Out of the Dark (2 page)

Nothing in the room was out of place. The beds were made. No suitcases. No clothes. Only a large alarm clock, sitting on one of the nightstands. And despite that alarm clock, it seemed as though they were living here in secret, trying to leave no sign of their presence. We had spent only a brief moment in the room that first night, just long enough to drop off some art books I was tired of carrying, which I hadn't managed to sell to a secondhand book dealer on the Place Saint-Michel.

And it was on the Place Saint-Michel that they had first spoken to me, late that afternoon, as all around us the crowds streamed down the steps to the métro or up the boulevard in the opposite direction. They had asked me where they might find a post office nearby. I was afraid my directions might be too vague for them to follow, since I've never been able to describe the shortest route between two points. I had decided it would be best to show them to the Odéon post office myself. On the way there, she had stopped in a café-tabac and bought three stamps. As she stuck them to the envelope, I had time to read the address: Majorca.

She had slipped the letter into one of the mailboxes without checking to see whether it was the one marked
AIR MAIL- FOREIGN
. We had turned back toward the Place Saint-Michel and the quais. She was concerned to see me carrying the books, since 'they were probably heavy.' She had said sharply to Gérard Van Bever:

'You could help him.'

He had smiled at me and taken one of the books – the largest – under his arm.

In their room on the Quai de la Tournelle, I had set the books at the foot of the nightstand, the one with the alarm clock. I couldn't hear it ticking. The hands pointed to three o'clock. A spot on the pillowcase. Bending down to set the books on the floor, I had noticed a smell of ether coming from the pillow and the bed. Her arm had brushed against me, and she had switched on the bedside lamp.

We had dined in a café on the quai, next door to their Hôtel. We had ordered only the main dish of that night's special. Van Bever had paid the check. I had no money with me that night, and Van Bever thought he was five francs short. He had searched through the pockets of his overcoat and his jacket and finally found five francs in change. She said nothing and watched him absently, smoking a cigarette. She had given us her dish to share and had eaten only a few bites from Van Bever's plate.

She had turned to me and said in her slightly gravelly voice:

'Next time we'll go to a real restaurant …'

Later, we had both waited by the front door of the hotel while Van Bever went up to the room for my books. I broke the silence by asking if they had lived here long and if they came from the provinces or from abroad. No, they were from around Paris. They'd been living here for two months. That was all she had told me that night. And her first name: Jacqueline.

Van Bever had come down and given me my books. He had asked if I would try to sell them again the next day, and if I made much money this way. They had suggested we meet again. It was difficult for them to give me a precise time, but they could often be found in a café on the corner of the Rue Dante.

I go back there sometimes in my dreams. The other night, a February sunset blinded me as I walked up the Rue Dante. After all these years, it hadn't changed.

I stood at the glassed-in terrace and looked in at the bar, the pinball machine, and the handful of tables, set up as if around a dance floor.

As I crossed the street, the tall apartment building opposite on the Boulevard Saint-Germain cast its shadow over me. But behind me the sidewalk was still lit by the sun.

When I awoke, the time in my life when I had known Jacqueline appeared to me with the same contrast of shadow and light. Pale wintertime streets, and the sun filtering through the slats of the shutters.

GÉRARD VAN BEVER wore a herringbone overcoat that was too large for him. I can see him standing at the pinball machine in the café on the Rue Dante. But Jacqueline is the one playing. Her arms and shoulders scarcely move as the machine rattles and flashes. Van Bever's overcoat was voluminous and came down past his knees. He stood very straight, with his collar turned up and his hands in his pockets. Jacqueline wore a gray cable-knit turtleneck and a brown jacket made of soft leather.

The first time I found them at the Café Dante, Jacqueline turned to me, smiled, and went back to her pinball game. I sat down at a table. Her arms and her upper body looked delicate next to the huge machine, whose jolts and shudders threatened to toss her backward at any moment. She was struggling to stay upright, like someone in danger of falling overboard. She came to join me at the table, and Van Bever took his turn at the machine.

At first I was surprised by how much time they spent playing that game. I often interrupted their match; if l hadn't come, it would have gone on indefinitely.

In the afternoon the café was almost empty, but after six o'clock the customers were shoulder to shoulder at the bar and at the tables. I couldn't immediately make out Van Bever and Jacqueline through the roar of conversations, the rattling of the pinball machine, and all the customers squeezed in together. I caught sight of Van Bever's herringbone overcoat first, and then of Jacqueline. I had already come here several times and not found them, and each time I had waited and waited, sitting at a table. I thought I would never see them again, that they had disappeared into the crowds and the noise. And then one day, in the early afternoon, at the far end of the deserted café, they were there, standing side by side at the pinball machine.

I can scarcely remember any other details of that time of my life. l've almost forgotten my parents' faces. I had stayed on a while longer in their apartment, and then I had given up on my studies and begun selling old books for money.

Not long after meeting Jacqueline and Van Bever, I rented a room in a hotel near theirs, the Hôtel de Lima. I had altered the birth date on my passport to make myself one year older and no longer a minor.

The week before I moved into the Hôtel de Lima I had no place to sleep, so they had left me the key to their room while they were out of town at one of the casinos they often went to.

They had fallen into this habit before we met, at the Enghien casino and two or three others in small resort towns in Normandy. Then they had settled on Dieppe, Forges-les-Eaux, and Bagnolles-de-l'Orne. They always left on Saturday and came back on Monday with the money they had won, which was never more than a thousand francs. Van Bever had come up with a martingale 'around the neutral five,' as he said, but it was only profitable if he limited himself to small bets.

I never went with them to the casinos. I waited for them until Monday, never leaving the neighborhood. And then, after a while, Van Bever began going only to 'Forges' – as he called it – because it was closer than Bagnolles-de-I'Orne, while Jacqueline stayed in Paris.

