Paris Noir Read online

  I began to spend my evenings at Samir’s, the grocer on the corner of rue Piat. He had a TV set in the back room and when he had customers he let me watch whatever channel I wanted. I watched all the shows Layla told me about, those shows for young people. I never thought there were so many kids who wanted to be famous, and that made me afraid for her. It’s true she had a nice voice and she was very good-looking, but there were lots of other kids with nice voices too, just as good-looking. I just hoped it wouldn’t ruin her life, hoped she wouldn’t be afraid to come back. I got five postcards from her over the next year, look, you can see them over there on the wall. She wrote the same thing on every one of them, or just about: I’m fine, Grandpa. Love you.

  One evening I really thought I saw her on a show. I’m almost sure of it. By that time I’d lost hope, I kept going to Samir’s mainly because I wasn’t used to staying home alone anymore, especially without much chance of Layla dropping by. The girl I saw only stayed on stage for a few minutes, they didn’t even give her time to finish her song. She said her name was Olympia but that doesn’t mean a thing, you know. She had heavy makeup on, with silver on her eyelids and red lips, done up in a way she never would have dared here, a shiny dress, very short. I remember thinking, So much money for such a short dress. But her voice sounded like Layla’s and she sang a Piaf song, which is funny because the others chose much more modern music, the kind you hear blasting on young people’s car radios when they’re stopped at a light with their windows rolled down, or when they don’t shut their bedroom windows. I couldn’t get a good look at her face, it went so fast, I yelled for Samir, hoping he could help me figure out if it really was her, but by the time he got there—he was helping another customer—it was already over.

  The weeks after that I kept watching the show, but the girl—Layla—she never came back. I kept hoping for months, I told myself maybe it was just the first round and we were going to see her again at some point. But I never did.

  A few months later there were the rumors. Somebody claimed they saw her in a bar, a nightclub really, then somebody else, and then somebody else again. They swore it really was Layla, said she was dancing every Saturday over there, near Pigalle, then they said the words peep show. I didn’t know what that meant either, before. Around that time, her family moved out; they didn’t even leave an address—I don’t know if it was the shame of the neighborhood hearing that their daughter was dancing naked in front of men. Her mother just left a box in front of my door with the girl’s things. They’re still there, in my bedroom.

  There isn’t much left to my story. One day I went there. I don’t know why, I think I was sure it wasn’t Layla, just as I had been sure that I’d seen her on TV at the gates of fame with Piaf’s song on her lips, but I needed to see her in person. The rumor had become more and more persistent and I basically knew where to look for her. I waited a few weeks, the time to get up my courage, and then I took the bus to Pi-galle one evening around midnight. I didn’t have to look far. There were photos of her at the entrance to one of the clubs. I looked at them for a long time, so long the guy watching the door got impatient and said, “Hey, Gramps, you coming in or you growing roots there?” In some pictures she was wearing dresses with slits at her thighs and between her breasts and in others she was almost naked. I had washed her when she was a baby and when she was a little girl; it didn’t bother me to see her naked. But there wasn’t one single photo where she was smiling. The lipstick was like a gash across her face, she’d lost her nice round cheeks, and her black eyes looked very big. When the guy at the entrance spoke to me I was caught unprepared, I couldn’t stop looking at her face after not having seen her for months, and when he said, “Well, Gramps?” I asked, “How much is it?” and I fumbled around in my wallet to pay the admission.

  Inside the peep show, as they call it, it was dark and it smelled of sweat, the music was too loud, you’d think you were in one of the worst bars in our neighborhood. I stayed standing near the door of the room they pointed me to, men kept coming in, pushing each other, I was hot, and then I realized I still had my cap on and I took it off. The first girl was a blonde in a shiny pink slip, she couldn’t dance but the men were whistling and yelling, some of them tried to touch her but there was a strongman watching the edges of the stage. After that I didn’t have to wait long, because the next one was Layla.

