Patrick Modiano: Young Once

“You’re three francs short.”

She rummaged in her pocket again, with a hunted look, but couldn’t find anything. Louis stood up and put a five-franc bill on the table.

“Thank you.”

The concourse was deserted. Louis followed her. She was walking slower and slower, and he was afraid she might fall.

•

Finally, she sat down on a bench, next to the ticket windows.

“Are you all right?” Louis said.

“I don’t feel so good… I’m afraid I might faint.”

He sat down next to her.

“Do you want some help?”

“Thanks. Just sit here a minute. It’ll pass…”

At the far end of the station, at the tables outside the large restaurant, a group of soldiers on leave were singing, every verse interrupted by shouts or bursts of laughter. A few people were heading toward the departure platforms with the slowness of sleepwalkers. Louis thought back to the crowd that had just been there, when he had accompanied Brossier to the train. After the tide ebbed away, there was no one left in the gigantic empty hall but him, this girl, and the soldiers back there, beached like clumps of seaweed.

He helped her stand up and supported her by the arm. Going downstairs, he felt the pressure of her hand. She was even paler than in the concourse, perhaps because of the fluorescent light. He led her to the taxi stand. Luckily there was no line.

She murmured her address so softly that it was he who had to tell the driver: “Porte Champerret.”

•

She could barely make it up the stairs and he held her arm as they walked down the hallway. She pointed to the door to her room and gave him the key, which he had a hard time turning because you had to put it into the lock only halfway. She fell onto her bed.

“Do you want something to eat?” Louis said.

“No, thank you.”

Her face was so pale that he wondered if he should call a doctor.

“I’m feeling better…” She gave him a weak smile. “Can you stay here with me a while? Just until I’m better.”

“What’s your name?”

“Odile.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed. She closed her eyes and opened them again at longer and longer intervals. Soon she was asleep.

Should he go look for something for her to eat or drink? The cafés were surely still open around Porte Champerret. But he risked having her wake up while he was gone. He realized that Brossier had forgotten to give him any money. All he had left were two five-franc notes.

She was sleeping, her left cheek pressed against the pillow. He took off her boots, which had zippers on the side. The room was tiny. You could just barely stand between the sink and the bed. He saw the photos of the singers on the wall and a tear-off calendar above the sink, with January 4 showing. Mechanically, he tore off the pages. It was January 12.

Why was the window wide open? He shut it. The radiator was on much too high and he looked in vain for the crank to adjust it. Aha, he understood and reopened the window.

He was hungry. How would ten francs last for five days? He lay down next to her and turned off the bedside lamp.

•

Odile looked in all her pockets and pulled together three ten-franc bills and two francs eighty-five cents in coins.

Toward the end of the afternoon, Louis went around the block and bought a liter of milk, some bread, and slices of ham. He called Hotel Muguet, and they told him that Brossier would not be back until next week.

So that they wouldn’t suffer too much from hunger, they slept and rested in bed for as long as they could. They lost all notion of time, and if Brossier hadn’t come back they would never have left that room, not even the bed, where they listened to music and little by little drifted off. The last thing they saw from the outside world were the snowflakes falling all day on the sill of the open window.

LOUIS introduced Odile to Brossier, waiting at a table at the Royal Champerret.

“What do you do?” Brossier asked.

“I’m putting out a record.”

“A record? Must be a lot of competition these days.”

He turned to Louis: “As for him, we’re trying to get him a good position. I have hopes that he’ll really go far.”

He had adopted a fake paternal tone that neither of them liked, and they exchanged a look. Louis was sure she was thinking the same thing as him about Brossier. Meanwhile, Brossier was considering Odile with a look that he no doubt meant to be charming.

“When I was young, I had dreams of a career in the arts too…”

He smiled, about to indulge in a personal story.

“Believe it or not, I met someone who encouraged me back then. A remarkable man. He enrolled me in an acting class… Unfortunately it didn’t work out. I looked too much like an actor named Roland Toutain.”

He started breathing more slowly, to better impress upon them the importance of his words.

“When it comes right down to it, that’s the only thing I really would have liked to do… Well, anyway. Are you two going to live together? It’s over there?”

He gestured to the large apartment block across the street.

“Yes. We’ll live together,” Louis said.

“That’s great, at your age. You can live on air, hmm?”

He took off his Tyrolean hat and put it on the table. This one was a darker green than the others, almost blue. He must have had a whole collection.

“At your age, I didn’t have a care in the world either. I’ll tell you about it someday…”

Odile, who had kept her face impassive until then, started showing signs of impatience. Maybe Brossier noticed. He raised his head abruptly.

“Tell me, Louis. I made plans with my friend Bejardy. Thursday at three. His place…You’ll need to shave, old boy. You look like a bum.”

•

The apartment was on Quai Louis-Blériot, in a group of buildings with access from avenue de Versailles as well. When they got to the fourth floor, Louis noticed, next to the doorbell, a little marble plaque with gold engraved letters on it: “R. de B.”

“What does that mean?” he asked Brossier.

“Roland de Bejardy.”

Brossier rang the bell. A man opened the door: brown hair, tall, around forty.

“Roland, let me introduce Louis Memling… Roland de Bejardy.”

“Nice to meet you.”

He led them into the living room, a spacious room whose windows looked out over the Seine. After indicating a light blue velvet sofa for them, he sat down behind a Louis XV desk.

“How old are you?”

“He’s twenty,” Brossier said, without giving Louis a chance to answer.

“That’s good.”

Bejardy gave him a protective, patronizing look. There was no paper on the desk, nothing but a telephone. But there were piles of folders sitting on the sky-blue carpet.

“Graduated high school?” Bejardy asked.

“No.”

“He just finished his military service,” Brossier said.

“Anyway, a diploma…”

And Bejardy swept the back of his hand across his desk. The way he sat there, with his energetic face, regular features, wavy brown hair, back held straight, broad chest in a Prince of Wales jacket, he seemed like a successful lawyer, and the words “star lawyer” came to Louis’s mind. Maybe because of the magnificent piece of furniture he was sitting behind, definitely because of his deep voice.

“You’ve already told him about the kind of work I’d like to give him, yes?”

“Not yet.”

“All right. It’s not complicated. It’s a night watchman’s job, in a garage. Now when I say ‘night watchman,’ in fact, it’s more of a job as a… secretary… You’ll have to answer the phone, open the door for clients…”

“What do you think, Louis?” Brossier asked.