Patrick Modiano: Paris Nocturne

*

I used to prolong my dinner at La Closerie de Passy as long as possible. At around ten o’clock the manager and her friends would sit at a table at the back, near the bar and near Pépère’s yellow cage. They would begin playing cards. She even invited me to join them one night. But it was time for me to continue my search. SEA-GREEN FIAT.

I thought that by walking around the streets of the neighbourhood towards midnight, I might be lucky enough to come across the car parked somewhere. Jacqueline Beausergent would surely be home at that time. It seemed more likely that I would eventually find THESEA-GREEN FIAT at night rather than during the day.

The streets were silent, the cold went straight through me. Of course, now and again, I was frightened that a police van doing its rounds would stop alongside me and ask to see my papers. My bloodstained sheepskin jacket and the bandage visible through my split moccasin must have made me look like a prowler. And I was still a few months shy of twenty-one. But, luckily, on those particular nights no police van stopped to drive me to the nearest police station or to the large, dingy buildings of the juvenile police department on the banks of the Seine.

I started at Square de l’Alboni. No sea-green Fiat among the cars parked there, on either side of the road. I was convinced that she could never find a spot out the front of her apartment, that she would drive around for ages in the neighbourhood looking for somewhere to park. No doubt she ended up quite far away. Unless her car was in a garage. There was one near her place, on Boulevard Delessert. I went in one night. There was a man at the back, in a sort of glass-walled office. He saw me from afar. As I pushed the door open, he stood up and I got the feeling that he was on the defensive. At that moment I regretted not wearing a new coat. As soon as I started talking, he relaxed. A car had knocked me over the other night and I was almost certain that the driver lived in the area. I hadn’t heard anything from the driver and I wanted to get in contact. Incidentally, it was a female driver. Yes, Square de l’Alboni. A sea-green Fiat. The woman had some injuries on her face and the Fiat was a bit damaged.

He consulted a large register that was already lying open on his desk. He put his index finger to his lower lip and slowly turned the pages. It was a gesture my father often made while examining mysterious files at the Corona or the Ruc-Univers. ‘You did say a sea-green Fiat?’ He held his index finger in the middle of the page, pointing at something. My heart was pounding. Actually there was a sea-green Fiat, licence plate…He lifted his head and considered me with the solemnity of a doctor in a consultation.

‘The car belongs to a certain Solière,’ he said. ‘I have his address.’

‘Does he live on Square de l’Alboni?’

‘No, not at all.’ He frowned as if thinking twice about giving me his address.

‘You said it was a woman. Are you sure it’s the same car?’ So I took him back through the events of that night: she and I going in the police van with Solière, the Hôtel-Dieu, the Mirabeau Clinic, and Solière again, waiting for me in the foyer when I left the clinic. I didn’t want to tell him about my last encounter with him in the café, when he pretended not to recognise me.

‘He lives at 4 Avenue Albert-de-Mun,’ he said. ‘But he’s not one of our regular clients. It was the first time he’s been here.’ I asked him where Avenue Albert-de-Mun was. Over that way. It runs along Trocadéro Gardens. Near the aquarium? A bit further on. An avenue that runs down towards the quay. The windscreen and one of the headlights had been replaced, but someone had come to collect the car before the repairs were finished. Solière himself? He couldn’t tell me, he was away that day. He would ask his business partner. From time to time he glanced at my split moccasin and bandage. ‘You’ve pressed charges, haven’t you?’ His tone was reprimanding but almost affectionate, like the pharmacist’s the other day. Against whom? The only charges I could press were against myself. Up until then my life had been chaotic. The accident was going to bring an end to all the years of confusion and uncertainty. It was time.

‘And is there any sign of a Madame Solière?’ I asked. ‘Or a Jacqueline Beausergent? Not in the register, in any case. A blonde woman, with injuries on her face? You’ve never seen her around the neighbourhood?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m always in the office, you know. Apart from when I go home, to Vanves. Are you sure she was driving?’

I was sure. That night, we’d sat next to each other for a long time on the sofa in the hotel lobby, before the man named Solière had walked towards us and we’d got in the police van. I could go and check at the hotel on Place des Pyramides. There must have been a witness. But I didn’t need a witness. All I needed was to find this woman to clear things up with her, that was all.

‘Go and see at Avenue-Albert-de-Mun,’ he said. ‘If they happen to bring the Fiat back, I’ll let you know. Where can I reach you?’ I gave him the address of the Hôtel Fremiet. After all, he didn’t mean me any harm.

It was around midnight and I walked to the Trocadéro Gardens. Solière. I repeated the name…I had kept an old address book of my father’s, which should be in the navy-blue cardboard box. I would check under the letter S.

I walked along the pathway to the aquarium. Yes, Avenue Albert-de-Mun ran down towards the Seine and along the Trocadéro Gardens. Number 4 was one of two apartment buildings before the quay. It stood on the corner of a small street and there was a terrace on the top floor. No light at any of the windows. The building looked abandoned. From time to time a car went past on the quay. I walked up to the glass doorway, but I didn’t dare go in. Any concierge, seeing me dressed as I was, and at that hour, would be sure to call the police. Was there a concierge? And what floor did this Solière live on? I remained standing on the pavement, next to the gardens, without taking my eyes off the façade. It was in there, on one of the floors, that I was to learn something important about my life. It seemed to me that one afternoon in my childhood, after leaving the aquarium, I had walked down this road, alongside the gardens. Four Avenue Albert-de-Mun. Still, I would check in my father’s old notebook to see if the address appeared on any of the pages, preceded by a name, Solière or another name. Perhaps the village of Fossombronne-la-Forêt was mentioned. Sooner or later, I would find out what connected the two places. I must have made numerous journeys between Fossombronne-la-Forêt and Paris in the sea-green Fiat or in another older car that this Jacqueline Beausergent drove. The longer I contemplated the white façade, the more I felt that I had seen it before — a fleeting sensation like the fragments of a dream that slip away as you wake up, or light from the moon. In my room at Porte d’Orléans, I would never have imagined that this neighbourhood and the Avenue Albert-de-Mun would become a magnetic zone for me. Up until then, I lived on the fringes, in the suburbs of life, waiting for something. Even now in my dreams, I find myself back in these neighbourhoods where I’m lost among all the tall apartment buildings on the outskirts of Paris. I search in vain for my old room, the one from before the accident.

I walked down to the quay. No sea-green Fiat there either. I walked around the apartment block. Perhaps she was away. And how would I find Solière’s phone number? Considering his demeanour in the café the other day, he didn’t seem the type you’d find in the phone book.

*

The pharmacist on Rue Raynouard was kind enough to change my dressings a few times. He disinfected the cut with Mercurochrome and advised me not to walk so much and to find a more appropriate shoe than the split moccasin for my left foot. Each time I went, I promised to follow his advice. But I knew very well that I wouldn’t change my shoes until I found the sea-green Fiat.