Out of the Dark (4 page)

'That would be a mistake. With them around, no one notices you.'

Jacqueline had turned away, as if she were bored by this subject and worried that Van Bever would tell me something he shouldn't.

'Why?' I had asked him. 'Are you afraid of being noticed?' He hadn't answered. But I didn't need an explanation. I was always afraid of being noticed too.

'Well? Shall we go back to the hotel?'

She was still speaking in that tender voice. She was caressing his hand. I remembered what she had said that afternoon, in the Café Dante: 'I can't do without Gérard.' They would walk into their room. Would they inhale from the ether bottle, as we had done the night before? No. A little earlier, as we were leaving the hotel, Jacqueline had taken the bottle from her pocket and had thrown it into a sewer farther along the quai.

'
I promised Gérard not to touch that filthy stuff anymore.'

Apparently she felt no such scruples with me. I was disappointed, but also strangely happy that she and I were now in collusion, since she had wanted to share 'that filthy stuff' with me.

I walked them hack to the quai. As they entered the hotel, Van Bever held out his hand.

'See you soon.'

She was looking away.

'We'll see each other later at the Café Dante,' she said.

I watched them climb the stairs. She was holding his arm. I stood still in the entryway. Then I heard the door of their room closing.

I walked along the Quai de la Tournelle, under the leafless plane trees, in the mist and the wet cold. I was glad to be wearing snow boots, but the thought of my badly heated room and brown wooden bed gnawed at me. Van Bever had won three thousand francs at Dieppe. How would I ever get hold of that kind of money? I tried to figure the value of the few books I had left to sell. Not much. In any case, I thought that even if I had a great deal of money, it would mean nothing to Jacqueline.

She had said, 'We'll see each other later at the Café Dante.' She had left it vague. So I would have to spend an afternoon waiting for them, and then another, like the first time. And as I waited, a thought would come to me: she didn't want to see me anymore, because of what had happened between us last night. I had become a problem for her because of what I knew.

I walked up the Boulevard Saint-Michel, and I felt as though I'd been walking these same sidewalks since long before, a prisoner of this neighborhood for no particular reason. Except one: I had a false student ID card in my pocket in case I was stopped, so it was better to stay in a student neighborhood.

When I got to the Hôtel de Lima, I hesitated to go in. But I couldn't spend the whole day outside, surrounded by these people with their leather briefcases and satchels, headed for the lycées, the Sorbonne, the École des Mines. I lay down on the bed. The room was too small for anything else: there were no chairs.

The church steeple was framed by the window, along with the branches of a chestnut tree. I wished that I could see them covered with leaves, but it would be another month before spring came. I don't remember if I ever thought about the future in those days. I imagine I lived in the present, making vague plans to run away, as I do today, and hoping to see them soon, him and Jacqueline in the Café Dante.

THEY INTRODUCED ME to Cartaud later on, at around one in the morning. I had waited for them in vain at the Café Dante that evening, and I didn't have the nerve to stop by their hotel. I had eaten in one of the Chinese restaurants on the Rue du Sommerard. The idea that I might never see Jacqueline again killed my appetite. I tried to reassure myself: they wouldn't move out of the hotel just like that, and even if they did, they would leave their new address for me with the concierge. But what particular reason would they have for leaving me their address? No matter; I would spend my Saturdays and Sundays hanging around the casinos of Dieppe and Forges-les-Eaux until I found them.

I spent a long time in the English bookstore on the quai, near Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. I bought a book there:
A High Wind in Jamaica
, which I had read in French when I was about fifteen, as
Un cyclone à la Jamaïque
. I walked aimlessly for a while, finally ending up in another bookstore, also open very late, on the Rue Saint-Séverin. Then I came back to my room and tried to read.

I went out again and found myself heading for the café where we had met that morning, on the Rue Cujas. My heart jumped: they were sitting in that same booth, near the window, along with a dark-haired man. Van Bever was on his right. Then I could only see Jacqueline, sitting across from them, alone on the bench, her arms folded. She was there behind the glass, in the yellow light, and I wish I could travel back in time. I would find myself on the sidewalk of the Rue Cujas just where I was before, but as I am today, and it would be simple for me to lead Jacqueline out of that fishbowl and into the open air.

I felt sheepish approaching their table as if l were trying to surprise them. Seeing me, Van Bever made a gesture of greeting. Jacqueline smiled at me, showing no surprise at all. Van Bever introduced me to the other man:

'Pierre Cartaud …'

I shook his hand and sat down next to Jacqueline.

'Were you in the neighborhood?' asked Van Bever in the polite tone of voice he would have used for a vague acquaintance.

'Yes … Completely by chance …'

I was very determined to stay where I was, in the booth. Jacqueline was avoiding my gaze. Was it Cartaud's presence that was making them so distant toward me? I must have interrupted their conversation.

'Would you like a drink?' Cartaud asked me.

He had the deep, resonant voice of someone who was practiced at speaking and influencing people.

'A grenadine.'

He was older than us, about thirty-five. Dark, with regular features. He was wearing a gray suit.

Leaving the hotel, I had stuffed
A High Wind in Jamaica
into the pocket of my raincoat. I found it reassuring always to have with me a novel I liked. I set it on the table as I felt deep in my pocket for a pack of cigarettes, and Cartaud noticed it.

'You read English?'

I told him yes. Since Jacqueline and Van Bever were still silent, he finally said:

'Have you known each other long?'

'We met in the neighborhood,' said Jacqueline.

'Oh yes … I see …'

What exactly did he see? He lit a cigarette.

'And do you go to the casinos with them?'

'No.'

Van Bever and Jacqueline were still keeping quiet. What could they find so troubling about my being here?

