I’m trying today to count all the faces I saw on the front porch or in the living room—without being able to identify most of them. No matter. If I could put names to those ten or so faces parading through my memory, it would prove embarrassing for some people who are still alive. They’d remember that they used to keep bad company.
The ones whose images remain the clearest are Roger Vincent, Jean D., and Andrée K., who they said was “the wife of a big-shot doctor.” They came to the house two or three times a week. They went to have lunch at the Robin des Bois inn with Annie and Little Hélène, and afterward they’d sit around a while longer in the living room. Or else they stayed for dinner at the house.
Sometimes Jean D. came alone. Annie would bring him from Paris in her 4CV. He was the one who seemed closest to Annie and who had probably introduced her to the two others. Jean D. and Annie were the same age. When Jean D. came to visit with Roger Vincent, it was always in Roger Vincent’s American convertible. Sometimes Andrée K. came with them, and she would sit in the front seat of the American car, next to Roger Vincent; Jean D. was in back. Roger Vincent must have been around forty-five at the time, and Andrée K. thirty-five.
I remember the first time we saw Roger Vincent’s American car parked in front of the house. It was the end of the morning, after class. I hadn’t yet been expelled from the Jeanne d’Arc school. From a distance, that huge convertible, with its tan body and red leather seats gleaming in the sun, had surprised my brother and me as much as if we’d turned a corner in the road and suddenly found ourselves face to face with the marquis de Caussade. Moreover, we’d had the same thought at the same moment, as we later confided to each other: the car belonged to the marquis de Caussade, who was back in the village after all his adventures and had been invited over by my father.
I said to Snow White:
“Whose car is that?”
“A friend of your godmother’s.”
She always called Annie my “godmother,” and it was in fact the case that we’d been baptized one year earlier at the church of Saint-Martin de Biarritz and that my mother had asked Annie to act as my godmother.
When we went inside the house, the living room door was open and Roger Vincent was sitting on the couch, next to the bow window.
“Come say hello,” said Little Hélène.
She had just poured out three glasses and was stopping up one of the liquor decanters with the enamel tags. Annie was on the telephone.
Roger Vincent stood up. He seemed very tall. He was wearing a glen plaid suit. His hair was white, well groomed, and brushed back, but he didn’t seem old. He leaned toward us and smiled.
“Hello, children …”
He shook our hands in turn. I had put down my schoolbag to shake his. I was wearing my gray smock.
“Are you just getting home from school?”
“Yes,” I said.
“School going well?”
“Yes.”
Annie had hung up the phone and joined us; Little Hélène set the liquor tray on the coffee table in front of the couch. She handed Roger Vincent a glass.
“Patoche and his brother live here,” Annie said.
“Well, then, to the health of Patoche and his brother,” said Roger Vincent, raising his glass with a wide smile.
In my memory, that smile remains Roger Vincent’s main attribute: it was always playing about his lips. Roger Vincent bathed in that smile, which was distant and dreamy rather than jovial, and which enveloped him like a very light mist. There was something muffled about that smile, as about his voice and bearing. Roger Vincent never made any noise. You never heard him coming, and when you turned around, there he was behind you. From the window of our room, we sometimes saw him arrive at the wheel of his American car. It stopped in front of the house like a speedboat with its motor cut off, carried in by the tide to berth silently on the shore. Roger Vincent stepped out of the car, his movements slow, his smile on his lips. He never slammed the door, but rather closed it gently.
That day, they were still in the living room when we finished our lunch with Snow White in the kitchen. Mathilde was tending the rose bush she had planted on the first terrace of the garden, near the grave of Doctor Guillotin.
I was holding my satchel, and Snow White was going to take me back to the Jeanne d’Arc school for afternoon classes, when Annie, who had appeared in the doorway to the living room, said to me:
“Study well, Patoche …”
Behind her, I saw Little Hélène and Roger Vincent smiling his immutable smile. No doubt they were about to leave the house to go have lunch at the Robin des Bois inn.
