After the Circus

~ ~ ~

The restaurant had the same name as the street: the Belles Feuilles.

A small dining room. Pale wood trim. A mahogany bar. Tables covered with white tablecloths and red imitation-leather seats.

When we entered, three patrons were having lunch. We were greeted by the waiter, a brown-haired man of about thirty-five in a white jacket whom they called Rémy. He gave us a table in back. Gisèle hadn’t removed her fur coat.

She said to Ansart:

“Do you think they could give the dog something to eat?”

“Of course.”

He called Rémy over and we each ordered the daily special. Ansart stood up and walked over to the table with the patrons. He spoke to them very courteously. Then he came back to join us.

“So, what do you think of my establishment?” he asked me, favoring me with his wide smile.

“I like it a lot.”

“It’s an old working-class café I used to hang out in when I was your age, during the war. At the time, I never would have imagined I could turn it into a restaurant.”

He was practically confiding in me. Because of my shyness? My attentive eyes? My age, which made him reminisce?

“From now on, you eat here on the house.”

“Thank you.”

Jacques de Bavière had gone to make a phone call at the bar. He was standing behind it, as if he owned the place.

“I have a very respectable clientele,” Ansart said. “People from the neighborhood …”

“And are you involved with the restaurant, too?” I asked Martine.

“She just helped me out a bit with the decoration.”

He rested an affectionate hand on her shoulder. I would have liked to know under what circumstances they had met, and also how Ansart and Jacques de Bavière had become acquainted. Ansart was a good ten years older. I pictured him at my age, one November evening, entering this café that probably wasn’t called the Belles Feuilles back then. What was he doing around here at the time?

After lunch, we stood awhile chatting on the sidewalk. Gisèle said we had to go walk the dog in the Bois. Ansart offered to drop Jacques de Bavière off at his place on Rue Washington. We told them there was no need, and that Jacques de Bavière could have his car back. But no, he insisted we hold on to it. It was very kind of him.

I asked Ansart where in Neuilly we were supposed to carry out our curious mission the next evening.

It was on Rue de la Ferme, at the edge of the Bois.

“Are you thinking of checking the place out? Good idea. It’s safer that way. Better to scope out all the exits in advance.”

And he clapped me on the shoulder, his face split by his candid smile.

After Porte Dauphine, we followed the road leading to the lakes and parked in front of the Pavillon Royal. A sunny Saturday afternoon in late autumn, like those Saturdays in my childhood when I used to arrive at that same spot at the same time of day, on the number 63 bus that stopped at Porte de la Muette. There was already a line of people at the boat rental concession.

We walked along the lake. She had let go the dog’s leash and he ran ahead of us in the alley. When he had gone too far ahead, she called him—“Raymond!”—and immediately he turned back. We passed by the landing dock where one could take a motorboat to the Chalet des Iles.

“Do we have to see them again later?”

She raised her face and looked at me with her pale blue eyes.

“It would be best,” she said. “They can help us … And besides, they lent us the car.”

“Do you really think we have to do what they asked?”

“Are you afraid?”

She had taken my arm and we followed the alley, which grew narrower and narrower, between the rows of trees.

“If we do favors for Pierre, we can ask him for anything we want. You know, Pierre’s really very nice …”

“Like what?”

“Like helping us with this trip to Rome.”

She hadn’t forgotten the plan I’d mentioned. I had the guide to Rome in one of my pockets and had already looked at it several times.

“I’d be happier in Rome myself,” she said.

I wanted her to explain her situation to me once and for all.

“But what is the story with your husband?”

She stopped walking. The dog had climbed up the embankment and was sniffing around the tree trunks. She gave my arm a tight squeeze.

“He’s trying to find me, but he hasn’t managed to so far. But even so, I’m always afraid I’ll run into him.”

“Is he in Paris?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do Ansart and Jacques de Bavière know about all this?”

“No. But you have to be nice to them. They can protect me from him.”

“And what does he do?”

“Oh … It depends on the day …”

We were at the Carrefour des Cascades. We strolled along the other side of the lake. She didn’t confide much else, other than that she had got married at nineteen and that her husband was older. I suggested we take the car past where Ansart had set our mission.

