Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [83]
“Who gives the orders?”
A guy turned on the faucets in the bathtub. He was completely ordinary. I heard the water gushing from the faucet.
“We’re going to refresh your memory!”
I don’t remember anything.
When I came to, they were smoking and chatting like three buddies sharing a good story. A really great dinner. A good place to go. The girl they had the night before in a very comfortable house. Two steps from Parc Monceau. The girls of the house were very clean. Hygiene—that’s the main thing … So many guys got the clap in sleazy whorehouses. They were no longer concerned with the bathtub, nor with the metal chair, nor with the basement with the foul smell of death. They were no longer concerned with me. They went into the next room. They headed out into the scent of chestnuts, on the beautiful, straight, pleasantly shaded avenues. With the perfume of women still lingering in the early-morning hours after they’ve left such a comfortable whorehouse, so typically Parisian.
They were three good friends chatting.
You had to convince yourself of the unbelievable, go through the corridor, reach the laundry room with its door open to the street. The piles of sheets and soiled towels, like lifeless bodies. Outside, the air had never been sharper. And yet so soft and sweet in the summer evening.
You had to go down the avenue, strolling like a regular customer, despite your heart jumping in your chest. At the end, Place des Ternes, florists, white tablecloths at the café Lorraine. And the steps to the metro hurtled down four at a time, because you’re about to make it now.
I remember everything.
Look, the newspaper stand over there, at the corner of rue Balagny, I remember it too. The paper seller in his box looks like a puppet in its little theater. His nose of gnarled wood like a vine.
Ah … today it’s someone else selling the papers.
“Paris Soir, please …”
“Is that a paper?”
“What a question!”
“A new one?”
“After twenty years its novelty has worn off.”
“Twenty years … it’s been around since 1987?”
“What are you talking about? Since 1923, of course! Okay, I’ve rounded off one year. Let’s not quibble. It’s been around for twenty-one years, are you happy now?”
“You’re not confusing it with Paris-Turf?”
“What would I want with horse racing?”
“If you don’t know, it’s not for me to say …”
“You’re not very helpful.”
“I don’t have to be. Don’t get on your high horse, now.”
“Do you sell newspapers or don’t you?”
“For thirty years, monsieur, and I’ve never heard of ParisSoir. Wouldn’t it be France Soir? Or Le Parisien?”
“Of course, the name may have changed with the Liberation. It wasn’t very respectable anymore.”
“The liberation … ?”
“Of Paris. For someone who sells information, you seem ill informed. Goodbye, monsieur.”
One thing’s for sure, he’s not the one I have to kill. He doesn’t open his papers, he couldn’t have lent me books. Paper sellers should never change. Nor avenues. Avenue de Clichy has its usual look. Dusty from all the humanity beating the pavement, the same worn-out hope in their pockets. And the bargain display windows, the cheap items, the fake-jewelry stores, the greasy spoons … Nothing’s missing. Yet I have trouble recognizing it.
“Ni tout à fait la même ni tout à fait une autre.” (“Neithercompletely the same nor completely other.”)Verlaine again. Did he go to Cité des Fleurs?The poets all go there, I suppose. As for me, rarely. Why don’t they ever want me to go out alone? Getting lost in the streets is dizzying. They don’t like me to get lost. It’s stupid. They end up finding you. They always do. The worst thing is getting lost inside. They call that wandering. But they often say all sorts of nonsense. That we are in 2007, for instance. Who told me that crap? The one I have to kill? He’ll get what he deserves. All I have to do is take the right street. Through Cité des Fleurs, since time has stopped there. A long and peaceful path, wisteria on the walls, small gardens and bourgeois houses. Nothing disrupts its peace. Neither the flow of cars on the avenue