Authors: Patrick Modiano
Where did she come from? I quickly determined she didn’t live in Paris. She talked about it like a city she barely knew. She’d stayed two or three times, all of them brief, at the Windsor-Reynolds, a hotel on Rue Beaujon I remembered well. It was where my father, before his strange disappearance, used to meet me (there’s a blank spot in my memory: was it in the lobby of the Windsor-Reynolds or in the lobby of the Lutetia that I saw him for the last time?). Apart from
the Windsor-Reynolds, all she remembered of Paris was Rue du Colonel-Moll and Boulevard Beauséjour, where she had some “friends” (I didn’t dare ask what sort). By contrast, Geneva and Milan often came up in her conversation. She’d worked in Milan, and in Geneva too. But what kind of work?
I checked her passport on the sly. Nationality: French. Domicile: 6
bis
, Place Dorcière, Geneva. Why? To my great amazement, she’d been born in Haute-Savoie, in the very town we were in. Coincidence? Or did she actually have roots in these parts? Did she still have family here? I ventured an indirect question on this subject, but she wanted to keep something hidden from me. She answered very vaguely, telling me she’d been raised abroad. I didn’t insist. In time, I thought, I would know everything.
She questioned me too. Was I here on holiday? For how long? She’d guessed right away, she said, that I came from Paris. I declared that I was taking a rest for several months at the insistence of “my family” (and I felt a visceral delight when I said “my family”), on account of my precarious health. As I provided her with these explanations, I saw a group of about ten very serious persons sitting around a table in a paneled room: the “family council” that was going to make some decisions about me. The windows of the room overlooked Place Malesherbes, and I belonged to the old Jewish bourgeoisie that had settled in Plaine-Monceau around 1890. She asked me pointblank: “Chmara’s a Russian name — are you Russian?” Then other things came to mind: we lived, my grandmother and I, in a ground-floor
apartment near the Étoile, on Rue Lord-Byron, to be exact, or Rue de Bassano (I need precise details). We survived by selling our “family jewels,” or by depositing them in a pawnshop on Rue Pierre-Charron. Yes, I was Russian, and my title was Count Chmara. She looked impressed.
For a few days, I was no longer afraid of anything or anyone. And then the fear came back. The old shooting pain.
The first afternoon we left the hotel, we took the boat, the
Amiral-Guisand
, which made the circuit of the lake. She was wearing big sunglasses with impenetrable silvered lenses. You could see your reflection in them as though in a mirror.
The boat putted along lazily, and it took at least twenty minutes to cross the lake to Saint-Jorioz. The bright sun made me blink. I could hear the distant rumble of motorboats, the shouts and laughter of bathers. A light airplane passed overhead, pretty high up, towing a streamer on which I read the following mysterious words: COUPE HOULIGANT. Houligant Cup …? After a very long maneuver, we landed — or rather, the
Amiral-Guisard
banged against the wharf. Three or four people came on board, among them a priest dressed in a bright red cassock, and the boat resumed its wheezy cruise. From Saint-Jorioz it went to a village named Voirens. Then there would be Port-Lusatz and, a little farther on, Switzerland. But the boat would turn in time and head for the other side of the lake.
The wind was blowing strands of her hair across her forehead. She asked me would she be a countess if we got married. She spoke in a joking tone, but underneath
it I could sense great curiosity. I told her she’d be called “Countess Yvonne Chmara.”
“But is that really Russian, Chmara?”
“Georgian,” I said. “Georgian …”
When the boat stopped at Veyrier-du-Lac, I recognized, in the distance, Madeja’s white-and-pink villa. Yvonne was looking in the same direction. About ten young people took up positions on the deck beside us. Most of them were wearing tennis outfits, and the girls’ fat thighs showed under their pleated white skirts. They all talked with the toothy accent cultivated around Ranelagh and Avenue Bugeaud. And I wondered why those sons and daughters of French polite society had, on the one hand, mild cases of acne, and on the other, a few too many kilos. The cause was surely their diet.
Two members of the group were debating the relative merits of Pancho Gonzales and Spalding tennis rackets. The more voluble of the two wore a goatee and a shirt decorated with a little green crocodile. Technical conversation. Incomprehensible words. A soft, soothing hum in the sunlight. One of the blond girls seemed not insensible to the charms of a dark-haired young man wearing moccasins and a blazer with a crest who was doing his best to shine in front of her. The other blonde declared that “the big party” was “not tomorrow night but the next,” and that her parents “would let them have the villa.” The sound of the water against the hull. The airplane came back over us, and I read the strange streamer again: COUPE HOULIGANT. They were all going (if I understood them correctly) to the tennis club in Menthon-Saint-Bernard. Their parents
must own lakeside villas. And how about us, where were we going? And our parents, who were they? Did Yvonne come from a “good family,” like our neighbors? And me? In any case, my title of count was quite another thing than a little green crocodile, lost on a white shirt …
“Will Count Victor Chmara please come to the telephone?” Yes, that made a fine sound, like a clash of cymbals.
We got off the boat at Menthon with the others. They walked ahead of us, carrying their rackets. We went along a road lined with villas whose exteriors evoked mountain chalets and where several generations of dreamy bourgeois had been coming to spend their vacations. Sometimes the houses were hidden by clusters of hawthorn or fir trees. Villa Primevère, Villa Edelweiss, Les Chamois, Chalet Marie-Rose … The others turned left on a road that led to the wire netting surrounding a tennis court. The buzz of their talk and their laughter faded away.
The two of us turned right. A sign said GRAND HÔTEL DE MENTHON. A private road mounted a very steep slope to a graveled esplanade. From there you had a view that was just as vast as, but sadder than, the one from the terraces of the Hermitage. On this side, the shores of the lake looked deserted. The hotel was very old. In the lobby, some green plants, some rattan chairs, some big sofas covered with plaid fabric. Families would come here in July and August. The same names would recur on the register, double names, very French: Sergent-Delval, Hattier-Morel, Paquier-Panhard … And when we took a room, I thought “Count Victor Chmara” was going to stand out like a greasy stain.
Around us, some children, their parents, and their grandparents, all of them very dignified, were getting ready to leave for the beach, carrying bags filled with cushions and towels. Several young people gathered around a tall man with very short dark hair and a khaki army shirt open over his chest. He was leaning on crutches as the others asked him questions.
A corner room. One of the windows overlooked the esplanade and the lake; the other was blocked up. A cheval glass and a little table covered with a lace doily. A brass bed. We stayed there until nightfall.
As we walked through the lobby, I saw them in the dining room, having their evening meal. They were all dressed in street clothes. Even the children had on ties or little dresses. And we two were the only passengers on the deck of the
Amiral-Guisand
. The exhausted old tub chugged back across the lake even more slowly than on the trip out. It stopped at deserted wharves and then resumed its cruise. The lights of the villas sparkled through the greenery. In the distance, the Casino, floodlit and gleaming. Some party was surely going on there that night. I would have liked the boat to stop in the middle of the lake or next to one of the half-collapsed barges. Yvonne had fallen asleep.
We often dined with Meinthe at the Sporting Club. Outdoor tables, covered with white tablecloths. On each, a double-shaded lamp. You know the photograph from the children’s charity ball supper in Cannes on August 22, 1939, and the other one, the one I always have on me (my father’s
in it, in the midst of an entire society that has vanished), taken on July 11, 1948, at the Cairo Casino the night the young Englishwoman named Kay Owen was elected “Miss Bathing Beauty”? Well, those two photographs could have been taken at the Sporting Club that year, when we used to have dinner there. Same décor. Same “blue” night. Same people. Yes, I recognized some faces.
Every time we dined together, Meinthe wore a dinner jacket of a different color and Yvonne a muslin or crepe dress. She was fond of boleros and scarves. I was condemned to my single flannel suit and my International Bar Fly tie. The first few times, Meinthe took us to the Sainte-Rose, a lakeside nightclub located past Menthon-Saint-Bernard, in Voirens, to be exact. He knew the manager, a fellow named Pulli, who he told me was an illegal resident. But this Pulli, a paunchy man with velvety eyes, seemed to be sweetness personified. He had a lisp. The Sainte-Rose was a very “chic” place. You could find the same rich summer vacationers there as at the Sporting Club. You danced on a terrace that featured a pergola. I remember holding Yvonne close to me and thinking I could never do without the smell of her skin and her hair, and the band was playing “Tuxedo Junction.”
All in all, we were meant to meet and hit it off.
We’d get back very late, and the dog would be asleep in the living room. Ever since I’d moved into the Hermitage with Yvonne, his melancholy had grown worse. Every two or three hours — as regular as a metronome — he’d make a tour of the bedroom and then go lie down again. Before
going back to the living room, he’d stop for a few minutes in front of our bedroom window and sit down, ears pricked, maybe following the progress of the
Amiral-Guisand
across the lake or contemplating the scenery. I was struck by the animal’s sad discretion and touched to observe him performing his guard duties.
She’d put on a beach robe with big orange and green stripes and lie across the bed to smoke a cigarette. On her night table, along with a lipstick or an atomizer, there were always wads of banknotes lying around. Where did that money come from? How long had she been staying at the Hermitage? “They” had put her up there for the duration of the film. But now that it was finished? It was very important to her — she explained — to spend the “season” in this resort town. The “season” was going to be “very brilliant.” “Resort,” “season,” “very brilliant,” “Count Chmara” — who was lying to whom in this foreign language?
But maybe she just needed company? I showed myself attentive, considerate, tactful, and passionate, as one is at eighteen. On those first evenings, when we weren’t discussing her “career,” she’d ask me to read her a page or two of André Maurois’s
History of England
. Every time I started to read, the Great Dane would immediately appear in the doorway to the living room, sit, and gravely regard me. Yvonne, lounging in her beach robe and frowning slightly, would listen. I never understood why she, who had never read anything in her life, liked that historical work so much. When I asked, she gave me vague answers: “It’s very good, you know”; “André Maurois is a very great writer.” I believe she’d found the
History of England
in the lobby
of the Hermitage, and I think the volume became a sort of talisman for her, a lucky charm. From time to time, she’d tell me, “Don’t read so fast,” or ask me the meaning of a sentence. She wanted to learn the
History of England
by heart. I assured her André Maurois would be glad to know that. So then she started asking me questions about the author. I explained that Maurois was a very gentle Jewish novelist much interested in female psychology. One evening she asked me to write him a note: “Monsieur André Maurois, I am an admirer of yours. I am reading your
History of England
, and I would love to have your autograph. Respectfully, Yvonne X.”
He never responded. Why not?
How long had she known Meinthe? Forever. He too — it appeared — had an apartment in Geneva, and they were practically inseparable. Meinthe practiced, “more or less,” medicine. In the pages of the Maurois book, I found a visiting card engraved with these three words: “Doctor René Meinthe,” and on the bathroom shelf, among the beauty products, a prescription from “Doctor R. C. Meinthe” for sleeping pills.
Furthermore, every morning when we woke up we’d find a letter from Meinthe under the door. I’ve kept a few of those letters; time has not dissipated their vetiver scent. I wondered where that fragrance came from. From the envelope, from the paper, or, you never know, from the ink Meinthe used? Here’s one letter, chosen at random: “Will I have the pleasure of seeing you two this evening? I must spend this afternoon in Geneva. I shall telephone you at the
hotel around nine o’clock. With love, your René M.” And another: “Forgive me for not having given you any signs of life, but I haven’t left my room for forty-eight hours. It occurred to me that in three weeks I shall be twenty-seven years old. And that I shall be a very old, very old person. I’ll see you very soon. Love from your godmother, René.” And this one, addressed to Yvonne in a more nervous hand: “Do you know who I just saw in the lobby? That prick François Maulaz. And he wanted to shake my hand. No, no, never. Never. He can drop dead!” (the last word underlined four times). There were many other letters.
The two of them often talked about people I didn’t know. I recall a few names: Claude Brun, Paulo Hervieu, a certain “Rosy,” Jean-Pierre Pessoz, Pierre Fournier, François Maulaz, “Miss Carlton,” and someone called Doudou Hendrickx, whom Meinthe qualified as a “swine.” I quickly realized that they were locals, that they all originally came from the town we were in, a summer vacation spot doomed to turn back into a boring little burg at the end of every October. Meinthe said that Brun and Hervieu had “gone up” to Paris, that Rosy had taken over her father’s hotel in La Clusaz, and that “that prick” Maulaz, the bookseller’s son, carried on openly every summer at the Sporting Club with a member of the Comédie-Française. All those people must have been their friends since childhood or adolescence. Whenever I asked a question, Meinthe and Yvonne would act evasive and interrupt their private conversation. Then I remembered what I’d learned from Yvonne’s passport and imagined each of them at the age of fifteen or sixteen, in the winter, leaving the Regent cinema.