“Are you walking to school?” asked Roger Vincent.
“Yes.”
Even when he talked, he smiled.
“I can take you in the car, if you like …”
“Did you see Roger Vincent’s car?” Annie asked me.
“Yes.”
She always called him “Roger Vincent,” with respectful affection, as if his first and last names were inseparable. I sometimes heard her on the telephone: “Hello, Roger Vincent … How are you, Roger Vincent …” She used the formal vous. She and Jean D. had great admiration for him. Jean D. called him “Roger Vincent” as well. When Annie and Jean D. talked about him, they seemed to be telling “Roger Vincent stories,” as if they were recounting ancient legends. Andrée K., “the wife of the big-shot doctor,” called him just Roger, and she said tu.
“Would you like it if I took you to school in my car?” asked Roger Vincent.
He had guessed what we wanted, my brother and I. We both climbed into the front seat next to him.
He backed majestically up the gentle slope of the avenue, and the car followed Rue du Docteur-Dordaine.
We glided on slack water. I couldn’t hear the sound of the motor. It was the first time my brother and I had ridden in a convertible. And that car was so big that it covered the entire width of the street.
“Here’s my school …”
He stopped the car and, stretching out his arm, opened the passenger door so that I could get out.
“Good luck, Patoche.”
I was proud to hear him call me Patoche, as if he’d known me for a long time. My brother was now all alone next to him, and he looked even smaller on that huge red leather seat. I turned around before going into the courtyard of the Jeanne d’Arc school. Roger Vincent waved at me. He was smiling.
Jean D. didn’t have an American convertible, but he had a fat wristwatch on whose face we could read the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years. He explained the complicated mechanism of that watch with its many buttons. He was much more at ease with us than Roger Vincent. And younger.
He wore a suede windbreaker, sporty turtleneck sweaters, and shoes with crepe soles. He, too, was tall and thin. Dark hair and a face with regular features. When his brown eyes rested on us, they were lit by a mix of mischief and sadness. His eyes were always widening, as if everything astonished him. I envied him his haircut: a long brush cut, whereas in my case, every two weeks the barber gave me a crew cut so short that the hairs pinched when I ran my hand over my scalp and above my ears. But there was nothing I could say. The barber simply picked up his clippers without asking my opinion.
Jean D. came to the house more often than the others. Annie always brought him in her 4CV. He had lunch with us and always sat next to Annie, at the large dining room table. Mathilde called him “my little Jean,” and she didn’t show the same reserve with him as she did with the other visitors. He called Little Hélène “Linou”—the same as Mathilde did. He always said, “How’s it going, Linou?”—and he called me “Patoche,” like Annie.
He lent my brother and me his watch. We were able to wear it, taking turns, for a whole week. The leather strap was too big, so he made another hole in it to keep it tight around our wrists. I wore that watch to the Jeanne d’Arc school and showed it off to the schoolmates huddled around me in the playground that day. Maybe the principal n
oticed that huge watch on my wrist, and saw me from her window getting out of Roger Vincent’s American car … Then she thought that was quite enough of that and that my place was not at the Jeanne d’Arc school.
“What sort of books do you read?” Jean D. asked me one day.
They were all having coffee in the living room after lunch: Annie, Mathilde, Little Hélène, and Snow White. It was a Thursday. We were waiting for Frede, who was supposed to arrive with her nephew. We had decided, my brother and I, to venture into the great hall of the chateau that afternoon, as we’d already done with my father. The presence of Frede’s nephew at our sides would bolster our courage.
“Patoche reads a ton,” answered Annie. “Isn’t that so, Snow White?”
“He reads way too much for his age,” said Snow White.
My brother and I had dipped a lump of sugar into Annie’s coffee cup and crunched it, as our ceremony required. Afterward, when they’d finished their coffee, Mathilde would read their future in the empty cups—“in the dregs,” as she said.
“So what do you read?” asked Jean D.
