Patrick Modiano: In the Café of Lost Youth

I shook hands with Louki and then with Maurice Raphaël, realizing that neither of them knew my name. I was a very unassuming customer at the Condé and I kept my distance, happy just to listen to them all. And that was plenty for me. I felt good around them. For me, the Condé was a refuge from all the drabness I anticipated in life. There will one day be a part of me — the best part — that I will be forced to leave behind there.

“A smart decision, living in Val-de-Grâce,” Maurice Raphaël said to me.

He was smiling at me and his smile seemed to express both kindness and irony.

“See you soon,” Louki said.

I climbed out of the car, and before I turned back, I waited for it to disappear over by Port-Royal. Truth be told, I didn’t actually live in Val-de-Grâce, but a bit farther down in a building at 85, boulevard Saint-Michel, where I had miraculously found a room when I first arrived in Paris. From the window, I could see the dark façade of my school. That night, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that monumental façade or from the great stone stairs of the entrance. What would they think if they found out I took those steps almost every day and was a student at the École Supérieure des Mines? Did Zacharias, La Houpa, Ali Cherif, or Don Carlos really know what the École des Mines was all about? It was necessary for me to keep this a secret or I risked them poking fun at me or distrusting me. What did the École des Mines represent to Adamov, Larronde, or Maurice Raphaël? Nothing, of course. They would suggest I stop going to such a place. If I spent a lot of time at the Condé, it was because I wanted them to give me such advice, once and for all. Louki and Maurice Raphaël would have already made it to the other side of Montparnasse Cemetery, over to the area that he called Limbo. And I remained, standing there in the dark, up against my window, contemplating that darkened façade. It could have passed for the abandoned train station of a provincial town. On the walls of the neighboring building, I had noticed bullet holes, like they had shot someone there. I quietly repeated those four words that seemed more and more foreign, “École Supérieure des Mines.”

I WAS FORTUNATE that particular young man was sitting next to me at the Condé and we struck up such a comfortable conversation. It was the first time I had been in that establishment, and I was old enough to be his father. The notebook in which he’d kept track of the Condé’s customers, day in and day out for the past three years, made my work easier. I feel bad for hiding the true reason I wanted to consult his document but I simply did so in hopes that he would be kind enough to lend it to me. And was I lying when I told him I was an art publisher?

I was pretty certain that he believed me. That’s the advantage of being twenty years older than someone: They don’t know your past. And even if they ask you a couple of distracted questions about what your life has been up until that point, you can make it up completely. A new life. They’re not going to go and check. As you tell of this imaginary life, great breaths of fresh air rush across a closed room in which you have been unable to breathe for a long time. A window abruptly opens, the shutters bang in the breeze. You have, once again, a future before you.

An art publisher. It came to me without even thinking. If I had been asked what I was going to be when I was older, some twenty years ago, I would have mumbled: an art publisher. And well, today I said it. Nothing has changed. All of those years are done and gone.

Except I haven’t quite wiped clean the slate of the past. There are still some witnesses, a few survivors among those who had been our contemporaries. One evening, at the Montana, I asked Dr. Vala when he was born. We were born the same year. And I reminded him that we had met in the olden days, in that very bar, when the area still shone as brightly as it once had. And moreover, it seemed to me that I had run into him well before, elsewhere in Paris, on the Rive Droite. I was even certain of it. Dryly, Vala had ordered a bottle of Vittel, cutting me off at the very moment it seemed as if I might bring up unpleasant memories. I shut up. We live at the mercy of certain silences. We have all known things about each other for a long time. So we try to avoid each other. It would be for the best, of course, if none of us were ever to see each other again.

What a strange coincidence… I came across Vala the very first afternoon I went into the Condé. He was sitting at a table at the back with two or three young people. He shot me the alarmed look of a bon vivant who finds himself in the presence of a ghost. I gave him a smile. I shook his hand without saying a thing. I felt that the least word on my part risked making him uncomfortable in front of his new friends. He seemed relieved by my silence and discretion as I sat down on an imitation-leather banquette at the other end of the room. From there I was able to watch him without his noticing my gaze. He spoke to them in a low voice, leaning toward them. Was he worried I would hear what he was saying? Then, to pass the time, I imagined all of the phrases I might have spoken in a feignedly urbane tone that would have made drops of sweat bead up on his forehead. “Are you still a doctor?” And then, after a long pause, “Say, are you still practicing at Quai Louis-Blériot? At least tell me you’ve kept your office on rue de Moscou. And that trip to Fresnes way back when, I hope there weren’t too many serious consequences.” I very nearly burst out laughing, all by myself in my corner. We never grow up. As the years go by, many people and many things end up seeming so humorous and so pathetic that all you can do is try to look at them through the eyes of a child.

•

That first visit, I spent a long time waiting at the Condé. She didn’t come. I would have to be patient. It would wait for another day. I watched the customers. Most of them weren’t more than twenty-five years old. A nineteenth-century novelist might have described them as “the student bohemians.” But few of them, in my opinion, were enrolled at the Sorbonne or the École des Mines. I must admit that watching them up close, I didn’t have high hopes for their futures.

Two men came in, one shortly after the other. Adamov and the dark-haired fellow with the flowing walk who had written a few books under the name Maurice Raphaël. I knew Adamov at first sight. In bygone days, he was almost always at the Old Navy Café, and his stare was one you didn’t forget. I believe I had done him a favor to help sort out his living situation, back when I still had a few contacts at the Renseignements Généraux. As for Maurice Raphaël, he too was a regular in the bars of the area. I’ve heard that he had been in some trouble after the war under a different name. Back in those days, I was working for Blémant. They both came up and leaned their elbows on the bar. Maurice Raphaël remained standing, rather stiffly, and Adamov hauled himself up onto a barstool, wincing in pain. He hadn’t yet remarked my presence. Would my face still bring anything back for him? Three young people, including a blond girl with bangs wearing a worn raincoat, joined them at the bar. Maurice Raphaël held out a pack of cigarettes and looked at them with an amused smile. Adamov showed himself to be less at ease with them. His intense stare made you think he was somewhat frightened by them.

I had two photo-booth pictures of this Jacqueline Delanque in my pocket. Back when I worked for Blémant, he had always been surprised at how easily I could identify someone. All it took was for my eyes to pass over a face once for it to remain engraved in my memory. Blémant had often kidded me about my ability to immediately recognize someone from afar, whether it was in three-quarter profile or even from behind. So I wasn’t the least bit worried. As soon as she came into the Condé, I would know it was her.