After the Circus (10 page)

On Sunday evenings, in the boarding school dormitory after our return from holidays, the proctor would turn out the lights at a quarter to nine and it would take a while for sleep to come.
I would wake with a start during the night, not knowing where I was. The night-light bathing the rows of bunks in a bluish glow yanked me back to reality. And since that time, whenever I've dreamed, I've tried to hold off the moment of waking for fear of finding myself back in that dormitory. I tried to explain this to her.

“Me too,” she said, “that often happens to me … I'm afraid of waking up in jail …”

I asked her why in jail? But she seemed embarrassed, and finally answered:

“That's just how it is …”

Outside, I paused. Going back to the Quai de Conti just seemed too tedious. I would have preferred for us to be in a place that didn't trigger any past associations. But she said none of that mattered, as long as we were together.

We drive down Rue Blanche. Once more, I feel like I'm in a dream. And in this dream, I experience a sensation of euphoria. The car glides along without my hearing the sound of the engine, as if it were coasting down the slope in idle.

On Avenue de l'Opéra, the lights and empty street open before us. She turns toward me:

“We can leave tomorrow, if you like.”

For the first time in my life, I feel as if the obstacles and constraints holding me back have been removed. Perhaps this is just an illusion that will evaporate tomorrow morning. I lower the window and the cold air heightens my euphoria. Not the slightest fog, the slightest halo around the streetlamps sparkling down the avenue.

We cross the Pont du Carrousel and, in my memory, we follow the quay against traffic, ignoring the one-way signs; we pass by the Pont des Arts, driving slowly, with no cars coming in the opposite direction.

Grabley isn't there yet. We cross through the foyer and the apartment detaches itself from the past. I enter it for the first time. It's she who guides me. Ahead of me she climbs the small staircase leading to the fifth floor. In the bedroom, we don't put on the light.

The lamps along the quay project a beam of light on the ceiling as bright as the kind that, in summer, filters through the slats of the venetian blinds. She is stretched out on the bed, in her black skirt and pullover.

The next morning, when we left the apartment, Grabley still hadn't come back. We had decided to return the car to Ansart and never see them again, him and Jacques de Bavière. We planned to leave for Rome as soon as possible.

We tried calling them, but no one answered the phone at Ansart's, nor at Jacques de Bavière's supposed residence. Too bad. We were leaning toward just abandoning the car on Rue Raffet.

It was a sunny autumn day, like the day before. I felt a sense of lightness and well-being at the thought of our departure. I would be leaving behind only things that were starting to fall apart: Grabley, the empty apartment … I just needed to find the authorization form I had used the previous year for a trip to Belgium, and I'd alter the date and destination. In Rome, I could certainly manage to avoid the French authorities and my draft obligations.

She told me there was no problem with her
leaving France. I tried to find out more about this husband she'd mentioned.

She hadn't seen him in a long time—nearly three months by now. She had gotten married on a whim. But who was he, exactly?

She looked me in the eye with a tight smile and said:

“Oh, kind of a strange guy … He runs a circus …”

I wasn't sure if she was joking or telling the truth.

She seemed to be watching for my reaction.

“A circus?”

“Yes, a circus …”

He had left on tour with the circus, but she hadn't wanted to go with him.

“I don't like talking about this …”

And there was silence between us all the way until we arrived at the building on Rue Raffet.

We rang at the door of the apartment. No one answered.

“They might be at the restaurant,” said Gisèle.

A woman was staring at us, at the entrance to the courtyard. She walked up to us.

“Are you looking for somebody?”

Her tone was curt, as if she were suspicious of us.

“Mister Ansart,” Gisèle said.

“Mister Ansart left very early this morning. He gave me the keys to his apartment. He won't be back for at least three months.”

So this was the concierge.

“He didn't say where he was going?” asked Gisèle.

“No.”

“And there's no place we can write to him?”

“He said he'd send me his new address. If you want to write him, you can leave the letter with me.”

Her tone had softened a bit. She watched after us as we crossed back through the courtyard with the dog. She seemed to find “Mister Ansart's” departure perfectly normal. Eventually, she would ask herself about that man who seemed so pleasant and well-mannered.
After that, others would ask, perhaps in the same office where Gisèle and I had been questioned. They would ask her to remember the smallest details about Ansart, who came to visit him. And she would remember that soon after his disappearance, a young man and young woman with a dog had rung at the apartment.

“What should we do with the car?” I asked Gisèle.

“We'll keep it.”

She rummaged in the glove compartment and pulled out the registration. It was in the name of Pierre Louis Ansart, born January 22, 1921, in Paris 10th, residing 14 Rue Raffet, Paris 16th.

We skirted the Bois de Boulogne, by the same route we'd taken on Saturday to go have lunch in Ansart's restaurant. I held onto his registration card. We turned onto Rue des Belles-Feuilles. The restaurant was closed. They had nailed wooden panels onto the façade, with peeling green paint that surely dated from the time when the Belles Feuilles was, as Ansart had said, a working-class café.

Now she seemed concerned. There must have been a connection between Ansart's sudden disappearance and the incident in Neuilly the day before, in which we had been more than just bystanders.

“Do you think Jacques de Bavière has also taken off?” I asked.

She shrugged. I recalled Martine's face, the way she had waved to us as we walked across the courtyard the other night.

“What about Martine? Can we reach her somewhere?”

She knew almost nothing about Martine, other than that she had been living with Ansart for several years. The only thing she remembered was her name: Martine Gaul.

We ended up in a café on Rue Spontini, where we ordered two sandwiches and two glasses of orange juice. She took a small address book from her bag and asked me to call Rue Washington to see whether Jacques de Bavière was still there.

“Hello … Who's this?”

A woman with a deep voice. The one who had greeted us on Saturday evening?

