Missing Person (10 page)

When I returned to the drawing-room, I thought no one was there any longer, but she was stretched out on the velvet sofa. She was asleep. I approached quietly, and sat down at the other end of the sofa. A tray with a tea-pot and two cups, in the center of the white wool carpet. I coughed. She did not wake up. Then I poured tea into the two cups. It was cold.

The lamp beside the sofa left a whole section of the room in darkness and I could just make out the table, the mannequin and the sewing machine, the objects which "Denise" had abandoned here. What had our evenings in this room been like? How could I find out?

I sipped the tea. I could hear her breath, almost imperceptible, but the room was so silent that the slightest sound, the slightest whisper would have stood out with disturbing clarity. What was the good of waking her? She could not tell me much. I put my cup down on the wool carpet.

The parquet creaked under me just as I was leaving the room and stepping into the corridor.

Groping, I looked for the door, then the time-switch on the stairway. I shut the door as quietly as possible. Hardly had I opened the other door, the glass-paneled one, to cross the entrance-hall, than something again clicked into place, as it had done when I looked out of the window of the room. The entrance-hall was lit by a globe in the ceiling which shed a white light. Gradually, my eyes got used to this too- bright light. I stood there, gazing at the gray walls and the shining panels of the door.

A mental picture flashed before me, like those fragments of some fleeting dream which one tries to hold on to in waking, so as to be able to reconstruct the whole dream. I saw myself, walking through a dark Paris, and opening the door to this building in Rue Cambacérès. Then my eyes were suddenly blinded and for a few seconds I could see nothing, so great was the contrast between this white light and the night outside.

What period did this go back to? To the time when my name was Pedro McEvoy and I came back here every evening? Did I recognize the entrance, the big rectangular door-mat, the gray walls, the globe-lamp in the ceiling, with a brass ring around it? Behind the glass panels of the door, I could see the staircase and I wanted to climb it slowly, to go through all the motions I used to and retrace my steps.

I believe that the entrance-halls of buildings still retain the echo of footsteps of those who used to cross them and who have since vanished. Something continues to vibrate after they have gone, fading waves, but which can still be picked up if one listens carefully. Perhaps, after all, I never was this Pedro McEvoy, I was nothing, but waves passed through me, sometimes faint, sometimes stronger, and all these scattered echoes afloat in the air crystallized and there I was.

16

H
ÔTEL
C
ASTILLE
, Rue Cambon. Across from the reception desk, a morning-room. In the glass-fronted bookcase, L. de Viel-Castel's
History of the Restoration.
Perhaps, one evening, I had taken down one of these volumes before going up to my room, and had forgotten the letter, photograph, or telegram I had used to mark my place in it. But I don't have the audacity to ask the porter if I can leaf through the seventeen volumes.

At the back of the hotel, a courtyard surrounded by a wall with green, ivy-covered trellises. Ochre paving-stones underfoot, the color of tennis court gravel. Tables and garden chairs.

So, I had lived here with this Denise Coudreuse. Did our room look out on to Rue Cambon or the courtyard?

17

9
A
, Q
UAI
D
'A
USTERLITZ
. A three-storyed building with the main entrance opening on to a yellow-walled passageway. A café whose sign reads
A la Marine
. Behind the glass door hangs a notice in bright red letters: "M
EN
S
PREEKT
V
LAAMCH
."

A dozen or so people crowded around the bar. I sat down at one of the empty tables, against the back wall, on which was a large photograph of a port:
A
NTWERP
, as it said under the photo.

The customers at the bar were talking in very loud voices. They all worked locally, no doubt, and were having their pre-dinner drink. By the glass door, a slot machine with a man in a navy blue suit and tie standing at it, his clothing standing out among the lumber-jackets, leather jackets, or overalls worn by the others. He was playing calmly, pulling the spring rod back with an easy movement.

The cigarette and pipe smoke irritated my eyes and made me cough a little. There was a smell of lard in the air.

