La Place De L'Étoile

by Patrick Modiano

  They had hoped to discover a new Proust, a rough-hewn Yid polished by contact with their culture, they came expecting sweet music only to be deafened by ominous tom-toms. Now they know where they stand with me. I can die happy.

  I was terribly disappointed by the reviews the following morning. They were patronising. I had to face facts. I would meet with no hostility from my peers, excepting the occasional Lady Bountiful and old men who looked like Colonel de la Rocque. The newspapers spent even more column inches concerned with my state of mind. The French have an overweening affection for whores who write memoirs, pederast poets, Arab pimps, Negro junkies and Jewish provocateurs. Clearly, there was no morality any more. The Jew was a prized commodity, we were overly respected. I could graduate from Saint-Cyr and become Maréchal Schlemilovitch: there would be no repeat of the Dreyfus Affair.

  After this fiasco, all that was left was for me to disappear like Maurice Sachs. To leave Paris for good. I bequeathed a part of my inheritance to my mother. I remembered that I had a father in America. I suggested he might like to visit me if he wanted to inherit 350,000 dollars. The answer came by return of post: he arranged to meet me in Paris and the Hôtel Continental. I was keen to pamper my tuberculosis. To become a prudent, polite young man. A real little Aryan. The problem was I didn’t like sanatoriums. I preferred to travel. My woppish soul longed for beautiful, exotic locations.

  I felt that the French provinces would provide these more effectively than Mexico or the Sunda Islands. And so I turned my back on my cosmopolitan past. I was keen to get to know the land, with paraffin lamps, and the song of the thickets and the forests.

  And then I thought about my mother, who frequently toured the provinces. The Karinthy Theatre Company, light comedy guaranteed. Since she spoke French with a Balkan accent, she played Russian princesses, Polish countesses and Hungarian horsewomen. Princess Berezovo in Aurillac. Countess Tomazoff in Béziers. Baronne Gevatchaldy in Saint-Brieuc. The Karinthy Theatre Company tours all over France.

  * * *

  * ‘I, Senora, your beloved, am the son of the learned and glorious Don Isaac Ben Israëç, Rabbi of the synagogue of Saragossa.’

  II

  My father was wearing an eau de Nil suit, a green-striped shirt, a red tie and astrakhan shoes. I had just made his acquaintance in the Ottoman Lounge of the Hôtel Continental. Having signed various papers making over a part of my fortune to him, I said:

  ‘In short, your New York business ventures are a dismal flop? What were you thinking, becoming chairman and managing director of Kaleidoscope Ltd.? You should have noticed that the kaleidoscope market is falling by the day! Children prefer space rockets, electromagnetism, arithmetic! Dreams aren’t selling any more, old man. And let me be frank, you’re a Jew, which means you have no head for commerce or for business. Leave that honour to the French. If you knew how to read, I would show you the elegant comparison I drew up between Peugeot and Citroën: on the one hand, a provincial man from Montbéliard, miserly, discreet, prosperous; on the other, André Citroën, a tragic Jewish adventurer who gambles for high stakes in casinos. Come, come, you don’t have the makings of a captain of industry. This is all an act! You’re a tightrope walker, nothing more! There’s no point putting on an act, making feverish telephone calls to Madagascar, to Lichtenstein, to Tierra del Fuego! You’ll never offload your stock of kaleidoscopes.’

  My father wanted to visit Paris, where he had spent his youth. We had a couple of gin fizzes at Fouquet’s, at the Relais Plaza, at the bars of Le Meurice, the Saint James Albany, the Élysée-Park, the Georges V, the Lancaster. This was his version of the provinces. While he puffed on a Partagas cigar, I was thinking about Touraine and the forest of Brocéliande. Where would I choose to live out my exile? Tours? Nevers? Poitiers? Aurillac? Pézenas? La Souterraine? Everything I knew of the French provinces I had learned from the pages of the Guide Michelin and various authors such as François Mauriac.

  I had been particularly moved by a text by this writer from the Landes: Bordeaux, of Adolescence. I remember Mauriac’s surprise when I passionately recited his beautiful prose: ‘That town in which we were born, in which we were a child, an adolescent, is the only one we must forbear to judge. It is part of us, it is ourselves, we carry it within us. The history of Bordeaux is the history of my body and my soul.’ Did my old friend understand that I envied him his adolescence, the Marianist Brothers school, the Place des Quinconces, the scents of balmy heather, of warm sand, of resin? What adolescence could I, Raphäel Schlemilovitch, recount other than that of miserable little stateless Jew? I would not be Gérard de Nerval, nor François Mauriac, nor even Marcel Proust. I had no Valois to stir my soul, no Guyenne, no Combray. I had no Tante Léonie. Doomed to Fouquet’s, to the Relais Plaza, to the Élysée Park where I drink disgusting English liqueurs in the company of a fat New York Jew: my father. Alcohol fosters a need in him to confide, as it had Maurice Sachs on the day we first met. Their fates are the same with one small difference: Sachs read Saint-Simon, while my father read Maurice Dekobra. Born in Caracas to a Sephardic Jewish family, he hurriedly fled the Americas to escape the police of the dictator of the Galapagos islands whose daughter he had seduced. In France, he became secretary to Stavinsky. In those days, he looked very dapper: somewhere between Valentino and Novarro with a touch of Douglas Fairbanks, enough to turn the heads of pretty Aryan girls. Ten years later his photograph was among those at the anti-Jewish exhibition at the Palais Berlitz, accompanied by the caption: ‘Devious Jew. He could pass for a South American.’

