The Black Notebook (8 page)

“I wasn't careful enough . . . I let myself get mixed up in these plots . . . You know, Jean, some of the people who frequent the Unic Hôtel maintain close ties with Morocco . . .”

As the time passed, the noise and number of people at the tables increased. Aghamouri spoke in a murmur, and I couldn't make out everything he said. Yes, the Unic Hôtel was the rendezvous for certain Moroccans and the Frenchmen who were “in business” with them . . . What sort of business? That Georges with the moon face, the one Paul Chastagnier had said was “no altar boy,” owned a hotel in Morocco . . . Paul Chastagnier had spent many years living in Casablanca . . . And Marciano was born there . . . And he, Aghamouri, had found himself among these people because of a Moroccan friend who spent time at the Cité Universitaire, but who actually worked for the embassy as a “security adviser.”

He spoke faster and faster, and it was hard for me to keep up with the flood of details. Perhaps he wanted to free himself of a burden, a secret he had carried too long. He suddenly said:

“Forgive me . . . All this must seem incoherent . . .”

Not at all. I was used to listening to people. And even when I didn't understand a word they were saying, I opened my eyes wide and fixed them with a penetrating stare, which gave them the illusion they were addressing an especially attentive interlocutor. My mind would be elsewhere, but my eyes gazed steadily at them, as if I were drinking up their words. It was different with Aghamouri. He was part of Dannie's entourage; I
wanted
to understand him. And I hoped he'd let slip a few clues about the ugly incident she was involved in.

“You're lucky . . . You don't have to dirty your hands like we do . . . You can keep your hands clean . . .”

Those last words contained a hint of reproach. Who did he mean by “we”? He and Dannie? I looked at his hands. They were delicate, much more delicate than mine. And white. Dannie's, too, had impressed me with their refinement. She had very graceful wrists.

“Except you have to be careful not to mix with the wrong people . . . However invulnerable you think you are, there's always a chink in the armor . . . Always . . . Be careful, Jean.”

It was as if he envied me for having “clean hands” and was anticipating the moment when I'd finally get them dirty. His voice grew increasingly distant. And, as I write these lines, that voice is as feeble as the ones that reach you very late at night on the radio, buried in static. I believe I already felt that way at the time. It seems to me that back then I saw them all as if they were behind the glass partition of an aquarium, and that glass stood between them and me. So it is that in dreams you watch others live through the uncertainties of the present, while you know the future. You try to persuade Mme du Barry not to return to France, to keep her from being guillotined. This evening, I think I'll take the metro to Jussieu. As the stations roll by, I will travel back in time. I'll find Aghamouri sitting at that same spot near the bar, in his camel coat, his black briefcase lying flat on the table—the black briefcase that might or might not have contained his course notes from Censier, which he said would help him pass his “foundation” exams. I wouldn't have been surprised if instead he had pulled out wads of cash, a gun, or files to pass on to that Moroccan friend from the Cité Universitaire, the one who worked as a “security adviser” at the embassy . . . I'll make him come with me to Jussieu station and we'll take the opposite journey, forward in time. We'll get off at Église-d'Auteuil, the end of the line. A quiet evening in a peaceful, almost rustic square. I'll tell him, “This is the situation. You're in the Paris of today. You no longer have anything to fear. Anyone who posed a threat is long dead. You're out of harm's way. There are no more phone booths. To call me, at any hour of the day or night, you use this thing.” And I'll hand him a cell phone.

“Yes . . . Be careful, Jean . . . When you were at the Unic Hôtel, I saw you talking a few times with Paul Chastagnier . . . He'll get
you
involved in some nasty business too.”

It was late. People were exiting the Lutèce Theater. No one was left at the dining tables facing us. Aghamouri seemed even more anxious than at the beginning of our conversation. I sensed that he was afraid to go outside, that he'd stay in this café until closing time.

I asked him again:

“And what about Dannie? . . . Do you really think that ugly incident you were talking about . . .”

