Missing Person. Patrick Modiano
but the prominent nose and the set of the head I found extremely noble. Or such was my impression from a distance.
Time passed. Almost half an hour had gone by and they were still talking. I was afraid that one of them would finally notice me, standing there on the pavement. And the taxi driver? I strode back to Rue Charles-Marie-Widor. The engine was still running and he was seated at the wheel, deep in his yellowy green paper.
“Well?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We might have to wait another hour.”
“Hasn’t your friend come out of the church yet?”
“Yes, but he’s chatting with the others.”
“You can’t ask him to come?”
“No.”
His large blue eyes stared at me in consternation.
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“It’s for you . . . I have to keep the meter running . . .”
I returned to my post, opposite the Russian church.
Styoppa had advanced a few feet. As a matter of fact, he was no longer standing at the end of the path but on the pavement, in the center of a group consisting of the blonde woman in the Musketeer’s hat, the brunette in the black shawl, the bald-headed man with the slanted Mongolian eyes, and two other men.
This time I crossed the street and stationed myself close to them, my back turned. The soft bursts of Russian filled the air and I wondered if a deeper, more resonant voice among them was Styoppa’s. I turned around. He gave the blonde woman in the Musketeer’s hat a long embrace. He was almost shaking her, and his features contracted in a painful grin. Then, in the same fashion, he embraced the fat bald-headed man with the slant eyes, and each of the others in turn. The time for farewells, I thought. I ran back to the taxi and jumped in.
“Quick . . . straight ahead . . . in front of the Russian church . . .”
Styoppa was still talking to them.
“Do you see the tall guy in navy blue?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have to follow him, if he’s in a car.”
The driver turned round, stared at me, and his blue eyes opened wide.
“I hope it’s not dangerous, sir.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
Styoppa detached himself from the group, walked a few paces and, without turning, waved his arm. The others, standing still, watched him. The woman in the gray Musketeer’s hat stood slightly to the front of the group, arched, like the figurehead of a ship, the large feather of her hat fluttering gently in the breeze.
He took some time opening the door of his car. I think he tried the wrong key. When he was seated at the wheel, I leaned forward to the taxi driver.
“Follow the car which the guy in navy-blue just got into.”
And I hoped I wasn’t on the wrong track, since there was nothing really to indicate that this man was Styoppa de Dzhagorev.
4
IT WAS NOT very hard to follow him: he drove slowly. At the Porte Maillot, he ran a red light and the taxi driver did not dare follow suit, but we caught up with him again at Boulevard Maurice-Barrès. Our two cars pulled up side by side at a crosswalk. He glanced across at me absentmindedly, as motorists do when they find themselves side by side in a traffic jam.
He parked his car on Boulevard Richard-Wallace, in front of the apartment buildings at the end, near the Pont de Puteaux and the Seine. He started down Rue Julien-Potin and I paid off my taxi.
“Good luck, sir,” said the driver. “Be careful . . .”
And I felt his eyes following me as I too started down Rue Julien-Potin. Perhaps he thought I was in some danger.
Night was falling. A narrow road, lined by impersonal apartment buildings, built between the wars, which formed a single long façade, on each side and all the way along Rue Julien-Potin. Styoppa was ten yards ahead of me. He turned right into Rue Ernest-Deloison, and entered a grocery store.
The moment had come to approach him. But because of my shyness it was extremely hard for me, and I was afraid he would take me for a madman: I would stammer, my speech would become incoherent. Unless he recognized me at once, in which case I would let him do the talking.
He was coming out of the grocer’s shop, holding a paper bag.
“Mr. Styoppa de Dzhagorev?”
He looked very surprised. Our heads were on the same level, which intimidated me even more.
“Yes. But who are you?”
No, he did not recognize me. He spoke French without an accent. I had to screw up my courage.
“I . . . I’ve been meaning to contact you for . . . a long time . . .”
“What for?”
“I am writing . . . writing a book about the Emigration . . . I . . .”
“Are you Russian?”
It was the second time I had been asked this question. The taxi driver too had asked me. And, actually, perhaps I had been Russian.
“No.”
“And you’re interested in the Emigration?”
“I . . . I . . . I’m writing a book about the Emigration. Some . . . someone suggested I come to see you . . . Paul Sonachidze . . .”
“Sonachidze? . . .”
He pronounced the name in the Russian way. It was very soft, like wind rustling in the trees.
“A Georgian name . . . I don’t know it . . .”
He frowned.
“Sonachidze . . . no . . .”
“I don’t want to be a nuisance. If I could just ask you a few questions.”
“I’d be happy to answer them . . .”
He smiled a sad smile.
“A tragic tale, the Emigration . . . But how is it you call me Styoppa? . . .”
“I . . . don’t . . . I . . .”
“Most of those who called me Styoppa are dead. The others, you can count on the fingers of one hand.”
“It was . . . Sonachidze . . .”
“I don’t know him.”
“Can I . . . ask . . . you . . . a few questions?”
“Yes. Would you like to come up to my place? We can talk.”
In Rue Julien-Potin, after we had passed through a gateway, we crossed an open space surrounded by apartment buildings. We took a wooden elevator with a double latticework gate and, because of our height and the restricted space in the elevator, we had to bow our heads and keep them turned toward the wall, so we didn’t knock brows.
He lived on the fifth floor in a two-room flat. He showed me into the bedroom and stretched out on the bed.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but the ceiling is too low. It’s suffocating to stand.”
Indeed, there were only a few inches between the ceiling and the top of my head and I had to stoop. Furthermore, both he and I were a head too tall to clear the frame of the door leading into the other room and I imagined that he had often bumped his forehead there.
“You can stretch out too . . . if you wish . . .” He pointed to a small couch, upholstered in pale blue velvet, near the window.
“Make yourself at home . . . you’ll