Patrick Modiano - In the Café of Lost Youth

Since that day, I have often followed that same route, both with her and alone. I would go and find her in her room during the day, or sometimes I would spend the night there when we stayed too late at the Canter. She lived in a hotel on rue Laferrière, a street located in the lower slopes zone that forms a semicircle where you feel isolated from everything else. An elevator with a wire-mesh door. It climbed very slowly. She lived on the last floor, all the way at the top. Maybe the elevator wouldn’t stop. She whispered in my ear, “You’ll see, it’s going to be great, we’ll have ourselves a little snow.”

Her hands were trembling. In the dim light of the hallway, she was so nervous that she couldn’t manage to insert the key into the keyhole.

“Go ahead, you try. I can’t seem to do it.”

Her voice grew increasingly unsteady. She had dropped the key. I bent down to grope around for it in the dark. I managed to slide it into the lock. The light was on, a yellow light cast by a ceiling fixture. The bed was unmade, the curtains drawn. She sat down on the edge of the bed and fumbled in the drawer of the nightstand. She withdrew a small metal box. She told me to inhale the white powder she called “snow.” After a moment, I began to feel fresh and light. I was certain the anxiety and the feeling of emptiness that often came over me in the street would never return. Ever since the pharmacist at place Blanche had spoken to me about low blood pressure, I had believed that I needed to harden myself, struggle against myself, strive to control myself. Nothing to be done, life had been tough love thus far. Sink or swim. If I fell, everyone else would just keep on walking down the boulevard de Clichy. There was no reason to have any illusions about it. But from now on, things were going to be different. The streets and boundaries of the neighborhood suddenly seemed far too narrow.

A book and stationery shop on the boulevard de Clichy stayed open until one in the morning. Mattei. A lone name stenciled on the front window. The owner’s name? I never got up the nerve to ask the brown-haired man with the mustache and the Prince of Wales check suit jacket who was always sitting there reading behind the desk. Customers continually interrupted his reading to buy postcards or a pad of paper. At the time of night I usually went in, there were rarely any customers other than the occasional person coming out of Minuit Chansons next door. Most of the time, he and I were alone in the bookshop. The same books were always on display in the front window, books I soon realized were science fiction novels. He had suggested that I read them. I remember a few of the titles: Pebble in the Sky, Stowaway to Mars, Vandals of the Void . I’ve only held on to one of them: The Dreaming Jewels .

The used books devoted to astronomy were filed on the right-hand side, on the shelves nearest the window. I had come across one with a torn-up orange cover: Journey into Infinity . That one I still have. The Saturday night I had intended to buy it, I was the only customer in the store and I could scarcely hear the din of the boulevard. A few neon signs could be seen through the window, including the blue and white of “The Most Beautiful Nudes in the World,” but they seemed so very far off. I wasn’t bold enough to disturb the man as he read, sitting there, his head down. I stood there in silence the better part of ten minutes before he turned his head my way. I held the book out to him. He smiled. “Very good, this one. Very good. Journey into Infinity .” I began to get out the money to pay for the book, but he raised his hand. “No, no. This one’s on me. And I hope you have a lovely journey.”

Yes, that bookstore wasn’t only a refuge; it was also a step in my life. I would often stay there until closing time. There was a chair next to the shelves, or rather a tall step stool where I would sit as I leafed through different books. I wasn’t sure that he was even aware of my presence. After a few days, without looking up from his reading, he would speak to me, always the same sentence: “So have you found your happiness?” Much later, someone informed me with great certainty that the one thing we cannot remember is the tone of a voice. And yet even now, during my bouts of insomnia, I often hear that voice and its Parisian accent — the accent of the slopes — asking me, “So have you found your happiness?” And that phrase has lost none of its kindness or mystery.

Late at night, stepping back out of the bookstore, I was shocked to once again find myself on the boulevard de Clichy. I didn’t really feel like going down to the Canter. My steps led me up instead. I now felt a great deal of pleasure climbing the slopes or the stairs. I counted each step. Once I had counted to thirty, I knew I was home free. Much later, Guy de Vere made me read Lost Horizon , a story about some people climbing the mountains of Tibet in search of the monastery of Shangri-La to learn great wisdom and the meaning of life. But it’s not worth the trouble going so far. I thought back on my nighttime walks. For me, Montmartre was Tibet. The slope of rue Caulaincourt was plenty for me. Up there, in front of the Château des Brouillards, I could truly breathe for the first time in my life. One day, at dawn, I snuck away from the Canter, having spent the night there with Jeannette. We were waiting for Accad and Mario Bay, who wanted to take us to Cabassud along with Godinger and another girl. I was suffocating. I came up with an excuse to step out for some fresh air. I started running. At place Blanche, all of the neon signs were dark, even that of the Moulin Rouge. I allowed myself to succumb to an intense feeling of intoxication that neither alcohol nor snow had ever given me. I climbed the slope as far as the Château des Brouillards. I had made up my mind never to see the bunch at the Canter again. Later I revisited that same intoxication every time I broke off all ties with someone. I was never really myself when I wasn’t running away. My only happy memories are memories of flight and escape. But life always regained the upper hand. Once I reached the allée des Brouillards, I felt certain that someone had asked me to meet them up there and that it would be a new beginning for me. There is a street a little farther up that I’d like to revisit one of these days. I was following it that morning. That’s where I was supposed to meet someone. But I didn’t know the number of the building. Didn’t matter, I was waiting for a sign that would let me know. At the end of the street ahead of me was wide-open sky, as if it led up to the edge of a cliff. I advanced with that feeling of lightness that can sometimes come to you in a dream. You no longer fear a thing in the world, potential dangers seem laughable. If something goes really wrong, you just need to wake yourself up. You’re invincible. I walked on, impatient to reach the end where there was nothing but blue sky and the void. What word would have best described my state of mind? Intoxication? Ecstasy? Rapture? In any case, that road was familiar to me. I felt as if I had walked it before. Soon I would reach the cliff’s edge and I would throw myself into the void. What happiness it would be to float through the air and finally know the feeling of weightlessness I had been searching for my whole life. I can still remember that morning with such clarity, that street and that sky at its end.

And then life went on, with its ups and downs. One dismal day, feeling particularly down, as I flipped through the book Guy de Vere had lent me, Louise, Sister of the Void , I used a ballpoint pen to replace her name on the cover with my own: Jacqueline, Sister of the Void .

THAT NIGHT, it was as if we were at a table-turning séance. We were gathered in Guy de Vere’s office, and he had turned off the lamp. Or perhaps it was simply a power outage. We listened to his voice in the darkness. He was reciting a text that he otherwise would have read under the light. Well no, I’m not being fair, Guy de Vere would have been shocked to hear me mention his name in the same breath as “table-turning” and “séance.” He deserved better than that. He would have said to me, in a slightly chiding tone, “Honestly, Roland.”