Missing Person (18 page)

"He was very friendly with a Russian fellow wasn't he?" I asked.

"A Russian? Besson, friendly with a Russian?"

He didn't see what I was getting at.

"You know, Besson didn't really amount to much. He had a bad attitude ..."

I realized he was not going to say anything more about Besson.

"Do you know a chalet in Megève called 'The Southern Cross'?"

'"The Southern Cross'? . . . There are lots of chalets called that..."

Again he offered me the box of lozenges. I took one.

"The chalet jutted out over a road," I said.

"What road?"

Yes, what road? The road I remembered looked like any other mountain road. How could I find it again? And perhaps the chalet was no longer there. And even if it were ...

I leaned toward the driver. My chin brushed against the fur collar of his lumber-jacket.

"Take me back to Sallanches station," I said.

He turned round. He seemed surprised.

"As you wish, sir."

39

Subject
: H
OWARD
DE
Luz. Alfred Jean.

Born at
:
P
ORT
-L
OUIS
(M
AURITIUS
), 30th July, 1912, to
H
OWARD
DE
L
UZ
, Joseph Simety and Louise, née
F
OUQUEREAUX
.

Nationality
:
B
RITISH
(
AND
A
MERICAN
).

Mr. Howard de Luz resided successively at:

The Château Saint-Lazare, Valbreuse (Orne)

23, Rue Raynouard, Paris 16

Hôtel Chateaubriand, 18, Rue du Circque, Paris 8

53, Avenue Montaigne, Paris 8

25, Avenue du Maréchal-Lyautey, Paris 16

Mr. Howard de Luz, Alfred Jean, had no obvious profession, in Paris.

From 1934 to 1939, he evidently devoted himself to searching for and selling old furniture, on behalf of a Greek residing in France, called Jimmy Stern, and at this time paid a long visit to the United States, from where his grandmother originated. It seems that Mr. Howard de Luz, although a member of a French family from Mauritius, made use of dual nationality, British and American. In 1950, Mr. Howard de Luz left France to settle in Polynesia, on the Island of Padipi, near Bora Bora (Society Isles).

The following note was attached to this memorandum:

"Dear Sir, please forgive this delay in conveying the information we have managed to obtain on Mr. Howard de Luz. It was very hard to find. Being a British (or American) national, Mr. Howard de Luz left hardly any traces behind in our departments and agencies.

"With kind regards to you and to Hutte.

J.-P. Bernardy."

40

M
Y
DEAR
H
UTTE
,
I will be leaving Paris next week for a Pacific island where I may possibly find a man who can give me some information about my former life. He is a childhood friend.

Until now everything has seemed so chaotic, so fragmented ... Scraps, shreds have come to light as a result of my searches... But then that is perhaps what a life amounts to...

Is it really my life I'm tracking down? Or someone else's into which I have somehow infiltrated myself?

I'll write to you from there.

I hope all is well with you in Nice and that you have got the position in the library which you wanted so much, in that place which reminds you of your childhood."

41

AUTeuil 54-73:
C
OMET
G
ARAGE
-
5, Rue Foucault. Paris 16.

42

A
STREET
giving on to the quay, in front of the Trocadéro gardens. It seems to me that Waldo Blunt, the American pianist I had accompanied home and who was Gay Orlov's first husband, lived in this street.

The garage had closed down a long time before, to judge by the big, rusty, iron gate. Above the latter, on the gray wall, you could still make out: COMET GARAGE, even though the blue lettering was half obliterated.

On the first floor, to the right, a window with a dangling, orange blind. A bedroom window? an office? Had the Russian been in this room when I phoned AUTeuil 54-73 from Megève? What was he doing at the Comet Garage? How could I find out? It all seemed so distant, as I stood in front of this deserted building ...

I turned around and stood a moment on the quay. I watched the cars passing and the lights, on the other side of the Seine, near the Champ-de-Mars. Maybe some part of my life still survived there, in a small apartment overlooking the gardens, some person who had known me and who still remembered me.

43

A
WOMAN
is standing at one of the windows of a ground floor apartment, on the corner of Rue Rude and Rue de Saigon. The sun is shining and children are playing ball outside on the pavement, a little way off. The children keep shouting "Pedro," because one of them is called that and the others are challenging him while continuing to play. And this "Pedro," pronounced in clear, ringing tones, echoes oddly in the street.

From her window, she cannot see the children. Pedro. She knew someone called that, a long time ago. She tries to remember when it was, while the cries, the laughter and the dull thud of the ball rebounding against a wall reach her. Ah, yes. It was when she was a fashion model, at Alex Maguy's. She had met a certain Denise, a blonde, rather Asiatic looking, who also worked in fashion. They took to each other straight away.

Denise lived with a man called Pedro. A South American, no doubt. She remembered that this Pedro in fact, worked at a legation. A tall, dark man, whose features she remembered quite distinctly. She would still recognize him today, except he must have gained a few gray hairs since.

One evening, the two of them came to her place, in Rue de Saigon. She had invited a few friends over to dinner. The Japanese actor and his wife with strawberry-blonde hair who lived nearby, in Rue Chalgrin, Evelyne, a dark-haired woman she had known at Alex Maguy's, escorted by a pale young man, someone else - but she had forgotten who - and Jean-Claude, the Belgian who was courting
her...
The dinner had been a cheery affair. She had thought what a handsome couple Denise and Pedro made.

One of the children catches the ball, hugs it to him and lopes off with large strides. She sees them passing her window on the run. Panting, the one holding the ball comes out into Avenue de la Grande-Armée. He crosses the road, still hugging the ball. The others do not dare follow him and stand there, watching him running along the opposite pavement. He kicks the ball ahead of him. The sun is shining on the chrome of bicycles in the windows of the bicycle shops along the avenue.