  I won’t tell you about how she was dancing under the eyes of those men, my poor ruined little girl. I didn’t stay very long, just enough to see her pace back and forth on the stage two or three times on her high heels, with a swaying walk I’d never seen from her, and then just when I was putting my cap on to leave—maybe it was my motion that attracted her attention—she saw me. She didn’t stop dancing but she dropped her arms, she’d been holding them over her head till then, and she twisted her ankle. I saw her mouth tighten in pain but nothing more because I’d already turned around, and I left without looking back.

  I didn’t tell anyone about what I saw. Nobody asked me anything but I think a lot of people understood, because I never went back to watch TV at Samir’s. I just went out to walk the dog and shop for food. The rest of the time I stayed here sitting in the kitchen, and I tried not to think. I didn’t even wonder anymore where I’d go when the building was torn down.

  I didn’t think she’d come. I didn’t guess it in her look when she spotted me at the peep show, all I saw was boredom and that new toughness, and the jab of pain when she twisted her foot, but I didn’t see joy or sorrow at the idea of what she’d lost, and I told myself she’d put all that behind her. Still, when there was a knock on the door one evening, very late, I knew right away it was her. I’d fallen asleep on the couch; since she left that’s where I usually slept, as if giving myself the illusion she was in the room next door. I went to splash some water on my face before I opened the door.

  She was pale, and I realized right away she’d knocked on the door across the hall first, the door of the apartment where her family used to live. It hadn’t been rented again because of the plan to demolish the building, but two guys set up house there, with candles for light and a coal stove for heat. They drank all day and begged in front of the Monoprix supermarket on rue des Pyrénées, a little further up. She must have woken them up because the younger one, a guy with a beard, was standing in the half-open doorway looking at us. When she came in, I didn’t hear him close the door and I’m sure he stayed there waiting for her to come out again.

  Oh yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking he waited for her, followed her to the park, and then what happened, happened. But you’re wrong.

  She didn’t cross the threshold until I told her to come in, and it was strange, that mix of humility and provocation in her face, like she was defying me to criticize her for anything. I found her taller, maybe it was her high heels, maybe her thinness, she was wearing a jacket I recognized and she floated in it like a little bird. She sat down on the couch and looked at me with a funny smile on her face. I could see immediately she’d taken something, something stronger than a couple of drinks, and that was new too: She looked at me and then seemed to look through me, she had to make an effort for her eyes to focus on my face again. She rubbed her nose with her forefinger and then she said: “So, they left.”

  Her voice was like her face, just as tough, like, grated—I know I should say grating, but it was something else, it was like they’d both been dragged over a hard surface and they’d lost all their softness. “Two months ago, yes,” I said. “But your mother left your things, they’re in my room, I can go get them if you like.”

  She shrugged indifferently, as if none of it had any importance. She stayed slumped on the couch with that half-smile on her lips and that floating look, twisting a strand of hair around her finger.

  “Layla,” I said, “come back. You can stay in the bedroom, you’ll be fine there, I almost always sleep in the living room now. I can help you bring over your things, if you like. We can even go
there right now.”

  She laughed, a joyless laugh, and I thought of the night before she left, that happy laugh I’d kept inside my ear like a good luck charm while she wasn’t here. “And to do what, huh?” she answered.

  I lowered my eyes, I never felt so old, so powerless, so silly too, but I made myself go on. “You can start singing again,” I said. “Samir’s looking for someone to take care of the cash register on weekends, it’d do me good to get out of here a little, and it could help pay for lessons. Maybe that’s all you need to make it work.”

  She laughed again, rolling her head against the back of the couch, and then she said: “No, Grandfather, it’s over, my voice is gone, can’t you hear? It’s not there anymore. It’s gone, that’s all there is to it.”

