Patrick Modiano - The Occupation Trilogy - La Place de l'Étoile – The Night Watch – Ring Roads

We caught the Paris — Bordeaux train. From the window of the compartment, France looked particularly splendid. Orléans, Beaugency, Vendôme, Tours, Poitiers, Angoulême. My father was no longer wearing a pale green suit, a pink buckskin tie, a tartan shirt, a platinum signet ring and the shoes with the astrakhan spats. I was no longer called Raphäel Schlemilovitch. I was the eldest son of a notary from Libourne and we were heading back to our home in the country. While a certain Raphäel Schlemilovitch was squandering his youth in Cap Ferrat, in Monte Carlo and in Paris, my obdurate neck was bowed over Latin translations. Over and over, I repeated to myself ‘Rue d’Ulm! Rue d’Ulm!’ feeling my cheeks flush. In June I would pass the entrance exam to the École Normale Supérieure. I would definitively ‘go up’ to Paris. On the Rue d’Ulm, I would share rooms with a young provincial lad like myself. An unshakeable friendship would develop between us. We would be Jallez and Jephanion. One night, we would climb the steps of the Butte Montmartre. We would see Paris laid out at our feet. In a soft, resolute voice we would say: ‘Now, Paris, it’s just you and me!’ We would write beautiful letters to our families: ‘Maman, I love you, your little man.’ At night, in the silence of our rooms, we would talk about our future mistresses: the Jewish baronesses, the daughters of captains of industry, actresses, courtesans. They would admire our brilliance and our expertise. One afternoon, hearts pounding, we would knock on the door of Gaston Gallimard: ‘we’re students at the École Normale Supérieure, monsieur, and we wanted to show you our first essays.’ Later, the Collège de France, a career in politics, a panoply of honours. We would be part of our country’s elite. Our brains would be in Paris but our hearts would ever remain in the provinces. In the maelstrom of the capital, we would think fondly of our native Cantal, our native Gironde. Every year, we would go back to clear out our lungs and visit out parents somewhere near Saint-Flour or Libourne. We would leave again weighted down with cheeses and bottles of Saint-Émilion. Our mamans would have knitted us thick cardigans: the winters in Paris are cold. Our sisters would marry pharmacists from Aurillac and insurance brokers from Bordeaux. We would serve as examples to our nephews.

Gare Saint-Jean, night is waiting for us. We have seen nothing of Bordeaux. In the taxi to the Hôtel Splendid, I whisper to my father:

‘The driver is definitely a member of the French Gestapo, my plump papa.’

‘You think so?’, my father says, playing along, ‘that could prove awkward. I forgot to bring the fake papers in the name Coudray-Macouard.’

‘I suspect he’s taking us to the Rue Lauriston to visit his friends Bonny and Lafont.’

‘I think you’re wrong: I think he’s heading for the Gestapo headquarters on Avenue Foch.’

‘Maybe Rue des Saussaies for an identity check?’

‘The first red light we come to, we make a run for it.’

‘Impossible, the doors are locked.’

‘What then?’

‘Wait it out. Keep your chin up.’

‘We could probably pass for Jewish collaborators. Sell them Fontainebleau forest at a bargain price. I’ll tell them I worked at Je suis partout before the war. A quick phone call to Brasillach or Laubreux or Rebatet and we’re home free. .’

‘You think they’ll let us make a phone call?’

‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll sign up to join the LVF or the Milice , show a little goodwill. In a green uniform and an alpine beret we can make it to the Spanish border. After that. .’

‘Freedom. .’

‘Shh! He’s listening. .’

‘He looks like Darnand, don’t you think?’

‘If it is him, we’ve really got problems. The Milice are bound to give us a tough time.’

‘I don’t like to say, but I think I was right. . we’re taking the motorway heading west. . the headquarters of the Milice is in Versailles. . We’re really in the shit!’

At the hotel bar, we sat drinking Irish coffee, my father was smoking his Upmann cigar. How did the Splendid differ from the Claridge, from the George V, and every other cara-vanserai in Paris and Europe? How much longer can grand hotels and Pullman cars protect me from France? When all is said and done, these goldfish bowls made me sick. But the resolutions I had made gave me a little hope. I would sign up to study lettres supérieures at the Lycée de Bordeaux. When I passed my entrance exam, I would be careful not to sign Rastignac, from the heights of the Butte Montmartre. I had nothing in common with this gallant little Frenchman. ‘Now, Paris, it’s just you and me!’ Only paymasters from Saint-Flour or Libourne could be so starry-eyed. No, Paris was too much like me. An artificial flower in the middle of France. I was counting on Bordeaux to teach me true values, to put me in touch with the land. After I graduated, I would apply for a post as a provincial schoolteacher. I would divide my days between a dusty classroom and the Café du Commerce. I would play cards with colonels. On Sunday afternoons, I would listen to old mazurkas from the bandstand in the town square. I would fall in love with the mayor’s wife, we’d meet on Thursdays in a hôtel de passe in the next town. It would all depend on the nearest country town. I would serve France by educating her children. I would belong to the battalion of the ‘black hussars’ of truth, to quote Péguy, whom I could count among my colleagues. Gradually I would forget my shameful origins, the dishonourable name Schlemilovitch, Torquemada, Himmler and so many other things.

Rue Sainte-Catherine, people turned as we passed. Probably because of my father’s purple suit, his Kentucky green shirt and the same old shoes with the astrakhan spats. I fondly wished a policeman would stop us. I would have justified myself once and for all to the French, tirelessly explaining that for twenty years we had been corrupted by one of their own, a man from Alsace. He insisted that the Jew would not exist if goys did not condescend to notice him. And so we are forced to attract their attention by wearing garish clothes. For us, as Jews, it is a matter of life and death.

The headmaster of the lycée invited us into his office. He seemed to doubt whether the son of this dago could genuinely want to study lettres supérieures . His own son — Monsieur le proviseur was proud of his son — had spent the holidays tirelessly swotting up on his Maquet-et-Roger 2. I felt like telling the headmaster that, alas, I was a Jew. Hence: always top of the class.

The headmaster handed me an anthology of Greek orators and told me to open the book at random. I had to gloss a passage by Aeschines. I acquitted myself brilliantly. I went so far as to translate the text into Latin.

The headmaster was dumbfounded. Was he really ignorant of the keenness, the intelligence of Jews? Had he really forgotten the great writers we had given France: Montaigne, Racine, Saint-Simon, Sartre, Henry Bordeaux, René Bazin, Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Céline. . On the spot, he suggested I skip the first year and enrolled me straight into the second year — khâgne .

‘Congratulations, Schlemilovitch,’ he said, his voice quavering with emotion.

After we had left the lycée, I rebuked my father for his obsequiousness, his Turkish Delight unctuousness in dealing with the proviseur .

‘What are you thinking, playing Mata Hari in the office of a French bureaucrat? I could excuse your doe eyes and your obsequiousness if it was an SS executioner you were trying to charm! But doing your belly dance in front of that good man! He was hardly going to eat you, for Christ’s sake! Here, I’ll make you suffer!’