Monsieur Monde Vanishes (9 page)

He had already opened it the night before. He found it just as it was, with the cosmetics, a scrap of pencil, and a few crumpled notes, including a thousand-franc one.

She looked him sternly in the eyes, and then her lips formed a contemptuous, terribly contemptuous smile, as she said: “That's not what's worrying me, for sure!”

It was late. They were almost alone, now, in the deserted dining room, where the waiters were beginning to tidy up, and in one corner waitresses were already laying out cutlery for the evening meal.

“Waiter!”

“Coming, monsieur …”

And the fluttering figures were snapped up by the purple pencil and lined up on a pad of paper, one sheet of which was pulled off and laid on the cloth in front of Monsieur Monde.

He had a great deal of money in his wallet. He had slipped in as many notes as it would hold, and it embarrassed him to open it; he did so with reluctance, in the furtive manner of a miser; he realized that Julie had noticed, that she had seen the bundle and was once more observing him with a suspicious eye.

They rose at the same time, visited the cloakrooms, and then met again outside, in the sunshine, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to stay together or how to part company.

They walked automatically to the quayside and mingled with the people watching small boys or old men angling.

In another hour Madame Monde would step out of her car before the police station on Rue La Rochefoucauld. He was not thinking of Madame Monde; he was not thinking of anything. He was conscious of moving restlessly in the midst of an outsize universe. His skin smelled springlike, because of the sunshine. His shoes were covered with fine dust. He was intensely aware of his companion's scent.

They had gone two hundred yards or so and were wandering aimlessly when she stopped.

“I don't feel like walking,” she decided.

Then they retraced their steps, past the three-story restaurant with its wide windows where, now, only the bustling black-and-white figures of waiters could be seen. It seemed quite natural to walk up La Canebière, and in front of a brasserie whose striped awning was down, despite the time of year, Monsieur Monde suggested: “Would you like to sit down?”

And then they were sitting beside the window, on either side of a small marble-top table; in front of him there was a glass of beer on a cardboard mat, and in front of her a cup of coffee which she was not drinking.

She was waiting. She said: “I'm stopping you from going about your business.”

“I have no business.”

“That's true. You told me you had private means. Where d'you live?”

“I did live in Paris, but I've left.”

“Without your wife?”

“Yes.”

“On account of a chick?”

“No!”

Her eyes revealed bewilderment and, once again, suspicion.

“Why?”

“I don't know.… For no reason.”

“Haven't you any children?”

“Yes …”

“And you didn't mind leaving them?”

“They're grown up.… My daughter's married.…”

Not far from them, people were playing bridge, important citizens and aware of their own importance, and two youths of Alain's age were playing billiards and looking at themselves in the glass.

“I don't want to sleep in that hotel again.”

He realized that she wanted to avoid unpleasant memories. He made no reply. And a long silence fell. They sat there, still and heavy, in the gathering darkness. Soon the lights would go on. The window, close beside them, shed a kind of frozen halo on their cheeks.

Julie was scanning the crowd that streamed by along the sidewalk, perhaps because she had nothing else to do, or to keep herself in countenance, or else perhaps in hope—or in fear—of recognizing Jean.

“I don't think I'll stay in Marseilles,” she said.

“Where will you go?”

“I don't know.… Farther on … Maybe to Nice? … Maybe to some small place by the sea where there won't be anybody. I'm sick of men.…”

At any moment they were free to get up and say good-by to one another, to go their different ways and never meet again. It seemed almost as if they did not know how to set about it, and that was why they stayed there.

Monsieur Monde felt embarrassed at sitting so long over a single drink, and summoned the waiter to order another half-pint. She called him back to ask: “When is there a train to Nice?”

“I'll bring you the timetable.”

She handed it to Monsieur Monde, who looked up two trains, a fast one that left Marseilles at seven and another, at nine, that stopped all along the coast.

“Don't you find it gloomy here?”

The quietness was oppressive, the room seemed empty, there was too much unstirring air between the few customers, and every sound was detached, assumed importance: the exclamation of a card player, the click of billiard balls, the snap of the lid of the soiled-linen hamper as the waiter opened and closed it. The lights were switched on, but then, in the dusk, the slate-gray street proved a depressing sight, with its curious procession of men, women, and children, walking fast or slowly, brushing up against or pushing past one another, all strangers to the rest, each going God knows where and perhaps nowhere, while obese buses bore past their full loads of tight-packed humanity.

“Excuse me.” The waiter, behind them, drew a heavy red curtain along its brass rod, and with a single gesture abolished the outside world.

Monsieur Monde sighed, gazing at his glass of beer. He noticed that his companion's fingers were clenched on her handbag. And he seemed to have to make a long journey through time and space to find the simple, commonplace words that he uttered at last, which blended with the banality of the setting:

“Shall we take the nine o'clock train?”

She said nothing, but sat still; the fingers clutching the crocodile-skin bag relaxed. She lit a fresh cigarette, and it was later on, about seven o'clock, when the brasseries were full of customers drinking their apéritifs, that they went out, as grave and glum as a real married couple.

From time to time he frowned. The stare of his pale eyes became more intense. These were the only visible signs of his anguish, and yet at such moments he felt out of his depth, and if he had not retained a certain self-respect he would have been capable of tapping the shiny walls of the compartment to make sure they really existed.

He was in a train once more, a train that had the special smell of all night trains. Four of the compartments in the second-class carriage were dark, with drawn curtains, and when, a short while previously, looking for seats, he had opened doors at random, he had disturbed people who were sleeping.

He stood in the corridor, leaning against the wall which bore a number on an enamel plate. He had drawn up the blind in front of him, and the window was dark, cold, and clammy; occasional lights could be seen in little stations along the coast; by chance, his carriage invariably stopped in front of the lamps marked “Gentlemen” and “Ladies.”

