He remained there motionless for a good ten minutes, looking at her with great tenderness. Then he kneeled, kissed her hand, and went down the stairs again.
I hardly had time to hide in the darkness of the sixth floor landing; and then I followed him. I knew there was nothing anyone could have done for him but I was moved by a kind of sick curiosity, professional as well as romantic.
When he got to the street, he took off his tie, stuffed it inside the pocket of his jacket, and dumped the jacket in a garbage can. It would soon be covered with oyster shells and lemon peels. Wearing only his shirt with the collar open under the snow that was now falling hard and sticking to the ground, he was walking faster than before, as if eager to put an end to the whole thing.
He turned left and took the Cité de Trévise. I love that park with its fountain and trees, its old, solid, and very bourgeois buildings. The balconies around the square were decorated with white garlands that twinkled under the snow.
Nico stared at them for a few minutes, shivering; he was standing in front of the old store that sells theater wigs at one corner of the square (it seemed right out of a Balzac novel), he was smoking a cigarette he’d had trouble lighting because of the snowflakes. He looked like he was filled with a vague longing for a life that could never have been his. Then he started walking again, along rue Bleue, then the dismal and deserted rue Lafayette, that cold thoroughfare that cuts the 9th arrondissement in two, between the first slopes of Montmartre and the flat, Hausmannian part where I live.
I followed him up to rue des Martyrs and I was almost happy for him that his last walk — for I was sure this was his last — was taking him to a more lively, joyful part of the neighborhood that I’ve always liked. On a night like this, you could feel the magic of Christmas. The windows of the antique stores on the little square Saint-Georges were still lit, and because I was walking very slowly, I spotted a magnificent barrel organ that reminded me of the one in Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game. Which made me wonder if people who live in the bourgeois 16th arrondissement are so happy or at peace with themselves after all.
The cafés on rue des Martyrs were still brightly lit, and down the street, on the right, the beautiful produce store — managed by a Moroccan guy who couldn’t care less about Christmas — was open. After reaching boulevard Rochechouart, Nico turned left toward Pigalle. The sex shops splattered the night with their bright lights, but the whores, freezing under their much-too-short synthetic fur coats, didn’t even try to seduce that strange passerby wearing only his shirt in the snow, disheveled, lonesome, and disgraced, already a shadow.
On Place Blanche, Nico got into a big black limousine that seemed to be waiting for him there. It went around the traffic circle and down toward the Opéra. The snow on the ground was so thick by now that the limousine had a hard time moving forward and I could easily follow it. My feet were freezing inside my cowboy boots and I said to myself that at least Nico was out of the cold. Rue Blanche, La Trinité Church, less forbidding than usual under the snow, and the huge Christmas tree twinkling in the little park. The doors of the church were wide open, a well of light, like the mouth of hell. A loudspeaker played “Silent Night” over and over for the few faithful who were cautiously walking to midnight mass. But I don’t like hymns or mangers anymore. I’ve lived too long.
The limousine was moving forward, solemnly, silently, like a black whale lit by the bluish whiteness of the snow. Behind the Opéra, without slowing down — granted, it wasn’t going very fast — one of its doors opened up and a body fell out. Finally, the car accelerated in the mud and disappeared in the direction of boulevard Haussmann.
The intersection was completely empty; the Santa Claus of the Galeries Lafayette, tucked away inside the warmth of its department store window, was moving his arms mechanically for nobody, with his ugly, hairless papier-mâché reindeer standing in the cotton snow.
I walked up to Nico. He had stopped breathing and his confession, scribbled in a shaky handwriting — I have betrayed — was pinned to his chest with a knife. He looked like a frightened little boy. I closed his eyes and left.
The Godfather, one of my favorite movies, only came to my mind when I was in front of the Opéra. I thought of all the killings and the death of Al Pacino’s daughter at the end, on the steps of the Palermo opera. The scene amused me and I think I even smiled. How theatrical these Italians are! But really, it would have had more panache if they had disposed of the body in front of the Opéra, at the foot of the majestic staircase rather than behind it. The way they had done it here, it looked kind of lame. The 9th arrondissement mafiosi were small-time gangsters.
Cars were scarce on Place de l’Opéra but you could already see a few dressed-up silhouettes: early revelers in suits and long dresses returning home after the twelve strikes of midnight; frail silhouettes against the snow carefully making their way — they could have been right out of a Dauchot painting.
I came to know Dauchot well, at the end of his life. I had paid him a visit twenty years earlier in his studio towering above Pigalle and we had become friends. I would drop by his place sometimes in the morning and have a drink there, when I was depressed after a night stake-out. He was the only friend of mine who could give me a dry pastis, like Robert Mitchum, apparently, when he was on a shoot in Corsica, at 8 a.m. He would show me the painting he was working on, though at the end, the poor guy wasn’t painting much. We didn’t talk a whole lot but we were fond of each other. I love friendship. I sure miss that poor old drunk.
Rue du Faubourg Montmartre was almost magical, surreal, in the quiet of the snow. But my heart wasn’t into dreaming.
Fifty yards beyond the intersection, flying over the snow, the screams of the crazy woman pierced the silence. I had never heard her howl so loudly, to the point of exhaustion. You could feel she was breathless. A few seconds of silence and it would start up again, a long, strident sob, inhuman, so human, unbearable. The nearer I came, the more I felt for her. I was sorry that she hadn’t died in her sleep, that she had seen the things her grandson left. Nico, out there, under the dead gaze of Santa Claus, had probably turned into a vague snow heap by now.
A police van came skidding along the buried street. It stopped in front of the crazy woman’s building. People in the neighborhood must have called to complain, finally. Nobody’s very patient on Christmas Eve...
On my way up to my place, I heard Tino Roastbeef’s stupid “Petit Papa Noël” song trumpeting out from under a door. I wasn’t in the mood. I nearly rang the doorbell of my downstairs neighbor, an eviction officer with ugly daughters, and acted tough, like a private dick, threatening to smash his face if he didn’t turn the sound down. But then, why bother? I was too tired, even to talk.
When I got home, I sank into my Voltaire chair and bour-bonized. I finished off everything I had left. And I listened to “Wild Horses” over and over again, not the Stones’ version but my buddy Elliott Murphy’s Last of the Rock Stars, last of the bluesmen, the ultimate loner, like Dylan, like Neil Young. He lives not far from here, on rue Beauregard, on the other side of this arrondissement. Sometimes when I feel blue, I go visit him; he takes his guitar and plays some Willie Dixon for me. Beautiful, my friends, just beautiful.
But tonight, it was Christmas and it was too late. And Elliott, after all, is a married man and a father.
So I kept on playing “Wild Horses,” all alone.