Paris Nocturne

~ ~ ~

LATE AT NIGHT, a long time ago, when I was about to turn twenty-one, I was crossing Place des Pyramides on my way to Place de la Concorde when a car appeared suddenly from out of the darkness. At first I thought it had just grazed me, then I felt a sharp pain from my ankle to my knee. I fell onto the pavement. But I managed to get up again. The car swerved and collided with one of the arcades surrounding the square in a shower of broken glass. The door opened and a woman stumbled out. A man who happened to be at the entrance of the hotel under the arcade ushered us into the lobby. We waited, the woman and I, on a red leather sofa while the man made a phone call from reception. She was cut along the hollow of her cheek, on her cheekbone and on her forehead, and the cuts were bleeding. A huge man with short brown hair came into the lobby and walked towards us.

Outside, they surrounded the car, which stood with its doors hanging open, and one of them took notes as if for a report. As we got into the police van, I realised that I was missing my left shoe. The woman and I were sitting side by side on the wooden bench. The huge brown-haired man sat on the bench opposite us. He was smoking and glanced at us coldly from time to time. Through the barred windows I could see that we were driving along Quai des Tuileries. I hadn’t been given time to collect my shoe, and I thought about how it would stay there, all night, in the middle of the pavement. I could no longer tell whether I’d lost a shoe or an animal, the dog from my childhood that had been run over when I lived on the outskirts of Paris, Rue Docteur-Kurzenne. Everything was getting muddled in my mind. Perhaps I hit my head when I fell. I turned to the woman. I was surprised she was wearing a fur coat.

I remembered that it was winter. And the man opposite was wearing a coat, too, and I was wearing one of those old sheepskin jackets you find at flea markets. Her fur coat was certainly not one you would find at a flea market. A mink? A sable? She was smartly dressed and well groomed, which contrasted with the cuts on her face. On my jacket, just above the pockets, I noticed spots of blood. I had a large graze on my left palm; the spots of blood on the fabric must have come from there. She held herself erect but with her head tilted to one side, as if staring at something on the floor. My shoeless foot, perhaps. She had shoulder-length hair and in the light of the lobby she seemed blonde.

The police van stopped at a red light on the quay, level with Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The man continued to watch us in silence, one at a time, with his cold stare. I couldn’t help but feel guilty of something.

We were still stopped at the lights. The café on the corner of the quay and Place Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, where I had often met my father, was still open. It was time to escape. Perhaps all we had to do was ask the guy on the bench to let us go. But I felt incapable of uttering a single word. He coughed, a chesty smoker’s cough, and I was startled at the sound. Since the accident, a profound silence had settled around me, as if I had lost my hearing. We continued along the quay. As the police van headed over the bridge, I felt her hand squeeze my wrist. She smiled, as if she wanted to reassure me, but I wasn’t frightened at all. It even seemed to me that we had been in each other’s company before, at another time, and that she still had the same smile. Where had I seen her? She reminded me of someone I had known a long time ago. The man opposite us had fallen asleep and his head had dropped onto his chest. She squeezed my wrist hard, and I was convinced that soon after, once we were out of the van, they would handcuff us to each other.

After the bridge, the van went through an entrance-way and stopped in the courtyard of the Hôtel-Dieu casualty department. We sat in the waiting room, still accompanied by the man. I was beginning to wonder exactly what his job was. A policeman in charge of keeping an eye on us? But why? I wanted to ask him, but I already knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me. I had LOST MY VOICE. The three words came into my mind in the stark light of the waiting room. The woman and I were sitting on a bench opposite the reception desk. The man went to talk to one of the women there. I was sitting very close to her; I could feel her shoulder against mine. He sat back down in the same place on the edge of the bench, along from us. A red-haired man, barefoot, dressed in a leather jacket and pyjama trousers, paced up and down the waiting room, shouting across at the women at reception. He complained that they weren’t paying him any attention. He kept walking in front of us, trying to catch my eye. But I kept my eyes averted because I was afraid he would talk to me. One of the women from reception went over to him and gently guided him towards the exit. He came back into the waiting room, but this time he launched into a tirade of complaints, like a howling dog.

From time to time, a man or a woman escorted by officers would cross the room quickly and disappear into the corridor opposite us. I wondered where the corridor led to, and if, when our turn came, we would be steered down there, too. Two women crossed the waiting room, surrounded by several police officers. I could tell that they had just come out of a police van, perhaps the same as the one that dropped us off. They were wearing fur coats, just as elegant as the one worn by the woman sitting next to me, and, like her, they were smartly turned out. No cuts on their faces. But each handcuffed at the wrists.

