‘You ought to ride,’ she says. ‘If you like, I’ll take you to the stables tomorrow.’
Had he dozed off? I hadn’t forgotten that he often closed his eyes, but that it was only pretence.
‘You’ll see, it’s so wonderful, taking long rides in the forest!’
He had put on a lot of weight in ten years. I’d never seen his complexion so livid.
‘Are you a friend of Jean’s?’ she asked me.
‘Not yet, but I hope to be.’
She seemed surprised by this reply.
‘And I hope that we’ll be friends, you and I,’ I added.
‘Of course. You’re so charming.’
‘Do you know this. . Baron Deyckecaire?’
‘Not very well.’
‘What does he do, exactly?’
‘I don’t know; you really should ask Jean.’
‘I find him rather odd, myself.’
‘Oh, he’s probably a black marketeer. .’
At midnight, Murraille wanted to hear the last news bulletin. The newsreader’s voice was even more strident than usual. After announcing the news briefly, he gave forth a kind of commentary on a hysterical note. I imagined him behind his mike: sickly, in black tie and shirtsleeves. He finished with: ‘Goodnight to you all.’
‘Thanks,’ said Marcheret.
Murraille led me aside. He rubbed the side of his nose, put his hand on my shoulder.
‘Look, what do you think. . I’ve just had an idea. . How would you like to contribute to the magazine?’
‘Really?’
I had stuttered a little and the result was ridiculous: Re-re-really?. .
‘Yes, I’d very much like to have a boy like you working on C’est la vie. Assuming you don’t think journalism beneath you?’
‘Not at all!’
He hesitated, then in a more friendly tone:
‘I don’t want to make things awkward for you, in view of the rather. . singular. . nature of my magazine. .’
‘I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.’
‘That’s very courageous of you.’
‘But what would you want me to write?’
‘Oh, whatever you like: a story, a topical piece, an article of the “Seen & Heard” variety. Take your time.’
These last few words he spoke with a curious insistence, looking me straight in the eye,
‘All right?’ He smiled. ‘So you’re willing to get your hands dirty?’
‘Why not?’
We rejoined the others. Marcheret and Sylviane Quimphe were talking about a night-club which had opened in the Rue Jean-Mermoz. My father, who had joined in the conversation, said he liked the American bar in the Avenue de Wagram, the one run by a former racing cyclist.
‘You mean the Rayon d’Or?’ Marcheret asked.
‘No, it’s called the Fairyland,’ said my father.
‘You’re wrong, Fat Man! The Fairyland is in Rue Fontaine!’
‘I don’t think so. .’ said my father.
‘47 Rue Fontaine. Shall we go and check?’
‘You’re right, Guy,’ sighed my father. ‘You’re right. .’
‘Do you know the Château-Bagatelle?’ Sylviane Quimphe asked. ‘I hear it’s very amusing.’
‘Rue de Clichy?’ my father wanted to know.
‘No, no!’ Marcheret cried. ‘Rue Magellan! You’re confusing it with Marcel Dieu-donné. You always get everything mixed up! Last time we were supposed to meet at L’Écrin on the Rue Joubert, Monsieur here waited for us until midnight at Cesare Leone on the Rue de Hanovre. Isn’t that right, Jean?’
‘It was hardly the end of the world,’ grunted Murraille.
For a quarter of an hour, they reeled off the names of bars and cabaret clubs as though Paris, France, the universe itself, were a red-light district, a vast al fresco brothel.
‘What about you, Monsieur Alexandre, do you go out a lot?’
‘No.’
‘Well then, my boy, we shall introduce you to the “heady pleasures of Parisian nightlife”.’
They went on drinking, talking of other clubs some of whose names dazzled me: L’Armorial, Czardas, Honolulu, Schubert, Gipsy’s, Monico, L’Athénien, Melody’s, Badinage. They were all talking volubly as though they would never stop. Sylviane Quimphe unbuttoned her blouse, and the faces of my father, Marcheret and Murraille flushed an unsettling crimson hue. I dimly recognised a few more names: Le Triolet, Monte-Cristo, Capurro’s, Valencia. My mind was reeling. In the colonies — I thought — the evenings must drag on interminably like this. Neurasthenic settlers mulling over their memories and trying to fight back the fear that suddenly grips them, that they will die at the next monsoon.
My father got up. He said he was tired and had some work to finish that night.
‘Are you planning to become a counterfeiter, Chalva?’ asked Marcheret, his voice slurred. ‘Don’t you think, Monsieur Alexandre, that he’s got the face of a forger?’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ my father said. He shook hands with Murraille.
‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured to him. ‘I’ll take care of all that.’
‘I’m relying on you, Chalva.’
When he came up to say goodbye to me, I said:
‘I must go, too. We could walk part of the way together.’
‘I’d be delighted.’
‘Must you go so soon?’ Sylviane Quimphe asked me.
‘If I were you,’ Marcheret quipped, wagging a finger to my father ‘I wouldn’t trust him!’
Murraille walked us out on to the veranda.
‘I look forward to your article,’ he said. ‘Be bold!’
We walked in silence. He seemed surprised when I turned up the Chemin du Bornage with him rather than going straight on, to the auberge. He gave me a furtive glance. Did he recognize me? I wanted to ask him outright, but I remembered how skilled he was at dodging awkward questions. Hadn’t he told me himself one day: ‘I could make a dozen prosecutors throw in the towel’? We passed beneath a street lamp. A few metres farther on, we found ourselves once more in darkness. The only houses I could see looked derelict. The wind rustled in the leaves. Perhaps in the intervening decade he had forgotten that I ever existed. All the plotting and scheming I had done just so that I could walk next to this man. . I thought of the drawing-room of the ‘Villa Mektoub’, of the faces of Murraille, Marcheret, and Sylviane Quimphe, of Maud Gallas behind the bar, and Grève crossing the garden. . Every gesture, every word, the moments of panic, the long vigils, the worry during these interminable days. I felt an urge to throw up. . I had to stop to catch my breath. He turned to me. To his left, another streetlight shrouded him in pale light. He stood motionless, petrified, and I had to stop myself reaching out to touch him, to reassure myself that this was not a dream. As I walked on and I thought back to the walks we used to take in Paris long ago. We would stroll side by side, as we were tonight. In fact in the time we had known each other, this was all we have ever done. Walked, without either of us breaking the silence. It was no different now. After a bend in the path, we came to the gate of the ‘Priory’. I said softly: ‘Beautiful night, isn’t it?’ He replied abstractedly: ‘Yes, a lovely night.’ We were a few yards from the gate and I was waiting for the moment when he would shake hands and take his leave. Then I would watch him disappear into the darkness and stand there, in the middle of the road, in the bewildered state of a man who may just have let slip the chance of a lifetime.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is where I live.’
He nodded shyly towards the house which was just visible at the end of the drive. The roof shimmered softly with moonlight.
‘Oh? So this is it?’
‘Yes.’
An awkwardness between us. He had probably been trying to hint that we should say goodnight, but saw that I was hesitant.