Villa Triste (16 page)

He spoke those words in a tone of wicked glee that frightened me. And the others too. They backed off. On our way home, René whispered, “Just think, they were afraid of Queen Astrid …”

He particularly admired that queen and always carried a photograph of her. He ended up persuading himself that in a previous life, he’d been the young, beautiful, and unfortunate Queen Astrid. Along with Astrid’s photo, he carried the one of the three of us on the evening of the Cup. I’ve got another, taken on Avenue d’Albigny, with Yvonne holding on to my arm. The dog’s beside us, looking very solemn. An engagement photograph, you’d think. And I’ve kept yet another, much older picture, which Yvonne gave me. It
dates from the time of the baron and shows them, Meinthe and her, on a sunny afternoon, sitting on the terrace of the Basque bar in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

Those are the only clear images. A mist enshrouds all the rest. Lobby and room in the Hermitage. Gardens at the Windsor and the Hotel Alhambra. Villa Triste. The Sainte-Rose. Sporting Club. Casino. Houligant. And the shadows of Kustiker (but who
was
Kustiker?), of Yvonne Jacquet, and of a certain Count Chmara.

That was right around the time when Marilyn Monroe left us. I’d read a great deal about her in the magazines, and I cited her as an example to Yvonne. She too could have a fine film career, if she wanted one. Frankly, she was as attractive as Marilyn Monroe. All she needed was to be as persevering.

She listened to me without saying anything, lying on the bed. I told her about Marilyn Monroe’s initial difficulties, her first calendar photos, her first small roles, the steps climbed up one by one. She, Yvonne Jacquet, shouldn’t stop along the way. “Flying mannequin.” Then her first part, in Rolf Madeja’s
Liebesbriefe auf dem Berg
. And she’d just won the Houligant Cup. Each stage had its importance. She must think ahead to the next one. Climb a little higher. A little higher.

She never interrupted me when I was expounding my ideas about her “career.” Did she really listen to me? In the beginning, she must have been surprised by such a degree of interest on my part, and flattered when I spoke so ardently about her great future. Perhaps there were some sporadic occasions when she caught my enthusiasm and started dreaming too. But I imagine those didn’t last. She was older than me. The more I think about it, the more I
tell myself she was living that moment of youth when everything’s going to be at the tipping point soon, when it’s going to be a little too late for everything. The boat’s still at the dock, all you have to do is walk up the gangway, you’ve got a few minutes left … A soft numbness overcomes you.

Sometimes my little speeches made her laugh. I even saw her shrug when I told her that producers were surely going to notice her performance in
Liebesbriefe auf dem Berg
. No, she didn’t believe that. She didn’t have the sacred fire. But neither did Marilyn Monroe, in the beginning. Eventually it comes, the sacred fire.

I often wonder where she may have ended up. She’s certainly not the same any longer, and I’m obliged to study the photographs in order to recall her face as it was then. I’ve tried for years without success to see
Liebesbriefe auf dem Berg
. The people I’ve asked have told me the film doesn’t exist. And Rolf Madeja’s name didn’t mean very much to them. I’m sorry about that. In the movie theater I would have rediscovered her voice, her gestures, and the look in her eyes, just as I knew them. And loved them.

Wherever she may be — very far away, I imagine — does she vaguely remember the plans and dreams I laid out for her in our room at the Hermitage while we were making the dog’s dinner? Does she remember America?

Because if we spent days and nights in delicious prostration, that didn’t stop me from pondering our future, which I envisioned with greater and greater precision.

I had, in fact, given some serious thought to the marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, a marriage
between a real American girl, sprung from the depths of America, and a Jew. We would have a destiny more or less like theirs, Yvonne and I. She, a little French girl from the country who a few years from now would be a movie star. And I, who would end up as a Jewish writer and wear thick horn-rimmed spectacles.

But France suddenly seemed to me too narrow a territory, where I wouldn’t be able to show my true capabilities. What could I hope for in this little country? An antiques business? A rare book dealership? A career as a long-winded, chilly man of letters? None of those professions stirred my enthusiasm. I had to go away and take Yvonne with me.

