She showed no sign of the indifference that had troubled me so much the night before, when I found them both with Cartaud. She seemed just as she had been before, in the moments we had spent together. I asked her if she was over her flu.
She shrugged. It was even colder than yesterday, and she was still wearing that thin leather jacket.
‘You should get a real coat,’ I told her.
She looked into my eyes and gave me a slightly mocking smile.
‘What do you think of as ‘a real coat’?’
I wasn’t expecting that question. As if she wanted to reassure me, she said:
‘Anyway, winter’s nearly over.’
She was waiting for news from Majorca. And she expected to be hearing something any day now. She hoped to leave in the spring. Obviously, I would come with them, if I wanted to. I was relieved to hear her say it.
‘And Cartaud? What do you hear from him?’
At the mention of the name Cartaud, she frowned. I had spoken in an ordinary tone of voice, like someone talking about the weather.
‘You remember his name?’
‘It’s an easy name to remember.’
And did he have a profession, this Cartaud? Yes, he worked in the office of a dental surgeon on the Boulevard Haussmann, next door to the Jacquemart-Andre Museum.
With a nervous gesture, she lit a cigarette.
‘He might lend us money. That would be useful for our trip.’
She seemed to be watching my reaction intently.
‘Is he rich?’ I asked her.
She smiled.
‘You were talking about a coat, just now…. Well, I’ll ask him to give me a fur coat.…’
She laid her hand on mine, as I had seen her do with Van Bever in the café on the Rue Cujas, and brought her face close to mine.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I really don’t like fur coats at all.’
In my room, she drew the black curtains. I’d never done so before because the color of the curtains bothered me. Every morning the sunlight woke me up. Now the light was streaming through the gap between the curtains. It was strange to see her jacket and her clothes scattered over the floor. Much later, we fell asleep. Comings and goings in the stairway brought me back to consciousness, but I didn’t move. She was still sleeping, her head against my shoulder. I looked at my wristwatch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon.
As she left the room, she told me it would be best not to see each other tonight. Van Bever had probably been back from Athis-Mons for some time, and he was expecting her at their hotel on the Quai de la Tournelle. I didn’t want to ask how she would explain her absence.
When I was alone again, I felt as though I were back where I had been the night before: once again there was nothing I could be sure of, and I had no choice but to wait here, or at the Café Dante, or maybe to go by the Rue Cujas around one in the morning. And again, on Saturday, Van Bever would leave for Forges-les-Eaux or Dieppe, and we would walk him to the mdtro station. And if he let her stay in Paris, it would be exactly like before. And so on until the end of time.
I gathered together three or four art books in my beige canvas carryall and went downstairs.
I asked the man standing behind the front desk if he had a directory of the streets of Paris, and he handed me one that looked brand-new, with a blue cover. I looked up all the numbers on the Boulevard Haussmann until I found the Jacquemart-Andrl Museum at number 158. At 160 there really was a dentist, a Pierre Robbes. I wrote down his telephone number, just in case it might be useful: Wagram 1318. Then, with my beige carryall in my hand, I walked to the English bookstore by Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, where I managed to sell one of the books I was carrying, Italian Villas and Their Gardens, for 150 francs.
Chapter 6
I hesitated for a moment before the building at 160 Boulevard Haussmann, and then I stepped into the entryway. On the wall, a plaque listed the names and floors in large printed letters:
Doctor P. Robbes P. Cartaud
3rd floor
The name Cartaud wasn’t written in the same lettering as the others, and it seemed to have been inserted sometime afterward. I decided to try the office on the third floor, but I didn’t take the elevator, whose cage and glass double doors shone in the semidarkness. Slowly I climbed the stairs, practicing what I would say to the person who came and opened the door –‘I have an appointment with Dr. Cartaud.’ If they showed me in to see him, I would take on the jovial tone of someone paying a spur-of-the-moment call on a friend.
With this one small difference: he had only seen me once, and it was possible that he wouldn’t recognize me.
