“I haven’t been back to the Haute-Savoie since then,” she said brusquely, as if to cut short our conversation.
“After you met Gurdjieff, were you in the ‘groups’?”
She seemed taken aback by the question.
“I’m asking because my friend’s mother and the pharmacist from the Plateau d’Assy often used that word . . .”
“It was Gurdjieff’s word,” she answered. “He talked about ‘work groups’ and ‘working on oneself’ . . .”
But I don’t think she wanted to give me any more particulars about the doctrine of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff.
“Your friend Geneviève,” she suddenly said. “It’s crazy how much she looks like Irène . . . The first time I saw her in that café, across from the Val-de-Grâce, it was a shock. I thought it was Irène . . .”
I wasn’t at all troubled by what she had just confided. Since my childhood, I had overheard so many strange things through half-open doors or thin hotel walls, in cafés and waiting rooms and overnight trains . . .
“I’m very concerned about Geneviève . . . That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Concerned? How so?”
“She’s got a strange way of living, as if, now and then, she simply removes herself from life . . . Don’t you think?”
“No.”
“It’s odd that you don’t see it . . . She sometimes looks like she’s walking around with her head in the clouds. Haven’t you ever noticed? Doesn’t she ever remind you of a somnambulist?”
The word called to mind the title of a ballet I’d seen as a child, which had left a fond memory. I tried to think what similarity might exist between Geneviève Dalame and that ballerina slowly climbing the stairs, arms outstretched.
“A somnambulist . . . You could be right,” I said.
I didn’t want to antagonize her.
“Irène was exactly like her . . . exactly . . . She had moments of complete absence . . . I tried to fight against that.”
“And what did Gurdjieff make of this?”
I immediately regretted asking. Back then, I was prone to blurting out inappropriate questions. I wanted to have done with it. From listening to so many people and paying them such close attention, I sometimes experienced an abrupt feeling of weariness and a sudden desire to cut all ties.
“Gurdjieff was a good influence on her. On me as well. I always encouraged Irène to follow his teachings.”
She turned toward me and stared at me pointedly. It was unnerving.
“We must help Geneviève.”
Her tone was so serious that she ended up convincing me Geneviève Dalame was in imminent danger. And yet, as much as I thought about it, I couldn’t imagine what sort of danger that might be.
“You have to persuade her to come live here.”
I was amazed that she would give me such a mission.
“It’s very bad for Geneviève to live in a hotel. Irène was exactly like her. I know the problem all too well . . . I spent three months telling her to leave that horrible hotel on Rue d’Armaillé. Luckily the meetings at Gurdjieff’s took place in that same neighborhood, otherwise Irène would never have left her room . . .”
Clearly, this Irène had meant a lot to her.
“The hotel she was living in was right near Gurdjieff’s?” I asked.
“Just a stone’s throw . . . Irène had taken a room there in order to be as close to Gurdjieff’s as possible.”
And so, you need only come across a person, or meet him two or three times, or hear him say something in a café or train corridor, to pick up snatches of his life. My notebooks are filled with bits of sentences spoken by anonymous voices. And today, on a page no different from the others, I try to transcribe the few words exchanged nearly fifty years ago with a certain Madeleine Péraud, whose first name I’m not even sure of. Irène, the Plateau d’Assy, Gurdjieff, a hotel on Rue d’Armaillé . . .
“You have to persuade Geneviève to come live here.”
Once more, she spoke in a murmur and had moved her face close to mine. She looked me right in the eye, and her gaze made me feel paralyzed, as in those dreams when you try to flee but are rooted to the spot.
A rather long time must have passed, several hours that I can’t recall, a memory lapse. Night was falling, the salon was in shadow, and I was still on the red sofa with her.
She stood up and went to turn on the floor lamp between the two windows. She walked to the bookcase and picked out two items from the shelves.
“Here . . . you can have more whenever you like . . .”
The two books were thin, almost like pamphlets: Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism, second series, and The Sacred Rite of Magical Love by Maria de Naglowska. I still have them fifty years later, and I wonder why some books or objects persist in following you around your whole life, without your knowledge, while others, much more precious, are lost.
