Honeymoon (9 page)

Yes, from time to time spend a night in another district, to dream of the one you've left. In the Fieve Hotel, for instance, I shall lie down on the bed in my room, as I am doing now, and believe I can hear, from a distance, the elephants trumpeting in the zoo. No one will ever be able to find me in any of these places.

•

I was wrong. Yesterday, at the beginning of the afternoon, I had decided to visit the former Colonial Museum. All you have to do when you leave the hotel is cross the square with the fountains, and you come to the low, wrought-iron gate, and the monumental steps leading up to the museum. As I was buying my ticket at the window in the entrance, I thought I recognized, somewhere among the milling crowd of tourists and schoolchildren in the main hall, Ben Smidane's profile. I lost no time in crossing the hall, threading my way between the visitors, and I emerged in a big corner room in which one could admire Marshal Lyautey's study. Someone, behind me, placed his hand on my shoulder:

"Well, Jean, so we're visiting museums?"

I turned round. Ben Smidane. He smiled at me, with an embarrassed smile. He was wearing a very elegant beige summer suit and a sky-blue polo neck.

"What a strange coincidence," I said, urbanely. "I didn't expect to meet you here."

"Nor did I. I thought you'd gone to Rio de Janeiro."

"Well, believe it or not, no."

I hadn't spoken to anyone for something like ten days, and it had taken a considerable effort to utter this one phrase. I wondered whether I would be capable of uttering another. The saliva was drying up in my mouth.

"I knew very well that you weren't in Rio."

He was clearly trying to put me at my ease, and I was grateful to him. No need now to go into any long explanations. I concentrated, and managed to come out with:

"You get tired of everything, even Rio."

"I understand," Ben Smidane said.

But I had a feeling that he didn't understand a thing. "Jean, I have to talk to you."

He made as if to take me by the arm and lead me away gently, as if he mistrusted my reactions.

"You don't look very confident, Ben. Are you afraid I'll misbehave in Lyautey's study?"

"Not in the least, Jean …"

He glanced around him, and then looked at me again. It was as if he was working out the quickest way of tackling me in the middle of the mass of visitors if I suddenly went raving mad.

"Do you like it at the Dodds Hotel?"

He had winked at me. No doubt he was trying to mollify me. But how did he know I was living at the Dodds Hotel? "Come on, Jean. We absolutely have to talk."

We found ourselves in the square with the fountains. "Shall we have a drink?" I suggested. "At the zoo cafeteria?" "Do you go to the zoo?"

I could read his thoughts. For him, I was not in my normal state.

The sun was beating down, and I no longer felt up to walking as far as the zoo.

"I know a café that's nearer, at the corner of the boule
vard.
There's never anyone in it, and it's very, very cool …"

We were the only customers. He ordered an espresso. So
did I.

"Annette sent me," he said.

"Oh yes? How is she?"

I had pretended to be indifferent.

"You must be wondering how I managed to find you?
Here."

He held out a crumpled bit of paper on which I read:

Hôtel Gouin? Hôtel de la Jonquière? Quietud's (Rue
Berzélius).

Hôtel Fieve.

Hôtel du Point du Jour.

Hôtel Dodds? Hôtel des Begonias (Rue de Picpus).

"You left it in your study, at the Cité Véron. Annette found
it the other evening. And she understood at once."

I had indeed scribbled down these names before my false departure for Rio.

"And you found me right away?"

"No. I've been hanging round the other hotels for four
days."

"I feel for you."

"Annette told me she knew all these hotels."

"Yes. We often stayed in them, twenty years ago."

"She asked me to give you this."

On the envelope was written:
FOR JEAN
, and I recognized one of the qualities I most admired in my wife: the beautiful big handwriting of the illiterate that she was.

Darling,

I miss you. Cavanaugh never leaves me for a second and I have to send you this letter without him knowing. You can trust Smidane and give him a message for me. I want to see you. I'll try to be at the Cité Véron every day at about seven. Phone me. Otherwise, I'll phone you, when I know which hotel you're staying in. I could come and meet you there, like we used to a long time ago. I'll do that without Cavanaugh knowing. I'm not telling anyone that you're still alive. I love you, darling.