  It hurt when she called me Grandfather because there was no tenderness in her voice like when she called me Grandpa, it was more of an impatient tone of voice, kind of scornful, like the kids playing soccer in the little square in front of the park when they think I’m not getting out of the way fast enough. It hurt, and then it made me mad. It was also seeing her like that on the couch, sprawled out like a doll, occasionally scratching her knee or her nose, looking like she was bored, not giving a damn about anything. I went and sat down next to her. “You can’t lose your voice just like that,” I said, even if it’s what I thought when I opened the door—that grated, worn-out voice, almost unrecognizable. “It’s because you haven’t worked on it for a long time. I’ll make you herb tea, lemon and honey, and then those powders Samir sells for colds, you’ll see, it’ll come back.”

  But she just closed her eyes and shook her head with an angry expression, and when I held out my hand to push back a strand of hair that was falling over her cheek, she shoved it away impatiently. “No,” she said. “My voice is gone. Don’t you get it? It’s all over. Oh, leave me alone.”

  She thought she was strong but she wasn’t as strong as all that; she couldn’t manage to brush away my hand and I left it there, near her cheek, even when she tried to push it away more impatiently, saying, “Stop it.”

  I slid my hand down and placed it on her throat. “Your voice isn’t gone,” I said. “I’m sure I’d feel it if you sang something—there, now, I can feel it vibrating under my fingers. Your neck’s all cold, that’s why too, but it’s going to warm up.”

  “Come on, leave me alone,” she repeated. “Leave me alone, I can’t breathe.” She could have screamed if she wanted to, there were neighbors, the two guys on the other side of the landing, and yet she whispered, and it was like a secret being born between us.

  “Sing,” I told her. “Sing something. Sing that song by Piaf you used to like so much. ‘La Vie en Rose.’ Sing.”

  Her throat vibrated under my hand when she murmured something, still softer, but I didn’t hear it. We stayed like that for a long time. She hadn’t opened her eyes again. She wasn’t trying to push me away anymore, she had her hands on her knees, quietly waiting for something, and that smile that didn’t look like hers was gone from her face. She didn’t move. I thought she was asleep.

  3.

  Arnaud hadn’t said a word while the old man was talking. He had opened his notebook and began mechanically taking notes after glancing over at the old man to make sure he didn’t mind. But his notes were such a mess that later he would be unable to read them or understand what they meant, aside from the last words he’d written in the middle of one page: La Vie en Rose.

  Now the old man was silent. Arnaud watched him. Big, fat tears were flowing from the old man’s eyes, like a child’s tears. He never would have thought such a deeply furrowed face could have so much emotion or so much water in it. At last the old man sighed, picked up his cup of coffee, and put it to his lips, then put it back down without drinking a drop.

  “When her neck began to grow cold under my palms I understood,” he said. “I took away my hands and her head slipped onto my shoulder. I didn’t know what to do, so I laid her down gently on the couch and I got up. It’s funny what goes through your head at moments like that, sir, because I wasn’t really thinking and yet I went straight to the bedroom closet where I knew that long ago I’d put away the blanket we used to take for picnics in the park. I took it, I went back to the living room and wrapped Layla in it. All that time I was wondering what I was going to do, but I must have known already. I picked her up in my arms without any hesitation—it wasn’t easy, since skinny as she was, she still weighed a lot, or maybe death just does that to you—and I walked to the door. The guy across the hall must’ve gotten tired or else he understood and didn’t want any trouble, because his door was shut.

  “I walked down the three flights with Layla in my arms, I went out into the street where it was still very dark, you couldn’t hear a car, not even a moped, and I walked to the park gate that doesn’t close very well. Everybody in the neighborhood knows there’s a gate that doesn’t close and all you have to do is jiggle it the right way to open it, any ten-year-old can show you how. I pushed the gate wide with my shoulder and I took the park path to the spot where we used to have picnics back then. It must have been close to dawn because a blackbird was singing in the trees, we must’ve stayed on the couch much longer than I thought, I may have fallen asleep with my hands on her throat. The smell of the flowers was very strong that night, I was surprised spring was in the air. I think I’d hardly been out of the house since the night I saw Layla in Pigalle.