On the door there was a gilded plaque with the words:
DENTAL SURGEON
I buzzed once, twice, three times, but no one answered.
I left the building. Beyond the Jacquemart-Andre Museum, a café with a glassed-in terrace. I chose a table with a view of the front door of number 160.I waited for Cartaud to arrive. I wasn’t even sure he meant anything to Jacqueline and Van Bever. It was only one of those chance meetings. They might never see Cartaud again in their lives.
I had already drunk several grenadines and it was five o’clock in the afternoon. I was beginning to forget just why I was waiting in this café. I hadn’t set foot on the Right Bank for months, and now the Quai de la Tournelle and the Latin Quarter seemed thousands of miles away.
Night was falling. The café, which was deserted when I sat down at my table, was gradually filling up with customers who must have come from the offices in the neighborhood. I could hear the sound of a pinball machine, as in the Café Dante.
A black car pulled up alongside the Jacquemart-André Museum. I watched it absently at first. Then suddenly I felt a jolt: it was Cartaud’s. I recognized it because it was an English model, not very common in France. He got out of the car and went around to open the left door for someone: it was Jacqueline. They would be able to see me behind the glass wall of the terrace as they walked toward the building’s front door, but I didn’t move from my table. I even kept my eyes fixed on them, as if I were trying to attract their attention.
They passed by unaware of my presence. Cartaud pushed open the front door to let Jacqueline go in. He was wearing a navy blue overcoat and Jacqueline her light leather jacket.
I bought a token for the telephone at the bar. The phone booth was in the basement. I dialed Wagram 1318. Someone answered.
‘Is this Pierre Cartaud?’
‘Who’s calling?’
‘Could I speak to Jacqueline?’
A few seconds of silence. I hung up.
Chapter 7
I met them, her and Van Bever, the next afternoon at the Café Dante. They were alone at the far end of the room, at the pinball machine. They didn’t interrupt their game when I came in. Jacqueline was wearing her black pants, narrow at the ankles, and red lace-up espadrilles. They weren’t the kind of shoes to wear in winter.
Van Bever went to get some cigarettes, and Jacqueline and I were left alone, facing each other. I took advantage of the moment to say:
‘How’s Cartaud? How was everything yesterday on the Boulevard Haussmann?’
She became very pale.
Why do you ask me that?’
‘I saw you go into his building with him.’
I was forcing myself to smile and to speak in a lighthearted voice.
‘You were following me?’
Her eyes were wide. When Van Bever came back, she leaned toward me and said quietly:
‘This stays between us.’
I thought of the bottle of ether –that filthy stuff, as she called it –that I had shared with her the other night.
‘You look worried….’
Van Bever was standing before me and had tapped me on the shoulder, as if he were trying to bring me out of a bad dream. He was holding out a pack of cigarettes.
‘You want to try another pinball game?’ Jacqueline asked him.
It was as if she wer
e trying to keep him away from me.
‘Not right now. It gives me a migraine.’
Me too. I could hear the sound of the pinball machine even when I wasn’t at the Café Dante.
I asked Van Bever:
‘Have you heard from Cartaud lately?’
Jacqueline frowned, probably as a way of telling me to stay off that subject.
‘Why? Are you interested in him?’
His voice sounded sharp. He seemed surprised that I had remembered Cartaud’s name.
‘Is he a good dendst?’ I asked.
I remembered the gray suit and the deep, resonant voice, which were not without a certain distinction.
‘I don’t know,’ said Van Bever.
Jacqueline was pretending not to listen. She was looking away, toward the entrance to the café. Van Bever was smiling a little stiffly.
‘He works in Paris half the time,’ he said.
‘And other than that, where does he work?’
‘In the provinces.’
The other night, in the café on the Rue Cujas, there was a sort of awkwardness between them and Cartaud, and, despite the mundane conversation we’d had when I sat down at their table, it had never gone away. And I found that same awkwardness now in Jacqueline’s silence and Van Bever’s evasive replies.
