Missing Person (14 page)

Married, 3rd April 1939, at the town-hall of the XVIIth arrondissement to Denise Yvette Coudreuse, of French nationality.

It is not known where Mr. Stern resided in France. A single form, dating from February 1939, indicates that a Mr. Jimmy Pedro Stern lived at that time at:

Hôtel Lincoln 24, Rue Bayard, Paris 8.

This is, moreover, the address which appears on the marriage certificate issued at the town hall of the XVIIth arrondissement. The registration form of the Hôtel Lincoln contained the following:

Name:
S
TERN
,
Jimmy, Pedro.

Address:
Via delle Botteghe Oscure, 2 Rome (Italy).

Profession:
broker.

Mr. Jimmy Stern seems to have disappeared in 1940.

30

Subject: M
C
E
VOY
, Pedro.

It has been very hard to find any information about Mr. Pedro McEvoy, either at police headquarters or at the general information bureau. It has been reported to us that a Mr. Pedro McEvoy, a Dominican subject, and working at the Dominican Legation in Paris, resided in December 1940, at 9, Rue Julien-Potin, at Neuilly (Seine).

After that, we lose sight of him.

In all probability, Mr. Pedro McEvoy left France before the last war.

He may also be a person using an assumed name and carrying false papers, as was common at the time.

31

I
T
WAS
Denise's birthday. A winter evening, with the snow falling on Paris, turning to slush. People were swallowed up by Métro entrances and walked briskly. The shop windows of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré were lit up. Christmas was approaching.

I went into a jeweler's, and I can still see the man's face. He had a beard and wore tinted glasses. I bought a ring for Denise. When I left the shop, the snow was still falling. I was afraid Denise would not be at our meeting place and for the first time it occurred to me that we might lose each other in this town, among all these hurrying shadows.

And I no longer remember if, that evening, my name was Jimmy or Pedro, Stern or McEvoy.

32

V
ALPARAISO
. She is standing, at the back of the tram, near the window, in the crush of passengers, squeezed between a little man with dark glasses and a dark-haired woman with the head of a mummy, who gives off a scent of violets.

Soon nearly all of them will get off at the Plaza Echaurren and she will be able to sit down. She comes into Valparaiso only twice a week to do her shopping, since she lives on the heights of the Cerro Alegre district. She rents a house there, in which she has set up her dancing school.

She does not regret having left Paris, five years ago now, after breaking her ankle, when she knew she would never dance again. She decided to leave then, to cut all ties with what had been her life. Why Valparaiso? Because she knew someone there, a former member of Cuevas's ballet.

She no longer expects to return to Europe. She will remain up there, giving her lessons, and will finally forget the old photographs of herself on the walls, dating from when she was a member of Colonel de Basil's company.

She only occasionally thinks of her life before the accident. Everything is confused in her mind. She mixes up names, dates, places. And yet, one memory returns to her regularly, twice a week, at the same time and same place, a memory more vivid than the others. It is when the tram stops, as now, at the bottom of the Avenida Errazuriz. This shady avenue, sloping gently upward, reminds her of Rue Jouy-en-Josas, where she lived as a child. She can still see the house, on the corner of Rue du Docteur-Kurzenne, the weeping willow, the white gate, the Protestant church below, and right at the bottom, the Robin Hood Inn. She remembers a Sunday, different from the others. Her godmother had come to fetch her.

She knows nothing about this woman, except her first name: Denise. She had a convertible. That Sunday, a dark- skinned man accompanied her. All three of them had gone to have an ice cream and they had taken a boat out, and in the evening, when they left Versailles to take her back to Jouy-en-Josas, they had stopped at a fair. She and her godmother, Denise, had climbed into a bumper-car, while the dark- skinned man watched.

She would have liked to have known more about it. What were their names? Where did they live? What had happened to them after all this time? These were the questions she asked herself as the tram continued along the Avenida Errazuriz, climbing toward the Cerro Alegre district.