He didn't leave me time to finish. He said sharply:

“It could cost her dearly . . . Even with false papers, they could still find her . . . It was a mistake to bring her to the Unic Hôtel and introduce her to the others . . . but it was just to give her a break . . . She should have left Paris right away . . .”

He had forgotten my presence. No doubt he repeated the same words to himself when he was alone at that hour of night. Then he shook his head as if snapping out of a bad dream.

“I mentioned Paul Chastagnier . . . But the most dangerous one of all is Georges . . . He provided Dannie with the false papers. He has major backers in Morocco and knows that friend from the embassy . . . They want me to do something for them . . .”

He was on the verge of telling me everything, but he stopped himself.

“I don't get why a boy like you should hang out with those people . . . I had no choice, but what about you?”

I shrugged.

“You know,” I said to him, “I don't hang out with anyone. Most people I couldn't care less about. Except for Restif de La Bretonne, Tristan Corbière, Jeanne Duval, and a few others.”

“If that's true, you're very lucky . . .”

And, like a detective who pretends to take your side the better to extract a confession:

“When you get down to it, all this is really Dannie's fault, don't you think? If you want my advice, steer clear of that girl . . .”

“I never take advice.”

I forced myself to smile at him, a guileless smile.

“Watch out for yourself . . . Dannie and I, it's as if we had the plague . . . Around us, you're in danger of catching leprosy . . .”

What he was trying to tell me was that there was a tight bond between the two of them, common ground, complicity.

“Don't worry too much about me,” I said.

When we left the café it was nearly midnight. He stood very stiff in his camel coat, black briefcase hanging from his hand.

“Forgive me, I kind of lost my head tonight. Don't pay any mind to what I said . . . It must be because of my exams. I never get much sleep . . . I have to take an oral in a few days . . .”

He had recovered all his scholarly dignity and gravitas.

“I don't do nearly as well in oral exams as in written.”

He forced himself to smile. I offered to accompany him to the Jussieu metro stop.

“What an idiot I am . . . I didn't even think to offer you dinner.”

He was no longer the same man. He had completely regained his self-possession.

We walked calmly across the square. We still had time before the last metro.

“Forget everything I said about Dannie . . . It's not as serious as all that . . . And anyway, when you're fond of someone, you take their concerns way too personally and worry for no reason.”

He said this in a clear voice, emphasizing every word. An expression occurred to me: he's muddying the waters.

He was about to go down the steps of the metro entrance. I couldn't keep from asking:

“Are you sleeping at the Unic Hôtel tonight?”

He was not expecting the question. He paused for a moment.

“I don't think so. I took back my old room at the Cité Universitaire. It's more pleasant, all in all.”

He shook my hand goodbye. He was in a hurry to leave, and went down the steps very fast. Before diving into the corridor, he looked back, as if afraid I'd run after him. And I was tempted to do it. I imagined we were sitting side by side on one of those dark red benches on the platform, waiting for a train that would take a long time to arrive because of the late hour. He had lied to me: he was not going back to the Cité Universitaire or he would have taken the Porte d'Italie line. He was going to the Unic Hôtel. He would get off at Duroc. Once again, I tried to find out what “ugly incident” Dannie had drifted into. But he didn't answer. There on the bench, he pretended not to know me. He stepped into the metro car, the doors shut behind him, and, his forehead pressed against the glass, he stared at me with dead eyes.

 

 

That night, I returned to Rue de l'Aude on foot. The long walk encouraged me to lose myself in my thoughts. On nights when Dannie joined me in my room, it was often around one in the morning. Sometimes she would say, “I went to see my brother,” or, “I was at my girlfriend's in Ranelagh,” without offering many details. From what I had gathered, this brother—sometimes she referred to him as “Pierre”—did not live in Paris but came to town regularly. And the “girlfriend in Ranelagh” was so called because her home was near the Ranelagh gardens, in the sixteenth arrondissement. While she never offered to let me meet her brother, she did say she would introduce me to her girlfriend in Ranelagh. But the days went by and her promise remained unkept.

