Family Record

by Patrick Modiano

  Yes, there are some very odd coincidences. I was distractedly leafing through a Swiss newspaper by the side of the pool when my eye fell on this notice: “Starting tomorrow, the outdoor theater in Lausanne will present a program of music from the French Riviera. Founded three years ago by former students of Prof. Ansermet, it brings together numerous musicologists, among them our colleagues from Genève-Variétés, Robert Gerbauld and Jean-Xavier Curtine.”

  I stood up, put on a white terrycloth robe, and left the others. I followed the gravel path that led from the pool to the hotel. I was certain I’d already lived through this day. I could also foretell the rest, as in a dream when you know that the blonde Countess du Barry will be guillotined, but when you try to warn her and urge her to flee Paris in time, she just shrugs.

  I went up to the reception desk and asked the man on duty:

  “Has Monsieur Gerbauld arrived yet?”

  “He’s at the bar, sir.”

  I was expecting that. I could even have prompted him.

  “At the bar, sir . . .”

  He stretched out his arm to show me the entrance to the bar.

  I remained on the threshold of the bar, a large room with light-colored wood paneling, a coffered ceiling, and low tables surrounded by plaid-upholstered armchairs.

  I recognized him right off. He was sitting to the right of the entrance, facing the other one. They were chatting. A smell of incense paper hovered in the air, and I recalled effortlessly that this was his cologne. With a step that I labored to make natural—I was barefoot and afraid my bathrobe would draw their attention—I went to sit at a table a certain distance from theirs. They didn’t notice me, being wholly absorbed in their conversation. They spoke loudly, Gerbauld in his warm voice, the other, the young one, in a tone even more metallic than on the radio.

  “You know the problem as well as I do, Jean-Xavier,” said Gerbauld.

  “Of course.”

  “There’s only one thing left for me to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Put their backs against the wall. Either a Manuel de Falla Festival next year, or a Hindemith Festival. End of story.”

  “You’re going to tell them that?”

  “If they refuse, I quit.”

  “Would you really, Robert?”

  And so, right near me, sat the man who had been responsible for several thousand deportations in the years 1940 to 1944, the one who directed the “squads” of Rue de Greffulhe, from whom my father had miraculously escaped . . . I knew his pedigree. Unremarkable small-time lawyer before the war, then local councilor; he had added a nobiliary “de” to his name and founded the Anti-Jewish Rally. At the Liberation, he had taken refuge in Madrid, where, under the name Estève, he had taught French. I knew everything about him, down to his date of birth: March 23, 1901, in Cahors.

  “. . . A Manuel de Falla Festival, or no festival at all!”

  “It’s really amazing how unfair those people are to de Falla,” Jean-Xavier noted pensively.

  “Unfair or not, I’ll slam the door right in their faces!”

  So that person a few feet away from me would rather I’d never been born? I looked at him with extreme curiosity. The photo I’d clipped from a Liberation newspaper was not very sharp, owing to the poor-quality paper, but I could tell his face had puffed up in twenty-five years—especially his jowls—and that he’d lost his hair. He was wearing glasses with gold frames and stems. He smoked a pipe, which he kept in his mouth even while speaking, and it gave him a placid air that surprised me. His bald skull and his corpulence exuded affability. He was wearing a black velvet suit and a burgundy turtleneck pullover. A fat clergyman. The other one, Jean-Xavier Curtine, was nothing more than a young man with regular features, but with a very narrow face and pale complexion. His dark hair looked like it was shellacked in place. His tight, peacock-blue suit, his signet ring, his precise little gestures, his moccasins—all of it suggested an Asian meticulousness. Moreover, he might have been Eurasian.

  “So, do you think they’ll go for the Manuel de Falla Festival?”

  Gerbauld nibbled on his pipe.

  “Naturally . . .”

  He smiled, pipe between his teeth.

  “Especially if I promise to air the whole thing on Genève-Variétés . . .”

  “It would be marvelous,” said Curtine in his metallic insect voice, “if we could have them play de Falla’s Atlántida.”

  Gerbault nodded, pensive.

  “Yes, yes, yes . . .”

  At that moment, the bartender approached their table.

  “Would the gentlemen care for anything?”

