“Are you looking for somebody?”
Her tone was curt, as if she were suspicious of us.
“Mister Ansart,” Gisèle said.
“Mister Ansart left very early this morning. He gave me the keys to his apartment. He won’t be back for at least three months.”
So this was the concierge.
“He didn’t say where he was going?” asked Gisèle.
“No.”
“And there’s no place we can write to him?”
“He said he’d send me his new address. If you want to write him, you can leave the letter with me.”
Her tone had softened a bit. She watched after us as we crossed back through the courtyard with the dog. She seemed to find “Mister Ansart’s” departure perfectly normal. Eventually, she would ask herself about that man who seemed so pleasant and well-mannered. After that, others would ask, perhaps in the same office where Gisèle and I had been questioned. They would ask her to remember the smallest details about Ansart, who came to visit him. And she would remember that soon after his disappearance, a young man and young woman with a dog had rung at the apartment.
“What should we do with the car?” I asked Gisèle.
“We’ll keep it.”
She rummaged in the glove compartment and pulled out the registration. It was in the name of Pierre Louis Ansart, born January 22, 1921, in Paris 10th, residing 14 Rue Raffet, Paris 16th.
We skirted the Bois de Boulogne, by the same route we’d taken on Saturday to go have lunch in Ansart’s restaurant. I held onto his registration card. We turned onto Rue des Belles-Feuilles. The restaurant was closed. They had nailed wooden panels onto the façade, with peeling green paint that surely dated from the time when the Belles Feuilles was, as Ansart had said, a working-class café.
Now she seemed concerned. There must have been a connection between Ansart’s sudden disappearance and the incident in Neuilly the day before, in which we had been more than just bystanders.
“Do you think Jacques de Bavière has also taken off?” I asked.
She shrugged. I recalled Martine’s face, the way she had waved to us as we walked across the courtyard the other night.
“What about Martine? Can we reach her somewhere?”
She knew almost nothing about Martine, other than that she had been living with Ansart for several years. The only thing she remembered was her name: Martine Gaul.
We ended up in a café on Rue Spontini, where we ordered two sandwiches and two glasses of orange juice. She took a small address book from her bag and asked me to call Rue Washington to see whether Jacques de Bavière was still there.
“Hello … Who’s this?”
A woman with a deep voice. The one who had greeted us on Saturday evening?
“I’d like to speak with Jacques de Bavière, please …”
“Who are you?”
Her tone was sharp, the tone of someone on the alert.
“We’re friends of Jacques. We came over on Saturday …”
“Jacques has left for Belgium.”
“Will he be gone long?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Did Mister Ansart go with him?”
There was a moment’s pause. I even thought the line had gone dead.
“I don’t know the person you mean. I’m very sorry, but I have to go now.”
She hung up.
So they had both gone. With Martine, no doubt. To Belgium, or somewhere else. How could we find out?
“Are you sure his name is de Bavière?” I asked Gisèle.
“Yes, de Bavière.”
What good would that do us? He surely wasn’t in the phone book, or in the social register, as his name might imply.
She said she wanted to try somewhere else, where we might stand a better chance of finding out news of Ansart. We followed the major boulevards. She didn’t offer any explanations. When we arrived at Place de la République, we took Boulevard du Temple, then stopped in a street that ran parallel to it, slightly downhill. In front of us was the Winter Circus.
She pointed out a café farther down the road, about fifty yards away.
“Go in and ask the guy behind the bar if he has any news of Mister Ansart …”
Why wasn’t she coming with me?
I walked down the street, turning around to make sure she was still there. I thought she might wait for me to enter the café, then vanish like all the others.
The café didn’t display any name, but an ad for Belgian beer was stickered on the façade. I went in. At the back of a small room were a few tables where patrons were having lunch.
Behind the bar stood a tall, dark-haired man with a slightly squashed nose wearing a dark blue suit; he was on the phone. I waited. A waiter in a burgundy jacket came up to me.
“A bottle of Vittel.”
The phone conversation dragged on. The man listened to his correspondent and occasionally answered, “Yes … yes … all right …” or gave a brief grunt of assent. He had jammed the receiver between his shoulder and cheek to light a cigarette and his eyes met mine, but I don’t know if he really saw me. He hung up.
I asked him in a timid voice:
“Do you have any news of Mister Ansart?”
He smiled at me. But I could tell this smile was just a façade, a way of establishing distance between us.
“You know Mister Ansart?”
His voice had a childlike timbre that reminded me of the actor Jean Marais. He came around the bar to join me on the other side and leaned on it with his elbow.
“Yes, I know him, and I also know Martine Gaul.”
Why had I added that detail? To make him trust me?
“I went by Rue Raffet this morning and they were gone.”
He looked me over with a benevolent eye, still with that smile. The elegant cut of his suit and his voice clashed with the surroundings. Was he really the owner of this café?
“They’re gone, but they will certainly be back. That’s all I can tell you.”
He smile widened, and the look in his eyes made it clear that, indeed, he wouldn’t say any more.
