Honeymoon

by Patrick Modiano

  •

  Often, the dark patch – as Rigaud called him – remained invisible. They might almost have thought that the sun in Juan-les-Pins had caused it to vanish for ever. Unfortunately, it reappeared in places where they no longer expected it. On the balustrade of the beach when people were bathing. On the pavement of the road to the Cape. On the terrace of the casino. One evening, when Rigaud was just about to take the lift up to join Ingrid in their room, he heard a metallic voice behind him:

  "Still on honeymoon?"

  He turned round. The man was in from of him, looking fondly at him.

  "Yes. Still on honeymoon."

  He had replied in the most neutral way possible. Because of Ingrid.

  •

  One night he woke up at about three o'clock, and opened the window because of the stifling heat. Ingrid was asleep, and she had folded the sheet down at the foot of the bed. A glint of moonlight lit up her shoulder and the curve of her hip. He felt nervous, and couldn't get back to sleep. He got up, and tiptoed out of the room to see if he could get a packet of cigarettes. The light from the bulbs in the corridor was even dimmer than usual. The one in the lift was out, but downstairs the chandelier was shining very brightly.

  He was just about to cross the lobby when he saw the dark patch behind the reception desk. The man was alone, bending over a wide-open register and taking notes. He hadn't seen Rigaud, and there was still time for him to turn round and go back up to his room. But like the other evening, at the Princesse de Bourbon's restaurant, a sudden impulse came over him. He walked slowly over to the reception desk. The man was still absorbed in his work. When he got up to him, Rigaud put both his hands down flat on the marble. Then the man raised his head, and produced a stony smile.

  "I've come to get a packet of cigarettes," said Rigaud. "Craven A, I suppose?"

  It was the same smooth tone as the other evening.

  "But I'm disturbing you in your work. I'll come back later."

  And Rigaud openly bent over the book in which the man was writing his notes: a list of names that he had copied, the names of the guests written in the hotel register. The man snapped his notebook shut.

  "As there aren't any Craven A, maybe you'd like one of these? …"

  He offered him his packet of Caporal.

  "No, thank you."

  Rigaud had said that in a pleasant tone. He didn't take his eyes off the big hotel register, open in front of him.

  "Were you taking notes?"

  "I was gathering some information. And while I work, you are on honeymoon …"

  As he had the other evening, he gave Rigaud a fond look. And his smile revealed a gold tooth.

  Rigaud had lowered his head. In front of him, the dark patch of the suit. A crumpled suit. A too-small black tie hung down from the collar of the brown shirt. The man had lit a cigarette. Ash fell on to the lapels of his jacket. Rigaud suddenly noticed a strange smell – a mixture of tobacco, sweat, and violet scent.

  "I'm really sorry to be on honeymoon," said Rigaud. "But that's the way it is … And it can't be any other way …"

  Then he turned his back and crossed the lobby to the lift. When he reached the gate, he gazed at the man over at the reception desk. The other was also staring at him. And under Rigaud's insistent look, he finally went back to his work, trying to make it look as natural as possible. He leafed through the hotel register, and from time to time wrote something in his notebook – no doubt the name of a guest, which had escaped his attention.

  •

  In the room, Ingrid was still asleep. Rigaud sat down at the foot of the bed and looked at her smooth, childish face. He knew he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep.

  He went and leaned against the balcony. He could still watch over her from there. Ingrid's left cheek was resting on her outstretched arm. Her hand was floating in space. He heard the click of hooves that heralded the passage of the cab and wondered whether he wasn't imagining things. Why that cab, so late? The sound came nearer and he leaned over the balcony, hoping to see the white horse go by. But a clump of pines concealed the bend in the Cape road.

