Patrick Modiano: After the Circus

I was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. Behind me, I heard the entrance door open and close. She walked up quickly. She was no longer wearing her raincoat, which she had folded over her arm, but a full-length fur.

“Were you going to leave?” she asked. “Had you gotten tired of waiting?”

She gave me a worried smile.

“Not at all. I thought you’d skipped out on me.”

She shrugged.

“That’s ridiculous … Whatever made you think that?”

We walked to the car. I had taken her raincoat and was carrying it over my shoulder.

“That’s a nice coat,” I said.

She seemed embarrassed.

“Oh, yes … It’s a lady I know … She lives here … a seamstress … I’d given her the coat so she could resew the hem.”

“Did you tell her you’d be coming over so late?”

“It was no bother … She works at night …”

She was hiding the truth from me and I was tempted to ask more specific questions, but I held back. She would eventually get used to me. Little by little she’d learn to trust me and tell me everything.

We were back in the car. I laid her raincoat on the back seat. She pulled away from the curb, gently this time.

“My hotel is right near here …”

Why had she chosen a hotel in this neighborhood? It wasn’t just chance. Something must have kept her around here, like an anchor point. Perhaps the presence of that mysterious seamstress?

We took one of the streets that led from Avenue de Suffren toward Grenelle, on the border of the 7th and 15th arrondissements. We stopped in front of a hotel, its façade bathing in the glow from the lit sign of a garage at a bend in the road. She rang at the door, and the night porter came to open for us. We followed him to the reception desk. She asked for the key to her room. He shot me a suspicious glance.

“Can you fill out a registration? I’ll need to see some ID.”

I didn’t have my papers on me. In any case, I was still a minor.

He had put the key on the reception desk. She picked it up nervously.

“This is my brother …”

The other hesitated for a moment.

“Well, you’ll have to show me some proof. I need to see his papers.”

“I forgot to bring them,” I said.

“In that case, I can’t let you go up with the young lady.”

“Why not? He’s my brother …”

Staring at the two of us in silence, he reminded me of the detective from the day before. The light accentuated his square jaw and balding head. A telephone sat on the counter. At any moment, I was expecting him to pick up the receiver and alert the nearest police station to our presence.

We made an odd couple and we must have looked rather suspicious, she and I. I remember the man’s strong jaw, his lipless mouth, the calm contempt with which he stared at us. We were at his mercy. We were nothing.

I turned toward her:

“I must have left my ID when we had dinner with mom,” I said in a timid voice. “Maybe mom has found it.”

I stressed the word mom to give him a more reassuring impression of us. She, on the other hand, seemed quite prepared to have it out with the night porter.

She was holding the key. I plucked it from her hand and set it down gently on the desk.

“Come on … We’ll go try to find that ID …”

I dragged her out by the arm. It was about thirty feet to the hotel exit. I was sure the man was watching us. Walk as naturally as possible. Especially don’t make it look like we’re running away. And what if he locked the door, and we were caught in a trap? But no.

Once outside, I felt relieved. That night porter was no longer a threat.

“Would you like to go back to the hotel alone?”

“No. But I’m sure that if we’d insisted, he would have given in.”

“I’m not.”

“Were you scared of him?”

She looked at me with a mocking smile. I wished I could have confessed to her that I’d lied about my age, that I was only eighteen.

“So, where to now?” she asked.

“My place. We’ll be much better off there than at the hotel.”

In the car, as we followed Avenue de Suffren toward the quays, I felt the same apprehension as with the night porter. I wondered whether this car and that fur coat she was wearing wouldn’t draw even more attention to us. I was afraid that at the next intersection, we might be stopped by one of those police roadblocks that were common in Paris at the time, when they checked for unaccompanied minors after midnight.

“Do you have your driver’s license?”

“It must be in my handbag,” she said. “Have a look.”

Her handbag was sitting on the dashboard. There wasn’t much in it and I immediately located the license. I was tempted to read it, so that I would finally know her name, address, and date and place of birth. But, out of discretion, I didn’t.

“What about the registration — do we have that?”

“Probably … check in the glove compartment.”

She shrugged. She seemed not to care about all the dangers I dreaded for us. She had switched on the radio, and gradually the music calmed me down. I felt confident again. We hadn’t done anything wrong. What could anyone hold against us?

“We should head to the South with this car,” I said to her.

“I thought you wanted to go to Rome.”

Up until then, I had imagined traveling to Rome by train. Now I tried to imagine us driving along the highway. First we would go to the South of France. Then we’d cross the border at Ventimiglia. With just a little luck, everything would go smoothly. Since I was underage, I’d draft a letter supposedly signed by my father, authorizing a trip abroad. I was an old hand at this type of forgery.

“Do you think they’d lend us the car?”

“Sure … Why wouldn’t they?”

She didn’t want to give me a straight answer.

“Well, you haven’t known them very long …”

She remained silent. I returned to the attack.

“That fellow, Jacques — did you meet him through Ansart?”

“Yes.”

“And what does Jacques do for a living?”

“He and Ansart are in business together.”

“So how did you meet Ansart?”

“In a café.”

She added:

“Jacques lives in a very nice apartment on Rue Washington. His full name is Jacques de Bavière …”

After that, I often heard that name on her lips: Jacques de Bavière. Did I mishear? Wasn’t it a more prosaic name, like de Bavier or Deba-viaire? Or simply a pseudonym?

“He’s a Belgian national, but he’s been living in France forever. He lives with his stepmother on Rue Washington.”

“His stepmother?”

“Yes, his father’s widow.”

We had arrived at the Pont de la Concorde. Instead of turning onto Boulevard Saint-Germain, she crossed the Seine.

“I prefer taking the quays,” she said.

“This Jacques de Bavière … He seems to be in love with you …”

“Perhaps. But I don’t want to live with him. I want to retain my independence.”

“You prefer living in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt?”

I had adopted a sarcastic tone, as if I didn’t believe in the existence of that house in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt.

“I have a right to my own life …”

“Someday you’ll have to take me to Saint-Leu …”

She smiled.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Not in the slightest. I’d be very curious to see your house …”

“Unfortunately I stopped living there yesterday — as you know very well …”

The Pont-Neuf. We followed the same route that we’d taken on foot the evening before. She parked the car in the recess on Quai de Conti, at the corner of the cul-de-sac.

The windows of both the office and the adjacent bedroom were lit. This time, we wouldn’t be able to avoid Grabley, and the prospect made me nervous. I said: