So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood

by Patrick Modiano

  Daragane feared that the man might ask him questions about a period of his life he no longer thought about. And if so, he would not have much to tell him. But he remained silent. After a while, the man asked him:

  “I can no longer remember what that place near Paris was . . .”

  “Neither can I.” And he regretted having answered him in such a curt manner.

  Yes, he would eventually recall the precise date of that particular autumn. But for the time being, he was still sitting on the edge of the bed, next to this Chantal, and it seemed to him that he had woken up after suddenly dozing. He tried to pick up the thread of the conversation.

  “Do you often wear this dress?”

  He pointed to the black satin dress with the two yellow swallows.

  “I found it here when I rented the room. It must have belonged to the previous lodger.”

  “Or perhaps to you, in an earlier life.”

  She frowned and stared at him suspiciously. She said to him:

  “We can go and make the photocopies.”

  She stood up, and Daragane had the impression that she wished to leave the room as quickly as possible. What was she frightened of? Perhaps he should not have mentioned that dress to her.

  WHEN HE GOT BACK HOME, HE WONDERED WHETHER he had not been dreaming. It was probably due to the Indian summer and the heat.

  She had dragged him along to a stationery shop on boulevard Voltaire, at the back of which was a photocopier. The typewritten sheets were as flimsy as the paper once used to send letters “by airmail”.

  They had left the shop and had gone a little way down the boulevard. It was as though she did not want to leave him again. Perhaps she was afraid that once they parted there would be no further sign of him and that Gilles Ottolini might never know who the mysterious Torstel was. But he, too, would be quite happy to remain in her company, so much did the prospect of returning on his own to his apartment make him feel apprehensive.

  “If you read the dossier this evening, it may refresh your memory . . .” and she pointed to the orange cardboard folder that he was holding, which contained the photocopies. She had even insisted that the photograph of the child be reproduced. “You can call me any time tonight . . . Gilles will not be back until tomorrow afternoon. I’d very much like to know what you think of all that . . .”

  And she had taken from her wallet a visiting card in the name of Chantal Grippay, with her address, 118 rue de Charonne, and her mobile phone number.

  “I must go home now . . . Gilles is going to call me and I’ve forgotten to take my mobile.”

  They had made an about-turn and walked in the direction of rue de Charonne. Neither of them said anything. They had no need to talk. She seemed to find it natural that they should walk side by side, and it had occurred to Daragane that if he took her arm she would let him do so, as though they had known one another for a long time. At the staircase to the Charonne métro station, they had gone their separate ways.

  Now, in his study, he was leafing through the pages of the “dossier”, but he did not feel like reading them immediately.

  To begin with, they had been typed without double spacing, and this mass of printed letters piled one on top of the other discouraged him from the start. And then, in the end, he had identified him, this Torstel. On the way back from Le Tremblay that Sunday in autumn, the man wanted to drop each of them home. But Chantal and Paul had got out at Montparnasse. From there, the métro was direct to where they lived. He stayed in the car because the man had told him that he lived not far from square du Graisivaudan, where he, Daragane, had this room.

  They kept silent throughout most of the journey. The man had eventually said to him:

  “I must have been to this house near Paris two or three times . . . It was your mother who took me there . . .”

  Daragane had not replied. He really did try to avoid thinking about this distant period of his life. And his mother, he did not even know whether she was still alive.

  The man had stopped the car by square du Graisivaudan. “Give my best wishes to your mother . . . We haven’t seen one another for a very long time . . . We were part of a kind of club, with some friends . . . the Chrysalis Club . . . Listen, if by any chance she wants to get in touch with me . . .”

  He handed him a visiting card on which were written “Guy Torstel” and—as far as he could remember—the address where he worked—a bookshop in the Palais-Royal. And a phone number. Later on, Daragane had lost the visiting card. But he had nevertheless copied out the name and the phone number—why?—in the address book he had at the time.

  He sat at his desk. Beneath the pages of the “dossier”, he discovered the photocopy of page 47 of his novel, Le Noir de l’été, where there was a mention, apparently, of this Torstel. The name was underlined, by Gilles Ottolini no doubt. He read:

  In the Galerie de Beaujolais, there was indeed a bookshop behind whose window some art books were displayed. He went in. A dark-haired woman was sitting at her desk.

  “I should like to talk to Monsieur Morihien.”

  “Monsieur Morihien is away,” she told him. “But would you like to speak to Monsieur Torstel?”

  That was all. Not much. The name was not mentioned except on page 47 of his novel. And that night he really didn’t feel like searching among the typewritten pages without double-spacing of the “Torstel” file. A needle in a haystack.

  He recalled that on the lost visiting card there had indeed been the address of a bookshop, in the Palais-Royal. And perhaps the telephone number was that of the bookshop. But after more than forty-five years, these two pathetic details were not enough to set him on the trail of a man who was now no more than a name.

  He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. He had decided to make an effort and to take himself back in time, if only for a moment. He had begun the novel, Le Noir de l’été, in the autumn, the same autumn when he had gone to Le Tremblay one Sunday. He remembered he had written the first page of the novel that Sunday evening in the room in square du Graisivaudan. A few hours earlier, when Torstel had been driving along the banks of the Marne and then crossed the Vincennes woods, he really had felt affected by autumn: the mist, the smell of damp earth, the paths strewn with dead leaves. The word “Tremblay” would always be associated for him now with that particular autumn.

