After the Circus

by Patrick Modiano

  He paused. But I didn’t say anything. I felt incapable of uttering a single word.

  “You have spent the last four days together and she is living at your address … I’m calling to warn you …”

  The office was now half in shadow and he continued speaking in his muffled voice.

  “There is a lot you don’t know about this person … I suppose she even lied to you about her name … Her real name is Suzanne Kraay …”

  He spelled out the name, mechanically: K-R-A-A-Y. It felt as if the voice I was hearing was prerecorded, like the talking clock.

  “She has already committed several offenses that landed her in La Petite-Roquette for a few months … But I don’t imagine she told you any of that … She probably also didn’t tell you she’s married …”

  “I’m aware,” I said, in a voice I tried to make curt.

  There was a pause.

  “You are certainly not aware of everything.”

  “I’m not interested,” I told him.

  “But I am interested, and you’re forgetting that you’re still a minor …”

  Once again the voice was muffled, distant.

  “And you’re running a huge risk …”

  I heard the crackling of static, as if my caller were standing at the far end of the world. Then the noise stopped and his voice came through, very near and distinct.

  “I’d like to give you a quick rundown so that we can clear the air. It’s in your interest. You should know what you’re exposing yourself to, since you’re a minor … Will you agree to meet me?”

  He had spoken that last sentence in the tone, at once obsequious and authoritarian, used by certain boarding school supervisors.

  “All right,” I said.

  “This evening, ten o’clock, near your building … In the café on the quay, opposite the Louvre Colonnade … You can see it from your windows … I’ll expect you at ten … I’m Mister Guélin.”

  He spelled his name, then hung up.

  I hung up in turn. Before he’d introduced himself, his voice had reminded me of a man I used to run into on Saturdays, when I went to the Jardin du Luxembourg or the Danton cinema. He always wore a gray sweat suit and had just come from the gym. A blond man of about forty, with close-cropped hair and sunken cheeks. One afternoon, he had struck up a conversation with me in one of those sorry cafés on the Carrefour de l’Odéon. He was a writer and journalist. I told him that I, too, hoped to become a writer one day. At which point he had given me a condescending smile:

  “It’s a lot of work, you know … A lot of work … I don’t think you have what it takes …”

  And he cited the example of a famous young dancer whom he greatly admired, who “worked at the barre day in, day out.”

  “That’s what it means to write, you see … Twenty-four hours of exercise a day … I doubt you have the strength of character … It’s not even worth trying.”

  He had almost persuaded me.

  “I can show you how I write …”

  He invited me to visit him at his place on Rue du Dragon. Two rooms with chalk-white walls, exposed beams in dark wood, a rustic writing table of the same color, and very stiff seats with high backs. He was wearing his sweat suit. He had signed one of his books for me, whose title I’ve forgotten. To my great surprise, he recommended I read The Girls by Montherlant. Then he’d offered to drive me home in his car, a Dauphine Gordini. Over the following months, I had seen him from my window, at night, parked in front of the building in that blue car with white trim. And I was afraid.

  I checked to see if by chance it was there today.

  But no. Silence. Night had fallen. I preferred the reflections of the streetlamps on the walls to the dim light of the bulb hanging from the ceiling. Once again, I feared Gisèle would never return. The voice I had heard on the phone only heightened my sense of isolation and abandonment. It corresponded so well to this empty office, where I was having trouble remembering where the furniture used to be.

  La Petite-Roquette … I had been walking one day on the street of the same name and had passed by the prison. Often, in my dreams, Rue de la Roquette spills onto the kind of square you find in Rome, in the middle of which rises a fountain. It’s always summer. The square is deserted and flattened by the sun. Nothing disturbs the silence but the murmur of the fountain. And I remain there, in the shadows, waiting for Gisèle to walk out of prison.

  The entry door slammed: I recognized her footsteps. She was there, in front of me, in her unbuttoned raincoat. She switched on the light. She said I was making a strange face.

  “That man called.”

  “And?”

  I told her it was someone wanting information about my father and that he’d made an appointment to see me later that evening, at ten, in the café just opposite, across the Seine.

  “It shouldn’t take long.”

  I took her face in my hands and kissed her. It didn’t matter if her name was Gisèle or Suzanne Kraay and if she’d served time in La Petite-Roquette. Had I known her back then, I wouldn’t have missed a single opportunity to go visit her. And even if she had committed a crime, I didn’t care, so long as she was alive, pressed against me, in her black skirt and pullover.

  “Aren’t you worried he’ll walk in on us?” she whispered in my ear.

  At first I thought she meant the man on the telephone. But she was talking about Grabley.

  “Oh, no. He’s at the Tomate …”

  Even so, we pushed the couch so that it blocked the office door.

  I could see the café lights shining from the other side of the Seine, at the corner of the quay. Was the man already there? I wished I had a very powerful pair of binoculars to watch him with. He, too, from the café, could check whether the lights were on in the apartment windows. And that thought caused me a sudden stab of anxiety, as if a trap had just closed on me.

  “What are you looking at?”