I wouldn’t leave anything behind because I had no ties to anything anywhere, and Yvonne had broken all of hers. We’d have a new life.

Was I inspired by the example of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller? I thought of America immediately. Once we got there, Yvonne would dedicate herself to the cinema. And I’d devote my energies to literature. We’d get married in the big synagogue in Brooklyn. We’d encounter various difficulties. Maybe they’d break us definitively, but if we overcame them, our dream would then take shape. Arthur and Marilyn. Yvonne and Victor.

I foresaw a return to Europe at a much later date. We’d retire to some mountainous region — Ticino or the Engadin. We’d live in an immense chalet, surrounded by a park. A set of shelves would hold Yvonne’s Oscars and my honorary doctorate diplomas from Yale and the University of Mexico. We’d have ten Great Danes tasked with mutilating
potential visitors, and we’d never see anybody. We’d spend entire days lounging around in our room, as in the days of the Hermitage and Villa Triste.

My inspiration for this second period of our life together was drawn from Paulette Goddard and Erich Maria Remarque.

Or then again, we might stay in America. We’d find a big house in the country. I had been impressed by the title of a book I saw in Meinthe’s living room:
Green Grass of Wyoming
. I’ve never read it, but just repeating “
Green Grass of Wyoming
” gives me a twinge in my heart. When all was said and done, it was in that nonexistent country, in the midst of that tall, translucent green grass, that I would have liked to live with Yvonne.

I reflected for several days on my plan to leave for America before speaking to her about it. There was a chance she wouldn’t take me seriously. First of all, I had to settle the practical details. No improvisations. I’d put together the money for the journey. Of the 800,000 francs I’d swindled the Genevois bibliophile out of, I still had about half, but I was counting on another resource: an extremely rare butterfly, pinned to the bottom of a little glass box I’d been carrying around in my luggage for several months. An expert had assured me that the insect was worth “at a minimum” 400,000 francs. It was, therefore, worth twice that, and I could get triple the amount if I sold the butterfly to a collector. I myself would purchase our tickets at the French Line offices, and we’d stay at the Algonquin hotel in New York.

After that, I was counting on my cousin Bella Darvi, who’d made herself a career over there, to introduce us into the film world. And that was it. That was, in broad outline, my plan.

I counted to three and sat on one of the steps of the grand staircase. Looking down through the balusters, I could see the reception desk and the porter, who was talking with a bald individual in a dinner jacket. Surprised, she turned around. She was wearing her green muslin dress and a scarf of the same color.

“So what do you say we go to America?”

I shouted that question for fear it would stick in my throat or turn into a stomach rumble. I took a big, deep breath and repeated, as loudly as before: “What do you say we go to America?”

She came and sat down next to me on the stair and squeezed my arm. “Is something wrong?” she asked me.

“No, not at all. It’s very simple … It’s very simple, very simple … We’re going to America …”

She examined her high-heeled shoes, kissed me on the cheek, and told me I could explain what I meant later. It was past nine o’clock, and Meinthe was waiting for us at the Resserre in Veyrier-du-Lac.

The place reminded me of the inns on the banks of the Marne. The tables were set up on a floating platform, fenced around its perimeter with latticework and tubs of plants and shrubs. Customers dined by candlelight. René had chosen one of the tables closest to the water.

He was wearing his beige shantung suit and waving an arm at us. He had a companion with him, a young man he introduced to us, but I’ve forgotten his name. We sat across from them.

“It’s very pleasant here,” I declared, by way of launching the conversation.

“Yes, in a way,” René said. “This hotel is more or less a bordello …”

“Since when?” Yvonne asked.

“Since forever, my dear.”

She looked back at me and burst out laughing. And then: “Do you know what Victor’s proposing? He wants to take me off to America.”

“To America?”

He visibly failed to understand.

“Weird idea.”

“Yes,” I said. “To America.”

He gave me a skeptical smile. As far as he was concerned, that notion was just words in the air. He turned to his friend and said, “So are you feeling better?”

The other nodded in reply.

“You have to eat something now.”

