Читать книгу Missing Person - Patrick Modiano - Страница 8

IT WAS a quarter to six. I asked the taxi driver to wait for me in the little Rue Charles-Marie-Widor and proceeded on foot until I reached Rue Claude-Lorrain, where the Russian Church was.

A detached, one-story building, with net curtains at the windows. On the right, a very wide path. I took up my position on the pavement facing it.

First I saw two women who stopped in front of the door opening on to the street. One had short brown hair and wore a black woollen shawl; the other was a blonde, very made up, and sported a gray hat which was shaped like a Musketeer’s. I heard them speaking French.

A stout, elderly man, completely bald, with heavy bags under his Mongolian slits of eyes, extracted himself from a taxi. They started up the path.

On the left, from Rue Boileau, a group of five people came toward me. In front, two middle-aged women supported a very old man by the arms, an old man so white-haired, so fragile, he seemed to be made of dried plaster. There followed two men who looked alike, father and son no doubt, both wearing well-cut, gray striped suits, the father dandified, the son with wavy blond hair. Just at this moment, a car braked level with the group and another alert, stiff old man, enveloped in a loden cape, his gray hair cut short, got out. He had a military bearing. Was this Styoppa?

They all entered the church by a side door, at the end of the path. I would have liked to have followed them, but my presence among them would have attracted attention. I was having increasing qualms that I might fail to identify Styoppa.

A car had just pulled to one side, a little further off, on the right. Two men got out, then a woman. One of the men was very tall and wore a navy blue overcoat. I crossed the street and waited for them.

They come closer and closer. It seems to me that the tall man stares hard at me before starting up the path with the two others. Behind the stained glass windows which look out on to the path, tapers are burning. He stoops as he passes through the door, which is much too low for him, and I know it is Styoppa.

The taxi’s engine was running but there was no one at the wheel. One of the doors was ajar, as if the driver would be returning any moment. Where could he be? I glanced about me and decided to walk round the block to look for him.

I found him in a café close by, in Rue Chardon-Lagache. He was seated at a table, with a glass of beer in front of him.

“Are you going to be much longer?” he asked

“Oh . . . another twenty minutes.”

Fair-haired, pale-skinned, with heavy jowls and protruding eyes. I don’t think I have ever seen a man with fleshier ear lobes.

“Does it matter if I let the meter run?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

He smiled politely.

“Aren’t you afraid your taxi might get stolen?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, you know . . .”

He had ordered a pâté sandwich and was eating with deliberation, gazing at me gloomily.

“What exactly are you waiting for?”

“Someone who’ll be coming out of the Russian church, down the road.”

“Are you Russian?”

“No.”

“It’s silly . . . You should have asked him when he was leaving . . . It would have cost you less . . .”

“Never mind.”

He ordered another glass of beer.

“Could you get me a paper?” he said.

He started searching in his pocket for the change, but I stopped him.

“Don’t worry . . .”

“Thanks. Get me Le Hérisson. Thanks again . . .”

I wandered about for quite a while before finding a newsstand in Avenue de Versailles. Le Hérisson was printed on a creamy green paper.

He read, knitting his brows and turning over the pages after moistening his index finger with his tongue. And I contemplated this fat, blond, blue-eyed man, with white skin, reading his green paper.

I didn’t dare interrupt him in his reading. At last, he consulted his tiny wrist watch.

“We must go.”

In Rue Charles-Marie-Widor, he sat down behind the wheel of his taxi and I asked him to wait for me. Again, I stationed myself in front of the Russian church, but on the opposite side of the street.

There was no one there. Had they, perhaps, left already? If so, there was no hope of my tracking down Styoppa de Dzhagorev again, since his name was not in the Paris directory. The tapers still burned behind the stained glass windows which looked out on to the path. Had I known the ancient lady for whom this service was being held? If I had been one of Styoppa’s frequent companions, he would probably have introduced me to his friends, including, no doubt, this Marie de Rosen. She must have been far older than us at the time.

