gusting wind. Tonight I will
dream of Proust, he thought. Then he called Simone’s place and talked to the old
lady who looked after her child. Madame won’t be home until after four; she has
an orgy tonight, said the woman. A what? asked Rousselot. The woman repeated the
sentence. My God, thought Rousselot, and hung up without saying good-bye. To
make things worse, that night he didn’t dream of Proust but of Buenos Aires,
where thousands of Riquelmes had taken up residence in the Argentine PEN Club, all armed with tickets to Paris, all shouting, all
cursing a name, the name of someone or something, but Rousselot couldn’t hear it
properly; it was like a tongue-twister or a password they were trying to keep
secret although it was gnawing their insides away.
The next morning, at breakfast, he was stunned to discover that he had
no money left. Le Hamel was three or four kilometers from Arromanches; he
decided to walk. To lift his spirits, he told himself that on D-Day the English
soldiers had landed on those beaches. But his spirits remained as low as could
be, and although he had thought it might take half an hour, in the end it took
him more than twice that time to reach Le Hamel. On the way he started doing
sums, remembering how much money he had brought with him to Europe, how much
he’d had left when he arrived in Paris, how much he had spent on meals, on
Simone (quite a lot, he thought, melancholically), on Riquelme, on taxis
(they’ve been ripping me off the whole time!), and wondering whether he could
have been robbed at some point without realizing. The only people who could have
done that, he concluded gallantly, were the Spanish journalist and Riquelme. And
the idea didn’t seem preposterous in those surroundings where so many lives had
been lost.
He observed Morini’s hotel from the beach. By that stage, anyone else
would have given up. For anyone else, circling around that hotel would have been
as good as admitting to idiocy, or to a sort of degradation that Rousselot
thought of as Parisian, or cinematic, or even literary, although for him the
word “literary” retained all its original luster, or some of it, at least. In
his situation, anyone else would have been calling the Argentine embassy,
inventing a credible lie and borrowing some money to pay for the hotel. But,
instead of gritting his teeth and making the phone calls, Rousselot rang the
hotel’s doorbell and was not surprised to hear the voice of an old woman who,
leaning out of one of the windows on the second floor, asked him what he wanted
and was not surprised by his reply: I need to see your son. Then the old woman
disappeared, and Rousselot waited by the door for what seemed like an
eternity.
He kept checking his pulse and touching his forehead to see if he had
a fever. When the door finally opened, he saw a lean, rather swarthy face, with
large bags under the eyes; it was, he judged, the face of a degenerate, and it
was vaguely familiar. Morini invited him in. My parents, he said, have been
working as caretakers of this hotel for more than thirty years. They sat down in
the lobby, where the armchairs were protected from dust by enormous sheets
embroidered with the hotel’s monogram. On one wall Rousselot saw an oil painting
of the beaches of Le Hamel, with bathers in
belle époque
costumes,
while opposite, a collection of portraits of famous guests (or so he supposed)
observed them from a zone infiltrated by mist. He shivered. I am Alvaro
Rousselot, he said, the author of
Solitude
—I mean, the author of
Nights on the Pampas
.
It took a few seconds for Morini to react, but then he leaped to his
feet, let out a cry of terror, and disappeared down a corridor. Such a
spectacular response was the last thing Rousselot had been expecting. He
remained seated, lit a cigarette (the ash dropped progressively onto the
carpet), and thought sadly of Simone and her son, and a café in Paris that
served the best croissants he had ever tasted in
dream of Proust, he thought. Then he called Simone’s place and talked to the old
lady who looked after her child. Madame won’t be home until after four; she has
an orgy tonight, said the woman. A what? asked Rousselot. The woman repeated the
sentence. My God, thought Rousselot, and hung up without saying good-bye. To
make things worse, that night he didn’t dream of Proust but of Buenos Aires,
where thousands of Riquelmes had taken up residence in the Argentine PEN Club, all armed with tickets to Paris, all shouting, all
cursing a name, the name of someone or something, but Rousselot couldn’t hear it
properly; it was like a tongue-twister or a password they were trying to keep
secret although it was gnawing their insides away.
The next morning, at breakfast, he was stunned to discover that he had
no money left. Le Hamel was three or four kilometers from Arromanches; he
decided to walk. To lift his spirits, he told himself that on D-Day the English
soldiers had landed on those beaches. But his spirits remained as low as could
be, and although he had thought it might take half an hour, in the end it took
him more than twice that time to reach Le Hamel. On the way he started doing
sums, remembering how much money he had brought with him to Europe, how much
he’d had left when he arrived in Paris, how much he had spent on meals, on
Simone (quite a lot, he thought, melancholically), on Riquelme, on taxis
(they’ve been ripping me off the whole time!), and wondering whether he could
have been robbed at some point without realizing. The only people who could have
done that, he concluded gallantly, were the Spanish journalist and Riquelme. And
the idea didn’t seem preposterous in those surroundings where so many lives had
been lost.
He observed Morini’s hotel from the beach. By that stage, anyone else
would have given up. For anyone else, circling around that hotel would have been
as good as admitting to idiocy, or to a sort of degradation that Rousselot
thought of as Parisian, or cinematic, or even literary, although for him the
word “literary” retained all its original luster, or some of it, at least. In
his situation, anyone else would have been calling the Argentine embassy,
inventing a credible lie and borrowing some money to pay for the hotel. But,
instead of gritting his teeth and making the phone calls, Rousselot rang the
hotel’s doorbell and was not surprised to hear the voice of an old woman who,
leaning out of one of the windows on the second floor, asked him what he wanted
and was not surprised by his reply: I need to see your son. Then the old woman
disappeared, and Rousselot waited by the door for what seemed like an
eternity.
He kept checking his pulse and touching his forehead to see if he had
a fever. When the door finally opened, he saw a lean, rather swarthy face, with
large bags under the eyes; it was, he judged, the face of a degenerate, and it
was vaguely familiar. Morini invited him in. My parents, he said, have been
working as caretakers of this hotel for more than thirty years. They sat down in
the lobby, where the armchairs were protected from dust by enormous sheets
embroidered with the hotel’s monogram. On one wall Rousselot saw an oil painting
of the beaches of Le Hamel, with bathers in
belle époque
costumes,
while opposite, a collection of portraits of famous guests (or so he supposed)
observed them from a zone infiltrated by mist. He shivered. I am Alvaro
Rousselot, he said, the author of
Solitude
—I mean, the author of
Nights on the Pampas
.
It took a few seconds for Morini to react, but then he leaped to his
feet, let out a cry of terror, and disappeared down a corridor. Such a
spectacular response was the last thing Rousselot had been expecting. He
remained seated, lit a cigarette (the ash dropped progressively onto the
carpet), and thought sadly of Simone and her son, and a café in Paris that
served the best croissants he had ever tasted in
Similar Books