  My father was not without a certain sense of humour: one afternoon, he went to the Palais Berlitz and offered to act as a guide for several visitors to the exhibition. When they came to the photo, he cried: ‘Peek-a-boo! Here I am!’. The Jewish penchant for showing off cannot be overstated. In fact, my father had a certain sympathy for the Germans since they patronised his favourite haunts: the Continental, the Majestic, Le Meurice. He lost no opportunity to rub shoulders with them in Maxim’s, Philippe, Gaffner, Lola Tosch and other nightclubs thanks to false papers in the name Jean Cassis de Coudray-Macouard.

  He lived in a tiny garret room on the Rue des Saussaies directly opposite the Gestapo. Late into the night he would sit up reading Bagatelles pour un massacre, which he found very funny. To my stupefaction, he could recite whole pages from the book. He had bought it because of the title, thinking it was a crime novel.

  In July 1944, he managed to sell Fontainebleau forest to the Germans using a Baltic baron as a middleman. With the profits of this delicate operation, he immigrated to the United States where he set up the company Kaleidoscope Ltd.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked, blowing a cloud of Partagas smoke into my face, ‘Tell me about your life.’

  ‘Haven’t you been reading the papers?’ I said wearily, ‘I thought Confidential magazine in New York devoted a special issue to me? Basically, I’ve decided to give up this shallow, decadent cosmopolitan life. I’m retiring to the provinces, the French countryside, back to the land. I’ve just settled on Bordeaux, the Guyenne, as a rest cure for my nerves. It’s also a little homage to an old friend, François Mauriac. I’m guessing the name means nothing to you?’

  We had one for the road in the bar at the Ritz.

  ‘May I accompany you to this city you mentioned earlier?’ he asked out of the blue, ‘you’re my son, we should at least take a trip together. And besides, thanks to you, I’m now the fourth-richest man in America!’

  ‘By all means come along if you like. After that, you can go back to New York.’

  He kissed me on the forehead and I felt tears come to my eyes. This fat man with his motley clothes was genuinely moving.

  Arm in arm, we crossed the Place Vendôme. My father sang snatches of Bagatelles pour un massacre in a fine bass voice. I was thinking about the terrible things I had read during my childhood. Particularly the series How to kill your father by André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre (the ‘Read Me’ series for boys). Breto
n advised boys to station themselves at the window of their house on the Avenue Foch and slaughter the first passing pedestrian. This man necessarily being their father, a préfet de police or a textile manufacturer. Sartre temporarily forsook the well-heeled arrondissements for the Communist-controlled suburbs of the banlieue rouge: here, middle-class boys were urged to approach the brawniest labourers, apologise for being bourgeois brats, drag them back to the Avenue Foch where they would smash the Sèvres china, kill the father, at which point the young man would politely ask to be raped. This latter method, while exhibiting greater perversity, the rape following the murder, was also more grandiose: the proletariat of all countries were being called upon to settle a family spat. It was recommended that young men insult their father before killing him. Some who made a name for themselves in such literature developed charming expressions. For example: ‘Families, I despise you’ (the son of a French pastor). ‘I’ll fight the next war in a German uniform.’ ‘I shit upon the French army’ (the son of a French préfet de police). ‘You are a bastard’ (the son of a French naval officer). I gripped my father’s arm more tightly. There was nothing to distinguish between us. Isn’t that right, my podgy papa? How could I kill you? I love you.

  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 caravanserai 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*. 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!’

  I broke into a run. He followed me as far as Tourny, he did not even ask me to stop. When he was out of breath, he probably thought I would take advantage of his tiredness and give him the slip forever. He said:

  ‘A bracing little run is good for the heart . . . It’ll give us an appetite . . .’

  He didn’t even stand up for himself. He was trying to outwit his sadness, trying to tame it. Something he learned in the pogroms, probably. My father mopped his forehead with his pink buckskin tie. How could he think I would desert him, leave him alone, helpless in this city of distinguished tradition, in this illustrious night that smelled of vintage wine and English tobacco? I took him by the arm. He was a whipped cur.

  Midnight. I open the bedroom window a crack. The summer air, ‘Stranger on the shore’, drifts up to us. My father says:

  ‘There must be a nightclub around here somewhere.’

  ‘I didn’t come to Bordeaux to play the lothario. And anyway, you can expect meagre pickings: two or three degenerate kids from the Bordeaux bourgeoisie, a couple of English tourists . . .’