Читать книгу Missing Person - Patrick Modiano - Страница 12

A NOTICE on the glass-fronted door announced, “Waldo Blunt at the piano from six to nine every evening in the Hilton Hotel bar.”

The bar was packed and the only free seat was at the table of a Japanese with gold-rimmed spectacles. He did not seem to understand me when I bent over him and asked if I might sit down, and when I did, he took no notice.

American and Japanese customers came in, hailed each other and spoke louder and louder. They stood about between the tables. Several, glass in hand, leaned on the backs or arms of chairs. One young woman was even perched on the knees of a gray-haired man.

Waldo Blunt arrived a quarter of an hour late and sat down at the piano. A small plump man with receding hair and a thin moustache. He was wearing a gray suit. First he turned his head and cast a glance around the tables where people were crowding. He stroked the keys of the piano with his right hand and played a few random chords. I happened to be sitting at one of the closest tables.

He began a tune which, I believe, was “Sur les quais du vieux Paris,” but the noise of conversation and the bursts of laughter made the music barely audible, and even close to the piano, I could not catch all the notes. He continued imperturbably, sitting bolt upright, his head bent. I felt sorry for him: I supposed that at one time in his life he had been listened to when he played the piano. Since then, he must have got used to this perpetual buzz, drowning out his music. What would he say, when I mentioned Gay Orlov’s name? Would it temporarily jolt him out of the apathetic state in which he played? Or would it no longer mean anything to him, like these notes, unable to still the hum of conversation?

The bar had gradually emptied. The only ones left now were the Japanese with the gold-rimmed spectacles, myself, and at the back of the room, the young woman I had seen perched on the lap of the gray-haired gentleman and who was now seated next to a fat, red-faced man in a light blue suit . . . They were speaking German. And very loudly. Waldo Blunt was playing a slow tune which I knew well.

He turned toward us.

“Would you like me to play anything in particular, ladies and gentlemen?” he asked in a cold voice with a trace of an American accent.

The Japanese next to me did not react. He remained motionless, his face smooth, and I was afraid he might topple from his seat at the slightest breath of air, since he was clearly an embalmed corpse.

“‘Sag warum,’ please,” the woman huskily called from the back.

Blunt gave a slight nod and started playing “Sag warum.” The light in the bar dimmed, as it sometimes does in dance halls at the first notes of a slow step. The couple took the opportunity to kiss and the woman’s hand slid into the opening of the fat, red-faced man’s shirt, then lower down. The gold-rimmed spectacles of the Japanese flashed. At his piano, Blunt looked like an automaton being jolted spasmodically: “Sag warum” requires an endless thumping out of chords.

What was he thinking about? Behind him, a fat, red-faced man stroked a blonde’s thigh and an embalmed Japanese had been sitting in his chair in the Hilton bar for several days. I was sure he was thinking about nothing. He was enveloped in a fog of indifference that grew thicker and thicker. Did I have the right to rouse him from it, to force him to think of something painful?

The fat, red-faced man and the blonde left the bar, no doubt to take a room. The man was pulling her by the arm and she almost stumbled. The Japanese and I were the only ones left.

Blunt again turned to us and said in his cold voice:

“Would you like me to play something else?”

The Japanese made no movement.

“‘Que reste-t-il de nos amours,’ please,” I said.

He played the tune in a strangely slow manner, and the melody seemed drawn out, trapped in a swamp from which the notes had trouble freeing themselves. From time to time he paused, like an exhausted walker who staggers a little. He looked at his watch, rose abruptly, and inclined his head for our benefit:

“Gentlemen, it is 9 o’clock. Good night.”

He left. I fell into step behind him, leaving the embalmed Japanese in the crypt of the bar.

He walked down the corridor and crossed the deserted lounge.

I caught up with him.

“Mr. Waldo Blunt? . . . I would like to speak to you.”

“What about?”

He threw me a hunted look.

“About someone you used to know . . . A woman called Gay. Gay Orlov . . .”

He stopped short in the middle of the lounge.

“Gay . . .”

He stared as though the light of a projector had been turned on his face.

“You . . . you knew . . . Gay?”

“No.”

We had left the Hôtel. There was a line of men and women in gaudy evening attire – long, green or pale-blue, satin dresses, and garnet-colored dinner-jackets – waiting for taxis.

“I don’t want to trouble you . . .”

“You’re not troubling me,” he said in a preoccupied tone. “It’s such a long time since I’ve heard Gay mentioned . . . But who are you?”

“A cousin of hers. I . . . I’d like to find out a few things about her . . .”

“A few things?”

He rubbed his temple with his forefinger.

“What do you want to know?”

We had turned into a narrow street which ran alongside the Hôtel and led to the Seine.

“I must be getting home,” he said.

“I’ll walk with you.”

“So, you’re Gay’s cousin, really?”

“Yes. The family would like some information about her.”

“She’s been dead a long time.”

“I know.”

He was walking at a rapid pace and I had trouble following him. I hurried to keep up with him. We had reached the Quai Branly.

“I live over there,” he said, pointing to the other bank of the Seine.

We stepped out on to the Pont Bir-Hakeim.

“I won’t be able to give you much information” he said. “I knew Gay a very long time ago.”

He had slowed down, as if he felt safe. Perhaps he had been walking quickly until then because he thought he was being followed. Or to shake me off.

“I didn’t know Gay had any family,” he said.

“Yes . . . she did . . . on the Giorgiadze side . . .”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Giorgiadze family . . . Her grandfather was called Giorgiadze . . .”

“Oh, I see . . .”

He stopped and leaned against the stone parapet of the bridge. I could not do likewise, as it made me dizzy. So, I stayed upright, standing in front of him. He seemed reluctant to speak.

“You know . . . I was married to her? . . .”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“It was in some old papers.”

“We were both working in a night club, in New York . . . I played the piano . . . She asked me to marry her only because she wanted to stay in America, and not have any problems with the immigration people . . .”

He shook his head at this memory.

“She was a strange girl. After that, she went with Lucky Luciano . . . She’d known him when she was working in the Palm Island Casino . . .”

“Luciano?”

“Yes, yes, Luciano . . . She was with him when he was arrested, in Arkansas . . . After that, she met a Frenchman and I heard she left for France with him . . .”

His gaze lightened. He smiled at me.

“It’s nice to be able to talk about Gay, you know . . .”

A Métro train passed by, overhead, in the direction of the right bank. Then a second one, going the other way. Their din drowned out Blunt’s voice. He was saying something to me, I could tell by the movement of his lips. “. . . The prettiest girl I ever knew . . .”

This scrap of speech which I managed to catch made me feel keenly despondent. Here I was, half-way across a bridge, at night, with a man I did not know, trying to drag some information out of him that would tell me something about myself, and I could not hear him for the noise of trains.

“Can we perhaps move on a bit?”

But he was so engrossed that he did not answer me. It was such a long time, no doubt, since he had thought about Gay Orlov, that all his memories of her were rising to the surface and making his head spin, like a sea breeze. He stayed there, leaning against the parapet of the bridge.