Bam! Bam! It’s starting again. A bullet has shattered the window of the bookstore. The owner had displayed a fine copy of Poèmes saturniens.
“Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne blessent moncoeur d’une langueur monotone...”
(“The long sobs / Of autumn / violins / Wound my heart /With a monotonous languor...”)
— They’re landing! He was laughing. They’re landing. The Americans will soon be in Paris.
In the window, Verlaine was shining like a sun.
Bam! A bullet for the poet!
Bam! Bam!
“Oh, I’m sorry. I frightened you, monsieur. Nothing to be afraid of, I’m not going to murder you. Not you. I’ve never even seen you before. Killing people you don’t know is something that happens only in novels... Novels! It’s coming back to me. It’s because of novels that I have to eliminate him... Excuse me? Oh no, I’m not crazy! Don’t be rude, monsieur. After all, I might kill you too. It’s taking the first step that’s difficult. And looking at you now, I think you’d be a first step that wouldn’t cost much... Shut up! You’re worthless...”
What an idiot! Listen... if you had to waste a bullet every time you met one... Eight grams of lead per fool; frankly, the joke would cost too much... No, I must stick to basics. And the basic thing here is that this guy has to die because of books.
A writer? The bad ones bore you to death. Eliminating one from time to time is a case of self-defense. But I have trouble imagining he’s a writer. He’d be more convincing as a critic. The way he has of imposing his opinion. “Good. A little tired. Poor form.” Does one kill a critic? Authors must feel like it, but I’m not one of them. If I ever was one, I forget what I might have written, thus I’m not imperishable. And we’re not talking about my death but his. A bookstore owner? A librarian? It seems to me he’s lent me some books. I didn’t even ask him to.
Here I am at Brochant. To the left, along the beltway where the no-man’s-land used to be, is the cemetery. To the right, Porte de Saint-Ouen, the field, and the flea market. I come here often. Should I say I used to come here? A second-hand clothes dealer. All sorts of old clothes, worn shoes, and for those in the know, coal, jerricans picked up at railway warehouses. You can find everything at Riton’s in Clignancourt. Including, for those who know how to ask for them, parachute silk and weapons — Lugers?
I got nabbed near his shop.
“Papers, bitte!”
As they pushed me in the car, I had time to glimpse the ticket office of the stadium, the guy inside, his cap and his embarrassment at having seen this. No more soccer match, I thought. At that moment, nothing could have been more important.
They took boulevard Berthier. Outside, life was going on. At the red light, a woman on a bicycle looked at me with infinite tenderness. Green. The driver turned off toward Malesherbes to reach avenue de Wagram. Classy part of town. Rich-looking façades, broad sidewalks. People walk there, relaxed, important, between two business meetings handled with broad, elegant gestures. There are charming, rousing encounters from 5 to 7, and pleasant memories. The car stopped in front of Hotel Mercedes, number 128. Geheimfeldpolizei.
I remember everything.
The room with chipped porcelain tiles. The bloodstains on the floor. The metal chair, the naked lightbulb dangling from its wire. The hideous bathtub, its obscene pipes.
They talked about Riton, the weapons, and the forged papers.
“Who gives the orders?”
A guy turned on the faucets in the bathtub. He was completely ordinary. I heard the water gushing from the faucet.
“We’re going to refresh your memory!”
I don’t remember anything.
When I came to, they were smoking and chatting like three buddies sharing a good story. A really great dinner. A good place to go. The girl they had the night before in a very comfortable house. Two steps from Parc Monceau. The girls of the house were very clean. Hygiene — that’s the main thing... So many guys got the clap in sleazy whorehouses. They were no longer concerned with the bathtub, nor with the metal chair, nor with the basement with the foul smell of death. They were no longer concerned with me. They went into the next room. They headed out into the scent of chestnuts, on the beautiful, straight, pleasantly shaded avenues. With the perfume of women still lingering in the early-morning hours after they’ve left such a comfortable whorehouse, so typically Parisian.
They were three good friends chatting.
You had to convince yourself of the unbelievable, go through the corridor, reach the laundry room with its door open to the street. The piles of sheets and soiled towels, like lifeless bodies. Outside, the air had never been sharper. And yet so soft and sweet in the summer evening.
You had to go down the avenue, strolling like a regular customer, despite your heart jumping in your chest. At the end, Place des Ternes, florists, white tablecloths at the café Lorraine. And the steps to the metro hurtled down four at a time, because you’re about to make it now.
I remember everything.
Look, the newspaper stand over there, at the corner of rue Balagny, I remember it too. The paper seller in his box looks like a puppet in its little theater. His nose of gnarled wood like a vine.
Ah... today it’s someone else selling the papers.
“Paris Soir, please...”
“Is that a paper?”
“What a question!”
“A new one?”
“After twenty years its novelty has worn off.”
“Twenty years... it’s been around since 1987?”
“What are you talking about? Since 1923, of course! Okay, I’ve rounded off one year. Let’s not quibble. It’s been around for twenty-one years, are you happy now?”
“You’re not confusing it with Paris-Turf?”
“What would I want with horse racing?”
“If you don’t know, it’s not for me to say...”
“You’re not very helpful.”
“I don’t have to be. Don’t get on your high horse, now.”
“Do you sell newspapers or don’t you?”
“For thirty years, monsieur, and I’ve never heard of Paris Soir. Wouldn’t it be France Soir? Or Le Parisien?”
“Of course, the name may have changed with the Liberation. It wasn’t very respectable anymore.”
“The liberation...?”
“Of Paris. For someone who sells information, you seem ill informed. Goodbye, monsieur.”
One thing’s for sure, he’s not the one I have to kill. He doesn’t open his papers, he couldn’t have lent me books. Paper sellers should never change. Nor avenues. Avenue de Clichy has its usual look. Dusty from all the humanity beating the pavement, the same worn-out hope in their pockets. And the bargain display windows, the cheap items, the fake-jewelry stores, the greasy spoons... Nothing’s missing. Yet I have trouble recognizing it.
“Ni tout à fait la même ni tout à fait une autre.” (“Neither completely the same nor completely other.”) Verlaine again. Did he go to Cité des Fleurs? The poets all go there, I suppose. As for me, rarely. Why don’t they ever want me to go out alone? Getting lost in the streets is dizzying. They don’t like me to get lost. It’s stupid. They end up finding you. They always do. The worst thing is getting lost inside. They call that wandering. But they often say all sorts of nonsense. That we are in 2007, for instance. Who told me that crap? The one I have to kill? He’ll get what he deserves. All I have to do is take the right street. Through Cité des Fleurs, since time has stopped there. A long and peaceful path, wisteria on the walls, small gardens and bourgeois houses. Nothing disrupts its peace. Neither the flow of cars on the avenue nor life swarming at the intersections. Nor the overflowing sidewalks. Right near there people walk, eat, slave away, and die too. But no echo of that ever penetrates here. Can one die in Cité des Fleurs?