In the Café of Lost Youth

by Patrick Modiano

  “Lend them to me for a while?” I asked him.

  “Of course.”

  I stuffed the envelope into a jacket pocket.

  There comes a time when you have to stop listening to other people. What did he, Jean-Pierre Choureau, really know about Jacqueline Delanque? Not much. They had lived together for barely a year in this street-level apartment in Neuilly. They had sat side by side on this sofa, they had eaten across from each other, and once in a while they had dined with old friends from business school and from the Lycée Jean-Baptiste Say. Is that enough to guess the entirety of what goes on in someone’s head? Did she still see any family relations? I made one final effort to ask him this question.

  “No, she didn’t have any family left.”

  I got up. He gave me an anxious look. He remained seated on the sofa.

  “It’s time I get going,” I told him. “It’s late.”

  I smiled at him, but he seemed surprised that I wanted to take my leave of him.

  “I’ll call you as soon as possible,” I told him. “I hope to be able to give you some news before too long.”

  He got up in turn, with the same trancelike movements he had used to guide me to the living room earlier. One final question came to mind.

  “Did she have any money when she left?”

  “No.”

  “And when she called you, once she had left, did she give you any indication as to how she was getting by?”

  “No.”

  He walked towards the front door with his stiff gait. Would he still be able to answer my questions? I opened the door. He stood behind me, frozen. I don’t know what it was that came over me, what disequilibrium or rush of bitterness, but I said to him in an aggressive tone: “I’d imagine you had hoped you would grow old together?”

  Was this to wake him from his torpor and depression? His eyes widened and he stared at me with fear. I stood in the doorframe. I stepped closer to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t hesitate to call me. Any time of day.”

  His face relaxed. He managed a smile. Before closing the door, he waved goodbye. I remained a long moment on the landing, and the automatic lighting went out. I imagined him sitting alone on the sofa, in the position he had occupied earlier. Absentmindedly picking up a magazine from the stack on the coffee table.

  •

  It was dark outside. I couldn’t pull my thoughts away from this man in his ground-floor apartment, sitting under the stark light of the lamp. Would he have something to eat before he went to bed? I wondered if he had a kitchen in there. I should have invited him for dinner. Perhaps, without me asking him questions, he might have said something, an admission that would have put me on the trail of Jacqueline Delanque more quickly. Blémant often told me that there comes a time for each individual, even the most stubborn, when he “spills the beans.” That was his motto. It was for us to await this moment with the utmost patience, while trying, of course, to provoke it, but in an almost imperceptible manner, as Blémant said, “with delicate little pinpricks.” The fellow must feel as if he is before a confessor. It’s tricky. That’s the job. I had reached the Porte-Maillot and I felt like walking for a while yet in the mildness of the evening. Unfortunately, my new shoes were really hurting my insteps. And so, back on the avenue, I went into the first café and selected one of the tables nearest the bay windows. I untied my shoes and removed the left one, the one that was causing me the most pain. When the waiter came, I didn’t even try to resist a brief moment of forgetfulness and relaxation, and I asked for an Izarra Verte.

  I took the envelope from my pocket and I pored over the pictures for a long while. Where was she now? In a café, like me, sitting alone at a table? Doubtless the phrase he had spoken earlier had given me this idea: “It’s all about trying to create ties.” Encounters in the street, in a Métro station at rush hour. We ought to shackle ourselves to each other at that moment. What connection can resist the tide as it carries you away and diverts your course? An anonymous office where you dictate a letter to a temp typist, a ground-floor apartment in Neuilly whose white, empty walls evoke what some would call a “showroom apartment,” where there would be no trace left of your stay. Two photo-booth snapshots, one facing the camera, one in profile. And that’s what we’re supposed to forge links with? There was someone who would be able to help me with my search: Bernolle. I hadn’t seen him since my Blémant days, except for one afternoon about three years ago. I was on my way to the Métro and I was crossing the square in front of Notre-Dame. A tramp came out of the Hôtel-Dieu and our paths crossed. He was wearing a raincoat with torn sleeves, pants that stopped above the ankles, and his bare feet were wedged into a pair of old sandals. He was unshaven and his dark hair was too long. And yet I recognized him. Bernolle. I followed him with the intention of speaking to him. But he was walking too quickly. He went in the front door of the police headquarters. I hesitated a moment. It was too late to catch him, so I decided to wait right there on the sidewalk. After all, we had grown up together.

