I was in the Cinéma Paradis, but apart from a scarf in row three and a lipstick in row fifteen, I had found nothing of note.
When I arrived in the seventeenth row, I switched off the vacuum cleaner. It was worth a try. Mélanie had always sat in row seventeen. That had aroused my curiosity even at the time, when I was still thinking about what might be a fitting story for the girl in the red coat.
I went back to my office and looked for a flashlight.
“Are you done?” Robert, who was still telephoning, looked up as I entered with a determined expression.
“Nearly,” I said, and went back into the auditorium with a quaking heart. I walked slowly along row seventeen.
I bent down, felt in every crack with my hand, shone the light into all the gaps. I found two bits of chewing gum stuck under seats and a ballpoint pen that had fallen between two seats. I looked at all the scratches and notches on the wooden backs of the seats in the row in front. I put my head under every seat. I don’t know exactly what I was looking for, but no one had ever examined the burgundy seating as closely before. I was absolutely sure that I would find something.
And I did find something.
When Robert came into the auditorium a quarter of an hour later, I was still sitting, lost in thought, my heart thumping, in front of the next-to-last seat in row seventeen. I was running my finger in amazement over two initials that you couldn’t see at first glance because they were darkened, having probably been scratched into the wood a long time before. It had obviously been two lovers who had wanted to immortalize their love. You could hardly make out the heart that surrounded the two letters with the plus sign between them in the middle, but the letters were quite visible: M. + V.
I suddenly remembered the enigmatic words that Mélanie had said to me on our first date in La Palette. I still feel how much those words moved me, and that I’d automatically linked them to my cinema, my wonderful choice of films, or even—in a moment of audacity—to myself.
“Whenever I’m looking for love, I go to the Cinéma Paradis,” Mélanie had said. And now I knew why.
Twenty-five
“Okay,” said Robert, his blue eyes sparkling. “It’s all crystal clear. M stands for Mélanie. You’re absolutely right: It can’t be a coincidence.” I nodded excitedly. Robert and I agreed at last. We’d gone to Chez Papa, a pleasant jazz club almost hidden away behind the Deux Magots in the rue Saint-Benoît. After the discovery I had made in row seventeen, I was really in need of a glass of red wine, or even two. The pianist tinkled away quietly in the background, accompanied by a bassist plucking languidly at his strings.
“But who is V.?” I said.
“Well, if we start from the premise that M. isn’t a lesbian, it can only be a guy.”
“Not just any guy. That’s her boyfriend. Perhaps the man who cheated on her with her colleague. The one with the jade earring.”
Robert shook his head. “No, no, just think a moment. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see that the initials are more than a year old. It must be something that happened quite a while ago.” He took his battered old Moleskine out of his jacket pocket and opened it. “So,” he said. Men’s names beginning with V … there aren’t all that many: Valentin, Virgile, Victor, Vincent—can you think of any more?”
“Vianney, Vivien, Valère, Vito, Vasco … It doesn’t have to be a French name, does it?”
“Not necessarily.” Robert had written all the names down carefully, one beneath the other. “What else? Vadim, Varus, Vasilij…”
“Vladimir,” I added, and my lips curled as I suddenly thought of the crazy old Russian woman in the building on the rue de Bourgogne whose bell I’d mistakenly rung.
“What are you grinning at?”
“Oh, I was just thinking of Dimitri.”
“Dimitri? Who’s Dimitri?” Robert asked.
“Oh,” I said, trying frantically to suppress a laugh. “Doesn’t matter.” I gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “Let’s say … an old acquaintance.” I burst out laughing.
“It seems to me that you don’t have the seriousness we require.” Robert looked at me with irritation. I think he felt his authority was being undermined. “What are you doing, Alain? Stop fooling around. We’re only looking for people whose name begins with a V.”
“Yes, I know. Sorry.” I pulled myself together.
