Suspended Sentences (23 page)
Read Suspended Sentences Online
Authors: Patrick Modiano
The compliment had struck me as only half-right. Joan Fontaine was English, whereas for me that girl represented the ideal Frenchwoman, as I imagined her at the time.
That evening, I noticed there was a larger group at their table than on other Sundays. I could name names: a certain Jean Terrail, whom
Claude Bernard had recognized among them the previous week, a dark-haired fellow who, he said, managed a hotel on Rue François-1er. Now, among the information I had gathered about Pagnon, there was this: “In 1943, personally swindled 300,000 francs in German marks that had been entrusted to him for sale by a Mr. Jean Terrail.” The world to which these people belonged revived some memories from childhood: it was my father’s world. Marquis and captains of industry. Gentlemen of fortune. Prison fodder. Angel Maquignon. I rescue them from the void one final time before they sink back into it forever.
Today, those Sunday evening diners seem as far away in time as if a century had elapsed. All that lively company is dead. My only interest in them is that they formed around Jacqueline a jewel case of decaying velvet … Vierzon to Paris in an hour and a quarter … There was nobody on the road … The restaurant door opens onto her, and from outside wafts an odor of wet earth and linden.
In the middle of dinner, she had suddenly stood up. The marquis had tried to detain her by taking her shoulder. But she had left their table and listlessly drifted out of the restaurant. The marquis hadn’t turned a hair. He had feigned indifference and forced himself to take part in the general conversation.
I hadn’t yet started my meal. I stood up in turn. An impulse pushed me outside. I had been watching her for weeks, and our eyes had barely met.
She was about ten yards ahead of me, on the sidewalk. She was walking with that same indolent step. I quickly caught up with her. She turned around. I remained speechless. I managed to stammer out:
“Have you … abandoned your friends?”
“Yes. Why did you ask me that?”
She raised the collar of her fur coat and pulled it tight it around her throat. Her ironic gaze was resting on me.
“I think I know one of your friends, by sight …”
She started walking again and I followed along, fearing she’d say something cutting. But she seemed to find it natural that I should remain at her side. We turned into that dead-end alley lined with houses that they call Avenue Rodin.
“So, you know one of my friends. Which one?”
It started to rain. We took shelter under the porch of the first building.
“The blond gentleman,” I said. “The marquis de something.”
She smiled at me.
“You mean the old prick?”
Her voice was soft, slightly indistinct, and she had pronounced those two words without stressing them. I suddenly realized that I’d been all wrong about her and that my imagination had led me astray. It was better this way. For me, from then on, she was simply Jacqueline of Avenue Rodin.
We waited for the rain to let up and then we walked to her place. Straight ahead, down Rue de la Tour. Then we followed Boulevard Delessert, in that area of Passy built in tiers that descend toward the river. A steep flight of steps brought us to a little street that led onto the quay. The elevator was out of service. Two adjoining rooms. In one of them, a large bed with a padded satin headboard.
“The old prick is going to show up. Is it all right with you if we turn out the light?”
Still in that soft, composed voice, as if it were a matter of course. We sat side by side on the sofa, in the half-light. She hadn’t removed her fur coat. She put her face close to mine.
“And you, what were you doing all those Sunday evenings in the restaurant?”
She had taken me by surprise. A mocking smile played about her lips. She leaned her head on my shoulder and stretched out her legs on the sofa. I caught the scent of her hair. I didn’t dare move. I heard the sound of an engine down below.
“That must be the old prick,” she whispered.
She got up and went to look out the window. The engine shut off. I went to look as well. It was raining very hard. A large, black English automobile was parked along the sidewalk. The marquis was standing immobile in front of the building. He wasn’t wearing an overcoat or raincoat. She left the window and went back to sit on the sofa.
“What is he doing?” she asked.
“Nothing. He’s standing in the rain.”
But after a moment, he headed for the door of the building. I heard his heavy step on the stairs. He gave two sharp knocks. She didn’t move from the sofa. He started pounding on the door. It was as if he was trying to break it down. Then silence again. His heavy step grew fainter on the stairs.
I hadn’t moved from the window. Under the pouring rain, he crossed the street and went to lean against the retaining wall of the steps we had walked down shortly before. And he stood there, unmoving, his back against the wall, his head raised toward the building façade. Rainwater poured onto him from the top of the steps, and his jacket was drenched. But he did not move an inch. At that moment a phenomenon occurred for which I’m still trying to find an explanation: had the street lamp at the top of the steps suddenly gone out? Little by little, that man melted into the wall. Or else the rain, from falling on him so heavily, had dissolved him, the way water dilutes a fresco that hasn’t had time to dry properly. As hard as I pressed my forehead against the glass and peered at the dark gray wall, no trace of him remained. He had vanished in that sudden way that I’d later notice in other people, like my father, which leaves you so puzzled that you have no choice but to look for proofs and clues to convince yourself these people had really existed.
