"Are you on your own?" I asked.
"He went to get some sleep. He's going to take over later."
"Do you work all night?"
"All night."
"Even in the summer?"
"Yes. It doesn't bother me. I don't like sleeping."
"If you ever need me," I said, "I could stand in for you whenever you like. I live in the district now, and I've nothing else to do."
I sat down on the chair opposite him.
"Would you like some coffee?" he said.
"With pleasure."
He went into the office and came back with two cups of coffee.
"I put a lump of sugar in. Is that all right?
We were now sitting on our chairs and sipping our coffee.
"Do you like the flat?"
"Very much," I said.
"I rented it from my friend, too, for three months, before I found a studio flat in the neighbourhood."
"And the flat was empty, as it is now?"
"All that was left was an old pair of skis in a cupboard."
"They're still there," I told him. "And your friend has no idea where to find the former owner?"
"He may be dead, you know."
He put his coffee cup down on the pavement by his feet.
"If he isn't dead, he might get in touch all the same," I said.
He smiled at me with a shrug of the shoulders. We remained silent for a few moments. He seemed thoughtful.
"In any case," he said, "he was a man who must have liked winter sports …"
•
Back at the hotel, I opened the folder containing my notes on Ingrid's life, and added the page torn out of the magazine and the envelope addressed to Rigaud. Yes, 3, Rue de Tilsitt had indeed been where Madame Paul Rigaud had lived. I had written it down on a bit of paper after checking in an old directory. During the few days that Ingrid had lived with Rigaud in the Rue de Tilsitt it had been snowing in Paris, and they hadn't left the flat. Through the big windows in the salon they looked at the snow covering the Place and the avenues all around, and enveloping the city in a blanket of silence, softness and sleep.
•
I woke up at about noon, and again hoped to get a message or a phone call from Annette before the end of the day. I went and had breakfast in the café on the other side of the square with the fountains. When I got back, I told the patron that I would be in my room until the evening, so that he wouldn't forget to come and fetch me if my wife phoned.
I've thrown open both halves of the window. A radiant summer's day. Nothing like the heatwave of the previous days. A group of children guided by monitors is making its way towards the former Colonial Museum. They stop, and surround the ice cream seller. The water in the fountains is sparkling in the sunlight, and I have no difficulty in transporting myself from this peaceful July afternoon where I am at the moment to the far-off winter when Ingrid met Rigaud for the first time. There's no frontier between the seasons any more, or between the past and the present.
•
It was one of the last days in November. As usual, she had left the dancing class at the Châtelet Theatre in the late afternoon. She hadn't much time now to get back to her father in the hotel in the Boulevard Ornano where they had been living since the beginning of the autumn: that evening the curfew was going to start at six throughout the arrondissement, because there had been an attack the day before on some German soldiers in the Rue Championnet.
She had earned some money for the first time in her life by dancing in the chorus, with some of her classmates, for the whole of the previous week, in a production of Vienna Waltzes at the Châtelet. A fee of fifty francs. Night was already falling, and she crossed the square to get to the entrance to the métro. Why did she feel so discouraged this evening at the prospect of going home to her father? Doctor Jougan had gone to live in Montepellier and he wouldn't be able to help her father any more, as he had so far done by employing him in his clinic in Auteuil. He had suggested that her father should join him in Montpellier, in the unoccupied zone, but he would have had to cross the demarcation line illegally … Of course, the doctor had asked the other people in the Auteuil clinic to look after her father, but they had neither Doctor Jougan's generosity nor his courage: they were afraid it might be discovered that an Austrian, registered as a Jew, was working clandestinely in their clinic …
She felt suffocated in the métro carriage, crammed up against all the other passengers. It was more crowded than usual, no doubt because of the six o'clock curfew. At the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis station, so many people got in that the doors wouldn't shut. She ought to have taken a bicycletaxi with the fifty francs from Vienna Waltzes. Or even a horse-drawn cab. In the time it took to get to the Boulevard Ornano, she would have imagined that the war was over and that she was travelling through a different town in a happier period than this one, the period of Vienna Waltzes, for instance.