The smell of ether was always hanging in their room when I spent the night alone there. The blue bottle sat on the shelf above the sink. There were clothes in the closet: a man's jacket, a pair of trousers, a bra, and one of the gray turtleneck sweaters that Jacqueline wore.

I slept badly those nights. I woke up not knowing where I was. It took me a long time to recognize the room. If someone had asked me about Van Bever and Jacqueline, I would have had trouble coming up with answers or justifying my presence here. Would they ever come back? I began to doubt it. The man behind the dark wooden counter at the entrance to the hotel was never concerned to see me heading upstairs to their room or keeping the key with me when I went out. He greeted me with a nod.

On the last night, I had awoken about five o'clock and couldn't get back to sleep. I was probably in Jacqueline's bed, and the clock was ticking so loudly that I wanted to put it away in the closet or hide it under a pillow. But I was afraid of the silence. I had got up and left the hotel. I had walked along the quai to the gates of the Jardin des Plantes and then into the only café open that early, across from the Austerlitz train station.

The week before, they had gone off to gamble at the Dieppe casino and returned very early in the morning. It would be the same today. One more hour, two more hours to wait … The commuters were emerging from the Gare d'Austerlitz in greater and greater numbers, drinking a cup of coffee at the bar, then heading for the entry to the métro. It was still dark. I walked along the edge of the Jardin des Plantes again, and then along the fence around the old Halle aux Vins.

I spotted their silhouettes from far away. Van Bever's herringbone overcoat stood out in the darkness. They were sitting on a bench on the other side of the quai, facing the closed display cases of the sidewalk book dealers. They were just back from Dieppe. They had knocked on the door of the room, but no one had answered. And I had left not long before, keeping the key in my pocket.

In the Hôtel de Lima, my window overlooked the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the upper end of the Rue des Bernardins. When I lay on the bed I could see the steeple of a church whose name I have forgotten, framed by the window. And the hours rang throughout the night, after the traffic noise had fallen off. Jacqueline and Van Bever often walked me back to my hotel. We had gone to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We had gone to a movie.

Those nights, nothing distinguished us from the students on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Van Bever's slightly worn coat and Jacqueline's leather jacket blended in with the drab backdrop of the Latin Quarter. I wore an old raincoat of dirty beige and carried books under my arm. No, there was nothing to draw attention to us.

On the registration form at the Hôtel de Lima I had put myself down as a 'university student,' but this was only a formality, since the man behind the desk had never asked me for any further information. All he asked was that I pay for the room every week. One day as I was leaving with a load of books I was planning to sell to a book dealer I knew, he asked me:

'So, how are your studies going?'

At first I thought I heard something sarcastic in his voice. But he was completely serious.

The Hôtel de la Tournelle was as quiet as the Lima. Van Bever and Jacqueline were the only lodgers. They had explained to me that the hotel was about to close so that it could be converted into apartments. During the day you could hear hammering in the surrounding rooms.

Had they filled out a registration form, and what was their occupation? Van Bever answered that in his papers he was listed as a 'door-to-door salesman' but he might have been joking. Jacqueline shrugged. She had no occupation. Salesman: I could have claimed the same title, since I spent my days carrying books from one secondhand dealer to the next.

It was cold. The snow melting on the sidewalks and quais, the black and gray of winter come to me in my memory. And Jacqueline always went out in her leather jacket, far too light for that weather.

IT WAS ON one of those winter days that Van Bever first went to Forges-les-Eaux alone, while Jacqueline stayed in Paris. She and I walked with Van Bever across the Seine to the Pont­Marie métro stop, since his train would be leaving from the Gare Saint-Lazare. He told us that he might go on to the Dieppe casino as well, and that he wanted to make more money than usual. His herringbone overcoat disappeared into the entrance of the métro and Jacqueline and I found ourselves together.

I had always seen her with Van Bever and had never had an opporrunity for a real conversation with her. Besides, she sometimes went an entire evening without saying a word. Or else she would curtly ask Van Bever to go and get her some cigarettes, as if she were trying to get rid of him. And of me too. But little by little I had grown used to her silences and her sharpness.

As Van Bever walked down the steps into the métro that day, I thought she must be sorry not to be setting off with him as she usually did. We walked along the Quai de l'Hôtel-de-Ville instead of crossing over to the Left Bank. She was quiet. I expected her to say good-bye to me at any moment. But no. She continued to walk beside me.

A mist was floating over the Seine and the quais. Jacqueline must have been freezing in that light leather jacket. We walked along the Square de I'Archevêque at the end of the Ile de la Cité, and she began to cough uncontrollably. Finally she caught her breath. I told her she should have something hot to drink, and we entered the café on the Rue Dante.

The usual late-afternoon rush was on. Two silhouettes were standing at the pinball machine, but Jacqueline didn't want to play. I ordered a hot toddy for her and she drank it with a grimace, as if she were taking poison. I told her, 'You shouldn't go out in such a light jacket.' Even though I had known her for some time, I had never spoken to her as a friend. She always kept a sort of distance between us.

We were sitting at a table in the back, near the pinball machine. She leaned toward me and said she hadn't left with Van Bever because she was feeling out of sorts. She was speaking in a low voice, and I brought my face close to hers. Our foreheads were nearly touching. She told me a secret: once winter was over, she planned to leave Paris. And go where?

'To Majorca …'

I remembered the letter she had mailed the day we met, addressed to Majorca.

'But it would be better if we could leave tomorrow …'

Suddenly she looked very pale. The man sitting next to us had put his elbow on the edge of our table as if he hadn't noticed us, and he went on talking to the person across from him. Jacqueline had retreated to the far end of the bench. The pinball machine rattled oppressively.