So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood (3 page)

“You'll see . . . It's an interesting book . . .”

She looked up at him and smiled.

“Have you lived here long?”

“Two years.”

The beige walls that had certainly not been repainted for years, the small desk, and the two windows that overlooked a courtyard . . . He had lived in identical rooms, at the age of this Chantal Grippay, and when he was younger than her. But at the time it was not in the eastern districts of the city. Rather more to the south, on the outskirts of the 14th or the 15th arrondissement. And towards the north-east, square du Graisivaudan, which by a mysterious coincidence she had mentioned earlier. And also, at the foot of the butte Montmartre, between Pigalle and Blanche.

“I know that Gilles called you this morning before setting off for Lyon. Did he say anything in particular?”

“Just that we would be seeing one another again.”

“He was frightened that you might be angry . . .”

Perhaps Gilles Ottolini was aware of their meeting today. He was reckoning that she would be more persuasive than he at encouraging him to talk, like those police inspectors who take over from one another during an interrogation. No, he had not left for Lyon and he was listening to their conversation behind the door. This thought made him smile.

“I'm being inquisitive, but I wonder why you've changed your first name.”

“I reckoned that Chantal was simpler than Joséphine.” She had said this seriously, as if this change of names had been carefully considered.

“I have the impression that there are no Chantals at all nowadays. How did you come across this name?”

“I chose it from the almanac.”

She had placed the sky-blue folder on the bed, beside her. A large photograph was half protruding from it, in between the copy of
Le Noir de l'été
and the typewritten pages.

“What's this photograph?”

“A photo of a child . . . you'll see . . . It belonged in the dossier . . .”

He did not care for this word “dossier”.

“Gilles was able to get some information from the police about the news item that interests him . . . We knew a cop who used to bet on horses . . . He searched around in the archives . . . He came across the photo as well . . .”

Once again she was speaking in that same husky voice, surprising in someone of her age, that she had used the other day in the café.

“Do you mind?” asked Daragane. “I'm too high up in this chair.”

He came and sat on the floor, at the foot of the bed. Now they were on the same level.

“Not at all . . . you're uncomfortable there . . . Come onto the bed . . .”

She leant over to him, and her face was so close to his that he noticed a tiny scar on her left cheek. Le Tremblay. Chantal. Square du Graisivaudan. These words had travelled a long way. An insect bite, very slight to begin with, and it causes you an increasingly sharp pain, and very soon a feeling of being torn apart. The present and the past merge together, and that seems quite natural because they were only separated by a cellophane partition. An insect bite was all it took to pierce the cellophane. He could not be sure of the year, but he was very young, in a room as small as this one with a girl called Chantal—a fairly common name at the time. The husband of this Chantal, one Paul, and other friends of theirs had set off as they always did on Saturdays to gamble in the casinos on the outskirts of Paris: Enghien, Forges-les-Eaux . . . and they came back the following day with a bit of money. He, Daragane, and this Chantal, spent the entire night together in this room in square du Graisivaudan until the others returned. Paul, the husband, also used to go to race meetings. A gambler. With him it was not merely a matter of doubling up on your losses.

The other Chantal—the present-day one—stood up and opened one of the two windows. It was beginning to get very hot in this room.

“I'm waiting for a phone call from Gilles. I'm not going to tell him you're here. You promise me that you're going to help him?”

Once again he had the feeling that they had agreed, she and Gilles Ottolini, not to allow him any breathing space and to make appointments with him each in turn. But to what purpose? And to help in what way, precisely? To write his article on this old news item about which he, Daragane, still knew nothing? Perhaps the “dossier”—as she had said a moment ago—that file, there, beside her on the bed in its open cardboard folder, would provide him with some explanations. “You promise me you'll help him?”

She was more persistent and was shaking her index finger. He was not sure whether this gesture was a threat.

“On condition that he informs me exactly what it is he wants from me.”

A loud ringing sound came from the bathroom. Then, a few notes of music.

“My mobile . . . That must be Gilles . . .”

She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, as though she did not want Daragane to hear her talking. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He had not noticed a hat stand, on the wall by the entrance, from which hung a dress that looked to him as though it was made of black satin. A gold lamé swallow had been sewn on either side, beneath the shoulders. Zips shone from the hip and at the wrists. An old dress, probably picked up at the flea market. He imagined her in this black satin dress, with the two yellow swallows.

Behind the bathroom door, long periods of silence and, each time, Daragane thought the conversation was over. But he heard her say in her husky voice: “No, I promise you . . .” and this phrase was repeated two or three times. He also heard her say “No, it's not true” and “It's much simpler than you think . . .” Apparently, Gilles Ottolini was blaming her for something or telling her about his anxieties. And she wanted to reassure him.

The conversation went on, and Daragane was tempted to leave the room without making any noise. When he was younger, he used the slightest opportunity to slip away from people, without his being able to understand very clearly why he did so: a longing to break free and to breathe in the fresh air? But today, he felt the need to let himself go with the tide, without pointless resistance. From out of the sky-blue cardboard folder he took the photograph that had caught his attention a moment ago. At first sight, it looked as though it was an enlargement of a passport photograph. A boy of about seven years old, with short hair cut in the style of the early fifties, though it could also be a present-day boy. One lived in a period when all the fashions, those of the past, yesterday and today, merged together, and perhaps, for children, it was a return to this earlier style of cutting. He would have to clear this up and he was keen to examine the way children's hair was cut, out there on the streets.

She emerged from the bathroom, her mobile in her hand.

“Forgive me . . . That went on a long time, but I put him in a much better mood. Sometimes, Gilles sees the gloomy side of everything.”

She sat down next to him, on the side of the bed.