'So you've never seen them play
boule
for three hours straight …'

He let out a loud laugh.

Jacqueline turned to me.

'We met this gentleman at Langrune,' she told me.

'I spotted them right away,' said Cartaud. 'They had such an odd way of playing …'

'Why odd?' said Van Bever with feigned naïveté.

'And we might ask just what .
you
were up to at Langrune?' said Jacqueline, smiling at him.

Van Bever had struck his customary jockey pose: his back curved, his head between his shoulders. He seemed uncomfortable.

'Do you gamble at the casino?' I asked Cartaud.

'Not really. I find it amusing to go there, for no special reason … when things are slack …'

And what was his occupation when things weren't slack?

Little by little, Jacqueline and Van Bever relaxed. Had they been worried that I might say something to displease Cartaud, or that in the course of our conversation he would reveal something that they both wanted to keep hidden from me?

'And next week … Forges?'

Cartaud was looking at them with amusement. 'No, Dieppe,' said Van Bever.

'I could give you a ride there in my car. It's very fast …' He turned to Jacqueline and me:

'Yesterday it took us a little over an hour to come back from Dieppe …'

So he was the one who had driven Van Bever back to Paris. I remembered the black car stopped on the Rue Cujas.

'That would be very nice of you,' said Jacqueline. 'It's such a bore taking the train every time.'

She was looking at Cartaud in a strange way, as if she found him impressive and couldn't help feeling somehow attracted to him. Had Van Bever noticed?

'I'd be delighted to help you,' said Cartaud. 'I hope you'll join us …'

He was staring at me with his sardonic look. It was as if he had already made up his mind about me and had settled on an attitude of slight condescension.

'I don't go to casinos in the provinces,' I said curtly.

He blinked. Jacqueline was surprised at my reply as well. Van Bever showed no emotion.

'You're missing out. Really very amusing, casinos in the provinces …'

His gaze had hardened. I must have offended him. He wasn't expecting that kind of comeback from such a meek­looking boy. But I wanted to ease the tension. So I said:

'You're right. They're very amusing … Especially Langrune …'

Yes, I would have liked to know what he was doing at Langrune when he met Jacqueline and Van Bever. I knew the place, because I had spent an afternoon there with some friends during a trip to Normandy the year before. I had a hard time imagining him there, wearing his gray suit and walking along the row of run-down villas by the sea, in the rain, looking for the casino. I vaguely remembered that the casino was not in Langrune itself but a few hundred meters down the road, at Luc-sur-Mer.

'Are you a student?'

He had come around to that question. At first I wanted to say yes, but such a simple answer would only complicate things, since I would have to go on to tell him what I was studying.

'No. I work for book dealers.'

I hoped that would be enough for him. Had he asked Jacqueline and Van Bev·cr the same question? And what was their answer? Had Van Bever told him he was a door-to­door salesman? I didn't think so.

'
I used to be a student, just across the way …'

He was pointing at a small building on the other side of the street. 'That was the French School of Orthopedics. I was there for a year. Then I studied dentistry at a school on the Avenue de Choisy …'

His tone had become confidential. Was this really sincere? Maybe he was hoping to make us forget that he was not our age and no longer a student.

'I chose dental school so that I could find a specific direction to take. I had a tendency to drift, like you …'

In the end, I could think of only one explanation for the fact that this thirty-five-year-old man in his gray suit should be sitting with us at this hour in this Latin Quarter café: he was interested in Jacqueline.

'You want something else to drink? I'll have another whiskey …'

Van Bever and Jacqueline did not show the slightest sign of impatience. As for me, I stayed where I was in the booth, like in those nightmares where you can't stand up because your legs are as heavy as lead. From time to time I turned toward Jacqueline, wanting to ask her to leave this café and walk with me to the Gare de Lyon. We would have taken a night train, and the next morning we would have found ourselves on the Riviera or in Italy.

The car was parked a little farther up the Rue Cujas, where the sidewalk became steps with iron handrails. Jacqueline got into the front seat.

Cartaud asked me for the address of my hotel, and we took the Rue Saint-Jacques to reach the Boulevard Saint­Germain.

'If understand correctly,
'
he said, 'you all live in hotels …'

He turned his head toward Van Bever and me. He looked us over again with his sardonic smile, and I had the feeling he saw us as utterly insignificant.

'A very Bohemian life, in other words …'

Maybe he was trying to strike a flippant and sympathetic tone. If so, he was doing it awkwardly, as older people do who are intimidated by youth.

'And how long will you go on living in hotels?'

This time he was talking to Jacqueline. She was smoking and dropping the ash out the half-open window.

'Until we can leave Paris,' she said. 'It all depends on our American friend who lives on Majorca.'

A little earlier, I had looked for a book by this McGivern person in the English bookstore on the quai but found nothing. The only proof of his existence was the envelope with the Majorcan address that I had seen in Jacqueline's hand that first day. But I wasn't sure the name on the envelope was 'McGivern.'

'Are you sure you can count on him?' Cartaud asked.

Van Bever, sitting next to me, seemed uncomfortable. Finally Jacqueline said:

'Of course … He suggested we come to Majorca.'

She was speaking in a matter-of-fact tone I didn't recognize. I got the impression that she wanted to lord it over Cartaud with this 'American friend' and to let him know that he, Cartaud, wasn't the only one interested in her and Van Bever.

He stopped the car in front of my hotel. So this was my cue to say goodnight, and I was afraid I would never see them again, like those afternoons when I waited for them in the Café Dante. Cartaud wouldn't take them straight back to their hotel, and they would end the evening together somewhere on the Right Rank. Or they might even have one last drink somewhere in this neighborhood. But they wanted to get rid of me first.