We cut across the Bois to the edge of Neuilly and reached Rue de la Ferme. The meeting place was a bar and restaurant at the corner of Rue de Longchamp. The last rays of sunlight lingered on the sidewalks.

It felt odd to be back here. I knew this area well. I had often come here with my father and a friend of his, then with Charell and Karvé, two schoolmates. There wasn’t a soul on Rue de la Ferme and the riding stables looked closed.

Night had already fallen when we returned to Ansart’s. He and Jacques de Bavière were sitting on the red couch, like the first time. Martine carried a tray in from the kitchen, containing tea and petits fours.

The photos were still on the coffee table. I picked one up at random, but it was the one I had already seen.

“Do you think we’ll be able to recognize him?” I asked Ansart.

“Oh, sure. There shouldn’t be very many people in the café tomorrow evening … And I’ll tell you a detail that will make him stand out immediately: the guy will surely be wearing riding breeches.”

I took a deep breath to buck up my courage, then said:

“But why don’t you go into the café yourself?”

Ansart gave me a sad, tender look that clashed with his wide smile.

“Here’s the problem: I don’t really have an appointment with this fellow tomorrow … It’s a surprise …”

“A good surprise?”

He didn’t answer. I think that if there hadn’t been such tenderness in his eyes, I might have become concerned. Martine poured us some tea. Ansart dropped into each of our cups, Gisèle’s and mine, a sugar cube that he held between his thumb and index finger.

“Not to worry,” Jacques de Bavière said, looking distractedly at one of the photos. “We’re just playing a little joke on him …”

I wasn’t really convinced, but Gisèle, sitting next to me, seemed to find all this entirely natural. She drank her tea in little sips. She gave the dog a sugar cube.

“Does the man ride horses?” I asked to break the silence.

Jacques de Bavière nodded.

“I met him in a stable on Rue de la Ferme where I rent a stall for my horse.”

Gisèle turned to me and, as if she wanted to steer the conversation onto more anodyne territory, said:

“Jacques has a lovely horse. He’s called Deer Field.”

“I don’t know if I’ll keep him much longer,” said Jacques de Bavière. “Horses are expensive, and I don’t really have the time to enjoy him.”

He didn’t have Ansart’s faint working-class accent, and the existence of this horse piqued my curiosity. I would have liked to see his apartment on Rue Washington and that “stepmother” Gisèle had told me about.

“Tomorrow, you can come here first or go directly to Rue de la Ferme,” said Ansart. “Don’t forget, the appointment is at six o’clock sharp … Here, this is for you and your sister …”

And he handed me two envelopes that I didn’t dare refuse.

We stopped near the end of the Champs-Elysées and had trouble finding a parking space. Outside, the air was as warm as a Saturday evening in spring.

We decided to go to the movies, but we didn’t want to leave the dog in the car. I figured that at the Napoléon, near Avenue de la Grande-Armée, they’d be more lenient about dogs than in the large first-run houses. And in fact, the cashier and the usherette let him come in with us. They were showing The Wonderful Country.

When we left the cinema, I suggested dinner in a restaurant. I still had on me the seven thousand five hundred francs from Dell’Aversano, to which I now added the two envelopes that Ansart had given me, each of which contained two thousand francs.

I wanted to invite her, but I was intimidated by the restaurants along the Champs-Elysées. I asked her to choose.

“We could go back to Rue Washington,” she said.

I was afraid of running into Jacques de Bavière. She reassured me. He would be with Ansart and wouldn’t be home until very late.

On Rue Washington, we sat near the street window.

“Jacques lives just across the way.”

She pointed out the entrance to number 22.

I would rather have forgotten all about them, but it was difficult as long as we hadn’t left Paris. Since she said those people could help us, I wanted to believe it. I just would have liked to know more about them.

“Have you been to Jacques de Bavière’s apartment?” I asked.

“Yes, several times.”

“I’d be curious to know what it’s like where he lives …”

“His stepmother must be there.”

After dinner, we crossed the street and, at the entrance to number 22, I had a moment’s hesitation.

“No, forget it …”

But she insisted. We would tell the stepmother we had an appointment with Jacques de Bavière, or simply that we were in the neighborhood and thought we’d drop by.

“But isn’t it kind of late to be paying a visit? Do you know this woman?”

“A little bit.”

We went into number 22 and Gisèle rang at a door on the ground floor. Above the bell was a small silver plaque with a name engraved on it: Ellen James.

A woman’s voice asked:

“Who is it?”

The door was equipped with a peephole. She must have been watching us.

“We’re friends of Jacques,” Gisèle said.

The door opened onto a blonde woman of about forty-five, wearing a black silk dress. A string of pearls around her neck.

“Ah, it’s you …” she said to Gisèle. “I didn’t recognize you.”

She threw me a questioning look.

“My brother,” Gisèle said.

“Come in …”

Frosted glass sconces dimly lit the entryway. On a sofa against the wall, men’s and women’s coats were piled haphazardly.

“I didn’t know you had a dog,” she said to Gisèle.

She led us into a large living room, its French windows opening onto a garden. From the next room, we heard the hubbub of conversation.

“I’m having some friends over for cards. But Jacques isn’t here this evening …”

She didn’t ask us to take off our coats. I sensed she was about to leave us in this room and go join the others.

“I’m not sure when he’ll be back …”

There was an anxious expression in her eyes.

“Have you seen him today?” she asked Gisèle.

“Yes, we had lunch together. Mister Ansart took us to his restaurant.”

The blonde woman’s face relaxed.

“I didn’t see him this morning … He went out very early …”

She was a pretty woman, but I remember that that evening she already seemed old to me, an adult my parents’ age. I had felt something similar about Ansart. As for Jacques de Bavière, he reminded me of those young people who headed off to fight in the Algerian War when I was sixteen.

“You’ll forgive me,” she said, “but I have to go rejoin my guests.”

I glanced rapidly around the living room. Sky-blue paneling, folding screen, pale marble mantelpiece, mirrors. At the foot of a console table, the carpet showed signs of intense wear, and on one of the walls I noticed discoloration where a painting had been removed. Behind the French windows, bouquets of trees stood out in the moonlight, and I couldn’t see where the garden ended.

“It’s like being in the country, isn’t it?” the blonde woman said to me, having followed my gaze. “The garden stretches all the way to the buildings on Rue de Berri …”

I felt like asking her point-blank if she was really Jacques de Bavière’s stepmother. She saw us to the door.

“If I see Jacques, is there something you’d like me to tell him?”

She had asked in a distracted voice, no doubt eager to return to her guests.

It was still early. People were lined up in front of the Normandie cinema for the second showing.

We walked down the avenue with the dog.

“Do you think she’s really his stepmother?” I asked.

“That’s what he says. He told me she runs a bridge club out of the apartment and he sometimes helps out.”

A bridge club. That explained the feeling of unease I had experienced. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the furniture was covered with slip-cases. I had even noticed magazines piled up on a coffee table, like in a dentist’s waiting room. So the apartment where Jacques de Bavière lived with his supposed stepmother was in fact nothing but a bridge club. I thought of my father. He too could easily have concocted a scheme like that, and Grabley would have acted as his secretary and doorman. They really did all belong to the same world.

We had reached the arcades of the Lido. I was suddenly seized by a violent desire to flee this city, as if I felt surrounded by a vague menace.

“What’s wrong? You’re pale as a sheet …”

She had stopped walking. A group of strollers jostled us as they went by. The dog, his head raised toward us, seemed worried too.

“It’s nothing … Just some passing dizziness …”

I forced a smile.

“Would you like to sit down for a bit, get something to drink?”

She pointed toward a café, but I couldn’t sit in the middle of that Saturday evening crowd. I would have suffocated. And anyway, there were no free seats.

“No … Let’s keep walking … I’ll be fine …”

I took her hand.

“What would you say to leaving for Rome right away?” I asked her. “Otherwise, I feel like it’ll be too late …”

She looked at me, eyes wide.

