“You were here the other night … You were the young lady’s brother … Except, you still have to prove it …”
I slid a few hundred-franc bills into the breast pocket of his jacket. His gaze softened.
“Thank you, sir.”
He turned around and pulled a key from one of the cubbyholes.
“Room number 3 for you and your sister …”
He was now extending us every professional courtesy.
“It’s on the first floor.”
He handed me the key and leaned forward.
“Make no mistake … The hotel now only occupies the first floor of the building. The rest are furnished apartments.”
He smiled.
“Obviously, it’s not strictly by the book … But neither are many things in life, am I right?”
I had taken the key, a simple tin key that didn’t look like it fit a hotel room.
“For the bill, I’m afraid I can’t give you a receipt.”
He looked truly apologetic.
“Don’t give it another thought,” I said. “It’s much better this way.”
We climbed the stairs, which were covered with a worn red carpet.
Several doors on either side of the hallway. Each one bore a number written in pencil.
We went into room number 3. It was spacious and high-ceilinged. A bay window looked out on the street. The very wide bed had baby blue sheets and a plaid blanket. A small wooden staircase led up to a mezzanine. The dog lay down on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“We could stay here until we leave for Rome,” said Gisèle.
Of course. While waiting for that day, we would not leave the neighborhood, just like airline passengers at the departure gate before boarding. We wouldn’t even leave this room, or this bed. And I imagined the man in the tan coat from before, ringing at the door of the Quai de Conti apartment early in the morning, coming for us as he had done twenty years earlier for my father and as he would do for all eternity. But he would never get his hands on us.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Rome.”
She switched off the bedside lamp. We were on the bed and we hadn’t drawn the curtains over the large bay window. I heard voices and slamming car doors from the garage across the way. The light from its electric sign fell on us. Soon all became quiet. I feel her lips on my temple and in the hollow of my ear. She asks, in a whisper, if I love her.
~ ~ ~
The next day, we got up at around ten. There was no one at the reception desk. We had breakfast on Rue du Laos, in a café with the same name as the street.
She said she was going straight out to retrieve the rest of the money in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt and hoped “it would go well.” Yes, she risked running into her husband and other people who lived in the house. But in the end, what difference did it make? She no longer owed anything to anyone.
I offered to go with her, but she maintained it was best if she went alone.
“I’ll call you in an hour if I need you.”
We went back to the hotel so that she could jot down the number. The porter still wasn’t there but on the counter we found a pile of buff-colored cards on which was written: “Hôtel-pension Ségur — furnished apartments, 7-bis Rue de la Cavalerie (15th), SUFFREN 75–55.” She slipped one into the pocket of her raincoat.
We walked to the car. She held my arm. She wanted to take the dog with her. She sat at the wheel and he on the back seat. I found a pretext not to leave her quite yet. Could she drop me at a newsstand?
She followed Avenue de Suffren toward the Seine. She stopped at the first newsstand.
“See you in a bit.”
She leaned out of the lowered window and waved.
I shoved the newspaper in my pocket. I turned onto the first street I came to, on the left, followed it, and emerged onto a square in the middle of which stretched a large public green with a gazebo.
I sat on one of the benches near the gazebo to read the paper. In front of me was the façade of the Dupleix barracks.
Sun. A cloudless sky. On the bench next to mine, a brown-haired woman of about thirty was watching a little boy ride his bike.
I was surprised to hear the clack of horseshoes coming nearer. A group of horsemen in military dress were riding into the barracks. I remembered that on Sunday mornings in my childhood, I used to hear the same sound when the Republican Guard paraded by on the quay.
On the local news page, I didn’t find the picture of the man they’d made get in their car on Sunday afternoon. Nothing about Ansart or Jacques de Bavière, or about Martine Gaul.
It occurred to me that we’d been right near here the other evening and I decided to walk to Rue Desaix, without having a clear idea of where it was. But I had only to skirt the barracks wall.
I recognized the building at number 34. Yes, that was where I had waited for her. The viaduct of the elevated metro, to the left, blocked the horizon of the street. What floor was the apartment on?
I took the same path and, once again, I came out onto the square with the public green, in front of the barracks.
I rejoined Avenue de Suffren and the narrow street with our hotel.
There was still nobody at the reception desk. The phone was sitting on the wooden ledge beneath the cubbyholes. It was nearly one o’clock. I leaned my elbow on the desk. One o’clock. One-fifteen. The phone didn’t ring. I picked up the receiver to make sure it was working properly and heard the dial tone.
She had arranged to meet me at two, at the café on Rue du Laos. I had no desire to go back up to our room. I went out and took Avenue de Suffren, but this time in the other direction. The avenue was quieter on this side. Along the opposite sidewalk, the old buildings of the Ecole Militaire. And the rows of plane trees. We wouldn’t see their leaves next spring because we would be in Rome.
The more I walked, the more it felt as if I was in a foreign city and becoming someone else. What I had lived through in my childhood and the few years following, up to my meeting Gisèle, gently peeled off of me in strips, dissolved; now and then, I even made a small effort to retain a few scraps before they vanished into thin air: the years of boarding school, my father’s silhouette in his navy blue coat, my mother, Grabley, the lights of the tour boat on the bedroom ceiling …
At ten minutes to two, I was standing in front of the café on Rue du Laos. She wasn’t there yet. I wanted to buy her a bouquet of roses at the florist’s, but I didn’t have any money on me. I walked back to the hotel. When I went in, the night porter was standing behind the reception desk.
He stared at me and blushed violently.
“Sir …”
He couldn’t find the words, but I had understood even before hearing them. Your friend. Accident. Just after the Suresnes bridge. They had found the hotel card in her raincoat pocket and called here.
I walked out, my mind a blank. Outside, everything was light, clear, indifferent, like a pure blue January sky.
About the Authors
PATRICK MODIANO, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, in 1945, and was educated in Annecy and Paris. He published his first novel, La Place de l’Etoile, in 1968. In 1978, he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for Rue des Boutiques Obscures (published in English as Missing Person), and in 1996 he received the Grand Prix National des Lettres for his body of work. Modiano’s other writings include a book-length interview with the writer Emmanuel Berl and, with Louis Malle, the screenplay for Lacombe Lucien.
MARK POLIZZOTTI’S books include the collaborative novel S. (1991),