In the Café of Lost Youth

by Patrick Modiano

  She first turned up in October of the previous year. I found a reference point in the Captain’s notebook. “October 15th, 9 p.m. Zacharias’s birthday. At his table, Annet, Don Carlos, Mireille, La Houpa, Fred, Adamov.” I can remember it perfectly. She was at their table. Why didn’t Bowing have the curiosity to ask her name? The accounts are fragile and contradictory, but I am certain of her presence that evening. Everything that made her invisible to Bowing’s gaze had struck me. Her timidity, her languid movements, her smile, and above all her silence. She had been next to Adamov. Perhaps it was because of him that she had come to the Condé. I had often run into Adamov around Odéon, as well as further up around Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Each time, he was walking with his hand resting on the shoulder of a young girl. A blind man allowing himself to be guided. And yet he looked as if he was observing everything with that tragic, doglike stare. And each time, it seemed to me, it was a different young girl serving as his guide. Or nurse. Why not her? Well, as it turned out, she left the Condé with Adamov that night. I saw them head down the empty street towards Odéon, Adamov with his hand on her shoulder, advancing with his methodical gait. You might have thought she was afraid of going too fast, and sometimes she would stop a moment, as if to allow him to catch his breath. At the Carrefour de l’Odéon, Adamov shook her hand somewhat solemnly, then she rushed into the mouth of the Métro. He resumed his somnambulist’s stride, straight on towards Saint-André-des-Arts. And her? Yes, she had begun to frequent the Condé that same autumn. And that’s definitely not a coincidence. For me, autumn has never been a sad season. The dying leaves and the days that grow shorter and shorter have never evoked the end of something for me but instead brought with them anticipation for the future. In Paris, during these October evenings, there is an electricity in the air at dusk. Even when it rains. I don’t feel down at that time of night, nor does it seem that time is passing too swiftly. I have the feeling that anything is possible. The year begins in the month of October. That’s when classes start again and to me it’s the season to take on new projects. So if she came to the Condé in October, it’s because she had broken ties with some entire part of her life and she wanted to do what they refer to in novels as “turning over a new leaf.” Moreover, a clue proves to me that I’m not mistaken. At the Condé, she was given a new name. Zacharias, that day, had even spoken of baptism. It was in some way a second birth.

  As for the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket, unfortunately he doesn’t appear in the photos taken at the Condé. Too bad. People often end up being identified thanks to a photo. It gets published in a newspaper asking witnesses to come forward. Was he a member of the group, one whose name Bowing didn’t know and was too lazy to ask?

  Last evening, I carefully went through every page in the notebook. “Louki with the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket.” And to my great surprise, I noticed that it wasn’t only in June that the Captain mentioned this stranger. At the bottom of one page, he had hurriedly scrawled, “May 24th. Louki with the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket.” And the same caption is found again, twice more, in April. I had asked Bowing why every time she was mentioned, he had underlined her name in blue pencil, as if to make her stand out from the others. No, he wasn’t the one who had done that. One day he had been sitting at the bar, jotting down the customers present in his notebook, when a man standing beside him had interrupted his work. A guy in his forties who knew Dr. Vala. He spoke softly and smoked American cigarettes. Bowing had felt trusting and had said a few words to him about what he called his Golden Book. The other man had seemed interested. He was an “art publisher.” Sure, he knew the fellow who had taken photos at the Condé some time ago. He intended to publish them in a book that would be titled A Café in Paris. Would Bowing be kind enough to lend him his notebook until the next day, as it might help him in selecting captions for the photos? The following day, he had returned the notebook and had never been seen at the Condé again. The Captain had been surprised to notice that each occurrence of the name Louki had been underlined in blue pencil. He had wanted to know more about it and had asked Dr. Vala a few questions about the art publisher. Vala had been surprised. “Ah, he told you he published art books, did he?” He knew him only in passing, from having run into him regularly at La Malène on rue Saint-Benoît as well as at the Montana, where he had even played dice with him a few times. The fellow had been around the neighborhood for a long time. His name? Caisley. Vala seemed a little embarrassed to speak of him. And when Bowing had alluded to the blue pencil marks beneath the name Louki, a worried expression had crossed the doctor’s face. It had been quite fleeting. And then he had smiled. “He must be interested in the little one. She’s so pretty. But what a strange idea to fill your notebook with all of those names. I find you all quite amusing, you and your friends and your pataphysical experiments.” He mixed them up—pataphysics, lettrism, automatic writing, metagraphics, and all of the experiments that interested the Condé’s more literary patrons, like Bowing, Jean-Michel, Fred, Babilée, Larronde, or Adamov. “What’s more, it’s dangerous to do that,” Dr. Vala had added with a serious tone. “Your notebook, it’s almost like a police register or a precinct logbook. It’s as if we had all been taken in a raid.”