Robert took a sip of wine and passed the little book with the names over to me. “So … and now concentrate. Do you recognize any of these names? Did Mélanie mention any of these names when you were talking to her?”
I looked at the list and muttered the names under my breath several times. Then I tried to remember everything Mélanie had told me. But if she had actually mentioned a man’s name, it wasn’t one that begins with a V. “Sorry, but none of these names says anything to me.” I was disappointed.
“Think again. I’m sure that this V. is important. When we know who V. is, all the rest will become clear.”
“Shoot,” I said with annoyance. “Aren’t there any other names that begin with V?
“Well, yes…” Robert raised his eyebrows and put on a mysterious expression. “I can think of one more.”
“Well?” I held my breath.
“Vercingetorix?”
It was twenty past eleven when we finally parted. I would never have dreamed that just before midnight I would once more be sitting in a taxi, heading for somewhere that was not totally unfamiliar to me.
“If you think of anything else … you can always call me,” Robert had said as he handed me the list with the names. He was speaking like a detective in an early-evening TV series—and that’s probably what he felt like. He was having so much fun with our inquiries in the V. case that he’d totally lost sight of his own main project—the forthcoming dinner with Melissa and Anne-Sophie.
I walked down the rue Saint-Benoît and turned right into the rue Jacob. My foot was still hurting, but I was so lost in thought that I hardly noticed it. Even if we hadn’t really gotten very far in the search for names, I had a good feeling: We’d at least gotten on the track of the mystery.
The reason why Mélanie had come to my cinema and always sat in the same row was nostalgia. That suited her very well.
How long ago had it been when two lovers had tried to immortalize their love in that row, in the deceptive certainty that their feelings would last forever? Had they often visited the Cinéma Paradis, or perhaps just once? Had they sat cuddling closely in row seventeen, watching Cyrano de Bergerac, Mélanie’s favorite film, and the best film there has ever been for people in love? I felt a little stab of jealousy. I would have liked to have been the one who had held hands with Mélanie while watching the amorous correspondence between Cyrano and the lovely Roxanne.
With a sigh, I stopped at Ladurée’s store window and glanced indifferently at the pretty dusky pink-and-lime-green boxes full of macaroons and other delicacies. If I had been going out with Mélanie, one evening, just for the hell of it, I would have brought her a box of raspberry macaroons because their delicate red reminded me of the color of her lips. I would have showered her with attentions just to see her smile. The previous evening, her smile had had something heartrending about it—almost as if she had had to let me leave, rather than her leaving me. What was the mystery that was keeping us apart? What was this obstacle to our love? Did it have something to do with the past? Did it have something to do with the Cinéma Paradis? Once again, I saw the two initials in front of me. What had happened to M. and V.? What had become of their love?
Thinking of the way Mélanie had spoken of the men in her life on our one and only evening together, it couldn’t have been anything good. “I have a talent for falling in love with the wrong men,” she had said. “In the end, there is always another woman.”
Had the mysterious V. been a married man who had deceived her? Had another woman come between them? Or had there been a tragic, fatal accident that left the loving M. behind all alone? Was it
possible that there was some similarity or some connection between me and V.? Was that why she’d been prepared to take up with me? Had she really been prepared to do so at all?
I didn’t know. There was so much I didn’t know. But at that moment, I felt so close to Mélanie. I looked at the reflection of my face in the window and almost expected to see Mélanie’s face appearing behind mine.
Strangely enough, I’d had the same feeling I’d had that evening as I stood on the roof terrace of the Georges, looking out over Paris as you’d look out on an ocean. A woman had quietly come up behind me, and yet I had been aware of the slight, almost imperceptible movement. It was Solène, and I’d sensed it immediately. But this time, there was no woman to stand silently behind me; the window remained empty.