  And so would the name Torstel which he had once used in the novel. Simply because of its resonance. That is what Torstel conjured up for him. There was no need to look any further. It was all he had to say. Gilles Ottolini would no doubt be disappointed. Too bad. After all, he was not obliged to give him any explanation. It was none of his business.

  Almost eleven o’clock in the evening. When he was at home on his own at that time, he often experienced what is known as “momentary flagging”. Then he would go into a neighbourhood café that stayed open very late at night. The bright light, the hubbub of noise, the comings and goings, the conversations in which he deluded himself he was participating, all this helped him overcome his momentary flagging after a short while. But for some time, he had no longer needed to resort to this expedient. It was enough for him to look out of his study window at the tree planted in the courtyard of the adjoining building, which retained its leaves much later than the others, until November. He had been told that it was a hornbeam, or an aspen, he was not sure. He regretted all the lost years when he had not paid sufficient attention to either the trees or the flowers. He, who no longer read any books other than Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, suddenly recalled a passage from the memoirs of a French philosopher. She had been shocked by what a woman had said during the war: “After all, the war doesn’t alter my relationship with a blade of grass.” She probably reckoned that this woman was frivolous or indifferent. But for him, Daragane, the phrase had another meaning: in periods of disaster or mental anxiety, all you need do is look for a fixed point in order to keep your balance and not topple overboard. Your gaze alights on a blade of grass, a tree,
the petals of a flower, as though you were clinging on to a buoy. This hornbeam—or this aspen—on the other side of his windowpane reassured him. And even though it was almost eleven o’clock at night, he felt comforted by its silent presence. Therefore, he might as well be done with it straight away and read the typed pages. He had to face the facts: Gilles Ottolini’s voice and physique had at first glance struck him as those of a blackmailer. He had wanted to overcome this prejudice. But had he really managed to do so?

  He removed the paperclip that held the sheets together. The photocopying paper was not the same as the originals. He remembered when Chantal Grippay was doing the photocopying how flimsy and transparent the pages were. They had reminded him of “airmail” notepaper. But that was not entirely correct. It was rather that they had the same transparency as the onionskin paper used for police interrogations. And besides, Chantal Grippay had told him: “Gilles was able to obtain information from the police . . .”

  He cast a last glance at the foliage of the tree, in front of him, before beginning his reading.

  The print was tiny, as though it had been typed on one of those portable machines that no longer exist nowadays. Daragane felt as though he was diving into a thick, indigestible broth. Occasionally, he would skip a line and would then have to go back again, with the help of his index finger. Rather than a coherent report, it consisted of some very brief notes, placed end to end in the greatest possible muddle, concerning the murder of a certain Colette Laurent.

  The notes retraced her career path. Arrival in Paris when very young from provincial France. Job in a nightclub in rue de Ponthieu. Room in a hotel in the Odéon district. She goes around with students from the École des Beaux-Arts. List of people questioned and whom she may have met in the night club, list of students at the Beaux-Arts. Body found in a hotel bedroom, 15th arrondissement. Interrogation of the owner of the hotel.

  So was this the news item that interested Ottolini? He broke off from his reading. Colette Laurent. This apparently anodyne name aroused an echo in him, but too muted for him to be able to describe it. He seemed to have read the date: 1951, but he did not feel like verifying this among the words that were all huddled together and made you feel as if you were suffocating.

  1951. More than half a century had gone by since then, and the witnesses to this news item, and even the murderer himself, were no longer alive. Gilles Ottolini had got there too late. This shit-stirrer would be left unsatisfied. Daragane regretted that he had described him in such a crude way. A few more pages to go. He still experienced this nervousness and this apprehension that had come over him when he had opened the “dossier”.

  He gazed for a moment at the leaves of the hornbeam, which were quivering gently, as though the tree was breathing in its sleep. Yes, this tree was his friend, and he recalled the title of a collection of poems an eight-year-old girl had had published: Arbre, mon ami. He was jealous of this girl, because he had been the same age as her and because he, too, wrote poems at the time. What period did this date from? From a year during his childhood almost as long ago as the year 1951 in the course of which Colette Laurent had been murdered.

  Once again, the tiny letters without double-spacing danced before his eyes. And he had to slide his forefinger along so as not to lose the thread. At last, the name Guy Torstel. It was linked to three names among which he was surprised to recognise that of his mother. The two others were: Bob Bugnand and Jacques Perrin de Lara. He vaguely remembered them, and this too went back to the distant period when the girl of his own age had published Arbre, mon ami. The first one, Bugnand, had the figure of a sportsman and wore beige. Dark-haired, he believed; and the other, a man with the large head of a Roman statue, who perched his elbow on marble fireplaces in an elegant pose when he spoke. Childhood memories often consist of small, trivial details that come from nowhere. Had these names attracted Ottolini’s attention and had he made a connection between them and he himself, Daragane? But no, certainly not. Firstly, his mother did not use the same surname as he did. The two others, Bugnand and Perrin de Lara, were lost in the mists of time, and Ottolini was too young for them to mean anything to him.

