This feeling, both exhilarating and disturbing, had not left her since her arrival in New York. She felt almost protected by this situation. She was passing, an unknown face that would disappear forever from these people's lives the second she turned the corner of the next boulevard.
As she walked down to her hotel, she saw dockworkers unloading canvas sacks and a lobster seller picking up empty shells left by customers just outside his stall.
She stopped to watch him nonchalantly retrieve these disemboweled crustaceans to throw them a little further down the street. Arlette smiled when she saw the ridiculous price displayed on the stall. Twenty cents for a lobster was almost indecent.
A little further down the driveway, men in suits stood watching another truck being unloaded by workmen. Crates of bottles. Alcohol thought the young woman. One of the men in the suit turned sharply in the direction of the street exit and glared at her as he removed the cigar from his twisted mouth.
She turned around immediately and continued on her way, quickening her pace. She felt her heartbeat quicken and she pulled her hat down on her head a little more. Smugglers, she thought, she had just seen smugglers.
It was like a kind of slap pulling her out of her daydreams. She was in America, where Prohibition and the financial crisis had created the greatest crime wave of this century. And she had just witnessed one of those criminal operations.
This thought made his blood run cold. She had to get back to her hotel room, and fast. She made a detour to Trinity Church to take the subway south.
She found a sandwich stand on the corner of a street next to her hotel. It was canned sausage with mustard and sauerkraut, can too. Hotdogs. _
She bought two hoping that this dinner would be enough for her and that she wouldn't have to go out again, but she quickly regretted her purchase after taking a first bite. The sausage was bland, the bread too soft, the sauerkraut tasted excruciatingly sour from a pickle, and the mustard was sweet.
When she closed the door of her room behind her, she had the impression that someone had followed her, that behind her the eyes of the man in the suit had remained fixed. Was it really dangerous to witness a smuggling scene here?
She asked herself the question and realized the grotesqueness of the situation. What she had seen was not abnormal in France. Wasn't it just like the delivery man who came to supply the village tavern near which she had grown up? What was wrong with that?
She shuddered as she remembered the men she had overheard who had looked at her suspiciously as if she were breaking a sabbath with the Devil himself. They had nothing to do with delivering pubs, they looked more like the gangsters we talked about in the gazettes. So this law prohibiting the sale of alcohol was so harsh? So people needed to drink so badly?
Without turning on the light, she put her wet things on the ceramic heater and lay down on the bed, staring at her open suitcase next to the door. Leaving Paris, she had the impression of taking too many things, of having trouble closing the suitcase.
Now she thought she should have brought so much more. At least buy souvenirs that she could hang up in her new room. She only had a few old photos that she kept in her notebook.
How she was going to miss France, she thought, looking at the large brick building facing the hotel.
A flash of lucidity brought her out of her budding nostalgia and reminded her why she was there. She didn't need memories, no more things from France. She was making a fresh start.
Her uncle had offered her a new life, a few months earlier, when she had learned that she was the only person named in her will, while traveling with a friend in the south of England.
It had been such a shock to her that she hadn't slept for three days. A message from Boston had arrived in his hands to turn his life upside down. This little letter must have passed through her old address in a ruined farmhouse near Saint-Die, then that of Paris, before reaching the hotel where she was staying, by the sea, south of London.
The envelope had therefore retraced the last years of her life by traversing France as if a pursuer from the past was going back to her. It had already been two years since she had left her studies in Paris to work with her friend, Paula Castelblanc, the famous photographer.
Luxurious hotels, cocktails with ambassadors, exhibitions in all the biggest halls in Europe, she had followed the great adventurer wherever she went, even to this small hotel in Brighton where she had received the letter that had separated their destinies.
Arlette again tried to swallow the hotdog. Infect. It was even worse cold. She preferred to feed on her memories, however bitter they were. He missed his friend.
Paula had guided her and had opened the doors to a world of luxury to which she would never have had access with her small student grant. Perhaps she would have done better to stay at university… She could have contented herself with the honor of accessing higher education, shining as a doctor, and returning to her native Lorraine to exercise her occupation. We would have welcomed her with open arms in the hospital of Raon l'Etape if she had returned there…
She pushed that thought away by opening her notebook. There appeared on the last page a handwritten note, written with delicacy and elegance: "Bon voyage my dear Arlette, we will meet again on the other side, your friend Paula". Arlette sketched a nostalgic smile and bent over the photo of her friend.
She could have dressed like her, learned photography by her side, and become a perfect boy with short hair, outrageously light clothes, and heady perfumes. The smile gradually faded from the young woman's face. She could have, yes, if she hadn't spent her time ironing her dresses, cooking for him, driving his car, and taking his reservations. That may be the reason why she hadn't hesitated to take the boat to New York.
Arlette got up, embarrassed by a drop of water from the ceiling which repeatedly fell on her forehead, and turned on the lamp in her office to look at her identity papers. Palace life was over. She was now a migrant like the others. Arlette Mangel, born August 13, 1906 in Raon-lès-Leau in the Vosges. A name and a place of birth, that's what he would have left of France until his death when all the rest would have disappeared.
In the dim light of the lamp, she looked at her face on the papers. She would not be a woman like Paula, she would be truly free, she would work alone, and she would succeed in freeing herself from all the prisons of comfort and laziness into which the photographer had fallen.
- This woman was a slave to the idea she had of her, she murmured, as if to reassure herself of her choices. I wouldn't have been able to follow his lifestyle for long, with my small pension anyway.
She was about to put her notebook in her bag when she heard a violent knock on the door.
Immediately, she extinguished the lamp and approached. So the traffickers had found her? She mechanically moved away from the window and waited. She heard nothing more. Only the loud breathing of the person behind the door.
She jumped when someone knocked again, louder this time. Should she answer or act like no one was there? She suddenly felt ridiculous for being so scared. It was certainly only the maitre d'. But why didn't he introduce himself, or call her name?
She slipped quietly along the wall to get near the window and looked through the curtain. The street was empty. No man in a suit. But even if it wasn't one of them, she couldn't see who could be knocking on her door at this hour-
"Maggie, let me in!" I know you are there! If you don't open up right now, I'm kicking down that fucking door!
A drunk, she thought. She opened the door with a quick gesture. A tall man with drenched red hair stood against the wall as if he was about to crumble. Arlette looked annoyed:
- You are not ashamed to wake up tourists at this time of night! If you wake up my husband, he will redo your portrait!
She closed the door without slamming it and put her ear to it. As she shouted, her foreign accent had taken on harsher hues that had the merit of frightening the drunkard. He swore and resumed his walk towards another bedroom door, resuming his fuss, with less success this time as she could hear another man's voice yelling back at her.
Welcome to America Arlette, she thought to herself before going to bed, smiling.
That she almost fell backward. The door was large, but he seemed to fill it easily. His thick neck hinted at strong muscles hidden under his leather jacket, despite his still-young face. He must have been about thirty at the most.
"Are you Miss Arlette Mangel?" he asked in a tone of pleasant astonishment, despite his sinister demeanor.
"Yes, I had… I had an appointment with Master Brünner at ten o'clock," she replied breathlessly.
He stared at her without letting her pass, as if absorbed in his thoughts. He wore the haircut typical of the men she had seen in this country, his hair shaved on the sides and long on the top of his head, pulled back with a great effort of rubber. With his light blond hair and bony face, he looked like one of those Dutch sailors whose eyes were hidden by high cheekbones and arches.
"Is Master Brünner expecting me?" You know, I have a train to catch and…
"The train is canceled, I'll take you there," he cut her off as if this information were obvious. Mr. Brünner is currently in talks with my employer, they won't be long.
She sighed in relief and adjusted her dress without looking at him. His delay would therefore go unnoticed. This guy was nice to him, he spoke lightly as if it was all a big joke. He spoke simply and directly, without sounding nonchalant. This gave the young woman the impression that she had nothing to fear from him.
"So you're a driver?"
"I was, now I'm a mechanic in Richmond. I still do a few missions for the senator from time to time.
Arlette suddenly raised her head:
"The senator?" she asked, trying to pronounce the "a" in "senator" correctly in English.
—Senator Fowler. He seems to be a friend of yours, right?
This name seemed to resonate on the stairs like an ancient word from a museum. Like an old forgotten memory, rehashed during an evening.
"A friend… of a friend." Is that him in the office? I didn't expect to see him today, I'm not dressed to meet him, she flushed and contemplated the simplicity of her clothes.
Gerald Fowler was one of Paula's "personal" friends. She had met him once in London, he had struck her as one of those men who swear by the masculinity of each of his actions and denigrates all the others. Hunting, cigars, bridge, firearms, whiskey, and the stock market were his favorite subjects.
In London, he had struggled to conceal his almost sickly attraction to slim-waisted blondes and his lack of literary references in front of the beautiful Paula. It, therefore, represented no fertile ground for discrediting stereotypes about wealthy Americans. What kind of man did he become when he was on his territory?
He held out a thick hand to her, which she shook with a smile. His English was understandable, without a strong accent, reassuringly simple. And then he was handsome.
"Delighted, Mr. McCarthy.
The office door opened at that moment and Gerald Fowler came out, putting his felt hat on his bald head. He wore mustaches and a goatee that was already white, and the full wrinkles on his face made him look like a chubby old man. Seeing Arlette, her gray eyes began to sparkle and a sincere smile appeared on her thin lips:
"Oh, Miss Mangel! What a pleasure to see you here again! How are you? he asked in French.
He shook her hand energetically, genuinely happy to see her again. She could feel the warmth in his words. Perhaps she reminded him of the exoticism on the other side of the ocean, awakening his memories of vacations in Europe. In any case, her outpouring of joy seemed to surprise her driver and the notary who had just appeared at the door.
—Pleasure shared, Mr. Fowler, I hope we will have the opportunity to see each other again! The young woman let herself be carried away, feeling the senator's enthusiasm touch her.
The man's eyes lit up like a child's. Perhaps she had spoken with a little too much enthusiasm…
"If you make us your duck breast with spices like last time, I would like to climb Mount Katahdin to come and eat at your place! You see, I haven't forgotten the menu, with the truffle cream puffs as a starter and the strawberry Charlotte…
Arlette fell from the clouds. She widened her eyes before laughing. She hadn't expected this. A hidden defect, a special request from a lustful old man, that would have been worthy of a politician like those with whom Paula was fooling around, but simple gluttony…
The young woman felt almost back in France, faced with the kindness and warmth of this man. This kindness immediately reminded him of his old life.
She suddenly felt like clinging to the senator, following him, and abandoning everything else, her inheritance, her trip. She had to force herself to push that cowardly idea out of her mind.