So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood

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AT ABOUT ELEVEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT, THE TELEPHONE rang in his study, but he did not pick up the receiver and waited for a message to be left on the answering machine. Breathing, regular at first, then increasingly halting, and a faraway voice; he wondered whether it was a woman’s or a man’s. A groan. Then the breathing began again and two voices mingled with one another and whispered without his being able to distinguish the words. Eventually, he turned off the answering machine and disconnected the telephone. Who was it? Chantal Grippay? Gilles Ottolini? Both of them at the same time?

In the end, he decided to take advantage of the silence of the night to reread all the pages of the “dossier” for one last time. But no sooner had he started his reading than he experienced an unpleasant sensation: the sentences became muddled and other sentences suddenly appeared that overlaid the previous ones and disappeared without giving him time to decipher them. He was confronted with a palimpsest in which all the various writings were jumbled together and superimposed, and moved about like bacilli seen through a microscope. He put this down to weariness, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he came across the photocopy of the passage in Le Noir de l’été in which the name of Guy Torstel was mentioned. Apart from the episode of the Photomaton shop — an episode he had stolen from real life — he had not the slightest memory of his first book. The only one he retained was that of the first twenty pages which he had later suppressed. In his mind’s eye, they were to have been the beginning of the book before he abandoned it. He had visualised a title for this first chapter: “Return to Saint-Leu-la-Forêt”. Were these twenty pages still hibernating in a cardboard box or an old suitcase? Or had he torn them up? He no longer knew.

Before writing them, he had wanted to travel for one last time, after fifteen years, to Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. It was not so much a pilgrimage, but rather a visit that would help him write the beginning of the book. And he had not mentioned this “return to Saint-Leu-la-Forêt” to Annie Astrand a few months later, on the evening he had seen her again after the book had been published. He was frightened that she might shrug and say to him: “But what a strange idea, Jean dear, to go back there. .”

So, one afternoon, a few days after having met Torstel at the racecourse, he had taken a bus to Porte d’Asnieres. The suburb had already changed a good deal at that time. Was it the same route that Annie Astrand had taken when she came back by car from Paris? The bus passed under the railway track near Ermont station. And yet he now wondered whether he had not dreamt this journey, which had taken place over forty years ago. It was probably the fact that he had made it a chapter of his novel that induced such confusion in him. He had walked up Saint-Leu’s main street and crossed the square with the fountain. . A yellow mist hovered and he wondered whether it did not come from the forest. On rue de l’Ermitage, he was sure that the majority of the houses had not yet been built in Annie Astrand’s time and that in their place there had been trees, on either side, the canopies of which formed an archway. Was he really in Saint-Leu? He thought he recognised the part of the house that gave onto the street and the large porch beneath which Annie often parked her car. But, further along, the surrounding wall had vanished and a long, concrete building replaced it.

Opposite, protected by a metal gate, was a single-storey house with a bow window and a frontage covered in ivy. A copper plate on the gate: “DR LOUIS VOUSTRAAT”. He remembered that after school one morning Annie had taken him to this doctor, and that one evening the doctor himself had come to the house to see him in his bedroom because he was ill.

He hesitated for a moment, there, in the middle of the street, then he made up his mind. He pushed open the gate which gave onto a small garden and he walked up the stone steps. He rang the bell, and waited. Through the half-open door, he saw a tall man, his white hair cut short, with blue eyes. He did not recognise him.

“Doctor Voustraat?”

The man gave a start of surprise, as though Daragane had just roused him from his slumber.

“There is no surgery today.”

“I merely wanted to talk to you.”

“What about, monsieur?”

Nothing suspicious about this question. His tone was friendly and there was something reassuring about his voice.

“I’m writing a book about Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. . I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Daragane felt so nervous that he thought he might have spoken this sentence with a stutter. The man gazed at him with a smile.

“Come in, monsieur.”

He led him into a drawing room where a fire was burning in the grate and directed him to an armchair opposite the bow window. He sat down beside him in a similar armchair that was covered in the same tartan material.

“And who gave you the notion of coming to see me, in particular?”

His voice was so solemn and gentle that, within a very short time, he could have extracted confessions from the wiliest and most hardened criminal. At least that was what Daragane imagined.

“Passing by, I saw your plate. And I said to myself that a doctor knows the place where he practises very well. .”

He had tried to speak clearly, in spite of his awkwardness, and he had only just managed to use the word “place” instead of “village”, which was the one that had automatically come to mind. But Saint-Leu-la-Forêt was no longer the village of his childhood.

“You are not mistaken. I’ve been practising here for twenty-five years.”

He stood up and walked over to a shelf on which Daragane noticed a box of liqueurs.

“Will you drink something? A little port?”

He handed the glass to Daragane and sat down again, beside him, in the tartan-covered armchair.

“And you are writing a book about Saint-Leu? What a good idea. .”

“Oh. . a pamphlet. . for a series on the different areas of Ile-de-France. .”

He searched for other details that would inspire this Dr Voustraat with confidence.

“For example, I’m devoting a chapter to the mysterious death of the last Prince de Condé.”

“I can see that you are well acquainted with the history of our little town.”

