After the Circus (11 page)

“So, you were a close friend of Ansart's?”

His eyes and face took on a sarcastic expression.

“We met in 1943. And that same year, we both got sent to Poissy prison … As you see, this all goes back a while …”

I remained silent. He added:

“But don't hold it against us. Anyone can make mistakes when they're young …”

I felt like telling him I'd already come here ten years earlier to ask for news of Ansart and that he hadn't wanted to tell me. Back then, there were still secrets to keep.

But now, these were all bygones, of no further importance.

“And are you still in touch with the girl?”

I was so startled by his question that I stammered a vague reply. Once alone, on the boulevard, I stupidly broke down in sobs.

We reached the Seine and followed the Quai des Célestins. Rummaging in my pocket for a pack of cigarettes, I realized I'd kept Ansart's registration card.

“Can you really depend on this guy we're going to see?” asked Gisèle.

“Yes. I believe he genuinely cares about me.”

Indeed, thinking about it today, I can better appreciate Dell'Aversano's kindness toward me. He had been moved by my family situation, if such an adjective can be used when your parents completely neglect you. The first time I'd visited him, he had asked some questions about my studies and counseled me to keep at them, no doubt judging that a teenager left to his own devices would come to a bad end. According to him, I deserved better than to fence stolen furniture to some Saint-Paul junk dealer. I had admitted that I dreamed of becoming a writer and had favorably impressed him when I said my bedside companion was a volume of Stendhal's correspondence called
To the Happy Few.

He was sitting at his desk at the back of the shop. He looked at Gisèle and the dog in surprise.

I introduced Gisèle as my sister.

“I have all your information for you,” he said.

My job in Rome with his fellow bookseller didn't start for another two months.

“Why, had you wanted to leave right away?”

I didn't dare tell him that we had use of a car, or I'd have had to show him Ansart's registration and explain the whole story. Perhaps another time … But I did admit that I wanted to go there with Gisèle. Did he really believe she was my sister? I didn't read any sign of disapproval on his face. He simply turned to her:

“Are you prepared to find work in Rome?”

He asked her age. She told him she was twenty-one. He knew how old I was, and I dug my nails into my palms for fear he'd mention it in front of Gisèle.

“I even know your new address down there … If you like, I'll ask my friend if you can move in early …”

I thanked him. Would it be possible for my sister to live there with me?

He looked at the two of us more closely. I guessed that he was trying to find a physical resemblance between us and couldn't.

“That depends,” he said. “Does your sister know how to type?”

“Yes,” said Gisèle.

I was sure she was lying. I really couldn't picture her sitting at a typewriter.

“My friend will need someone who can type in French … I'll call him this evening to find out more about it.”

He stood up and invited us to go have coffee. We walked by the car, but I didn't say anything and Gisèle was my accomplice in silence. Tomorrow, without fail, I'd tell him everything that had happened. I didn't have the right to hide anything from this man who had been so good to us.

He asked how much longer I could stay in the Quai de Conti apartment.

“Not more than three weeks …”

He couldn't understand how a father and mother could abandon a boy who was so passionate about literature and whose bedside book was called
To the Happy Few.
And what astounded him even more was that I considered my parents' attitude entirely natural, and that it had never even occurred to me to expect any help from them.

“So, you have to be settled in Rome three weeks from now and your sister has to be able to live with you …”

From the way he had pronounced the words
your sister,
I could tell he wasn't fooled.

“Does your sister like literature as much as you?”

Gisèle looked embarrassed. In the time we'd known each other, we had never once talked about books.

“I'm making her read
To the Happy Few”
I said.

“And do you like it?” Dell'Aversano asked.

“Very much.”

She flashed him a winning smile. It was sunny
out and the air was warm for the season. We sat at the only sidewalk table left at the café. The clock on the church of Saint-Gervais chimed noon.

“So you know our future address in Rome?” I asked.

Dell'Aversano pulled an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket.

“It's number 7 on Via Frescobaldi.”

He turned to Gisèle:

“Do you know Rome?”

“No,” Gisèle said.

“So then you weren't with your brother when he celebrated New Year's Eve there at age fifteen?”

He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“And this Via Frescobaldi,” I asked, “what neighborhood is it in?”

“Here, I'll show you.”

Using a ballpoint pen, he drew two parallel lines on the envelope.

“This is the Via Veneto … You do know the Via Veneto …”

I had told him the story of how, on my father's orders, I'd tried to catch the woman with straw-blond hair and too much foundation who was running away from us.

“You follow Via Pinciana past the gardens of the Villa Borghese …”

He continued drawing lines on the envelope and with the tip of his pen he showed us the way.

“You make a left, still skirting the Villa Borghese, and you come to Via Frescobaldi … And there it is …”

He drew a cross.

“The great thing about the neighborhood is that you're surrounded by green … Your street is right near the botanical gardens …”

Neither of us could take our eyes off the map he'd just sketched. I was walking with Gisèle, in summer, beneath the shade trees of Via Frescobaldi.

At Quai de Conti, Grabley had left a note on the office couch:

My dear Obligado,

Someone called for you around 2 p.m. A man claiming to be from the police. He left his name, Samson, and a number where you can reach him:
TURBIOO
92-00.

I hope you haven't done something foolish.

Last night, the evening ended better than I expected and we were sorry you weren't with us. Would you like to join us again this evening, at the Tomate, for the 10:30 show?

Yours, Grabley

I asked Gisèle whether I should phone right away to find out what the man wanted. But we decided he should be the one to call back.

The afternoon was spent waiting, and the two of us did our best to overcome our nervousness. I had crumpled and torn up Grabley's note on which he'd written, “I hope you haven't done something foolish.”

“You think they could know what we did yesterday afternoon?”