Perhaps Aghamouri had not lied to me; perhaps, as I walked toward Rue de l'Aude, he was already back in his room at the Cité Universitaire. But Dannie? I could still hear Aghamouri's voice, like a fading echo: “She's done something pretty serious . . . She's liable to find herself in deep trouble . . .” And I was afraid I would be waiting for her in vain that night. Then again, I often waited without knowing if she'd show. Or else she would come by when I wasn't expecting her, at around four in the morning. I would have fallen into a light sleep, and the sound of the key turning in the lock would startle me awake. Evenings were long when I stayed in my neighborhood to wait for her, but it seemed only natural. I felt sorry for people who had to record appointments in their diary, sometimes months in advance. Everything was prearranged for them, and they would never wait for anyone. They would never know how time throbs, dilates, then falls slack again; how it gradually gives you that feeling of vacation and infinity that others seek in drugs, but that I found just in waiting. Deep down, I felt sure you would come sooner or later. At around eight in the evening, I heard my neighbor shut her door, her steps growing fainter down the stairs. She lived one flight up. On her door was a small, white square of cardboard on which she had written her first name in red ink: Kim. She was about the same age as us. She was performing in a play and had told me she was always afraid she'd arrive late, after the curtain went up. She had given us tickets, Dannie and me, and we had gone to a theater on the boulevards that today no longer exists. A taxi waited for her every evening, except Monday, at eight p.m. sharp, and on Sundays at two, in front of number 28 Rue de l'Aude. I watched through the window as she climbed into the cab, wearing a parka, and pulled the door shut. It was January; the weather had been very cold. Then a layer of snow had covered the street, and for a few days we were far away from Paris, in a mountain village. I don't remember the title of the play or what it was about. She went onstage after intermission. I had recorded one sentence of her dialogue in my black notebook, along with the exact time—nine forty-five—that she spoke the line. If anyone had asked me why, I doubt I could have said. But today I understand it better: I needed reference points, the names of metro stations, street addresses, dogs' pedigrees, as if fearing that from one moment to the next people and things would slip away or vanish, and I had to preserve at least some proof of their existence.

I knew that every evening at roughly nine forty-five, she would say, onstage, facing the audience:

“We counted for so little in his life . . .”

And writing it today, half a century later—or even after a century; I've forgotten how to count the years—I momentarily escape the sense of emptiness I feel. Taxi waiting at eight in the evening, fear of arriving after the curtain went up, parka against the cold and snow, once-common gestures fallen into disuse, a play that no one will ever see again, long-gone laughter and applause, the theater itself demolished . . . We counted for so little in his life . . . On her Mondays off, there was a light in her window, and that, too, reassured me. The other evenings, I was alone in that small building. I sometimes felt I had lost my memory and couldn't understand what I was doing there. Until Dannie returned.

 

 

I was walking with her in the neighborhood where I grew up, an area I normally avoided because it brought back painful memories—an area now so changed that it has become completely foreign and indifferent to me. We went past the Royal Saint-Germain and arrived in front of the Hôtel Taranne. I saw that writer I admired coming out of the hotel, the one who had written a poem called “Dannie.” Behind us, a man's voice called out, “Jacques!” and he turned around. He glanced at me in surprise, thinking I'd been the one to call him by name. I was tempted to take advantage of the coincidence, walk up and shake his hand. I would have asked him why his poem was called “Dannie” and whether he, too, had known a girl by that name. But I didn't dare. Someone came up to him, once more saying “Jacques,” and he realized his mistake. I think he even smiled at me. The two men followed the boulevard ahead of us, walking toward the Seine.

“You should go say hello to him,” Dannie said. She offered to accost him for me, but I held her back. And then it was too late: they had disappeared, turning left onto Boulevard Raspail. We doubled back. Once more, we were at the entrance of the Hôtel Taranne.

“Why don't you leave a note for him, asking to meet?” Dannie said.