  He came back out of the same door in a navy blue coat, flannel pants, and black lace-up shoes. It was no longer the same man. He seemed nervous when I approached him. He was freshly shaven. We walked the length of the quay without saying a word. Once we had taken a seat at a table a bit farther down, at the Soleil d’Or, he confided in me. He was still employed digging up information, oh, nothing big, some work as an informant and a mole where he played the part of a tramp to better see and hear what went on around him: staking out building fronts, the various flea markets, Pigalle, around the train stations, and even in the Latin Quarter. He had a sad smile. He lived in a studio in the sixteenth arrondissement. He gave me his telephone number. Not for a moment did we speak of the past. He had placed his travel bag on the bench next to him. He would have been rather surprised if I had told him what it contained: an old raincoat, pants that were too short, a pair of sandals.

  •

  The very evening I returned from the meeting in Neuilly, I telephoned him. Ever since we had reconnected, I occasionally turned to him for information I required. I asked him to find me some details concerning one Jacqueline Delanque, married name Choureau. I didn’t have much else to tell him about this person, other than her date of birth and that of her marriage to a certain Choureau, Jean-Pierre, of 11, avenue de Bretteville in Neuilly, an active partner with Zannetacci. He took notes. “That’s all?” He seemed disappointed. “And nothing on either of them in the criminal records, I suppose,” he said in a disdainful voice. “No rap sheets?” Criminal records. Rap sheets. I tried to picture the Choureaus’ bedroom in Neuilly, the bedroom I ought to have taken a look at out of professional conscientiousness.

  A bedroom empty forevermore, a bare mattress stripped of its sheets.

  •

  Over the course of the following weeks, Choureau telephoned me several times. He always spoke in an expressionless voice and it was always seven o’clock in the evening. Perhaps at that particular hour, alone in his ground-floor apartment, he felt the need to talk to someone. I told him to be patient. I got the feeling that he had given up and that he would slowly begin to accept his wife’s disappearance. I received a letter from Bernolle:

  My dear Caisley,

  No jacket on file in the criminal records. Neither under Choureau nor Delanque.

  But chance is a strange mistress. A tedious statistical assignment that I’ve been working on within the police station logs of the 9th and 18th arrondissements led me to find you a bit of information.

  On two separate occasions, I came across “Delanque, Jacqueline, 15 years old.” The first time, in the logs of the Quartier Saint-Georges police station, from seven years ago, and a second time, several months later, in that of Grandes-Carrières. Grounds: Juvenile Vagrancy.

  I asked at Leoni if there might be something concerning hotels. Two years ago, Delanque, Jacqueline, lived at the Hôtel San Remo, 8, rue d’Armaillé (17th) and the Hôtel Métropole, 13, r
ue de l’Étoile (17th). In the logs from Saint-Georges and from Grandes-Carrières, it indicates that she lived with her mother at 10, avenue Rachel (18th arrondissement).

  She currently lives at the Hôtel Savoie, 8, rue Cels, in the 14th arrondissement. Her mother passed away four years ago. On her birth certificate from the city hall in Fontaines-en-Sologne (Loir-et-Cher), of which I am sending you a copy, it indicates that she was born to an unknown father. Her mother was employed as an usher at the Moulin Rouge and had a friend, a Guy Lavigne, who worked at the La Fontaine Garage (16th) and who helped her out financially. Jacqueline Delanque doesn’t seem to have steady employment.

  There, my dear Caisley, you have everything that I have gathered for you. I hope to see you soon, but on the condition that it isn’t in my work attire. Blémant would have laughed heartily at that tramp disguise. You, a little less, I suppose. And me, not a bit.