  The sound of the hooves grew fainter, and he couldn't play with Ingrid at seeing which of them would be the last to hear it. He shut his eyes. The sound was now almost imperceptible, down there on the road. It would fade completely, and then nothing would break the silence. He imagined himself sitting beside Ingrid in the cab going along the road. He leaned over to the driver and asked him the purpose of the journey, but the cabbie had fallen asleep. So had Ingrid. Her head had dropped down on to his shoulder, and he felt her breath in the hollow of his neck. Now he and the white horse were the only ones still awake. In his case, it was anguish that prevented him from sleeping. But the white horse? What if it suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, in the dead of night?

  •

  The next morning they were sunbathing on the pontoon, and from time to time Rigaud raised his head up to the balustrade overlooking the beach to check whether the dark patch was there. No, though. It had vanished. For how long? At what moment, at what spot in Juan-les-Pins would it reappear?

  Ingrid had left her big beach hat in their room.

  "I'll go and fetch it."

  "Oh no. Stay here."

  "Yes. I'll go."

  It was an excuse to leave the beach for a moment without alarming Ingrid. He wanted to check whether the man was in the vicinity. He would feel more relaxed if he knew where he was. But he was neither in the hotel gardens nor in the lobby. Beach hat in hand, Rigaud detoured through the Rue de l'Oratoire which led to the pine forest. The sun was oppressive, and he kept to the shady pavement. Walking some ten metres in front of him was a very tall, slightly stooping man. He recognized the hotel porter.

  The beach hat was like one his mother had worn years before. Ingrid had bought it in a boutique near the casino, where it had been the only hat in the window. Someone – perhaps his mother – had left it behind in Juan-les-Pins at the end of one summer, like the empty packet of Craven A he had found in the back of the drawer.

  The porter was walking slowly in front of him, and he didn't want to pass him. He remembered the villa, on the Cape road, where his mother sometimes used to take him to visit an American woman friend. On those days they left Cannes after lunch. He was between ten and twelve. The visit to the American friend lasted until the evening. There were a lot of people in the salon and on the landing stage down below. All of them were interested in water skiing, and the American had been the first woman to take it up. He remembered one of the guests very clearly: a suntanned man with white hair whose body was as dry as that of a mummy, and who was also very keen on water skiing. Each time, his mother would point out this guest and say: "Go and say hallo to Monsieur Bailby", before abandoning him in the garden where he played by himself all afternoon. Unpleasant memories. They had come back to him because of the hall porter now walking in front of him. He caught him up, and put a hand on his shoulder. The man turned round, surprised, and smiled at him:

  "You're a guest at the hotel, if I'm not mistaken?"

  Rigaud felt impulsively drawn towards this man. He had been in such distress since the day before, he was so very frightened that something dreadful could happen to Ingrid, that he was ready to cling to any life buoy.

  "I'm Madame Paul Rigaud's son …"

  The words had escaped him, and he felt like laughing. Why suddenly bring up his mother, a woman who had so little maternal feeling that she abandoned him for whole days in the garden of the villa, and one evening had even forgotten he was there and left without him? Some time later, when he was dying of hunger and cold in a boarding school in the Alps, the only thing she had seen fit to send him was a silk shirt.

  "Are you really Madame Paul Rigaud's son?"

  The man was looking at him as if he were the Prince of Wales.

  "But you ought to have told me before, Monsieur, that you were her son …"

  The porter had straightened his back and
seemed so moved that Rigaud felt he had pronounced a magic formula. He wondered whether he hadn't chosen Juan-les-Pins for a refuge because it was linked to his childhood. A sad, but sheltered childhood, in a world that still believed it would last for ever, or that was too frivolous to think of the future. For instance, his mother, that poor feather-brained creature … She would really not have understood the first thing about the war, or about the ghost – like Juan-les-Pins of today, where people lived from the black marker with false papers in their pockets. But here he was, using her as a last resort.

  "I remember Madame Paul Rigaud so well … She used to come to meet her friends here, in Juan … And you – you're her son …"

  He gave him a protective look. Rigaud felt sure that this man could help him.

  "I'd like to ask your advice," he stammered. "I'm in a delicate situation …"

  "We'll be able to talk better here."

