In the Café of Lost Youth

by Patrick Modiano

  PATRICK MODIANO was born in the Boulogne-Billancourt suburb of Paris near the end of the Nazi occupation of France. He studied at the Lycée Henri-IV and the Sorbonne. As a teenager he took geometry lessons with the writer Raymond Queneau, who would play a key role in his development. He has written more than thirty works of fiction, including novels, children’s books, and the screenplay for Louis Malle’s film Lacombe, Lucien. In 2014, Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

  CHRIS CLARKE was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada, and lives and works in and around New York City. His published translations include work by Oulipo members Raymond Queneau and Olivier Salon. He currently teaches French and is translating a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan, which will be published in 2016.

  IN THE CAFÉ OF LOST YOUTH

  PATRICK MODIANO

  Translated from the French by

  CHRIS CLARKE

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 2007 by Éditions Gallimard

  Translation copyright © 2016 by Chris Clarke

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in French as Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue.

  Cover image: Jeanloup Sieff, Ina, Paris, 1959; courtesy of the Estate of Jeanloup Sieff

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Modiano, Patrick, 1945– author. | Clarke, Chris (Translator) translator.

  Title: In the cafe of lost youth / Patrick Modiano ; translated by Chris Clarke.

  Other titles: Dans le cafe de la jeunesse perdue. English

  Description: New York : New York Review Books, 2016. | Series: New York Review Books Classics

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015039566 | ISBN 9781590179543 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Psychological. | FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PQ2673.O3 D3613 2016 | DDC 843/.914—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039566

  ISBN 978-1-59017-954-3

  v1.0

  For a complete list of titles, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  CONTENTS

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  Dedication

  IN THE CAFÉ OF LOST YOUTH

  At the halfway point of the journey making up real life, we were surrounded by a gloomy melancholy, one expressed by so very many derisive and sorrowful words in the café of the lost youth.

  —GUY DEBORD

  IN THE CAFÉ OF LOST YOUTH

  THERE were two entrances to the café, but she always opted for the narrower one hidden in the shadows. She always chose the same table at the back of the little room. At first she didn’t speak to anyone, then she got to know the regulars of the Condé, most of whom were about our age, I’d say between nineteen and twenty-five years old. She sometimes sat at their tables, but most of the time she was faithful to her spot, way at the back.

  She wasn’t regular about her visits. You might find her sitting there very early in the morning. Or sometimes she appeared around midnight and stayed until closing time. Along with Le Bouquet and La Pergola, it was one of the cafés in the neighborhood that closed the latest, and the one with the strangest clientele. I often ask myself, now that time has passed, if it wasn’t her presence alone that gave this place and these people their strangeness, as if she had impregnated them all with her scent.

  Suppose that you were blindfolded, led there, and seated at a table, then your blindfold was removed and you were given a few minutes to answer the question: What part of Paris are you in? You only would have had to observe your neighbors and listen to their comments, and you might have been able to guess: Somewhere not far from the Carrefour de l’Odéon, which in my mind I always picture looking dreary in the rain.