  Take care,

  Bernolle

  All that remained was for me to telephone Jean-Pierre Choureau and tell him that the mystery was cleared up. I’m trying to remember at which exact moment I decided not to do anything about it. I had dialed the first digits of his number when I hung up abruptly. I was overwhelmed at the thought of going back to that ground-floor apartment in Neuilly during the late afternoon as I had before, of waiting with him under the red-shaded lamp for night to fall. I unfolded the old Taride map of Paris that I always keep on my desk, within arm’s reach. Through my years of consulting it, I have often torn it at the edges, and each time, I stuck Scotch tape over the tear, as if I were dressing a wound. The Condé. Neuilly. Quartier de l’Étoile. Avenue Rachel. For the first time in my professional life, I felt the need to go against the tide while conducting my investigation. Yes, I was traveling the road that Jacqueline Delanque had followed, but in the opposite direction. Jean-Pierre Choureau no longer mattered. He had only been a bit part and I saw him receding into the distance forever, a black briefcase in his hand, towards the Zannetacci offices. In the end, the only interesting person was Jacqueline Delanque. There had been many Jacquelines in my life. She would be the last. I took the Métro, the north-south line, as they call it, the one that connected avenue Rachel to the Condé. As the stations passed by, I traveled back in time. I got off at Pigalle. Once there, I walked along the boulevard’s wide median with a spring in my step. A sunny autumn afternoon where it would have been nice to work on new projects and where life could have started over from scratch. After all, it was in this area that her life had begun, this Jacqueline Delanque. It seemed as if she and I had an appointment. Coming up on place Blanche, my heart was racing a bit and I felt nervous and even intimidated. I hadn’t felt this way in a long time. I continued on down the median, my pace growing quicker. I could have walked this familiar district with my eyes closed: the Moulin Rouge, Le Sanglier Bleu. Who knows? Maybe I had crossed paths with this Jacqueline Delanque a long time ago, on the right-hand sidewalk as she went to meet her mother at the Moulin Rouge, or on the opposite side as school let out from the Lycée Jules-Ferry. There, I had arrived. I had forgotten about the cinema on the corner of the avenue. It was called the Mexico, and it wasn’t by chance that it had such a name. It gave you the desire to travel, to run away, to disappear. I had also forgotten the silence and calm of avenue Rachel, which leads to the cemetery, although you never think of the cemetery, you tell yourself that at its end it must let out onto the countryside, or even, with a bit of luck, onto a seaside promenade.

  I stopped in front of number 10 and, after a moment of hesitation, I went into the building. I went to knock on the concierge’s glass door, but I stopped myself. What good would that do? On a little sign glued to one of the door’s panes were listed the names of the tenants and the floor number of each one. I took my notebook and my ballpoint pen from the inside pocket of my jacket and made note of the names:

  Deyrlord (Christiane)

  Dix (Gisèle)

  Dupuy (Marthe)

  Esnault (Yvette)

  Gravier (Alice)

  Manoury (Albine)

  Mariska

  Van Bosterhaudt (Huguette)

  Zazani (Odette)

  The name Delanque (Geneviève) was crossed out and replaced by Van Bosterhaudt (Huguette). The mother and daughter had lived on the fifth floor. Yet as I closed my notebook I knew that none of these details would do me any good.

  Outside, by the building’s entrance, a man stood on the doorstep of a fabric shop whose sign read La Licorne. As I was looking up towards the fifth floor, I heard him say to me in a reedy voice, “Can I help you find something, sir?”

  I ought to have asked him about Geneviève and Jacqueline Delanque, but I knew how he would have responded, nothing but very superficial little “surface” details, as Blémant used to say, without ever getting to the heart of the matter. All it took was to hear his reedy voice, to notice his weaselly face and the severity of his stare: No, there was nothing to hope for from him, except for the “information” that you could get from any old informant. Or else he would tell me that he didn’t know Geneviève or Jacqueline Delanque. A cold rage swept over me, directed at this weasel-faced fellow. Perhaps he suddenly took the place of all the so-called witnesses I had interrogated during my investigations, people who had never understood a thing of what they had seen, be it out of stupidity, spite, or sheer indifference. I walked with a heavy step and planted myself in front of him. I was some eight inches taller than him and weighed twice what he did.

