Out of the Dark (14 page)

But I stood there petrified, trying to find some common thread connecting the Café Dante or the Hôtel de la Tournelle fifteen years ago to this living room with its bay windows open onto the Bois de Boulogne. There was none. I'd fallen prey to a mirage. And yet, now that I thought about it, these places were all in the same city, not so far from each other. I tried to imagine the shortest possible route to the Café Dante: follow the Boulevard Périphérique as far as the Left Bank, enter the city at the Porte d'Orléans, then drive straight ahead toward the Boulevard Saint-Michel… At that hour, in August, it would hardly have taken a quarter of an hour.

The man in the blazer was speaking to her, and she was listening to him indifferently. She'd sat down on one of the arms of the couch and lit a cigarette. I saw her in profile. What had she done to her hair? Fifteen years ago it came down to her waist, and now she wore it a little above the shoulder. And she was smoking, but she wasn't coughing.

'Will you come up with us?' Darius asked me. He had left the others on the couch and was standing with George and Thérèse Caisley. Thérèse. Why had she changed her name?

I followed them onto one of the balconies.

'You just have to climb the deck ladder,' said Darius.

He pointed to a stairway with concrete steps at the end of the balcony.

'And where are we setting sail for, captain?' asked Caisley, slapping Darius's shoulder familiarly.

We were behind them, side by side, Thérèse Caisley and I. She smiled. But it was a polite smile, the kind used for strangers.

'Have you ever been up here?' she asked me.

'No. Never. This is the first time.'

'The view must be beautiful.'

She had said these words so coldly and impersonally that I wasn't even sure she was speaking to me.

A large terrace. Most of the guests were sitting in beige canvas chairs.

Darius stopped at one of the groups as he passed by. They were sitting in a circle. I was walking behind Caisley and his wife, who seemed to have forgotten I was there. They met another couple at the edge of the terrace. The four of them stood stiII and began to talk, she and Caisley leaning against the balustrade. Caisley and the two others were speaking English. From time to time she punctuated the conversation with a short sentence in French. I came and rested my elbows on the parapet of the terrace as well. She was just behind me. The other three were still speaking in English. The singer's voice drowned out the murmur of the conversations and I began to whistle the refrain of the song. She turned around.

'Excuse me,' I said.

'That's all right.'

She smiled at me, the same vacant smile as before. And since she was silent again. I had no choice but to add: 'Lovely evening ...

The discussion between Caisley· and the two others was growing more animated. Caisley had a slightly nasal voice.

'What's especially pleasant,' I told her, 'is the cool breeze coming from the Bois de Boulogne ...'

'Yes.'

She got out a pack of cigarettes, took one and offered me the pack:

'Thanks very much. I don't smoke.'

'You're smart ...'

She lit a cigarette with a lighter.

'I've tried to quit several times,' she told me, 'but I just can't do it ...'

'Doesn't it make you cough?'

She seemed surprised by my question.

'I stopped smoking,' I told her, 'because it made me cough.'

There was no reaction. She really didn't seem to recognize me.

'It's a shame you can hear the noise of the Périphérique from here,' I said.

'Do you think so? I can't hear it from my apartment ... And I live on the fourth floor.'

'Still, the Périphérique is a very useful thing,' I told her. 'It took me no more than ten minutes to drive here from the Quai de la Tournelle tonight.'

But my words had no effect on her. She was still smiling her cold smile.

'Are you a friend of Darius?'

It was the same question the woman had asked me in the elevator.

'No,' I told her. 'I'm a friend of a friend of Darius … Jacqueline ...'

I avoided making eye contact with her. I was staring at one of the streetlights below us, beneath the trees.

'I don't know her.'

'Do you spend summers in Paris?' I asked.

'My husband and I are leaving for Majorca next week.'

I remembered our first meeting, that winter afternoon on the Place Saint-Michel, and the letter she was carrying, whose envelope said: Majorca.

'Your husband doesn't write detective novels, does he?'

She gave a sudden laugh. It was strange, because Jacqueline had never laughed like that.

'What on earth would make you think he writes detective novels?'

Fifteen years ago, she had told me the name of an American who wrote detective novels and who might be able to help us get to Majorca: "McGivern. Later, I had come across a few of his books, and I'd even thought of searching him out and asking him if he knew Jacqueline by any chance, and what had become of her.

'I had him mixed up with someone else who lives in Spain … William McGivern...'

For the first time she looked straight into my eyes, and I thought I could see something conspiratorial in her smile.

'What about you?' she asked me. 'Do you live in Paris?'

'For now. I don't know if I'm going to stay ...'

Behind us Caisley was still speaking in his nasal voice, and now he was at the center of a very large group.

'I can work anywhere,' I told her. 'I write books.'

Again, her polite smile, her distant voice:

'Oh really? … How interesting … I'd very much like to read your books ...'

'I'd be afraid they might bore you …'

'Not at all … You'll have to bring them to me one day when you come back to Darius's ...'

'With pleasure.'

Caisley had let his gaze fall on me. He was probably wondering who I was and why I was talking to his wife. He came to her and put his arm around her shoulders. His shallow blue eyes never left me.

'This gentleman is a friend of Darius and he writes books.'

I should have introduced myself, but I always feel uncomfortable speaking my own name.

'I didn't know Darius had any writer friends.'