The huge brown-haired man motioned for us to get up and took us to the end of the room. Walking with one shoe was uncomfortable and I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to take it off. I felt quite a sharp pain in the ankle of the foot without a shoe.

A nurse led us into a small room with two camp beds. We lay down. A young man came in. He wore a white coat and had a jawline beard. He checked his papers and asked the woman her name. She replied: Jacqueline Beausergent. He asked me for my name, too. He examined my shoeless foot, then my leg, lifting my trousers up to the knee. The nurse helped her out of her coat and cleaned the cuts on her face with cotton wool. Then they switched on a night-light, and left us. The door was wide open and, in the light of the corridor, our man paced up and down. He appeared in the doorway with the regularity of a metronome. She was lying there next to me, her fur coat pulled over her like a blanket. There wouldn’t have been room for a bedside table between the two beds. She reached her hand out and squeezed my wrist. I thought of the handcuffs that the two women were wearing earlier and again said to myself that they would end up putting them on us, too.

Out in the corridor, he stopped pacing. He was talking quietly with the nurse. She came into the room, followed by the young man with the jawline beard. They turned on the light and stood at the head of my bed. I turned to the woman and she shrugged under the fur coat, as if to tell me there was nothing we could do, we were trapped, the time to escape had passed. The huge brown-haired man stood motionless in the doorway, his legs slightly apart, his arms folded. He didn’t take his eyes off us. He must have been preparing to stop us in case we tried to escape. She smiled at me again, with that same wry smile she had in the police van earlier. I don’t know why, but this smile made me uneasy. The fellow with the jawline beard and white coat leaned over me and, with the nurse’s help, put a kind of big black muzzle over my mouth and nose. I smelled the ether before losing consciousness.

*

From time to time, I tried to open my eyes, but I kept falling into a half-sleep. Then I had a dim memory of the accident and wanted to turn over and see if she was still there in the other bed. But I didn’t have the strength to make the slightest movement — the stillness put me at ease. I remembered the big black muzzle, too. It must have been the ether that put me in this state. I lay still and let myself drift along in the river’s current. Her face came to me with total precision, like a large identikit photograph: the even arches of her eyebrows, clear eyes, blonde hair, the cuts on her forehead, cheekbones and the hollow of her cheek. In my half-sleep the huge brown-haired man held up the photo, asking me if I ‘knew this person’. I was astonished to hear him speak. He kept repeating the question with the metallic voice of a talking clock. I studied the face until I thought, yes, I know this person. Or perhaps I had met someone who looked very similar. I could no longer feel the pain in my left foot. That evening I was wearing my old moccasins with crepe rubber soles and stiff leather, which I had cut with scissors because they were too tight and hurt my ankles. I thought about that shoe I had lost, the forgotten shoe left in the middle of the pavement. The shock of the accident brought back the memory of the dog that had been run over long ago, and I could see the sloping avenue in front of the house. The dog used to escape and go to the vacant lot at the end of the avenue. I was afraid that he might get lost, so I kept an eye out for him from my bedroom window. It was often evening when he came walking slowly back up the avenue. Why had this woman become associated with a house where I had spent part of my childhood?

Again, I heard him ask me the same question, ‘Do you know this person?’ His voice became softer and softer until it was a whisper, as if he was speaking right up against my ear. I stayed still and let myself be carried along by the river, perhaps the same river where we used to walk with the dog. Faces gradually appeared in front of me, and I compared them with the identikit photograph. Of course, that was it: she had a room on the first floor of the house, the last room at the end of the corridor. The same smile, the same blonde hair but worn longer. She had a scar across her left cheekbone, and I suddenly understood why I had thought I recognised her in the police van. The cuts on her face must have reminded me of the scar, only I hadn’t realised it then.

Once I had the strength to turn over to the side where she lay on the other bed, I would reach out and touch her shoulder to wake her. She would still be wrapped up in her fur coat. I would ask her all the questions I needed to ask. I would finally find out exactly who she was.

