Villa Triste (11 page)

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.

Did she believe me? Halfway. Before going to sleep, she required me to tell her “fabulous” stories, full of titled people and movie stars. How many times did I describe my father’s trysts with the actress Lupe Vélez in the Spanish-style villa in Beverly Hills? But when I wanted her to tell me about her family in return, she’d say, “Oh … It’s not very interesting …” And yet it was the only thing I needed to make my happiness complete: the tale of a childhood and adolescence spent in a provincial town. How could I explain to her that to my eyes, the eyes of a man without a country, Hollywood, Russian princes, and Farouk’s Egypt seemed drab and faded in comparison with that exotic and nearly unapproachable creature, a little French girl?

It happened one evening, just like that. She told me, “We’re having dinner at my uncle’s.” We were reading magazines on the balcony, and the cover of one of them, I remember, pictured the English actress Belinda Lee, who had died in a car accident.

I put on my flannel suit. Since the collar of my only white dress shirt was worn threadbare, I was wearing an off-white polo shirt, which went very well with my blue-and-red International Bar Fly tie. I had a lot of trouble tying the tie, because the polo shirt’s collar was too soft, but I wanted to look well dressed. I accessorized my suit jacket with a midnight-blue pocket handkerchief I’d bought for its deep color. As to footwear, I hesitated among raggedy moccasins, espadrilles, and a pair of Westons, which were almost new but had thick crepe soles. I opted for the last, considering them the most dignified. Yvonne begged me to wear my monocle: it would intrigue her uncle, and he’d think I was a “hoot.” But that sounded exactly like what I didn’t want, and I hoped the man would see me as I really was: a modest, serious youth.

She chose a white silk dress and the fuchsia turban she’d worn on the day of the Houligant Cup. It had taken her longer than usual to put on her makeup. Her lipstick was the
same color as the turban. She pulled on her elbow-length gloves, which I thought a curious thing to do before going to dinner at her uncle’s. We set out, taking the dog.

Some people in the hotel lobby caught their breath as we passed. The dog preceded us, performing his quadrille figures. He’d do that when we went out at times he wasn’t used to.

We took the cable car.

We proceeded along Rue du Parmelan, the continuation of Rue Royale. As we walked on, I discovered a different town. We were leaving behind us all the artificial charm of a spa resort, all that shoddy décor, fit for an operetta in which a very old Egyptian pasha falls asleep in the sorrow of exile. Food stores and motorcycle shops replaced the upscale boutiques. Yes, the number of motorcycle shops was unbelievable. Sometimes two of them adjoined each other, both with discounted Vespas out on the sidewalk. We passed the bus station. A bus was waiting, its engine running. On its side you could read the name of its company and the stops it made: SEVRIER-PRINGY-ALBERTVILLE. We reached the corner of Rue du Parmelan and Avenue du Maréchal-Leclerc. The avenue bore this name for only a short distance, because it was Route Nationale 201, which went to Chambéry. It was lined with plane trees.

The dog was afraid and kept as far away from the road as he could. The Hermitage setting better suited his weary silhouette, and his presence in the suburbs aroused curiosity. Yvonne said nothing, but the neighborhood was familiar to her. There had certainly been years and years when she’d
walked that road regularly, coming back from school or from a party in town (“party” isn’t the right word; she would have been to a “ball” or a “dance hall”). As for me, I’d already forgotten the lobby at the Hermitage. I didn’t know where we were going, but I was already prepared to live with her on Nationale 201. The windows in our bedroom would tremble as the heavy trucks roared past, like the windows in the little apartment on Boulevard Soult where I’d lived for a few months with my father. I felt light on my feet. Except for my heels, which my new shoes were chafing a little.

Night had fallen, and on each side of the road, two- and three-story houses stood guard, little white buildings that had a kind of colonial charm. There were buildings like those in the European quarter of Tunis and even in Saigon. Every now and then, a house that looked like a mountain cabin in the middle of a minuscule garden reminded me that we were in Haute-Savoie.

We passed a brick church, and I asked Yvonne its name: Saint-Christophe. I would have loved to know if she’d made her first communion there, but I didn’t dare ask the question for fear of being disappointed. A little farther on was a movie house called, in English, the Splendid. With its dirty beige façade and its red porthole doors, it looked like all the cinemas you notice in the suburbs when you cross the Avenues du Maréchal-de-Lattre-de-Tassigny, Jean-Jaurès, or du Maréchal-Leclerc, just before entering Paris. She must have gone to the Splendid too, when she was sixteen. That evening it was showing a film from our childhood,
The Prisoner of Zenda
, and I imagined us going to the box office and getting two balcony seats. I’d known that theater forever, I
could see its interior, the seats with their wooden backs, the panel with local advertisements in front of the screen: Jean Chermoz, florist, 22 Rue Sommeiller. LAV NET laundry & dry cleaning, 17 Rue du Président-Favre. Decouz, Radios, TV, Hi-Fi, 23 Avenue d’Allery … We passed one café after another. Through the windows of the last one, we could see four wavy-haired boys playing table soccer. There were green tables outside. The customers sitting at them observed the dog with interest. Yvonne had taken off her long gloves. The thing was, she was returning to her natural setting, and you might have thought she’d put on her white silk dress to go to a local fête or a July 14 dance.