"What would you like?"

I had not seen him coming up. I had even thought that no one would come to ask me what I wanted, so little notice had been taken of my presence at a table in the rear.

"An espresso," I said.

He was a short man, of about sixty, with white hair, his red face already flushed by the various aperitifs he had no doubt imbibed. His light blue eyes seemed even paler against the ruddiness of his complexion. There was something jolly in these crockery tints - white, red and blue.

"Excuse me ..." I said, just as he was about to return to the bar. "What does the notice on the door mean?"

"Men Spreekt Vlaamch?"

He had pronounced these words in a resounding voice.

"Yes."

"It means: Flemish spoken."

At that, he left me and made for the bar with a rolling gait. Without any fuss he eased aside the customers in his path.

He returned with the cup of coffee, which he held in both hands, his arms stretched out in front of him, as though he was trying not to drop the cup.

"Here you are."

He placed the cup in the center of the table, breathing as hard as a marathon runner at the end of the race.

"Does the name .
.. C
OUDREUSE
... mean anything to you?"

I had put the question bluntly.

He sank into the chair opposite me and folded his arms.

He was still breathing hard.

"Why? You knew... Coudreuse?"

"No, but I've heard about him in the family."

His color was brick-red now and sweat was standing out on the wings of his nose.

"Coudreuse ... He used to live up there, on the second floor..."

He had a slight accent. I swallowed a mouthful of coffee, determined to let him talk, since another question might put him off.

"He worked at the Gare d'Austerlitz . . . His wife was from Antwerp, like me ..."

"He had a daughter, didn't he?"

He smiled.

"Yes. A pretty little thing ... Did you know her?"

"No, but I heard about her ..."

"What's happened to her?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

"She used to come here every morning for her father's cigarettes. Coudreuse smoked Belgian cigarettes - Laurens ..."

He was caught up in his memories and, like me, I think, no longer heard the bursts of talk and laughter nor the machine-gun rattle of the slot machine close by.

"A decent fellow, Coudreuse ... I often ate with them, upstairs ... His wife, she spoke Flemish ..."

"You've no news of them since then?"

"He died ... His wife returned to Antwerp ..."

And he made a broad, sweeping gesture across the table.

"It's the dim and distant past, all that..."

"You say she used to come for her father's cigarettes ... What was the brand again?"

"Laurens."

I hoped I'd remember the name.

"A funny kid... at ten, she was already playing billiards with my customers ..."

He pointed to a door at the back of the café which must have led to the billiard room. So, that was where she had learned the game.

"Wait a moment," he said. "I'll show you something..."

He rose heavily and walked over to the bar. Again he eased aside all those who were in his way. Most of the customers were wearing sailors' caps and speaking some strange language, Flemish no doubt. I thought that it was because of the barges anchored below, by the Quai d'Austerlitz, which must have come from Belgium.

"Here ... Look..."

He had sat down opposite and handed me an old fashion magazine, the cover of which showed a girl, with chestnut- brown hair and limpid eyes, and with something Asiatic in her features. I recognized her at once: Denise. She was wearing a black bolero and holding an orchid.

"That was Denise, Coudreuse's daughter . . . See ... A pretty little thing ... She became a model... I knew her when she was just a kid ..."

The magazine cover was spotted and streaked with whisky.

"I still remember her as she was when she used to come for the Laurens ..

"She wasn't a dressmaker, was she?"

"No, I don't think so."

"And you really don't know what became of her?"

"No."

"You haven't got her mother's address, in Antwerp?"

He shook his head. He looked broken-hearted.

"It's all over and done with, my friend ..."

What did he mean?

"Would you lend me this magazine?" I asked him.

"Yes, pal, but you must promise to return it."

"It's a promise."

"I'm attached to it. It's like a family souvenir."

"What time did she come for the cigarettes?"

"Always at quarter-to-eight. Before going to school."

"Which school?"

"Rue Jenner. Sometimes her father took her."

