The Black Notebook

by Patrick Modiano

  “They’re all in the lobby,” she whispered in my ear. She had decided as we neared the hotel to go on ahead and peek through the window to see whether the coast was clear. She didn’t want the carrier bag to draw attention to us. I was troubled by the bag, too, as if it were the proof that we’d just committed an evil deed, and today that trouble amazes me. Why that constant feeling of uncertainty and guilt? Guilt over what, exactly? I peered through the window in turn. They were all sitting in armchairs in the lobby, Aghamouri on the armrest of the one where Marciano was seated, the others—Paul Chastagnier, Duwelz, and the man they simply called “Georges”—occupying one chair each: worn brown leather armchairs. It was as if they were holding a council of war. Yes, guilt over what? I wonder. Moreover, they weren’t exactly the kind of people to lecture us on morals. I took Dannie’s arm and pulled her into the hotel. It was Georges who saw us first, the man whose face clashed with his stocky, robust build: a moonlike face and dreamy eyes, but before long you noticed that his features harbored as much violence as his body. And when he shook your hand, you had a sudden sensation of cold, as if his veins were filled with ice water. We walked toward them, and I heard Paul Chastagnier’s metallic voice:

  “So, you been out shopping?”

  And he stared at the carrier bag I was holding in my left hand.

  “Yes . . . Yes . . . We’ve been out shopping,” Dannie said in a very gentle tone. She was probably trying to bolster her courage. Her composure astounded me, given how worried she’d been only moments before, as we approached the hotel. The one called Georges pondered the two of us with his moonlike face and pale skin, so pale he seemed to be wearing pancake makeup. He raised his eyebrows in an expression of curiosity and distrust that I had noticed on him every time he faced someone. Perhaps he was the one Dannie was afraid of. The first time I’d met him in that lobby, she had introduced him: “Georges.” He had remained silent and merely raised his eyebrows. Georges: the sound of that name took on a disturbing, cavernous quality that matched his face. When we’d left the hotel, Dannie had said to me, “I hear that fellow is dangerous,” but she hadn’t explained in what way. Did she even know? According to her, he was someone Aghamouri had met in Morocco. She had smiled and shrugged: “Oh, you know, best not to get mixed up in all that . . .”

  “Won’t you join us for a drink?” Paul Chastagnier offered.

  “It’s kind of late,” said Dannie, still in that gentle voice.

  Aghamouri, who hadn’t risen from the armrest of Gérard Marciano’s chair, stared at the two of us in astonishment. It seemed to me his face had gone pale.

  “Too bad you can’t stay a little while. You could have told us all about your shopping adventures.”

  This time, Paul Chastagnier was speaking directly to me. Clearly, the carrier bag aroused his curiosity.

  “Will you help me bring these things up to my room?” She had turned to me, now using the formal vous and pointing at the bag. It was as if she were expressly drawing their attention to it, rubbing it in.

  I followed her toward the elevator, but instead she took the stairs. She went up ahead of me. On the first-floor landing, when they could no longer see us, she moved closer and murmured in my ear:

  “It’s better if you leave. Otherwise I’m going to have trouble with Aghamouri.”

  I walked her to her room. She took the carrier bag from me. She said under her breath, as if they might hear:

  “Tomorrow at noon at the Chat Blanc.”

  That was a rather dreary café on Rue d’Odessa, with a back room where one could sit unnoticed amid the few billiards players: Bretons wearing fisherman’s caps.

  Before closing the door, she said, even more softly:

  “It would be good if we could go to that country house I told you about.”

  To go back down, I took the elevator. I didn’t want to meet one of them in the stairwell. Especially not Aghamouri. I was afraid he’d ask questions and demand an explanation. Once again, I experienced that lack of self-confidence, that timidity that Paul Chastagnier had noticed, and that had made him remark one day as we were walking in the gray streets behind Montparnasse:

  “It’s funny . . . A kid with your talent and sensitivity . . . How come you keep such a low profile?”

  In the lobby, they were still sitting in their armchairs. I had to walk past them to exit the hotel, and I didn’t feel like talking to them. Aghamouri looked up and gave me a cold stare, which was unusual. Perhaps he’d been keeping an eye on the elevator to see whether I was staying in Dannie’s room. Paul Chastagnier, Duwelz, and Gérard Marciano were all leaning toward Georges, listening carefully as if he were giving instructions. I slunk toward the hotel exit as if trying not to bother them. I was afraid Aghamouri might follow me. But no, he remained seated with the others. It was just postponing the inevitable, I told myself. Tomorrow he’d ask about Dannie and me, and the prospect filled me with dread. I had nothing to tell him. Nothing. And besides, I’ve never known how to answer questions.

