-Michel of Lyon, who are sojourning, as they do every summer, in their villa in Chavoires, drew particular attention and were vigorously applauded.

  But the prize, after several ballots, was awarded to Mlle. Yvonne Jacquet, 22, a lovely young woman with red hair, dressed in white and accompanied by a formidable mastiff. Mlle. Jacquet’s grace and nonconformism made a vivid impression on the jury.

  Mlle. Yvonne Jacquet was born and raised in our town. Her family is originally from the region. She has just made her cinematic debut in a film shot a few kilometers from here by a German filmmaker. We wish Mlle. Jacquet, our hometown girl, good luck and much success.

  Her escort was M. René Meinthe, the son of Dr. Henri Meinthe. This name will awaken many memories in some of our readers. Indeed, Dr. Henri Meinthe, the scion of an old Savoyard family, was one of the heroes and martyrs of the Resistance. A street in our town bears his name.

  The article was illustrated by a large photograph taken at the Sainte-Rose, just at the moment when we entered. It shows all three of us on our feet, Yvonne and me side by side in the foreground, Meinthe a little behind. The caption below the photo reads, “Mlle. Yvonne Jacquet, M. René Meinthe, and one of their friends, Count Victor Chmara.” The picture’s very sharp, in spite of the newsprint. Yvonne and I look serious. Meinthe’s smiling. We’re all gazing at a point in the middle distance. I carried that photograph on me for many years before putting it away with other souvenirs, and one night when I was looking at it and feeling gloomy, I couldn’t stop myself from writing across it in red pencil: “Royals for a day.”

  8.

  “The lightest port you’ve got, my dear,” Meinthe says again.

  The barmaid doesn’t understand. “Light?”

  “Very, very light.” But he says it without conviction.

  He runs his hand over his unshaven cheeks. Twelve years ago, he would shave two or three times a day. Somewhere in the depths of the Dodge’s glove compartment, there was an electric razor, but he called it a useless instrument, because his beard was too stiff. He even broke some Bleue Extra blades on it.

  The barmaid comes back with a bottle of Sandeman and pours him a glass. “I don’t have any … light port,” she says.

  She whispers “light” as though it’s a dirty word.

  “Doesn’t matter, my dear,” Meinthe replies.

  And he smiles. All at once he seems younger. He breathes into his glass and observes the ripples on the surface of the port.

  “Would you by chance have a straw, my dear?”

  She brings him one reluctantly, her face a sullen mask. She’s not more than twenty. She must be saying to herself, “How long is this moron going to stay here? And how about the other one over there, the loon in the checked jacket?” As she does every night at eleven, she has just relieved Geneviève, who was already working in this bar in the early ’60s and who also, during the day, ran the refreshment stall near the bathing huts at the Sporting Club. A gracious blonde. It was said she had a heart murmur.

  Meinthe is turned toward the man in the checked jacket. That jacket’s the only noticeable thing about him. Otherwise, he’s got a thoroughly ordinary face: small black mustache, rather large nose, brown hair combed back. A moment ago he looked decidedly drunk, but now he’s sitting up very straight, with a self-important smirk on his lips.

  “Will you call …” (his voice is thick and hesitant) “Chambéry 233 for me …”

  The barmaid dials the number. Somebody answers on the other end. But the man in the checked jacket remains at his table, stiff and straight.

  “Monsieur, I have your party on the line,” the barmaid says, getting anxious.

  He doesn’t budge an inch. His eyes are wide open and his chin thrust slightly forward.

  “Monsieur …”

  He’s a stone statue. She hangs up. She must be starting to worry. These two customers are really bizarre … Meinthe has been observing the goings-on with a frown. After a few minutes, the other man starts up again, his voice even more muted than before:

  “Will you call … Chambéry 233 for me …”

  The barmaid doesn’t move. He goes on imperturbably: “Will you call …”

  She shrugs. Then Meinthe leans over to the telephone and dials the number himself. When a voice answers, he holds out the receiver toward the man in the checked jacket, who doesn’t move. He fixes his wide-open eyes on Meinthe.

  “Come now, Monsieur …” Meinthe murmurs. “Come now …”

  Finally he shrugs and lays the receiver on the bar.

  “Perhaps you’d like to be home in bed, my dear?” he asks the barmaid. “I don’t want to keep you.”

  “No. Anyway, we don’t close until two in the morning … A lot of people will be coming in later.”

  “A lot?”

  “There’s a convention. They’ll all end up here.”

  She pours herself a glass of Coca-Cola.

  “Not very merry here in the winter, is it?” Meinthe remarks.

  “I’m going to Paris,” she declares aggressively.

  “The right move.”

