Patrick Modiano - Young Once

•

The youth exchange group had reserved two compartments, and Odile and Louis sat face-to-face next to the door. She had put her suitcase up on the luggage rack and Louis kept his blue backpack in his hands. She was thinking about the fat blond and felt demoralized, caught in a trap. That deposition she had signed… They had kept it in a file somewhere. So what. But maybe the fat blond had found evidence to link her to Bellune’s apartment? She thought she might have left one of her flexi-discs there, and some photographs of her that Bellune had wanted for a record cover… But what if he wasn’t on that case? Well, she had seen him at avenue des Ternes, in front of the Hotel Rovaro.

Louis was talking to the others. Little by little, she started listening to them, and eventually forgot about the fat blond.

She was sitting next to a girl who admitted to her that she was only seventeen. She looked older because of her height, her sunglasses, and her deep voice. The brunette with blue eyes and a pleated skirt was sitting to Louis’s right. There was another girl with a chubby face, and a brown-haired boy who clearly thought he was very handsome. He wore a signet ring and never stopped running his hand through his hair.

“What about you?” he asked Odile and Louis. “You have your families’ addresses?”

They didn’t understand what he meant. Our families? Yes, the members of the youth exchange lived with families during their stay in Bournemouth. But Odile and Louis did not know their families’ addresses.

•

At Le Havre, they waited for departure at a café table on the pier. The jukebox was playing Italian songs, and the melodious sound of their words got swallowed up by the mist and concrete all around.

The boat was at the dock. The crew-cut guy told Odile and Louis that it was called the Normania and that it would travel to Southampton overnight.

The customs office was in a kind of small hangar. The crew-cut guy had collected all the passports from the group members; when Odile handed hers over, she had a fleeting memory of the fat blond policeman.

One of the customs officers stamped the passports one after the other and gave them back to the youth exchange group leader, who seemed to know him.

“Lots of passengers tonight?”

“Not bad,” the customs officer answered. “It’s Easter break. Look.”

Groups of teenagers, boys and girls between fifteen and twenty, were standing packed together on the Normania’ s deck. Some were singing a song. When the youth exchange members boarded, they could hardly make their way through the crush of people. The crew-cut guy waved with one hand and held Louis’s wrist tightly with the other.

“Don’t lose sight of us. We’ll meet up in the grand salon. Make sure you keep your badges on you… Yes… Yes… Keep them on you, that’s the most important thing. I gave them to you, keep them on.”

The poor man, he was horrified at the thought that the youth exchange group might get split up in the crowd. His voice, which up until then had suggested a sheepdog’s bark, was almost a sob.

•

Night had long since fallen by the time the Normania cast off. Odile and Louis, leaning on the ship’s railing, looked out at the lights of Le Havre getting farther and farther away. Louis was still wearing his blue backpack and Odile clutched her suitcase between her legs. Nearby, ten or fifteen young people in large black velvet berets were singing an old ballad in the gentle breeze, in a language they didn’t recognize. The group alternated in halves, repeating the chorus, and Odile and Louis relaxed and let the melodious unknown language wash over them.

Before long, the deck was empty except for them. Neither one felt the cold air — this was their first time traveling by ship. They walked to the stern and then down a staircase and along gangways where small groups of people, sitting on the ground, were chatting and playing cards. A bit farther up, people were crowding around a metal counter to buy a sandwich or a warm drink. Eventually they came out into what the group leader had called the “salon,” but which looked more like a smoking lounge, with leather sofas and armchairs bolted to the floor and landscape photos on the paneled walls like the pictures in train compartments. There were two portholes, one on each side, and a bridge table in front of one of them.

As soon as they walked in, the smell of pipes and brown tobacco seized them by the throat. Here, as well, passengers were sitting around on the floor. Some were even asleep in their sleeping bags. The youth exchange group was gathered around a sofa and an armchair, and the crew-cut group leader waved Louis and Odile over. Louis carried Odile’s suitcase on his shoulder and the two of them forced their way through the outstretched bodies and the groups sitting cross-legged. Near the bridge table, three of the mysterious beret-clad strangers were still singing, in a subdued voice.

“I thought you were lost,” the group leader said. “Sit over here. Why are you still carrying your luggage? That doesn’t make sense, you should have left it with ours.”

Louis shrugged his shoulders in response. He sat down on the floor, his back against the side of the sofa, and Odile found a place next to him.

“We use first names in our group,” the leader said. “My name’s Gilbert.”

He introduced the blue-eyed brunette with the pleated skirt and the boy with the signet ring: “Françoise, Alain.” Then the others.

“Marie-Jo, Claude, Christian…”

Louis and Odile said their names in turn.

“You’re brother and sister?” Gilbert asked.

“No, cousins,” Louis said without thinking.

The ship had started to rock and now the movement grew more noticeable.

“I hope you don’t get seasick,” Gilbert said. “It usually doesn’t last long. The crossing is pretty smooth, actually.”

He took a pipe out of his pocket.

“Personally, I have a radical cure for seasickness: a pipe! Axter and me, we agree about that. He’s a great one for pipe-smoking too.”

Odile curled up, closed her eyes, and rested her cheek against the back of the sofa. Gilbert lit his pipe. With his crew cut and large lips, he looked like a good little schoolboy, and Louis imagined him in short pants, at the top of the class, raising a finger every time the teacher asked a question and saying, “M’sieu! M’sieu!”

On the armchair, the dark-haired boy with the ring was flirting with Marie-Jo, the girl who seemed older than her seventeen years. Then he kissed her, interminably. His arms were crossed behind the girl’s neck and Louis suspected him of glancing secretly at his wristwatch to time how long the kiss lasted.

“You don’t want a puff, do you, old boy?” Gilbert said.

He offered him the pipe. Louis refused.

“Your cousin is asleep, old boy,” Gilbert said, pointing to Odile.

The ship rocked more and more. Odile’s suitcase, sitting at the foot of the sofa, slid a little and Louis caught it. He had put his backpack back on.

“Wearing that pack doesn’t bother you, old boy?” Gilbert said.

“No,” Louis said. “I’m used to it.”

The dark-haired boy and Marie-Jo were still in their embrace. Other romances were springing up between members of the group. The chubby-cheeked girl was holding hands with a short redheaded boy whose accent sounded French Algerian. The brunette with the blue eyes and pleated skirt seemed jealous of Marie-Jo, held close by the dark-haired boy.

“The problem is that they won’t learn English because they’ll spend all their time pairing up with each other,” Gilbert said. “I’ll have to have a talk with Axter about it. Good-for-nothings… Now you and your cousin are setting a good example, at least. That’s how it should be.”