The Black Notebook

by Patrick Modiano

  She pulled me to the right, under the arcades of Rue de Castiglione.

  “Let me take you to dinner . . . It’s not too far from here . . . We can walk . . .”

  At that hour, the area was deserted and the echo of our footsteps reverberated beneath the arcades. Around us reigned the kind of silence that ought to have been broken not by a passing car but by the clack of hooves from a carriage horse. I don’t know whether I thought this at the time or whether the idea occurred to me just now, as I write these lines. We were lost in the nocturnal Paris of Charles Cros and his dog Satan, of Tristan Corbière and Jeanne Duval. Traffic flowed around the Opéra, and we were once again in the Paris of the twentieth century, which today seems so far away . . . We followed Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, which ended at Trinité Church, its dark façade like a giant bird at rest.

  “We’re almost there,” she said. “It’s at the beginning of Rue Blanche . . .”

  Last night, I dreamed that we were following the same route, probably because of what I had just written. I heard her voice, “It’s at the beginning of Rue Blanche,” and I slowly turned toward her. I said:

  “At number 23?”

  She appeared not to hear. We walked at a steady pace, her arm in mine.

  “I once knew a girl named Mireille Sampierry who lived at 23 Rue Blanche.”

  She didn’t react. She remained silent, as if I hadn’t said a word, or as if the distance between us in time was so great that my voice could no longer reach her.

  But that evening, I didn’t yet know the name Mireille Sampierry. We skirted the square in front of the church.

  “You’ll see . . . It’s a place I really like . . . I used to go there a lot when I lived on Rue Blanche . . .”

  I remember that, by association, I thought of Baroness Blanche. I had taken notes about her several days earlier, in my notebook, copying a page from a history of Paris under Louis XV: it was a report that summarized the little information we possess about the baroness’s chaotic and adventurous life.

  “Do you know why the street is named that?” I asked her. “It’s because of Baroness Blanche.”

  A few days before, she had wanted to know what I was writing in my notebook, and I had read her my notes about that woman.

  “So I used to live on ‘Baroness Blanche Street’?” she said with a smile.

  The restaurant was located at the corner of Rue Blanche and the small side street that led back to Trinité Church. The curtains were drawn behind its front windows. She went in ahead of me, as if entering a familiar place. A large bar all the way in back, and on either side a row of round tables with white tablecloths. The walls looked dark red because of the muted light. There were only two diners—a man and a woman—at a table near the bar, behind which stood a dark-haired man of about forty.

  “Well, look who’s here,” he said to Dannie, as if surprised to see her.

  She seemed embarrassed. She said to him:

  “I’ve been away from Paris all this time.”

  He greeted me with a brief nod. She introduced me:

  “A friend.”

  He seated us at a table near the door, perhaps so that we’d be left in peace, away from the other couple. But those two spoke very little, and in low voices.

  “It’s nice here,” she said to me. “I should have brought you here before.”

  It was the first time I saw her relax. Anywhere else in Paris I had been with her, I always noticed a hint of worry deep in her eyes.

  “I used to live a bit farther on . . . in a hotel . . . when I left the apartment on Avenue Félix-Faure . . .”

  As I write these lines, I read on the official form: “Mireille Sampierry, residing at 23 Rue Blanche, Paris 9th.” But number 23 isn’t a hotel: I checked. So why would she tell me she’d lived in a hotel? Why that seemingly innocuous lie? And that name, Mireille Sampierry? It’s too late to ask her now, except in my dreams, when different time periods merge together and I can ask whatever I please, thanks to what I gleaned from Langlais’s file. But there’s no point. She can’t hear me, and I experience that strange sensation of absence you feel when you dream about deceased friends and see them so near to you.

  “So, what have you been up to all this time?”

  He was standing at our table. He had served us two glasses of Cointreau, no doubt figuring that we shared the same tastes.

  “Trying to find work . . .”