“That's why you have to help him. He would be so pleased if you could remember who this Torstel was . . . You don't have any idea?”

Yet more questioning. How late into the night would this go on? He would never get out of this room. Perhaps she had locked the door. But he felt very calm, just a little tired as he often did in the late afternoon. And he would gladly have asked her permission to lie down on the bed.

He kept repeating a name to himself and could not get it out of his head. Le Tremblay. A racecourse in the southeastern suburbs where Chantal and Paul had taken him one Sunday in the autumn. Paul had exchanged a few words in the grandstand with a man who was older than them and he had explained to them that this was someone he occasionally used to meet at the casino at Forges-les-Eaux and that he too used to attend race meetings. The man had offered to drive them back to Paris in his car. It was real autumn weather, and not like today's Indian summer, when it was so hot in this room, and he was not at all sure when he would be able to leave . . . She had closed the sky-blue cardboard folder and had laid it on her lap.

“We must go and make photocopies for you . . . It's near here . . .”

She glanced at her watch.

“The shop closes at seven o'clock . . . we've got time . . .”

Later on, he would try to remember the precise year of that particular autumn. From Le Tremblay, they had followed the Marne and crossed the Vincennes woods at dusk. Daragane was sitting next to the man who was driving, the other two in the back. The man had appeared surprised when Paul had introduced them—Jean Daragane.

They spoke about this and that, about the last race at Le Tremblay. The man had said to him:

“Your name's Daragane? I think I met your parents a long time ago . . .”

This term “parents” surprised him. He felt as though he had never had any parents.

“It was about fifteen years ago . . . At a house near Paris . . . I remember a child . . .”

The man had turned towards him.

“The child, it was you, I imagine . . .”

Daragane feared that the man might ask him questions about a period of his life he no longer thought about. And if so, he would not have much to tell him. But he remained silent. After a while, the man asked him:

“I can no longer remember what that place near Paris was . . .”

“Neither can I.” And he regretted having answered him in such a curt manner.

Yes, he would eventually recall the precise date of that particular autumn. But for the time being, he was still sitting on the edge of the bed, next to this Chantal, and it seemed to him that he had woken up after suddenly dozing. He tried to pick up the thread of the conversation.

“Do you often wear this dress?”

He pointed to the black satin dress with the two yellow swallows.

“I found it here when I rented the room. It must have belonged to the previous lodger.”

“Or perhaps to you, in an earlier life.”

She frowned and stared at him suspiciously. She said to him:

“We can go and make the photocopies.”

She stood up, and Daragane had the impression that she wished to leave the room as quickly as possible. What was she frightened of? Perhaps he should not have mentioned that dress to her.

 

WHEN HE GOT BACK HOME, HE WONDERED WHETHER
he had not been dreaming. It was probably due to the Indian summer and the heat.

She had dragged him along to a stationery shop on boulevard Voltaire, at the back of which was a photocopier. The typewritten sheets were as flimsy as the paper once used to send letters “by airmail”.

They had left the shop and had gone a little way down the boulevard. It was as though she did not want to leave him again. Perhaps she was afraid that once they parted there would be no further sign of him and that Gilles Ottolini might never know who the mysterious Torstel was. But he, too, would be quite happy to remain in her company, so much did the prospect of returning on his own to his apartment make him feel apprehensive.

“If you read the dossier this evening, it may refresh your memory . . .” and she pointed to the orange cardboard folder that he was holding, which contained the photocopies. She had even insisted that the photograph of the child be reproduced. “You can call me any time tonight . . . Gilles will not be back until tomorrow afternoon. I'd very much like to know what you think of all that . . .”

And she had taken from her wallet a visiting card in the name of Chantal Grippay, with her address, 118 rue de Charonne, and her mobile phone number.

“I must go home now . . . Gilles is going to call me and I've forgotten to take my mobile.”

They had made an about-turn and walked in the direction of rue de Charonne. Neither of them said anything. They had no need to talk. She seemed to find it natural that they should walk side by side, and it had occurred to Daragane that if he took her arm she would let him do so, as though they had known one another for a long time. At the staircase to the Charonne métro station, they had gone their separate ways.

Now, in his study, he was leafing through the pages of the “dossier”, but he did not feel like reading them immediately.

To begin with, they had been typed without double spacing, and this mass of printed letters piled one on top of the other discouraged him from the start. And then, in the end, he had identified him, this Torstel. On the way back from Le Tremblay that Sunday in autumn, the man wanted to drop each of them home. But Chantal and Paul had got out at Montparnasse. From there, the métro was direct to where they lived. He stayed in the car because the man had told him that he lived not far from square du Graisivaudan, where he, Daragane, had this room.

They kept silent throughout most of the journey. The man had eventually said to him:

“I must have been to this house near Paris two or three times . . . It was your mother who took me there . . .”

Daragane had not replied. He really did try to avoid thinking about this distant period of his life. And his mother, he did not even know whether she was still alive.

The man had stopped the car by square du Graisivaudan. “Give my best wishes to your mother . . . We haven't seen one another for a very long time . . . We were part of a kind of club, with some friends . . . the Chrysalis Club . . . Listen, if by any chance she wants to get in touch with me . . .”

He handed him a visiting card on which were written “Guy Torstel” and—as far as he could remember—the address where he worked—a bookshop in the Palais-Royal. And a phone number. Later on, Daragane had lost the visiting card. But he had nevertheless copied out the name and the phone number—why?—in the address book he had at the time.

He sat at his desk. Beneath the pages of the “dossier”, he discovered the photocopy of page 47 of his novel,
Le Noir de l'été
, where there was a mention, apparently, of this Torstel. The name was underlined, by Gilles Ottolini no doubt. He read: