Patrick Modiano: So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood

On that afternoon last year, 4 December 2012—he had jotted down the date in his notebook — there was a long traffic jam and he asked the taxi driver to turn right into rue Coustou. He was mistaken when he thought he could see the garage sign from a distance, for the garage had vanished. And so too, on the same pavement, had the black wooden exterior of the Néant. On both sides, the façades of the buildings looked new, as though they were covered with a glaze or a thin layer of some colourless cellophane that had erased the cracks and stains of the past. And behind, at the very back, they must have resorted to taxidermy in order to create the empty space. On rue Puget, the woodwork and the window of the Aero had been replaced by a white wall, that kind of neutral blank whiteness that is the colour of oblivion. For over forty years, he, too, had drawn a blank over the period when he wrote that first book and over the summer when he walked on his own with the sheet of paper folded in four in his pocket: SO YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.

That night, on leaving the garage, Annie and he were unlikely to have changed pavements. They would certainly have walked past the Néant.

Fifteen years later, the Néant still existed. He had never felt he wanted to go inside. He was too frightened of toppling into a black hole. What is more, it seemed to him that nobody crossed its threshold. He had asked the owner of the Aero what kind of show they put on—“I believe that it’s there that Pierre’s sister made her debut at the age of sixteen. Apparently, the customers all sit in the darkness, with acrobats, circus riders and striptease artists who wear skull and crossbones.” That night, had Annie cast a brief glance at the entrance of the establishment where she had made her “debut”?

As they crossed the boulevard, she had held his hand. For the first time, he was seeing Paris at night. They did not walk down rue Fontaine, that street he was accustomed to taking when he walked about on his own in the daytime. She led him along the central reservation. Fifteen years later, he was walking along the same central reservation, in winter, behind the fairground stalls that had been put up for Christmas and he could not take his eyes off those brightly lit neon signs that called out to him and the increasingly faint Morse code signals. It was as though they were gleaming for the last time and still belonged to the summer when he had found himself in the neighbourhood with Annie. How long had they been there? For months, for years, like those dreams that have seemed so long to you and which you realise, on waking up suddenly, have only lasted a few seconds?

As far as rue Laferrière he could feel her hand on his neck. He was still a child who might escape and get run over. At the foot of the stairs, she had put her index finger to her lips to let him know that they must go upstairs in silence.

That night, he had woken up on several occasions. He was sleeping on a couch in the same bedroom as Annie, and she was in the double bed. Their two suitcases were lying at the foot of the bed, Annie’s leather case and his smaller one, made of tin. She had got up in the middle of the night and she had left the bedroom. He could hear her talking in the room next door to someone who must have been her brother, the man from the garage. He had eventually fallen asleep. Very early the following morning, she had stroked his forehead as she woke him up and they had had breakfast together, with her brother. The three of them were sitting round a table, and she was rummaging in her handbag because she feared she might have lost the blue folder that Roger Vincent had brought to the foyer of the hotel the previous day, his “passport”, in the name of “Jean Astrand”. But no, it was there in her handbag. Later on, at the time of the rue Coustou room, he would ask himself when he had lost this fake passport. Probably in his early adolescence, at the time he had been sent home from his first boarding school.

Annie’s brother had driven them by car to the gare de Lyon. It was difficult to walk on the pavement outside the station and in the great hall, because of the masses of people. Annie’s brother was carrying the suitcases. Annie said that it was the first day of the summer holidays. She was waiting at a counter to get the train tickets, while he stayed with Annie’s brother, who had put down the suitcases. You had to be careful that people did not jostle you and that the porters’ trolleys did not roll over your feet. They were late, they had run to the platform, she was gripping him very hard by the wrist so that he did not get lost in the crowd, and her brother was following them with the suitcases. They had climbed onto one of the first carriages, Annie’s brother behind them. Masses of people in the corridor. Her brother had put down the suitcases at the entrance to the carriage and had kissed Annie. And then, he had smiled at him and whispered in his ear: “Make sure you remember. . Your name is Jean Astrand now. . Astrand.” And he barely had time to get down onto the platform and to wave to them. The train began to pull away. There was one free seat in one of the compartments. “You sit there,” Annie had told him. “I’ll stay in the corridor.” He did not want to leave her, she had dragged him along, holding him by the shoulder. He was frightened she might leave him there, but his seat was next to the door of the compartment, and he could keep an eye on her. Standing in the corridor, she did not move and, from time to time, she turned around to smile at him. She lit a cigarette with her silver lighter, she was pressing her forehead to the window and she would certainly have been admiring the scenery. He kept his head down in order to avoid catching the eye of the other travellers in the compartment. He was frightened that they might ask him questions, as adults often do when they notice a child on his own. He would have liked to stand up so that he could ask Annie whether their two suitcases were still in the same place, at the entrance to the carriage, and whether someone might steal them. She opened the door of the compartment, leant over towards him and said to him in a low voice: “We’ll go to the restaurant car. I’ll be able to sit with you.” It seemed to him as though the travellers in the compartment were looking at both of them. And the images follow one after the other, in fits and starts, like a worn-out film. They are walking down the corridors of the coaches and she is holding him by the neck. He is frightened when they move from one carriage to another above the couplings where the pitching movement is so vigorous that you risk falling over. She grips his arm so that he does not lose his balance. They are sitting opposite one another, at a table in the restaurant car. Luckily, they have the table to themselves, and in any case there is hardly anyone at the other tables. It is a change from all those carriages they have just passed through where the corridors and compartments were packed. She runs her hand over his cheek and tells him that they will stay at their table as long as possible and, should no-one come to disturb them, until the end of the journey. The thing that worries him is their two suitcases, which they have left back there, at the entrance to the other carriage. He wonders whether they may lose them or whether someone may already have stolen them. He must have read a story of this kind in one of the Bibliothèque verte books that Roger Vincent had brought for him one day at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. And it is probably on account of this that he will be haunted throughout his life by a dream: suitcases that are lost on a train, or else the train leaves with your suitcases and you are left on the platform. If he could remember all his dreams, he would now be counting hundreds and hundreds of lost suitcases.