He was smoking a cigarette. He was conscious of smoking it, of holding it between his fingers, of blowing out the smoke, and this was what was so baffling, so bewildering; he was conscious of everything, he kept on seeing himself without the intermediary of a mirror, he would catch sight of one of his own gestures or attitudes and feel almost certain that he recognized it.

But he searched his memory in vain, he could not picture himself in any similar situation. Especially, without his mustache, and wearing a ready-made suit that somebody else had worn!

Even that instinctive movement … half turning his head to glance at Julie, in the corner of the compartment, sometimes sitting with eyes closed as though asleep, and sometimes staring straight in front of her as though wrestling with some important problem.

But Julie herself formed part of his memories. He felt no surprise at seeing her there. He recognized her. Perplexed, he resisted the notion of some previous existence.

And yet, often, he was sure of it—he had always intended to note it down in the morning, but had never done so—three or four times at least he had dreamed the same dream, he had found himself repeatedly in a flat-bottomed boat with oars that were too long and too heavy to handle, in a landscape whose details he could recall even when awake and long after, a landscape he had never seen in real life, made up of greenish lagoons and hills of that purplish blue that one sees in the paintings of early Italian masters.

Each time he had had that particular dream he had recognized the place, he had experienced the satisfaction that one feels on returning to a familiar spot.

But this was clearly impossible in the case of this train journey with Julie. He was clearheaded, rational. This must be a scene that he had so often seen performed by other people, a scene that he had probably longed so violently to enact himself, that now …

That glance back into the compartment, that air of satisfaction that must have come over his face when he looked at his sleeping companion … And the woman's questioning gesture, that tilt of her chin when the train drew up noisily in a more important station and was invaded by a rush of new travelers; it meant: Where are we?

As the glazed door was closed, he mouthed the name so that she could read it on his lips, separating the syllables: “Toulon!” He repeated: “Tou-lon … Toulon …”

Failing to understand, she beckoned him to come in, showed him the vacant seat beside her, and he went and sat in it; his own voice had an unfamiliar ring.

“Toulon …”

She took a cigarette out of her bag. “Give me a light.…”

She called him “
tu
” for the first time, naturally, because for her, too, this was probably a moment that she had lived through before.

“Thanks … I think we'd better go on to Nice.…”

She was whispering. In the opposite corner an elderly man with white hair was asleep, and his wife, who was elderly too, was watching over him like a child. He must have been ill, for once before she had made him swallow a small greenish pill. She was watching Julie and Monsieur Monde. And he felt ashamed, because he guessed what she must be thinking about them. Moreover, although she dared not mention it, she probably resented Julie's smoking, which must upset the old man.

The train started off again.

“D'you know Nice?”

This time the “
tu
” came less naturally. Julie had had time to premeditate it. He felt convinced she was using it for the benefit of the lady opposite, and because it seemed more logical, conforming to a familiar situation.

“A little … Not very well …”

He had been there several times, three winters running in fact, with his first wife after the birth of their daughter, who as a baby had suffered from bronchitis every year; in those days doctors still recommended the Riviera. They had stayed in a big middle-class hotel on the Promenade des Anglais.

“I don't know it myself.…”

They fell silent. She finished her cigarette, which she had difficulty in crushing in the narrow brass ash tray, then she crossed and uncrossed her legs, which gleamed palely in the bluish shadows; she tried out various positions, sank back against the padded upholstery, and finally rested her head on her companion's shoulder.

This, too, was a memory that … No, surely! It was an attitude in which he'd seen other people a dozen times, a hundred times. He had tried to imagine their feelings and now he was acting in the scene himself, it was he whom the young man standing in the corridor— he must have got on at Toulon—was watching, with his face glued to the window.

Then came the procession along the station platform, over the tracks, the slow monotonous scuffle toward the exit, the search through his pockets for the tickets.…

“I tell you you put them in the left-hand pocket of your waistcoat.…”

She had reverted to “
vous
.” All around them, touts were calling out the names of hotels, but she did not listen to them. It was she who led the way. She walked straight ahead, threading her way much more swiftly than he could, and once they were through the gateway she remarked: “We'd better leave our things in the baggage room.”

They had only one suitcase each, but Julie's was heavy and particularly cumbersome.

Thus, once outside the station, they no longer looked like travelers. They made straight for the town center; it was a fine clear night, and there were still some cafés open. From afar they could see the lights of the Casino de la Jetée and their manifold reflections in the water of the bay.

Julie showed neither surprise nor admiration. Because she occasionally turned one of her high heels, she clung to the man's arm, but it was she who led the way. She went forward without speaking a word, as calmly as an ant guided by its instinct.

“So this is the famous Promenade des Anglais?”

Branched lamps, stretching out to infinity. The vast sweep of the Promenade, all along the sea, with its small yellow paving stones and its deserted benches, and long lines of cars in front of casinos and grand hotels.

She was not dazzled by it all. She kept on walking, glanced down all the side streets, and finally turned down one of them and went close to the window of a brasserie to peer through the gap between the curtains.

“We might try this one.”

“It's a café,” he objected.

But she pointed out beyond the café and in the same building, a door with the word “Hotel” in white letters. They went into the brightly lit room, and she collapsed, somewhat wearily, onto a crimson seat; her next gesture, since there were people about, was to open her handbag, hold her mirror up to her face, and redden her lips.

“Will you have supper?” the waiter asked.

She said to Monsieur Monde: “D'you want to eat?”

They had not had dinner at Marseilles, because although they might have done so before the train left, they had not felt hungry then.