Patrick Modiano - Young Once

They leaned against the railing and waited for their ship to leave. Axter, standing on the running board of the bus, pipe in his mouth, waved goodbye at them wildly with both arms.

•

Bejardy and Nicole Haas were waiting for them at Le Havre, at the exit from customs. It was almost eight o’clock and getting dark.

“Did you have a good trip?” Bejardy asked in a dull voice.

Nicole Haas smiled at them, without saying anything. They sat in the backseat of Bejardy’s car, with Bejardy at the wheel, Nicole Haas next to him.

He drove fast and seemed nervous. He and Nicole Haas had not exchanged a single word, as though they had just had a fight. Bejardy had turned on the radio, and every so often he turned up the volume more.

“So, Roland, have you decided yet?” Nicole Haas asked.

“I don’t know, Coco. Maybe the hotel in Verneuil? What do you think?”

She didn’t answer. Bejardy turned back to look at Odile and Louis.

“You must be tired from the trip. It doesn’t make sense to drive another three hours. We can spend the night at a hotel… Unless you’d rather go straight back to Paris?”

Without answering, Louis took Odile’s hand and squeezed it. They both felt that there was nothing to say. Anyway, Bejardy had already turned up the radio again.

•

They had dinner. Nicole Haas hadn’t wanted to eat in the large empty dining room at the inn, and Bejardy had chosen a table near the bar.

She was visibly giving Bejardy the cold shoulder, but she was very friendly to Odile and Louis.

“And Axter? How is he doing?” Bejardy asked.

“What do you think of Axter?” Nicole Haas asked at once, as though she wanted them to answer her question and not Bejardy’s.

“He’s nice,” Louis said. “When you met him, you were running a restaurant on a boat, in Neuilly?”

“Ah. So he told you about that?” Bejardy said, looking embarrassed.

“You owned a boat, Roland?” Nicole Haas said ironically. “You? A boat?”

“No. We set up a restaurant on a boat, with Brossier,” Bejardy said. “By Bois de Boulogne.”

“And what about the boat?”

“It belonged to the Touring Club de France,” Bejardy said, getting exasperated.

“I would have loved to see you on that boat. Did you wear a captain’s hat?”

And Nicole lit a cigarette with the same nonchalant gesture as that first time in Paris, with the same Zippo lighter that had so surprised Louis.

“Axter is a real Englishman,” she said. “Did you see his wife too?”

“Yes.”

“She seems more like his mother, don’t you think?”

“And yet they’re the same age,” Bejardy said dryly.

“I don’t think so. There must be as big an age difference between them as between you and me.”

Bejardy shrugged. He was having trouble keeping his temper. Odile looked back and forth between Bejardy and Nicole, interested in what was happening.

“Doesn’t he seem much older than me?” Nicole asked Odile, indicating Bejardy.

Odile didn’t know what to say. Louis lowered his head.

“No, I don’t think so,” Odile said timidly.

“She’s polite at least,” Nicole said. “And well brought up.”

“Much better brought up than you, Coco,” Bejardy said.

His face was calm and relaxed again and he had taken Nicole’s hand. Underneath it all, Louis thought, Bejardy liked it that Nicole treated him so badly in front of other people. Was it just one of their little games?

“I have never met anyone with a character as bad as Coco’s,” Bejardy said, stroking her hand.

Louis looked at the Zippo lighter that Nicole had put on the table. He picked it up, lit it, and contemplated the black smoke that the flame gave off.

“When I was in boarding school, I dreamed of having a lighter like this.”

“Really?” Nicole said. “You can have it.”

She smiled at him and her smile was so sweet, so understanding, that Louis had the feeling their faces could have come closer and closer at that moment, their lips could touch.

“Yes, please. The lighter is yours.”

•

Two rooms had been reserved for the night in an annex to the inn, on the other side of the garden. Just as they left the bar, Bejardy took Louis’s arm and held him back.

“I wanted to thank you for what you’ve done for me. We’ll discuss it in Paris. You know your commission is waiting for you there, Louis.”

“Oh, it was nothing. Really.”

In fact, he would have been relieved if Bejardy forgot to give him this commission.

“I insist. You need some pocket money. At your age…”

They rejoined Odile and Nicole Haas, who had already crossed the lawn. The path was lit by a lantern hanging on the outside of the annex.

An outdoor staircase led to the second floor, and the rooms opened out onto a balcony with a rough-hewn wooden railing.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

Their rooms were next door to each other.

•

Around two in the morning, Louis and Odile were woken by voices — Bejardy’s and Nicole’s. At first they couldn’t understand what the voices were saying. Bejardy was talking nonstop and it seemed to Louis that he was reading something or talking to someone on the phone.

“You bastard!” Nicole Haas shouted.

“Shut up!”

Something shattered on the floor.

“You’re crazy! You’ll wake everyone up!”

“I don’t care!”

“Do you think they’ll start hitting each other?” Odile said.

She leaned her head against the hollow of Louis’s shoulder. They didn’t move.

“You can keep your dough!” Nicole Haas shouted. “I’m taking the car and going back to Paris!”

“Enough already!”

One of them slapped the other. The sound of a scuffle.

“Crook! Crook! You’re just a pathetic crook!”

“Shut up!”

“Murderer!!”

“Coco…”

He must have covered her mouth with his hand, because her voice sounded muffled, like a moan.

“Bastard! Bastard!”

“All right, calm down. Calm down, Coco.”

Their voices got softer. Suddenly, they laughed. Silence. She let out a sigh, then another, at intervals that grew closer and closer together.

Odile and Louis stayed motionless, their eyes wide. A latticework of reflections played on the blanket.

“I wonder what’s happening over there,” Louis said.

After a few moments, he felt the same smothering feeling of dependence in this room that he had felt in boarding school and in the army. The days followed one another and you wondered what was happening over there, and you hardly believed that you would ever be free of this prison.

“We have to leave,” Odile said.

Leave. Of course. Bejardy had no hold over him. None at all. He didn’t owe him anything. No one and nothing had any hold over him. Even the school yard and the barracks yard now seemed unreal to him, and harmless, like the memory of a little park somewhere.

BROSSIER was waiting for them at one of the outdoor tables at place Jussieu, since the night was warm. When Odile and Louis arrived, he stood up and gave them a hug, a gesture full of an affection that was unusual for him.

He had changed a lot since they’d left for England. He was wearing an old sky-blue tracksuit jacket and sneakers, his face was thinner, and he was starting to grow a beard, which he stroked from time to time.

“Louis. I have big news for you. I’m not working with Bejardy any more. It’s over.”

He waited with a triumphant look for Louis and Odile’s reaction.

“What are you going to do now?” Odile asked.

“Listen… I’ve never been this happy.” He puffed up his chest with pride. “I’ve signed up at the Faculty of Sciences, as an independent auditor. That’ll let me feel even closer to Jacqueline. We’re in the same building, Quai Saint-Bernard.”