Patrick Modiano - In the Café of Lost Youth

“Cheers,” Jeannette Gaul said to me. She was still smiling at me and I got the impression her green eyes were probing me, trying to guess what was going on in my head. She asked me, “Do you live around here?”

“Yes. A little farther up.”

There were several different zones in the neighborhood, of which I knew all the boundaries, even if they were invisible. As I was intimidated and I didn’t really know what to say to her, I added, “Yeah, I live farther up. Here we’re only on the lower slopes.” She furrowed her brow.

“The lower slopes?” Those two words intrigued her, although she hadn’t lost her smile. Was it the effect of the Pimm’s? My shyness melted away. I explained to her what I meant by “the lower slopes,” an expression I had learned along with all the other schoolchildren in the neighborhood. The lower slopes begin at the Square de la Trinité. They don’t stop climbing until you get to the Château des Brouillards and Saint-Vincent Cemetery, and then they dip back down towards the borderlands past Clignancourt, way up north.

“Aren’t you just full of information,” she said to me. Her smile grew ironic. She seemed to have let her guard down a bit. She ordered two more glasses from Suzanne. I wasn’t used to drinking much in the way of alcohol, and one glass was already plenty for me. But I didn’t have the nerve to say no. To get it over with more quickly, I drank it in one go. She was still watching me silently.

“Do you go to school?”

I hesitated before I replied. I had always dreamed of being a student, because I found the idea quite glamorous. But that dream had been cut short the day they had rejected my application to the Lycée Jules-Ferry. Was it the self-confidence induced by the champagne? I leaned toward her and, perhaps in order to be more convincing, I brought my face closer to hers.

“Yes, I’m a student.”

That first time, I hadn’t noticed the other customers around us. Nothing at all like the Condé. If I wasn’t worried that I might run into certain ghosts, I would quite happily return to that place one night in order to better understand where I come from. But it pays to be prudent. That said, I’m running the risk of finding it closed down. New ownership. None of it had much of a future.

“A student of what?”

She caught me off guard. The candor of her stare had encouraged me. She certainly couldn’t suspect that I was lying.

“Oriental languages.”

She seemed impressed. She never asked me subsequently for any details about my studies in Oriental languages, nor for the schedule of the classes, nor the location of the school. She ought to have realized that I wasn’t attending any such school. But I believe that for her — and for me as well — it was in some way a title of nobility that I bore, the sort that is inherited without one having to do anything. She introduced me as “the student” to all the regulars in the bar on rue de La Rochefoucauld, and perhaps some of them there still remember me that way.

That night she accompanied me all the way home. In turn, I had wanted to know what she did with her life. She told me that she had been a dancer, but that she’d had to give up that line of work because of an injury. A ballet dancer? No, not exactly, although she had been classically trained. Looking back, I’m left with a question that never would have occurred to me at the time: Had she been a dancer as much as I had been a student? We were following rue Fontaine towards place Blanche. She explained to me that “for the time being” she was a “business partner” of Suzanne’s, one of her oldest friends, sort of her “big sister.” The two of them ran the spot she had taken me to that evening, which was also a restaurant.

She asked me if I lived alone. Yes, alone with my mother. She wanted to know what my mother did for a living. I didn’t speak the words “Moulin Rouge.” Dryly, I replied, “Certified accountant.” After all, my mother could have been a certified accountant. She was certainly serious enough and had the discretion.

We parted company in front of the coach entrance. It was without the slightest trace of lightheartedness that I returned to that apartment each night. I knew that sooner or later I would leave it for good. I was counting a great deal on the people I would eventually meet, which would put an end to my loneliness. This girl was my first encounter and perhaps she would help me take flight on my own.

“See you tomorrow?” She seemed surprised by my question. I had blurted it out far too abruptly, without managing to conceal my nervousness.

“Of course. Whenever you like.”

She shot me another one of her tender, ironic smiles, the same one she had given me earlier when I had explained what I meant by “the lower slopes.”

There are holes in my memory. Or rather, certain details are out of order in my mind. For the past five years I have avoided thinking about all of this. And it was enough for the taxi to climb that street and for me to rediscover those illuminated signs: Aux Noctambules, Aux Pierrots… I no longer remember the name of the place on rue de La Rochefoucauld. The Rouge Cloître? Chez Dante? The Canter? Yes, the Canter. None of the customers of the Condé would have ever patronized the Canter. There are certain invisible boundaries in our lives. And yet, the first few times I went to the Condé, I had been quite surprised to recognize one of the customers I had seen at the Canter: Maurice Raphaël, the one whom everyone called the Jaguar. Never in a million years would I have guessed that this man was a writer. Nothing set him apart from those who played cards and other games in the bar’s small back room, behind the wrought-iron gate. I recognized him. I hadn’t felt that my face was familiar to him. So much the better. What a relief.

I never really understood what Jeannette Gaul’s role was at the Canter. Sometimes she took orders and waited on the customers. She sat with them at the tables. She knew most of them. She introduced me to a tall dark-haired man with a Mediterranean look to him, very well dressed, who gave the impression of being well-educated. A certain Accad, the son of a doctor in the neighborhood. He was always accompanied by two friends, Godinger and Mario Bay. Sometimes, they played cards and other games with the older men in the little back room. This would often go on until five in the morning. One of the cardplayers was apparently the Canter’s actual owner. A man in his fifties with short gray hair, also very well dressed, a grim-looking man whom Jeannette told me was a “former lawyer.” I remember his name: Mocellini. Once in a while he would get up and join Suzanne behind the bar. Some nights he would stand in for her and serve the drinks himself, just as if he were at home in his own apartment and all of the customers were his guests. He called Jeannette “my dear” or “Crossbones” without my ever understanding why, and the first few times I went to the Canter he looked me over with a fair amount of suspicion. One night, he asked me how old I was. I did my best to make myself look older and said, “Twenty-one years old.” He continued to observe me with a frown, he didn’t believe me. “You’re sure you’re twenty-one?” I was growing more and more embarrassed and was nearly ready to tell him my real age, but all of the severity abruptly left his face. He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Well then, twenty-one years old it is.”

Jeannette had a thing for Mario Bay. He wore tinted glasses, but not out of affectation. Light hurt his eyes. He had very delicate hands. At first, Jeannette had taken him for a pianist, one of those, she told me, who perform at Salle Gaveau or the Pleyel. He was around thirty, as were Accad and Godinger. But if he wasn’t a pianist, what was it that he did for a living? He and Accad were very tight with Mocellini. According to Jeannette, they had worked for Mocellini when he was still a lawyer. They had worked for him ever since. Doing what? Various business ventures, she told me. But what did that actually mean, “business ventures”? At the Canter, they would often invite us to join them at their table, and Jeannette let on that Accad had a crush on me. Right from the start I got the feeling that she wanted me to get together with him, perhaps in order to strengthen her relationship with Mario Bay. If anything, I had the impression that it was Godinger who had taken a liking to me. He was as dark as Accad, but taller. Jeannette didn’t know him as well as the other two. Apparently he had a lot of money and a car that he always parked in front of the Canter. He lived in the hotel upstairs and often traveled to Belgium.