  “Is it against the law to look at a building?”

  He stared at me with severe and timorous eyes. I would have liked to scare him even more.

  And then, to calm myself, I sat down on a bench on the median, up by the entrance to the avenue, across from the Cinéma Mexico. I took off my left shoe.

  Sunshine. I was lost in my thoughts. Jacqueline Delanque could count on my discretion, Choureau would never learn anything of the Hôtel Savoie, the Condé, La Fontaine Garage, or this person named Roland, doubtless the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket mentioned in the notebook. “Louki. Monday, February 12th, 11 p.m. Louki, April 28th, 2 p.m. Louki with the brown-haired guy in the suede jacket.” Throughout the pages of the notebook, I had underlined her name each time in blue pencil and recopied all the notes that concerned her on loose sheets. With the dates. And the times. But she had no reason to worry. I wouldn’t go back to the Condé. Really, I had been fortunate, the two or three times I had waited for her at one of the tables in the café, that she hadn’t come on those days. I would have been embarrassed to spy on her without her knowing, yes, I would have been ashamed of my role. By what right do we intrude, forcing our way in like common crooks, and by what presumptuousness do we delve into their heads and their hearts—and ask them to account for themselves? By what authority? I had taken off my shoe and was massaging my instep. The pain died down. Night fell. Before, I suppose this would have been about the time Geneviève Delanque left for work at the Moulin Rouge. Her daughter stayed home alone, on the fifth floor. Towards thirteen, fourteen years old, one evening, once her mother had gone, she had left the building, careful not to be noticed by the concierge. Outside, she hadn’t gone past the street corner. She had been happy, the first several times, with the ten o’clock show at the Cinéma Mexico. Then the return trip to the building, climbing the stairs without setting off the automatic lights, the door shut as softly as possible. One night, when the cinema let out, she had walked a little farther, as far as place Blanche. And each night, a little bit farther. Juvenile Vagrancy, it had been written in the police logs of the Quartier Saint-Georges and in those of Grandes-Carrières, and those two words evoked for me a meadow beneath the moon, beyond the Caulaincourt bridge all the way back there, behind the cemetery, a meadow where at last you could breathe in the fresh air. Her mother had come to pick her up at the police station. Unfortunately, things had already been set in motion and no one could hold her back any longer. Nocturnal wandering towards the west, if I was correctly reading t
he few clues that Bernolle had gathered. At first, the Quartier de l’Étoile, and then still farther west, Neuilly and the Bois de Boulogne. But why, then, had she married Choureau? And once again flight, but this time towards the Rive Gauche, as if crossing the river would protect her from some imminent danger. And yet hadn’t this marriage also been a kind of protection? If she’d had the patience to stay in Neuilly, it would have eventually been forgotten that beneath a Madame Jean-Pierre Choureau hid a Jacqueline Delanque whose name appeared in the police logs on two occasions.

  Evidently I was once again a prisoner of my old professional conditioning, habits that made my colleagues believe that, even as I slept, I carried out my investigations. Blémant compared me to the postwar gangster they called “the Man Who Smokes in His Sleep.” He always kept an ashtray on the edge of his night table upon which he rested a lit cigarette. He slept in fits and starts, and each time he was briefly awake, he stretched an arm over to the ashtray and inhaled a puff of cigarette. Then, as if in a trance, he would light another one. And yet in the morning, he had no recollection of any of it and was convinced he had slept deeply. On that bench, I too, now that night had fallen, had the impression of being in a dream in which I continued to follow Jacqueline Delanque’s trail.

  Or to be more precise, I felt her presence on this boulevard, its lights shining like signals without my being able to decipher them very well. They spoke to me from the depths of the years, but I didn’t know which ones. And these lights, they seemed even more vivid to me from the dimness of the median. Vivid and distant at the same time.

  I had slipped my sock back on, and once again stuffed my foot into my left shoe, getting up from the bench where I would gladly have spent the whole night. And I walked along the wide median as she had, at fifteen, before she had been picked up. Where and at which moment had she attracted attention?