Villa Triste (10 page)

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”:

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.”

“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.

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 living 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.”