I went to pay for the bottle of Vittel, but he waved his hand.
“No … Forget it …”
He opened the door for me himself and gave me a brief nod of farewell. He was still smiling.
In the car, Gisèle asked:
“What did he say?”
She must have known that man with his immutable smile. She had no doubt met him with Ansart and Jacques de Bavière.
“He said they would certainly be back, but he didn’t seem to want to provide any details.”
“It doesn’t matter. In any case, we’ll never see them again. We’ll be in Rome.”
We followed the boulevard up to Place de la Bastille. We weren’t far from Dell’Aversano’s shop. I suggested that we stop in to finalize our travel arrangements.
“Had you been in that café before?” I asked Gisèle.
“Yes. Lots of times.”
She paused, then said, as if reluctantly:
“It was when my husband worked at the Winter Circus.”
She fell silent. I thought of the man in the dark blue suit. His smile had impressed me and I still remembered it ten years later, when one afternoon I happened to find myself near the Winter Circus. I hadn’t been able to resist going into that café. It was around 1973.
He was standing behind the bar, less elegant than the first time, features drawn and hair gone gray. A number of photos were glued to the wall, some of them signed, depicting performers from the Winter Circus who patronized the café.
One of the photos, larger than the others, had caught my eye. It showed a whole group of people standing at the bar, around a blonde woman wearing a rider’s jacket. And among them, I recognized Gisèle.
I had ordered a bottle of Vittel, like the first time.
At that hour of the afternoon, he and I were the only ones there. I asked him point blank:
“Did y
ou know that girl?”
I joined him behind the bar and pointed out Gisèle in the photo. He didn’t seem the least bit surprised by my actions.
He leaned closer to the picture.
“Oh, sure, I knew her … She was really young … She used to spend her evenings here … Her husband worked for the circus … She would wait for him … She always looked bored … That must be a good ten years ago …”
“But what did her husband do, exactly?”
“He must have been part of the circus staff. He was older than her.”
I sensed that he’d answer any question I asked. I was still young at the time and had a shy, polite air about me. And he, no doubt, wanted nothing better than to chat away the empty hours of that early summer afternoon.
He seemed much more accessible than he had ten years earlier. He had lost his mystery, or rather the mystery I’d lent him. The slim man in the dark blue suit was nothing more today than a café proprietor on Rue Amelot, practically your basic barkeep.
“Did you know Pierre Ansart?”
He cast me a surprised glance and once again I saw on his face the disingenuous smile from before.
“How come? Did you know Pierre?”
“That girl introduced me to him about ten years ago.”
He knitted his brow.
“The girl in the photo? … Pierre must have met her here … He often came to see me …”
“And what about a younger man named Jacques de Bavière, does that ring a bell?”
“No.”
“He was a friend of Ansart’s.”
“I didn’t know all of Pierre’s friends …”
“You don’t know what became of him, do you?”
Again that smile.
“Pierre? No. He’s not in Paris anymore, that much I know.”
I stopped talking. I was waiting for him to say what he’d told me the first time: They’re gone, but they will certainly be back.
Through the half-open door, the sun threw bright spots on the walls and empty tables in back.
“So, you were a close friend of Ansart’s?”
His eyes and face took on a sarcastic expression.
“We met in 1943. And that same year, we both got sent to Poissy prison … As you see, this all goes back a while …”
I remained silent. He added:
“But don’t hold it against us. Anyone can make mistakes when they’re young …”
I felt like telling him I’d already come here ten years earlier to ask for news of Ansart and that he hadn’t wanted to tell me. Back then, there were still secrets to keep.
But now, these were all bygones, of no further importance.
“And are you still in touch with the girl?”
I was so startled by his question that I stammered a vague reply. Once alone, on the boulevard, I stupidly broke down in sobs.
We reached the Seine and followed the Quai des Célestins. Rummaging in my pocket for a pack of cigarettes, I realized I’d kept Ansart’s registration card.
“Can you really depend on this guy we’re going to see?” asked Gisèle.
“Yes. I believe he genuinely cares about me.”
Indeed, thinking about it today, I can better appreciate Dell’Aversano’s kindness toward me. He had been moved by my family situation, if such an adjective can be used when your parents completely neglect you. The first time I’d visited him, he had asked some questions about my studies and counseled me to keep at them, no doubt judging that a teenager left to his own devices would come to a bad end. According to him, I deserved better than to fence stolen furniture to some Saint-Paul junk dealer. I had admitted that I dreamed of becoming a writer and had favorably impressed him when I said my bedside companion was a volume of Stendhal’s correspondence called To the Happy Few.
He was sitting at his desk at the back of the shop. He looked at Gisèle and the dog in surprise.
I introduced Gisèle as my sister.
“I have all your information for you,” he said.
My job in Rome with his fellow bookseller didn’t start for another two months.
“Why, had you wanted to leave right away?”