•
She didn't get out at Simplon as she usually did, but at Barbès-Rochechouart. It was half past five. She preferred to walk to the hotel in the fresh air.
There were groups of German soldiers and French policemen at the entrance to the Boulevard Barbès, as if it was a frontier post. She had a presentiment that if she went down the boulevard like the other people going home to the eighteenth arrondissement, the frontier would close behind her for ever.
She walked down the Boulevard Rochechouart on the left-hand pavement, which was in the ninth arrondissement. From time to time she glanced at the opposite pavement which marked the limit of the curfew and where it was darker, even though it wasn't six yet: still fifteen minutes before the frontier closed, and if she didn't cross it before then she wouldn't be able to get back to her father at the hotel. The métro stations in the district would also close at six. In the Place Pigalle, another frontier post. German soldiers were surrounding a lorry. But she walked straight on, on the same pavement, along the Boulevard de Clichy. Now only ten minutes. Place Blanche. There, she stopped for a few moments. She was just about to cross the Place and the frontier, she took three steps, and stopped again. She walked back on the pavement in the Place Blanche, on the ninth arrondissement side. Now only five minutes. She mustn't give way to the impulse to let herself be sucked into the darkness over on the other side. She must stick to the ninth arrondissement pavement. She walked up and down outside the Café des Palmiers and the chemist's in the Place Blanche. She forced herself not to think of anything, and especially not of her father. She counted. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-six, twenty-seven … Six o'clock. Five past six. Ten past six. There. It was over.
•
She must go on walking straight ahead on the same pavement, and she must avoid looking over on to the other side where the curfew zone began. She quickened her pace as if she were hurrying over a narrow gangway and all the time afraid of toppling over into the void. She hugged the walls of the buildings and of the Lycée Jules-Ferry, where she had still been a pupil the year before.
When she had crossed the Place de Clichy, she finally turned her back on the eighteenth arrondissement. She was leaving it behind her, that district now forever drowned in the curfew. It was as if she had jumped from a sinking ship just in time. She didn't want to think about her father because she still felt too close to that dark, silent zone from which no one would ever be able to escape now. For her part, she had only just managed it.
She no longer felt the sense of suffocation that had come over her in the métro, and a little while before at the Barbès-Rochechouart crossroads at the sight of the motionless soldiers and policemen. It seemed to her that the avenue opening out in front of her was a big forest path which led, farther on, to the west, to the sea whose spray the wind was already blowing in her face.
•
Just as she reached the Étoile, it began to rain. She sheltered under a porch in the Rue de Tilsitt. On the ground floor of the next building there was a teashop called Le Rendez-vous. She hesitated a long time before
going in, because of her sports coat and old pullover.
She sat down at a table in the back. There were not many customers that evening. She jumped: the pianist on the other side of the room was playing one of the tunes from Vienna Waltzes. A waitress brought her a cup of chocolate and a macaroon and gave her an odd look. She suddenly wondered whether she had a right to be there. Perhaps this teashop was forbidden to "unaccompanied minors". Why did that expression come to her mind? Unaccompanied minors. She was sixteen, but she looked twenty. She tried to bite into the macaroon but it was hard, and the chocolate was a very pale, almost mauve colour. It really didn't taste of chocolate. Would the fifty francs she'd earned from Vienna Waltt.es be enough to pay the bill?