  “I stopped at a tree we used to sit under. I kneeled down and I put her down on the ground. I picked her up a little to tuck the blanket under her, I laid her out with her legs together and her arms straight down beside her body, I buttoned up her jacket to hide the bluish necklace around her throat, and then I got up. I looked at her for a moment. Oh, we were so happy under this tree, me and her. As I was walking back home, it started to rain and suddenly I couldn’t stand to think of her staying out there in the rain. I went up to get a pink nylon windbreaker she’d left behind when she went away; her mother had put it in the box she’d left on my doormat. I took it out of its plastic bag, went back down, and put it on Layla; first I slipped it over her head, then I pulled her arms through the sleeves, and finally I drew the hood over her face. I could hear the sound of the raindrops falling on the plastic. Did she have her pink windbreaker on when they found her? She didn’t get too wet?”

  He was looking at Arnaud imploringly, and Arnaud lowered his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said in a low voice, “I couldn’t cross the police barrier. But she was under another plastic thing, a kind of gray tarp. No, I don’t think she was wet.”

  The old man shook his head with a pensive expression. He picked up the cap on the table next to his cup and wiped his face with it, then kept it in his hand.

  “After that, I came back up here and waited for someone to arrive,” he began again in a weary tone. “I waited for someone to come so I could tell my story. I will follow you to the police station. But the dog … I’d just like you to leave the dog at the grocery store on rue Piat.”

  Arnaud capped his pen and shut his notebook. The coffee must have been boiling for hours, it was much too strong; he felt as if it had ripped the skin off his mouth and his heart was beating very fast. He was thinking of all those newspapers he’d skimmed through since the fall, all those sordid crimes, stabbings, shootings, skulls cracked against walls, that search for evil he’d thrown himself into to find an ideal killer, and he remembered the incredibly gentle handshake of the old man. He was looking at them at that very moment, those two hands clenched on his cap, which he was stroking softly, the way you pet an animal. Then Arnaud glanced up again and forced himself to smile.

  “I’m not the police, sir,” he said. “I’m not going to put you in jail. Your story …” he went on hastily. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone anything. Layla did not come to see you. You were sleeping, you didn’t hear her knock, you didn’t open your door.”

  But the old man was staring at him as if he didn�
��t understand. “Don’t say anything,” he repeated. “Why?” He had mechanically put his cap back on, he looked ready to go, to follow the police who’d come knock on his door in a few minutes or a few hours.

  “I live outside Paris,” Arnaud suddenly heard himself saying. “I can take you in for a while if you like. We can go there now. No one will know you were here last night. No one will suspect you.”

  But under the woolen cap, his face still reddened by tears, the old man was looking at him with incomprehension, almost with mistrust.

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do,” he said at last. “What you’re telling me there, that’s not my story. I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.” He continued to examine Arnaud’s face as if he was seeing him for the first time, as if he didn’t know how this stranger got into his kitchen, sitting in front of him with the coffeepot between them. He pushed back his chair and got up heavily. “Go away, sir,” he said. “Go away, please.”

  Arnaud hesitated, then did as he was told. He stood up, slipped his notebook and pen into his pocket. The old man remained standing behind the table while Arnaud walked over to the door and went out. In the stairway he found the same stench of urine and soup; the door to the apartment across the hall was slightly open, but he was not tempted to take a look inside. He walked quickly down the three flights. Just as he was leaving through the doors of the building, he saw the police coming—three men who seemed to know where they were going—and he turned his face away so their eyes would not meet.

  He headed back to the park. Most of the police cars had disappeared; so had most of the onlookers. When he passed through the gates, he saw that the yellow tape was still there but they’d taken the body away. He stopped on the path. He looked for a long time at the lawn, soaked by the downpour. In the grass under a tree, there was an oval in a softer green on the spot where the body had protected it from the rain. Suddenly he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw his friend.