I couldn’t see much of the room: only the white ceiling and the window opposite me. Or rather, a bay window, on the right of which a branch swung to and fro. And the blue sky behind the windowpane, a blue so pure that I thought it must be a beautiful winter’s day. I had the impression I was in a hotel in the mountains. Once I was able to get up and walk over to the window, I would see that it looked out onto a field of snow, perhaps the start of a ski run. I was no longer carried by the river’s current, but was gliding over the snow, a gentle, endless slope, and the air I breathed had the coolness of ether.

The room seemed larger than the one last night in the Hôtel-Dieu, and I hadn’t noticed a bay window, or any other window in that kind of storage room where we had been taken after the waiting room. I turned my head. No camp bed, no one else but me. They must have given her a room next to mine, and I would soon see how she was. The huge brown-haired man who I feared would handcuff us to each other was surely not a policeman as I had thought, and we owed him no explanation. He could ask me all the questions he liked, interrogate me for hours; I no longer felt guilty of anything. I was gliding over the snow and the cold air made me slightly euphoric. The accident the night before did not happen by chance. It marked a breach in continuity. The shock was good for me, and it occurred in time for me to make a new start in life.

The door was to my right, beyond the small, white, wooden bedside table where they had left my wallet and passport. And on the metal chair against the wall, I recognised my clothes. At the foot of the chair, my one shoe. I could hear voices on the other side of the door, the voices of a man and a woman conversing calmly. I really had no desire to get up. I wanted to prolong this respite as long as possible. I wondered if I was still in the Hôtel-Dieu, but it didn’t feel like it, because of the silence, barely interrupted by the two reassuring voices on the other side of the door. The branch waved to and fro in the window frame. Sooner or later they would come and explain everything to me. I felt absolutely no apprehension, even though I had always been on edge. Perhaps I owed this sudden peacefulness to the ether they made me inhale the night before, or another drug that had eased the pain. In any case, the heaviness I had always felt bearing down on me had lifted. For the first time in my life, I was light and carefree, and that was my real nature. The blue sky at the window evoked one word for me: ENGADIN. I had always needed fresh air, and last night a mysterious doctor, after having examined me, understood that I had to leave for ENGADIN immediately.

I could hear their conversation on the other side of the door, and the presence of these two unseen and unknown people reassured me. Perhaps they were there to watch over me. Again the car appeared suddenly from the shadows, grazed me and collided with the arcade, the door opened and she stumbled out. While we were sitting on the sofa in the hotel lobby and until she squeezed my wrist in the police van, I thought she was drunk. In a police station, they’d say, an ordinary accident like one that was caused by someone ‘driving under the influence’. But now I was sure it was something else entirely. It was as if there was someone watching over me without my knowing or as if chance had put something in my path to protect me. And that night, time was running out. I had to be protected from some kind of danger, or be warned about it. A scene came back to me, probably because of the word ENGADIN. A few years earlier, I had seen a fellow hurtling down a steep ski slope and deliberately throw himself against the wall of a chalet and break his leg so he wouldn’t have to go to war, the war we called ‘Algerian’. In short, he was trying to save his life that day. As for me, apparently I didn’t even have a broken leg. Thanks to her, I came out of it relatively unscathed. I needed the shock. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on what my life had been up to that point. I had to admit that I was ‘heading for disaster’—to use the words I’d heard others say about me.

Once again my gaze landed on the shoe at the foot of the chair: the big moccasin I had split at the ankle. They must have been surprised when they removed it, before putting me in bed. They were kind enough to put it with the rest of my clothes and lend me the pyjamas I was wearing, blue with white stripes. Where did all this solicitude come from? She must have given them instructions. I couldn’t take my eyes off the shoe. Later on, when my life had taken a new course, I would always have to keep it in view, displayed on a mantelpiece or in a glass box, as a souvenir from the past. And to those who wanted to know more about it, I would reply that it was the only thing my parents had left me; yes, as far back as I could remember, I had always walked with one shoe. With this thought, I closed my eyes and sleep came to me in a burst of silent hysterical laughter.