When the teashop closed, she would find herself outside, in the rain. And she would have to look for somewhere to shelter until midnight. And after the curfew? Panic gripped her. She hadn't thought of that when she was walking along, hugging the walls to escape the other curfew, the six o'clock one. She had noticed a couple of young men at a table near hers. One was wearing a light grey suit. His chubby face was in contrast to the severity of his gaze and his thin-lipped mouth. What made his gaze severe and staring was a big patch over his right eye. His blond hair was combed backwards. The other was dark, and wearing a shabby tweed jacket. They were talking in low voices. Her eyes had met those of the dark one. The other snapped open a gold-plated cigarette case, put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a lighter that was also gold-plated. It looked as if he was explaining something to the dark one. Occasionally he raised his voice, but the piano music drowned his words. The dark one listened, and nodded from time to time. She met his eyes again, and he smiled at her.
•
The fair-haired man in the light grey suit waved a nonchalant goodbye to the other, and went out. The dark one stayed alone at the table. The pianist was still playing the tune from Vienna Waltt.es· She was afraid that closing time had come.
Everything around her began to swim. She tried to stop her nervous trembling. She gripped the edge of the table and kept her eyes fixed on the cup of chocolate and the macaroon she hadn't been able to eat.
The dark young man stood up and went over to her. "You look as if you're not feeling well …"
He helped her to stand up. Outside, they took a few steps in the rain and she felt better. He was holding her arm.
"I didn't go home ... In the eighteenth arrondissement ... because of the curfew ..."
She had said these words very quickly, as if she wanted to get rid of a great weight. Suddenly she began to cry. He pressed her arm.
"I live very near here ... You can come home with me ..."
They walked round the bend in the road. It was just as dark as it had been earlier when she was on the border of the curfew, and fighting with all her strength against the impulse to leave the ninth arrondissement pavement. They crossed an avenue whose dimmed street lamps gave out a blue light.
"What do you do? Is it interesting?"
He had asked her this in affectionate tones, to give her confidence. She had stopped crying, but she felt the tears trickling over her chin.
"I'm a dancer."
•
She felt intimidated as they went through the gate and crossed the courtyard of one of the big town houses round the Place de l'Étoile. He opened a front door on the second floor and stood aside to let her go in first.
Lighted lamps and chandeliers. The curtains were drawn to conceal the lights. She had never seen such enormous rooms or such high ceilings. They crossed a hall, and then a bedroom whose walls were covered with shelves full of old books. A log fire in the salon was almost out. He told her to take off her coat and sit on the settee. At the far end of the salon there was a conservatory under a big glazed rotunda.
"You can phone home."
He put the phone down beside her on the settee. She hesitated for a moment. You can phone home. She remembered the number all right: MONTMARTRE 33–83, the number of the café on the ground floor of the hotel. The patron would answer, unless he'd closed the café because of the curfew. With a hesitant finger, she dialled the number. He was bending over the fire, poking a log.
"Could you leave a message for Doctor Teyrsen?"
She had to repeat the name several times.
"The doctor who lives in the hotel ... Yes ... From his daughter ... Tell him that everything is all right ..."
She hung up, very quickly. He went and sat beside her on the settee.
"You live in an hotel?"
"Yes. With my father."
Their two rooms could easily have fitted into a corner of the salon. She visualized the front door of the hotel, and the red-carpeted spiral staircase that led up steeply to the first floor. On the right of the corridor, rooms 3 and 5. And this salon where she now was, with its silk curtains, its panelling, its chandelier, its paintings and conservatory … She wondered whether she was in the same town or whether she was dreaming, as she had been earlier in the métro, when she had imagined herself returning to the Boulevard Ornano in a horse-drawn cab. And yet there were no more than twelve métro stations between this place and the Boulevard Ornano.
"And you? Do you live here alone?"
He shrugged his shoulders ruefully, as if he were apologizing.
Something suddenly gave her confidence. She noticed, when he made a rather too abrupt gesture as he removed the phone from the settee, that the lining of his tweed jacket was torn. And his big shoes. One of them didn't even have a lace.
•
They had dinner in the kitchen, at the far end of the flat. But there wasn't very much to eat. Then they went back to the salon, and he said:
"You'll have to stay the night here."
He led her into the next room. In the over-bright light of the chandelier there was a four-poster bed with wooden carvings and a silk canopy.