I told him adventure stories: Jules Verne, The Last of the Mohicans … but I preferred The Three Musketeers because of the fleur de lys on Milady’s shoulder.
“You should read pulps,” said Jean D.
“Jean, you’re crazy,” said Annie, laughing. “Patoche is way too young for pulps …”
“He’s got plenty of time ahead of him to read pulps,” said Little Hélène.
Apparently, neither Mathilde nor Snow White knew what “pulps” were. They kept silent.
A few days later, he returned to the house in Annie’s 4CV. It was raining that late afternoon, and Jean D. was wearing a fur-lined coat called a “Canadienne.” My brother and I were listening to the radio, both seated at the dining room table, and when we saw him come in with Annie, we got up to greet him.
“Here,” said Jean D., “I brought you a pulp …”
He took a black-and-yellow-covered book from the pocket of his jacket and handed it to me.
“Pay no attention, Patoche,” said Annie. “He’s just joking. That’s not a book for you …”
Jean D. looked at me with his slightly widened eyes, his sad, tender gaze. At certain moments, I had the sense that he was a child, like us. Annie often spoke to him in the same tone she used with us.
“No, seriously …” said Jean D. “I’m sure you’ll like this book.”
I took it so as not to hurt his feelings. Still today, whenever I come across one of the black-and-yellow covers of the Série Noire, a deep, slightly drawling voice echoes in my head, the voice of Jean D., who that evening repeated to me and my brother the title written on the book he’d given us: Don’t Touch the Loot.
Was it the same day? It was raining. We had accompanied Snow White to the news dealer’s because she wanted to buy some stationery. When we left the house, Annie and Jean D. were both sitting in the 4CV, parked in front of the door. They were talking and were so absorbed in their conversation that they didn’t see us, even though I waved at them. Jean D. had pulled the collar of his Canadienne up around his neck. When we returned, they were still in the 4CV. I leaned toward them, but they didn’t even look. They were talking and they both had serious faces.
Little Hélène was playing solitaire on the dining room table and listening to the radio. Mathilde must have been in her bedroom. My brother and I went up to ours. Through the window, I watched the 4CV in the rain. They stayed in it, talking, all the way to dinnertime. What secrets could they have been sharing?
Roger Vincent and Jean D. often came for dinner at the house, along with Andrée K. Other guests arrived after dinner. On those evenings, they all stayed in the living room until very late. From our bedroom we could hear shouts and bursts of laughter. And the phone ringing. And the doorbell. We ate dinner at seven-thirty in the kitchen, with Snow White. The dining room table was already set for Roger Vincent, Jean D., Andrée K., Annie, Mathilde, and Little Hélène. Little Hélène cooked for them, and they all said she was “a real cordon bleu.”
Before going up to bed, we went into the living room to say good night. We were in our pajamas and bathrobes—two plaid flannel bathrobes that Annie had given us as presents.
The others would join them later in the evening. I couldn’t help watching them, through the slats of the blinds in our room, once Snow White had turned out the lights and wished us good night. They came, one by one, and rang at the door. I could easily see their faces under the bright light of the bulb above the porch. Some of them have been engraved indelibly in my memory. And I’m amazed the police never questioned me: children see things, after all. They also hear things.
“You have very handsome bathrobes,” said Roger Vincent.
And he smiled.
We first shook Andrée K.’s hand, who always sat on the chair with the flowered upholstery next to the telephone. People called her while she was at the house. Little Hélène, who usually picked up, would say:
“Andrée, it’s for you …”
Andrée K. stretched out her arm to us nonchalantly. She smiled, too, but her smile didn’t last as long as Roger Vincent’s.
“Good night, children.”
She had freckles on her face, prominent cheekbones, green eyes, and light brown hair cut in bangs. She smoked a lot.
We shook Roger Vincent’s hand, who was always smiling. Then Jean D.’s. We kissed Annie and Little Hélène good night. Before leaving the living room with Snow White, Roger Vincent complimented us again on the elegance of our bathrobes.
