Patrick Modiano - Suspended Sentences

But I had in front of me only a man with a heavyset face and coarse voice. I felt an unease similar to the one that gripped me a few years later, when I overheard a conversation between forwarding agents and meatpacking truckers at an inn near Paris: they were talking about the poachers who supplied them with deer and venison, about clandestine slaughters and nocturnal deliveries to horse butchers’ shops; the places where they operated were the ones whose graceful names had been sung by Gérard de Nerval: Crépy-en-Valois, Mortefontaine, Loisy, La Chapelle-en-Serval …

So they were returning from Sologne. The marquis was master of the hounds for a hunting rally that “unleashed”—I had caught that word from their mouths — in the Vierzon forest. The rally was called the “Sologne — Menehou Pond.” And I imagined that pond at the end of a forest path, at sunset. In the distance, a fanfare of hunting horns tugged at my heart. I couldn’t take my eyes off the still waters with their reddish reflections, the water lilies, the bulrushes. Little by little, the surface of the water turned black, and I saw that girl, as a child, at the edge of the pond in Menehou …

After several Sundays, the restaurant owner began to recognize me. I had taken advantage of a moment when the others hadn’t yet arrived for dinner, and I’d asked him who that girl in the fur coat was, with regard to the marquis whom she always seemed to be with and who always sat next to her. “A poor relation,” he’d said with a shrug.

A poor relation, certainly born, like the marquis, into a very old, aristocratic family whose origins were lost in the mists of time and in the depths of the forests of the Ile de France and Sologne … I was certain she’d spent her childhood in a boarding school in Bourges, with the Ursuline sisters. She was the only descendant of one of those extinct families with no male heirs, the kind that people called “overseas half-breeds,” who remained in Constantinople, Greece, and Sicily for centuries after the Crusades. Much later, one of her ancestors had returned to Sologne, their native land, to discover a ruined castle on the banks of the Menehou pond, and linden trees, in whose shade, in summer, large butterflies gently swirled.

One Sunday evening, she was being even sulkier than usual, in her fur coat. From my table I watched the marquis’s attempts to cheer her up: he tickled her chin with his index finger, but she turned her head away sharply, as if she’d been startled by the touch of something viscous. I shared her disgust: the marquis’s hands were thick and ruddy, the hands of a strangler that called to mind the title of a documentary, The Blood of Beasts . That memory joins with the memory of the conversation overheard between agents and meat shippers who crisscrossed the country of Nerval. How dare that hulking blond in his hunting jacket soil such a delicate face with his hand? Claude Bernard, who one Sunday had noticed my interest in the girl, had kindly remarked, “She looks like Joan Fontaine, my favorite actress …”

The compliment had struck me as only half-right. Joan Fontaine was English, whereas for me that girl represented the ideal Frenchwoman, as I imagined her at the time.

That evening, I noticed there was a larger group at their table than on other Sundays. I could name names: a certain Jean Terrail, whom Claude Bernard had recognized among them the previous week, a dark-haired fellow who, he said, managed a hotel on Rue François-1er. Now, among the information I had gathered about Pagnon, there was this: “In 1943, personally swindled 300,000 francs in German marks that had been entrusted to him for sale by a Mr. Jean Terrail.” The world to which these people belonged revived some memories from childhood: it was my father’s world. Marquis and captains of industry. Gentlemen of fortune. Prison fodder. Angel Maquignon. I rescue them from the void one final time before they sink back into it forever.

Today, those Sunday evening diners seem as far away in time as if a century had elapsed. All that lively company is dead. My only interest in them is that they formed around Jacqueline a jewel case of decaying velvet … Vierzon to Paris in an hour and a quarter … There was nobody on the road … The restaurant door opens onto her, and from outside wafts an odor of wet earth and linden.

In the middle of dinner, she had suddenly stood up. The marquis had tried to detain her by taking her shoulder. But she had left their table and listlessly drifted out of the restaurant. The marquis hadn’t turned a hair. He had feigned indifference and forced himself to take part in the general conversation.

I hadn’t yet started my meal. I stood up in turn. An impulse pushed me outside. I had been watching her for weeks, and our eyes had barely met.

She was about ten yards ahead of me, on the sidewalk. She was walking with that same indolent step. I quickly caught up with her. She turned around. I remained speechless. I managed to stammer out:

“Have you … abandoned your friends?”

“Yes. Why did you ask me that?”

She raised the collar of her fur coat and pulled it tight it around her throat. Her ironic gaze was resting on me.

“I think I know one of your friends, by sight …”

She started walking again and I followed along, fearing she’d say something cutting. But she seemed to find it natural that I should remain at her side. We turned into that dead-end alley lined with houses that they call Avenue Rodin.

“So, you know one of my friends. Which one?”

It started to rain. We took shelter under the porch of the first building.

“The blond gentleman,” I said. “The marquis de something.”

She smiled at me.

“You mean the old prick?”

Her voice was soft, slightly indistinct, and she had pronounced those two words without stressing them. I suddenly realized that I’d been all wrong about her and that my imagination had led me astray. It was better this way. For me, from then on, she was simply Jacqueline of Avenue Rodin.

We waited for the rain to let up and then we walked to her place. Straight ahead, down Rue de la Tour. Then we followed Boulevard Delessert, in that area of Passy built in tiers that descend toward the river. A steep flight of steps brought us to a little street that led onto the quay. The elevator was out of service. Two adjoining rooms. In one of them, a large bed with a padded satin headboard.

“The old prick is going to show up. Is it all right with you if we turn out the light?”

Still in that soft, composed voice, as if it were a matter of course. We sat side by side on the sofa, in the half-light. She hadn’t removed her fur coat. She put her face close to mine.

“And you, what were you doing all those Sunday evenings in the restaurant?”

She had taken me by surprise. A mocking smile played about her lips. She leaned her head on my shoulder and stretched out her legs on the sofa. I caught the scent of her hair. I didn’t dare move. I heard the sound of an engine down below.

“That must be the old prick,” she whispered.

She got up and went to look out the window. The engine shut off. I went to look as well. It was raining very hard. A large, black English automobile was parked along the sidewalk. The marquis was standing immobile in front of the building. He wasn’t wearing an overcoat or raincoat. She left the window and went back to sit on the sofa.

“What is he doing?” she asked.

“Nothing. He’s standing in the rain.”

But after a moment, he headed for the door of the building. I heard his heavy step on the stairs. He gave two sharp knocks. She didn’t move from the sofa. He started pounding on the door. It was as if he was trying to break it down. Then silence again. His heavy step grew fainter on the stairs.