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Authors: Patrick Modiano
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attentively as possible. These lunatics were not prepared to wait.
I would take a suitcase and head off on my own, to scout around until evening, in an area bounded by the Bastille, the Place de la République, the
grands boulevards
, the Avenue de l’Opéra and the Seine. These districts each have a particular peculiar charm. Saint-Paul, where I have dreamed of spending my old age. All I would need was a little shop, some small business. The Rue Pavée or the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, that ghetto to which I would be inevitably drawn back one day. In the Temple district, I felt my bargain-hunting instincts come to the fore. In the Sentier, that exotic principality formed by the Place du Caire, the Rue du Nil, the Passage Ben-Aiad and the Rue d’Aboukir, I thought about my poor father. The first four
arrondissements
sub-divide into a tangled multitude of provinces whose unseen borders I eventually came to know. Beaubourg, Greneta, le Mail, la Pointe Sainte-Eustache, les Victoires . . . My last port of call was a bookshop called Le Petit-Mirioux in the Galerie Vivienne. I got there just as it was getting dark. I scoured the shelves, convinced that I would find what I was looking for. Mme Petit-Mirioux stocked literary works of the past hundred years. So many unjustly forgotten books and authors, we agreed regretfully. They had taken so much trouble for nothing . . . We consoled each other, she and I, reassuring ourselves there were still fans of Pierre Hamp or Jean-José Frappa and that sooner or later, the Fischer brothers would be rescued from oblivion and on that comforting note, took leave of each other. The rest of the shops in the Galerie Vivienne seemed to have been closed for centuries. In the window of a music bookshop, three yellowing Offenbach scores. I sat down on my suitcase. Not a sound. Time had stood still at some point between the July Monarchy and the Second Empire. From the far end of the Galerie came the faint glow of the bookshop, and I could just make out the shadow of Mme Petit-Mirioux. How long would she remain at her post? Poor old sentinel.
Farther on, the deserted arcades of the Palais-Royal. People had played here, once. But no more. I walked through the gardens. A zone of silence and mellow half-light where the memories of dead years and broken promises tug at the heart. Place du Théâtre-Francais. The streetlights are dazzling. You are a diver coming up too quickly to the surface. I had arranged to meet ‘papa’ in a caravanserai on the Champs-Élysées. We would get into the Talbot, as we always did, and sail across Paris.
Before me was the Avenue de l’Opéra. It heralded other boulevards, other streets, that would later cast us to the four points of the compass. My heart beat a little faster. In the midst of so much uncertainty, my only landmarks, the only ground which did not shift beneath my feet, were the pavements and the junctions of this city where, in the end, I would probably find myself alone.
Now, though it grieves me, I must come to the ‘distressing incident at the George V métro’. For several weeks my father had been fascinated by the Petite Ceinture, the disused railway-line that circles Paris. Was he planning to have it renovated by public subscription? Bank loans? Every Sunday, he would ask me to go with him to the outskirts of the city and we followed the path of the old railway-line on foot. The stations along the route were derelict or had been turned into warehouses. The tracks were overgrown with weeds. From time to time my father would stop to scribble a note or sketch something indecipherable in his notebook. What was he dreaming of? Was he waiting for a train that would never come?
On that Sunday, 17 June, we had followed the Petite Ceinture through the 12th
arrondissement
. Not without effort. Near the Rue de Montempoivre, the track joins those coming from Vincennes and we ended up getting confused. After three hours, emerging dazed from this labyrinth of
I would take a suitcase and head off on my own, to scout around until evening, in an area bounded by the Bastille, the Place de la République, the
grands boulevards
, the Avenue de l’Opéra and the Seine. These districts each have a particular peculiar charm. Saint-Paul, where I have dreamed of spending my old age. All I would need was a little shop, some small business. The Rue Pavée or the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, that ghetto to which I would be inevitably drawn back one day. In the Temple district, I felt my bargain-hunting instincts come to the fore. In the Sentier, that exotic principality formed by the Place du Caire, the Rue du Nil, the Passage Ben-Aiad and the Rue d’Aboukir, I thought about my poor father. The first four
arrondissements
sub-divide into a tangled multitude of provinces whose unseen borders I eventually came to know. Beaubourg, Greneta, le Mail, la Pointe Sainte-Eustache, les Victoires . . . My last port of call was a bookshop called Le Petit-Mirioux in the Galerie Vivienne. I got there just as it was getting dark. I scoured the shelves, convinced that I would find what I was looking for. Mme Petit-Mirioux stocked literary works of the past hundred years. So many unjustly forgotten books and authors, we agreed regretfully. They had taken so much trouble for nothing . . . We consoled each other, she and I, reassuring ourselves there were still fans of Pierre Hamp or Jean-José Frappa and that sooner or later, the Fischer brothers would be rescued from oblivion and on that comforting note, took leave of each other. The rest of the shops in the Galerie Vivienne seemed to have been closed for centuries. In the window of a music bookshop, three yellowing Offenbach scores. I sat down on my suitcase. Not a sound. Time had stood still at some point between the July Monarchy and the Second Empire. From the far end of the Galerie came the faint glow of the bookshop, and I could just make out the shadow of Mme Petit-Mirioux. How long would she remain at her post? Poor old sentinel.
Farther on, the deserted arcades of the Palais-Royal. People had played here, once. But no more. I walked through the gardens. A zone of silence and mellow half-light where the memories of dead years and broken promises tug at the heart. Place du Théâtre-Francais. The streetlights are dazzling. You are a diver coming up too quickly to the surface. I had arranged to meet ‘papa’ in a caravanserai on the Champs-Élysées. We would get into the Talbot, as we always did, and sail across Paris.
Before me was the Avenue de l’Opéra. It heralded other boulevards, other streets, that would later cast us to the four points of the compass. My heart beat a little faster. In the midst of so much uncertainty, my only landmarks, the only ground which did not shift beneath my feet, were the pavements and the junctions of this city where, in the end, I would probably find myself alone.
Now, though it grieves me, I must come to the ‘distressing incident at the George V métro’. For several weeks my father had been fascinated by the Petite Ceinture, the disused railway-line that circles Paris. Was he planning to have it renovated by public subscription? Bank loans? Every Sunday, he would ask me to go with him to the outskirts of the city and we followed the path of the old railway-line on foot. The stations along the route were derelict or had been turned into warehouses. The tracks were overgrown with weeds. From time to time my father would stop to scribble a note or sketch something indecipherable in his notebook. What was he dreaming of? Was he waiting for a train that would never come?
On that Sunday, 17 June, we had followed the Petite Ceinture through the 12th
arrondissement
. Not without effort. Near the Rue de Montempoivre, the track joins those coming from Vincennes and we ended up getting confused. After three hours, emerging dazed from this labyrinth of
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