Patrick Modiano: After the Circus

“And what does he do?”

“Oh … It depends on the day …”

We were at the Carrefour des Cascades. We strolled along the other side of the lake. She didn’t confide much else, other than that she had got married at nineteen and that her husband was older. I suggested we take the car past where Ansart had set our mission.

We cut across the Bois to the edge of Neuilly and reached Rue de la Ferme. The meeting place was a bar and restaurant at the corner of Rue de Longchamp. The last rays of sunlight lingered on the sidewalks.

It felt odd to be back here. I knew this area well. I had often come here with my father and a friend of his, then with Charell and Karvé, two schoolmates. There wasn’t a soul on Rue de la Ferme and the riding stables looked closed.

Night had already fallen when we returned to Ansart’s. He and Jacques de Bavière were sitting on the red couch, like the first time. Martine carried a tray in from the kitchen, containing tea and petits fours.

The photos were still on the coffee table. I picked one up at random, but it was the one I had already seen.

“Do you think we’ll be able to recognize him?” I asked Ansart.

“Oh, sure. There shouldn’t be very many people in the café tomorrow evening … And I’ll tell you a detail that will make him stand out immediately: the guy will surely be wearing riding breeches.”

I took a deep breath to buck up my courage, then said:

“But why don’t you go into the café yourself?”

Ansart gave me a sad, tender look that clashed with his wide smile.

“Here’s the problem: I don’t really have an appointment with this fellow tomorrow … It’s a surprise …”

“A good surprise?”

He didn’t answer. I think that if there hadn’t been such tenderness in his eyes, I might have become concerned. Martine poured us some tea. Ansart dropped into each of our cups, Gisèle’s and mine, a sugar cube that he held between his thumb and index finger.

“Not to worry,” Jacques de Bavière said, looking distractedly at one of the photos. “We’re just playing a little joke on him …”

I wasn’t really convinced, but Gisèle, sitting next to me, seemed to find all this entirely natural. She drank her tea in little sips. She gave the dog a sugar cube.

“Does the man ride horses?” I asked to break the silence.

Jacques de Bavière nodded.

“I met him in a stable on Rue de la Ferme where I rent a stall for my horse.”

Gisèle turned to me and, as if she wanted to steer the conversation onto more anodyne territory, said:

“Jacques has a lovely horse. He’s called Deer Field.”

“I don’t know if I’ll keep him much longer,” said Jacques de Bavière. “Horses are expensive, and I don’t really have the time to enjoy him.”

He didn’t have Ansart’s faint working-class accent, and the existence of this horse piqued my curiosity. I would have liked to see his apartment on Rue Washington and that “stepmother” Gisèle had told me about.

“Tomorrow, you can come here first or go directly to Rue de la Ferme,” said Ansart. “Don’t forget, the appointment is at six o’clock sharp … Here, this is for you and your sister …”

And he handed me two envelopes that I didn’t dare refuse.

We stopped near the end of the Champs-Elysées and had trouble finding a parking space. Outside, the air was as warm as a Saturday evening in spring.

We decided to go to the movies, but we didn’t want to leave the dog in the car. I figured that at the Napoléon, near Avenue de la Grande-Armée, they’d be more lenient about dogs than in the large first-run houses. And in fact, the cashier and the usherette let him come in with us. They were showing The Wonderful Country.

When we left the cinema, I suggested dinner in a restaurant. I still had on me the seven thousand five hundred francs from Dell’Aversano, to which I now added the two envelopes that Ansart had given me, each of which contained two thousand francs.

I wanted to invite her, but I was intimidated by the restaurants along the Champs-Elysées. I asked her to choose.

“We could go back to Rue Washington,” she said.

I was afraid of running into Jacques de Bavière. She reassured me. He would be with Ansart and wouldn’t be home until very late.

On Rue Washington, we sat near the street window.

“Jacques lives just across the way.”

She pointed out the entrance to number 22.

I would rather have forgotten all about them, but it was difficult as long as we hadn’t left Paris. Since she said those people could help us, I wanted to believe it. I just would have liked to know more about them.

“Have you been to Jacques de Bavière’s apartment?” I asked.

“Yes, several times.”

“I’d be curious to know what it’s like where he lives …”

“His stepmother must be there.”

After dinner, we crossed the street and, at the entrance to number 22, I had a moment’s hesitation.

“No, forget it …”

But she insisted. We would tell the stepmother we had an appointment with Jacques de Bavière, or simply that we were in the neighborhood and thought we’d drop by.

“But isn’t it kind of late to be paying a visit? Do you know this woman?”

“A little bit.”

We went into number 22 and Gisèle rang at a door on the ground floor. Above the bell was a small silver plaque with a name engraved on it: Ellen James.

A woman’s voice asked:

“Who is it?”

The door was equipped with a peephole. She must have been watching us.

“We’re friends of Jacques,” Gisèle said.

The door opened onto a blonde woman of about forty-five, wearing a black silk dress. A string of pearls around her neck.

“Ah, it’s you …” she said to Gisèle. “I didn’t recognize you.”

She threw me a questioning look.

“My brother,” Gisèle said.

“Come in …”

Frosted glass sconces dimly lit the entryway. On a sofa against the wall, men’s and women’s coats were piled haphazardly.

“I didn’t know you had a dog,” she said to Gisèle.

She led us into a large living room, its French windows opening onto a garden. From the next room, we heard the hubbub of conversation.

“I’m having some friends over for cards. But Jacques isn’t here this evening …”

She didn’t ask us to take off our coats. I sensed she was about to leave us in this room and go join the others.

“I’m not sure when he’ll be back …”

There was an anxious expression in her eyes.

“Have you seen him today?” she asked Gisèle.

“Yes, we had lunch together. Mister Ansart took us to his restaurant.”

The blonde woman’s face relaxed.

“I didn’t see him this morning … He went out very early …”

She was a pretty woman, but I remember that that evening she already seemed old to me, an adult my parents’ age. I had felt something similar about Ansart. As for Jacques de Bavière, he reminded me of those young people who headed off to fight in the Algerian War when I was sixteen.

“You’ll forgive me,” she said, “but I have to go rejoin my guests.”

I glanced rapidly around the living room. Sky-blue paneling, folding screen, pale marble mantelpiece, mirrors. At the foot of a console table, the carpet showed signs of intense wear, and on one of the walls I noticed discoloration where a painting had been removed. Behind the French windows, bouquets of trees stood out in the moonlight, and I couldn’t see where the garden ended.

“It’s like being in the country, isn’t it?” the blonde woman said to me, having followed my gaze. “The garden stretches all the way to the buildings on Rue de Berri …”