I was about to move on, when I heard steps approaching hurriedly. A woman in a hat ran up the street carrying a heavy shoulder bag and waved to a taxi that was just traveling up the rue Bonaparte toward the boulevard Saint-Germain. It came to a halt outside Ladurée. The woman opened the back door of the taxi and thankfully threw in her bag. Then, before she got in, I heard her say breathlessly, “Avenue Victor Hugo, vite!”
The taxi drove off and I continued on my way, idly musing on the fact that the writer Victor Hugo also had a first name beginning with a V. It could just be that I already had a special antenna tuned to men’s names beginning with V; it could be that I particularly liked the name Victor. At any rate, a vague memory popped out of the depths of my subconscious. Should the name Victor mean anything to me? It meant nothing.
And yet …
Shaking my head, I continued for a few paces. And then I stopped stock-still and smacked my forehead. A lightning vision came to me: a quiet square, the lighting of a match, an exchange of confidences by night outside a jeweler’s window.
There was, in fact, someone who had mentioned the name Victor only a few weeks before. Someone who, strangely enough, knew the Cinéma Paradis of old and had returned after many years, searching for what it had once been. In my mind’s eye, I saw a truly beautiful woman with blond hair.
But it wasn’t Mélanie.
Twenty-six
The carpet muffled sound completely. On impulse, I had turned on my heel in the middle of the street, run back to the taxi stand outside the Brasserie Lipp, and driven here. My thoughts whirled around like brightly colored leaves in fall, and yet, now that I was standing outside the door of her suite, there was a breathless calm in my head. It was just before midnight, and I only had one hope: that she would be there.
I knocked on the door, first softly and then more loudly. Only then did I notice the little bell push, but before I could press it, the door slowly opened. In bare feet, wearing a flowing silver-gray satin nightdress, Solène was standing there, looking at me in astonishment.
“Alain!” was all she said, and a light blush colored her bright face.
“May I come in?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” She opened the door a bit wider and I went in. Under other circumstances, I might have paid more attention to the extravagant decor—the costly furniture upholstered with expensive yellow material scattered with roses, the heavy gold-braided drapes, the marble fireplace with two candelabra and a clock that looked as if they’d come straight from Versailles—but at that moment I was only interested in the woman who was staying there. She walked in silently in front of me and pointed to a chair. I sat down, my heart pounding.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you so late at night,” I began.
“You don’t have to apologize, Alain. I never go to bed before one.”
Solène fell into a picturesque pose in the chair next to mine, resting her blond mane on the high back of the chair and smiling enigmatically.
“I love being disturbed at night. Is your headache better?”
I breathed in deeply. “Listen, Solène, I have to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Yes, I thought so.” She fiddled with a strand of hair. She sat there, lovely and mysterious as a Lorelei, and seemed to have all the time in the world. “So, what do you want to tell me, Alain? Out with it. I won’t bite.”
“Yesterday evening on the terrace, you said you’d like to do something for me.”
“Yes?” She let the strand of hair slide out of her hand and looked attentively at me.
“Well, I think you could really help me.”
“Anything that’s in my power.”
“So,” I said, trying to get my thoughts into some kind of order. “Everything is so incredibly confusing.… Where should I begin?” I thought for a moment. “I didn’t have a headache yesterday evening—I mean, that wasn’t the reason I … I ran away in such a rush.…”
Solène nodded. “I know.” She tipped her head to one side and looked at me. “I’ve known that for a long time, you dummy. I could see it in your face—how confused you were. You don’t have to explain anything to me; I’m just glad that you came. Just running off like that…” She laughed softly. “But I understand you only too well. Sometimes you just run away from your own feelings—at least at first.…” She leaned over toward me, and her gentle, meaningful look irritated me.
I sat up straight. “Solène,” I said. “I wasn’t running away from anything or anyone. Yesterday evening, I saw Mélanie. I followed her, but she actually ran away from me, jumped into the Métro and vanished. It was obvious that she didn’t want to speak to me.…”
“Méla?” Now it was Solène’s turn to look confused.