  He flashed me a sarcastic look, as if he wasn’t taken in by any of this and wanted an ally.

  “But she hasn’t introduced us. André Falvet . . .”

  He shook my hand, still smiling. I stammered:

  “Jean . . .”

  I was always embarrassed to introduce myself and enter into someone’s life in that abrupt, almost military way, which practically requires you to stand at attention. To keep things less formal, I dispensed with my family name.

  “So, did you find any work?”

  The sarcasm wasn’t only in his look. It was as if he were talking to a child.

  “Yes . . . A secretarial job . . . with him . . .”

  She pointed to me.

  “Secretarial?”

  He nodded in false admiration.

  “Some people were asking after you. In fact they asked me a lot of questions, but not to worry, I kept mum . . . I told them you’d gone abroad . . .”

  “Well done.”

  She looked around her, probably to verify that the decor hadn’t changed. Then she turned to me:

  “It’s very peaceful in here . . .”

  It felt as if we were removed from everything, in a grotto that no one else could enter because a heavy red curtain had been drawn across the opening. The man and woman at the table in back had disappeared without my noticing, and now there was no way for me to know who they were.

  “Yes, very peaceful,” he said to her. “You forgot it’s our day off . . .”

  He headed back to the bar and, before going through the door that must have led to the kitchen:

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone for dinner this evening . . . I have to warn you, it’ll be pot luck.”

  She leaned toward me and our foreheads touched. She whispered:

  “He’s very nice . . . Nothing like those guys at the Unic Hôtel . . . You can trust him.”

  I did not understand at the time why she was trying to reassure me. The man’s name, André Falvet, appears in the file that Langlais gave me, and what a strange feeling, every time, when you learn things twenty years after the fact about people you once knew . . . You finally decipher, thanks to a secret code, what you had lived through in confusion and without really understanding . . . A car ride at night with the headlights off, and no matter how tightly you press your forehead against the window, you have no reference points. And besides, did you really ask that many questions about where you were going? Twenty years later, you follow the same path by day and finally see all the details surrounding you. But so what? It’s too late, and no one is left. André Falvet, a member of the Stéfani gang. Served time in Poissy prison. Dog breeder in Porcheville. Manager of Carrol’s Beach in La Garoupe. Restaurant La Passée, Boulevard Gouvion-Saint-Cyr. Le Sévigné, Rue Blanche.

  “We should come here more often,” she said to me.

  We did go back several times. The room was no longer empty, as it had been that first evening. Instead, all the tables were occupied by odd-looking customers, and I wondered if they were locals. Others were seated at the bar, speaking with the aforementioned André Falvet. Some of them are listed in Langlais’s file. Names, mere names, that I’d gladly copy down here, as a shot in the dark, but right now I’m not up to it. I’ll do it later, just to be on the safe side. You never know: you should always send out signals. The light was muted, as if the bulbs were of insufficient wattage. Or was the aforementioned Falvet trying to create a more intimate ambiance? As I write this, a thought occurs. The light was the same as in the apartment on Avenue Félix-Faure, where she had taken
me one evening, and also as in the country house in Feuilleuse, at dusk. As if the lamps had grown weaker over time. But sometimes, something clicks. Yesterday, I was alone in the street and a veil fell away. No more past, no more present—time stood still. Everything had recaptured its true light. It was about eight in the evening, in summer, and there was still sunlight at the bottom of Rue Blanche. They had placed two or three outdoor tables in front of the restaurant. The door was wide open on the street, and you could hear the din of conversation from the dining room. We were sitting at one of the outdoor tables, Dannie and I. The sun was making us squint.

  “I have to show you the hotel where I used to live, a bit farther on,” she said.

  “At number 23?”

  “Yes, number 23.”

  And she did not seem at all surprised that I should know the address.

  “But that’s not a hotel.”

  She didn’t answer, and it made no difference. She wanted to walk around the neighborhood before nightfall. But we had plenty of time ahead of us. Thanks to daylight saving time, the sun would still be up at ten o’clock. I even thought it would shine all night.