  Bowing had objected, trying to explain his theory of fixed points, but from that day on the Captain had the impression that Dr. Vala distrusted him and even wanted to avoid him.

  This Caisley hadn’t just underlined the name Louki. Each time there was a mention of “the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket” in the notebook there were two blue pencil lines. All of this troubled Bowing quite a bit, and for the next few days he had roamed around rue Saint-Benoît with hopes of running into this so-called art publisher, perhaps at La Malène or the Montana, to ask him to explain himself. He never found him. Some time later, Bowing ended up leaving France and gave me the notebook, as if he had wanted me to take over his research. But it’s too late now. And if this whole period still endures in my memory, it’s because of questions that have remained unanswered.

  Sometimes during the quieter moments of the day, on the way home from the office, and often in the solitude of Sunday evenings, a detail comes back to me. With the utmost concentration, I try to gather others like it and make note of them on the remaining blank pages at the back of Bowing’s notebook. I too have gone hunting for fixed points. It’s just a hobby, not unlike how others do crosswords or play solitaire. The names and the dates in Bowing’s notebook help me quite a lot, every now and then they remind me of some particular detail, some rainy day or sunny afternoon. I’ve always been very sensitive to the seasons. One evening, Louki came into the Condé, her hair soaking wet either from a downpour or rather one of those interminable rains that we get in November or the beginning of spring. Madame Chadly was behind the bar that day. She went up to the second floor, to her tiny apartment, and fetched a bath towel. As the notebook tells us, that night Zacharias, Annet, Don Carlos, Mireille, La Houpa, Fred, and Maurice Raphaël were all gathered at one table. Zacharias took the towel and dried Louki’s hair with it before knotting it around her head like a turban. She sat down at their table, they made her drink a hot toddy, and she stayed quite late with them, the turban on her head. On the way out of the Condé, around two in the morning, it was still raining. We were all standing in the doorway and Louki was still wearing her turban. Madame Chadly had turned off the café lights and gone up to bed. She opened her mezzanine window and suggested that we go up to her place to take shelter. But Maurice Raphaël gallantly told her: “Don’t worry yourself about it, madame. It is time we let you sleep.” He was a handsome, dark-haired man, older than us, a regular customer at the Condé whom Zacharias referred to as “the Jaguar” because of the way he walked and his cat-like mannerisms. Like Adamov and Larronde, he had published several books, but he never spoke of them to us. There was mystery surrounding him, and we even thought he may have had ties to the underworld. The rain had redoubled its efforts, a real monsoon
, but it wasn’t a big deal for the others since they lived in the vicinity. Soon only Louki, Maurice Raphaël, and I remained under the porch. “Would you both like a ride back home?” offered Maurice Raphaël. We ran through the rain to the bottom of the street where he had parked his car, an old black Ford. Louki sat next to him, and I sat in the backseat. “Who am I dropping off first?” said Maurice Raphaël. Louki gave him her address, adding that it was up from Montparnasse Cemetery. “So you live in Limbo,” he said. And I think that neither she nor I understood what he meant by “Limbo.” I asked him to drop me off a little way past the gates of the Luxembourg, on the corner of Val-de-Grâce. I didn’t want him to know exactly where I lived for fear that he might ask questions.

