The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau

One

IT WAS AN EVENING like any other at the Restaurant de la Cloche. Behind the counter, the proprietor, Pasteur, had poured himself a pastis, an indication that no more meals would be served and that any further service would be provided by his wife, Marie, and the waitress, Adèle. It was nine o’clock.

Manfred Baumann was at his usual place by the bar. Lemerre, Petit and Cloutier sat around the table by the door, the day’s newspapers folded in a pile between them. On their table was a carafe of red wine, three tumblers, two packets of cigarettes, an ashtray and Lemerre’s reading glasses. They would share three carafes before the night was out. Pasteur opened his newspaper on the counter and leaned over it on his elbows. He was developing a bald patch, which he attempted to disguise by combing back his hair. Marie busied herself sorting cutlery.

Adèle served coffee to the two remaining diners and began wiping the waxcloths of the other tables, pushing the crumbs onto the floor that she would later sweep. Manfred observed her. His place was not exactly at the bar, but at the hatch through which food was brought from the kitchen. He continually had to adjust his position to allow the staff to pass, but nobody ever thought to ask him to move. From his post he could survey the restaurant and strangers often mistook him for the proprietor.

Adèle was wearing a short black skirt and a white blouse. Around her waist was a little apron with a pocket in which she kept a notebook for taking orders and the cloth she used for wiping tables. She was a dark, heavy-set girl with a wide behind and large, weighty breasts. She had full lips, an olive complexion and brown eyes, which she habitually kept trained on the floor. Her features were too heavy to be described as pretty, but there was an earthy magnetism about her, a magnetism no doubt amplified by the drabness of the surroundings.

As she leant over the unoccupied tables, Manfred turned towards the counter and, in the mirror above the bar, watched her skirt inch up her thighs. She was wearing tan tights with white ankle socks and black pumps. The three men at the table by the door also observed her; undoubtedly, Manfred imagined, harbouring similar thoughts to his own.

Adèle was nineteen years old and had been working at the Restaurant de la Cloche for five or six months. She was a sullen girl, reluctant to engage in conversation with the regulars, yet Manfred was sure she enjoyed their attention. She kept her blouse loosely fastened, so that it was often possible to see the lace edging of her brassiere. If she did not wish them to stare, why dress in such a provocative manner?

All the same, when she turned towards the bar, Manfred averted his eyes.

Pasteur was staring at an article in the middle pages of L’Alsace. There was a crisis in Lebanon.

‘Bloody Arabs,’ said Manfred.

Pasteur gave a little snort through his nose to acknowledge the remark. He was not one to engage in controversial discussions over the bar. His duties were limited to pouring drinks and issuing bills. He regarded waiting tables as beneath his dignity. Such chores, along with the dispensing of pleasantries, were left to Marie and Adèle or whoever else was working. Manfred, for his part, had no particular opinion on the situation in the Middle East. He had made the remark only because he had thought it was sort of thing Pasteur might have said, or which would at least have met with his approval. Manfred was quite happy with Pasteur’s unwillingness to engage in chit-chat. When he did pass a remark now and again, it tended to fall flat and it was a relief not to feel obliged to make conversation.

At the table by the door, Lemerre, a barber whose shop was not far from the restaurant, was holding forth on the subject of the milking cycle of dairy cows. He was explaining at some length how the yield could be increased merely by milking the cattle at shorter intervals. Cloutier, who had been brought up on a farm, attempted to interject that any gains made by such a measure were lost in the long term by shortening the milk-bearing life of the cows. Lemerre shook his head vigorously and made a gesture with his hand to quieten his companion.

‘A common misconception,’ he said, before continuing with his lecture. Cloutier stared at the table and fidgeted with the stem of his glass. Lemerre was a corpulent man in his early fifties. He was wearing a burgundy V-neck sweater over a black polo neck. His trousers were hiked halfway up his belly and secured with a thin leather belt. His hair, which Manfred assumed he dyed, was jet black and combed back from his forehead, revealing a pronounced widow’s peak. Petit and Cloutier were both married, but they rarely made reference to their wives and when they did so it was always in the same deprecating terms. Lemerre had never married. ‘I don’t believe in keeping animals in the house,’ was his customary explanation.