In the entryway, I was about to open the apartment door to leave when she laid her hand on my arm.
“Are you heading off to see Geneviève?”
I felt embarrassed about answering, so badly did she seem to envy me.
“I meant to tell you . . . you could live here, with her . . . I would be very happy to take you in . . .”
Six years later, I was walking along Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, near the Mosque and the wall surrounding the botanical gardens. A woman was walking ahead of me, holding a little boy by the hand. Her nonchalant gait reminded me of someone. I couldn’t help staring at her.
I quickened my pace and caught up to the woman and little boy. I turned toward her. Geneviève Dalame. We hadn’t seen each other in those six years. She smiled at me as if we’d just parted company the day before.
“Do you live in this neighborhood?”
I was using the formal vous, but I don’t know why. Probably because of the little boy’s presence. Yes, she lived right nearby. I tried to make conversation, but she seemed to find it perfectly natural that we should walk next to each other in silence.
We entered the botanical gardens and followed a path to the zoo. The little boy ran ahead of us, then turned around and ran back, pretending to escape from invisible pursuers; sometimes he ducked behind a tree trunk. I asked if he was her son. Yes. Was she married? No. She lived alone with her boy. In short, we had found each other again six years later in the same street where we’d first met, but it didn’t seem as if any time had passed. On the contrary, it had stopped, and our first encounter was recurring, with a variation: the presence of that child. And we would meet yet again, in that same street, as the hands of a watch come together every day at noon and midnight. Moreover, on the evening when I’d met her for the first time, at the occult bookstore on Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, I had bought a book whose title had struck me: The Eternal Return of the Same.
We had arrived at the cages of the zoo, empty that day save for the largest one, in which they’d shut a panther. The little boy had stopped and watched it through the bars. Geneviève Dalame and I had taken seats on a bench, farther back.
“I bring him here to see the animals because of The Jungle Book. He wants me to read it to him every night.”
I then recalled the few bookshelves near the large window in my mother’s empty apartment on the quays. I was certain that alongside the Hans Fallada novels and The Vicomte of Bragelonne there were still the two volumes of The Jungle Book, in an illustrated edition. I would have to work up the nerve to go back there, to verify that I wasn’t mistaken.
I hesitated to mention her sudden disappearance. One evening, at the hotel on Rue Monge, they had told me she’d checked out “permanently.” The next day, at Polydor Studios, one of her colleagues had said curtly that she was “on leave,” without providing further details. At Madeleine Péraud’s, on Rue du Val-de-Grâce, no one answered the door. And I, having gotten used to disappearances since childhood, hadn’t really been surprised by Geneviève Dalame’s.
“So, you took off without leaving a forwarding a
ddress?” She shrugged. But I didn’t need any explanations. The little boy came up to us and announced that he was going to open the cage door and walk around with the panther, which he called Bagheera, the panther from The Jungle Book. Then he took up position again in front of the bars, waiting for Bagheera to come closer.
“Have you had any word from Doctor Péraud?”
In a detached tone, as if speaking of a vague acquaintance, she explained that Doctor Péraud no longer lived on Rue du Val-de-Grâce, but in the 15th arrondissement. Those people you often wonder about, whose disappearance is shrouded in mystery, a mystery you’ll never be able to solve—you’d be surprised to learn that they simply changed neighborhoods.
“And you’re not working for Polydor Studios anymore?” No, she still worked there. But like Madeleine Péraud, they were no longer at the same address. From Boulevard de la Gare, Polydor Studios had found a home near Place de Clichy.
I again thought of those electric maps near the ticket windows in the metro. Every station had its corresponding button on the keyboard. And you had only to press the button to see where you needed to transfer. The routes appeared on the map in lines of different-colored lights. I was sure that, in the future, you’d need only enter onto a screen the name of a person you had met once upon a time and a red dot would indicate the spot in Paris where you could find them.
