Patrick Modiano: After the Circus

“We’ll go in on tiptoe.”

But just as we were crossing the foyer in the semidarkness, Grabley opened the door to the bedroom.

“Who’s there? Is that you, Obligado?”

He was wearing his plaid bathrobe.

“You could at least introduce me …”

“Gisèle,” I said in an unsure voice.

“Henri Grabley.”

He had moved toward her and held out a hand that she didn’t shake.

“Delighted to meet you. Please forgive me for greeting you in this attire.”

He was playing master of the household. Moreover, his entire person corresponded so perfectly to that empty apartment …

“Mister Grabley is a friend of my father’s,” I said.

“His oldest friend.”

With a gesture, he bade us enter the room, adjacent to the office, that had never had a very determinate function: sometimes it was a living room — the furniture used to consist of a midnight-blue sofa, two wing chairs of the same color, and a coffee table — sometimes a “guest room.”

The curtainless windows looked out on the quay.

“I was getting fed up with my view of the courtyard, so I moved in here. Do I have your permission, Obligado?”

“Make yourself at home.”

He had walked into the room, but she and I remained on the threshold. A mattress was lying on the floor, in the left-hand corner. Light came from a naked bulb in a lamp base. There wasn’t any furniture left. On the marble mantelpiece were a large radio and the black oilskin bags Grabley sometimes used for his morning shopping.

“Shall we go into the office instead?”

He kept his eyes fixed on her, a fatuous smile on his face, his head slightly raised.

“You’re very lovely, Miss …”

She didn’t react, but I was afraid she would leave because of him.

“I hope you won’t hold my frankness against me, Miss.”

Our silence was making him feel awkward. He turned to me.

“I haven’t been able to reach your father. The phone number he gave me doesn’t answer.”

No surprise there. I could even foresee that number ringing in the void for all eternity.

“Just keep trying,” I told him. “He’ll answer eventually.”

He looked hapless, standing there before us like an old ham who can’t win over the audience.

“Hey, what if the three of us had dinner tomorrow?”

“I don’t know if Gisèle is free.”

I looked to her for support.

“That’s very kind of you, sir, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to come in to the city tomorrow evening.”

I was grateful to her for adopting that courteous tone — I’d been afraid she would answer much more cuttingly. I suddenly felt sorry for Grabley, with his blond mustache and shopping bags on the mantelpiece; for my father, who had hightailed it … Today, I again see that scene, from a distance. Behind the panes of a window, in muted light, I can make out a blond man in his fifties wearing a plaid bathrobe, a girl in a fur coat, and a young man … The light bulb in the lamp base is too small and too weak. If I could go back in time and return to that room, I would change the bulb. But in brighter light, the whole thing might well dissolve.

In the fifth-floor bedroom, she was lying against me. I could hear muted music and an announcer’s droning voice.

Grabley was listening to the radio downstairs.

“There’s something weird about that guy,” she said. “What does he do?”

“Oh, he’s a bit of a jack of all trades.”

One day, I had come across a wallet he’d left in the office. Among the other documents it contained, one very old one in particular had raised my eyebrows: an application to be listed in the Business Register as a greengrocer in the produce market in Reims.

“And what about your father? Is he like that too?”

For the first time, she had used the familiar tu.

“No, not exactly …”

“Did he go to Switzerland because he was in trouble here in France?”

“Yes.”

None of this seemed to bother her much.

“What about you? Do you have any family?” I asked her.

“Not really.”

She looked me in the eye and smiled.

“I have a brother named Lucien …”

“But what do you do for a living?”

“A little of everything …”

She knitted her brow, as if searching for the right words. She finally said:

“I was even married once.”

I pretended not to have heard. The slightest word or movement might interrupt this confidence. But she fell silent again, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Reflections skidded across the walls. Their shape and movement were like foliage rustling and trembling in the wind. It was the last tour boat passing by, its searchlights aimed at the building façades along the quays.

The next day was Saturday. The sunshine and blue sky contrasted with the gray and cloud cover of the day before. One of the booksellers on the quay had already opened his stall. I experienced a holiday atmosphere that I’d already felt on the rare Saturdays in my past when I awoke in this same room, surprised to find myself far away from the boarding school dormitory.

That morning, she seemed more relaxed than the previous day. I thought of our upcoming departure for Rome and decided to buy myself a map of the city as soon as possible. Then I asked if she’d like to take a walk in the Bois de Boulogne.

Grabley had left a note in the office:

Dear Obligado,

I have to go back to Boulevard Hausmann to get rid of the rest of the papers your father left behind. This evening I make my “rounds.” If you and your friend would like to join me, let’s meet at eight o’clock at the Magots. That girl is really quite charming … Try to bring her along … I would be delighted to introduce you this evening to someone who isn’t too bad herself.

H. G.

She went to make sure the suitcases were still in the storage closet. Then she told me she had to go get something before noon somewhere near the Quai de Passy. That worked out well, as it was on the way to the Bois de Boulogne.

As we were getting into the car, I asked her to wait for me a moment and I ran to the bookseller’s stall. In a row of books about travel and geography, I found an old guide to Rome, and this coincidence struck me as auspicious.

We were now used to this car, and I even felt as if it had always belonged to us. There was very little traffic that Saturday morning, as during those vacation weeks when most Parisians have left the city. We crossed over to the Right Bank via the Pont de la Concorde. The quays were even emptier on that side. After the gardens of Trocadéro, we stopped at the corner of Rue de l’Alboni, beneath the elevated metro.

She said she had to go on alone. She would meet me in an hour at the café on the quay.

She turned around and waved good-bye.

I wondered if she was going to vanish for good. The evening before, I’d had a reference point: I had seen her enter a building. But now, she didn’t even want me to accompany her all the way. I was never sure of anything with her.

I preferred to walk rather than just sit and wait in that café, and one by one I took the neighboring streets and the stairways with their balusters and streetlamps. Later, I would often return to that area, and each time the stairways on Rue de l’Alboni reminded me of the Saturday when I had walked around there, waiting for her. It was November, but in my memory, because of the sun that day, a summer light bathes the neighborhood. Dappled sunlight on the sidewalks and shadows beneath the metro viaduct. A dark, narrow passageway that was once a rustic path rises through the buildings up to Rue Raynouard. At night, at the exit of the Passy metro stop, the streetlamps cast a pale light on the foliage.