Read Online The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano - Free Book Online Page B

from me . . .”
    A gate was half-open, allowing access to the Central Wine Market, and Aghamouri had stopped in front of it.
    â€œWe can cut through here,” he said. “I know a café on Rue Jussieu. Aren’t you tired of walking?”
    I passed through the gateway behind him and entered a large courtyard surrounded by half-demolished buildings, like the ones in the former leather exchange. And the same semidarkness as over the empty lot where I had waited not long before . . . Up ahead, a streetlamp shed white light on the still-intact warehouses, whose walls bore painted signs like the ones I had noted in the ruins of the leather exchange.
    I turned toward Aghamouri.
    â€œMay I?”
    I pulled the black notebook from my jacket pocket, and today I again read the notes I rapidly took down that evening as we walked toward Rue Jussieu:
    Â 
Marie Brizard & Roger
    Butte de la Gironde
    Fine Wines of Algeria
    La Loire Warehouses
    Libaud, Margerand & Blonde
    Brandies and Liqueurs. La Roseraie Cellars . . .
    Â 
    â€œDo you often do this?” Aghamouri asked.
    He seemed disappointed, as if he feared that everything he had just confided didn’t really interest me and my mind was on something else. But there’s nothing I can do about it: I was as susceptible back then as I am now to people and things that are about to disappear. We came to a modern building with a brightly lit vestibule, which bore on its façade the inscription FACULTY OF SCIENCES.
    We walked through the vestibule and then through another patch of waste ground up to Rue Jussieu.
    â€œHere it is,” said Aghamouri.
    And he pointed out a café across the street, next to the Lutèce Theater. People were clustered on the sidewalk, waiting for the show to begin.
    We sat in a corner near the bar. Facing us, on the opposite side of the room, stood a row of tables with a few diners.
    Now it was my turn to take the initiative and get him to talk. Otherwise he might start having second thoughts.
    â€œBefore, you said Dannie had done something serious . . . I’d really like to know more.”
    He paused for a moment.
    â€œShe’s liable to find herself in deep trouble, of a legal nature . . .”
    He was searching for the right words—precise, professional terms, the words of a lawyer or policeman.
    â€œShe’s fairly safe for now . . . But they could find out she was involved in an ugly incident . . .”
    â€œWhat kind of ugly incident?”
    â€œYou’ll have to ask her that yourself.”
    There was a moment of silence between us. An awkward moment. I heard them ringing up the curtain in the theater next door, announcing the start of the play. Lord, how I would have loved to be in the auditorium with her that evening, among the spectators, and for her not to be involved in an ugly incident . . . I couldn’t understand Aghamouri’s resistance to telling me what that ugly incident was.
    â€œMy sense is, you and Dannie are fairly intimate,” I said. He gave me an embarrassed look. “I saw you together one evening, very late, at the 66 . . .”
    He didn’t seem to know what the 66 was. I explained that it was a café toward the upper end of Boulevard Saint-Michel, near the Luxembourg station.
    â€œIt’s possible . . . We used to go there when we still lived at the Cité Universitaire.”
    He smiled, as if trying to steer the conversation onto more neutral territory, but I wanted him to keep to the essentials. After all, it was he who had asked to meet. I was carrying his letter, its envelope bearing my name and address, 28 Rue de l’Aude. I had slipped it between the pages of my black notebook. Moreover, I still have it; I reread it earlier today, before faithfully copying down its contents on a sheet of the Clairefontaine stationery I’ve been using lately.
    â€œDon’t you think you