  She was lying on the couch. Her skirt and pullover were thrown on the coffee table.

  “I’m watching for the tour boat,” I told her.

  I cracked open the window. The Quai de Conti remained empty for a long while, the time it took for the traffic lights to turn green, over toward the Pont-Neuf. And before the next few cars appeared, there was silence, no doubt the same silence my father had known on evenings during the Occupation, behind this same window.

  At that time, the café opposite didn’t shine and the Louvre Colonnade was shrouded in darkness. The advantage, today, was knowing where the danger lay: that light across the Seine.

  I looked at my watch. A quarter to ten.

  “I have to go to my appointment.”

  She was sitting on the edge of the couch. She leaned her chin in the palms of her hands.

  “Do you have to go?”

  “If I don’t, he’ll only call back … Might as well get rid of him once and for all.”

  I repeated that he was a former associate of my father’s. I was tempted to tell her the truth, but checked myself in time. She wanted to come with me, rather than stay in the apartment by herself. We went out with the dog. She had thought we might walk to the café, crossing via the Pont des Arts. But I said it would be better to take the car.

  As we were about to turn onto the Pont du Carrousel, I almost asked her just to keep driving, keep following the river. Then, once on the Right Bank, as we got closer to the café, I thought better of it. I was ready for this meeting now. I was even eager to see this man’s face.

  We stopped at the corner of Rue du Louvre, in front of the café entrance. Only one customer, sitting near the window. He was reading a newspaper spread out on the table and hadn’t noticed our car. I felt Gisèle’s hand grip my arm. She was staring at the man, mouth half-open. Her face drained of color.

  “Don’t go, Jean … Please, I’m begging you.”

  I was struck that she’d called me by my name. She held on to my arm.

  “Why? Do you know him?”

  He was
still reading his paper beneath the fluorescent lights. Before turning a page, he moistened his index finger on his tongue.

  “If you go, we’re done for … I’ve had dealings with him before …”

  An expression of terror was twisting her features. But I felt completely calm. I gently caressed her forehead and lips. I felt like kissing her and murmuring comforting words in her ear. I simply said:

  “Don’t worry about a thing … This guy CAN’T HURT US …”

  She tried again to hold me back, but I opened the door and got out of the car.

  “Wait for me here. And if it goes on too long, go back to the apartment.”

  For the first time in my life, I felt sure of myself. My timidity, my doubts, that habit of apologizing for my every movement, of deprecating myself, of taking the other person’s side—all that had vanished, fallen off like dead skin. I was in one of those dreams where you meet the dangers and torments of the present but avoid them at every turn, for you already know the future and feel invulnerable.

  I pushed open the glass door. He raised his eyes from his newspaper. A man of about forty, brown hair, bald spot like a monk’s tonsure. He was wearing a tan coat.

  I planted myself in front of him.

  “Mister Guélin, I presume?”

  He fixed me with a cold stare, as if gauging how much he was going to make me pay for my apparent nonchalance.

  “We’ll be better off in back …”

  His voice was even more metallic than on the phone. Standing in his coat, with his bearing and stocky outline, that baldness over a brutal face, he looked like an ex-soccer player.

  We went to sit in back, he on the red imitation-leather bench. There was no one there but us. Except a man in a suit at the counter where they sold cigarettes. But he didn’t seem to know we were there.

  He sat leaning on the table, elbows spread, still giving me his cold stare, chin slightly raised.

  “You did the right thing coming here … Otherwise, your situation could have gotten much more difficult …”

  He tried to make me look away. But he didn’t succeed. I had even moved my face closer to his, as if in challenge.

  “Something very serious happened yesterday afternoon, in Neuilly … You know what I’m talking about?”

  “No.”

  “Really? You’re a smart boy and you’d do better to level with me …”

  I still didn’t lower my eyes, and our faces were now so close that our foreheads nearly touched. His breath smelled like anise liqueur.

  “First off, you’re a minor … And your girlfriend has been turning tricks for some time now …”

  The words had been spoken in a toneless voice, but he was watching for my reaction.

  I forced myself to smile at him, a wide smile that must have looked more like a grimace.

  “She’s a regular at an apartment at 34 Rue Desaix … I know the place well, and the madam … and even most of the clients … As do you, I suppose?”

  I remembered the other evening, when I’d waited in front of the buildings. The viaduct of the elevated metro at the end of the street. And the endless wall of the Dupleix barracks. I had seen her come out of one of the buildings and walk toward me.

  “I imagine you also know your girlfriend’s husband?”

  “None of these things are my business.”

  I had adopted a dreamy, absent tone.

  “But of course it’s your business. And you are going to tell me in detail what happened yesterday afternoon.”

  The newspaper was folded in the pocket of his coat. Earlier, I had asked Gisèle to bring me back the same evening paper, but she had forgotten.

  “Nothing happened yesterday afternoon.”

  I had pulled away from him so as not to smell his anise breath. I leaned back against the chair.