  I shook hands with Louki and then with Maurice Raphaël, realizing that neither of them knew my name. I was a very unassuming customer at the Condé and I kept my distance, happy just to listen to them all. And that was plenty for me. I felt good around them. For me, the Condé was a refuge from all the drabness I anticipated in life. There will one day be a part of me—the best part—that I will be forced to leave behind there.

  “A smart decision, living in Val-de-Grâce,” Maurice Raphaël said to me.

  He was smiling at me and his smile seemed to express both kindness and irony.

  “See you soon,” Louki said.

  I climbed out of the car, and before I turned back, I waited for it to disappear over by Port-Royal. Truth be told, I didn’t actually live in Val-de-Grâce, but a bit farther down in a building at 85, boulevard Saint-Michel, where I had miraculously found a room when I first arrived in Paris. From the window, I could see the dark façade of my school. That night, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that monumental façade or from the great stone stairs of the entrance. What would they think if they found out I took those steps almost every day and was a student at the École Supérieure des Mines? Did Zacharias, La Houpa, Ali Cherif, or Don Carlos really know what the École des Mines was all about? It was necessary for me to keep this a secret or I risked them poking fun at me or distrusting me. What did the École des Mines represent to Adamov, Larronde, or Maurice Raphaël? Nothing, of course. They would suggest I stop going to such a place. If I spent a lot of time at the Condé, it was because I wanted them to give me such advice, once and for all. Louki and Maurice Raphaël would have already made it to the other side of Montparnasse Cemetery, over to the area that he called Limbo. And I remained, standing there in the dark, up against my window, contemplating that darkened façade. It could have passed for the abandoned train station of a provincial town. On the walls of the neighboring building, I had noticed bullet holes, like they had shot someone there. I quietly repeated those four words that seemed more and more foreign, “École Supérieure des Mines.”

  I WAS FORTUNATE that particular young man was sitting next to me at the Condé and we struck up such a comfortable conversation. It was the first time I had been in that establishment, and I was old enough to be his father. The notebook in which he’d kept track of the Condé’s customers, day in and day out for the past three years, made my work easier. I feel bad for hiding the true reason I wanted to consult his document but I simply did so in hopes that he would be kind enough to lend it to me. And was I lying when I told him I was an art publisher?

  I was pretty certain that he believed me. That’s the advantage of being twenty years older than someone: They don’t know your past. And even if they ask you a couple of distracted questions about what your life has been up until that point, you can make it up completely. A new life. They’re not going to go and check. As you tell of this imaginary life, great breaths of fresh air rush across a closed room in which you have been unable to breathe for a long time. A window abruptly opens, the shutters bang in the breeze. You have, once again, a future before you.

  An art publisher. It came to me without even thinking. If I had been asked what I was going to be when I was older, some twenty years ago, I would have mumbled: an art publisher. And well, today I said it. Nothing has changed. All of those years are done and gone.

  Except I haven’t quite wiped clean the slate of the past. There are still some witnesses, a few survivors among those who had been our contemporaries. One evening, at the Montana, I asked Dr. Vala when he was born. We were born the same year. And I reminded him that we had met in the olden days, in that very bar, when the area still shone as brightly as it once had. And moreover, it seemed to me that I had run into him well before, elsewhere in Paris, on the Rive Droite. I was even certain of it. Dryly, Vala had ordered a bottle of Vittel, cutting me off at the very moment it seemed as if I might bring up unpleasant memories. I shut up. We live at the mercy of certain silences. We have all known things about each other for a long time. So we try to avoid each other. It would be for the best, of course, if none of us were ever to see each other again.