  “I’ll have a beer,” said Gerbauld. “Draft. What about you?”

  “A grenadine . . .”

  Then the bartender came to my table.

  “A Suze,” I said.

  They had noticed my presence and both of them looked at me, no doubt surprised by my pool attire. Gerbauld smiled. He gave me a friendly nod, to which I responded. Our drinks were served.

  “How is it?” Gerbauld asked, facing in my general direction.

  “How’s what?”

  “The water in the pool.”

  “Very nice.”

  He turned to Curtine.

  “You should go swimming, Jean-Xavier. That fellow says it’s nice.”

  “I plan to,” the other said, smiling at me.

  “Cheers,” Gerbauld said to me, raising his glass of beer.

  I grimaced a smile, then stood up and left the bar.

  I crossed the lobby with huge strides and ran down the gravel path to the pool.

  Muzzli and Papou were swimming. Henri Seroka was lying next to Micheline Carole on a large red-and-white beach towel. They were holding hands.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  What could I say? They told me that Hedy, the Indonesian girl, had been looking for me for the past half-hour.

  Muzzli and Papou came out of the pool and joined us.

  “You look pale,” observed Seroka. “You should have a Porto flip.”

  I was shaking, but I tried to hold my body stiff so they wouldn’t notice.

  “Are you okay?” asked Muzzli.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Just fine.”

  I slipped off my bathrobe and dove in. I remained for a long time underwater, eyes open. As long as I could. An eternity. When I resurfaced, I rested my elbows on the edge of the pool and leaned my chin on the blue mosaic.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” said Seroka. “I’ll order you a Porto flip.”

  Two men were walking on the path, farther on, coming toward us, closer and closer. Curtine and Gerbauld. Curtine was wearing a light-blue bathing suit with V-shaped notches on the hips. Gerbauld had kept his black velvet suit and was carrying a camera of impressive size, slung over his shoulder.

  They stopped across the pool from us. Gerbauld sat on the one canvas chair and Curtine squatted near him. His bearing was fairly athletic, like people of small stature who take an exaggerated interest in building their muscles. With a sudden jerk, he stood up and went to test the water with his left foot. He remained poised for a few seconds, right leg slightly bent, left leg stiff like a dancer en pointe, torso very straight, arms behind his back. Without getting up, Gerbauld had trained his lens on Curtine and was pressing the shutter. Curtine smiled.

  My friends and I watched them, and I noticed a certain interest among Seroka, Micheline Carole, and Badrawi. I was seized with an urge to call out to Gerbauld by his real name, but the place wasn’t right and I was afraid I’d scare the others. Curtine walked with slow, supple steps to the diving board. He made it bend several times, jumping very high, as if testing out its elasticity. Gerbauld had gotten up from the canvas chair and, from a standing position, continued to photograph Curtine.

  Finally, Curtine executed an elegant dive and, after several strokes, snorted and hoisted himself onto the pool edge with a single pull of his arms. Again Gerbauld photographed him, but this time fro
m up close. He slung his camera back across his chest, picked up a large red-and-white towel draped over the back of the chair, unfolded it, wrapped it around Curtine, and massaged his shoulders with the kinds of firm, protective motions that a trainer might use on his star boxer. Curtine lay back flat on the ground, legs tight, abdominal muscles visibly tensed. He kept stroking his hair with his hands to brush it back. Gerbauld knelt beside him, aimed his camera, and shot again.

  “How was it?” he asked.

  “Very nice.”

  They lowered their voices, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then Gerbauld raised his eyes and looked across the pool.

  He saw me and waved.

  “You know that guy?” Badrawi asked.

  “No.”

  After about fifteen minutes, they got up, Curtine wrapped in his red-and-white beach towel that he dropped negligently by the side of the pool. He walked toward the path, advancing in small strides, like an athlete taking to the podium during a bodybuilding contest. He walked on tiptoe so as not to lose a centimeter of his small height. Gerbauld followed behind, slightly hunched. Passing by where we were, Curtine turned and said to me:

  “It was very nice. Very nice. Thank you.”

  Again I smelled that odor of incense paper. Then the two of them disappeared down the path toward the hotel.

  “Odd ducks,” said Seroka.