I didn’t dare tell him that we had use of a car, or I’d have had to show him Ansart’s registration and explain the whole story. Perhaps another time … But I did admit that I wanted to go there with Gisèle. Did he really believe she was my sister? I didn’t read any sign of disapproval on his face. He simply turned to her:
“Are you prepared to find work in Rome?”
He asked her age. She told him she was twenty-one. He knew how old I was, and I dug my nails into my palms for fear he’d mention it in front of Gisèle.
“I even know your new address down there … If you like, I’ll ask my friend if you can move in early …”
I thanked him. Would it be possible for my sister to live there with me?
He looked at the two of us more closely. I guessed that he was trying to find a physical resemblance between us and couldn’t.
“That depends,” he said. “Does your sister know how to type?”
“Yes,” said Gisèle.
I was sure she was lying. I really couldn’t picture her sitting at a typewriter.
“My friend will need someone who can type in French … I’ll call him this evening to find out more about it.”
He stood up and invited us to go have coffee. We walked by the car, but I didn’t say anything and Gisèle was my accomplice in silence. Tomorrow, without fail, I’d tell him everything that had happened. I didn’t have the right to hide anything from this man who had been so good to us.
He asked how much longer I could stay in the Quai de Conti apartment.
“Not more than three weeks …”
He couldn’t understand how a father and mother could abandon a boy who was so passionate about literature and whose bedside book was called To the Happy Few. And what astounded him even more was that I considered my parents’ attitude entirely natural, and that it had never even occurred to me to expect any help from them.
“So, you have to be settled in Rome three weeks from now and your sister has to be able to live with you …”
From the way he had pronounced the words your sister, I could tell he wasn’t fooled.
“Does your sister like literature as much as you?”
Gisèle looked embarrassed. In the time we’d known each other, we had never once talked about books.
“I’m making her read To the Happy Few” I said.
“And do you like it?” Dell’Aversano asked.
“Very much.”
She flashed him a winning smile. It was sunny out and the air was warm for the season. We sat at the only sidewalk table left at the café. The clock on the church of Saint-Gervais chimed noon.
“So you know our future address in Rome?” I asked.
Dell’Aversano pulled an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“It’s number 7 on Via Frescobaldi.”
He turned to Gisèle:
“Do you know Rome?”
“No,” Gisèle said.
“So then you weren’t with your brother when he celebrated New Year’s Eve there at age fifteen?”
He smiled at her and she smiled back.
“And this Via Frescobaldi,” I asked, “what neighborhood is it in?”
“Here, I’ll show you.”
Using a ballpoint pen, he drew two parallel lines on the envelope.
“This is the Via Veneto … You do know the Via Veneto …”
I had told him the story of how, on my father’s orders, I’d tried to catch the woman with straw-blond hair and too much foundation who was running away from us.
“You follow Via Pinciana past the gardens of the Villa Borghese …”
He continued drawing lines on the envelope and with the tip of his pen he showed us the way.
“You make a left, still skirting the Villa Borghese, and you come to Via Frescobaldi … And there
it is …”
He drew a cross.
“The great thing about the neighborhood is that you’re surrounded by green … Your street is right near the botanical gardens …”
Neither of us could take our eyes off the map he’d just sketched. I was walking with Gisèle, in summer, beneath the shade trees of Via Frescobaldi.
At Quai de Conti, Grabley had left a note on the office couch:
My dear Obligado,
Someone called for you around 2 p.m. A man claiming to be from the police. He left his name, Samson, and a number where you can reach him: TURBIOO 92-00.
I hope you haven’t done something foolish.
Last night, the evening ended better than I expected and we were sorry you weren’t with us. Would you like to join us again this evening, at the Tomate, for the 10:30 show?
Yours, Grabley
I asked Gisèle whether I should phone right away to find out what the man wanted. But we decided he should be the one to call back.
The afternoon was spent waiting, and the two of us did our best to overcome our nervousness. I had crumpled and torn up Grabley’s note on which he’d written, “I hope you haven’t done something foolish.”
“You think they could know what we did yesterday afternoon?”
Gisèle shrugged and smiled at me. She seemed calmer than I was. We spread out the map of Rome on the floor and tried to familiarize ourselves with our new neighborhood, memorizing the names of the streets, monuments, and churches that were near our new home: Porta Pinciana, Santa Teresa, the Temple of Aesculapius, the Colonial Museum … No one would ever find us there.
Later, darkness began to fall and we were lying on the couch. She got up and put on her black skirt and pullover.
“I’m going out for cigarettes.”
She wanted me to stay in case the phone rang. I asked her to buy the evening paper.
I watched her from the window. She didn’t take the car. She walked with a languid step, hands in the pockets of her raincoat that she’d left unbuttoned.
She disappeared around the corner of the Hôtel des Monnaies.
I lay back down on the couch. I tried to recall the furniture that used to be in this office.
The telephone rang. A muffled, slightly drawling voice.
“I’m calling on behalf of Mister Samson, who asked you some questions last Thursday. A young girl was called in just after you … The two of you met up later at the Soleil-d’Or café.”
After the Circus Page 8