“I ran into your brother once,” I told her. She’d had no word from him since that morning when he’d come to ask for money. And when had I run into him? Two or three years ago. I was walking down Boulevard Saint-Michel and was going past La Source, a large café that I had always hesitated to enter without quite knowing why. I recognized him right off the bat because of his fake-leopard-skin jacket. He was sitting at a table next to the glass façade, with a fellow his age. He had stood up and banged on the glass with both fists to get my attention. He was about to join me on the sidewalk, but I beat him to it and pushed open the door to the café, as one confronts a perilous situation in a dream, with the certainty that one could wake up at any moment. I sat down at their table. The discomfort I felt every time I walked by La Source became sharper: I felt as if everyone in the place was under threat of a police raid.
From his jacket pocket he drew his black notebook and, after looking in it, smiled at me sarcastically.
“I tried calling you at Val-d’Or 1414 a few years ago, but evidently you were out.”
I sat there, facing him, in the hopes that he’d tell me something about Geneviève Dalame, perhaps the reasons for her disappearance.
He introduced his friend. His name, Alain Parquenne, has stuck in my memory because I read it ten years later on Avenue de Wagram, on the sign of a tiny shop selling used cameras that he was surely fencing. I’d been tempted to go inside to remember myself to that ghost.
“Geneviève? Haven’t you seen her these past three years? Neither have I . . . She must be deep into her tarot cards and crystal balls, as usual . . .”
His fake-leopard-skin jacket looked even rattier than when we’d first met. I noticed a rip at one of the wrists and a stain on his sleeve. As for Alain Parquenne, he had pasty skin and the face of a prematurely aged child—the face of a former stable boy or jockey.
“He’s a photographer,” Geneviève Dalame’s brother told me. “He’s making me a press book that I can show agents. I want to break into the movies . . .”
The other watched me while smoking a cigarette, and his glutinous black eyes disturbed me. Abruptly, Geneviève Dalame’s brother said to him, “Time for you to call and let them know.” Alain Parquenne stood up and headed toward the back of the room.
“I’m sure you could help me out,” Geneviève Dalame’s brother said to me, with a fixed stare that sent a chill up my spine, the greedy look of someone who would rob corpses after a bombardment.
“Don’t you want to help me?” His features had tensed and betrayed a certain bitterness. The other reappeared at our table.
“So, did you let them know?” asked Geneviève Dalame’s brother. The other nodded and sat down. I was seized by a wave of panic that I had a hard time getting under control. Who were those people he’d called? Let them know what? I felt as if I were suddenly caught in a mousetrap and the police would bust in at any moment.
“I asked if he’ll help us out,” he said, pointing at me.
“Yeah, you have to give us a hand,” the other said with an evil smile. “Anyway, we’re not letting you go . . .”
I stood up and moved toward the café exit. Geneviève Dalame’s brother came after me and blocked my path. The other one moved in close behind me, as if he wanted to keep me from turning back. I thought: I have to get out of here before the police bust in. And with a sharp jab of the knee and shoulder, I shoved Geneviève Dalame’s brother aside. Then I rammed my fist into the other’s face. I was finally in the open air, free. I ran down the boulevard. They both ran after me. I managed to lose them near the Café de Cluny.
“You should never have talked to my brother. As far as I’m concerned, he’s dead. He’s capable of anything. He’s already done time in Epinal.”
She had spoken these words in a very low voice, as if she didn’t want the little boy to hear, though he was still standing in front of the cage bars, watching the panther.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Pierre.”
It was my chance to discover what her life had been like those past six years. Today, February 1, 2017, I regret not having asked specific questions. But at the time, I was sure she’d answer evasively, or not at all. “She walks around with her head in the clouds,” Madeleine Péraud had once said to me. And she had used the word “somnambulist.” It reminded me of the ballet I’d seen as a child, featuring a dancer whose name I still recall: Maria Tallchief. Maybe Geneviève Dalame walked “with her head in the clouds,” but her step was light and supple, like a dancer’s.
“Has he started school yet?” I asked, looking at Pierre.
“His school is across the botanical gardens.”
There was no point talking to her about the past. If I had alluded to certain details from six years ago—the café on Boulevard de la Gare, the hotel on Rue Monge, the few people that “Doctor Péraud” had introduced to us, the rather dubious circumstances that she’d dragged us into—she would have been very surprised. She had surely forgotten all of it. Or else, she saw it all from a great distance—greater and greater as the years progressed. And the landscape became lost in fog. She lived in the present.