  We went to have lunch at the sidewalk of a restaurant across the avenue, near the Ouchy church. I found Hedy, the Indonesian, who asked me to come to her place. Hedy shared with her twin sister a room on the ground floor of a building near Jordils station; from their window, you could see, at the foot of a small valley, the sprightly colored trains heading down to Ouchy.

  I felt a kind of relief when I entered that white room, which had no furnishings or wall hangings. A large mattress on the floor, a light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and that was it. Neutral, like Switzerland.

  I asked to make a phone call. She didn’t seem to mind. She spoke no French, so we communicated in very approximate English. Besides, we didn’t need to speak. I dialed the number of the hotel.

  “Robert Gerbauld, please . . .”

  A click. Gerbauld’s deep voice:

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Is this Robert Gerbauld?”

  “It is.”

  “I’m a faithful listener to Music in the Night.”

  A pause. Then I heard him say in a tone of forced cheerfulness:

  “Ah, I see. And how did you know I was here?”

  “I’m going to the music festival.”

  “Ah, I see . . .”

  “I’d very much like to meet you. I’m a young admirer . . .”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen. Couldn’t I meet you, Monsieur Gerbauld? Even for just five minutes . . .”

  “Well . . . you’re catching me a little off-guard . . .”

  “It would make me so happy.”

  A pause. Under his breath, as if he didn’t want someone nearby, perhaps Curtine, to overhear:

  “We could try to meet for a moment this evening . . .”

  “Yes.”

  In a voice that was still lower and more rushed:

  “Listen . . . the café on Avenue d’Ouchy . . . Opposite the main entrance of the Beaurivage hotel . . . Eight-thirty . . . Good-bye for now.”

  He hung up.

  The Indonesian girl and I stayed in that smooth white room until five in the afternoon. Then we joined the others and went swimming with Micheline Carole and Henri Seroka. Badrawi, sprawled on an inflatable mattress, was doing a crossword puzzle. A bit farther on, beneath the trees, Michel Muzzli was chatting with the other Indonesian, Hedy’s twin sister. I watched the tiny buoys dancing on the surface of the water.

  Henri Seroka ordered us aperitifs, and in an anisette fog we made our plans for the evening. Badrawi invited us to dinner. At eight-fifteen, I asked him to drop me off at the café on Avenue d’Ouchy where Gerbauld had set our rendezvous. We’d come back to pick up the others at the hotel bar.

  “Do you have a pressing engagement?” he asked, a curious look in his eye.

  “Yes. Crucial.”

  Muzzli and the other Indonesian girl came with us. Badrawi drove his old Peugeot slowly. I told Papou to stop at the end of the road that led to the Beaurivage.

  By the way, would they mind if I brought someone else with us in the car? Afterward, we’d take him somewhere isolated. They suddenly seemed nervous. The Indonesian girl looked at us one after the other, not understanding. I told them some details about Gerbauld.

  “You’re not really thinking of killing him, are you?” said Muzzli.

  “No.”

  At exactly eight-thirty, I saw Gerbauld on the left-hand sidewalk of the avenue. He was walking quickly toward the café. He was wearing a beige linen suit and a hat that was also made of beige linen, shaped like one of those Tyrolean hats. He slipped quickly into the café.

  I couldn’t make myself leave the car seat. Muzzli turned to me.

  “Isn’t that the guy from the pool?”

  I didn’t answer. All I had to do was cross the avenue and follow him into the café. I would have shaken his hand, we would have ordered two beers, and we would have talked about Manuel de Falla. I would have offered to drive him back to the hotel. He would have gotten into the Peugeot and Badrawi would have started up. No, I didn’t want to kill him, but I did want to have a “discussion.”

  “Shall we wait?” asked Badrawi.

  “Yes.”

  Not even a “discussion.” A few words that I would have whispered to him before we parted company at the entrance of his hotel:

  “Still at Rue Greffulhe?”

  He would have gaped at me with the terrified look that people get when you remind them, point-blank, of some trivial detail from their past. The dress or shoes they wore on such-and-such an evening. How could you know that? You weren’t born yet. That’s incredible. You’re frightening me.