Annette

I put the letter in my pocket.

"Have you got a message for her?" Ben Smidane asked me anxiously.

"No."

Ben Smidane's brow furrowed with a studious, childish expression.

"Jean, I find your attitude disconcerting."

He seemed eager to understand, and so deferential towards me – I was older than he, after all – that I felt sorry for him.

"It's very simple. I just feel tired of my life and my job."

He was drinking in my words, and nodding solemnly.

"You're still too young, Ben, to have that feeling. One starts out full of enthusiasm and the spirit of adventure, but after a few years it becomes a job and a routine … I don't want to discourage you, though. I'm really the last person to tell anyone what to do."

"You don't realize, Jean … We thought you'd disappeared for good …"

He hesitated for a few seconds, and then added:

"That you were dead …"

"So what?"

He stared at me in consternation.

"You don't know how much Annette loves you … The moment she found the bit of paper with the names of the hotels, she decided that life was worth living again …"

"And Cavanaugh?"

"She asked me to be sure to tell you that Cavanaugh has never counted for her."

I felt a sudden repugnance at hearing my private life brought up, and embarrassed at seeing Ben Smidane involved in it all.

"At your age, the main thing is to think of yourself and your future, Ben."

He seemed amazed that in such circumstances I should concern myself with him. And yet I would have liked him to talk about the expedition he was planning to the Indian Ocean to search for the wreck of a Dutch galleon, and to share his dreams and illusions with me.

"And you?" he asked. "Are you counting on staying here long?"

He pointed despairingly at the Boulevard Soult outside the café window:

"Then I can tell Annette to come and see you?"

"Tell her not to come just yet … She wouldn't find me … We mustn't rush things."

He frowned again, in the same studious way as before. He was trying to understand. He didn't want to thwart me.

"Tell her to leave a phone message, or write me a note from time to time. That'll be enough for the time being. Just a message … Or a letter … Here, at the Dodds Hotel … or at the Fieve Hotel … Or at the other hotels on the list … She knows them all …"

"I'll tell her …
"

"And you, Ben, don't hesitate to come and talk to me about your projects, since you and Annette are the only ones who know I'm still alive … But don't let anyone else know."

•

Ben Smidane went off in the direction of the Avenue Daumesnil, and I noticed a phenomenon that doesn't often happen to a man: several women turned round as he passed them.

I was alone again. Naturally, I was expecting to get a message from Annette shortly. But I was certain that she wouldn't turn up unexpectedly. She knew me too well. For twenty years she had found me a good teacher in the art of concealing oneself, of avoiding bores, or of giving people the slip: cupboards you hide in as a last resort, windows you climb out of, back stairs or emergency exits you take at the double, escalators you race down in the wrong direction … And all those far-off journeys I had gone on, not to satisfy the curiosity or vocation of an explorer, but to escape. My life had been nothing but evasion. Annette knew that she mustn't rush things: at the slightest alert I was likely to disappear – and this time for good. But I would have been touched to receive a message from her from time to time, in all these places where we had lived in the old days and which I have now come back to. They haven't changed much. Why, when I was about eighteen, did I leave the centre of Paris and come to these suburban regions? I felt at ease in these districts, I could breathe here. They were a refuge, far away from the bustle of the centre, and a springboard to adventure and to the unknown. You only had to cross a square or walk down an avenue, and Paris was behind you. It was a pleasure to feel myself on the outskirts of the city, with all these lines of escape … At night, when all the street lights came on in the Porte de Champerret, the future beckoned to me.

That was what I had tried to explain to Annette, who was amazed that I wanted to live so far out. She had finally understood. Or had pretended to. We had lived in several hotels on the outskirts of Paris. I spent my days vaguely dealing in antiquarian books, but she earned more than I did: two thousand francs a month as a model for L., a famous couture house in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Her colleagues were all fifteen years older than she was, and didn't forgive her for it.