He smiled at me. He was about ten wars older than us. Where could she have met him? In London, maybe. Yes, she had undoubtedly stayed on in London after we lost contact with each other.

'He thought you were a writer as well; she said.

Caisley was shaken by a loud burst of laughter. Then he stood up straight, just as he was before: his shoulders stiff, his head high.

'Really, that's what you thought? You think I look like a writer?'

I hadn't given the matter any thought. I didn't care what this Caisley person did for a living. No matter how many times I told myself he was her husband, he was indistinguishable from everyone else standing on the terrace. We were lost, she and I, in a crowd of extras on a movie set. She was pretending to know her part, but I wouldn't be able to avoid giving myself away. They would soon notice that I didn't belong here. I still hadn't spoken, and Caisley was looking at me closely. It was essential that I find something to say·:

'I had you mixed up with an American writer who lives in Spain ... William McGivern ...'

Now I'd bought myself some time. But it wouldn't be enough. I urgently needed to find other rejoinders, and to speak them in a natural and relaxed tone of voice so as not to attract attention. My head was spinning. I was afraid I was going to be ill. I was sweating. The night seemed stiflingly close, unless it was only the harsh illumination of the spotlights, the loud chatter of the conversations, the laughter.

'Do you know Spain well?' Caisley asked me.

She had lit another cigarette, and she was still staring at me with her cold gaze. I was scarcely able to stammer out:

'No. Not at all.'

'We have a house on Majorca. We spend more than three months a year there.'

And the conversation would go on for hours on this terrace. Empty words, hollow sentences, as if she and I had outlived ourselves and could no longer make even the slightest allusion to the past. She was perfectly comfortable in her part. And I didn't blame her: As I went along I too had forgotten nearly everything about my life, and each time whole stretches of it had fallen to dust I'd felt a pleasant sensation of lightness.

'And what's your favorite time of year in Majorca?' I asked Caisley.

I was feeling better now, the air was cooler, the guests around us less noisy, and the singer's voice very sweet. Caisley shrugged.

'
Every season has its charms in Majorca.'

I turned to her:

'And do you feel the same way?'

She smiled as she had a moment before, when I thought I had glimpsed something conspiratorial.

'I feel exactly as my husband does.'

And then a sort of giddiness came over me, and I said to her:

'It's funny. You don't cough when you smoke anymore.'

Caisley hadn't heard me. Someone had slapped him on the back and he had turned around. She frowned.

'No need to take ether for your cough anymore ...'

I'd said it lightly, as if only making conversation. She gave me a look of surprise. But she was as poised as ever. As for Caisley, he was talking to the person next to him.

'I didn't understand what you said ...'

Now she was looking away, and her gaze had lost its expression. I shook my head briskly, trying to look like someone waking up suddenly.

'Excuse me ... I was thinking of the book I'm writing at the moment ...'

'A detective novel?' she asked me, politely but distractedly.

'Not exactly.'

It was no use. The surface remained untroubled. Still waters. Or rather a thick sheet of ice, impossible to penetrate after fifteen years.

'Shall we be going?' asked Caisley.

He had his arm around her shoulders. He was a massive figure, and she seemed very small next to him.

'I'm leaving too,' I said.

'We must say good-night to Darius.'

We looked for him without success among the clusters of guests on the terrace. Then we went downstairs to the living room. At the far end of the room, four people were sitting around a table playing cards in silence. Darius was one of them.

'Well,' said Caisley, 'it's obvious that nothing can compete with poker ...'

He shook Darius's hand. Darius stood up and kissed her hand. I shook hands with Darius in turn.

'Come back whenever you like,' he told me. 'The door is always open for you.'

On the landing. I waited to take the elevator.

'We'll say good-bye to you here,' said Caisley. 'We live just downstairs.'

'I left my purse in the car this afternoon,' she told him. 'I'll be right back up.

''Well, good-bye,' said Caisley, with a nonchalant wave of the arm. 'And it was very nice meeting you.'

He went down the stairs. I heard a door shut. The two of us were in the elevator. She lifted her face toward me:

"My car is down the street a little, near the park ...'

'I know,' I told her.

She was looking at me, her eyes wide.

'Why? Are you spying on me?'

'I saw you by chance this afternoon, getting out of your car.'

The elevator stopped, the double doors slid open, but she didn't move. She was still looking at me with a slightly surprised expression.

'You haven't changed much,' she told me.

The double doors closed again with a metallic sound. She lowered her head as if she were trying to shield herself from the light of the ceiling lamp in the elevator.

'And me? Do you think I've changed?'

Her voice was not the same as it was a while ago, on the terrace; it was the slightly hoarse, slightly gravelly voice she used to have.

'No … Except your hair and your name ...'

The avenue was silent. You could hear the trees rustling.

'Do you know this neighborhood?' she asked me.

'Yes.'

I was no longer very sure I did. Now that she was walking next to me, I felt as though I had come to this avenue for the first time. But I wasn't dreaming. The car was still there, under the trees. I gestured toward it:

'I rented a car… And I hardly know how to drive …'

'I'm not surprised ...'

She had taken my arm. She stopped and gave me a smile:

'Knowing you, you probably get the brake mixed up with the accelerator ...'

I also felt as though I knew her well, even if l hadn't seen her for fifteen years and knew nothing of her life. Of all the people I'd met up to now, she was the one who had stayed in my mind the most. As we walked, her arm in mine, I began to convince myself that we had last seen each other the day before.