So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood (8 page)

“The only thing that I can tell you is that she had been in prison . . . I really know nothing else about this woman . . .”

The neon lighting on the terrace had been switched off so as to make these last two customers realise that the café was about to close. Perrin de Lara sat there silently in the half-light. Daragane thought of the cinema in Montparnasse that he had gone into the other evening to shelter from the rain. It was not heated and the few people in the audience were still wearing their overcoats. He often kept his eyes closed in the cinema. The voices and the music in a film were more evocative for him than the image. A remark from the film he had seen that evening came to mind, spoken in a muffled voice, before the lights went on, and he had been deceived into thinking that it was he himself who had spoken it: “What a peculiar path I've had to take in order to reach you.”

Someone was tapping him on the shoulder:

“Gentlemen, we're about to close . . . It's time to leave . . .”

They had crossed the avenue and were walking through the garden at the spot where, during the daytime, the stalls of the postage stamp market are set up. Daragane hesitated whether to take his leave of Perrin de Lara. The man had stopped suddenly, as though an idea had suddenly crossed his mind:

“I couldn't even tell you why she had been in prison . . .”

He held out a hand which Daragane clasped.

“See you very soon, I hope . . . Or perhaps in ten years' time . . .”

Daragane did not know how to answer him and he stood there, on the pavement, gazing after him. Wearing his far too flimsy coat, the man receded into the distance. He walked beneath the trees very slowly and, at the moment that he was about to cross avenue de Marigny, he almost lost his balance, propelled forward by a puff of wind and an armful of dead leaves.

 

BACK AT HOME, HE LISTENED TO THE ANSWERING
machine to find out whether Chantal Grippay or Gilles Ottolini had left a message. None. The black dress with swallows was still lying on the back of the sofa and the orange cardboard folder was in the same place on his desk, by the telephone. He took out the photocopies.

Not a great deal, at first sight, about Annie Astrand. And yet there was. The address of the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt was mentioned: “15 rue de l'Ermitage”, followed by a comment that an investigation had taken place there. It had happened in the same year that Annie had taken him to the Photomaton shop and when she had been searched at the customs post at Ventimiglia. Her brother Pierre (6 rue Laferrière, Paris IXe) was mentioned as was Roger Vincent (12 rue Nicolas-Chuquet, Paris XVIIe), whom they wondered might not be her “protector”.

It even specified that the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt was in the name of Roger Vincent. There were also copies of a much older report from the Criminal Investigation Department, Vice Squad, Investigation and Information Bureau, concerning the aforementioned Astrand Annie living in a hotel, 46 rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, on which was written: “Known at the Étoile Kléber”. But all this was unclear, as though someone—Ottolini?—when copying out documents from the archives in a hurry, had skipped words and had jumbled together certain sentences taken at random that had no connection one with the other.

Was it really worthwhile burying oneself in this dense and viscous mass again? As he continued with his reading, Daragane experienced a feeling similar to that of the previous day when he tried to decipher the same pages: sentences you hear in a semi-slumber, and the few words you do remember in the morning make no sense. All this, strewn with specific addresses—15 rue de l'Ermitage, 12 rue Nicolas-Chuquet, 46 rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette—probably in order to find reference points in this shifting sand.

He was sure that he would tear up these pages over the coming days and that this would make him feel better. Between now and then, he would leave them on his desk. One final reading might conceivably help him discover hidden clues that would put him on the trail of Annie Astrand.

He needed to find the envelope that she had sent him, years ago, containing the passport photos. On the day he received it, he had consulted the current street directory. No Annie Astrand at number 18 rue Alfred-Dehodencq. And since she had not given him her phone number, all he could do was write to her . . . But would he receive an answer from her?

That evening, in his study, all this seemed so long ago . . . It was already ten years since the beginning of the new century . . . And yet, at a bend in the road, or spotting a passing face—and often it only required an unexpected word in a conversation or a note of music—the name, Annie Astrand, came back into his memory. But it happened increasingly seldom and more and more briefly, a bright signal that faded immediately.

He had hesitated whether to write to her or send her a telegram. 18 rue Alfred-Dehodencq.
PLEASE GIVE PHONE NUMBER. JEAN.
Or a pneumatic dispatch, of the kind that people still sent in those days. And then he, who neither liked unexpected visits nor people who suddenly accost you in the street, had decided to call at that address.

 

IT WAS IN AUTUMN, ON ALL SAINTS' DAY. IT WAS
sunny, that afternoon. For the first time in his life, the words “All Saints” did not instil in him a feeling of sadness. At place Blanche, he had taken the métro. Two changes were required. At Étoile and Trocadéro. On Sundays and public holidays, the trains took a long time coming, and he thought to himself that he would have been unable to have seen Annie Astrand again except on a public holiday. He counted the years: fifteen, since the afternoon she had taken him to the Photomaton shop. He remembered a morning, at the gare de Lyon. They had both boarded the train, a crowded train on the first day of the summer holidays.

While waiting for the train at Trocadéro station, he had a sudden doubt: she might not be in Paris that day. After fifteen years, he would no longer recognise her.

There were railings at the end of the street. Behind them were the trees in the Ranelagh gardens. Not a single car the entire length of the pavement. The silence. Hard to imagine anyone living here. Number 18 was at the very end, on the right, before the railings and the trees. A white building, or rather a large house with two storeys. At the entrance door, an intercom. And a name, alongside the single button of this intercom:
VINCENT
.

The building seemed to him to be deserted, like the street. He pressed the button. From the intercom, he heard a crackling sound, which could have been the rustle of the wind in the trees. He leant forward and, enunciating the syllables clearly, he said twice: “JEAN DARAGANE”. A woman's voice, partly muffled by the noise of the wind, replied: “First floor.”

The glazed door opened slowly and he found himself in a white entrance hall lit by a wall lamp. He did not take the lift and went up by the right-angled staircase. When he reached the landing, she was standing at the half-open door, her face partly hidden. Then she drew back the door and stared at him as though she had difficulty recognising him.

“Come in, Jean dear . . .”

A timid, but slightly husky voice, just as it had been fifteen years ago. The face had not altered either, nor had the expression. Her hair was not as short. It reached down to her shoulders. How old was she now? Thirty-six? In the hallway, she was still looking at him with curiosity. He tried to think of something to say to her:

“I didn't know whether I should press the button that said ‘Vincent'. . .”

“My name is Vincent now . . . I've even changed my first name, would you believe . . . Agnès Vincent . . .”

She showed him into the adjoining room, which was probably used as a drawing room, although the only furniture consisted of a sofa and, next to it, a floor lamp. A large bay window through which he could see trees that had not lost their leaves. It was still light. Glimmers of sunshine on the wooden floor and on the walls.

“Sit down, Jean dear . . .”

She sat down at the other end of the sofa, as if to observe him better.

“Do you remember Roger Vincent, perhaps?”

Scarcely had she uttered this name than he did in fact remember an American car, a convertible, parked outside the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, and in the driver's seat sat a man, whom he had assumed, at first, was also American on account of his height and a slight accent when he spoke.

“I got married a few years ago to Roger Vincent . . .”

She looked at him and she had an embarrassed smile on her face. So that he should forgive her for this marriage?

“He's in Paris less and less . . . I think he'd be glad to see you again . . . I phoned him the other day and I told him that you had written a book . . .”

One afternoon, at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, Roger Vincent had come to collect him outside school in his convertible American car. It glided so quietly along rue de l'Ermitage that you could not hear the sound of the engine.

“I haven't read your book to the end yet . . . I stumbled on the passage about the Photomaton shop straight away . . . I never read novels, you know . . .”

She seemed to be apologising, as she had done just now when she had informed him about her marriage to Roger Vincent. But no, there was no point in her reading the book “to the end” now that they were sitting on the sofa together.

“You must have wondered how I was able to get your address . . . I met someone who drove you home last year . . .” She frowned and seemed to be searching for a name. But Daragane himself came up with:

“Guy Torstel?”

“Yes . . . Guy Torstel . . .”

Why do people whose existence you are unaware of, whom you meet once and will never see again, come to play, behind the scenes, an important role in your life? Thanks to this individual, he had found Annie again. He would have liked to thank this Torstel.

“I'd completely forgotten this man . . . He must live in the neighbourhood . . . He accosted me in the street . . . He told me that he had come to the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt fifteen years ago . . .”

It was probably this meeting with Torstel at the racecourse last autumn that had jogged his memory of her. Torstel had talked about the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. When Torstel had said: “I can't remember what this place on the outskirts of Paris was”, and also: “The child, it was you, I imagine”, he, Daragane, had not wished to answer. He had not thought about Annie Astrand, or about Saint-Leu-la-Forêt for a long time. However, this encounter had suddenly revived memories that, without his being fully aware of them, he was careful not to awaken. And now, he had done so. They were very tenacious, these memories. That very evening he began to write his book.

“He told me that he had met you at a racecourse . . .”

She smiled as though it were a joke.

“I hope you're not a gambler.”

“No, not at all.”

He, a gambler? He had never understood why all these people in casinos spent so long standing around tables, silent and motionless, looking as though they were more dead than alive. And every time Paul had talked to him about doubling up on his losses, he found it difficult to maintain his concentration.

“With gamblers, things always end up very badly, Jean dear.”

Perhaps she knew a great deal about the subject. She frequently used to return very late to the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, and he, Daragane, had sometimes found he could not get to sleep until she returned. What a comfort to hear the sound of her car's tyres on the gravel and the engine which you knew was about to be switched off. And her footsteps along the corridor . . . What did she do in Paris until two in the morning? Perhaps she gambled. After all these years, and now that he was no longer a child, he would have liked to put the question to her.

“I didn't really understand what this Monsieur Torstel does . . . I believe he's an antique dealer at the Palais-Royal . . .”

It was clear she did not know what to say to him. He would have liked to make her feel at ease. She probably felt as he did, as though there were a shadowy presence between them, which neither of them was able to speak about.

“So, you're a writer now?”

She was smiling at him, and this smile struck him as ironical. A writer. Why not confess to her that he had written
Le Noir de l'été
in the style of a missing person advertisement? With a bit of luck, the book would attract her attention, and she would get in touch with him. That is what he had thought. Nothing more.

The daylight was fading, but she did not switch on the standard lamp beside her.

“I should have got in touch with you before now, but I had rather a turbulent life . . .”

She had just used the perfect tense, as though her life were over.

“It didn't surprise me that you should have become a writer. When you were little, at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, you read a lot . . .”

Daragane would have preferred her to talk about her own life, but she seemed not to want to do so. She was sitting on the sofa, in profile. An image that had retained great clarity, in spite of all these lost years, came back to him. One afternoon, Annie, in the same position, head and shoulders to the right, in profile, seated at the wheel of her car and he, a child, beside her. The car was parked outside the gate of the house, at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. He had noticed a tear, barely visible, slipping down her right cheek. She had made a sudden movement with her elbow to wipe it away. Then she started up the engine, as though nothing were the matter.

“Last year,” said Daragane, “I met someone else who knew you . . . in the Saint-Leu-la Forêt days . . .”

She turned towards him and cast him an anxious look.

“Who?”

“A Jacques Perrin de Lara.”

“No, I can't think who . . . I met so many people in the Saint-Leu-la-Forêt days . . .”