A dark and sticky staircase filled with choice odours from the toilets on each floor led to the top landing and a single door fitted with security locks. There was not even a concierge to provide the smallest titbit of gossip! The postman left the mail in zinc letterboxes. One of these bore, handwritten, the grandiose name of Mercedes del Loreto. After two days of watching, Madame Michette had initiated a conversation with a little old lady stepping downstairs with her shopping bag in one hand and a cigarette between her lips, her face whitened with powder and grey hair curled with tongs.
‘Ah, Mercedes del Loreto!’ the old lady had said. ‘Of course I know her. It must be fifteen years since I saw her in the building. But she’s still up there, still with us. Only yesterday I heard her shrieking. As if there was a sea lion up there … You know’ — she waved her arms and blew out her cheeks — ‘arrh, arrh … oowowoowow … What would you say to a quick glass of white at the tabac on the corner? You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you? A proper one! I say, things are looking up. Oh, they’re German. You won’t find the black market flooded with those. The Fritzes keep an eye on things. Plays by the rules, their army.’
They walked to the nearest bistro and stood at the counter.
‘Two medium-dry whites, Amédée. Anjou, please.’
The barman raised his eyebrows.
‘Madame Berthe, I don’t know if you’ve noticed … there’s a war on. Shortages. Anjou is hard to get hold of.’
‘Oh, do stop pretending. Get the bottle out. She’s a friend.’
The Anjou appeared. Madame Berthe sipped and clucked with her tongue.
‘She moved in in 1920. I know because I was a diseuse at the Bobino then. Did you see me?’
‘No,’ Madame Michette said, ‘I wasn’t living in Paris. You can’t be everywhere.’
‘I quit in 1925. Went to Gaston Baty. Do you know him?’
‘Gaston who?’
‘Baty. Théâtre Montparnasse, you know.’
‘And you’re a diseuse?’ Madame Michette repeated worriedly, a provincial who had no idea what a diseuse was.
‘No, I’m a dresser now. Marguerite Jamois, I dressed her. I did. Oh, there were plenty of actors who couldn’t do without me: Lucien Nat, Georges Vitray. There wasn’t a button out of place in Maya, in Simoom, in The Shadow of Evil. That was great theatre, Madame. What’s your name?’
‘Marceline, Marceline Michette.’
‘If you told me you were from the Auvergne it wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘I am.’
‘Like him. Monsieur Baty’s from Pélussin. Do you know it?’
‘No, I’m more from Montaigut-le-Blanc.’
‘Don’t know it. Anyway, it can’t be far. What do you want from old Mercedes?’
‘It’s for a newspaper.’
‘Journalists, I’m used to them. Always hanging round me, waiting for gossip. I suppose everyone’s got to live.’
Madame Michette ignored the jibe. What would this stupid old woman have said if she had found out she was talking to a secret agent?
‘Mercedes has paid the price for her adventures. Hasn’t gone out since 1925. In the beginning you’d hear her walking on her peg leg: knock, knock, knock … Just like Sarah Bernhardt. She was at Saint-Gervais when Bertha sent over one of her big ones.15 Bang … no more leg. A terrible thing for a lady who liked to lead the men a merry dance,’ she giggled, knocking back her white wine, ‘and then she took to her bed. Been there for fifteen years. There’s a chap who lives with her. Some say he’s her last husband, others that he’s her son. As disreputable as they come, I can tell you. One evening I found him pissing on the stairs; it was running all the way down. He looked very sheepish. Don’t say anything, don’t say a word, he begged me. He was afraid I’d tell the old girl, his old girl … I don’t know. He goes up to feed her every night and every lunchtime, and if he’s late she starts shrieking: arrh, arrh … oowowoowow …’
The barman, washing glasses behind the counter, grinned.
‘All right, Madame Berthe, still doing your impressions?’
‘My dear Amédée,’ the dresser said, ‘you’re such a peasant. I’m not doing an impression. I am Mercedes del Loreto; I do her better than she does. By the way, your wine is watered down.’
She had drunk her half-glass in a single gulp. Madame Michette bought her another. At the end of each mission she provided Palfy with a list of her expenses, which he signed and passed on to higher quarters. When peace was declared she would be reimbursed.
‘They haven’t got any facilities up there,’ Madame Berthe went on, ‘so he empties the chamber pots. He does it very discreetly, but I’ve seen him. He’s devoted to her. He’s not a bad lad, deep down. People aren’t all good or all bad, generally. There’s degrees. What did you say your paper’s name was?’
‘It’s published in the unoccupied zone.’
‘Oh, down in the free! Some folk think they’re clever, but it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other wherever you go. We’re free here too. We’re chatting, aren’t we?’
‘We are,’ Madame Michette said.
‘So that Mercedes del Loreto, she had a fine old time, I’ll say. Bankers and princes. All right, fine … but in the end we’re all the same … same pussy, up and down, not side to side … even the Chinese. Then one day a wooden overcoat … That chap who lives with the old girl, there’s one or two who knew him around here. Before the war — I mean the 14–18, not the last one; that was a joke. Yes, he used to hang around the cafés at Montparnasse. Did caricatures. Went from table to table with a sketch pad and pencil. Portrait? he’d say. People let him get on with it. They called him Léonard Twenty-Sous. That’s all I know.’
So La Garenne ceased to be a mystery. He was Mercedes del Loreto’s son, and at one time in his life had felt he was an artist. All that was left of his ambition was the way he dressed and an unrelenting meanness from his hungry years. Jean told Jesús. He was unexpectedly moved. La Garenne a failure? The old shit had at last won his sympathy. Jesús vowed not to insult him quite so coarsely in future. Palfy also appeared to be touched.
‘The thought of him emptying his mother’s chamber pots makes me want to cry. I wouldn’t have done as much for mine. Let’s leave him to his little rackets. He’ll never hit the big time. But you, my dear Jean, it’s about time you stood on your own two feet. In the space of a few months you’ve learnt most of the tricks of the most crooked trade in Paris. You should open a gallery.’
‘What with? I don’t have a sou.’
‘Our dear Marceline will provide for you. She’s from the Auvergne. A saver.’
‘Precisely. She’s from the Auvergne, so she’s not stupid.’
‘To do her duty as a patriot she’d happily hand over every franc. I’ll take care of it.’
In barely two months Palfy had gathered together what he continued to call the best capital there was: contacts. Almost nightly his place was laid at Avenue Foch, in an apartment that had become one of the most sought-after destinations in Paris. Soon after midday he was to be found at Maxim’s or Lapérouse’s or in one of those bistros at Les Halles whose doors were only opened to a select few. Paris could no longer do without Julius and Madeleine, and they could no longer do without Palfy. Thanks to Julius, the theatres effortlessly managed to get hold of the cloth and materials they needed for their costumes and sets, which, with unconscious competitiveness, had never seemed quite so sumptuous. Stagehands, judged to be indispensable for the resumption of the economic life of the country, were released from their POW camps. Sergeant-Major Michette was freed as promised. His brief period of captivity had transformed him. Glimpsed as he passed through Paris, he was greatly slimmed down; like Samson losing his hair, in losing his paunch he had lost his authority. Madame Michette was pitiless: she kept him for a few days, then sent him back to Clermont-Ferrand alone to look after the running of the Sirène. She had no use for a clod like her husband in the giddy exhilaration of her Parisian existence and her secret missions. He belonged to another epoch, a bygone era. She explained the situation to Palfy.