  Outside, I couldn’t help looking back at them through the window. And today, as I write this, I feel as if I’m still watching them, standing on that sidewalk as if I’d never left it. And yet, however much I look at Georges, the one she said was dangerous, I no longer feel the disquiet that sometimes used to grip me when I mingled with those people in the lobby of the Unic Hôtel. Paul Chastagnier, Duwelz, and Gérard Marciano lean in toward Georges for all eternity, planning what Aghamouri called “their dirty tricks.” It will end badly for them, in prison or some obscure vendetta. Aghamouri, sitting on the armrest, keeps silent, observing them with anxious eyes. He was the one who had told me, “Watch out. They can drag you down a very bad path. My advice is to break off relations while there’s still time.”

  Soon after that evening, he arranged to meet me at the entrance to the Censier branch of the university. He was eager to “clear the air.” I had thought he wanted to scare me off from seeing Dannie again. And now he, too, is behind that window for all eternity, his anxious eyes fixed on the others as they conspire in low voices. And I feel like telling him, in turn, “Watch out.” Personally, I was in no danger. But I wasn’t fully aware of that at the time. It took me several years to realize it. If I remember correctly, I nonetheless had a vague premonition that none of them would ever drag me down a “very bad path.” Langlais, questioning me at the Quai de Gesvres, had said, “You used to keep some mighty peculiar company.” He was mistaken. All those people I met, I saw only from a great distance.

  That night, I don’t know how long I remained in front of the hotel window, watching them. At a certain moment, Aghamouri stood up and walked toward the window. He would surely notice me there on the sidewalk. I didn’t budge an inch. Too bad if he came outside and joined me. But his eyes were elsewhere and he didn’t see me. The one called Georges stood up in turn and went with his heavy gait to stand next to Aghamouri. They were only a few inches away behind the window, and the second one, with his moonlike face and hard eyes, didn’t notice me either. Perhaps the glass was opaque from inside, like a one-way mirror. Or else, very simply, dozens and dozens of years stood between us: they remained frozen in the past, in the middle of that hotel lobby, and we no longer lived, they and I, in the same space of time.

  I wrote down very few appointments in that black notebook. Each time, I was afraid the person wouldn’t show up if I committed the date and time of our meeting to paper in advance. One should not be so certain of the future. As Paul Chastagnier said, I “kept a low profile.” I felt as if I were living a clandestine existence, and so, in this type of life, one avoids leaving traces or setting down one’s comings and goings in black and white. And yet, in the middle of one page of the notebook, I read: “Tuesday. Aghamouri. 7 p.m. Censier.” I attached no importance to that meeting, and it didn’t bother me to have it spelled out in black letters on the white sheet.

  It must have been two or three days after the night when we had arrived late at the Unic Hôt
el and I’d been carrying the bag. I was surprised to receive a note from Aghamouri at 28 Rue de l’Aude, where I was renting a room. Where had he gotten my address? From Dannie? I brought him to Rue de l’Aude several times, but I think that was much later. My recollections are hazy. Aghamouri had written in his letter: “Don’t tell anyone about this meeting. Especially not Dannie. It’s strictly between us. You’ll understand why.” That “you’ll understand why” had worried me.

  It was already dark. While waiting, I walked around the wasteland in front of the new university building. That evening, I had brought along my black notebook, and to pass the time I jotted down the fading inscriptions that still clung to a few buildings and warehouses slated for demolition that bordered the empty lot. I read:

  Sommet Brothers—Leathers and Pelts

  B. Blumet & Son—Forwarding Agents for Leathers and Pelts

  Beaugency Tanneries

  A. Martin & Co.—Rawhide

  Salting and Tanning—Paris Leather Exchange

  As I wrote down those names, I began to feel queasy. I think it shows in my handwriting, which is choppy, almost illegible by the end. Later, I added in pencil, in a steadier hand:

  Hundred Maidens Hospital

  It was an obsession of mine to want to know what had occupied a given location in Paris over successive layers of time. That evening, I thought I could smell the nauseating odor of pelts and rawhide. The title of a documentary came to mind, one that I’d seen when I was too young and that had marked me for life: The Blood of Beasts. They slaughtered animals in Vaugirard and La Villette, then brought their skins here to be sold. Thousands upon thousands of anonymous beasts. And of all that, there remained only an empty back lot and, for just a little while longer, the names of a few vultures and murderers painted on those half-crumbled walls. And that evening, I had written them down in my notebook. What was the use? I would much rather have known the names of those hundred maidens from the hospital that used to stretch over this plot of land well before the days of the leather exchange.

  “You’re pale as a ghost . . . Is something the matter?”

  Aghamouri was standing in front of me. I hadn’t seen him come out of the university building. He was wearing his camel coat and carrying a black briefcase. I was still absorbed in my notes. He said with an embarrassed smile:

  “You do recognize me, don’t you?”

