Patrick Modiano - Young Once

He had received his salary the day before and managed to persuade Odile to join him. She would have to show up at the Auteuil cabaret-restaurant at around ten o’clock, and neither she nor Louis understood why Brossier had told them to meet him at the Cité Universitaire Métro station at the start of the afternoon.

The inner pocket of Louis’s jacket was bulging with fifteen hundred francs, and Odile would receive her fee after that night’s show. They were rich. And it was the first sunny day of the winter. In the train, on the Sceaux line, they felt like they were setting out on a trip.

BROSSIER was waiting for them on the platform at the Cité Universitaire station, as though they had just arrived on holiday and he, their friend, had come to meet their train. Plus, as he came up to them, he said “No luggage?” in a tone that left Louis confused, to the point where he wondered if they were really still in Paris, not at the seaside.

Even Brossier’s clothes were disconcerting. Still a Tyrolean hat with a red feather, but no boring, rumpled traveling salesman’s suit, no black socks and shoes. No. Instead, a print shirt under a white sweater, linen pants, and white sneakers, a monochrome look that Brossier seemed proud of. He hadn’t shaved. Or brushed his hair. Louis and Odile admired this new man. He walked them to the stairs leading out of the station.

“This way, my friends.”

They crossed the boulevard, led by Brossier, and entered the Cité campus.

“Here’s where I spend my weekends,” Brossier said with a smile. “Come with me, it’s this way.”

They took a path to the left between areas of grass, crossed the threshold of one of the massive buildings, and walked down a hallway, running into groups of students.

“My fiancée is waiting for us in the cafeteria. Here we are.”

The cafeteria was deserted at this early-afternoon hour. A beautiful black woman with harmonious Ethiopian features was sitting at a table all the way in the back, and Brossier walked over to her.

“This is Jacqueline, my fiancée. Odile… Louis… Jacqueline Boivin.”

She stood up and shook hands with them. She looked a little intimidated; she was around twenty years old and wearing a gray pleated skirt and a beige twinset: conservative clothes that didn’t match Brossier’s sporty look. He invited them to sit down at the table.

“I recommend the pan bagnats, they’re excellent here. Don’t you think so, Jacqueline?”

She agreed with an almost imperceptible nod of her head.

Louis and Odile said nothing while Brossier walked over to the counter. They both smiled at Brossier’s fiancée without daring to speak, and when Louis offered her a cigarette from his pack, she refused with a furtive gesture. Brossier rejoined them, carrying a tray piled high with pan bagnats that he handed out to them. After taking a bite of his own, he said, “Juicy, aren’t they? Maybe you’d like a little harissa to make it spicier? I prefer it without.”

And he dug into the roll.

“Yes, Jacqueline is a student, she lives here at Cité Universitaire. As for me…”

He rummaged through his jacket pocket and took out a card that he handed to Louis.

“Look, I managed to get a student ID printed up. You need it to eat at the university cafeteria… and to feel like you belong.”

Louis looked at the card. It was in Brossier’s name, with his photograph, and listed a college address. Odile examined it in turn.

“And you sleep here?” she asked bluntly.

“Every weekend.”

He liked being able to reveal his secret, and he put his arm around his fiancée’s shoulders.

Odile handed him back his student card, which Brossier looked at too. He handled it carefully, even though it was encased in a plastic sheath.

“I made myself a bit younger… Oh, just ten years or so…”

“What exams are you taking this year?” Odile asked.

“The generals in literature. What are they called again, Jacqueline?”

“Propaedeutics,” Jacqueline said in a pinched voice.

He pulled her closer, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

“How did you get this card?” Louis asked.

“Bejardy knows someone. A Pole, who made false papers during the war.”

He said it unwillingly, as though it was a sore point and he was sad he wasn’t a real student.

“Jacqueline is a mathematician, just think… She’s taking courses at the Faculty of Sciences.”

“Where did you meet?” Odile asked Jacqueline.

“Here, in the cafeteria.” She had answered in a slow, soft voice. “I always saw him alone here in the cafeteria. He looked bored. So we started talking.”

“Yes, I’ve been coming here a long time,” Brossier said. “Especially when I felt low. I always liked Cité. It’s a different world… I would wander around the corridors of all the buildings, sit in the TV rooms. You know what I mean. This place has something about it.”

As he was talking, Louis started to see him in a different light. How could he ever have guessed that this man, as chatty and jokey as a guy hawking something on the street, and who, he had told Odile, “dealt in tires,” was strolling around in his time off under the shade of the trees at Cité, an Ethiopian on his arm and a fake student ID in his pocket?

“Does Bejardy know?” Louis asked.

“No, not yet, but I’m planning to tell him. Nothing surprises Roland, you know. We’ll invite him out here some night. Jacqueline has to meet him.”

They left the cafeteria. Brossier wanted them to see the Cité campus and wanted to point out all the various buildings, like the provinces of his kingdom.

“We were just in the Provinces of France building, the most important. I like the England building more, in front of you. It reminds me of a hotel in Aix-les-Bains. Before I met Jacqueline, I often used to spend the evening reading a newspaper in the England building.”

He was holding Jacqueline’s hand and growing more and more eloquent as they continued their visit. He explained to Odile and Louis that people stayed out late on the great lawn in the summer to listen to the voices and laughter of the night. In June, there was the Cité festival — a ball in the Provinces of France building.

“You have to come see how nice it is here when it’s spring…”

He pointed out a building with a steel and glass façade.

“The Cuba building… The Cubans are great. They bring so much joy and excitement to Cité… Tell me, have the two of you ever wanted to be students?”

“You mean a student like you are?” Odile said, bursting out laughing.

A student. That was something that had never once crossed Louis’s mind, or Odile’s. How could they ever go to university?

“I can get you IDs, if you want.”

“I hope you’ll keep your promise! Will you?” Odile asked. “I’d like to be a student.”

For her, and for Louis, these two syllables had a mysterious harmony: Those who were “students” seemed as distant and incomprehensible to them as members of an Amazonian tribe.

“Everyone here is a student?” Odile asked.

“Yes.”

A group of boys and girls were scattered across the lawn and some of them were improvising a volleyball game without a net. Their shouts were in a language that Louis didn’t recognize.

“Yugoslavians,” Brossier said.

He showed them Grand Café Babel on the boulevard, which was, he said, like a branch of the university. It was so nice to have a drink there on June nights and listen to the leaves rustling in the trees. Then they walked toward Parc Montsouris.

“You see that building there, in the middle of the lawn?” Brossier said. “It’s an exact replica of the bey’s palace in Tunis.”