“Do you have time to walk us home?” she asked.
She took Pierre by the hand, and he looked back to glance one last time at the bars of the cage, behind which Bagheera turned in endless circles.
We walked past the occult bookstore where we had first met. A sign said that it would reopen at two o’clock. We looked at the volumes displayed in the window: Powers from Within, The Masters and the Path, The Adventurers of Mystery . . .
“Maybe we could come here tonight to look for some books,” I proposed to Geneviève Dalame. Rendezvous at six o’clock, the same time as six years before. It was in this bookstore, after all, that I’d found the volume that had given me so much to ponder: The Eternal Return of the Same. At every page, I said to myself: If we could relive something we’d already experienced, in the same time, the same place, and the same circumstances, but live it much better than the first time, without the mistakes, hitches, and idle moments, it would be like making a clean copy of a heavily revised manuscript . . . The three of us had arrived at an area that I had often walked through with her, between Rue Monge, the Mosque, and Rue du Puits-de-l’Ermite.
She stopped in front of a building that was larger than the others and had balconies. “This is where I live.” Pierre opened the street door by himself. I followed them in. I had the feeling I’d already come here in some former life to visit someone. “Tonight at six, at the bookstore,” Geneviève Dalame said. “And after, we can have dinner here . . .”
>
They left me in the entryway. I stood at the foot of the stairs. Now and then, Pierre leaned his head over the ramp, as if he wanted to make sure I was still there. And each time, I waved at him. Then he stood there watching me, chin resting on the banister, while Geneviève Dalame must have been unlocking the door to the apartment. I heard the door shut behind them and felt a pang. But leaving the building, I couldn’t see any reason to be sad. For a few months more or, who knows, a few years, despite time’s fugitive passing and the successive disappearances of people and things, there was a fixed point: Geneviève Dalame. Pierre. Rue de Quatrefages. Number 5.
I’m trying to impose some order on my memories. Every one of them is a piece of the puzzle, but many are missing, and most of them remain isolated. Sometimes I manage to connect three or four, but no more than that. So I jot down bits and pieces that come back to me in no particular order, lists of names or brief phrases. I hope that these names, like magnets, will draw others to the surface, and that those bits of sentences might end up forming paragraphs and chapters that link together. Meanwhile, I spend my days in a large shed that looks like an old auto repair shop, in search of lost people and objects.
Djorie Bruss
Emmanuel Brucken (photographer)
Jean Meyer (Blue-Eyed Jean)
Gaelle and Guy Vincent
Annie Caisley, 11 Rue des Marronniers
Van der Mervenne
Joseph Nasch, 33 Avenue Montaigne
J. de Fleury (bookseller), 2 Rue Baste, 19th arr.
Olga Ordinaire, 9 Rue Duranton, 15th arr.
Ariane Pathé, 3 Rue Quentin-Bauchart
Douglas Eyben
Anna Seidner
Marie Molitor
Pierrot 43 . . .
As we fumble through these efforts, certain names light up intermittently, like signals that might lead to a hidden path.
The name “Madame Hubersen,” which I’d jotted down randomly, followed by a question mark, prompted merely a vague recollection at first. I tried to associate “Madame Hubersen” with other names on my list. I hoped that between them and “Madame Hubersen,” an illuminated line would appear, like the one on the metro map that told you which route you needed to take to get from Corvisart station to Michel-Ange-Auteuil, or from Jasmin to Filles-du-Calvaire. I had nearly reached the bottom of the list and I felt like an amnesiac, trying to break through a layer of ice and forgetfulness. And then suddenly, I knew for certain that the name “Madame Hubersen” was linked to that of Madeleine Péraud. And that Madeleine Péraud had in fact taken Geneviève Dalame and me, several times, to see that Madame Hubersen, who lived in an apartment on one of those wide avenues in the western neighborhoods—an avenue whose name I hesitate to write down today, as if too precise a detail could still harm me, nearly fifty years after the fact, and provoke what they call “further investigation” into a “case” in which I might have been implicated.
Sleep of Memory Page 3