Patrick Modiano: In the Café of Lost Youth

He tried to take on a detached tone, shooting me a lifeless smile. Yes, his wife had disappeared two months ago after an unspectacular argument. Could I be the first person that he had spoken to since her disappearance? The iron shutter of one of the bay windows was lowered, and I wondered if this man had cloistered himself in his apartment for the past two months. But other than the shutter, there was no trace of disorder or sloppiness in the living room. As for him, after wavering for a moment, he regained a certain self-composure.

“I would like this situation to be cleared up rather quickly,” he finally told me.

I took a closer look at him. Very light-colored eyes below black brows, high cheekbones, unremarkable features. In his appearance and his way of moving, there was an athletic vigor that was accentuated by his short hair. You could have easily imagined him on a sailboat, shirtless, a solitary navigator. And in spite of such apparent vitality and charm, his wife had left him.

I wanted to know whether during all that time he had made any attempts to find her. No. She had telephoned him three or four times, letting him know that she would not be coming back. She had strongly advised against his trying to get in touch with her and gave him no explanation. Her voice had changed. This was no longer even the same person. A very calm voice, very confident, a change that he had found quite disconcerting. He and his wife were almost fifteen years apart in age. She, twenty-two. He, thirty-six. As he gave me those details, I felt about him a certain distance, even a coldness, clearly the fruit of what one would call a proper education. And now I needed to ask him questions that were increasingly specific and I no longer knew if it was worth the trouble. What exactly was it that he wanted? For his wife to return? Or was he simply seeking to understand why she had left him? Perhaps this would be enough for him. With the exception of the sofa and coffee table, there was no furniture in the living room. The bay windows gave on to the avenue where cars passed by only occasionally, so infrequently that the ground-floor level of the apartment wasn’t a concern. Night was falling. He lit the red-shaded tripod lamp that stood next to the sofa on my right. The light made me blink my eyes, a white light that made the silence even more profound. I think he was waiting for my questions. He had crossed his legs. To buy some time, I took my spiral-bound notebook and my ballpoint pen from the inside pocket of my coat and made a few notes. “Him, 36 yrs old. Her, 22. Neuilly. First-floor apartment. No furniture. Bay windows looking onto avenue de Bretteville. No traffic. A few magazines on the coffee table.” He waited without saying a thing as if I were a doctor writing a prescription.

“Your wife’s maiden name?”

“Delanque. Jacqueline Delanque.”

I asked him the date and place of birth of this Jacqueline Delanque. The date, also, of their marriage. Did she have a driver’s license? A steady job? No. Did she have any family left? In Paris? In the provinces? A checkbook? As he answered me in a sad voice, I jotted down all of those details that are often the sole things that bear witness to the passage of a human being on Earth. Provided that one day someone finds the spiral-bound notebook in which they were recorded in a tiny, difficult-to-read script such as my own.

Now it was necessary for me to move on to more delicate questions, the ones that grant access to a man’s private life without first having to ask his permission. What gives us the right?

“You have friends?”

Yes, a few people that he saw regularly enough. He knew them from business school. A few had also been classmates at the Lycée Jean-Baptiste Say.

He had even tried to open a firm with three of them before going to work for the Zannetacci Real Estate Company as an active partner.

“Are you still working?”

“Yes. At 20, rue de la Paix.”

What means of transportation did he use when he went to the office? Every detail, no matter how trivial it may seem, is telling. By automobile. He traveled for Zannetacci from time to time. Lyon. Bordeaux. The Côte d’Azur. Geneva. And Jacqueline Choureau, née Delanque, did she stay behind on her own in Neuilly? He had taken her along on these trips a few times, they had gone to the Côte d’Azur. And when she was on her own, what did she do with her free time? There truly wasn’t anyone who might be able to give him information concerning the disappearance of Jacqueline, married name Choureau, born Delanque, to give him the slightest clue? “I don’t know, a secret she might have told you one day when she was feeling blue?” “No. She would never have confided in anyone.” Often, she reproached him for his friends’ total lack of imagination. It was important to keep in mind, as well, that she was nearly fifteen years younger than they were.

I had now arrived at a question that already bothered me a great deal, but one that it was necessary to ask: “Do you think she had a lover?”

The tone of my voice struck me as a bit brutal and a bit stupid. But that’s how it was. He frowned.

“No.”

He hesitated, he looked me right in the eye as if he was waiting for encouragement from me or as if he was searching for the right words. One evening, one of his old business-school friends had come to their place for dinner and had brought along someone called Guy de Vere, a man older than the rest of them. This Guy de Vere was very well versed in the occult sciences and had offered to bring them a few works on the subject. His wife had attended several gatherings and even some sort of conference given regularly by this Guy de Vere. He hadn’t been able to accompany her due to a backlog of work at Zannetacci. His wife developed an interest in these gatherings and spoke of them often, without him really understanding what they were all about. She had borrowed one of the books that Guy de Vere had suggested to her, the one that had seemed the easiest to read. It was called Lost Horizon . Had he been in contact with Guy de Vere after his wife’s disappearance? Yes, he had telephoned him several times, but de Vere didn’t know anything. “Are you positive about that?” He shrugged his shoulders and fixed me with a weary look. This Guy de Vere had been very evasive and it had been clear that he would get no information from him. The exact name and address of this man? He didn’t know his address, it wasn’t in the directory.

I tried to think of other questions to ask him. A moment of silence passed between us, but it didn’t appear to bother him. Seated side by side on that sofa, it was as if we were in a dentist’s or a doctor’s waiting room. White, bare walls. A woman’s portrait hung over the sofa. I nearly picked up one of the magazines from the coffee table. A sense of emptiness came over me. I must admit that at that moment I felt the absence of Jacqueline Choureau née Delanque to the point that it felt definitive to me. But there was no reason to be a pessimist right from the start. And further, wouldn’t this living room have had the same feeling of emptiness even if the woman had been present? Did they dine there? If so, it must have been on a card table that was folded up and put away afterwards. I wanted to know if she had left on the spur of the moment, without bothering to take all of her belongings. No. She had taken her clothing and the few books Guy de Vere had lent her, all of it in a dark red leather suitcase. There wasn’t the slightest trace of her. Even the pictures with her in them — a few vacation photos — had disappeared. Evenings, alone in the apartment, he wondered if he had ever been married to Jacqueline Delanque. The sole remaining proof was the family record book given to them after they had married. Family record book. He repeated these words as if he didn’t understand their meaning.