  What a strange coincidence . . . I came across Vala the very first afternoon I went into the Condé. He was sitting at a table at the back with two or three young people. He shot me the alarmed look of a bon vivant who finds himself in the presence of a ghost. I gave him a smile. I shook his hand without saying a thing. I felt that the least word on my part risked making him uncomfortable in front of his new friends. He seemed relieved by my silence and discretion as I sat down on an imitation-leather banquette at the other end of the room. From there I was able to watch him without his noticing my gaze. He spoke to them in a low voice, leaning toward them. Was he worried I would hear what he was saying? Then, to pass the time, I imagined all of the phrases I might have spoken in a feignedly urbane tone that would have made drops of sweat bead up on his forehead. “Are you still a doctor?” And then, after a long pause, “Say, are you still practicing at Quai Louis-Blériot? At least tell me you’ve kept your office on rue de Moscou. And that trip to Fresnes way back when, I hope there weren’t too many serious consequences.” I very nearly burst out laughing, all by myself in my corner. We never grow up. As the years go by, many people and many things end up seeming so humorous and so pathetic that all you can do is try to look at them through the eyes of a child.

  •

  That first visit, I spent a long time waiting at the Condé. She didn’t come. I would have to be patient. It would wait for another day. I watched the customers. Most of them weren’t more than twenty-five years old. A nineteenth-century novelist might have described them as “the student bohemians.” But few of them, in my opinion, were enrolled at the Sorbonne or the École des Mines. I must admit that watching them up close, I didn’t have high hopes for their futures.

  Two men came in, one shortly after the other. Adamov and the dark-haired fellow with the flowing walk who had written a few books under the name Maurice Raphaël. I knew Adamov at first sight. In bygone days, he was almost always at the Old Navy Café, and his stare was one you didn’t forget. I believe I had done him a favor to help sort out his living situation, back when I still had a few contacts at the Renseignements Généraux. As for Maurice Raphaël, he too was a regular in the bars of the area. I’ve heard that he had been in some trouble after the war under a different name. Back in those days, I was working for Blémant. They both came up and leaned their elbows on the bar. Maurice Raphaël remained standing, rather stiffly, and Adamov hauled himself up onto a barstool, wincing in pain. He hadn’t yet remarked my presence. Would my face still bring anything back for him? Three young people, including a blond girl with bangs wearing a worn raincoat, joined them at the bar. Maurice Raphaël held out a pack of cigarettes and looked at them with an amused smile. Adamov showed himself to be less at ease with them. His intense stare made you think he was somewhat frightened by them.

  I had two photo-booth pictures of this Jacqueline Delanque in my pocket. Back when I worked for Blémant, he had always been surprised at how easily I could identify someone. All it took was for my eyes to pass over a face once for it to remain engraved in my memory. Blémant had often kidded me about my ability to immediately recognize someone fr
om afar, whether it was in three-quarter profile or even from behind. So I wasn’t the least bit worried. As soon as she came into the Condé, I would know it was her.

  Dr. Vala turned towards the bar and our eyes met. He gave a friendly wave. I suddenly had the urge to walk over to his table and tell him that I had a private question to ask him. I would have taken him aside and showed him the photos. “You know her?” Really, it would have been helpful to find out a bit more about this girl from one of the customers at the Condé.

  •

  As soon as I learned the address of her hotel, I had made my way there. I had chosen the middle of the afternoon, as it would be more likely that she was out. At least so I hoped. Then I would be able to ask the front desk a few questions about her. It was a sunny autumn day and I decided to make the trek on foot. I set out from the quays and slowly made my way inland. By rue du Cherche-Midi, the sun was in my eyes. I went into Au Chien Qui Fume and ordered a cognac. I was anxious. I surveyed avenue du Maine from the window. All I needed to do was to walk down the left sidewalk and I’d reach my destination. No reason to feel anxious. As I continued along the avenue, I regained my calm. I was nearly certain she wouldn’t be there, and in any case, I wouldn’t go into the hotel to ask questions this time, I would wander around outside as if I were on a stakeout. I had plenty of time. I had been paid for it.