He spoke to him as though to a child, but the boy must have been a bit older than me. He had blond hair, cut short, an angelic face, and a wrestler’s shoulders.

René explained to us that his friend had competed that afternoon for the title of “France’s Handsomest Athlete.” The contest had taken place at the Casino. He’d been awarded only third place in the “juniors.” The boy ran his
hand through his hair and addressed me: “I didn’t have any luck, none at all.”

I was hearing him speak for the first time, and for the first time, I noticed his lavender-blue irises. Still today, I can remember the childish distress in his eyes. Meinthe filled the boy’s plate with crudités. He continued to address his remarks to me, and also to Yvonne. He was feeling confident.

“The judges, those bastards … I should have got the top score in free-form posing …”

“Shut up and eat,” Meinthe said affectionately.

From our table, you could see the lights of the town in the distance, and if you turned your head slightly, another light, this one very bright, would draw your attention to the other side of the lake, just opposite us: the Sainte-Rose. That night spotlights were sweeping the façades of the Casino and the Sporting Club, and their beams reached the shores of the lake. The water was tinted red and green. I heard a voice, excessively amplified by a loudspeaker, but we were too far away to understand the words. It was a son et lumière show. I’d read in the local papers that the show would feature an actor from the Comédie-Française, Marchat, I believe, reciting Alphonse de Lamartine’s poem “Le Lac.” I’m sure it was his voice whose reverberations we could hear.

“We should have stayed in town for it,” Meinthe said. “I adore son et lumière shows. How about you?”

He was addressing his friend.

“Dunno,” the friend replied. He looked even more desperate than he’d looked the moment before.

“We could stop in later,” Yvonne suggested with a smile.

“No,” Meinthe said. “I have to go to Geneva tonight.”

And what was he going to do there? Who would he meet at the Bellevue or the Pavillon Arosa, places Kustiker had mentioned on the telephone? One day he wouldn’t come back alive. Geneva, a city sterile in appearance but sordid underneath. A slippery city. A transit point.

“I’m going to stay three or four days,” Meinthe said. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

“But Victor and I will be on our way to America by then,” Yvonne declared.

And she laughed. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t take my plan seriously. I felt a dull fury growing inside me.

“The thing is, I’m sick to death of France,” I said in a peremptory tone.

“So am I,” Meinthe’s friend said, in a brutal fashion that contrasted with the timidity and sadness he’d displayed until then.

And that remark lightened the mood.

Meinthe had ordered after-dinner drinks, and we were the only diners left on the floating restaurant. The loudspeakers in the distance were blaring out music that reached us only in snatches.

“There,” Meinthe said. “That’s the municipal band. They play at all the son et lumière shows.” He turned to us. “What are you two doing tonight?”

“Packing our bags for America,” I declared curtly.

“He’s sticking to his America story,” Meinthe said. “So you’re going to leave me here all alone?”

“Of course not,” I said.

We drank a toast then, all four of us, just like that, not for any reason, but because Meinthe proposed it. His friend ventured a pale half smile, and a furtive flash of gaiety briefly lit up his blue eyes. Yvonne held my hand. The waiters were already starting to clear the tables.

Those are all my memories of that last dinner.

She was listening to me, frowning studiously, lying on the bed in her old dressing gown, the black one with the red dots. I was explaining my plan: the French Line, the Algonquin hotel, and my cousin Bella Darvi … America, in short, the Promised Land we’d set sail for in a few days. And the more I talked, the closer it seemed, until it was almost within reach of my hand. Couldn’t we see its lights already, over there, on the other side of the lake?

She interrupted me two or three times to ask questions: “What will we do in America?” “How will we get visas?” “What will we live on?” And so carried away was I by my subject that I barely noticed how much thicker her voice was becoming. Her eyes were half shut, or maybe even closed, and then suddenly she opened them wide and gaped at me with a horrified expression on her face.

No, we couldn’t stay in France, in this stifling little country, among these red-faced wine “connoisseurs,” these bicycle racers, these gaga gastronomes who could distinguish among various kinds of pears. I was choking with rage. We couldn’t
stay one more minute in a country where people rode to hounds. Over and out. Never again. The suitcases. Quick.