The three of us are washed up!”
“At five?”
Seated at his desk, Salomon raises his teary pink face in our direction:
“At five?
That does it! On top of everything else, I’m supposed to miss my meeting at the Alhambra for your sake?
Not before six, get it?”
Defenseless now, I shake his pudgy hand, and we leave.
The crowd on the street making any conversation impossible, we keep silent.
I’m apprehensive of the relative solitude of the Boulevard Malesherbes, where Brague will begin to argue and win me over.
I’m already won over and determined to set out . . . Hamond won’t like it.
Margot will say,
“You’re perfectly right, my girl,” but won’t mean a word of it, though she’ll give me excellent advice and three or four bottles of “special remedies” for headaches, constipation, and fever.
And when it comes to Dufferein-Chautel, what will he say?
It amuses me to think of the look on his face.
He’ll console himself with Jadin, that’s all . . . To set out . . . How soon now?
“The date, Brague?
Just imagine, I paid no attention to it!”
Shrugging his shoulders, Brague comes to my side amid the troop of pedestrians waiting submissively for the traffic cop’s white baton to halt the line of cars and open a path for us from the sidewalk of the Boulevard Haussmann to the traffic island in the Place Saint-Augustin.
“If it were left up to you to clinch our contracts, my poor friend!
Madame yaps, Madame gets on her high horse, Madame wants this, doesn’t want that, and then, at the end of it:
‘Gosh, I didn’t pay attention to the date!’ ”
Deferentially, I allow him to savor his superiority.
One of Brague’s keenest pleasures is to treat me like a beginner, like a blundering pupil . . . Under the policeman’s protection, we run all the way to the Boulevard Malesherbes . . .
“From April fifth to May fifteenth,” Brague finishes. “Do you have any objections? There’s nothing keeping you here?”
“Nothing . . .”
We walk up the boulevard, somewhat stifled by the lukewarm vapor rising from the wet paving stones.
A brief shower, practically a storm, has made the thaw set in; the blackish sidewalk reflects the lights, lengthening them and making them iridescent.
The far end of the street is lost in an indistinct haze, reddened by the remaining twilight . . . Involuntarily, I turn around and look all about me, seeking . . . what?
Nothing.
No, nothing is keeping me here or anywhere else.
No beloved face will arise out of the fog, the way a bright flower emerges from dark waters, and beg me tenderly:
“Don’t go!”
So I’ll be leaving again.
April fifth is far off—today is February fifteenth—but it’s as if I were already gone.
Brague can murmur in my inattentive ear names of cities, hotels, numbers and more numbers . . .
“Are you at least listening?”
“Yes.”
“So you won’t be working at all between today and April fifth?”
“Not that I know of !”
“You wouldn’t consider doing some short piece, any little bit of nonsense in high-society style, that would keep you busy until then?”
“Not at all.”
“If you like, I could try to find you some little job by the week.”
I thank my partner as I leave him, touched at his wish to avoid unemployment for me, that idleness which discourages, diminishes, and unsettles performers who are out of work . . .
Three heads are raised when I enter my study: those of Hamond, Fossette, and Dufferein-Chautel.
Huddling together under the pink lampshade around a little table, they’re playing ecarte while waiting for me.
Fossette knows how to play cards in bulldog fashion; sitting on a chair, she follows the men’s hands back and forth, ready to catch on the fly a card they tip too far.
Hamond exclaims,
“At last!”
Fossette says,
“Woof!” Dufferein-Chautel says nothing, but he almost barked, too . . .