*

A nurse woke me with a tray, which she told me was breakfast. I asked her where exactly I was and she seemed surprised that I didn’t know. At the Mirabeau Clinic. When I asked the address of the clinic, she didn’t answer. She studied me with an incredulous smile. She thought I was making fun of her. Then she consulted a form she had taken out of the pocket of her white coat and told me that I had to ‘leave the premises’. I repeated, which clinic? The floor pitched as it did in my dream. I had dreamed that I was a prisoner on a cargo ship in the middle of the sea. All I wanted was to reach solid ground. The Mirabeau Clinic, Rue Narcisse-Diaz. I didn’t venture to ask her which neighbourhood the street was in. Was it near the Hôtel-Dieu? She seemed to be in a hurry and closed the door behind her without giving me any further information. They had bandaged my ankle, knee, wrist and hand. I couldn’t bend my left leg, but I managed to dress myself. I put on my one shoe, thinking that it might be difficult to walk in the street but that there was sure to be a bus stop or metro station nearby and I’d soon be back at my place. I decided to lie down again on the bed. I still felt at ease. Would this feeling last long? I was afraid it would disappear as soon as I left the clinic. Looking at the blue sky framed by the window, I convinced myself that they had brought me to the mountains. I had avoided going over to the window, for fear of disappointment. I wanted to remain under the illusion for as long as possible that the Mirabeau Clinic was in a winter sports village in Engadin. The door opened and the nurse appeared. She carried a plastic bag, placed it on the bedside table and left without a word, in one swift movement. In the bag was the shoe I had left behind. They had taken the trouble to go all the way over there and retrieve it from the pavement. Or perhaps she had asked them to get it. I was surprised by such attention on my behalf. Now nothing was stopping me ‘leaving the premises’, as the nurse had instructed. I felt like walking in the open air.

I was limping a little and held the banister as I went down the long staircase. In the entrance hall, I was about to leave through the glass doors, one side of which stood open, when I noticed the huge brown-haired man. He was sitting on a bench. He waved to me and got up. He was wearing the same coat as the other night. He took me over to the reception desk. They asked for my name. He stood next to me, as if to better monitor my movements, but I was planning on giving him the slip. As quickly as possible. There in the entrance hall rather than out in the street. The woman at reception gave me a sealed envelope with my name written on it.

Then she gave me a discharge form to sign and handed me another envelope, this time with the clinic’s letterhead on it. I asked her if I had to pay anything, but she told me that the bill had been taken care of. By whom? In any case, I wouldn’t have had enough money. As I was about to cross the hall towards the exit, the huge brown-haired man asked me to sit with him on the bench. He gave me a vague smile and I decided that the fellow probably meant me no harm. He presented me with two sheets of onionskin paper on which some text had been typed. The report—I still remember the word he had used — yes, the report of the accident. I had to sign my name again, on the bottom of the page. He took a pen out of his coat pocket and even removed the lid for me. He said I could read the text before I signed, but I was in too much of a hurry to get out into the open air. I signed the first sheet. I didn’t have to bother with the second; it was a copy for me to keep. I folded it, stuffed it into the pocket of my sheepskin jacket, and got up.

He followed hard on my heels. Perhaps he wanted to put me back in a police van, and there she’d be again, sitting in the same place as the other night? Outside, in the little street that ran down to the quay, there was just one parked car. A man was sitting in the driver’s seat. I tried to find the words to take my leave. If I walked off suddenly, he might find my behaviour suspicious and there was a good chance I’d have him on my back again. So I asked him who the woman from the other night was. He shrugged his shoulders and told me that I was bound to see in the report, but that it would be better for me and for everyone else if I forgot about the accident. As far as he was concerned the ‘case was closed’ and he sincerely hoped I thought so, too. He stopped alongside the car and asked, in a cold tone, if I was all right to walk, and if I’d like to be ‘dropped off’ somewhere. No, I was fine, really. So, without saying goodbye, he got in next to the driver, slammed the door rather savagely and the car moved off towards the quay.

*

The weather was mild, a sunny winter’s day. I no longer had any notion of time. It must have been early afternoon. My left leg was hurting a bit. Dead leaves on the pavement. I dreamed that I would come out onto a forest path. I was no longer thinking about the word Engadin, but an even sweeter one, more remote — Sologne. I opened the envelope. Inside was a wad of banknotes. No message or explanation. Why all this money? Perhaps she’d noticed the sorry state of my sheepskin jacket and of my one shoe. Before the split moccasins, I had a pair of big lace-up shoes with crepe rubber soles that I wore even in summer. And it would have been at least the third winter I had worn the old sheepskin jacket. I took the form I had signed out of my pocket. A report or rather a summary of the accident. There was no letterhead from any police branch, nor did it look like a standard administrative form. ‘Night-time…a sea-green Fiat automobile…licence plate…coming from the direction of Carrousel Garden and heading into Place des Pyramides…Both taken to the lobby of the Hôtel Régina…Hôtel-Dieu casualty department… Dressings applied to the leg and arm…’ There was no mention of the Mirabeau Clinic and I wondered when and how they had transported me there. My surname and my first name were in the summary, as well as my date of birth and my old address. They must have found all this information from my old passport. Her name and surname were also there: Jacqueline Beausergent, and her address: Square de l’Alboni, but they had forgotten to add the street number.