  Night. Muzzli had switched on the radio. Badrawi was smoking and the Indonesian girl sat next to me, impassive and silent. I saw him leave the café. He paused on the sidewalk, looked left, then right. The neon shone pink on him. He had taken off his hat and was staring at the tips of his shoes; he looked tired. He raised his head and I was surprised to see that his features had gone gaunt, no doubt because of the darkness and the neon glow. I hadn’t noticed, in the bar and at the pool, his prominent chin, nor his sinuous mouth that gave him the face of a frog, as in my dreams.

  Supposing it really was D.—and I was less and less certain—I knew in advance that, hearing my little utterance, he would look at me with glazed eyes. It would mean nothing to him anymore. Memory itself is corroded by acid, and of all those cries of suffering and horrified faces from the past, only echoes remain, growing fainter and fainter, vague outlines. Switzerland of the heart.

  He had donned his Tyrolean-style hat and, with it on, he looked like a toad whose head peers out steadily from a lily pad. He stood there, motionless, under the neon lights. I didn’t dare ask Papou or Michel whether they saw the same thing I did, or just a poor old queen waiting on the sidewalk after being stood up.

  A mirage, no doubt. Besides, it was all a mirage; everything in this country was devoid of reality. We were kept apart, as Muzzli said, from the “sufferings of the world.” There was nothing left but to let ourselves be engulfed by the lethargy that I persisted in calling “Switzerland of the heart.”

  There, across from us, on the other side of the avenue, he looked left and right, standing stiffly under the pink light. He took his pipe from his pocket and contemplated it.

  “Shall we go join the others?” I said to Badrawi.

  X

  It was in the Luxembourg Gardens, one winter morning ten years ago, that I learned of Fats’s death. I had pulled up a metal chair next to the pond and unfolded the newspaper. A picture of Fats—mustache, dark glasses, white silk scarf, and the felt hat he often wore to go
out—accompanied the article. He had keeled over in a restaurant on the Viale Trastevere, probably while eating a dish of that green lasagna he loved so well.

  I was eighteen, working in a bookstore in Rome, when I was introduced to Fats by a French girl a bit older than I who performed at the Open Gate, a cabaret on Via San Niccolò da Tolentino. A brunette, with slanted eyes and a lovely, candid mouth, called Claude Chevreuse, at least professionally. At around midnight she would appear onstage wearing a mink coat and evening gown and begin a languid striptease while the piano man played the theme from They Shall Have Music. Two white toy poodles capered around her, turning somersaults in the air, and snatched her stockings, bra, garters, and panties between their teeth as she peeled them off. For some time, Fats had been a regular presence in the audience, always on his own, and when Claude returned to her dressing room, she would find a rose from this nightly spectator.

  Fats invited us to his table one night after the show. When Claude introduced us, he burst into a guffaw that jiggled his shoulders and flabby cheeks. I happened to have the same name as a brand of cards that everyone in Italy used for playing poker. Fats found this riotously funny, and from then on his nickname for me was Poker.

  That evening, after we’d had a last drink at a sidewalk café on the Via Veneto, Claude whispered in my ear that she had to go home with Fats. They climbed into a cab in front of the Excelsior. Fats lowered the window, waved his stubby fingers, and said, “Arrivederla, Poker.”

  I felt a twinge to think that Claude had abandoned me, yet again, for someone who was hardly worth it. I don’t know why I loved that girl from Chambéry, who had come to Rome a few years back to “make a name in the movies.” Since then, she had let herself go, started doing a bit of cocaine. In Rome, things tend to end rather than begin.

  From then on, I would run into Fats at the Open Gate whenever I went to pick up Claude Chevreuse. He waited for her in her dressing room. She treated him cruelly and made cutting remarks about his weight, but Fats didn’t respond, or just nodded. One evening, she deserted us both on the Via Veneto, saying she had a date with a “very attractive, very slim” boy, stressing the word “slim” to needle Fats. We watched her leave, then went to get pastries. I tried to distract Fats, who seemed utterly dejected. I suppose that’s why he came to like me, and why we got together again a dozen or so times. He would make appointments with me for four o’clock sharp at a small bar on Via delle Botteghe Oscure, and there he had what he called his “snack”: about a dozen smoked-salmon sandwiches. Or else, in the evening, he took me to a restaurant near the Quirinale, where the coat-check lady greeted him as “Your Highness.”