  A short while ago, I was in a bookstore on Rue de l’Odéon. Night had already fallen. Among the used books, I had discovered a novel with a scuffed red binding whose title was The Dream Is Over. The bookseller, at his counter, had just slipped the volume into a white plastic bag and was handing it to me when a woman entered the shop. She hadn’t shut the glass door behind her, as if she were in a hurry. A mixed-race woman my age, tall, wearing an old, rust-colored coat with a hanging belt. She was carrying a large shopping bag. She came up and plunked the bag on the counter.

  “You buy books?”

  She had asked the question abruptly, with an outmoded accent from the old Paris outskirts.

  “That depends,” said the bookseller.

  “An old lady sent me . . . I work for her . . .”

  She yanked the books from the large shopping bag: art books, deluxe volumes from the Pléïade series . . . A necklace and brooch were stuck to one of them, and she shoved them back in the bag. Her movements were staccato, and several banknotes fell out. She scooped them up and thrust them in a pocket of her coat.

  “Does this old lady live in the neighborhood?” asked the bookseller.

  “No . . . No . . . She lives in the seventeenth. She’s my employer . . .”

  “I’ll need her address,” said the bookseller.

  “What for?”

  She had suddenly turned aggressive. The necklace, the brooch, and the banknotes among the books made it look like a hasty robbery. The books were piled on the counter.

  “So, you don’t want them?”

  “Not right now,” said the bookseller.

  She threw them back into the shopping bag, furiously, one by one. The bookseller stared at their covers as if looking for bloodstains. Perhaps he figured she had murdered the old lady she called her “employer.”

  She shrugged and left the shop without shutting the door behind her. Afraid she would vanish, I ran out after her.

  The instant I had seen her in the bookstore, I had told myself she was the reincarnation of Jeanne Duval, or perhaps Jeanne Duval in the flesh. Her tall stature, old-style Parisian accent, and the large bag in which she stacked the books, jewelry, and banknotes corresponded perfectly to the few details I had read about her and had once jotted down in my black notebook. She was walking about ten yards ahead of me and she had a slight limp. I could have caught up with her, but I preferred to follow at a distance, to persuade myself it was indeed she. The belt of her coat was hanging down; she was carrying the shopping bag in her left hand, and its weight made her tilt slightly to one side. The lamps on the building façades had not changed since the nineteenth century and barely lit the street. I was afraid I might lose sight of her. At the Carrefour de l’Odéon, she headed toward the metro entrance. I had quickened my step. Just as she was about to descend the stairs, I shouted:

  “Jeanne!”

  She turned around. She threw me a worried glance, as if I had caught her red-handed. For a moment, we remained frozen in place, watching each other. I wanted to go up and accompany her to the station platform, carry her bag for her. I couldn’t move. My legs felt like lead, as often happens in my dreams. Then she ran down the stairs. No doubt she was afraid I would follow. She must have taken me for a plainclothesman. In the flush of emotion, I sat down beneath the statue of Danton. She had told the bookseller that her “employer” lived in the seventeenth arrondissement. But of course: it corresponded to the last piece of information I had read about her. It has never been established when she died, and I wondered whether she ever had died. Moreover, no one knew her date of birth. Her shadow still remained very present in certain quarters of Paris. The last witness, who had identified her because he lived nearby, had stated that her address was 17 Rue Sauffroy. That was at the far end of the seventeenth arrondissement. A long haul by metro. From Odéon, she would change at Sèvres-Babylone. Then at Saint-Lazare. She would get off at Brochant. I promised myself I would go to Rue Sauffroy someday. At least I had a vague reference marker. It was more than I could say about the people I had known much closer in time than Jeanne Duval, who, like her, were mentioned in my black notebook. I had no idea what had become of them. I believe the ones Dannie called “those losers from the Unic Hôtel” were dead—or at least Georges, alias Rochard, was, and Paul Chastagnier. I’m less sure about Duwelz and Gérard Marciano. I never heard from Aghamouri again. And Dannie had vanished for good. Still, on the last page of the black notebook I had made a list of certain details I remembered, which could have helped me track her down. Later, I added the other details I hadn’t known, the ones I learned from Langlais’s file. Nonetheless, my search remained fruitless, and after a time I gave up. I no longer harbored any illusions. All of it would someday fall into oblivion.