The door they had entered by and which must have led into the chapel where the ceremony was taking place, this door which I was keeping under constant watch, suddenly opened, and the blonde woman in the Musketeer’s hat stood framed in it. The brunette in the black shawl followed. Then the father and son, in their gray striped suits, supporting the plaster figure of the old man, who was talking to the fat bald-headed man with the Mongolian features. And the latter was stooping, his ear practically touching his companion’s lips: the old gentleman’s voice must certainly have been hardly more than a whisper. Others followed. I was watching for Styoppa, my heart pounding.

Finally, he emerged, among the last. His great height and navy blue overcoat allowed me to keep him in sight, as there was a large number of them, forty at least. They were mostly getting on in years, but I noticed a few young women and even children. They all lingered on the path, talking among themselves.

The scene resembled a country school playground. The old man with the plaster appearance was installed on a bench, and each of them in turn came up to greet him. Who was he? “Georges Sacher,” mentioned in the newspaper notice? Or an ex-graduate of the School of Pages? Perhaps he and Marie de Rosen had lived out some brief idyll in Petersburg, or on the shores of the Black Sea, before everything fell to pieces? The fat bald-headed man with the Mongolian eyes was surrounded by people as well. The father and son, in their gray striped suits, circulated, like a pair of dancers at some society ball, moving from table to table. They seemed full of themselves, and the father kept breaking into laughter, throwing back his head, which I found incongruous.

Styoppa, for his part, was talking soberly with the woman in the gray Musketeer’s hat. He laid his hand on her arm and on her shoulder in a courtly and affectionate manner. He must have been a very handsome man. I put him down as seventy. His face was a little bloated, his hair receding, but the prominent nose and the set of the head I found extremely noble. Or such was my impression from a distance.

Time passed. Almost half an hour had gone by and they were still talking. I was afraid that one of them would finally notice me, standing there on the pavement. And the taxi driver? I strode back to Rue Charles-Marie-Widor. The engine was still running and he was seated at the wheel, deep in his yellowy green paper.

“Well?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We might have to wait another hour.”

“Hasn’t your friend come out of the church yet?”

“Yes, but he’s chatting with the others.”

“You can’t ask him to come?”

“No.”

His large blue eyes stared at me in consternation.

“Don’t worry,” I said.

“It’s for you . . . I have to keep the meter running . . .”

I returned to my post, opposite the Russian church.

Styoppa had advanced a few feet. As a matter of fact, he was no longer standing at the end of the path but on the pavement, in the center of a group consisting of the blonde woman in the Musketeer’s hat, the brunette in the black shawl, the bald-headed man with the slanted Mongolian eyes, and two other men.

This time I crossed the street and stationed myself close to them, my back turned. The soft bursts of Russian filled the air and I wondered if a deeper, more resonant voice among them was Styoppa’s. I turned around. He gave the blonde woman in the Musketeer’s hat a long embrace. He was almost shaking her, and his features contracted in a painful grin. Then, in the same fashion, he embraced the fat bald-headed man with the slant eyes, and each of the others in turn. The time for farewells, I thought. I ran back to the taxi and jumped in.

“Quick . . . straight ahead . . . in front of the Russian church . . .”

Styoppa was still talking to them.

“Do you see the tall guy in navy blue?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have to follow him, if he’s in a car.”

The driver turned round, stared at me, and his blue eyes opened wide.

“I hope it’s not dangerous, sir.”

“Don’t worry,” I said.

Styoppa detached himself from the group, walked a few paces and, without turning, waved his arm. The others, standing still, watched him. The woman in the gray Musketeer’s hat stood slightly to the front of the group, arched, like the figurehead of a ship, the large feather of her hat fluttering gently in the breeze.

He took some time opening the door of his car. I think he tried the wrong key. When he was seated at the wheel, I leaned forward to the taxi driver.

“Follow the car which the guy in navy-blue just got into.”

And I hoped I wasn’t on the wrong track, since there was nothing really to indicate that this man was Styoppa de Dzhagorev.