“Why right away? We have to wait for Ansart and Jacques de Bavière to help us out … We can’t do much of anything without them …”

“Well, what about crossing the street? It’s quieter on the other side …”

And in fact, there were fewer people on the left-hand sidewalk. We walked toward Etoile, where we had parked the car. And today, trying to remember that evening, I see two silhouettes with a dog, walking up the avenue. Around them, the passersby become scarcer and scarcer, the cafés empty out, the movie houses go dark. In my dream, I was sitting that evening at a table on the Champs-Elysées amid several late-hour customers. They had already turned off the lights in the main room and the waiter was stacking the chairs as a hint that it was time for us to leave. I went out. I walked toward Etoile and heard a distant voice say: “We have to wait for Ansart and Jacques de Bavière to help us out …”—her voice, deep and always a little hoarse.

At Quai de Conti, the office windows were lit. Had Grabley forgotten to turn off the lights before going out on his rounds?

As we were crossing the darkened foyer with the dog, we heard laughter.

We tiptoed forward and Gisèle held the dog by his collar. We were hoping to slip by to the stairs without attracting any attention. But just as we passed by the half-open door of the office, it suddenly swung open and Grabley appeared, glass in hand.

He jumped when he saw us. He remained standing in the doorway, staring in surprise at the dog.

“Well, now … I don’t believe I’ve met this one …”

Had he had too much to drink? With a ceremonial gesture, he ushered us in.

A small young woman with a round face and short brown hair was sitting on the couch. At her feet was a bottle of champagne. She was holding a glass, and she didn’t seem at all put out by our sudden appearance. Grabley introduced us.

“Sylvette … Obligado and Miss …”

She smiled at us.

“You might offer them some champagne,” she said to Grabley. “I don’t like drinking alone.”

“I’ll go fetch some glasses …”

But he didn’t find any in the kitchen. There were only two left: his and the girl’s. He would have to bring us teacups, or even those paper cups we’d been using for the past few weeks.

“No need,” I told him.

The dog went toward the small brunette. Gisèle pulled him back by his collar.

“Let him go … I love dogs …”

She petted his forehead.

“Guess where I met Sylvette?” asked Grabley.

“Do you really think they’re interested?” she said.

“I met her at the Tomate …”

Gisèle frowned. I was afraid she’d leave then and there.

The small brunette took a sip of champagne to hide her embarrassment.

“Do you know the Tomate, Obligado?”

I remembered walking past that establishment every Sunday evening on the way to picking up my mother, who was performing in a theater near Pigalle.

“I’m a dancer,” she said sheepishly, “and they hired me for a two-week engagement … But I don’t think I’ll stay … The show is kind of creepy …”

“Not in the slightest,” said Grabley.

She blushed and lowered her eyes.

It was ridiculous to feel self-conscious in front of us. I remembered those Sunday evenings when I crossed Paris on foot, from the Left Bank to Pigalle, and the neon sign at the end of Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette — red, then green, then blue.

LA TOMATE CONTINUOUS STRIPTEASE

A bit farther up was the Théâtre Fontaine. My mother was in a vaudeville show there: The Perfumed Princess. We would catch the last bus back to the Quai de Conti apartment, which was in almost as much disrepair then as now.

“To the Tomate!” said Grabley, raising his glass.

The small brunette raised hers as well, as if in defiance. Gisèle and I sat still. So did the dog. Their glasses clinked. There was a long silence. We were all under the wan light of the ceiling bulb, as if celebrating some mysterious birthday.

“Please excuse me,” Gisèle said, “I’m dead on my feet.”

“Tomorrow is Sunday, we can all go to the Tomate to watch Sylvette,” Grabley said.

And once again, I thought of all those bygone Sunday evenings.

I slept fitfully. Several times I awoke with a start, and reassured myself that she was still beside me in bed. I had a temperature. The room had turned into a train compartment. The silhouettes of Grabley and the small brunette appeared in the window frame. They were standing on the platform, waiting for us to depart. They were each holding a paper cup and they raised their arms in a toast, as if in slow motion. I could hear Grabley’s half-muffled voice:

“We can all meet tomorrow at the Tomate …”

But I knew full well we wouldn’t show up. We were leaving Paris for good. The train jerked to a start. The buildings and houses of the suburbs stood out one last time, black against a crepuscular sky. We were squeezed together in a couchette and the jostling carriage shook us violently. The next morning, the train would stop at a platform flooded in sunlight.