We walked past a dark wooden fence nearly a hundred meters long. Posters of all sorts were glued to it. Posters for the Splendid cinema. Posters announcing the parish festival and the arrival of the Pinder circus. Luis Mariano’s head, half torn off. Old, barely legible slogans: FREE HENRI MARTIN … RIDGWAY GO HOME … ALGÉRIE FRANÇAISE … Arrow-pierced, initialed hearts. The streetlamps that had been installed out there were modern, concrete, slightly curved. They projected the shadows of the plane trees and their rustling foliage onto the fence. A very warm night. I removed my jacket. We were in front of the entrance to an imposing garage. To the right, a little side door bore a plaque with a name in Gothic letters: JACQUET. There was also a sign: SPARE PARTS FOR AMERICAN VEHICLES.

He was waiting for us in a ground-floor room that did double duty as a living and dining room. The two windows and the glass door overlooked the garage, which was an immense hangar.

Yvonne introduced me, noble title and all. I was embarrassed, but he seemed to find it perfectly natural. He turned to her and asked gruffly, “Does the count like breaded veal cutlets?” He had a very pronounced Parisian accent. “Because I’m making cutlets for you.”

He kept a cigarette — or, rather, a butt — stuck in the corner of his mouth and screwed up his eyes as he spoke. His voice was very deep and raspy, the voice of a big drinker or heavy smoker. “Sit down …”

He pointed at a bluish sofa against the wall. Then, with little swaying steps, he walked into the next room: the kitchen. We heard frying sounds.

He came back carrying a tray, which he placed on an arm of the sofa. On the tray were three glasses and a plate of those cookies known as
langues de chat
. He handed glasses to Yvonne and me. They held a vaguely pink fluid. He smiled at me and said, “Try it. A hell of a fine cocktail. Liquid dynamite. It’s called a Pink Lady … Try it.”

I wet my lips with it. I swallowed a drop. And immediately began to cough. Yvonne burst out laughing.

“You shouldn’t have given him that, Unky Roland.”

I was touched and surprised to hear her say “Unky Roland.”

“Dynamite, am I right?” he said, his eyes sparkling, practically bulging. “You have to get used to it.”

He sat in the armchair, which was covered with the same tired bluish fabric as the sofa. He stroked the dog, dozing at his feet, and sipped his cocktail.

“Everything all right?” he asked Yvonne.

“Yes.”

He nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. Maybe he didn’t feel like talking in front of someone he was meeting for the first time. He was waiting for me to launch the conversation, but I was even more intimidated than he was, and Yvonne gave us no help at all. On the contrary: she took her gloves out of her purse and slowly pulled them on. He followed this bizarre and interminable operation out of the corner of one eye and got a little sulky around the mouth. There were some long minutes of silence.

I was watching him stealthily. His hair was brown and thick and his complexion ruddy, but his large black eyes and long eyelashes gave his heavy face a certain languid charm. He must have been a beautiful young man, of a slightly stocky beauty. His lips, by contrast, were thin, humorous, very French.

You could tell he’d dressed and groomed himself carefully to receive us. Gray tweed jacket too broad across the shoulders, dark shirt with no tie. Lavender cologne. I tried to spot a family resemblance between him and Yvonne. Without success. But I figured I’d manage it before the end of the evening. I’d place myself in front of them and examine them both at the same time. In the end, I was sure to notice a gesture or a facial expression they had in common.

“So, Uncle Roland, do you have a lot of work at the moment?”

She asked the question in a tone of voice that surprised me. It mingled childish naïveté with the kind of brusqueness a woman might use in addressing the man she lives with.

“Indeed I do … These crap American cars … All these shitty Studebakers …”

“No fun, right, Unky Roland?” This time you would have thought she was talking to a child.

“No. Especially since the engines inside those goddamn Studebakers …”

He left his sentence unfinished, as if he’d suddenly realized that technical details wouldn’t interest us.

“Ah, well … And how are things with you?” he asked Yvonne. “Everything all right?”

“Yes, Unky.”

She was thinking about something else. What?

“Excellent. If everything’s all right, that’s all right … Shall we move to the table?”

He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Hey, Yvonne, did you hear me?”

The table stood close to the French window and the windows overlooking the garage. A navy-blue-and-white checkered tablecloth. Duralex tumblers. He indicated my place: the one I’d figured would be mine. Across from them. On his plate and Yvonne’s, wooden napkin rings with their names — “Roland” and “Yvonne” — carved in round letters.