Honeymoon (10 page)

•

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 impres
sion 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 ciga
rette, before lighting one himself. He was following the con
versation 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 mark 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
8
e
, but this was crossed out and someone had added in black ink:
20
,
Boulevard Soult, Paris
12
e
.
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 …

They hadn't put the lights on in the salon, because of the curfew. They had stood for a few moments at one of the French windows, watching the great patch of the Arc de Triomphe, which was darker than the night, and the Place rendered phosphorescent by the snow.

•

"Were you asleep?"

I hadn't heard him come into the room; he had an oil lamp in his hand. Night had fallen, and I was lying on the bed. He put the lamp down on the bedside table.

"Are you going to move into the flat right away?"

"I don't know yet."

"I'll give you a pair of sheets, if you like."

The lamp cast shadows on the walls, and l could have imagined that my dream was continuing if I had been alone. But this man's presence seemed very real. And his voice was very clearly audible. I got up.

"You already have some blankets …"

He pointed to the tartan rugs on the beds.

"Did they belong to Monsieur Rigaud?" I asked. "Certainly. They're the only things that were left here, apart from the beds and the wardrobe."

"Then he lived here with a woman?"

"Yes. I remember that they were living here when there was the first air raid over Paris … Neither of them wanted to go down to the cellar …"