“I'd like to speak with Jacques de Bavière, please …”

“Who are you?”

Her tone was sharp, the tone of someone on the alert.

“We're friends of Jacques. We came over on Saturday …”

“Jacques has left for Belgium.”

“Will he be gone long?”

“I couldn't say.”

“Did Mister Ansart go with him?”

There was a moment's pause. I even thought the line had gone dead.

“I don't know the person you mean. I'm very sorry, but I have to go now.”

She hung up.

So they had both gone. With Martine, no doubt. To Belgium, or somewhere else. How could we find out?

“Are you sure his name is de Bavière?” I asked Gisèle.

“Yes, de Bavière.”

What good would that do us? He surely wasn't in the phone book, or in the social register, as his name might imply.

She said she wanted to try somewhere else, where we might stand a better chance of finding out news of Ansart. We followed the major boulevards. She didn't offer any explanations. When we arrived at Place de la République, we took Boulevard du Temple, then stopped in a street that ran parallel to it, slightly downhill. In front of us was the Winter Circus.

She pointed out a café farther down the road, about fifty yards away.

“Go in and ask the guy behind the bar if he has any news of Mister Ansart …”

Why wasn't she coming with me?

I walked down the street, turning around to make sure she was still there. I thought she might wait for me to enter the café, then vanish like all the others.

The café didn't display any name, but an ad for Belgian beer was stickered on the façade. I
went in. At the back of a small room were a few tables where patrons were having lunch.

Behind the bar stood a tall, dark-haired man with a slightly squashed nose wearing a dark blue suit; he was on the phone. I waited. A waiter in a burgundy jacket came up to me.

“A bottle of Vittel.”

The phone conversation dragged on. The man listened to his correspondent and occasionally answered, “Yes … yes … all right …” or gave a brief grunt of assent. He had jammed the receiver between his shoulder and cheek to light a cigarette and his eyes met mine, but I don't know if he really saw me. He hung up.

I asked him in a timid voice:

“Do you have any news of Mister Ansart?”

He smiled at me. But I could tell this smile was just a façade, a way of establishing distance between us.

“You know Mister Ansart?”

His voice had a childlike timbre that reminded me of the actor Jean Marais. He came
around the bar to join me on the other side and leaned on it with his elbow.

“Yes, I know him, and I also know Martine Gaul.”

Why had I added that detail? To make him trust me?

“I went by Rue Raffet this morning and they were gone.”

He looked me over with a benevolent eye, still with that smile. The elegant cut of his suit and his voice clashed with the surroundings. Was he really the owner of this café?

“They're gone, but they will certainly be back. That's all I can tell you.”

He smile widened, and the look in his eyes made it clear that, indeed, he wouldn't say any more.

I went to pay for the bottle of Vittel, but he waved his hand.

“No … Forget it …”

He opened the door for me himself and gave me a brief nod of farewell. He was still smiling.

In the car, Gisèle asked:

“What did he say?”

She must have known that man with his immutable smile. She had no doubt met him with Ansart and Jacques de Bavière.

“He said they would certainly be back, but he didn't seem to want to provide any details.”

“It doesn't matter. In any case, we'll never see them again. We'll be in Rome.”

We followed the boulevard up to Place de la Bastille. We weren't far from Dell'Aversano's shop. I suggested that we stop in to finalize our travel arrangements.

“Had you been in that café before?” I asked Gisèle.

“Yes. Lots of times.”

She paused, then said, as if reluctantly:

“It was when my husband worked at the Winter Circus.”

She fell silent. I thought of the man in the dark blue suit. His smile had impressed me and I still remembered it ten years later, when one afternoon I happened to find myself near the
Winter Circus. I hadn't been able to resist going into that café. It was around 1973.

He was standing behind the bar, less elegant than the first time, features drawn and hair gone gray. A number of photos were glued to the wall, some of them signed, depicting performers from the Winter Circus who patronized the café.

One of the photos, larger than the others, had caught my eye. It showed a whole group of people standing at the bar, around a blonde woman wearing a rider's jacket. And among them, I recognized Gisèle.

I had ordered a bottle of Vittel, like the first time.

At that hour of the afternoon, he and I were the only ones there. I asked him point blank:

“Did you know that girl?”

I joined him behind the bar and pointed out Gisèle in the photo. He didn't seem the least bit surprised by my actions.

He leaned closer to the picture.

“Oh, sure, I knew her … She was really young … She used to spend her evenings here
… Her husband worked for the circus … She would wait for him … She always looked bored … That must be a good ten years ago …”

“But what did her husband do, exactly?”

“He must have been part of the circus staff. He was older than her.”

I sensed that he'd answer any question I asked. I was still young at the time and had a shy, polite air about me. And he, no doubt, wanted nothing better than to chat away the empty hours of that early summer afternoon.

He seemed much more accessible than he had ten years earlier. He had lost his mystery, or rather the mystery I'd lent him. The slim man in the dark blue suit was nothing more today than a café proprietor on Rue Amelot, practically your basic barkeep.

“Did you know Pierre Ansart?”

He cast me a surprised glance and once again I saw on his face the disingenuous smile from before.

“How come? Did
you
know Pierre?”

“That girl introduced me to him about ten years ago.”

He knitted his brow.

“The girl in the photo? … Pierre must have met her here … He often came to see me …”

“And what about a younger man named Jacques de Bavière, does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“He was a friend of Ansart's.”

“I didn't know all of Pierre's friends …”

“You don't know what became of him, do you?”

Again that smile.

“Pierre? No. He's not in Paris anymore, that much I know.”

I stopped talking. I was waiting for him to say what he'd told me the first time: They're gone, but they will certainly be back.

Through the half-open door, the sun threw bright spots on the walls and empty tables in back.