Read Online Out of the Dark by Patrick Modiano - Free Book Online

I could take a taxi. That would be much faster than the métro: I would have had to change at the Opéra station and carry the suitcase through the corridors.
    The driver got out to put the suitcase in the trunk, but I wanted to keep it with me. We drove down the Avenue de I'Opéra and followed the quais. Paris was deserted that night, like a city I was about to leave forever. Once I was at the Quai de la Tournelle, I was afraid I'd lost the key to the room, but it was in one of my raincoat pockets after all.
    I walked past the little reception counter and asked the man who usually sat there until midnight if anyone had called for room 3 . He answered no, but it was only ten to ten.
    I climbed the stairs without any objection from him. Maybe he couldn't tell the difference between Van Bever and me. Or else he didn't feel like worrying about people's comings and goings anymore, in this hotel that was about to be closed down.
    I left the door of the room ajar so that I would be sure to hear him when he called me to the telephone. I put the suitcase flat on the floor and stretched out on Jacqueline's bed. The smell of ether clung stubbornly to the pillow. Had she been taking it again? Would that smell be forever associated in my mind with Jacqueline?
    At ten o'clock I began to worry: she would never call, and I would never see her again. I often expected people I had met to disappear at any moment, not to be heard from again. I myself sometimes arranged to meet people and never showed up, and sometimes I even took advantage of the momentary distraction of someone I was walking with in the street to disappear. A porte-cochère on the Place Saint-Michel had often been extremely useful to me. Once you passed through it you could cross a courtyard and come out on the Rue de I'Hirondelle. And in a little black notebook I had made a list of all the apartment buildings with two exits.
    I heard the man's voice in the stairway: telephone for room 3 . It was ten fifteen and I had already given up on her. She had slipped away from Cartaud. She was in the seventeenth arrondissement. She asked if l had the suitcase. I was to pack her clothes in an overnight bag and go get my things as well from the Hôtel de Lima, then wait for her in the Café Dante. But I had to get away from the Quai de la Tournelle as quickly as possible, because that was the first place Cartaud would come looking. She spoke in a very calm voice, as if she had prepared all this in her head beforehand. I found an old overnight bag in the closet and in it I put her two pairs of pants, her leather jacket, her bras, her pairs of red espadrilles, her turtleneck sweater, and the various toiletries lined up on the shelf above the sink, among them a bottle of ether. There was nothing left but Van Bever's clothes. I left the light on so the concierge would think someone was still in the room, and I closed the door behind me. What time would Van Bever come back? He might very well join us at the Café Dante. Had she called him in Forges or Dieppe, and had she said the same thing to him as she'd said to me?
    I left the stairway light off as I went downstairs. I didn't want to attract the concierge's attention carrying this suitcase and overnight bag. He was hunched over a newspaper, doing the crossword puzzle. I couldn't help looking at him as I walked by, but he didn't even lift his head. Out on the Quai de la Tournelle, I was afraid I might hear someone behind me shouting 'Monsieur, monsieur … Would you please come back at once …' And I was also expecting to see Cartaud pull alongside me and stop. But once I got to the Rue des Bemardins I calmed down. I quickly went up to my room and put the few clothes and the two books I had left into Jacqueline's bag.
    Then I went downstairs and asked for the bill. The night concierge asked me no questions. Outside on the Boulevard Saint-Germain I felt the same euphoria that always welled up in me when I was about to run away.

I SAT DOWN