  One day a photographer had come into the Condé. Nothing about his appearance distinguished him from the customers. The same age, the same sloppy style of dress. He wore a jacket that was too long, cotton pants, and big army-issue shoes. He took a number of photos of the people who frequented the Condé. He became a regular himself and, as far as the others were concerned, it was as if he was taking family photos. Quite some time later, they appeared in a monograph about Paris, with only the customers’ first names or nicknames as captions. And she appears in several of these photographs. She caught the light better than the others, as they say in the film business. Of them all, she’s the one you notice first. At the bottom of the page, in the captions, she’s referred to as “Louki.” “From left to right: Zacharias, Louki, Tarzan, Jean-Michel, Fred, and Ali Cherif.” “Foreground, seated at the bar: Louki. Behind her: Annet, Don Carlos, Mireille, Adamov, and Dr. Vala.” She has good posture, whereas the others slouch; the one named Fred, for example, has fallen asleep with his head against the imitation-leather banquette and hasn’t shaved in several days. Needless to say, the name Louki was given to her once she became a regular at the Condé. I was there one night when she came in towards midnight and only Tarzan, Fred, Zacharias, and Mireille were left, all sitting at the same table. It was Tarzan who shouted, “Look, here comes Louki.” She appeared frightened at first, then she smiled. Zacharias got up and, with a tone of feigned solemnity, proclaimed, “Tonight, I baptize thee. Henceforth, you shall be called Louki.” And as the hours went by and they all referred to her as Louki, I really think she felt relieved to have this new name. Yes, relieved. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I end up with the same impression I had at first: She was taking refuge here, at the Condé, as if she were running from something, trying to escape some danger. This thought came to me upon seeing her alone, all the way at the back where no one would notice her. And even when she mingled with the others, she didn’t draw attention to herself. She remained quiet and reserved, and seemed happy just to listen. I had even thought that she chose the noisy groups, the loudmouths, to feel safer, otherwise she wouldn’t have been likely to spend all her time seated at a table with Zacharias, Jean-Michel, Fred, Tarzan, and La Houpa. With them, she could blend into the background and was no more than an anonymous extra, one of the people referred to in the photo captions as “unidentified person” or, more simply, “X.” Yes, at first, at the Condé, I never saw her have a one-on-one discussion with anyone. What’s more, there was no drawback to one of the loudmouths calling her Louki because it wasn’t really her name.

  And yet, if you watched her carefully, you would notice certain details that set her apart from the others. She took a great deal of care with her clothing, which was unusual among the patrons of the Condé. She lit a cigarette one evening as she sat with Tarzan, Ali Cherif, and La Houpa, and I was struck by the slenderness of her hands. And above all, her nails shone. They were painted with a clear varnish. This detail may seem a bit trivial, so let’s stick to what’s important. First of all, some details about the Condé’s regulars are necessary. Well, they were between nineteen and twenty-five years old, with the exception of a few customers such as Babilée, Adamov, and Dr. Vala who were approaching fifty, but no one paid any mind to their ages. Babilée, Adamov, and Dr. Vala still clung to their youthfulness, men we might describe with the melodious and obsolete moniker “bohemians.” When I look up “bohemian” in the dictionary, I find: A person who leads a wandering life, without rules or worries about the next day. Truly a definition well suited to those who frequented the Condé
. Some, like Tarzan, Jean-Michel, and Fred, claimed to have had numerous run-ins with the police since their adolescence, and La Houpa had escaped from the Bon Pasteur Correctional Facility at sixteen. But we were on the Rive Gauche and most of them lived in the sheltered world of literature and the arts. I myself was going to school. I didn’t dare tell this to them, and I didn’t often mingle with their group.