  The more he read, the more he had the sense that this “dossier” was a sort of ragbag in which bits and pieces from two different investigations that had not taken place in the same year had been thrown together, since the date was now given as 1952. However, between the notes from 1951 dealing with the murder of Colette Laurent and those on the two last pages, he thought he could detect a slender unifying thread: “Colette Laurent” had visited “a house in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt” where “a certain Annie Astrand” lived. This house was apparently under police supervision—but for what reason? Among the names mentioned, those of Torstel, his mother, Bugnand and Perrin de Lara. Two other names were not unknown to him. Roger Vincent and in particular that of the woman who lived in the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, “a certain Annie Astrand”.

  He would have liked to put these muddled notes into some sort of order, but this seemed beyond his powers. What is more, at this late hour of the night, one often comes up with some peculiar notions: the target whom Gilles Ottolini had in mind when he had gathered all the notes in his file, well it was not some old news item, but he himself, Daragane. Of course, Ottolini had not found the angle to fire from, he groped around, he got lost along crossed paths, he was incapable of reaching the heart of the matter. Daragane could sense him prowling around him in search of a way in. Perhaps he had gathered together all these disparate elements in the hope that Daragane would react to one of them, like those police officers who begin an interrogation with petty remarks in order to lull the suspect’s defences. Then, when the person feels safe, they suddenly fire the crucial question at him.

  His eyes settled once more on the leaves of the hornbeam tree and he felt ashamed of such notions. He was losing his composure. The few pages he had just read were merely an inept draft, an accumulation of details that concealed what was most important. One name alone disturbed him and drew him like a magnet: Annie Astrand. But it was barely legible amid these words jumbled together without double-spacing. Annie Astrand. A faraway voice picked up late at night on the radio and you persuade yourself that she is speaking to you in order to give you a message. Someone had told him one day that you forget the voices of those whom you have been close to in the past very quickly. Yet if he were to hear the voice of Annie Astrand today, in the street, he was certain he would recognise it.

  When he was next in Ottolini’s company, he would be very careful not to draw attention to this name: Annie Astrand, but he was not sure whether he would see him again. If need be, he would write a very brief note to give him the sparse information about Guy Torstel. A man who looked after a bookshop in the Galerie de Beaujolais, adjoining the Palais-Royal gardens. Yes, he had met him only once, almost fifty years ago, one Sunday evening in autumn at Le Tremblay. He could even carry kindness a step further by providing him with a few additional details about the two others, Bugnand and Perrin de Lara. Friends of his mother, as Guy Torstel must have been. In the year when he read the poems in Arbre, mon ami and when he felt envious of that girl of his own age who was the author, Bugnand and Perrin de Lara—and perhaps Torstel too—always carried a book in their pocket, like a missal, a book to which they appeared to attach great importance. He remembered its title: Fabrizio Lupo. One day, Perrin de Lara had said to him in a solemn voice: “When you’re grown up, you too will read Fabrizio Lupo”, one of those remarks that will continue to sound mysterious until the end of one’s life, because of its resonance. Later on, he had searched for this book, but unfortunately he had never found a copy of it and he had never read Fabrizio Lupo. He would not need to bring up these minute recollections. The likeliest outcome was that he would eventually be rid of Gilles Ottolini. Telephone calls that he would not answer. Letters, some of which would be registered. Most annoying of all would be that Ottolini would station himself outside the building and, since he did not k
now the code, he would wait for someone to push open the porte cochère and slip in behind him. He would come and ring at his door. He would also have to disconnect this bell. Every time he left his home, he would run into Gilles Ottolini who would accost him and follow him in the street. And he would have no alternative but to take refuge in the nearest police station. But the cops would not take his explanations seriously.

  It was almost one o’clock in the morning, and he reckoned that at that time of day, in the silence and solitude, one begins to worry unduly. He gradually calmed down, and even burst out into a fit of mad laughter at the thought of Ottolini’s face, one of those faces that are so narrow that even when they are standing opposite you, you would think they were in profile.

  The typed pages were scattered over his desk. He picked up a pencil that had red lead at one end and blue lead at the other, which he used to correct his manuscripts. He scored through the pages with the blue pencil as he went along and he drew a circle in red round the name: ANNIE ASTRAND.

  AT ABOUT TWO O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, THE TELEPHONE rang. He had fallen asleep on the sofa.

  “Hello . . . Monsieur Daragane? This is Chantal Grippay . . .”

  He hesitated for a moment. He had just had a dream in which Annie Astrand’s face had appeared to him, and that had not happened to him for more than thirty or so years.

  “You’ve read the photocopies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forgive me for phoning so late . . . but I was so eager for you to give me your opinion . . . Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We must see one another before Gilles returns. May I call at your home?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Now.”

  He told her the address, the entry code, the floor. Had he surfaced from his dream? Annie Astrand’s face had seemed so close a moment ago . . . She was at the wheel of her car, outside the house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, he was sitting on the front seat beside her, and she was speaking to him, but he could not hear the sound of her voice.