The Black Notebook (6 page)

The prospect of returning to her room in Montparnasse didn't seem to appeal. It was that evening, in the metro, that she alluded for the first time to a country house where we might go, but I mustn't mention it to the others. The others were Aghamouri and his crowd: Duwelz, Marciano, Chastagnier . . . I asked her if Aghamouri knew she'd lived in the apartment on Avenue Félix-Faure. No, he had no idea. She hadn't met him until afterward, at the Cité Universitaire. And he also had no knowledge of that country house she'd just mentioned to me. A country house about sixty miles from Paris, she had said. No, neither Aghamouri nor anyone else had ever gone with her to the post office where she picked up her mail. “So, I'm the only one who knows your secrets?” I said. We walked down the endless corridor of the Montparnasse metro station and were the only people on the moving walkway. She took my arm and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I hope you know how to keep a secret.” We walked along the boulevard as far as the Dôme, then veered off and skirted the walls of the cemetery. She was trying to buy time to keep from running into Aghamouri and the others in the hotel lobby. It was especially Aghamouri she wanted to avoid. I was about to ask her why she felt accountable to him, but on second thought it seemed pointless. I believe that already, back then, I had understood that no one ever answers questions. “We'll have to wait for them to turn out the lights in the lobby before we go in,” I said in a vaguely casual tone. “Like before, to get into the apartment . . . But the night porter might see us.”

The closer we came to the hotel, the more I sensed her apprehension. Let there be no one in the lobby, I thought. Her anxiety was catching. I could already hear Paul Chastagnier saying in his metallic voice, “So what are you lugging around in that bag?” She paused when we reached the street the hotel was on. It was nearly eleven o'clock. “Shall we wait a little longer?” she said. We sat on a bench on the median strip along Boulevard Edgar-Quinet. I had set the carrier bag down next to me. “It was really stupid to leave that light on in the living room,” she said. I was surprised that she was attaching so much importance to it. But now, after all these years, I understand the sadness that had suddenly clouded her features. I, too, experience a strange sensation at the thought of those lamps we forgot to turn off in places to which we never returned . . . It wasn't our fault. Each time, we had to leave fast, on tiptoe. I'm sure we left a light on in the country house, too. And what if I were solely responsible for that negligence or oversight? Today I'm convinced that it was neither oversight nor negligence, but that at the moment of leaving it was I who lit a lamp, deliberately. Out of superstition, perhaps, to ward off a curse, and more than anything, so that a trace of us would remain, a signal that we weren't really gone and that someday we'd return.

“They're all in the lobby,” she whispered in my ear. She had decided as we neared the hotel to go on ahead and peek through the window to see whether the coast was clear. She didn't want the carrier bag to draw attention to us. I was troubled by the bag, too, as if it were the proof that we'd just committed an evil deed, and today that trouble amazes me. Why that constant feeling of uncertainty and guilt? Guilt over what, exactly? I peered through the window in turn. They were all sitting in armchairs in the lobby, Aghamouri on the armrest of the one where Marciano was seated, the others—Paul Chastagnier, Duwelz, and the man they simply called “Georges”—occupying one chair each: worn brown leather armchairs. It was as if they were holding a council of war. Yes, guilt over what? I wonder. Moreover, they weren't exactly the kind of people to lecture us on morals. I took Dannie's arm and pulled her into the hotel. It was Georges who saw us first, the man whose face clashed with his stocky, robust build: a moonlike face and dreamy eyes, but before long you noticed that his features harbored as much violence as his body. And when he shook your hand, you had a sudden sensation of cold, as if his veins were filled with ice water. We walked toward them, and I heard Paul Chastagnier's metallic voice:

“So, you been out shopping?”

And he stared at the carrier bag I was holding in my left hand.

“Yes . . . Yes . . . We've been out shopping,” Dannie said in a very gentle tone. She was probably trying to bolster her courage. Her composure astounded me, given how worried she'd been only moments before, as we approached the hotel. The one called Georges pondered the two of us with his moonlike face and pale skin, so pale he seemed to be wearing pancake makeup. He raised his eyebrows in an expression of curiosity and distrust that I had noticed on him every time he faced someone. Perhaps he was the one Dannie was afraid of. The first time I'd met him in that lobby, she had introduced him: “Georges.” He had remained silent and merely raised his eyebrows. Georges: the sound of that name took on a disturbing, cavernous quality that matched his face. When we'd left the hotel, Dannie had said to me, “I hear that fellow is dangerous,” but she hadn't explained in what way. Did she even know? According to her, he was someone Aghamouri had met in Morocco. She had smiled and shrugged: “Oh, you know, best not to get mixed up in all that . . .”

“Won't you join us for a drink?” Paul Chastagnier offered.

“It's kind of late,” said Dannie, still in that gentle voice.

Aghamouri, who hadn't risen from the armrest of Gérard Marciano's chair, stared at the two of us in astonishment. It seemed to me his face had gone pale.

“Too bad you can't stay a little while. You could have told us all about your shopping adventures.”

This time, Paul Chastagnier was speaking directly to me. Clearly, the carrier bag aroused his curiosity.

“Will you help me bring these things up to my room?” She had turned to me, now using the formal
vous
and pointing at the bag. It was as if she were expressly drawing their attention to it, rubbing it in.

I followed her toward the elevator, but instead she took the stairs. She went up ahead of me. On the first-floor landing, when they could no longer see us, she moved closer and murmured in my ear:

“It's better if you leave. Otherwise I'm going to have trouble with Aghamouri.”

I walked her to her room. She took the carrier bag from me. She said under her breath, as if they might hear:

“Tomorrow at noon at the Chat Blanc.”

That was a rather dreary café on Rue d'Odessa, with a back room where one could sit unnoticed amid the few billiards players: Bretons wearing fisherman's caps.

Before closing the door, she said, even more softly:

“It would be good if we could go to that country house I told you about.”

To go back down, I took the elevator. I didn't want to meet one of them in the stairwell. Especially not Aghamouri. I was afraid he'd ask questions and demand an explanation. Once again, I experienced that lack of self-confidence, that timidity that Paul Chastagnier had noticed, and that had made him remark one day as we were walking in the gray streets behind Montparnasse:

“It's funny . . . A kid with your talent and sensitivity . . . How come you keep such a low profile?”

In the lobby, they were still sitting in their armchairs. I had to walk past them to exit the hotel, and I didn't feel like talking to them. Aghamouri looked up and gave me a cold stare, which was unusual. Perhaps he'd been keeping an eye on the elevator to see whether I was staying in Dannie's room. Paul Chastagnier, Duwelz, and Gérard Marciano were all leaning toward Georges, listening carefully as if he were giving instructions. I slunk toward the hotel exit as if trying not to bother them. I was afraid Aghamouri might follow me. But no, he remained seated with the others. It was just postponing the inevitable, I told myself. Tomorrow he'd ask about Dannie and me, and the prospect filled me with dread. I had nothing to tell him. Nothing. And besides, I've never known how to answer questions.

Outside, I couldn't help looking back at them through the window. And today, as I write this, I feel as if I'm still watching them, standing on that sidewalk as if I'd never left it. And yet, however much I look at Georges, the one she said was dangerous, I no longer feel the disquiet that sometimes used to grip me when I mingled with those people in the lobby of the Unic Hôtel. Paul Chastagnier, Duwelz, and Gérard Marciano lean in toward Georges for all eternity, planning what Aghamouri called “their dirty tricks.” It will end badly for them, in prison or some obscure vendetta. Aghamouri, sitting on the armrest, keeps silent, observing them with anxious eyes. He was the one who had told me, “Watch out. They can drag you down a very bad path. My advice is to break off relations while there's still time.”

Soon after that evening, he arranged to meet me at the entrance to the Censier branch of the university. He was eager to “clear the air.” I had thought he wanted to scare me off from seeing Dannie again. And now he, too, is behind that window for all eternity, his anxious eyes fixed on the others as they conspire in low voices. And I feel like telling him, in turn, “Watch out.” Personally, I was in no danger. But I wasn't fully aware of that at the time. It took me several years to realize it. If I remember correctly, I nonetheless had a vague premonition that none of them would ever drag me down a “very bad path.” Langlais, questioning me at the Quai de Gesvres, had said, “You used to keep some mighty peculiar company.” He was mistaken. All those people I met, I saw only from a great distance.

That night, I don't know how long I remained in front of the hotel window, watching them. At a certain moment, Aghamouri stood up and walked toward the window. He would surely notice me there on the sidewalk. I didn't budge an inch. Too bad if he came outside and joined me. But his eyes were elsewhere and he didn't see me. The one called Georges stood up in turn and went with his heavy gait to stand next to Aghamouri. They were only a few inches away behind the window, and the second one, with his moonlike face and hard eyes, didn't notice me either. Perhaps the glass was opaque from inside, like a one-way mirror. Or else, very simply, dozens and dozens of years stood between us: they remained frozen in the past, in the middle of that hotel lobby, and we no longer lived, they and I, in the same space of time.

 

 

I wrote down very few appointments in that black notebook. Each time, I was afraid the person wouldn't show up if I committed the date and time of our meeting to paper in advance. One should not be so certain of the future. As Paul Chastagnier said, I “kept a low profile.” I felt as if I were living a clandestine existence, and so, in this type of life, one avoids leaving traces or setting down one's comings and goings in black and white. And yet, in the middle of one page of the notebook, I read: “Tuesday. Aghamouri. 7 p.m. Censier.” I attached no importance to that meeting, and it didn't bother me to have it spelled out in black letters on the white sheet.

It must have been two or three days after the night when we had arrived late at the Unic Hôtel and I'd been carrying the bag. I was surprised to receive a note from Aghamouri at 28 Rue de l'Aude, where I was renting a room. Where had he gotten my address? From Dannie? I brought him to Rue de l'Aude several times, but I think that was much later. My recollections are hazy. Aghamouri had written in his letter: “Don't tell anyone about this meeting. Especially not Dannie. It's strictly between us. You'll understand why.” That “you'll understand why” had worried me.

It was already dark. While waiting, I walked around the wasteland in front of the new university building. That evening, I had brought along my black notebook, and to pass the time I jotted down the fading inscriptions that still clung to a few buildings and warehouses slated for demolition that bordered the empty lot. I read:

Sommet Brothers—Leathers and Pelts

B. Blumet & Son—Forwarding Agents for Leathers and Pelts

Beaugency Tanneries

A. Martin & Co.—Rawhide

Salting and Tanning—Paris Leather Exchange

As I wrote down those names, I began to feel queasy. I think it shows in my handwriting, which is choppy, almost illegible by the end. Later, I added in pencil, in a steadier hand:

Hundred Maidens Hospital

It was an obsession of mine to want to know what had occupied a given location in Paris over successive layers of time. That evening, I thought I could smell the nauseating odor of pelts and rawhide. The title of a documentary came to mind, one that I'd seen when I was too young and that had marked me for life:
The Blood of Beasts.
They slaughtered animals in Vaugirard and La Villette, then brought their skins here to be sold. Thousands upon thousands of anonymous beasts. And of all that, there remained only an empty back lot and, for just a little while longer, the names of a few vultures and murderers painted on those half-crumbled walls. And that evening, I had written them down in my notebook. What was the use? I would much rather have known the names of those hundred maidens from the hospital that used to stretch over this plot of land well before the days of the leather exchange.

“You're pale as a ghost . . . Is something the matter?”

Aghamouri was standing in front of me. I hadn't seen him come out of the university building. He was wearing his camel coat and carrying a black briefcase. I was still absorbed in my notes. He said with an embarrassed smile:

“You do recognize me, don't you?”

I was about to show him the names I had just jotted down, but back then I always felt people became suspicious if they realized you were writing something, standing over there by yourself. No doubt they were afraid you were stealing something from them, their words, fragments of their life.