  I’d really felt that she was different from the others. Where had she come from before we had given her a new name? Often, the regulars of the Condé had books with them that they would set down nonchalantly on the table before them, the covers stained with wine. The Songs of Maldoror. Illuminations. The Mysterious Barricades. But Louki, at least at first, was always empty-handed. Later, she must have wanted to be like the others, and one day at the Condé I came upon her alone, reading. After that, she was never without her book. She kept it out somewhere noticeable on the table whenever she ended up with Adamov and the others, and it was as if this book were her passport or a residence permit that legitimized her presence by their sides. But nobody paid it any mind, not Adamov, not Babilée, not Tarzan, not La Houpa. It was a pocket book with a soiled cover like one you’d buy used along the quay; its title had been printed in large red letters. A French translation of Lost Horizon. At the time, it meant nothing to me. I should have asked her what the book was about, but I had foolishly told myself that Lost Horizon was nothing but an accessory for her, assuming she pretended to read it in order to fall in step with the customers of the Condé. If someone passing by was to shoot a furtive glance inside—maybe going so far as to press his forehead against the window for a moment—he might have taken the patrons for a typical student clientele. But he would have changed his mind if he noticed the quantity of alcohol they were consuming at Tarzan, Mireille, Fred, and La Houpa’s table. In the peaceful cafés of the Latin Quarter, they never would drink like that. Sure, during the slack hours of the afternoon, the Condé could pass for one of them. But once the day started to draw to a close, it became the meeting place of what a romantic philosopher once called “the Lost Youth.” Why this café instead of another? Because of the owner, Madame Chadly, who never seemed surprised by anything and demonstrated a certain indulgence toward her customers. Many years later, the streets of the neighborhood no longer offering anything but the windows of luxury boutiques, the site of the Condé since replaced by a leather shop, I ran into Madame Chadly on the other bank of the Seine, on the way up rue Blanche. She didn’t recognize me right away. We walked a while, side by side, talking about the Condé. Her husband, an Algerian, had purchased the business after the war. She remembered all of our names. She often wondered what had become of us, although she had no illusions. She had known right from the outset that things would turn out badly for us. Stray dogs, she told me. And as we bade each other farewell in front of the pharmacy at place Blanche, she confided to me, looking me right in the eye: “Louki was my favorite.”

  When Louki was sitting with Tarzan, Fred, and La Houpa, did she drink as much as they did, or did she pretend so as to not upset them? In any case, her back straight, her movements slow and gracious, her smile almost imperceptible, she held her liquor extremely well. At the bar, it’s easier to cheat. You wait for a moment when your friends aren’t paying attention and you empty your glass into the sink. But there, at one of the tables of the Condé, it was more difficult. The others forced you to keep up with their drinking escapades. On that subject, they revealed themselves to be extremely touchy and considered you unworthy of their group if you didn’t accompany them to the very end of what they referred to as their “journeys.” As for other kinds of intoxicants, I had suspected without being certain that Louki used some, with certain members of the group. All the same, nothing in her eyes or her attitude would lead you to believe that she escaped to synthetic paradises.

  I’ve often wondered if an acquaintance had told her about the Condé before she went in for the first time. Or if someone had asked her to meet him in the café and then not turned up. If so, she might have sat there at her table, day after day and night after night, hoping to run into him once again in this place that was the sole point linking her to this unknown person. No other way of getting in touch with him. No address. No phone number. Just a first name. And yet, maybe she had just washed up there by chance, as I had. She was in the neighborhood and had sought shelter from the rain. I’ve always believed that certain places are like magnets and draw you towards them should you happen to walk within their radius. And this occurs imperceptibly, without you even suspecting. All it takes is a sloping street, a sunny sidewalk, or maybe a shady one. Or perhaps a downpour. And this leads you straight there, to the exact spot you’re meant to wash up. It seems to me that because of its location, the Condé had that sort of magnetic power, and if one were to calculate the probability, the results would indicate that within a fairly large area, it was inevitable that you would drift towards it. This much I know from personal experience.

  One of the members of the group, Bowing, the one we called “the Captain,” had undertaken a venture of which the others approved. For going on three years he had been taking note of the names of the Condé’s customers as they arrived, in each instance jotting down the date and exact time. He had charged two of his friends with the responsibility of performing the same task at Le Bouquet and La Pergola, both of which stayed open all night. Unfortunately, in both of those cafés, the customers didn’t always want to give their names. It was as if Bowing were trying to save butterflies that fluttered around a lamp from being forgotten. He envisioned a great register where the names of the customers of all the cafés of Paris were recorded, with notes made of their successive arrivals and departures. He was haunted by what he called “fixed points.”