33

T
HAT
EVENING
, I was sitting at a table in the wine-bar-cum-grocery to which Hutte had introduced me and which was situated on Avenue Niel, just opposite the agency. A counter and, on the shelves, exotic food products: teas, Turkish delight, rose-petal preserves, Baltic herring. The place was frequented by ex-jockeys, talking over old times and showing each other dog-eared photographs of horses whose carcasses had long ago been cut up for meat.

Two men, at the bar, were speaking under their breath. One of them was wearing an overcoat that was the color of dead leaves and reached down almost to his ankles. He was short, like most of the customers. He turned around, no doubt to see what time the clock over the entrance showed, and his gaze fell on me.

His face grew very pale. His mouth hung open and his eyes stared.

He approached me slowly, frowning. He stopped at my table.

"Pedro."

He fingered the material of my jacket, at the height of my biceps.

"Pedro, it's you?"

I hesitated before answering. He seemed put out.

"Excuse me," he said. "But aren't you Pedro McEvoy?"

"Yes," I said shortly. "Why?"

"Pedro, you ... you don't recognize me?"

"No."

He sat down opposite me.

"Pedro ... I'm ... André Wildmer ..."

He was upset. He took my hand.

"André Wildmer... The jockey... Don't you remember me?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "There are gaps in my memory. When did we meet?"

"But you must know... Freddie and I..."

This name had the effect of an electric shock on me. A jockey. The gardener at Valbreuse had spoken to me of a jockey.

"That's funny," I said. "Someone spoke to me about you ...At Valbreuse..."

His eyes misted over. The drink? Or was it emotion?

"Oh, come on, Pedro ... Don't you remember when the three of us, you, me, and Freddie, used to go to Valbreuse?..."

"Not too well. But it was the gardener at Valbreuse who spoke to me about it..."

"Pedro ... So you're alive, you're alive?"

He clasped my hand very tight. It hurt.

"Yes. Why?"

"You're ... you're in Paris?"

"Yes. Why?"

He looked at me in horror. He had trouble believing that I was alive. So, what had happened? I wanted to know, but apparently he did not dare tackle this question head on.

"I... live at Giverny... in the Oise," he said. "I... I very rarely come to Paris ... Would you like a drink, Pedro?"

"A Marie Brizard," I said.

"I'll have one too."

He poured the drink himself into our glasses, slowly and he seemed to me to be playing for time.

"Pedro ... What happened?"

"When?"

He finished his drink at one gulp.

"When you tried to get over the Swiss border with Denise?..."

What could I answer?

"You never sent us any news. Freddie was very worried..."

He filled his glass again.

"We thought you'd got lost in all that snow ..."

"You shouldn't have worried," I said.

"And Denise?"

I shrugged.

"Do you remember Denise well?" I asked.

"But Pedro, of course I do ... And anyway, why are you being so formal with me?"

"I'm sorry, old man," I said. "I haven't been too well lately. I'm trying to remember that whole period... But it's so hazy..."

"I know. It's a long time ago, all that... Do you remember Freddie's wedding?"

He smiled.

"Not too well."

"In Nice ... When he married Gay..."

"Gay Orlov?"

"Of course, Gay Orlov . . . Whom else would he have married?"

He looked very upset that this marriage no longer conveyed much to me.

"In Nice . . . The Russian church ... A religious ceremony ... No civil marriage ..."

"What Russian church?"

"A little Russian church with a garden ..."

Was it the one Hutte described in his letter? Sometimes there are the oddest coincidences.

"Yes, of course," I said ... "Of course ... The little Russian church in Rue Longchamp, with the garden and the library..."

"So, you remember? We were the four witnesses ... We held crowns over Freddie's and Gay's heads ..."

"Four witnesses?"

"Yes ... you, me, Gay's grandfather ..."

"Old Giorgiadze?..."

"That's it... Giorgiadze ..."

The photograph where I appeared together with Gay Orlov and old Giorgiadze must have been taken on that occasion. I would show it to him.

"And the fourth witness was your friend Rubirosa ..."

"Who?"

"Your friend Rubirosa ... Porfirio ... The Dominican diplomat..."

