Valentiner, who had secured a cushy administrative post. He lived in a studio on the Quai Voltaire and, in his leisure time,read the latest novels by Evelyn Waugh. He was later sent to the Russian Front and was killed.
Other visitors to the Quai de Conti apartment included a young Russian, Georges dâIsmailoff, who was tubercular but always went out into the frozen winters of the Occupation without an overcoat. A Greek, Christos Bellos: he had missed the last ship leaving for America, where he was supposed to join a friend. A girl of the same age, Geneviève Vaudoyer. All that remains of them are their names. Geneviève Vaudoyer and her father, Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, were the first French bourgeois family to invite my mother to their home. Geneviève Vaudoyer introduced my mother to Arletty, who also lived on the Quai de Conti, in the building next door to number 15. Arletty took my mother under her wing.
I hope I can be forgiven all these names, and others to follow. Iâm a dog who pretends to have a pedigree. My mother and father didnât belong to any particular milieu. So aimless werethey, so unsettled, that Iâm straining to find a few markers, a few beacons in this quicksand, as one might attempt to fill in with half-smudged letters a census form or administrative questionnaire.
My father was born in 1912, in Square Pétrelle in Paris, on the border of the 9th and 10th arrondissements. His father was originally from Thessaloniki and belonged to a Jewish family from Tuscany established under the Ottoman Empire. Cousins in London, Alexandria, Milan, Budapest. Four of my fatherâs cousins, Carlo, Grazia, Giacomo, and his wife, Mary, would be murdered by the SS in Italy, in Arona, on Lake Maggiore, in September 1943. My grandfather left Thessaloniki when he was a child and went to Alexandria. But after several years, he left for Venezuela. I believe he had cut all ties with his family and background. He became involved in the pearl trade in Margarita Island, then ran a thrift shop in Caracas. After Venezuela, he settled in Paris in 1903. He ran an antiques shop at 5 Rue de Châteaudun, where hesold objets dâart from China and Japan. He held a Spanish passport, and until the day he died he would be registered at the Spanish consulate in Paris, whereas his forebears, as âTuscan subjects,â had been under the protection of the French, English, and then Austrian consulates. Iâve kept several of his passports, one of which was issued by the Spanish consulate in Alexandria. And a certificate, drawn up in Caracas in 1894, attesting that he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. My grandmother was born in the Pas-de-Calais. In 1916, her father lived in a suburb of Nottingham. But after her marriage, she adopted Spanish citizenship.
My father lost his father when he was four. Childhood in the 10th arrondissement, Cité dâHauteville. Collège Chaptal, where he was a boarderâeven on weekends, he told me. And from his dormitory he could hear the music of the street carnival, on the median strip along Boulevard des Batignolles. He never took his baccalaureate exam. As a teenager and youngadult, he was left to his own devices. By age sixteen, he and his friends were hanging out at the Hôtel Bohy-Lafayette, the bars of Faubourg Montmartre, the Cadet, the Luna Park. His name was Alberto, but they called him Aldo. At age eighteen, he began smuggling petroleum, sneaking drums of it into Paris undetected by the authorities. At nineteen, he asked a manager of the Saint-Phalle bank to underwrite his âfinancialâ operations, so persuasively that the latter agreed to back him. But the affair went sour, as my father was a minor, and the law stepped in. At age twenty-four, he rented a room at 33 Avenue Montaigne and, according to certain documents Iâve preserved, he often traveled to London to help form a company called Bravisco Ltd. His
Other visitors to the Quai de Conti apartment included a young Russian, Georges dâIsmailoff, who was tubercular but always went out into the frozen winters of the Occupation without an overcoat. A Greek, Christos Bellos: he had missed the last ship leaving for America, where he was supposed to join a friend. A girl of the same age, Geneviève Vaudoyer. All that remains of them are their names. Geneviève Vaudoyer and her father, Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, were the first French bourgeois family to invite my mother to their home. Geneviève Vaudoyer introduced my mother to Arletty, who also lived on the Quai de Conti, in the building next door to number 15. Arletty took my mother under her wing.
I hope I can be forgiven all these names, and others to follow. Iâm a dog who pretends to have a pedigree. My mother and father didnât belong to any particular milieu. So aimless werethey, so unsettled, that Iâm straining to find a few markers, a few beacons in this quicksand, as one might attempt to fill in with half-smudged letters a census form or administrative questionnaire.
My father was born in 1912, in Square Pétrelle in Paris, on the border of the 9th and 10th arrondissements. His father was originally from Thessaloniki and belonged to a Jewish family from Tuscany established under the Ottoman Empire. Cousins in London, Alexandria, Milan, Budapest. Four of my fatherâs cousins, Carlo, Grazia, Giacomo, and his wife, Mary, would be murdered by the SS in Italy, in Arona, on Lake Maggiore, in September 1943. My grandfather left Thessaloniki when he was a child and went to Alexandria. But after several years, he left for Venezuela. I believe he had cut all ties with his family and background. He became involved in the pearl trade in Margarita Island, then ran a thrift shop in Caracas. After Venezuela, he settled in Paris in 1903. He ran an antiques shop at 5 Rue de Châteaudun, where hesold objets dâart from China and Japan. He held a Spanish passport, and until the day he died he would be registered at the Spanish consulate in Paris, whereas his forebears, as âTuscan subjects,â had been under the protection of the French, English, and then Austrian consulates. Iâve kept several of his passports, one of which was issued by the Spanish consulate in Alexandria. And a certificate, drawn up in Caracas in 1894, attesting that he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. My grandmother was born in the Pas-de-Calais. In 1916, her father lived in a suburb of Nottingham. But after her marriage, she adopted Spanish citizenship.
My father lost his father when he was four. Childhood in the 10th arrondissement, Cité dâHauteville. Collège Chaptal, where he was a boarderâeven on weekends, he told me. And from his dormitory he could hear the music of the street carnival, on the median strip along Boulevard des Batignolles. He never took his baccalaureate exam. As a teenager and youngadult, he was left to his own devices. By age sixteen, he and his friends were hanging out at the Hôtel Bohy-Lafayette, the bars of Faubourg Montmartre, the Cadet, the Luna Park. His name was Alberto, but they called him Aldo. At age eighteen, he began smuggling petroleum, sneaking drums of it into Paris undetected by the authorities. At nineteen, he asked a manager of the Saint-Phalle bank to underwrite his âfinancialâ operations, so persuasively that the latter agreed to back him. But the affair went sour, as my father was a minor, and the law stepped in. At age twenty-four, he rented a room at 33 Avenue Montaigne and, according to certain documents Iâve preserved, he often traveled to London to help form a company called Bravisco Ltd. His
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