And Dr Voustraat stared at him with his blue eyes and smiled at him, as he had done fifteen years ago when he had listened to his chest in his bedroom in the house opposite. Was it for a bout of flu or for one of those childhood illnesses with such complicated names?

“I shall need other information that may not be historical,” said Daragane. “Some anecdotes, for example, concerning certain inhabitants of the town. .”

He astonished himself at having been able to complete a sentence of such length, and with confidence.

Dr Voustraat appeared thoughtful, his eyes focused on a log that was burning gently in the grate.

“We have had artists at Saint-Leu,” he said as he nodded, looking as though he were jogging his memory. “The pianist Wanda Landowska. . And also the poet Olivier Larronde. .”

“Would you mind if I made a note of the names?” Daragane asked.

From one of his coat pockets he took out a ballpoint pen and the black moleskin notebook that he always kept with him since he had begun his book. In it, he jotted down snatches of sentences, or possible titles for his novel. With great care, he wrote, in capital letters: WANDA LANDOWSKA. OLIVIER LARRONDE. He wanted to show Dr Voustraat that he had scholarly habits.

“Thank you for your information.”

“Other names will certainly occur to me. .”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Daragane. “Would you, by any chance, remember a news item that is supposed to have occured at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt?”

“A news item?”

Dr Voustraat was evidently surprised by this word.

“Not a crime, of course. . But something shady that may have happened around here. . I was told about a house, just opposite yours, where some strange people lived. .”

There, he had cut to the heart of the matter, in a much quicker way than he had anticipated.

Dr Voustraat’s blue eyes stared at him again and Daragane sensed a certain mistrust in his gaze.

“Which house opposite?”

He wondered whether he had not gone too far. But why, after all? Did he not appear to be a sensible young man who wanted to write a pamphlet about Saint-Leu-la-Forêt?

“The house that’s slightly to the right. . with the large porch. .”

“You mean La Maladrerie?”

Daragane had forgotten this name, which caused him a pang of emotion. He had the fleeting sense of passing beneath the porch of the house.

“Yes, that’s it. . La Maladrerie. .” and pronouncing these five syllables he suddenly experienced a feeling of dizziness, or rather of fear, as though La Maladrerie were associated for him with a bad dream.

“Who spoke to you about La Maladrerie?”

He was taken aback. It would have been better to tell Dr Voustraat the truth. Now, it was too late. He should have done so earlier, on the doorstep. “You looked after me, a very long time ago, during my childhood.” But no, he would have felt like an imposter and as though he were stealing someone else’s identity. That child seemed like a stranger to him now.

“It was the owner of the Ermitage restaurant who spoke to me about it. .”

He said this just in case, to put him off the track. Did this establishment still exist, and had it ever really existed apart from in his memories?

“Ah, yes. . the Ermitage restaurant. I didn’t think it was called that anymore, nowadays. . Have you known Saint-Leu for a long time?”

Daragane sensed a surge of dizziness welling up inside him, the kind that affects you when you are on the brink of confessing to something that will alter the course of your life. There, at the top of the slope, you just have to let yourself glide, as though on a slide. At the bottom of the large garden at La Maladrerie, there had actually been a slide, probably erected by the previous owners, and its handrail was rusty.

“No. It’s the first time I’ve been to Saint-Leu-la-Forêt.” Outside, dusk was falling, and Dr Voustraat stood up to switch on a lamp and stoke the fire.

“Wintry weather. . Did you see that fog just now?. . I was right to make a fire. .”

He sat down in the armchair and leant over towards Daragane.

“You were lucky to have rung my bell today. . It’s my day off. . I should also mention that I’ve cut down on the number of my home visits. .”

Was this word “visits” a hint on his part that implied he had recognised him? But there had been so many home visits over the last fifteen years and so many appointments at Dr Louis Voustraat’s home, in the little room that served as his surgery, at the end of the corridor, that he could not recognise all the faces. And in any case, thought Daragane, how could one ascertain a likeness between that child and the person he was today?

“La Maladrerie was indeed lived in by some strange people. . But do you think there’s really any point in my talking to you about them?”

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.”

Outside, they walked along rue de l’Ermitage. They passed in front of the long concrete building that had replaced the garden wall, but Daragane did not wish to recall this vanished wall.

“A good deal of mist,” said the doctor. “It’s winter already. .”

Then they walked in silence, the two of them, the doctor very erect, very upright, the bearing of a former cavalry officer. Daragane could not remember having walked like this, at night, in his childhood, along the streets of Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. Except for once, at Christmas, when Annie had taken him to midnight mass.

The bus was waiting, the engine turning over. He would evidently be the only passenger.

“I’ve been delighted to chat with you all afternoon,” said the doctor, holding out his hand. “And I’d love to hear more about your little book on Saint-Leu.”

At the very moment Daragane was about to get on the bus, the doctor held him by the arm.

“I was thinking of something. . about La Maladrerie and all those curious people we spoke about. . The best witness could be the child who once lived there. You would need to find him. . don’t you think so?”

“That will be very difficult, doctor.”

He sat at the very rear of the bus and looked through the window behind him. Dr Voustraat stood there motionless, probably waiting for the bus to disappear round the first corner. He gave him a wave.