“No, not Méla. Mélanie, the woman in the red coat. The woman I’ve been searching for the whole time. She was standing at the far end of the roof terrace and staring over at us. I’m sure she recognized me. And then she was off, as if she’d seen the devil himself.”
For a brief moment, Solène’s face crumpled, but then she regained control of herself. “And what do you want from me now, Alain?”
I took a deep breath, and then the words just tumbled from my lips. “I was in the Cinéma Paradis this evening,” I said. “And there, in row seventeen—that was the row she preferred—I found something interesting. A heart with two letters, scratched into the back of the seat in front. It was almost impossible to make out the heart, but you could see the letters M and V.” Solène followed what I was saying, wide-eyed.
“M—that stands for Mélanie, it can’t be anything else,” I continued excitedly. “And V for a man’s name. But Mélanie never mentioned a name beginning with V. On the other hand, you did. And you know the Cinéma Paradis from your childhood. It took me a while, but then it came back to me: You wanted to get away from Paris at that time, and there was that student from San Francisco. Your boyfriend, if I understood rightly. Victor. His name was Victor.”
My chest was very constricted and I had to catch my breath. “None of this is just chance, Solène. And now I’d like you to tell me just one thing: Who is Victor? What happened at that time? What happened between Mélanie and Victor, who was your boyfriend? What is the connection between Mélanie and you?”
Solène had gone pale. Her eyes fluttered uneasily. Then she stood up and, without a word, went over to her dressing table. She picked something up. It was a picture in a narrow silver frame. She held it out to me and I took it.
The picture, and old black-and-white photograph, showed two little girls in thick winter coats standing on a bridge in Paris, holding hands and laughing. The bigger one had her bright blond hair tied up in a gigantic white bow and stood with one of her bootees forward in a coquettish pose. The smaller one had dark blond braids and her big brown eyes radiated a charming shyness.
I looked in disbelief at the happy children’s faces, in which you could see everything that would develop into the women they’d later become. Some sensitive corner of my memory held a trace of a laugh, an impetuous, heartwarming ‘Ha-ha-ha,’ which, without being aware of it, I had recognized in another woman—in the woman who was standing in front of me now, so distraught and looking so guilty.
�
�But…” I said softly. “That’s not possible.”
Solène gave a barely perceptible nod. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Mélanie is my sister.”
Twenty-seven
There are some things that are said to you that you never forget as long as you live, Solène had said, and I could see how a deeply felt sorrow darkened the blue of her eyes. The words she would never forget had been said by her sister.
“The only thing that’s important is that you get what you want; you don’t care about anything else,” Mélanie had said, full of hatred. “I never want to see you again, do you hear? Get out of my sight!”
That night in the luxury suite in the Ritz, I took a journey back in time that led directly to the hearts of two wounded sisters who had been inseparable as children.
Before Solène began telling me her story—and it was to last into the early hours of the morning—she asked me for an exact description. “I want to be completely sure,” she said, and I did as she asked, although for me there was no doubt that the younger of the two girls in the photograph was Mélanie.
When I mentioned the golden ring with the roses, Solène nodded in dismay. “Oh my God,” she murmured. “Yes, that’s Maman’s ring.” She looked at me in anguish, and I nodded.
“Mélanie said at the time that her mother was dead and that the ring was her only memento of her,” I added. “She didn’t say anything about her father.”
“Mélanie loved Maman most of all. She never really got on with Papa. In our family, I was Daddy’s darling. I was the tomboy, the adventurous one, the girl who made everyone laugh and hung out with the boys in the neighborhood. Mélanie was the quiet one. She lived in her own little world. She was fanciful and highly strung. When Maman once came home an hour later than expected, she found Mélanie hiding, totally distraught, in the wardrobe. She’d hidden in there, convinced that something had happened to Maman. She had a lively imagination and invented stories that she wrote in an exercise book that she hid jealously under her mattress and wouldn’t let anyone see.”
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