Out of the Dark

by Patrick Modiano

  I stood back. They’d forgotten me. I retreated to the other side of the room and sat down at one end of a couch. At the other end, two young people, pressed together, were speaking quietly to each other. No one was paying any attention to me. I tried to spot Jacqueline among the crowd. About twenty people. I looked at the man they called Darius, over by the threshold of the balcony, a slender silhouette in a beige suit. I thought he must be about forty years old. Could Darius be Jacqueline’s husband? The clamor of the conversations was drowned out by music, which seemed to be coming from the balconies.

  I examined the face of one woman after another, but in vain; I didn’t see Jacqueline. This was the wrong floor. I wasn’t even sure she lived in this building. Now Darius was in the middle of the room, a few meters from me, standing with a very elegant blonde woman who was listening to him intendy. From time to time she laughed. I tried to make out what language he was speaking, but the music covered his voice. Why not walk up to the man and ask him where Jacqueline was? In his deep, courtly voice he would reveal the solution to this mystery, which was not really a mystery at all: if he knew Jacqueline, if Jacqueline was his wife, or what floor she lived on. It was as simple as that. He was facing in my direction. Now he was listening to the blonde woman and by chance his gaze had come to rest on me. At first, I had the impression that he didn’t see me. And then he gave me a friendly little wave with his hand. He seemed surprised that I was sitting alone on the couch, speaking to no one, but I was much more comfortable now than when I came into the apartment, and a memory from fifteen years earlier came back to me. We had arrived in London, Jacqueline and I, at Charing Cross Station, about five o’clock in the afternoon. We had taken a taxi to get to the hotel, which we’d chosen at random from a guidebook. Neither of us knew London. When the taxi turned onto the Mall and that shady, tree-lined avenue opened up before me, the first twenty years of my life fell to dust, like a weight, like handcuffs or a harness that I never thought I would be free of. Just like that, nothing remained of all those years. And if happiness was the fleeting euphoria I felt that afternoon, then for the first time in my existence I was happy.

  Later, it was dark, and we were walking aimlessly in the area of Ennismore Gardens. We walked along the iron fence surrounding an abandoned garden. There was laughter, music, and the hum of conversation coming from the top floor of one of the houses. The windows were wide open, and a group of silhouettes stood out against the light. We stayed there, leaning on the garden fence. One of the guests sitting on the edge of the balcony had noticed us and had motioned for us to come up. In big cities, in summertime, people who have long since lost track of each other or who don’t even know each other meet one evening on a terrace, then lose each other again. And none of it really matters.

  Darius had come over to me:

  ‘Have you lost your friends?’ he said with a smile.

  It took me a moment to understand who he meant: the three people in the elevator.

  ‘They’re not really my friends.’

  But I immediately wished I hadn’t said that. I didn’t want him asking himself what I was doing here.

  ‘I haven’t known them long,’ I told him. ‘And they had the idea of bringing me here….’

  He smiled again.

  ‘The friends of my friends are my friends.’

  But he was uncomfortable because he didn’t know who I was. To put him at his ease, I said, as quietly as possible:

  ‘Do you often throw such nice parties?’

  ‘Yes. In August. And always when my wife is away.’

  Most of the guests had left the living room. How could they all fit on the balconies?

  ‘I feel so lonely when my wife is away….’

  His eyes had taken on a melancholy expression. He was still smiling at me. This was the time to ask him if his wife’s name was Jacqueline, but I didn’t dare risk it yet.

  ‘And you, do you live in Paris?’

  He was probably asking just to be polite. After all, I was his guest, and he didn’t want me to be sitting alone on a couch away from all the others.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know if I’m going to stay.…’

  Suddenly I felt a need to confide in him. It had been three months, more or less, since I had spoken to anyone.

  ‘My work is something I can do anywhere, as long as I have a pen and a sheet of paper.…’

  ‘You’re a writer?’

  ‘If you can call it that….’

  He wanted me to tell him tides of my books. Maybe he’d read one.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I told him.

  It must be exciting to write, hmm?’

  He must not have had much practice with one-to-one conversations on such serious matters.

  ‘I’m keeping you from your guests,’ I told him. ‘For that matter, I think I might have driven them all away.’

  There was almost no one left in the living room or on the balconies.

  He laughed lightly:

  ‘Not at all… Everyone’s gone up to the terrace….’

  There were still a few guests left in the living room, ensconced on a couch across the room, a white couch like the one where I was sitting next to Darius.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance,’ he told me.

  Then he moved toward the others, among them the blonde woman he had been speaking with a few moments before and the man in the blazer from the elevator.

  ‘Don’t you think we need some music here?’ he asked them, very loudly, as if he were only there to keep the party going. ‘I’ll go put on a record.’

  He disappeared into the next room. After a moment, the voice of a chanteuse came forth.

  He sat down with the others on the couch. He had already forgotten me.

  It was time for me to leave, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the sound of conversation and laughter coming from the terrace and, from the couch, the voices of Darius and his guests occasionally breaking through the music. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, and I let myself be lulled by the song.