He has forgotten the others. He runs on his own with the ball, and dribbles it, turning right into Rue Anatole-de- la-Forge.

44

I
PRESSED
my brow to the porthole. Two men were keeping watch on the bridge, chatting, and the moonlight gave their skins an ashen appearance. Finally they leaned over the rails.

I could not sleep, even though there was no more swell. I kept looking through the photographs of us all, Denise, Freddie, Gay Orlov, and gradually they lost their reality, as the boat continued on its way. Had they ever existed? I remembered what I had been told about Freddie's activities in America. He had been the "confidant of John Gilbert."

And I could see them: two men walking side by side in the neglected grounds of a villa, past a tennis court covered with dead leaves and broken twigs, the taller of the two men - Freddie - leaning toward the other who must have been speaking in a low voice and was undoubtedly John Gilbert.

Later I heard a scuffle, bursts of laughter and voices in the ship's gangways. They were arguing over a trumpet, who was to play the opening bars of
"Auprès de ma blonde"
The door of the cabin next to mine slammed. There were several people in it. Again there were bursts of laughter, the clinking of glasses, fast breathing, a soft, drawn out
moan ...

Someone was prowling the corridors, ringing a little bell and repeating in the high-pitched voice of a choirboy that we had crossed the Line.

45

O
VER
THERE
was a succession of red navigation lights, which seemed at first to be suspended in air, before one realized that they followed the line of a bank. The dark blue, silken shape of a mountain. Calm waters, after passing the reefs.

We were entering in the roads of Papeete.

46

I
HAD
BEEN
recommended to see a certain Fribourg. He had been living in Bora Bora for thirty years and made documentary films about the Pacific islands which he usually showed in Paris, at the Salle Pleyel. He was extremely knowledgeable about the South Sea Islands.

I did not even have to show him the photograph of Freddie. He had met him on several occasions when he berthed at the Island of Padipi. He described him to me as a man of over six feet, who never left his island, or if he did, went out alone on his boat, a schooner, on which he made long trips through the Tuamotu Archipelago, and even as far as the Marquesas.

Fribourg offered to take me to the Island of Padipi. We set out on a sort of fishing vessel. We were accompanied by a fat Maori who never moved more than an inch from Fribourg's side. I believe they lived together. A strange couple, this little man with the manners of a former scout master, in worn plus-fours and a sport shirt, and wearing glasses with metal frames, and the big bronzed Maori. The latter was dressed in a sarong and a blouse of pale blue cotton fabric. During the crossing, he told me in a soft voice that as a youth he had played soccer with Alain Gerbault.

47

O
N
THE
THE
ISLAND
, we followed a turf-covered path, lined with coconut palms and breadfruit trees. Here and there, a white, breast-high wall marked the boundaries of a garden, in the middle of which stood a house - always the same style - with a veranda and corrugated iron roof, painted green.

We came out into a wide meadow surrounded by barbed wire. Along the left-hand side ran a line of hangars, among which was a three-story building of a rosy beige color. Fribourg explained that it was an old aerodrome, constructed by the Americans during the Pacific war, and that this was where Freddie lived.

We entered the three-story building. On the ground floor, a room with a bed and a mosquito net, a desk and a wicker armchair. A door led into a rudimentary bathroom.

On the first and second floors, the rooms were empty and there were panes missing in the windows. Some piles of rubbish in the corridors. A military map of the South Pacific had been left hanging on one of the walls.

We returned to the room which must have been Freddie's. Brown-feathered birds slipped through the half open window and perched, in tight ranks, on the bed, the desk and bookshelf near the door. More and more came. Fribourg told me these were Moluccan blackbirds and that they gnawed through everything, paper, wood, even the walls of houses.

A man entered the room. He was wearing a sarong and had a white beard. He spoke to the fat Maori who was sticking to Fribourg like a shadow and the fat man translated, swaying slightly from side to side. About two weeks ago, the schooner on which Freddie had set off for the Marquesas had washed up on the island's coral reefs, and Freddie was no longer on board.

He asked us if we wished to see the boat and led us to the edge of the lagoon. The boat was there, its mast broken, while, to protect it, old truck tires had been hung on its side.

Fribourg announced that once we got back, we would ask for searches to be made. The fat Maori in the pale blue bodice was talking to the other one in a very shrill voice. They seemed to be uttering little cries. Soon I stopped paying any attention to them.

I do not know how long I remained by the edge of the lagoon. I thought about Freddie. No, he simply could not have vanished at sea. No doubt, he had decided to cut his last ties and must be hiding out on an atoll. I would find him in the end. And besides, there was one last thing I would have to try: to return to my old address in Rome, Via delle Botteghe Oscure, 2.

Evening had come. The lagoon was fading gradually, as its greenness was reabsorbed. Grayish mauve shadows still moved on the water, in a dim phosphorescence.

Mechanically, I had taken out of my pocket the photographs of us all which I had wanted to show Freddie, and among them the photo of Gay Orlov as a little girl. I had not noticed until then that she was crying. One could tell by the wrinkling of her brows. For a moment, my thoughts transported me far from this lagoon, to the other end of the world, to a seaside resort in Southern Russia where the photo had been taken, long ago. A little girl is returning from the beach, at dusk, with her mother. She is crying for no reason at all, because she would have liked to continue playing. She moves off into the distance. She has already turned the corner of the street, and do not our lives dissolve into the evening as quickly as this grief of childhood?