Patrick Modiano - Paris Nocturne

Where had she met him? Oh, in a café. She was eating a sandwich before going back to work at the office. He was preparing one of his classes that he gave at the Hautes Études. When he found out she was a typist, he asked her to type up a text for him. I was about to tell her that I had met Bouvière for the first time in a café as well. But I was afraid of bringing up a painful topic. Perhaps she knew of the existence of the woman with the fur-lined raincoat, the one who said: ‘Next time, you won’t forget my refills, will you.’ What if this woman was the cause of the scar on her wrist? Or was it just Bouvière, whose love life at first seemed rather strange to me…

I wanted to know what stop she was getting off at. Petits-Champs — Danielle Casanova. My ticket was for Gare du Luxembourg, but that didn’t matter. I had decided to stay with her until she got off. She was heading for Opéra Intérim, but soon, she said, she would be leaving that job. The doctor had promised her ‘full-time work’: typing up his class notes and articles, arranging his meetings, and preparing notifications and memos to send out to the different groups. She was happy to have a real job that finally gave her life some meaning.

‘So you’re going to devote yourself entirely to the doctor?’ The question slipped out, and I immediately regretted it. She stared at me, a certain steeliness in her pale-blue eyes. I wanted to make up for my tactlessness with a more general remark: ‘You know, gurus don’t always realise how much power they hold over their followers.’ She softened her gaze. I got the impression she was no longer focused on me and was lost in her thoughts.

‘You think so?’ she asked. I was moved by how much confusion and candour there was in her question. A real job that would finally give her life some meaning…In any case, she had wanted to end it, her life, judging by the scar on her wrist. I would have loved her to confide in me. I dreamed, for a moment, that on the bus she brought her face close to mine and spoke at length up close to my ear so that no one else could hear.

Once more, she looked at me suspiciously. ‘I don’t agree with you,’ she said abruptly. ‘Personally, I need a guru…’ I nodded. I had no response to give her. We had arrived at the Palais-Royal. The bus passed in front of the Ruc-Univers where I had often sat with my father, out on the terrace. He never said anything either, and we parted without breaking the silence. A lot of congestion. The bus lurched along. I should have taken the opportunity to ask her questions quickly and to learn more about this girl, Geneviève Dalame, but she seemed preoccupied. All the way to Petits-Champs — Danielle-Casanova, we didn’t exchange a single word. And then we got off the bus. On the pavement, she shook my hand distractedly, with her left hand, the one with the watch and the scar. ‘See you at the next meeting,’ I said. But at the meetings after that, she always ignored my presence. She walked up Avenue Opéra and I quickly lost sight of her. There were far too many people about at that hour.

LAST NIGHT, I dreamed for the first time about one of the saddest experiences of my life. When I was seventeen years old, in order to get rid of me, my father called the police one afternoon, and a police van was waiting for us in front of the apartment block. He handed me over to the superintendent, saying that I was a ‘thug’. I would rather forget this experience but, in my dream last night, a detail that had been erased with all the rest came back and rattled me, forty years on, like a time bomb. I’m sitting on a bench at the back of the police station, waiting, with no idea what they’re going to do with me. Every now and again I would fall into a half-sleep. From midnight onwards, I frequently hear the sound of a car engine and doors slamming. Police officers push a motley group into the room, some of them well dressed, others who look more like homeless people. A round-up. They give their names. Gradually they disappear into a room; I can only see the wide-open door. The last one to present herself to the fellow tapping at the typewriter is a young woman, with chestnut hair, dressed in a fur coat. Several times the police officer makes a mistake spelling her name, and she repeats wearily: JACQUELINE BEAUSERGENT.

Before she goes into the room next door, our eyes meet.

I WONDER IF, on the night when the car knocked me over, I hadn’t just accompanied Hélène Navachine to her train at Gare du Nord. Whole sections of our lives end up slipping into oblivion and, sometimes, tiny little sequences in between as well. And on this strip of old film, spots of mould cause shifts in time and give the impression that two events occurring months apart took place on the same day or even simultaneously. How can any sense of chronology be established as we watch these truncated images scroll past before us, overlapping chaotically in our memories, or following one after the other, sometimes slowly, sometimes jolting, in the middle of blanks. It leaves my mind reeling.

It appears I must have been walking back from Gare du Nord that night. If not, why would I have found myself sitting on a bench so late at night, near Square de la Tour Saint Jacques, in front of the night bus station? A couple was also waiting at the station. The man started speaking to me in an aggressive tone. He wanted me to go with them, him and the woman, to a hotel. The woman said nothing and seemed embarrassed. He took me by the arm and tried to pull me along. He pushed me towards her. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she? And you haven’t seen everything yet.’ I tried to get away from him, but he wouldn’t let me go. Each time, he’d grab me by the arm. The woman smiled contemptuously. He must have been drunk; he thrust his face into mine when he spoke to me. He didn’t smell of alcohol, but of a strange eau de toilette, Aqua di selva. I shoved him away violently with my elbow. He turned to me, open-mouthed, crestfallen.

I started down Rue de la Coutellerie, a small, deserted street that runs at an angle just before the Hôtel de Ville. Over the years since then — and even as recently as today — I have returned to this street to try to understand the uneasiness that it caused me the first time. The feeling of unease is still there. Or rather, the feeling of slipping into a parallel world, outside time. All I have to do is walk along this road to realise that the past is gone for good, without really knowing which present I exist in. It’s a simple through road that cars roar down at night. A forgotten street that no one has ever thought much about. That night, I noticed a red light on the left-hand side. The place was called Les Calanques. I went in. Light came from a paper lantern hanging from the ceiling. Four people were playing cards at one of the tables. A brown-haired man with whiskers stood up and came over to me. ‘For dinner, sir? On the first floor.’ I followed him up the stairs. Here, too, only one table was occupied, also by four people, two women and two men — close to the bay window. He showed me to the first table on the left, at the top of the stairs. The others took no notice of me at all. They were talking quietly, murmurs and occasional laughter. Gifts lay open on the table, as if they were celebrating one of their birthdays or Christmas or New Year’s Eve. On the red tablecloth was the menu. I read: Fish Waterzooi. The names of the other dishes were written in tiny letters that I couldn’t make out under the bright, almost white light. Next to me, there were stifled bursts of laughter.

FISH WATERZOOI. I wondered who the regulars of this place could be. Members of a brotherhood who passed on the address to one another in hushed voices or, as time had no meaning in this street, had these people lost their way and were now gathered around a table for eternity? I no longer knew how I ended up here. I was probably uneasy about Hélène Navachine leaving. And it was a Sunday night, and Sunday nights leave strange memories, like brief interludes of nothingness in our lives. You had to go back to school or to the barracks. You waited on the platform of a station whose name you can’t remember. A little later, you slept badly under the blue night-lights in a dormitory.