Spring came early this year. It was very warm on March 18 and 19, 1990. Overnight, the buds blossomed into leaves on the chestnut trees in the Luxembourg. In front of the entrance to the gardens, on Rue Guynemer, multicolored buses stop and let out Japanese tourists. In rows, they follow an alley to the Statue of Liberty that rises at the edge of a lawn, a miniature replica of the one in New York.
A short while ago, I was sitting on a bench, not far from that statue. A man with silver hair wearing a blue suit walked at the head of a group of Japanese and, in front of the statue, gave them, with movements of his arm, a few explanations in approximate English. I mixed with the group. I didn’t take my eyes off that man; I focused on the timbre of his voice. I thought I recognized the false Pacheco from the time of the Cité Universitaire. He was carrying a travel bag with the TWA airlines logo on it. He had aged. Was it really he? The same tanned skin, as when he’d returned from Casablanca, and the same eyes that were so blue they were empty.
I moved closer to him. I was tempted to tap him on the shoulder and interrupt his spiel. And say, holding out my hand, “Monsieur Lombard, I presume?”
The Japanese took a few photos of the statue, and their group made an about-face down the alley that leads to the gate on Rue Guynemer. The man with the silver hair and blue suit led the way. They climbed into the bus that was waiting at the sidewalk. The man counted the Japanese as they passed in front of him.
He climbed on in turn and sat next to the driver. He was holding a microphone. The Jardins du Luxembourg was just one stop and
they had all of Paris to visit. I wanted to follow them on that glorious morning, harbinger of spring, and be just a simple tourist. No doubt I would have rediscovered a city I had lost and, through its avenues, the feeling I’d once had of being light and carefree.
At the age of twenty, I had left for Vienna with Jacqueline of Avenue Rodin. I remembered the days preceding our departure and an afternoon at the Porte d’Italie. I had visited a small kennel at the end of Avenue d’Italie. In one of the cages, a terrier was watching me with black eyes, head slightly cocked, ears raised, as if he wanted to start a conversation and not miss a single word of what I would say. Or else, he was simply waiting for me to deliver him from his prison—which I did after a few moments’ hesitation. Why not take a dog to Vienna?
I sat down with him at a sidewalk café table. It was June. They hadn’t yet dug the foundations for the
périphérique
, which gives such a feeling of enclosure. Back then, the gates of Paris were all in vanishing perspectives; the city gradually loosened its grip and faded into barren lots. And one could still believe that adventure lay right around every street corner.
This page constitutes a continuation of the copyright page on
p. iv
.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Modiano, Patrick, 1945–. [Novels. Selections. English]
Suspended sentences : three novellas / Patrick Modiano ; translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti.
pages cm.—(Margellos world republic of letters)
Originally published in French as: Chien de printemps (1993); Remise de peine (1988); and Fleurs de ruine (1991).
ISBN
978-0-300-19805-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Modiano, Patrick, 1945–, Translations into English. I. Polizzotti, Mark, translator. II. Modiano, Patrick, 1945–, Chien de printemps, English. III. Modiano, Patrick, 1945–, Remise de peine. English. IV. Modiano, Patrick, 1945–, Fleurs de ruine. English. V. Title.
PQ2673.O3A2 2015
843′.914—dc23
2014026824
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of
ANSI
/
NISO
Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
P
ATRICK
M
ODIANO
, 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
.
M
ARK
P
OLIZZOTTI’S
books include the collaborative novel
S
. (1991),
Lautréamont Nomad
(1994),
Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton
(1995; rev. ed. 2009),
Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados
(2006), and
Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited
(2006). His articles and reviews have appeared in the
New Republic
, the
Wall Street Journal, ARTnews
, the
Nation, Parnassus, Partisan Review, Bookforum
, and elsewhere. The translator of more than forty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Marguerite Duras, Raymond Roussel, and Jean Echenoz, he directs the publications program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
1
. I later discovered that Jacques Besse had composed the music for Jean-Paul Sartre’s
The Flies
and the film score for
Dédée d’Anvers
. The last addresses I was able to find for him were 15 Rue Hégésippe-Moreau, Paris 18, and Château de la Chesnaie, Chailles (Loiret-Cher), tel.: 27.
Eugène Deckers had several exhibitions. He died in Paris in 1977. His address was 25 Quai d’Anjou, Paris.
2
.
Orphée et l’Orphéisme
by H. de Meyendorff (Paris: Editions du Sablier, 1949).
Table of Contents
Introduction: Missing, by Mark Polizzotti
Afterimage