  Someone was ringing the doorbell. Darius stood up and walked toward the front door. He smiled at me as he passed by. The others went on talking, and in the heat of the discussion the man in the blazer was making broad gestures, as if he were trying to convince them of something.

  Voices in the entryway. They were coming nearer. I heard Darius and a woman speaking in low tones. I turned around. Darius was standing with a couple, and all three of them were at the threshold of the living room. The man was tall, brown-haired, wearing a gray suit, with rather heavy features, his blue eyes shallow-set. The woman was wearing a yellow summer dress that left her shoulders bare.

  ‘We’ve come too late,’ the man said. ‘Everyone has already left. …’

  He had a slight accent.

  ‘No, no,’ said Darius. ‘They’re waiting for us upstairs.’

  He took each of them by the arm.

  The woman, whom I had seen in three-quarters profile, turned around. My heart jumped. I recognized Jacqueline. They were walking toward me. I stood up, like a robot.

  Darius introduced them to me:

  ‘George and Thérése Caisley.’

  I greeted them with a nod. I looked the so-called Thérése Caisley squarely in the eyes, but she didn’t blink. Apparently she didn’t recognize me. Darius seemed embarrassed not to be able to introduce me by name.

  ‘These are my downstairs neighbors,’ he told me. ‘I’m happy they came…. And in any case, they wouldn’t have been able to sleep because of the noise….’

  Caisley shrugged:

  ‘Sleep?… But it’s still early,’ he said. ‘The day is only beginning.’

  I tried to make eye contact with her. Her gaze was absent. She didn’t see me, or else she was deliberately ignoring my presence. Darius led them across the room to the couch where the others were sitting. The man in the blazer stood up to greet Thérése Caisley. The conversation started up again. C
aisley was very talkative. She hung back a little, with a sullen or bored look. I wanted to walk toward her, take her aside, and quietly say to her:

  ‘Hello, Jacqueline.’

  But I stood there petrified, trying to find some common thread connecting the Café Dante or the Hôtel de la Tournelle fifteen years ago to this living room with its bay windows open onto the Bois de Boulogne. There was none. I’d fallen prey to a mirage. And yet, now that I thought about it, these places were all in the same city, not so far from each other. I tried to imagine the shortest possible route to the Café Dante: follow the Boulevard Périphérique as far as the Left Bank, enter the city at the Porte d’Orléans, then drive straight ahead toward the Boulevard Saint-Michel…. At that hour, in August, it would hardly have taken a quarter of an hour.

  The man in the blazer was speaking to her, and she was listening to him indifferently. She’d sat down on one of the arms of the couch and lit a cigarette. I saw her in profile. What had she done to her hair? Fifteen years ago it came down to her waist, and now she wore it a little above the shoulder. And she was smoking, but she wasn’t coughing.

  ‘Will you come up with us?’ Darius asked me.

  He had left the others on the couch and was standing with George and Thérése Caisley. Thérése. Why had she changed her name?

  I followed them onto one of the balconies.

  ‘You just have to climb the deck ladder,’ said Darius.

  He pointed to a stairway with concrete steps at the end of the balcony.

  ‘And where are we setting sail for, captain?’ asked Caisley, slapping Darius’s shoulder familiarly.

  We were behind them, side by side, Thérése Caisley and I. She smiled. But it was a polite smile, the kind used for strangers.

  ‘Have you ever been up here?’ she asked me.

  ‘No. Never. This is the first time.’

  ‘The view must be beautiful.’

  She had said these words so coldly and impersonally that I wasn’t even sure she was speaking to me.

  A large terrace. Most of the guests were sitting in beige canvas chairs.

  Darius stopped at one of the groups as he passed by.

  They were sitting in a circle. I was walking behind Caisley and his wife, who seemed to have forgotten I was there.

  They met another couple at the edge of the terrace. The four of them stood still and began to talk, she and Caisley leaning against the balustrade. Caisley and the two others were speaking English. From time to time she punctuated the conversation with a short sentence in French. I came and rested my elbows on the parapet of the terrace as well. She was just behind me. The other three were still speaking in English. The singer’s voice drowned out the murmur of the conversations and I began to whisde the refrain of the song. She turned around.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  She smiled at me, the same vacant smile as before. And since she was silent again, I had no choice but to add: ‘Lovely evening…’

  The discussion between Caisley and the two others was growing more animated. Caisley had a slightly nasal voice.

  ‘What’s especially pleasant,’ I told her, ‘is the cool breeze coming from the Bois de Boulogne….’

  ‘Yes.’

  She got out a pack of cigarettes, took one, and offered me the pack:

  ‘Thanks very much. I don’t smoke.’

  ‘You’re smart….’

  She lit a cigarette with a lighter.

  ‘I’ve tried to quit several times,’ she told me, ‘but I just can’t do it….’

  ‘Doesn’t it make you cough?’

  She seemed surprised by my question.

  ‘I stopped smoking,’ I told her, ‘because it made me cough.’

  There was no reaction. She really didn’t seem to recognize me.

  ‘It’s a shame you can hear the noise of the Périphérique from here,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think so? I can’t hear it from my apartment. … And I live on the fourth floor.’