  “Nothing? You must be joking …”

  He had folded his arms.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the newspaper in his pocket. Perhaps he was going to unfold it and show me the photo of the man we’d seen getting into Ansart’s car, tell me they had fished his body out from under the bridge at Puteaux. But the thought of it left me cold. It was only later, around age thirty, that I started feeling some remorse when recalling certain episodes from my past, like a tightrope walker who feels dizzy retrospectively, after he has crossed over the abyss.

  “You’re coming with me to see some friends. And I advise you to tell us everything, or you’ll be in a world of trouble …”

  His tone brooked no objection and his hard eyes were still fixed on me. I could feel myself losing my footing, so to pluck up my courage, I said:

  “Anyway, who are you, exactly?”

  “I’m a very close friend of Mister Samson.”

  What was he trying to insinuate? That he was with the police?

  “What does that mean, a very close friend?”

  He was taken aback by my question, but then he recovered:

  “It means someone who can land you in jail just like that.”

  And then a strange phenomenon occurred: I still hadn’t looked away, and this man was losing his composure. Little by little, he started reminding me of those dozens of individuals who would meet my father in hotel lobbies or cafés just like this one. I often accompanied him. I was fourteen at the time, but I watched all those people under the fluorescent lights. In even the most elegant of them, the ones who at first seemed the most respectable, a cornered street hawker always showed through.

  “Because you want to take charge of my schooling?”

  The other seemed nonplussed:

  “A minute from now, you won’t be such a wise guy.”

  But it was already too late for him. He was receding in time. He would go join all the other bit players, all the poor accessories of a period of my life: Grabley, the woman with straw-blond hair, the Tomate, the unfurnished apartment, an old navy blue overcoat in the crowd of travelers at the Gare de Lyon …

  “So long, sir.”

  I was outside. Farther on, on the little square, she had been watching for me. She waved her arm. She had parked the car in the shadow of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois church.

  “I was afraid he’d take you away with him …”

  Her hand was trembling. She had to turn the key several times before the ignition caught.

  “There was no reason to be afraid,” I said.

  “He was in the office when the other one interrogated me. But I already knew him from before … He didn’t say anything about me?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  We followed Rue de Rivoli. Once again, a feeling of euphoria enveloped me. If we continued to roll past these arcades, beyond which streetlights gleamed unto infinity, we would emerge onto a large public square near the seashore. Through the lowered window, I could already smell the ocean air.

  “Do you swear he didn’t mention me?”

  “I swear.”

  What that phantom had said no longer mattered: La Petite-Roquette, 34 Rue Desaix, and the afternoon in Neuilly when “something very serious happened.” All of it was so far removed … I had made a leap into the future.

  “I think it’s better if we don’t stay at the apartment tonight.”

  I tried to reassure her that we were in no danger, but she seemed so anxious, so nervous, that I finally said:

  “We can go wherever you like.”

  Still, it gave me a pang in the heart to see her prey to shadows and incidents that to me were already past and done. It was as if I had set sail and was watching her, far behind me, flailing against the tide.

  We went back to the Quai de Conti apartment to grab the suitcases. She waited for me at the foot of the small stairway leading to the fifth floor.

  Just as I opened the door to the storage closet, the phone rang. She stared at me, petrified.

  “Don’t answer.”

  I climbed down the stairs carrying the two suitcases and walked into the office. The phone was still ringing. I felt for it
in the dark:

  “Hello.”

  Silence.

  “Are you still in the café, Guélin?” I said.

  No reply. I thought I could hear him breathing. She had picked up the listening extension. We were standing near the windows. I couldn’t help glancing toward the other bank of the Seine. Over there, the café was lit. I said:

  “How’s it going, you pathetic old fuck?”

  Another breath. It was like the rustle of wind in the leaves. She wanted me to hang up, grabbed the receiver and tried to wrest it from me, but she couldn’t. I kept it glued to my ear. One evening, at the same hour, in the same place, during the Occupation, my father had received a similar phone call. No one answered. It was no doubt a man much like the one from before, brown hair, balding, tan coat, who belonged to Superintendent Permilleux’s squad and was tasked with ferreting out undeclared Jews.

  A crackling sound. He hung up.

  “We have to get out of here right now,” she said.

  She carried one of her suitcases herself, the lighter one, and we crossed the foyer. As we were about to go out, I put down the other suitcase:

  “Hold on a moment. I’ll be right back …”

  I ran back up the little staircase. In the fifth-floor bedroom I gathered the few books that still remained on the shelves between the two windows, among which I found To the Happy Few.

  I piled them on the bed and knotted one of the sheets into a bundle. Those books had been shelved there well before my father’s arrival in the apartment. It was the previous tenant, the author of The Hunt, who had left them. Some of them bore the name, on the flyleaf, of a mysterious François Vernet.

  When I came back down with my improvised bag, she was waiting on the landing.

  I slammed the door shut and felt as if I were leaving that apartment forever, because of the books I was taking with me.

  This time we had left the dog in the car. Seeing us, he let out a kind of howl and danced up and down on his hind legs.

  We stashed the two suitcases and the bundle of books in the trunk.

  “Where to?” I asked.