We were at the foot of the stairs when Jean D. stuck his head through the half-open door to the living room.
“Sleep tight.”
He looked at us with his tender, slightly widened eyes. He gave us a wink and said in a lower voice, as if it were our secret:
“Don’t touch the loot.”
One Thursday, Snow White took a day off. She had gone to visit family in Paris and had left with Annie and Mathilde after lunch, in the 4CV. We stayed home in the care of Little Hélène. We were playing in the garden at setting up a canvas tent Annie had given me for my last birthday. Around midafternoon, Roger Vincent came by, alone. He and Little Hélène talked together in the courtyard of the house, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Little Hélène told us she had to run an errand in Versailles and asked us to come with them.
We were thrilled to ride in Roger Vincent’s American car again. It was April, during Easter vacation. Little Hélène sat in front. She was wearing her riding breeches and her cowboy jacket. We were sitting on the huge back seat, my brother and I, and our feet didn’t reach the floor of the car.
Roger Vincent drove slowly. He looked back toward us, with his smile:
“Would you like me to turn on the radio?”
The radio? So you could listen to the radio in this car? He pushed an ivory button on the dashboard, and instantly we heard music.
“Should I turn it up or down, boys?” he asked us.
We didn’t dare answer. We listened to the music coming from the dashboard. And then a woman started singing in a raspy voice.
“That’s Edith singing, boys,” said Roger Vincent. “She’s a friend …”
He asked Little Hélène:
“Do you still see Edith?”
“Now and then,” said Little Hélène.
We drove down a large avenue and arrived in Versailles. The car stopped at a red light, and we admired, on a lawn to our left, a clock whose numbers were made of flowerbeds.
“The next time,” Little Hélène said to us, “I’ll take you to see the palace.”
She asked Roger Vincent to stop at a store where they sold used furniture.
“Boys, you stay here in the car,” said Roger Vincent. “Watch the car for me …”
We were proud to be entrusted with such an important mission and we watched the comings and goings of the passers-by like hawks. Behind the window of the store, Roger Vincent a
nd Little Hélène were talking with a dark-haired man wearing a raincoat and a mustache. They spoke for a very long time. They had forgotten about us.
They came out of the store. Roger Vincent was holding a leather suitcase that he stashed in the trunk. He got back behind the wheel, with Little Hélène next to him. He turned back toward me:
“Anything to report?”
“No … Nothing …” I said.
“So much the better,” said Roger Vincent.
On the way back, in Versailles, we followed an avenue at the end of which rose a brick church. Several fairground stalls occupied the median strip, around a glittering bumper car track. Roger Vincent parked along the curb.
“Shall we take them for a ride in the bumper cars?” he asked Little Hélène.
The four of us waited at the side of the track. Music blared very loud through speakers. Only three cars were being used by customers, two of which chased the third and rammed it at the same time, on either side, producing screams and shouts of laughter. The trolley poles left trails of sparks along the ceiling of the track. But what captivated me more than anything was the color of the cars: turquoise, pale green, yellow, purple, bright red, mauve, pink, midnight blue … They stopped moving and their occupants left the track. My brother climbed into a yellow car with Roger Vincent, and I, with Little Hélène, into a turquoise one.
We were the only ones on the track, and we didn’t ram each other. Roger Vincent and Little Hélène drove. We circled the track, and Little Hélène and I followed Roger Vincent and my brother’s car. We zigzagged among the other cars, empty and motionless. The music played less loudly, and the man who had sold us our tickets looked forlorn, standing at the side of the track as if we were the last customers ever.
It was nearly dark. We stopped at the edge of the track. I looked one more time at all those cars with their bright colors. We talked about it, my brother and I, in our room after lights out. We had decided to build a track in the courtyard the next day, with old planks from the storage shed. Naturally, it wouldn’t be easy to get hold of a bumper car, but maybe you could find old ones that didn’t work. It was mainly the color that interested us: I couldn’t decide between mauve and turquoise; my brother had a predilection for very pale green.
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