  ‘Still, the Périphérique is a very useful thing,’ I told her. ‘It took me no more than ten minutes to drive here from the Quai de la Tournelle tonight.’

  But my words had no effect on her. She was still smiling her cold smile.

  ‘Are you a friend of Darius?’

  It was the same question the woman had asked me in the elevator.

  ‘No,’ I told her. ‘I’m a friend of a friend of Darius … Jacqueline….’

  I avoided making eye contact with her. I was staring at one of the streetlights below us, beneath the trees.

  ‘I don’t know her.’

  ‘Do you spend summers in Paris?’ I asked.

  ‘My husband and I are leaving for Majorca next week.’

  I remembered our first meeting, that winter afternoon on the Place Saint-Michel, and the letter she was carrying, whose envelope said: Majorca.

  ‘Your husband doesn’t write detective novels, does he?’

  She gave a sudden laugh. It was strange, because Jacqueline had never laughed like that.

  ‘What on earth would make you think he writes detective novels?’

  Fifteen years ago, she had told me the name of an American who wrote detective novels and who might be able to help us get to Majorca: McGivem. Later, I had come across a few of his books, and I’d even thought of searching him out and asking him if he knew Jacqueline by any chance, and what had become of her.

  ‘I had him mixed up with someone else who lives in Spain … William McGivern…’

  For the first time she looked straight into my eyes, and I thought I could see something conspiratorial in her smile. What about you?’ she asked me. ‘Do you live in Paris?’

  ‘For now. I don’t know if I’m going to stay….’

  Behind us Caisley was still speaking in his nasal voice, and now he was at the center of a very large group.

  ‘I can work anywhere,’ I told her. ‘I write books.’

  Again, her polite smile, her distant voice:

  ‘Oh really?… How interesting…. I’d very much like to read your books….’

  ‘I’d be afraid they might bore you….’

  ‘Not at all… You’ll have to bring them to me one day when you come back to Darius’s….’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  Caisley had let his gaze fall on me. He was probably wondering who I was and why I was talking to his wife. He came to her and put his arm around her shoulders. His shallow blue eyes never left me.

  ‘This gentleman is a friend of Darius and he writes books.’

  I should have introduced myself, but I always feel uncomfortable speaking my own name.

  ‘I didn’t know Darius had any writer friends.’

  He smiled at me. He was about ten years older than us. Where could she have met him? In London, maybe. Yes, she had undoubtedly stayed on in London after we lost contact with each other.

  ‘He thought you were a writer as well,’ she said.

  Caisley was shaken by a loud burst of laughter. Then he stood up straight, just as he was before: his shoulders stiff, his head high.

  ‘Really, that’s what you thought? You think I look like a writer?’

  I hadn’t given the matter any thought. I didn’t care what this Caisley person did for a living. No matter how many times I told myself he was her husband, he was indistinguishable from everyone else standing on the terrace. We were lost, she and I, in a crowd of extras on a movie set. She was pretending to know her part, but I wouldn’t be able to avoid giving myself away. They would soon notice that I didn’t belong here. I still hadn’t spoken, and Caisley was looking at me closely. It was essential that I find something to say:

  ‘I had you mixed up with an American writer who lives in Spain … William McGivern….’

  Now I’d bought myself some time. But it wouldn’t be enough. I urgently needed to find other rejoinders, and to speak them in a natural and relaxed tone of voice so as not to attract attenti
on. My head was spinning. I was afraid I was going to be ill. I was sweating. The night seemed stiflingly close, unless it was only the harsh illumination of the spotlights, the loud chatter of the conversations, the laughter.

  ‘Do you know Spain well?’ Caisley asked me.

  She had lit another cigarette, and she was still staring at me with her cold gaze. I was scarcely able to stammer out:

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  We have a house on Majorca. We spend more than three months a year there.’

  And the conversation would go on for hours on this terrace. Empty words, hollow sentences, as if she and I had outlived ourselves and could no longer make even the slightest allusion to the past. She was perfectly comfortable in her part. And I didn’t blame her: As I went along I too had forgotten nearly everything about my life, and each time whole stretches of it had fallen to dust I’d felt a pleasant sensation of lightness.

  ‘And what’s your favorite time of year in Majorca?’ I asked Caisley.

  I was feeling better now, the air was cooler, the guests around us less noisy, and the singer’s voice very sweet. Caisley shrugged.

  ‘Every season has its charms in Majorca.’

  I turned to her:

  ‘And do you feel the same way?’

  She smiled as she had a moment before, when I thought I had glimpsed something conspiratorial.

  ‘I feel exactly as my husband does.’

  And then a sort of giddiness came over me, and I said to her:

  ‘It’s funny. You don’t cough when you smoke anymore.’ Caisley hadn’t heard me. Someone had slapped him on the back and he had turned around. She frowned.

  ‘No need to take ether for your cough anymore. …’

  I’d said it lightly, as if only making conversation. She gave me a look of surprise. But she was as poised as ever. As for Caisley, he was talking to the person next to him.

  ‘I didn’t understand what you said.…’

  Now she was looking away, and her gaze had lost its expression. I shook my head briskly, trying to look like someone waking up suddenly.