From outside, the Restaurant de la Cloche of Saint-Louis was an unremarkable place. The pale yellow render on the exterior walls was stained and chipped. The sign on the wall above the windows was unenticing, but the restaurant’s central location made promotion redundant. The door to the restaurant was on a corner adjacent to a car park in which the town’s weekly market was held. On the wall next to the door was a blackboard on which the day’s specials were written, and above this a small balcony with an ornate wrought iron balustrade. The balcony belonged to the apartment in which Pasteur and his wife lived. Inside, the restaurant was surprisingly spacious. The decor was unpretentious. Two wide pillars divided the room, informally separating the dining area on the right of the door from the tables by the window where locals dropped in during the day for a quick glass, or spent the evening drinking and exchanging views on the contents of the day’s newspapers. The dining area was furnished with fifteen or so rickety wooden tables covered with brightly coloured waxcloths and set with cutlery and tumblers. On the wall behind the counter, partially obscured by a glass shelf of liqueur bottles, was a large mirror advertising Alsace beer, its art deco lettering chipped and barely legible in places. This mirror created the illusion that the restaurant was bigger than it was. It also gave the place an air of faded grandeur. Marie often grumbled that it looked shabby, but Pasteur insisted that it gave the place charm. ‘We’re not running a Paris bistro,’ was his habitual response to any suggestion of upgrading. On the wall to the right of the counter were the doors to the toilets, flanked by two hulking dark wood dressers used to store cutlery, glasses and crockery. The dressers had been there as long as anyone could remember. Certainly they predated Pasteur’s ownership of the establishment.

Manfred Baumann was thirty-six years old. He was dressed tonight, as he was every night, in a black suit and white shirt with a tie loosened at the neck. His dark hair was neatly cut and parted to one side. He was a good-looking man, but his eyes shifted nervously as if he was trying to avoid eye contact. Consequently, people often felt ill at ease in his company and this served to reinforce his own awkwardness. Once a month, on Wednesday afternoon when the bank where he worked was closed, Manfred went to Lemerre’s shop to have his hair cut. Without fail Lemerre asked him what he would like done and Manfred would reply, ‘The usual’. As he cut Manfred’s hair, Lemerre engaged in small talk about the weather or uncontroversial subjects from the day’s papers and when Manfred left, he would bid him goodbye with the phrase ‘Until Thursday’.

Yet not three hours later, Lemerre would be sitting at his table with Petit and Cloutier and Manfred would be standing at his place at the counter of the Restaurant de la Cloche. They would acknowledge each other, but no more so than if they were strangers happening to make eye contact. On Thursdays, however, Manfred was invited to join the three men in the weekly game of bridge. Manfred did not particularly enjoy playing cards and the atmosphere was invariably strained. It seemed to Manfred that his presence at their table made the others uncomfortable, yet to turn down their invitation would be interpreted as a snub. The tradition had begun three years previously after the death of Le Fevre. The Thursday after the funeral the three friends were short of a man to make up their four and asked Manfred to join them. He was aware that he was simply filling the dead man’s shoes, and Lemerre’s customary farewell of ‘Until Thursday’ made it clear that he was not welcome to join them on other evenings.

Manfred ordered his final glass of wine of the evening. A bottle was kept behind the bar for him and Pasteur drained the remaining contents into a fresh glass and placed it on the counter. Manfred always drank the whole bottle, but he ordered by the glass. This arrangement meant that he paid twice as much for his drinks than if he simply ordered the bottle, but out of habit he never did. Once, he had calculated how much he would save over the course of the year if he were to change his practice. It had been a sizeable amount, but he stuck to his routine. He told himself that it was coarse to stand alone at the bar with a bottle. It would suggest that he came in with the intention of getting drunk, not that that would concern the other patrons of the restaurant. Manfred also felt that this habit might account for Lemerre and his friends’ reserved attitude towards him, as if by ordering by the glass he was setting himself above the three men who drank carafes. It gave the impression that he thought he was better than them. This was in fact true.

Pasteur never remarked on Manfred’s drinking habits. Why should he? It was no skin off his nose if Manfred wanted to pay twice as much as necessary for his wine.

As the clock ticked towards ten o’clock, Adèle became more animated in her movements. She swept around the tables with something approaching gusto, and even exchanged some sort of joke with the men by the door. Lemerre made a remark, which must have been lewd, because Adèle playfully wagged an admonishing finger at him, before turning on her heel and sashaying back towards the bar. Manfred had never seen her behave in this flirtatious fashion before, but she still lowered her eyes as he stepped back to allow her to pass through the hatch. She disappeared into the back and returned a few minutes later. She was wearing the same skirt as before, but had changed into black tights and high heels, and was now wearing a denim jacket over a tight black top. She had applied mascara and lipstick. She bid Pasteur goodnight. He glanced up at the clock and nodded a grudging farewell. Adèle appeared unaware of the impact of her transformation on the remaining patrons of the bar. She glanced neither left nor right as she made her exit.

Manfred drained the remains of his wine and put the money on the pewter salver upon which Pasteur had placed his bill a few moments before. Manfred always made sure he had the precise amount in his pocket. If he paid with a large note, it meant waiting for Pasteur to rummage in his pocketbook for change, and then having to ostentatiously leave a tip.

