He recalled having walked along a road at the end of which he could see the Moulin-Rouge. He had not dared go further than the central reservation of the boulevard for fear of getting lost. As a matter of fact, it would only have required a few steps for him to find himself at the spot where he was now. And the thought of this gave him a strange sensation, as though time was irrelevant. It happened fifteen years ago, he was walking on his own, very near here, in the July sunshine, and now it was December. Every time he left the Aero, it was already dark. But suddenly, for him, the seasons and the years merged together. He decided to walk as far as rue Laferrière—the same route he used to take in the past—straight on, keep straight on. The streets were on a slope and, as he walked further down, he felt certain that he was going backwards in time. The darkness would grow brighter at the bottom of rue Fontaine, it would be daylight and there would be that July sunshine. Annie had not merely written the address on the sheet of paper folded in four, but the words: SO YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, in her large handwriting, an old-fashioned handwriting that was no longer taught at the school in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt.
The slope on rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette was as steep as the previous street. You just had to let yourself glide along. A little further down. On the left. Only once had they gone back together to their room when it was dark. It was the day before they set off by train. She had her hand on his head or on his neck, a protective gesture to assure herself that he really was walking beside her. They were returning from the Hôtel Terrass beyond the bridge that overlooks the cemetery. They had gone into this hotel, and he had recognised Roger Vincent, in an armchair, at the back of the foyer. They sat down with him. Annie and Roger Vincent were talking to one another. They forgot he was there. He listened to them without understanding what they were saying. They were speaking too quietly. At one moment, Roger Vincent repeated the same thing: Annie must “take the train” and she must “leave her car in the garage”. She disagreed, but she had eventually said to him: “Yes, you’re right, it’s more sensible.” Roger Vincent had turned to him and had smiled. “Here, this is for you.” And he had handed him a navy-blue folder and told him to open it. “Your passport.” He had recognised himself on the photograph, one of those they had had taken in the Photomaton booth where, on each occasion, the extreme brightness of the light had made him blink. He could read his first name and his date of birth on the opening page, but the surname was not his, it was Annie’s: ASTRAND. Roger Vincent had told him in a solemn voice that he must use the same name as the “person accompanying him”, and this explanation had been enough for him.
On the way back, Annie and he walked along the central reservation of the boulevard. After the Moulin-Rouge, they had taken a small street, on the left, at the end of which stood the front of a garage. They had passed through a workshop that smelt of darkness and petrol. At the very back was a glass-panelled room. A young man was standing behind a desk, the same young man who sometimes came to Saint-Leu-la-Forêt and had taken him to the Cirque Médrano one afternoon. They spoke about Annie’s car, which could be seen, over there, parked alongside the wall.
He had left the garage with her, it was dark and he had wanted to read the words on the neon sign: “Grand Garage de la Place Blanche”, the same words that he read again, fifteen years later, leaning out of the window of his bedroom at 11 rue Coustou. When he had switched off the light and was trying to get to sleep, reflections in the shape of trellis work were projected onto the wall, opposite his bed. He went to bed early, because of the building works that started up again at about seven o’clock in the morning. It was difficult for him to write after a bad night. In his drowsiness, he could hear Annie’s voice, more and more distant, and all he could understand was the end of a sentence: “. . . SO YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD . . .” On waking up, in this bedroom, he realised that it had taken him fifteen years to cross the street.
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, wh
o 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.
“Don’t worry, Jean dear,” says Annie, smiling at him. These words reassure him. They are still sitting in the same seats after lunch. No-one else in the restaurant car. The train stops at a large station. He asks her whether they have arrived. Not yet, Annie tells him. She explains to him that it must be six o’clock in the evening and that it is always this time when you arrive in this city. Some years later, he would frequently catch the same train and he would know the name of the city where one arrives at dusk in winter. Lyon. She has taken a pack of cards from her handbag and she wants to teach him how to play patience, but he does not understand it at all.
He has never made such a long journey. No-one has come to disturb them. “They’ve forgotten us,” Annie tells him. And the memories he still has of all this have also been worn away by forgetfulness, apart from a few more distinct images when the film slips and eventually gets stuck on one of them. Annie rummages in her bag and hands him the navy-blue folder—his passport—so that he remembers his new name carefully. In a few days’ time they will cross “the frontier” to go to another country and to a city that is called “Rome”. “Remember this name carefully: Rome. And I swear to you that they won’t be able to find us in Rome. I’ve got friends there.” He does not really understand what she is saying, but because she bursts out laughing, he starts to laugh as well. She plays patience again and he watches her laying the cards in rows on the table. The train stops once more at a large station, and he asks her whether they have arrived. No. She has given him the pack of cards, and he enjoys sorting them out according to their colours. Spades. Diamonds. Clubs. Hearts. She tells him that it is time to go and find the suitcases. They go back along the corridors of the coaches in the opposite direction, and she holds him sometimes by the neck, sometimes by the arm. The corridors and the compartments are empty. She says that all the passengers have got off before them. A ghost train. They find their suitcases in the same place at the entrance to the coach. It is dark and they are on the deserted platform of a very small station. They go down a lane that runs alongside the railway track. She stops in front of a door hollowed out of a surrounding wall and she takes a key from her handbag. They walk down a path in the dark. A large white house with lights on in the windows. They go into a room that is very brightly lit and has black and white tiling. In his memory, however, he confuses this house with the one in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, probably because of the short time he spent there with Annie. The bedroom he slept in down there, for instance, seems to him to be identical to the one in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt.
Twenty years later, he happened to be on the Côte d’Azur and he had thought he recognised the little station and the lane they had walked down between the railway track and the walls of the houses. Èze-sur-Mer. He had even questioned a man with grey hair who ran a restaurant on the beach. “That must be the old Villa Embiricos on Cap Estel . . .” He had jotted down the name just in case, but when the man added, “A Monsieur Vincent had bought it during the war. Afterwards it was impounded. Now, they’ve turned it into a hotel”, he felt afraid. No, he would not return to places for the sake of recognising them. He was too frightened that the grief, buried away until then, might unfurl through the years like a Bickford fuse.
They never go to the beach. In the afternoons, they stay in the garden, from where you can see the sea. She found a car in the garage of the house, a car that was bigger than the one at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. In the evenings, she takes him to have dinner in the restaurant. They take the Corniche road. It is in this car, she tells him, that they will cross “the frontier” and drive as far as “Rome”. On the last day, she would often leave the garden to make telephone calls and she seemed anxious. They are sitting opposite one another beneath a veranda, and he is watching her playing patience. She leans over and she frowns. She appears to be thinking a great deal before laying down one card after another, but he notices a tear trickling down her cheek, so small that you can hardly see it, as on that day, at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, when he was sitting in the car beside her. In the night, when she speaks on the telephone in the bedroom next door, he can hear only the sound of her voice and not the words. In the morning, he is woken up by the rays of the sun that peep into his bedroom through the curtains and make orange patches on the wall. To begin with, it is almost nothing, the crunch of tyres on the gravel, the sound of an engine growing fainter, and you need a little more time to realise that there is no-one left in the house apart from you.
About the Author
PATRICK MODIANO was born in Paris in 1945. His first novel, La Place de l’étoile, was published in 1968 when he was just twenty-two and his works have now been translated into over thirty languages around the world. He won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2012, the 2010 Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institut de France for lifetime achievement, t
he 1978 Prix Goncourt for Rue de boutique obscures, and the 1972 Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française for Les boulevards de ceinture. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014.
EUAN CAMERON’s translations include works by Julien Green, Simone de Beauvoir and Paul Morand, and biographies of Marcel Proust and Irène Némirovsky.
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