  The man at the table behind him snaps his fingers: “Could I have another dry martini, please?” Then he adds: “And Chambéry 233 …”

  Meinthe dials the number again and, without turning around, places the receiver on the stool next to him. The girl giggles. He raises his head, and his eyes fall on the old photographs of Émile Allais and James Couttet above the aperitif bottles. Another photo has been added, one of Daniel Hendrickx, who was killed in an automobile accident a few years ago. Surely Geneviève, the other barmaid, had it hung up there. She was in love with Hendrickx in the days when she worked at the Sporting Club. In the days of the Houligant Cup.

  9.

  That cup — where is it now? In the back of what closet? Or what storeroom? In the end, we used it for an ashtray. The pedestal the dancer was on had a convenient circular rim. We crushed out our cigarettes on it. We must have left it behind in the hotel room, and I’m surprised that I — attached to objects as I am — didn’t take it with me.

  At first, however, Yvonne seemed to dote on it. She displayed it prominently on the desk in the livi
ng room. It marked the start of her career. The Victoires and the Oscars would come later. Later still, she’d refer to it with affection when talking to journalists, for I had no doubt that Yvonne would become a movie star. In the meanwhile, we pinned up the long article from L’Écho-Liberté.

  We spent lazy days. We’d get up fairly early. In the morning, there was often mist — or rather a blue vapor that freed us from the law of gravity. We were light, so light … When we went down Boulevard Carabacel, we hardly touched the sidewalk. Nine o’clock. Soon the thin mist would be burned away by the sun. No guests yet on the beach at the Sporting Club. We were the only living creatures, except for one of the beach attendants, dressed in white, who was putting out deck chairs and parasols. Yvonne wore an opal-colored two-piece bathing suit, and I’d borrow her beach robe. She’d go swimming, and I’d watch her. The dog too would follow her with his eyes. She’d wave and shout to me, laughing, to come in and join her. I used to tell myself it was all too good to be true, and that some disaster was going to happen tomorrow. On July 12, 1939, I’d think, a guy like me, wearing a red-and-green striped beach robe, was watching his fiancée swim in the pool at the Éden-Roc. He was afraid, like me, to listen to the radio. Even there, at Cap d’Antibes, he wouldn’t escape the war … The names of possible places of refuge jostled one another in his head, but he wouldn’t have time to desert. For a few seconds, I was seized by an inexplicable terror, and then she got out of the water and came and lay down beside me in the sun.

  Around eleven o’clock, when the beach at the Sporting Club started to be overrun by people, we’d take refuge in a kind of small cove. You could reach it from the restaurant terrace by going down some crumbling steps built in Gordon-Gramme’s time. Below, a beach of shingles and rocks, and a tiny one-room cabin with windows and shutters. On the rickety door, carved into the wood in Gothic letters, two initials: G-G — Gordon-Gramme — and the date: 1903. He must surely have built that doll’s house himself and come there to gather his thoughts. Sensitive, farsighted Gordon-Gramme. When the sun was beating down too hard, we’d spend a little while inside. Semidarkness. A pool of light on the threshold. A slight odor of mold, which we eventually got used to. The sound of the lapping water, as monotonous and reassuring as the tennis balls. We’d shut the door.

  She swam and sunbathed. I preferred the shade, like my Eastern ancestors. In the early afternoon, we’d go back up to the Hermitage and stay in our room until seven or eight o’clock in the evening. There was a very wide balcony, and Yvonne would stretch out in the middle of it. I’d install myself at her side, my head covered by a white felt “colonial” hat — one of the few things I still owned that had belonged to my father, and all the more precious because we were together when he bought it. It was at Sport et Climat, on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Saint-Dominique. I was eight years old, and my father was getting ready to leave for Brazzaville. What was he going to do there? He never told me.

  I went down to the lobby to get magazines. Because of the foreign clientele, you could find most of the major European publications there. I’d buy them all: Oggi, Life, Cinémonde, Der Stern, Confidential … I’d cast a wary glance at the big newspaper headlines. There were some serious goings-on in Algeria, but also in France and elsewhere in the world. I preferred not to know. A lump formed in my throat. I hoped there wouldn’t be too much talk about all that in the illustrated magazines. No. No. Avoid important topics. Panic would take hold of me again. To calm myself, I’d down an Alexandra at the bar and go back upstairs with my pile of magazines. We’d read them, sprawled on the bed or the floor in front of the open French window, amid the golden patches strewn by the last rays of the sun. Lana Turner’s daughter had stabbed her mother’s lover to death. Errol Flynn had died of a heart attack, but not before responding to a young friend who asked him where she could put the ashes of her cigarette by gesturing at the open mouth of a stuffed leopard. Henri Garat had died like a tramp. Prince Ali Khan had died too, in a car crash near Suresnes. I can’t remember any of the happy events. We’d clip out a few photos. We hung them on the walls of the room, and the hotel management didn’t seem to mind.

  Empty afternoons. Slow hours. Yvonne often wore a black silk dressing gown with red dots and some holes here and there. I’d forget to take off my old “colonial” fedora.