I had never held such a large sum of money in my hands. I would have preferred a note from her, but she was probably not in a state to write after the accident. I assumed that the huge brown-haired guy had taken care of everything. Her husband, perhaps. I tried to remember at what point he had appeared. She was alone in the car. Later on he had walked towards us in the hotel lobby, while we were waiting, sitting next to each other on the sofa. They probably wanted to compensate me for my injuries and felt guilty at the idea of how much worse the accident could have been. I would have liked to reassure them. No, they shouldn’t worry on my account. The envelope with the clinic’s letterhead contained a prescription signed by a Doctor Besson instructing me to change my dressings regularly. I counted the banknotes again. No more financial worries for a long time. I recalled those last meetings with my father, when I was about seventeen years old, when I never dared to ask him for any money. Life had already drawn us apart and we met up in cafés early in the morning, while it was still dark. The lapels of his suits became increasingly threadbare and each time the cafés were further from the city centre. I tried to remember if I had met up with him in the neighbourhood where I was walking.

I took the report I had signed out of my pocket. So she lived on Square de l’Alboni. I knew the area, as I often got off at the metro station close by. It didn’t matter that the number was missing. I’d work it out with her name, Jacqueline Beausergent. Square de l’Alboni was a little further south, next to the Seine. I was in her neighbourhood. That was why they had moved me to the Mirabeau Clinic. She probably knew. Yes, it must have been her idea to have me taken there. Perhaps someone she knew had come to collect us at the Hôtel-Dieu. In an ambulance? I said to myself that at the next phone box I would look her up in the phone directory by street name or I would call directory enquiries. But there was no rush. I had all the time in the world to find her exact address and pay her a visit. It was perfectly justifiable on my part and she surely wouldn’t take offence. I had never called at the house of someone I didn’t know, but in this case, there were certain details that needed to be clarified, not to mention the wad of banknotes in an envelope, no accompanying message, like a handout thrown to a beggar. You knock someone down in a car at night, and arrange for money to be delivered to him in case he’s been crippled. For a start, I didn’t want the money. I had never depended on anyone and I was convinced, at that time, that I didn’t need anyone. My parents had been of no help at all and the occasional meetings in cafés with my father always ended the same way: we would get up and shake hands. And not once did I have the courage to beg him for money. Especially towards the end, around Porte d’Orléans, when he had lost all the energy and charm that he had on the Champs-Élysées. One morning, I noticed buttons were missing from his navy-blue overcoat.

I was tempted to follow the quay as far as Square de l’Alboni. At each apartment block, I would ask the concierge which floor Jacqueline Beausergent lived on. There couldn’t be that many numbers. I recalled her wry smile and how she had squeezed my wrist, as if there were some kind of complicity between us. It would be best to telephone first. Not to rush things. I remembered the strange impression I had in the police van all the way to the Hôtel-Dieu, that I had already seen her face somewhere else. Before finding out her phone number, perhaps I would make an effort to remember. Things were still simple at that time; I didn’t have most of my life behind me. Going back a few years would be enough. Who knows? I had already crossed paths with a certain Jacqueline Beausergent, or the same person going by a different name. I had read that only a small number of encounters are the product of chance. The same circumstances, the same faces keep coming back, like the pieces of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope, with the play of mirrors giving the illusion that the combinations are infinitely variable. But in fact the combinations are rather limited. Yes, I must have read that somewhere, or perhaps Dr Bouvière explained it to us one evening in a café. But it was difficult for me to concentrate on these questions for any length of time; I never felt I had a head for philosophy. All of a sudden, I didn’t want to cross Pont de Grenelle and find myself south of the river and return, by metro or by bus, to my room on Rue de la Voie-Verte. I thought I’d walk around the neighbourhood a bit more. Besides, I had to get used to walking with the dressing on my leg. I felt good there, in Jacqueline Beausergent’s neighbourhood. It even felt as if the air was lighter to breathe.