Gisèle shrugged and smiled at me. She seemed calmer than I was. We spread out the map of Rome on the floor and tried to familiarize ourselves with our new neighborhood, memorizing the names of the streets, monuments, and churches that were near our new home: Porta Pinciana, Santa Teresa, the Temple of Aesculapius, the Colonial Museum … No one would ever find us there.

Later, darkness began to fall and we were lying on the couch. She got up and put on her black skirt and pullover.

“I'm going out for cigarettes.”

She wanted me to stay in case the phone rang. I asked her to buy the evening paper.

I watched her from the window. She didn't take the car. She walked with a languid step, hands in the pockets of her raincoat that she'd left unbuttoned.

She disappeared around the corner of the Hôtel des Monnaies.

I lay back down on the couch. I tried to recall the furniture that used to be in this office.

The telephone rang. A muffled, slightly drawling voice.

“I'm calling on behalf of Mister Samson, who asked you some questions last Thursday. A young girl was called in just after you … The two of you met up later at the Soleil-d'Or café.”

He paused. But I didn't say anything. I felt incapable of uttering a single word.

“You have spent the last four days together and she is living at your address … I'm calling to warn you …”

The office was now half in shadow and he continued speaking in his muffled voice.

“There is a lot you don't know about this person … I suppose she even lied to you about her name … Her real name is Suzanne Kraay …”

He spelled out the name, mechanically:
K-R-A-A-Y
. It felt as if the voice I was hearing was prerecorded, like the talking clock.

“She has already committed several offenses that landed her in La Petite-Roquette for a few
months … But I don't imagine she told you any of that … She probably also didn't tell you she's married …”

“I'm aware,” I said, in a voice I tried to make curt.

There was a pause.

“You are certainly not aware of everything.”

“I'm not interested,” I told him.

“But I
am
interested, and you're forgetting that you're still a minor …”

Once again the voice was muffled, distant.

“And you're running a huge risk …”

I heard the crackling of static, as if my caller were standing at the far end of the world. Then the noise stopped and his voice came through, very near and distinct.

“I'd like to give you a quick rundown so that we can clear the air. It's in your interest. You should know what you're exposing yourself to, since you're a minor … Will you agree to meet me?”

He had spoken that last sentence in the tone,
at once obsequious and authoritarian, used by certain boarding school supervisors.

“All right,” I said.

“This evening, ten o'clock, near your building … In the café on the quay, opposite the Louvre Colonnade … You can see it from your windows … I'll expect you at ten … I'm Mister Guélin.”

He spelled his name, then hung up.

I hung up in turn. Before he'd introduced himself, his voice had reminded me of a man I used to run into on Saturdays, when I went to the Jardin du Luxembourg or the Danton cinema. He always wore a gray sweat suit and had just come from the gym. A blond man of about forty, with close-cropped hair and sunken cheeks. One afternoon, he had struck up a conversation with me in one of those sorry cafés on the Carrefour de l'Odéon. He was a writer and journalist. I told him that I, too, hoped to become a writer one day. At which point he had given me a condescending smile:

“It's a lot of work, you know … A lot of work … I don't think you have what it takes …”

And he cited the example of a famous young dancer whom he greatly admired, who “worked at the barre day in, day out.”

“That's what it means to write, you see … Twenty-four hours of exercise a day … I doubt you have the strength of character … It's not even worth trying.”

He had almost persuaded me.

“I can show you how I write …”

He invited me to visit him at his place on Rue du Dragon. Two rooms with chalk-white walls, exposed beams in dark wood, a rustic writing table of the same color, and very stiff seats with high backs. He was wearing his sweat suit. He had signed one of his books for me, whose title I've forgotten. To my great surprise, he recommended I read
The Girls
by Montherlant. Then he'd offered to drive me home in his car, a Dauphine Gordini. Over the following months, I had seen him from my window, at night, parked in
front of the building in that blue car with white trim. And I was afraid.

I checked to see if by chance it was there today.

But no. Silence. Night had fallen. I preferred the reflections of the streetlamps on the walls to the dim light of the bulb hanging from the ceiling. Once again, I feared Gisèle would never return. The voice I had heard on the phone only heightened my sense of isolation and abandonment. It corresponded so well to this empty office, where I was having trouble remembering where the furniture used to be.

La Petite-Roquette … I had been walking one day on the street of the same name and had passed by the prison. Often, in my dreams, Rue de la Roquette spills onto the kind of square you find in Rome, in the middle of which rises a fountain. It's always summer. The square is deserted and flattened by the sun. Nothing disturbs the silence but the murmur of the fountain. And I remain there, in the shadows, waiting for Gisèle to walk out of prison.

The entry door slammed: I recognized her footsteps. She was there, in front of me, in her unbuttoned raincoat. She switched on the light. She said I was making a strange face.

“That man called.”

“And?”

I told her it was someone wanting information about my father and that he'd made an appointment to see me later that evening, at ten, in the café just opposite, across the Seine.

“It shouldn't take long.”

I took her face in my hands and kissed her. It didn't matter if her name was Gisèle or Suzanne Kraay and if she'd served time in La Petite-Roquette. Had I known her back then, I wouldn't have missed a single opportunity to go visit her. And even if she had committed a crime, I didn't care, so long as she was alive, pressed against me, in her black skirt and pullover.

“Aren't you worried he'll walk in on us?” she whispered in my ear.

At first I thought she meant the man on the telephone. But she was talking about Grabley.

“Oh, no. He's at the Tomate …”

Even so, we pushed the couch so that it blocked the office door.

I could see the café lights shining from the other side of the Seine, at the corner of the quay. Was the man already there? I wished I had a very powerful pair of binoculars to watch him with. He, too, from the café, could check whether the lights were on in the apartment windows. And that thought caused me a sudden stab of anxiety, as if a trap had just closed on me.