I remember that the models' dressing room had been relegated to the far end of a back yard. Annette often had to be on duty all day in case a client came to choose a dress. And she had to be on her guard to see that the other models didn't trip her up or scratch her face, and to avoid their stiletto heels, because when the collections were shown she was always the one who wore the wedding dress.

We had lived in the Dodds Hotel for a few weeks, but after all this time I've forgotten the number of our room. The one I'm in today? In any case, my position hasn't changed: I'm lying on the bed, my arms crossed behind the back of my neck, and I'm staring at the ceiling. I used to wait like this on the evenings when she was on duty at the couture house. We would go out to a restaurant and then to the movies. And I can't – incorrigible scribbler that I am – prevent myself from drawing up a rough list of a few places we used to patronize:

ORNANO
43

Chalet Édouard

Brunin-Variétés

Chez Josette de Nice

Delta

La Carlingue Danube Palace Petit Fantasia Restaurant Coquet

Cinéma Montcalm

Haloppé

Just now, going back to the hotel, I had the feeling that I was in a dream. I was going to wake up at the Cité Véron. Annette would still be asleep. I would have returned to real life. I would suddenly remember that we were supposed to be dining with Cavanaugh, Wetzel and Ben Smidane. Or else it would be the fourteenth of July and we would be about to entertain all our friends on the terrace. Then Annette would wake up and, thinking I looked odd, would ask me: "Have you had a nightmare?" I would tell her everything: the false departure for Rio, the journey from Paris to Milan and back, my visit to the flat as if I were now no more than a ghost, my surprise that she should be with Ben Smidane in the locked bedroom, the long afternoons spent at the zoo and around the Porte Dorée, toying with the idea of emigrating to the other peripheral districts she and I had known twenty years ago. And of staying there for good. Annette would say:

"You do have funny dreams, Jeannot."

I pinched my arm. I shook my head. I opened my eyes wide. But I couldn't wake up. I stood motionless in that square, contemplating the water in the fountains and the groups of tourists going into the former Colonial Museum. I wanted to walk to the big café in the Avenue Daumesnil, sit down on the terrace and talk to the people next to me to dispel this feeling of unreality. But that would only further increase my malaise: if I got into conversation with strangers, they would answer me in a different language from mine. Then as a last resort I thought of phoning Annette from my room in the Dodds Hotel. No. I wouldn't be able to get through to her from that room we may perhaps have occupied twenty years ago, the call would be jammed by all those years accumulated one on top of the other. It would be better to ask for a token at the counter of the first café I came to and dial the number from the booth. I abandoned the idea. There too my voice would be so far away that she wouldn't hear it.

I went back to the hotel. I hoped to find a message from Annette there, but there wasn't one. Then I told myself that she would telephone me, and that only the sound of the phone ringing in my room could put an end to my dream. I waited on the bed. Finally I fell asleep, and had a real dream: A summer's night, very hot. I was in a convertible car. I sensed the presence of the driver but couldn't make out his face. We were going from the centre of Paris to the Porte d'Italie district. Now and then it was daytime, we were no longer in the car but walking through little streets like those in Venice or Amsterdam. We crossed an undulating meadow in the town. Then it was night-time again. The car was going slowly down a deserted, badly-lit avenue near the Gare d'Austerlitz. The name: Gare d'Austerlitz, was one of those that accompany you in your sleep and whose resonance and mystery vanish in the morning when you wake up. At last we came to an outer boulevard which sloped gently downwards and where I noticed some palm trees and umbrella pines. A few lights in the windows of the big blocks. Then zones of semi-darkness. The blocks gave
pl
ace to some warehouses and the perimeter of a stadium … We turned into a road bordered by a fence and some foliage that hid a railway embankment. And posters advertising the local cinemas were still on the fence. It was such a long time since we'd been in this neighbourhood …