So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood (11 page)

Daragane had the sense that there was something more behind these harmless words. As on the radio, for example, when the sound is blurred and two voices are broadcast one over the other. He seemed to be hearing: “Why have you come back to Saint-Leu after fifteen years?”

“It's as though this house had a curse put on it . . . Perhaps because of its name . . .”

“Its name?”

Dr Voustraat smiled at him.

“Do you know what
‘maladrerie'
means?”

“Of course,” said Daragane.

He did not know, but he was ashamed to admit this to Dr Voustraat.

“Before the war, it was lived in by a doctor like me who left Saint-Leu . . . Later on, at the time I arrived, a certain Lucien Führer used to come here regularly . . . the owner of a sleazy Paris dive . . . There were many comings and goings . . . It was from this time on that the house was visited by some strange people . . . up until the end of the fifties . . .”

Daragane jotted down the doctor's words in his notebook as he went along. It was as though he were about to reveal the secret of his origins to him, all those years from the beginning of one's life that had been forgotten, apart from the occasional detail that rises up from the depths, a street entirely covered by a canopy of leaves, a smell, a name that is familiar but which you no longer know whom it belonged to, a slide.

“And then this Lucien Führer disappeared from one day to the next, and the house was bought by a Monsieur Vincent . . . Roger Vincent, if I remember correctly . . . He always parked his American convertible in the street . . .”

After fifteen years, Daragane was not entirely sure what colour this car was. Beige? Yes, surely. With red leather seats. Dr Voustraat remembered that it was a convertible and, if he had a good memory, he might have been able to confirm this colour: beige. But he feared that if he asked him this question, he might arouse his suspicion.

“I could not tell you exactly what this Monsieur Roger Vincent's job was . . . perhaps the same as Lucien Führer's . . . A man of about forty who came from Paris frequently . . .”

It seemed to Daragane in those days that Roger Vincent never slept at the house. He would spend the day at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt and leave again after dinner. From his bed, he could hear him starting up his car, and the noise was different from Annie's car. A noise both louder and more muffled.

“People said that he was half American or that he'd spent a long time in America . . . He had the look of an American . . . Tall . . . sporty in his appearance . . . I treated him once . . . I believe he had dislocated his wrist . . .”

Daragane had no memory of that. He would have been impressed if he had seen Roger Vincent wearing a bandage on his wrist or a plaster.

“There was also a young woman and a little boy who lived there . . . She wasn't old enough to have been his mother . . . I used to think that she was his big sister . . . She could have been this Monsieur Roger Vincent's daughter . . .”

Roger Vincent's daughter? No, this notion had not occurred to him. He had never asked himself questions as to the precise relationship between Roger Vincent and Annie. It would appear, he often used to say to himself, that children never ask themselves any questions. Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know.

“There were many comings and goings in this house . . . Sometimes, people would arrive in the middle of the night . . .”

In those days, Daragane slept well—the sleep of childhood—except on the evenings when he waited for Annie to return. He would often hear noisy voices and doors banging in the night, but he fell asleep again immediately. And anyway, the house was enormous, a building made up of several different parts, and so he never knew who was there. Leaving to go to school in the morning, he used to notice a number of cars parked in front of the porch. In the part of the building where his bedroom was, there was also Annie's, on the other side of the corridor.

“And, in your opinion, who were all these people?” he asked Dr Voustraat.

“A house search was conducted, but they had all disappeared . . . They questioned me, since I was their nearest neighbour . . . Apparently, this Roger Vincent had been implicated in an affair they called ‘The Combination' . . . I must have read this name somewhere, but I couldn't tell you what it's to do with . . . I confess I've never been interested in news items.”

Did Daragane really want to know any more than Dr Voustraat did? A gleam of light that you can barely make out from beneath a closed door and which indicates someone is there. But he did not want to open the door in order to discover who was in the room, or rather in the cupboard. A turn of phrase immediately came to mind: “the skeleton in the cupboard”. No, he did not want to know what the word “combination” stood for. Ever since childhood, he used to have the same bad dream: huge relief initially, when he woke up, as though he had escaped from a danger. And then, the bad dream became more and more specific. He had been an accomplice or a witness to something serious that had happened very long ago in the past. Certain people had been arrested. He himself had never been identified. He lived under the threat of being interrogated, when they would notice that he had had connections with the “culprits”. And it would be impossible for him to answer questions.

“And the young woman with the child?” he said to Dr Voustraat.

He had been surprised when the doctor had said: “I thought she was his big sister.” A horizon might be opening up on his life and would dispel the shadowy areas: fickle parents whom he scarcely remembered and who apparently wished to get rid of him. And that house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt . . . He sometimes wondered what he was doing there. From tomorrow onwards, he would devote himself to making enquiries. And first of all, find Annie Astrand's birth certificate. And also ask for his own, Daragane's, birth certificate, but he would not be satisfied with a typewritten duplicate and he would consult the register, where everything is written in hand, himself. On the few lines devoted to his birth, he would discover crossings-out, alterations, names that they had tried to rub out.

“She was often on her own with the little boy, at La Maladrerie . . . I was asked questions about her as well, after the search . . . According to the people who interrogated me, she had been an ‘acrobatic dancer'. . .”

He had pronounced the two last words on the tip of his tongue.

“It's the first time I've spoken to anyone about this business for a long time . . . Apart from me, no-one really knew about it at Saint-Leu . . . I was their nearest neighbour . . . But you must understand that they weren't exactly my kind of people . . .” He smiled at Daragane, a slightly ironic smile, and Daragane smiled too at the thought that this man with close-cropped white hair, a military bearing, and, especially, his very open blue eyes, had been—as he said—their nearest neighbour.

“I don't think you're going to use all that for your pamphlet about Saint-Leu . . . or else you would have to search for more precise details in the police archives . . . But, in all honesty, do you think that would be worthwhile?”

This question surprised Daragane. Had Dr Voustraat recognised him and seen through him? “In all honesty, do you think that would be worthwhile?” He had said this with kindness, in a tone of fatherly reproach or even friendly advice—the advice of someone who might have known you in your childhood.

“No, of course,” said Daragane. “It would be out of place in a simple pamphlet about Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. One could conceivably write a novel about it.”

He had set foot on a slippery slope which he was on the point of sliding down: admitting to Doctor Voustraat the precise reasons why he had rung his doorbell. He could even say to him: “Doctor, let's go to your surgery for a consultation, as we used to do in the old days . . . Is it still at the end of the corridor?”

“A novel? You would have to know all the principal characters. Many people have been to this house . . . Those who questioned me used to refer to a list and mentioned every name to me . . . But I didn't know any of those individuals . . .” Daragane would have really liked to have this list in his possession. It would probably have helped him pick up Annie's trail, but all these people had vanished into thin air, changing their surnames, their first names and their features. Annie herself, if she were still alive, would be unlikely still to be known as Annie.

“And the child?” asked Daragane. “Did you hear any news of the child?”

“None. I've often wondered what became of him . . . What a strange start to life . . .”

“They must surely have registered him at a school . . .”

“Yes. At the Forêt school on rue de Beuvron. I remember having written a note to explain his absence because of flu.”

“Perhaps at the Forêt school, we might find some record of his being there . . .”

“No, unfortunately. They pulled down the Forêt school two years ago. It was a very small school, you know . . .”

Daragane remembered the playground, its asphalt surface, its plane trees, and the contrast, on sunny afternoons, between the green of the foliage and the black of the asphalt. And he did not need to close his eyes to do so.

“The school no longer exists, but I can show you around the house . . .”

Once again, he had the feeling that Dr Voustraat had seen through him. But no, that was impossible. There was no longer anything in common between himself and this child he had left behind along with the others, with Annie, Roger Vincent and the people who came at night, by car, and whose names once featured on a list—that of passengers on a sunken ship.

“I was entrusted with a duplicate key to the house . . . in case any of my patients wanted to visit it . . . It's for sale . . . But not many customers have turned up. Shall I take you round?”

“Another time.”

Dr Voustraat seemed disappointed. In actual fact, thought Daragane, he was glad to invite me in and to chat. Normally, during these endless afternoons with time to spare, he must be on his own.

“Really? Wouldn't you like to? It's one of the oldest houses in Saint-Leu . . . As its name indicates, it was built on the site of a former lazaretto . . . That could be of interest for your pamphlet . . .”

“Another day,” said Daragane. “I promise you I'll be back.”

He lacked the courage to go into the house. He preferred that it should remain for him one of those places that have been familiar to you and which you occasionally happen to visit in dreams: in appearance they are the same, and yet they are permeated with something strange. A veil or a light that is too harsh? And in these dreams you come across people you once loved and whom you know are dead. If you speak to them they don't hear your voice.

“Is the furniture still the same as fifteen years ago?”

“There is no longer any furniture,” said Dr Voustraat. “All the rooms are empty. And the garden is an absolute virgin forest.”

Annie's bedroom, on the other side of the corridor, from where in his semi-slumber he used to hear voices and shrieks of laughter very late into the night. She was accompanied by Colette Laurent. But, often, the voice and the laugh were those of a man whom he had never met in the house during the daytime. This man must have left very early in the morning, long before school. Someone who would remain a stranger until the end of time. Another more detailed memory came back to him, but effortlessly so, like the words of songs learnt in your childhood and that you are able to recite all your life without understanding them. Her two bedroom windows gave onto the street which was not the same as it is today, a street shaded by trees. On the white wall, opposite her bed, a coloured engraving depicted flowers, fruit and leaves, and underneath it was written in large letters:
BELLADONNA AND HENBANE
. Much later, he discovered that these were poisonous plants, but at the time what interested him was deciphering the letters: belladonna and henbane, the first words he had learnt to read. Another engraving between the two windows: a black bull, its head lowered, which gazed at him with a melancholy expression. This engraving had as its caption:
BULL FROM THE POLDERS OF HOLSTEIN
, in smaller letters than belladonna and henbane, and harder to read. But he had managed to do so after a few days, and he had even been able to copy out all these words on a pad of notepaper that Annie had given him.

“If I understand correctly, doctor, they found nothing during the course of their search?”

“I don't know. They spent several days rifling through the house from top to bottom. The other people must have hidden something there . . .”

“And no articles about this search in the newspapers at the time?”

“No.”

A whimsical plan ran through Daragane's mind at that moment. With the royalties for the book of which he had only written two or three pages, he would buy the house. He would select the necessary tools: screwdrivers, hammers, crowbars, pincers, and he would devote himself to a meticulous exploration over several days. He would slowly pull out the wood panelling from the drawing room and the bedrooms and he would smash the mirrors to see what they concealed. He would set about searching for secret staircases and hidden doors. In the end he would be sure to find what he had lost, and what he had never been able to speak about to anyone.

“You probably came by bus?” Dr Voustraat asked him.

“Yes.”

The doctor checked his wristwatch.

“I can't take you back to Paris by car unfortunately. The last bus for Porte d'Asnieres leaves in twenty minutes.”