"This was my mother's room …"
He noticed that she was surprised by the four-poster bed and by the room, which was almost as big as the salon.
"Doesn't she live here any more?"
"She's dead."
The bluntness of this reply took her aback. He smiled at her.
"My parents have been dead for quite some time."
He walked round the room, as if on a tour of inspection. "I don't think you'll feel very comfortable here ... It would be better for you to sleep in the library ..."
She had lowered her head, and couldn't take her eyes off that big shoe without a lace that made such a strong contrast with the four-poster bed, the chandelier, the panelling and the silks.
•
In the book-lined room they had crossed earlier, after the hall, he pointed to the divan:
"I must give you some sheets."
Very fine voile sheets, pinkish beige and edged with lace. He had also brought her a tartan wool blanket and a little pillow without a pillow slip.
"This is all I could find."
He seemed to be apologizing.
She helped him make the bed.
"I hope you won't be cold ... They've turned the heating off …"
She had sat down on the edge of the divan, and he in the old leather armchair in the corner of the library.
"So you're a dancer?"
He didn't really seem to believe it. He was giving her an amused look.
"Yes. A dancer at the Châtelet. I was in the cast of Vienna Waltzes."
She had adopted a haughty tone.
"I've never been to the Châtelet ... But I'll come and see you …"
"Unfortunately, I don't know whether I'll be able to go on working …"
"Why not?"
"Because my father and I are in trouble."
•
She had hesitated to tell him about her situation, but the tweed jacket with the torn lining and the shoe without a lace had encouraged her. And then, he often used slang words that didn't go with the refinement and luxury of the flat. She had even begun to wonder whether he really lived ther
e. But on one of the shelves in the library there was a photo of him much younger, with a very elegant woman who must have been his mother.
He left her, wishing her a good night, and saying that at breakfast the next day she would be able to drink some real coffee. Then she was alone in the room, amazed to find herself on that divan. She didn't put the light out. If she felt she was falling asleep she would put it out, but not just yet. She was afraid of the dark because of the curfew that evening in the eighteenth arrondissement, the dark that reminded her of her father and the hotel in the Boulevard Ornano. How reassuring it was to contemplate the bookshelves, the opalescent lamp on the little table, the silk curtains, the big Louis XV bureau over by the windows, and to feel the fresh lightness of the voile sheets ... She hadn't told him the truth. In the first place she had pretended that she was nineteen. And then, she wasn't really a dancer at the Châtelet. Next, she had said that her father was an Austrian doctor who had emigrated to France before the war, and that he worked in a clinic in Auteuil. She hadn't touched on the root of the problem. She had added that they were only living in the hotel temporarily, because her father was looking for another flat. She hadn't admitted, either, that she had purposely let the time of the curfew go by so as not to go back to the Boulevard Ornano. In other times, no one would have attached much importance to this fact, it would even have seemed quite normal for a girl of her age, and would simply have been seen as an escapade.
•
The next day, she didn't go back to the hotel in the Boulevard Ornano. She again phoned MONTMARTRE 33–83. Doctor Teyrsen's daughter. They must leave a message for the doctor: "Tell him not to worry." But the patron of the café and the hotel, whose voice Ingrid recognized, replied that her father was expecting this phone call and that he'd go and fetch him from his room. Then she hung up.
Another day went by. Then another. They didn't leave the flat, she and Rigaud, except to go and have dinner in a nearby black market restaurant in the Rue d'Armaillé. They went to the cinema in the Champs-Élysées. The film was Remorques. A few more days went by and she didn't phone MONTMARTRE 33–83 again. December. Winter was beginning. The Resistance mounted more attacks, and this time the curfew was imposed at half past five for a week. The whole town was plunged into darkness, cold and silence. You had to go to ground wherever you happened to be, keep your head down as far as possible, and wait. She didn't ever want to leave Rigaud, and the Boulevard Ornano seemed so far away...
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