  I was about to show him the names I had just jotted down, but back then I always felt people became suspicious if they realized you were writing something, standing over there by yourself. No doubt they were afraid you were stealing something from them, their words, fragments of their life.

  “Was your class interesting?”

  I had never been to university, and I imagined him in a classroom like that in a primary school, lifting his desktop to take out his grammar text and notebook and dipping his nib in the inkwell.

  We walked across the empty lot, avoiding the puddles. His camel coat and black briefcase only reinforced my opinion: he couldn’t be a student. He looked like someone on his way to a business appointment in a hotel lobby in Geneva. I’d thought we would go as usual to the café on Place Monge, but we took the opposite direction, toward the Jardin des Plantes.

  “You don’t mind if we have a quiet chat while we walk, do you?”

  He spoke in a casual, friendly tone, but I could sense some awkwardness, as if he were searching for the right words and expected to find himself on foreign ground where he would not meet anyone he knew. And, in fact, Rue Cuvier stretched before us, deserted and silent all the way to the Seine.

  “I wanted to warn you . . .”

  He had said these words with great seriousness. Then, nothing. Perhaps, at the last minute, he had lost his nerve.

  “Warn me about what?”

  I had asked the question too bluntly. While I kept a “low profile,” as Paul Chastagnier said, I had never followed others’ advice. Never. And every time they were surprised—and disappointed—because I had listened so attentively, wide-eyed like a good pupil or pleasant young man. We walked past the low houses that bordered the Jardin des Plantes. I think it was the part of the botanical gardens that contained the zoo. The street was dimly lit, and at the end of the darkness and silence I was afraid we would hear the growls of roaming beasts.

  “I should have said something earlier . . . It’s about Dannie . . .”

  I turned to look at him, but he was resolutely facing forward. I wondered if he wasn’t deliberately avoiding my eyes.

  “I met Dannie at the Cité Universitaire . . . She was looking for someone to lend her a room, and even a student ID . . .”

  He spoke slowly, as if trying with every word to inject as much clarity as possible into a very muddled topic.

  “I always suspected someone had told her to look me up . . . Otherwise she never would have thought of coming to the Cité Universitaire . . .”

  I, too, had often wondered how a girl like Dannie would know about the Cité. I had asked her one evening when we’d gone to the post office. “You know,” she had answered, “I did come to Paris to study.” Yes, but study what?

  “Through a friend in the Moroccan Pavilion, I was able to get her a student ID and residence card . . . in my wife’s name . . .”

  Why in his wife’s name? He had stopped walking.

  “She was afraid to use her own ID . . . When I had to leave the Cité Universitaire, she didn’t want to stay there. I introduced her to the others at the hotel in Montparnasse . . . I think they helped her get false papers . . .”

  He gripped my arm and pulled me to the opposite sidewalk. I was surprised by his abrupt desire to cross the street. We had stopped in front of a small building, and perhaps he was afraid someone might overhear us through the windows. On the other side, no such danger. We skirted the gates of the Central Wine Market, bathed in shadow and even more deserted and silent than the street.

  “And why,” I asked, “did she need false papers?”

  It felt like a dream. This often happened in that period of my life, especially after nightfall. Exhaustion? Or that strange, overpowering sensation of déjà vu, also due to lack of sleep? Everything gets jumbled in your mind, past, present, and future; everything is superimposed. And still today, Rue Cuvier strikes me as detached from Paris, in some unknown provincial town, and I can hardly believe that the man walking next to me ever really existed. I still hear my voice in a distant echo: “Why did she need false papers?”

  “But her name really is Dannie, isn’t it?” I asked Aghamouri in a falsely casual tone, dreading what he might reveal.

  “Yes, probably,” he said curtly. “On her new ID card, I’m not sure. It’s not really important . . . On the card I gave her at the Cité Universitaire, she has my wife’s name, Michèle Aghamouri.”

  I asked him a question that I regretted the moment I’d said it:

  “And what about your wife—does she know about all this?”

  “No.”

  He again became what he had been a few moments earlier, the person I still remember very clearly: a worried man, eternally on the alert.

  “This stays between us, all right?”

  “You know,” I said to him, “I’ve known how to keep my mouth shut since I was little.”

  The solemn tone in which I’d spoken those words surprised even me.

  “She’s done something pretty serious and they might hold her accountable,” he blurted out. “That’s why she wanted new ID papers.”

  “Pretty serious? Like what?”

  “Ask her yourself. The problem is, if you do ask her, she’ll know you heard it from me . . .”

  A gate was half-open, allowing access to the Central Wine Market, and Aghamouri had stopped in front of it.

  “We 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.

  “May 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:

  Marie Brizard & Roger

  Butte de la Gironde

  Fine Wines of Algeria

  La Loire Warehouses

  Libaud, Margerand & Blonde

  Brandies and Liqueurs. La Roseraie Cellars . . .

  “Do 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.