He smiled at the memory of this Porfirio Rubirosa. A Dominican diplomat. Maybe he was the one I worked for at the legation.

"Afterward we went to old Giorgiadze's ..."

I could see us, around midday, walking along an avenue lined with plane-trees, in Nice. The sun shone.

"And was Denise there?"

He shrugged.

"Of course she was ... You certainly have forgotten it all..."

The seven of us walked carelessly along, the jockey, Denise, I, Gay Orlov and Freddie, Rubirosa and the old Giorgiadze. We were wearing white suits.

"Giorgiadze lived in the apartment building on the corner of the Alsace-Lorraine Gardens."

Palm-trees rising high into the sky. And children tobogganing. The white façade of the building, with its orange, canvas blinds. Our laughter on the staircase.

"That evening, your friend Rubirosa took us out to dinner at Eden Roc, to celebrate the marriage ... So ... do you remember now?..."

He breathed hard, as though he had just exerted himself physically. He seemed exhausted by the effort to call to mind that day when Freddie and Gay Orlov got married in church, that day of sun and carefreeness, which no doubt had been one of those privileged moments of youth.

"In fact," I said, "you and I have known each other a long time then ..

"Yes ... But I knew Freddie first ... Because I was his grandfather's jockey... Unfortunately, it didn't last long... The old man lost everything ..."

"And Gay Orlov... Do you know that..."

"Yes, I know... I lived quite close to her ... Square des Aliscamps..."

The large apartment building and the windows from which Gay Orlov must have had a fine view of the Auteuil race course. Waldo Blunt, her first husband, had told me that she killed herself because she was afraid of growing old. I suppose that she often watched the races from her window. Each day, several times in the afternoon, ten or so horses leap forward, fly over the course and smash into obstacles. And the ones that make it over the jumps show up again and again for several months and then they too vanish like the others. New horses are needed endlessly, and are successively replaced. And each time the same burst of energy ends in disaster . . . Such a spectacle cannot fail to depress and disenchant and it was perhaps because she lived next to a race course that Gay Orlov... I felt like asking André Wildmer what he thought of this. He should understand. He was a jockey.

"It's really sad," he said. "Gay was a swell girl..."

He leaned forward and brought his face up close to mine. His skin was red and pock-marked and he had dark brown eyes. A diagonal scar scored his right cheek, extending all the way to the point of his chin. His hair, too, was brown, except for a white streak over his brow.

"And you, Pedro ..."

But I did not let him finish his sentence.

"Did you know me when I lived in Rue Julien-Potin, at Neuilly?" I said on the off chance, remembering the address on "Pedro McEvoy's" form.

"When you lived at Rubirosa's ... Of course ..."

Rubirosa again.

"Freddie and I often came ... It was high jinks every night..."

He burst out laughing.

"Your friend Rubirosa used to hire musicians... it went on all night... Do you remember those two tunes he always played on the guitar?"

"No ..."

"
'El Reloj' and
'Tu me acostumbraste
'...
Especially
'Tu me acostumbraste'
..."

He whistled a few bars of the tune.

"Well?"

"Yes ... yes ... It's coming back," I said.

"You got me a Dominican passport... It wasn't much use to me ..."

"You'd already been to see me at the legation?" I asked.

"Yes ... When you gave me the Dominican passport."

"I never understood what I was supposed to be doing at that legation."

"I don't know... You told me once that you acted more or less as Rubirosa's secretary and that it was a good spot for you ... It was sad that Rubi got himself killed in that car accident..."

Yes, sad. Another witness I would not be able to question.

"Tell me, Pedro ... What was your real name? It always intrigued me. Freddie told me your name wasn't Pedro McEvoy . . . But that it was Rubi who had got you false papers..."

"My real name? I wish I knew."

And I smiled, so that he could take it as a joke.

"Freddie knew it, since you were school friends . . . You would drive me crazy with your stories about the Luiza School..."

"What school?"

"Luiza... You know perfectly well... Don't play games... That day your father came to fetch the two of you by car... He let Freddie drive, though he didn't have a license yet... You told me the story at least a hundred times ..."