Read Online Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano - Free Book Online Page A

lose all touch with Dora Bruder over this
period would be to report on the changes in the weather. The
first snow fell on 4 November 1941. Winter got off to a cold
start on 22 December. On 29 December, the temperature
dropped still further, and windowpanes were covered with a
thin coating of ice. From 13 January onwards, the cold
became Siberian. Water froze. This lasted some four weeks. On
12 February, the sun came out briefly, like a tentative
annunciation of spring. The snow on the sidewalks, trampled
by pedestrians, turned to a blackish slush. It was on that
evening of 12 February that my father was picked up by the
Jewish Affairs police. On 22 February it snowed again. On 25
February, there was a fresh, much heavier snowfall. On 3
March, just after 9 P.M. , the first bombs fell on the suburbs.
Windows rattled in Paris. On 13 March, in broad daylight, the
sirens sounded a general alert. Passengers were stuck in the
métro for two hours. They were led out through the tunnel.
A second alert that same day, at 10 P.M. 15 March was a
beautiful sunny day. On 28 March, about 10 P.M. , a distant air raid,
lasting till midnight. On 2 April, around 4 A.M. , an alert,
followed by a heavy bombardment till six. More raids from 11 P.M. On 4 April, the buds on the chestnut trees burst open.
On 5 April, toward evening, a passing spring storm brought
hail and, with it, a rainbow. Don’t forget: rendezvous
tomorrow afternoon, on the terrace of the Café des Gobelins.
    Â 
    A few months ago, I managed to get hold of a photograph of
Dora Bruder, one that is in complete contrast to those already
in my collection. It may be the last ever taken of her. Her face
and demeanor have none of the childlike qualities that shine
out from all the earlier photographs, in the gaze, the rounded
cheeks, the white dress worn on a school assembly day  .  .  .  I
don’t know when this photograph was taken. It could only have
been in 1941, when Dora was a boarder at the Saint-Coeur-de-Marie,
or else early in the spring of 1942, when she returned
to the Boulevard Ornano after her escape in December.
    She is with her mother and her maternal grandmother.
The three women are side by side, the grandmother between
Cécile Bruder and Dora. Cécile Bruder wears a black dress, her
hair cut short, the grandmother’s dress is flowered. Neither
woman is smiling. Dora wears a two-piece dress in black—or
navy blue—with a white collar, but this could equally well be
a cardigan and skirt—the photograph is too dark to see. She
wears stockings and ankle-strap shoes. Her midlength hair, held
back by a headband, falls almost to her shoulders, her left arm
hangs at her side, fingers clenched, her right arm is hidden
behind her grandmother. She holds her head high, her eyes are
grave, but a smile is beginning to float about her lips. And this
gives her face an expression of sad sweetness and defiance. The
three women are standing in front of a wall. The ground is
paved, as in the passage of some public place. Who could have
been the photographer? Ernest Bruder? Or does the fact that
he is not present in the photograph mean that he had already
been arrested? In any case, it would seem that the three women
have put on their Sunday best to face this anonymous lens.
    Could it be that Dora is wearing the navy blue skirt
mentioned in the missing notice in Paris-Soir ?
    Â 
    Such photographs exist in every family. They were caught in
a few seconds, the duration of the exposure, and these
seconds have become an eternity.
    Why, I wonder, does the lightning strike in one place
rather than another? Suddenly, as I write these lines, I find
myself thinking of former colleagues in my profession. Today, I
am visited by the memory of a German writer. His name was
Friedo Lampe.
    It was his name that first caught my attention, and the
title of one of his books, Au bord de la nuit , translated into
French some twenty years ago, at which time I had