  He led him under the archway of a big white building whose roofs and deserted playground Rigaud could see from their balcony: L'École Saint-Philippe. They emerged on to one of the playgrounds with a covered passageway at the far end, and the porter guided him to a plane tree at the side of the ground. He pointed to a bench at the foot of the plane tree:

  "Sit down."

  He sat down beside Rigaud.

  "I'm listening."

  This man could have been his grandfather, and had white hair and long legs, which he crossed. And he looked like an Englishman or an American.

  "It's like this…," Rigaud began, in a hesitant voice. ''I came here from Paris with a girl …"

  "Your wife, if I'm not mistaken?"

  "She isn't my wife … I got her some false papers … She had to leave Paris …

  "I understand …"

  And what if it was all only a bad dream? How could the war have any semblance of reality when you found yourself sitting under a plane tree in a playground, in the provincial calm of an early afternoon? At the other end, the classrooms, and beside you a man with white hair and an affectionate voice who had tender memories of your mother. And the reassuring, monotonous chirping of the crickets.

  "You can't stay at the hotel any longer," said the porter. "But I'll find you another refuge …"

  "Do you really think we can't stay?" Rigaud murmured. "Next week the police are going to raid all the hotels on the Côte."

  A cat sidled out of the half-open door of one of the classrooms, crossed the covered passageway and went and curled up in the middle of a pool of sunlight. And they could still hear the crickets chirping.

  "We've already been inspected by a man sent specially from Paris."

  "I know," said Rigaud. "A man in a dark suit. Do you think he's still here?"

  "Unfortunately, yes," said the porter. "He circulates between Cannes and Nice. He insists on checking all the hotel registers."

  Rigaud had put Ingrid's beach hat down on the bench beside him. She would be getting worried because he hadn't come back. He would have liked her to be with them in this playground, where you felt safe. Over there, the cat was asleep in the middle of the pool of sunlight.

  "Do you think we could hide here?" Rigaud asked.

  And he pointed to the classrooms and to the first floor, where the dormitories must be.

  "I have a better hiding place for you," said the porter. "The villa of an American lady your mother used to see a lot of in the old days."

  •

  On his way to the beach, Rigaud considered what he was going to say to Ingrid. He wouldn't tell her that police raids were expected the following week, but simply say that a friend of his mother was lending them her villa. His mother … Through what irony of fate was she now so persistently reappearing in his life, whereas before, she had never been there when he needed her? And now that she was dead, it was as if Madame Paul Rigaud wanted to be forgiven and to obliterate all the wrong she had done him.

  The beach was deserted. The few deck chairs still facing the sea hadn't even been folded. No one was there but Ingrid. She was sunbathing on the pontoon.

  "I met the porter from the Provençal," Rigaud said. "He's found us a villa. The hotel's going to close soon."

  Ingrid had sat down on the edge of the pontoon, her legs dangling. She had put on the big hat, which concealed her face.

  "It's odd," she said. "They all left at the same time." Rigaud couldn't take his eyes off the empty deck chairs. "They must have gone to have a siesta …"

  But he knew very well that on the other days, at the same time, there had still been people on the beach.

  "Shall we bathe?" said Ingrid.

  "Yes."

  She had taken off her hat and put it on the pontoon. They dived. The sea was as calm as a lake. They swam breast stroke, about fifty metres. Rigaud raised his head slightly in the direction of the beach and the pontoon. Ingrid's big hat formed a red patch on the dark wood. That was the only sign of any human presence in the vicinity.

  •

  They left the beach at around five, and Rigaud wanted to buy a newspaper. Ingrid was amazed. Ever since they had been in Juan-les-Pins they hadn't read a single paper, except a film magazine that Ingrid bought each week.

  But the newsagent was closed. And all the shops in the Rue Guy-de-Maupassant had already lowered their blinds. They were the only people walking along the pavement. They turned back.

  "Don't you think it's strange?" Ingrid asked.

  "No … Not at all …" said Rigaud, forcing himself to speak casually. "The season's over … And we didn't realize it …"

  "Why did you want to buy a paper? Has something happened?"