  Now that I’ve been writing these pages, I do think that there is, in fact, a way to combat oblivion: go into certain areas of Paris where you haven’t set foot in thirty or forty years and spend the afternoon, as if on a stakeout. Perhaps the women and men you’ve been wondering about might suddenly appear around a street corner, or along a path in the park, or will emerge from one of the buildings that border those empty mews labeled “Square” or “Villa.” These people lead their clandestine lives, and this is possible only in quiet areas, far removed from the center of town. Still, the few times I thought I recognized Dannie, it was always in a crowd. One evening at the Gare de Lyon, when I was about to take a train, in the hullabaloo of people leaving on holiday. One late Saturday afternoon, at the intersection of the boulevard and the Chaussée d’Antin, amid the throngs crushing into the large department stores. But each time I was mistaken.

  One winter morning, some twenty years ago, I had been summoned to the courthouse in the thirteenth arrondissement, and at around eleven o’clock, after I left court, I found myself on the sidewalk of Place d’Italie. I had not been back to that square since the spring of 1964, a time when I frequented the area. I realized I didn’t have a penny in my pocket for a cab or the metro fare home. I found an ATM in a small side street behind the district town hall, but after I had entered my PIN code, a slip of paper came out in lieu of cash. It read: “We’re sorry. You have insufficient credit.” Again I entered my code, and the same slip of paper came out with the same message: “We’re sorry. You have insufficient credit.” I skirted the town hall and once again was on the sidewalk of Place d’Italie.

  Fate wanted to keep me here and was not to be crossed. Maybe I would never manage to leave this district, since my credit was insufficient. I felt lighthearted because of the sun and the blue January sky. The skyscrapers hadn’t existed in 1964, but they gradually dissolved in the limpid air to make way for the Clair de Lune café and the squat buildings of Boulevard de la Gare. I would slip into a parallel time where no one could ever reach me.

  The paulownias with their mauve flowers in Place
d’Italie . . . I repeated that phrase to myself, and I admit that it brought tears to my eyes—or was it the winter cold? In short, I had returned to my point of departure, and if ATMs had existed in 1964, I would have received the same slip of paper: insufficient credit. Back then, I had no credit, no legitimacy. No family or defined social status. I floated on the Paris air.

  I walked toward the former site of the Clair de Lune. People used to sit for hours at the tables in back, near the bandstand, not ordering anything. I was circling Place d’Italie. Perhaps I should take a room in a small hotel, like the Coypel, if it still existed, or another whose name I’d forgotten near Les Gobelins. I arrived at the corner of Avenue de la Soeur-Rosalie and again walked toward the town hall, wondering how long I would keep turning around the square, as if it were a magnetic field holding me in place. I stopped in front of a café. A middle-aged man was seated at a table behind the window, watching me. And I, too, couldn’t take my eyes off him. His face reminded me of someone. Regular features. Gray—or white—hair in a long brush cut. He waved to me. He wanted me to come join him in the café.

  He stood at my approach and held out his hand.

  “Langlais. Can you place me now?”

  I had a moment’s hesitation. It was probably his military stiffness and the “can you place me now” that helped me identify him. And besides, one never forgets the faces of people one meets at a stressful time in one’s life.

  “Quai de Gesvres.”

  He looked surprised that I should say that.

  “You have a good memory.”

  He sat back down and motioned for me to take the seat opposite him.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on you from a distance all this time,” he said. “I even read your last book, the one about that woman . . . Jeanne Duval . . .”