  The partly torn-up magazines littered the floor. Bottles of suntan lotion were everywhere. The dog lay across an armchair. And we listened to records on the old Teppaz player. We’d forget to turn on the lights.

  Downstairs the orchestra would be starting to play and people began arriving for dinner. Between two numbers, we’d hear the babble of conversations. A voice would rise above the hubbub — a woman’s voice — or a burst of laughter. And the orchestra would start up again. I’d leave the French window open so that the commotion and the music could reach up to us. They were our protection. And they began at the same time every day, hence the world was still going around. For how long?

  The open bathroom door framed a rectangle of light. Yvonne was putting on her makeup. I’d lean over the balcony and watch all those people (most of them in evening attire), the shuttling waiters, and the musicians, whose individual characteristics I came to know by heart. For example, the orchestra leader stood leaning forward, his chin practically against his chest. And when the piece came to an end, he’d jerk his head upward, openmouthed, like a man gasping for breath. The violinist had a nice, rather piggy face; he closed his eyes and nodded, sniffing the air.

  Yvonne was ready. I’d turn on a lamp. She’d smile at me and give me a mysterious look. By way of amusing herself, she’d put on black gloves that went up to her elbows. She’d stand in the middle of the room, surrounded by disorder, the unmade bed, the scattered articles of clothing. We’d leave on tiptoe, avoiding the dog, the ashtrays, the record player, and the empty glasses.

  Late into the night, after Meinthe had brought us back to the hotel, we’d listen to music. Our nearest neighbors lodged several complaints about the “racket” we made. They were — as the concierge informed me — an industrialist from Lyon and his wife, whom I’d seen shaking hands with Fossorié after the Houligant Cup. I had a bouquet of peonies brought to them, with a note: “Count Chmara apologizes and sends you these flowers.”

  Upon our return, the dog would bark, plaintively and regularly, and that would go on for about an hour. It was impossible to calm him. So we’d opt for putting on music to drown out his barking. While Yvonne undressed and took a bath, I’d read her some pages from the Maurois book. We’d leave the record player on, blasting out some frenetic song. I would vaguely hear the industrialist from Lyon pounding on the door between our rooms and the telephone ringing. He must have complained to the night porter. Maybe they’d wind up kicking us out of the hotel. So much the better. Yvonne had slipped on her beach robe, and we were preparing a meal for the dog (we had for this purpose a whole pile of cans and even a portable stove). After he ate, we hoped, he’d shut up. The Lyon industrialist’s wife shouted through the din the singer was making: “Do something, Henri, do something. CALL THE POLICE …” Their balcony adjoined ours. We’d left the French window open, and the industrialist, weary of beating on the communicating door, started reviling us from outside. So Yvonne took off her robe and stepped out onto the balcony, completely naked, except that she’d pulled on her long black gloves. The man stared at her and went red in the face. His wife was pulling him by the arm. And bawling: “Oh, the filthy bastards … The whore …”

  We were young.

  And rich. The drawer of her night table was overflowing with banknotes. Where did all that money come from? I didn’t dare ask her. But one day, while arranging the wads in neat rows so she could close the drawer, she explained that it was her earnings from the film. She’d insisted on being paid in cash, in 5,000-franc notes. She added that she’d also cashed the Houligant Cup check. She showed me a package wrapped in newspaper: eight hundred 1,000-franc banknotes. She
preferred the smaller denominations.

  She kindly offered to lend me some money, but I declined. There were still 800,000 or 900,000 francs lying around in my suitcases. I’d acquired that sum by selling a bookseller in Geneva two “rare” editions I’d bought for a song in a Paris junk shop. At the hotel reception desk, I exchanged my 50,000-franc notes for the equivalent in bills of 500 francs, which I carried upstairs in a beach bag. I emptied them all out on the bed. She put all her banknotes on the bed too, and together they formed an impressive pile. We marveled at that mass of paper money, which we wouldn’t be long in spending. And I recognized in her our shared taste for ready cash, I mean for money easily won, the wads you stuff in your pockets, the wild money that slips through your fingers.

  After the article appeared, I started asking her questions about her childhood here in this town. She’d avoid answering, no doubt because she liked to remain mysterious, and because in the arms of “Count Chmara” she was a little ashamed of her “modest” origins. And since the truth about me would have disappointed her, I told her stories about my family’s adventures. My father was still very young when he left Russia with his mother and sisters, on account of the Revolution. They’d spent some time in Constantinople, Brussels, and Berlin before settling in Paris. Like many beautiful, aristocratic White Russians, my aunts had earned their living working as mannequins at Schiaparelli. My father, at the age of twenty-five, went to America on a sailboat and there married the heiress to the Woolworth fortune. Then he divorced her and got a colossal alimony settlement. Back in France, he met my maman, an Irish music-hall artiste. I was born. They’d both disappeared in a light airplane over Cap Ferrat in July 1949. I’d been raised by my grandmother, in Paris, in a ground-floor apartment on Rue Lord-Byron. That was it.