Manfred put on his raincoat, which had been hanging on the hat-stand next to the door to the WC, and left with a curt nod to Lemerre and his cronies. It was the beginning of September and the first autumnal chill was in the air. The streets of Saint-Louis were deserted. As he turned the corner into Rue de Mulhouse, he spotted Adèle a hundred metres or so ahead. She was walking slowly and Manfred found himself catching up with her. He could hear the clacking of her heels on the pavement. Manfred slowed his pace — he could hardly stride past her without making some kind of greeting and this would lead to them falling into inevitably awkward conversation. Perhaps Adèle would think he had followed her. Or perhaps her flirtatious display in the restaurant had actually been for his benefit and she had deliberately walked in this direction to contrive a meeting.

No matter how much he slowed his pace, Manfred continued to gain ground. The closer he got, the slower Adèle seemed to become. At one point, she stopped and, steadying herself on a lamppost, adjusted the ankle-strap of her shoe. Manfred was now barely twenty metres behind her. He bent down and pretended to tie his shoelace. He hunched his head over his knee, hoping that Adèle would not spot him. He listened to the clack of her heels on the pavement grow fainter. When he looked up she was no longer in sight. She must have turned off or entered a building.

Manfred resumed his normal brisk pace. Then, as he approached the little park in front of the Protestant temple, he saw Adèle standing by the low wall that separated the park from the pavement. She was smoking a cigarette and appeared to be waiting for someone. By the time Manfred spotted her it was too late to take evasive action. He contemplated crossing the street, in which case a brief wave would constitute adequate acknowledgement of his passing, but Adèle had already seen him and was watching him approach. Manfred was not drunk, but, under her scrutiny, he suddenly felt a little unsteady on his feet. It crossed his mind that she might be waiting for him, but he immediately dismissed the thought.

‘Good evening, Adèle,’ he said when he was a few metres away. He stopped, not because he wanted to, but because it would have seemed rude to walk straight past as if she was a mere waitress unworthy of a few pleasantries.

‘Good evening, Manfred,’ she replied.

Until that moment Manfred was not even aware that she knew his first name. And for her to use it suggested some familiarity between them. In the restaurant she had only ever addressed him as Monsieur Baumann. Had he even detected a flirtatious tone in her voice?

‘It’s chilly,’ Manfred said, because he could think of nothing else.

‘Yes,’ said Adèle. With her free hand she pulled her jacket closed over her chest, either to attest to Manfred’s remark or to conceal her cleavage.

There was a pause. ‘Of course, it’s always cooler at night when the sky is clear,’ Manfred continued. ‘The clouds act as insulation. They trap the heat, just like a blanket on a bed.’

Adèle looked at him for a moment and then nodded slowly. She blew a smoke ring. Manfred regretted mentioning bed. He could feel the colour rising to his cheeks.

‘Are you waiting for someone?’ he asked when it became apparent that she was not going to add anything. It was none of his business what she was doing, but again he could think of nothing else to say. And what if she replied that, no, she wasn’t waiting for anyone. What would he do then? Invite her to his apartment or to one of the bars in town that stayed open late and about which he knew nothing?

Before she had the chance to answer, and to Manfred’s relief, a young man pulled up on a scooter. He nodded curtly in Manfred’s direction. Manfred acknowledged him and bid goodnight to Adèle.

‘Good night, monsieur,’ she replied.

As he walked off, Manfred stole a glance over his shoulder in time to see Adèle throw her leg over the seat of the scooter. He imagined the young man asking who he was. Some guy from the restaurant, would be her likely response.

Manfred lived ten minutes’ walk away, on the top floor of a four-storey 1960s apartment block set back from Rue de Mulhouse. The apartment consisted of a small kitchen, a bedroom, a living room that Manfred rarely used, and a small shower room. The kitchen overlooked a small leafy park surrounded by other similar apartment blocks. There were benches for the residents and a children’s play park. There was a small balcony outside the kitchen window, which caught the sunlight in early evening, but Manfred rarely sat out for fear that the other residents might think he had an unhealthy interest in the play park below. People often thought ill of single men in their thirties, especially those who chose to keep themselves to themselves. Manfred kept his apartment scrupulously clean and tidy.

Once home, Manfred poured himself a nightcap from the bottle on the kitchen counter and knocked it back. He poured himself a second and took it with him to bed. He lifted the book from his bedside table, but did not open it. His encounter with Adèle had left him unsettled, excited even. It was not just she had used his first name, so much as the fact that when her companion arrived, she had reverted to ‘monsieur’, as if concerned to give the impression that there was nothing between them. Manfred had never thought there was anything between them, but she could easily have bid goodnight without using either form of address. It was a deliberate act to conceal the intimate moment they had shared from her boyfriend.

Manfred recalled the sight of Adèle tottering on the pavement in front of him, adjusting the ankle-strap of her shoe. He masturbated with greater vigour than usual and fell asleep without mopping up his emission.