  In this uninterrupted stream of women, men, children, and dogs that pass by and end up lost from sight among the streets, it would be nice to hold on to a face once in a while. Yes, according to Bowing, amidst the maelstrom that is a large city, you had to find a few fixed points. Before he left to go abroad, he gave me the notebook where, day after day for three years, the customers of the Condé had been listed. Louki only appeared under her borrowed name, and she is mentioned for the first time one January 23rd. The winter that year had been particularly severe, and some of us didn’t leave the Condé all day so as to stay out of the cold. The Captain also made note of our addresses in order to make it possible to imagine the customary route that each of us took to the Condé. For Bowing, it was another way of establishing fixed points. He doesn’t mention her address right away. It’s not until March 18th that you read, “2 p.m. Louki, 16, rue Fermat, 14th arrondissement.” But on September 5th of that same year, she had moved: “11:40 p.m. Louki, 8, rue Cels, 14th arrondissement.” I assume that Bowing drew our routes to the Condé on large maps of Paris and that for this task, the Captain would use ballpoint pens with different-colored ink. Maybe he wanted to know if it was possible for us to run into each other before we even reached our destination.

  As a matter of fact, I remember having met Louki one day in an unfamiliar neighborhood after paying a visit to a distant cousin of my parents’. When I left his place, I was walking towards the Porte Maillot Métro, and we ran into each other at the far end of avenue de la Grande-Armée. I stared at her and she gave me an anxious look, as if I had caught her in the middle of an embarrassing situation. I held out my hand to her. “We’ve seen each other at the Condé,” I told her, and the café had suddenly seemed as if it were on the other side of the world. She gave a little embarrassed smile: “Oh, sure, at the Condé.” It wasn’t too long after she had first appeared there. She hadn’t yet started to mingle with the others and Zacharias hadn’t yet named her Louki. “The Condé’s a funny little café, huh?” She had given a nod of her head in agreement. We walked a short ways together, and she told me that she lived nearby, but added that she wasn’t at all fond of the neighborhood. It’s stupid, I could have found out her real name that day. The
n we went our separate ways at the Porte Maillot, by the entrance to the Métro, and I watched her recede into the distance towards Neuilly and the Bois de Boulogne, walking more and more slowly, as if to give someone the opportunity to catch up to her. I got a feeling that she wouldn’t come back to the Condé and that would be the last I heard of her. She would disappear into what Bowing called “the anonymity of the big city,” which he endeavored to combat by filling the pages of his notebook with names. A 190-page Clairefontaine notebook with a plastic-coated red cover. To be frank, that doesn’t amount to much. If you flip through the notebook, other than fleeting names and addresses, there is little to be learned about either these people or me. Doubtless the Captain figured it was already quite significant to have named us and “fixed” us somewhere. As for the rest . . . At the Condé, we never questioned each other about our origins. We were too young and we didn’t even have pasts to reveal, we lived in the present. Even the older customers like Adamov, Babilée, or Dr. Vala never alluded to their pasts. They were just happy to be there, among us. It isn’t until now, after all this time, that I feel regret; I would have liked for him to have been more precise in his notebook, and for him to have included a short biography of each of them. Did he really believe that a name and an address would later be enough to keep track of a life? And especially when the names weren’t real? “Louki. Monday, February 12th, 11 p.m.” “Louki. April 28th, 2 p.m.” He also indicated the seats they took around the tables each day. Sometimes there weren’t even names. Three times in June of that year, he noted: “Louki with the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket.” He hadn’t asked him his name, this fellow, or else he had been refused an answer. Apparently the guy wasn’t a regular customer. The brown-haired guy in the suede jacket had been lost forever among the streets of Paris, and Bowing had only managed to fix his shadow for a few seconds. Also, there were inaccuracies in his notebook. I established points of reference which corroborate my belief that she had not in fact come to the Condé for the first time in January, as Bowing would have you believe. I have a memory of her from well before that date. The Captain didn’t mention her before the others started to call her Louki, and I guess that until then he hadn’t noticed her presence. She hadn’t even been given a vague entry along the lines of “2 p.m. A brunette with green eyes,” something similar to “the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket.”