The trouble with that one is he’s hard to get rid of,’ said Jacqueline.
Van Bever seemed relieved that she had taken the initiative to let me in on the secret, as if, from now on, they no longer had anything to hide from me.
We don’t particularly want to see him,’ he added. ‘He comes chasing after us….’
Yes, that was just what Cartaud had said the other night. They had met him two months before in the Langrune casino. He was alone at the boule table, playing halfheartedly, just killing time. He had invited them to dinner in the only restaurant that was still open, a little up the road in Luc-sur–Mer, and had explained to them that he worked as a dentist in the area. In Le Havre.
‘And do you think it’s true?’ I asked.
Van Bever seemed surprised that I would express any doubt about Cartaud’s profession. A dentist in Le Havre. I had gone there several times, long ago, to board a boat for England, and Pd walked through the streets near the docks. I tried to remember arriving at the train station and going to the port. Big concrete buildings, all the same, lining avenues that seemed too wide. The gigantic buildings and the esplanades had given me a feeling of emptiness. And now I had to imagine Cartaud in that setting.
‘He even gave us his address in Le Havre,’ Van Bever said.
I didn’t dare ask him in front of Jacqueline if he also knew his other address, in Paris, on the Boulevard Haussmann.
She had a bemused look all of a sudden, as if she thought Van Bever was simplifying things and making them much less confused than they were: a man you meet in a coastal resort in Normandy and who works as a dentist in Le Havre, all very banal, really. I remembered that Pd always waited for boarding time in a café by the docks: La Porte Océane. Did Cartaud go there? And in Le Havre, did he wear the same gray suit? Tomorrow I would buy a map of Le Havre, and when I was alone with Jacqueline she would explain it all for me.
‘We thought we would lose him in Paris, but three weeks ago we saw him again….’
And Van Bever hunched his back a little more and lowered his head between his shoulders, as if he were about to jump an obstacle.
‘You met him in the street?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Jacqueline. ‘I ran into him by chance. He was waiting for a taxi on the Place du Chatelet. I gave him the address of our hotel.’
Suddenly she seemed very distressed that we were still talking about this.
‘Now that he’s in Paris half the time,’ said Van Bever, ‘he wants to see us. We can’t say no….’
Yesterday afternoon, Jacqueline got out of the car after Cartaud had opened the door, and followed him into the building on the Boulevard Haussmann. I had watched them both. There was no trace of unhappiness on Jacqueline’s face.
‘Are you really obligated to see him?’
‘In a way,’ said Van Bever.
He smiled at me. He hesitated a moment, then added:
‘You could do us a favor…. Stay with us, next time he hunts us down.…’
‘Your being there would make things easier for us,’ said Jacqueline. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘No, not at all. It will be a pleasure.’
I would have done anything for her.
Chapter 8
That Saturday Van Bever went to Forges-les-Eaux. I was waiting for them in front of their hotel at about five in the afternoon, as they had asked. Van Bever came out first. He suggested we take a quick walk along the Quai de la Tournelle.
‘I’m counting on you to keep an eye on Jacqueline.’
These words took me by surprise. A little embarrassed, he explained that Cartaud had called the day before to say he wouldn’t be able to give him a ride to Forges-les-Eaux because he had work to do. But Cartaud’s apparent thoughtfulness and false friendliness were not to be trusted. Cartaud only wanted to take advantage of his absence, Van Bever’s, to see Jacqueline.
So why didn’t he take her with him to Forges-les-Eaux?
He answered that if he did, Cartaud would only come and find them there, and it would be precisely the same thing.
Jacqueline came out of the hotel to meet us.
‘I suppose you were talking about Cartaud,’ she said.
She looked at us intently, one after the other.
‘I asked him to stay with you,’ said Van Bever.
‘That’s nice.’