I stretched out my hand for the magazine and snatched it up quickly, my heart beating hard. He might, after all, change his mind and decide to keep it.

"Thanks. I'll bring it back tomorrow."

"Mind you do, huh?"

He looked at me suspiciously.

"But why are you interested? Are you family?"

"Yes."

I could not resist studying the magazine cover. Denise seemed a little younger than in the photograph I already had. She was wearing earrings, her neck half hidden by fern leaves which rose above the orchid she was carrying. In the background, there was a carved wooden angel. And at the bottom, in the left-hand corner of the photograph, in tiny red lettering which stood out well against the black of her bolero, were the words: "Photo by Jean-Michel Mansoure."

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked.

"No thanks."

"Well, the coffee's on the house."

"That's very kind of you."

I rose, holding the magazine. He walked ahead of me, opening up a path for me through his customers, who were growing thicker and thicker around the bar. He spoke to them in Flemish. It took us a while to reach the glass door. He opened it and mopped his nose.

"You won't forget to give it back, will you?" he said, pointing to the magazine.

He closed the glass door and followed me out into the street.

"You see. They lived up there... on the second floor..."

The windows were lit up. At the back of one of the rooms, I could make out an armoire of dark wood.

"There are other tenants ..."

"When you used to eat with them, what room was it?"

"That one ... on the left..."

And he pointed to the window.

"And Denise's room?"

"It looked out on the other side... On the courtyard..."

He looked thoughtful, standing there next to me. Finally I held out my hand.

"Good-bye. I'll return the magazine."

"Good-bye."

He went back into the café. He looked at me, his big red head pressed against the door. The smoke from the pipes and cigarettes submerged the customers at the bar in a yellow fog and this big red head, in its turn, grew more and more hazy, because of the blur his breath left on the glass.

It was night. The time Denise returned from school, if she stayed for night classes. What route did she take? Did she come from the right or the left? I had forgotten to ask the café owner. At that time, there was less traffic and the leaves of the plane-trees formed an arch over the Quai d'Austerlitz. The station itself, further off, must have looked like the station of some town in the southwest. Beyond that, the Botanical Gardens and the darkness and profound silence of the Wine Market added to the peacefulness of the neighborhood.

I entered the building and flicked on the time-switch. A corridor with old black and gray tiles. A door-mat, made of iron. Letter boxes on the yellow wall. And the everlasting smell of lard.

If I closed my eyes, I thought, if I concentrated, placing my fingers against my forehead, perhaps I would manage to hear, far off, the slap of sandals on the stairs.

18

B
UT
I
THINK
it was in a hotel bar that Denise and I met for the first time. I was with the man who appears in the photographs, my childhood friend, Freddie Howard de Luz, and Gay Orlov. They had been living in the hotel for some time, because they had come back from America. Gay Orlov told me she was waiting for a friend, a girl she had just got to know.

She walked toward us and her face struck me at once. An Asiatic face, although she was almost blonde. Almond eyes, very clear. High cheekbones. She wore a strange little hat, shaped somewhat like a Tyrolean one, and her hair was cut rather short.

Freddie and Gay Orlov told us to wait for them a moment and went up to their room. The two of us were left, facing one another. She smiled.

We did not speak. She had clear eyes, with a greenness that came and went in them.

19

Mr. Jean-Michel. 1, Rue Gabrielle, XVIII. CLI 72-01.

20

Y
OU
MUST
forgive me," he said when I sat down at his table in a café in Place Blanche where he had suggested, over the telephone, that I join him at around 6 o'clock. "You must forgive me, but I always arrange to meet people out... Particularly the first time... Now we can go to my place..."

I had recognized him easily, as he had indicated that he would be wearing a dark green velvet suit and that his hair was white, very white, and cut short. This severe cut contrasted strongly with his long black eyelashes, which fluttered ceaselessly, his almond eyes and the feminine shape of his mouth: upper lip sinuous, lower tense and imperious.