  "No."

  The square in the pine forest was also deserted. And on the strip of ground where games of bowls were usually going on, not a single player: had the inhabitants of Juan-les-Pins also left their town, like the holiday-makers?

  Outside the entrance to the Provençal, the cab with the white horse was waiting, and the driver was just finishing loading it with a pile of suitcases. Then he climbed up on to his seat and cracked his whip. The horse, walking even more slowly than usual, started off down the hotel drive. Ingrid and Rigaud stood at the door for a moment, waiting to hear the sound of the hooves grow fainter.

  Rigaud was filled with apprehension, which Ingrid must have shared, as she said:

  "Maybe there's going to be an earthquake …"

  And the sunlight all around them deepened the silence.

  •

  In the hotel lobby – no one. At this time of day the guests were usually sitting at the tables at the far end, having their aperitifs, and when Ingrid and Rigaud came back from the beach they were greeted by the murmur of conversation.

  The hall porter was standing behind the reception desk. "You can spend one more night here. Tomorrow, I'll take you to the villa."

  "Are we the only ones left?" Rigaud asked.

  "Yes. The others left after lunch. Because of an article yesterday in a Paris paper …"

  He turned to the pigeonholes behind him, where a few now useless keys were hanging.

  "I've changed your room," said the porter. "It's wiser … You're on the first floor … I'll bring you up some dinner later …"

  "Have you got the article?" Rigaud asked.

  "Yes."

  This time they went up the stairs and along the corridor lit by a nightlight, to Room 116. The blinds were drawn, but even so the sun filtered through and formed little rectangles of light on the floor. There was just a bare bed-frame. Rigaud went over to one of the windows and unfolded the paper the porter had given him. The headline of the article, on the front page, hit him in the eye: "The Perfumed Ghetto … Who's Who in the hotels on the Côte d'Azur." A list of names at the start of the article. His name wasn't there, as it sounded French.

  "What does the article say?" Ingrid asked.

  "Nothing of any interest …"

  He folded the paper and stuffed it into the drawer of the bedside table. A few years hence, when the war was over and the hotel
was once again full of life, a guest would discover this paper as he, Rigaud, had found the empty packet of Craven A. He went and lay down beside Ingrid on the bed-frame and held her close to him. There was not even any point now in picking up the card on the bedside table and hanging it outside the door: "Do not disturb."

  •

  He slept fitfully. He woke up suddenly and made sure that Ingrid was still lying beside him on the frame. He had wanted to lock the door, but that was a useless precaution: the porter had given him a master key which opened the communicating doors between the rooms.

  Some men guided by the dark patch had entered the lobby and were about to raid the hotel. But he wasn't at all afraid for Ingrid. The men were going along the corridors on all five floors with torches which barely pierced the darkness. And they'd have to open, one after the other, the doors to the two hundred and fifty rooms in the hotel to check whether or not they were occupied.

  He could hear the regular banging of the doors on the upper floors. The bangs came nearer, and occasionally he heard voices: the dark patch and the others had now reached their floor. His hand tightened on the master key. As soon as he heard them open the door to the room next to theirs he would wake Ingrid and they'd slip into the room on the other side. And this game of cat and mouse would continue through all the rooms on the floor. The men really hadn't the slightest chance of finding them, because they'd both be hidden in the depths of the shadows of the Provençal.

  Once again he awoke with a start. Not a sound. Not the slightest banging of a door. The blinds let the daylight through. He turned to Ingrid. Her cheek resting on her arm, she was sleeping like the child she was.

  •

  At the end of the palm-lined drive stood the villa, with its medieval-style façade surmounted by a turret. At the time when he used to come here with his mother, Rigaud was reading Walter Scott, and he imagined that the castles in Ivanhoe or Quentin Durward were like this villa. The first time he came, he had been surprised that the American woman and "Monsieur Bailby" were not dressed like the people in the illustrations of these books.

  The porter wanted to show them the garden first.