Patrick Modiano: In the Café of Lost Youth

Dr. Vala turned towards the bar and our eyes met. He gave a friendly wave. I suddenly had the urge to walk over to his table and tell him that I had a private question to ask him. I would have taken him aside and showed him the photos. “You know her?” Really, it would have been helpful to find out a bit more about this girl from one of the customers at the Condé.

•

As soon as I learned the address of her hotel, I had made my way there. I had chosen the middle of the afternoon, as it would be more likely that she was out. At least so I hoped. Then I would be able to ask the front desk a few questions about her. It was a sunny autumn day and I decided to make the trek on foot. I set out from the quays and slowly made my way inland. By rue du Cherche-Midi, the sun was in my eyes. I went into Au Chien Qui Fume and ordered a cognac. I was anxious. I surveyed avenue du Maine from the window. All I needed to do was to walk down the left sidewalk and I’d reach my destination. No reason to feel anxious. As I continued along the avenue, I regained my calm. I was nearly certain she wouldn’t be there, and in any case, I wouldn’t go into the hotel to ask questions this time, I would wander around outside as if I were on a stakeout. I had plenty of time. I had been paid for it.

When I reached rue Cels, I decided to be clear in my mind about things. A calm and gray street, it reminded me not only of a village or a suburb but of those mysterious regions they call “the borderlands.” I went straight to the front desk. No one. I waited about ten minutes, hoping that she wouldn’t appear. A door opened and a woman with short dark hair, dressed all in black, came to the reception desk. I said in a pleasant voice: “This is regarding Jacqueline Delanque.”

I figured she had registered here under her maiden name.

She smiled at me and took an envelope from one of the pigeonholes behind her.

“Are you Monsieur Roland?”

Now who was this? Just in case, I gave a vague nod of the head. She handed me the envelope, on which was written in blue ink: “For Roland.” The envelope wasn’t sealed. On a large sheet of paper, I read:

Roland, come and meet me after five o’clock at the Condé. If you can’t, call me at AUTEUIL 15–28 and leave me a message.

It was signed “Louki.” A pet name for Jacqueline?

I folded the sheet up and slid it into the envelope, handing it back to the brunette.

“Excuse me. There’s been a mix-up. This isn’t for me.”

She didn’t react at all but mechanically replaced the letter in the pigeonhole.

“Has Jacqueline Delanque lived here a long time?”

She hesitated a moment and then replied affably, “For about a month.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

She seemed indifferent to me and ready to answer all of my questions. She gave me a weary look.

“Thank you very much,” I said to her.

“You’re welcome.”

I didn’t want to linger, as this Roland could arrive at any time. I went back out onto avenue du Maine and followed it in the direction from which I’d come. At Au Chien Qui Fume, I ordered another cognac. I looked up the Condé’s address in the directory. It was in the Quartier de l’Odéon. Four o’clock in the afternoon, I had a bit of time to kill, so I placed a call to AUTEUIL 15–28. A terse voice that reminded me of a speaking clock: “La Fontaine Garage, how can I help you?” I asked for Jacqueline Delanque. “She’s stepped out a moment. Can I take a message?” I was tempted to hang up, but I forced myself to reply. “No, no message. Thank you.”

Above all, it’s necessary to determine people’s itineraries with as much precision as possible in order to understand them better. I repeated to myself, in a low voice: “Hotel rue Cels. La Fontaine Garage. Café Condé. Louki.” And then, that part of Neuilly between the Bois de Boulogne and the Seine, where that fellow had asked me to meet him to talk about his wife, the aforementioned Jacqueline Choureau, née Delanque.

•

I can’t remember who recommended that he talk to me. It doesn’t really matter. He probably found my address in the directory. I had taken the Métro well before the appointed time. It was a direct line. I got off at Sablons and walked around for nearly half an hour. I had a habit of getting to know the lay of the land before jumping straight into the thick of things. In the past, Blémant criticized me for it and thought that I was wasting my time. Dive in, he told me, rather than running in circles around the edge of the pool. Personally, I felt the opposite way. No sudden movements, but instead a passivity and slowness that allow you to be softly penetrated by the spirit of the place.

The scents of autumn and the country were in the air. I followed the avenue that ran along the Jardin d’Acclimatation, only I stuck to the other side next to the Bois de Boulogne and the bridle path. I would have loved it if it were just a casual stroll.

This Jean-Pierre Choureau had called me to set up a meeting, his voice devoid of expression. All he let me know was that it was about his wife. As I approached his home, I saw him walking along the bridle path, as I was, passing the amusement rides of the Jardin d’Acclimatation. How old was he? The timbre of his voice had seemed youthful to me, but voices can often be misleading.

What drama or marital hell would he drag me into? I felt assailed by discouragement, and I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to go to this meeting. I headed across the Bois towards the Mare Saint-James and the small lake the ice skaters frequented during the winter. I was the only one walking there and I got the impression that I was far from Paris, maybe somewhere in Sologne. Once again, I managed to overcome the discouragement. A vague professional curiosity made me interrupt my stroll through the woods and return towards the outskirts of Neuilly. Sologne. Neuilly. I imagined long rainy afternoons in Neuilly for the Choureaus. And over there, in Sologne, you could hear the horns of the hunt at dusk. Did his wife ride sidesaddle? I burst out laughing as I remembered Blémant’s remark: “Caisley, you go way too far, way too fast. You ought to have been a novelist.”

•

He lived at the far end, by the Porte de Madrid, in a modern building with a large windowed entrance. He had told me to go to the end of the hall and then to turn left. I would see his name on the door. “It’s an apartment on the ground floor.” I had been surprised by the sadness with which he had said “ground floor.” Then there was a long silence, as if he regretted the admission.

“And the exact address?” I had asked him.

“Eleven, avenue de Bretteville. Have you got that? Eleven. At four o’clock, would that work for you?”

His voice had grown steadier, taking on an almost conversational tone.

The small golden plaque on the door read “Jean-Pierre Choureau,” over which I noticed a peephole. I rang. I waited. There, in that deserted and silent hallway, I told myself that I had come too late. He had committed suicide. I felt ashamed by such a thought and, once again, I had a strong desire to drop the whole thing, to leave that hall, to return to my walk in the fresh air, in Sologne. I rang again, this time in three short bursts. The door opened straight away, as if he had been stationed behind it, observing me through the peephole.

A man of some forty years, with short-cropped brown hair, well above average height. He wore a navy blue suit and a sky blue shirt, the collar open. He led me wordlessly towards what one might have referred to as the living room. He motioned to a sofa behind a coffee table, and we sat down side by side. He struggled to speak. To put him at ease, I said to him, in the softest voice possible, “So this is about your wife?”