We walked him to the Pont-Marie métro station, as before. They were both quiet. And I no longer felt like asking questions. I was giving in to my natural indifference. All that really mattered was that I would be alone with Jacqueline. I even had Van Bever’s authorization to do so, since he had asked me to serve as her guardian. What more could I ask?
Before he walked down the steps into the métro, he said:
‘I’ll try to be back tomorrow morning.’
At the bottom of the staircase he stood still for a moment, very straight, in his herringbone overcoat. He stared at Jacqueline.
‘If you want to get in touch with me, you have the phone number for the casino at Forges….’
Suddenly he had a weary look on his face.
He pushed open one of the doors, and it swung shut behind him.
We were crossing the lie Saint-Louis heading for the Left Bank, and Jacqueline had taken my arm.
‘When are we going to run into Cartaud?’
My question seemed to annoy her slightly. She didn’t answer.
I was expecting her to say good-bye at the door of her hotel. But she led me up to her room.
Night had fallen. She turned on the lamp next to the bed.
I was sitting on the chair near the sink, and she was on the floor, with her back against the edge of the bed and her arms around her knees.
‘I have to wait for him to call,’ she said.
She was talking about Cartaud. But why was she forced to wait for him to call?
‘So you were spying on me yesterday on the Boulevard Haussmann?’
‘Yes.’
She lit a cigarette. She began to cough after the first puff.
I got up from the chair and sat down on the floor next to her. We leaned back against the edge of the bed.
I took the cigarette from her hands. Smoke didn’t agree with her, and I wished she would stop coughing.
‘I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Gérard…. He would have been embarrassed with you there…. But I wanted to tell you that he knows all about it….’
She was looking defiantly into my eyes:
Tor now, there’s nothing I can do We need him….’
I was about to ask her a question, but she reached over and turned off the lamp. She leaned toward me and I felt the caress of her lips on
my neck.
‘Wouldn’t you like to think about something else now?’ She was right. You never knew what trouble the future might hold.
Around seven o’clock in the evening, someone knocked on the door and said in a gravelly voice: ‘You’re wanted on the telephone.’ Jacqueline got up from the bed, slipped on my raincoat, and left the room without turning on the light, leaving the door ajar.
The telephone hung on the wall in the corridor. I could hear her answering yes or no and repeating several times that ‘there was really no need for her to come tonight,’ as if the person on the other end didn’t understand what she was saying, or as if she wanted to be begged.
She closed the door, then came and sat down on the bed. She looked funny in that raincoat; it was too big for her, and she’d pushed the sleeves up.
‘I’m meeting him in half an hour…. He’s going to come and pick me up…. He thinks I’m alone here….’
She drew nearer to me and said, in a lower voice:
‘I need you to do me a favor….’
Cartaud was going to take her to dinner with some friends of his. After that, she didn’t really know how the evening would end. This was the favor she wanted from me: to leave the hotel before Cartaud arrived. She would give me a key. It belonged to the apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann. I was to go and pick up a suitcase, which I would find in one of the cupboards in the dentist’s office, ‘the one next to the window.’ I would take the suitcase and bring it back here, to this room. All very simple. She would call me at about ten o’clock to let me know where to meet her.
What was in this suitcase? She smiled sheepishly and said, ‘Some money.’ I wasn’t particularly surprised. And how would Cartaud react when he found it missing? Well, he would never suspect that we were the ones who had stolen it. Of course, he had no idea that we had a copy of the key to his apartment. She had had it made without his knowledge at the ‘Fastkey’ counter in the Gare Saint-Lazare.
I was touched by her use of the word ‘we’ because she meant herself and me. All the same, I wanted to know if Van Bever was in on this plan. Yes. But he preferred to let her tell me about it. So I was only to play a minor role in all this, and what they wanted from me was a sort of burglary. To help me overcome my qualms, she went on to say that Cartaud wasn’t ‘a good person,’ and that in any case “he owed it to her….’
Out of the Dark Page 4