Patrick Modiano: Paris Nocturne

I was limping a little and held the banister as I went down the long staircase. In the entrance hall, I was about to leave through the glass doors, one side of which stood open, when I noticed the huge brown-haired man. He was sitting on a bench. He waved to me and got up. He was wearing the same coat as the other night. He took me over to the reception desk. They asked for my name. He stood next to me, as if to better monitor my movements, but I was planning on giving him the slip. As quickly as possible. There in the entrance hall rather than out in the street. The woman at reception gave me a sealed envelope with my name written on it.

Then she gave me a discharge form to sign and handed me another envelope, this time with the clinic’s letterhead on it. I asked her if I had to pay anything, but she told me that the bill had been taken care of. By whom? In any case, I wouldn’t have had enough money. As I was about to cross the hall towards the exit, the huge brown-haired man asked me to sit with him on the bench. He gave me a vague smile and I decided that the fellow probably meant me no harm. He presented me with two sheets of onionskin paper on which some text had been typed. The report —I still remember the word he had used — yes, the report of the accident. I had to sign my name again, on the bottom of the page. He took a pen out of his coat pocket and even removed the lid for me. He said I could read the text before I signed, but I was in too much of a hurry to get out into the open air. I signed the first sheet. I didn’t have to bother with the second; it was a copy for me to keep. I folded it, stuffed it into the pocket of my sheepskin jacket, and got up.

He followed hard on my heels. Perhaps he wanted to put me back in a police van, and there she’d be again, sitting in the same place as the other night? Outside, in the little street that ran down to the quay, there was just one parked car. A man was sitting in the driver’s seat. I tried to find the words to take my leave. If I walked off suddenly, he might find my behaviour suspicious and there was a good chance I’d have him on my back again. So I asked him who the woman from the other night was. He shrugged his shoulders and told me that I was bound to see in the report , but that it would be better for me and for everyone else if I forgot about the accident. As far as he was concerned the ‘case was closed’ and he sincerely hoped I thought so, too. He stopped alongside the car and asked, in a cold tone, if I was all right to walk, and if I’d like to be ‘dropped off’ somewhere. No, I was fine, really. So, without saying goodbye, he got in next to the driver, slammed the door rather savagely and the car moved off towards the quay.

*

The weather was mild, a sunny winter’s day. I no longer had any notion of time. It must have been early afternoon. My left leg was hurting a bit. Dead leaves on the pavement. I dreamed that I would come out onto a forest path. I was no longer thinking about the word Engadin, but an even sweeter one, more remote — Sologne. I opened the envelope. Inside was a wad of banknotes. No message or explanation. Why all this money? Perhaps she’d noticed the sorry state of my sheepskin jacket and of my one shoe. Before the split moccasins, I had a pair of big lace-up shoes with crepe rubber soles that I wore even in summer. And it would have been at least the third winter I had worn the old sheepskin jacket. I took the form I had signed out of my pocket. A report or rather a summary of the accident. There was no letterhead from any police branch, nor did it look like a standard administrative form. ‘Night-time…a sea-green Fiat automobile…licence plate…coming from the direction of Carrousel Garden and heading into Place des Pyramides…Both taken to the lobby of the Hôtel Régina…Hôtel-Dieu casualty department… Dressings applied to the leg and arm…’ There was no mention of the Mirabeau Clinic and I wondered when and how they had transported me there. My surname and my first name were in the summary, as well as my date of birth and my old address. They must have found all this information from my old passport. Her name and surname were also there: Jacqueline Beausergent, and her address: Square de l’Alboni, but they had forgotten to add the street number.

I had never held such a large sum of money in my hands. I would have preferred a note from her, but she was probably not in a state to write after the accident. I assumed that the huge brown-haired guy had taken care of everything. Her husband, perhaps. I tried to remember at what point he had appeared. She was alone in the car. Later on he had walked towards us in the hotel lobby, while we were waiting, sitting next to each other on the sofa. They probably wanted to compensate me for my injuries and felt guilty at the idea of how much worse the accident could have been. I would have liked to reassure them. No, they shouldn’t worry on my account. The envelope with the clinic’s letterhead contained a prescription signed by a Doctor Besson instructing me to change my dressings regularly. I counted the banknotes again. No more financial worries for a long time. I recalled those last meetings with my father, when I was about seventeen years old, when I never dared to ask him for any money. Life had already drawn us apart and we met up in cafés early in the morning, while it was still dark. The lapels of his suits became increasingly threadbare and each time the cafés were further from the city centre. I tried to remember if I had met up with him in the neighbourhood where I was walking.

I took the report I had signed out of my pocket. So she lived on Square de l’Alboni. I knew the area, as I often got off at the metro station close by. It didn’t matter that the number was missing. I’d work it out with her name, Jacqueline Beausergent. Square de l’Alboni was a little further south, next to the Seine. I was in her neighbourhood. That was why they had moved me to the Mirabeau Clinic. She probably knew. Yes, it must have been her idea to have me taken there. Perhaps someone she knew had come to collect us at the Hôtel-Dieu. In an ambulance? I said to myself that at the next phone box I would look her up in the phone directory by street name or I would call directory enquiries. But there was no rush. I had all the time in the world to find her exact address and pay her a visit. It was perfectly justifiable on my part and she surely wouldn’t take offence. I had never called at the house of someone I didn’t know, but in this case, there were certain details that needed to be clarified, not to mention the wad of banknotes in an envelope, no accompanying message, like a handout thrown to a beggar. You knock someone down in a car at night, and arrange for money to be delivered to him in case he’s been crippled. For a start, I didn’t want the money. I had never depended on anyone and I was convinced, at that time, that I didn’t need anyone. My parents had been of no help at all and the occasional meetings in cafés with my father always ended the same way: we would get up and shake hands. And not once did I have the courage to beg him for money. Especially towards the end, around Porte d’Orléans, when he had lost all the energy and charm that he had on the Champs-Élysées. One morning, I noticed buttons were missing from his navy-blue overcoat.

I was tempted to follow the quay as far as Square de l’Alboni. At each apartment block, I would ask the concierge which floor Jacqueline Beausergent lived on. There couldn’t be that many numbers. I recalled her wry smile and how she had squeezed my wrist, as if there were some kind of complicity between us. It would be best to telephone first. Not to rush things. I remembered the strange impression I had in the police van all the way to the Hôtel-Dieu, that I had already seen her face somewhere else. Before finding out her phone number, perhaps I would make an effort to remember. Things were still simple at that time; I didn’t have most of my life behind me. Going back a few years would be enough. Who knows? I had already crossed paths with a certain Jacqueline Beausergent, or the same person going by a different name. I had read that only a small number of encounters are the product of chance. The same circumstances, the same faces keep coming back, like the pieces of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope, with the play of mirrors giving the illusion that the combinations are infinitely variable. But in fact the combinations are rather limited. Yes, I must have read that somewhere, or perhaps Dr Bouvière explained it to us one evening in a café. But it was difficult for me to concentrate on these questions for any length of time; I never felt I had a head for philosophy. All of a sudden, I didn’t want to cross Pont de Grenelle and find myself south of the river and return, by metro or by bus, to my room on Rue de la Voie-Verte. I thought I’d walk around the neighbourhood a bit more. Besides, I had to get used to walking with the dressing on my leg. I felt good there, in Jacqueline Beausergent’s neighbourhood. It even felt as if the air was lighter to breathe.