Ring Roads

by Patrick Modiano

  ‘So you’re renting the place?’

  He tried to catch my eye, which I noticed with surprise. He never looked directly at people.

  ‘Yes, I’m renting it.’

  The words were barely audible.

  ‘You probably think I’m being terribly nosy?’

  ‘Not at all, monsieur.’

  He gave a faint smile, more a tremor of the lips, as though afraid of being hit, and I pitied him. This feeling I had always experienced with regard to him, which caused a burning pain in my gut.

  ‘Your friends seem charming,’ I said. ‘I had a lovely evening.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  This time, he held out his hand.

  ‘I must go in and work.’

  ‘What at?’

  ‘Nothing very interesting. Accounting.’

  ‘Good luck,’ I murmured. ‘I hope I’ll run into you again soon.’

  ‘It would be a pleasure.’

  As he opened the gate, I felt a sudden panic: should I tap him on the shoulder, and tell him every detail of the pains I had taken to find him? What good would it do? He trudged up the driveway slowly as though completely exhausted. For a long moment, he stood at the top of the steps. From a distance, his figure looked indistinct. Did it belong to a man or to one of those monstrous creatures who loom over you in feverish dreams?

  Did he wonder what I was doing there, standing on the other side of the gate?

  Eventually, thanks to dogged persistence, I got to know them better. It being July, work didn’t keep them in Paris and they ‘made the most’ of the country (as Murraille put it). All the time I spent with them, I listened to them talking, ever meek and attentive. On scraps of paper, I jotted down the information I gleaned. I know the life stories of these shadows is of no great interest to anyone, but if I didn’t write it down, no one else would do it. It is my duty, since I knew them, to drag them – if only for an instant – from the darkness. It is a duty, but for me it is also a necessary thing.

  Murraille. At a young age, he started hanging out at the café Brabant with a group of journalists from Le Matin. They persuaded him to get into the business. Which he did. At twenty, general dogsbody, then secretary to a man who published a scandal sheet he used to blackmail victims. His motto was: ‘Never threaten; only coerce.’ Murraille was sent to the victims’ homes to collect the envelopes. He remembered the frosty welcome. But there were some who greeted him with obsequious politeness, begging him to intercede with his editor, to ask him to be less demanding. These were the ones who had ‘every reason to feel guilty’. After a while, he was promoted to sub-editor, but the articles he was called on to write were of a terrifying monotony, and they all began with: ‘We hear from a reliable source, that Monsieur X . . .’ or: ‘How is it that Monsieur Y . . .’ or ‘Can it be true that Monsieur Z . . .’ There followed ‘revelations’ that, at first, Murraille felt ashamed to be spreading. His editor suggested he always end with a little moral maxim such as: ‘The wicked must be punished’, or by what he called ‘a hopeful note’: ‘We hold out hope that Monsieur X . . . (or Monsieur Y . . .) will find his way back to the straight and narrow. We feel sure that he will, because, as the evangelist says “each man in his darkness goes towards the light”,’ or some such. Murraille felt a brief twinge of conscience every month when he collected his salary. Besides, the offices of 30b Rue de Gramont – the peeling wallpaper, the dilapidated furniture, the meagre lighting – were conducive to depression. It was all far from cheering for a young man his age. If he spent three years there, it was only because the perks were excellent. His patron was generous and gave Murraille a quarter of the proceeds. The same editor (apparently, a dead ringer for Raymond Poincaré) was not without a sensitive streak. He had bouts of black depression when he would confide to Murraille that he had become a blackmailer because he was disillusioned by his fellow man. He had thought they were good – but had quickly realised his mistake; so he had decided to tirelessly condemn their vile deeds. And to make them PAY. One evening, in a restaurant, he died of a heart attack. His last words were: ‘If you only knew . . .!’ Murraille was twenty-five. These were difficult times for him. He worked as film and music-hall critic for several second-rate papers.

  He quickly developed an appalling reputation in the newspaper world, where he was currently regarded as a ‘rotten apple’. Though this saddened him, his laziness and his taste for easy living made it impossible for him to change. He had a permanent fear of being short of money, the very prospect threw him into a state of panic. At times like this, he was capable of anything, like an addict desperate for a fix.

  When I met him, his star was on the rise. He was editor of his own magazine. ‘Troubled times’ had made it possible for him to realise his dream. He had exploited the chaos and the murk. He felt perfectly at home in this world which seemed hell bent on destruction. I often wondered how a man who looked so distinguished (everyone who met him will tell you about his unaffected elegance, his frankness) could be so utterly devoid of scruples. There was one thing I liked a lot about him: he never deluded himself. A friend from his old regiment had once accidentally shot him while cleaning his gun; the bullet had missed his heart by inches. I often heard him say: ‘When I’m condemned to death and they order a firing squad to put twelve bullets in me, they can save a bullet.’

  Marcheret was originally from the Quartier des Ternes. His mother, a colonel’s widow, had done her best to bring him up correctly. She felt old before her time, and threatened by the outside world. She had hoped her son would go into the church. There, at least, he might be safe. But Marcheret, from the age of fifteen, had only one idea: to get away from their dingy apartment on the Rue Saussier-le-Roi, where the photograph of Maréchal Lyautey on the wall gently watched over him. (The photograph even bore an inscription: ‘To Colonel de Marcheret. With fond wishes, Lyautey.’) All too soon, his mother had genuine cause for concern: he was lazy and neglected his studies. He was expelled from the Lycée Chaptal for fracturing another pupil’s skull. Frequented the cafés and the fleshpots of Paris. Played billiards and poker into the early hours. Needed money constantly. She never reproached him. Her son was not to blame, but the others, the bad boys, the communists, the Jews. How she longed for him to stay safely in his room . . . One night, Marcheret was strolling along the Avenue de Wagram. He felt the familiar surge of frustration twenty-year-olds feel when they don’t know what to do with their life. The guilt he felt at causing his mother grief was mingled with anger at the fact he had only fifty francs in his pocket . . . Things could not carry on like this. He wandered into a cinema showing Le Grand Jeu with Pierre-Richard Willm. The story of a young man who sets off to join the Foreign Legion. It was as though Marcheret was seeing himself up on the screen. He sat through two screenings, enthralled by the desert, the Arabic town, the uniforms. At 6 p.m. he walked into the nearest café as Legionnaire Guy de Marcheret and ordered a blanc-cassis. Then a second. He signed up the next day.

  In Morocco, two years later, he heard about his mother’s death. She had never recovered from his leaving. Hardly had he confided his grief to one of his barrack-room mates, a Georgian by the name of Odicharvi, than the man dragged him off to a Bouss-Bir establishment that was part brothel, part cafe. At the end of the evening, his friend had the marvellous idea of raising a glass, pointing towards Marcheret and shouting: ‘Let’s drink to the orphan!’ He was right. Marcheret had always been an orphan. And in enlisting in the Legion, he had hoped to find his father. But he had found only loneliness, sand and the mirages of the desert.

  He returned to France with a parrot and a dose of malaria. ‘What pisses me off about things like that,’ he told me, ‘is that no one comes to meet you at the station.’ He felt out of place. He was no longer accustomed to the bright lights and the bustle. He was terrified of crossing the street, and in a blind panic on the Place de l’Opéra, asked a policeman to take his hand and lead him across. Eventually he was lucky enough to meet anot
her former Legionnaire who ran a bar on the Rue d’Armaille. They swapped stories. The bar owner took him in, fed him, adopted the parrot, and in time Marcheret began to enjoy life again. Women found him attractive. This was in an era – so distant now – when being a Legionnaire made women’s hearts flutter. A Hungarian countess, the widow of a wealthy industrialist, a dancer at the Tabarin – in fact ‘blondes’ as Marcheret put it – fell for the charms of this sentimental soldier, who turned a healthy profit from the swooning sighs. Sometimes he would show up in night clubs in his old uniform. He was the life and soul of the party.

  Maud Gallas. I don’t have much information on her. She tried her hand as a singer – short-lived. Marcheret told me she had managed a nightclub near the Plaine Monceau that catered exclusively to female clients. Murraille even claimed that having been charged with receiving stolen goods, she had become persona non grata in Département de la Seine. One of her friends had bought the Clos-Foucré from the Beausires and, thanks to her wealthy patron, she now managed the auberge.

  Annie Murraille was twenty-two. A diaphanous blonde. Was she really Jean Murraille’s niece? This was something I was never able to confirm. She wanted to be a great movie actress, she dreamed of seeing ‘her name in lights’. Having landed a few minor roles, she played the lead in Nuit de rafles, a film completely forgotten these days. I assumed she got engaged to Marcheret because he was Murraille’s best friend. She had an enormous affection for her uncle (was he really her uncle?). If there are those who still remember Annie Murraille, they think of her as an unfortunate but poignant young actress . . . She wanted to make the most of her life . . .

  Sylviane Quimphe I knew rather better. She came from a humble background. Her father worked as nightwatchman at the old Samson factory. She spent her whole adolescence in an area bounded to the north by the Avenue Daumesnil, to the south by the Quai de la Rapée and the Quai de Bercy. It was not the sort of area that attracted tourists. At times, it feels as though you are in the countryside, and walking along the Seine, you feel you have discovering a disused port. The elevated métro line that crosses the Pont de Bercy and the crumbling morgue buildings add to the terrible desolation of the place. But there is one magical spot in this bleak landscape that inexorably attracts dreamers: the Gare de Lyon. It was here that Sylviane Quimphe’s wanderings always took her. At sixteen, she would explore every nook and corner. Especially the main-line departure platforms. The words ‘Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits’ brought colour to her cheeks.

  She trudged home to the Rue Corbineau, reciting the names of towns she would never see. Bordighera-Rimini-Vienna-Istanbul. Outside her house was a little park, where, as the dark drew in, all the tedium and desolate charm of the 12th arrondissement was distilled. She would sit on a bench. Why had she not simply boarded some train, any train? She decided not to go home. Her father was working all night. The coast was clear.

  From the Avenue Daumesnil, she glided towards the labyrinth of streets called the ‘Chinese Quarter’ (does it still exist today? A colony of Asians had set up shabby bars, small restaurants and even – it was said – a number of opium dens). The human dreck who prowl around train stations tramped through this seedy area as through a swamp. Here, she found what she had been looking for: a former employee of Thomas Cook with a silver tongue and a handsome body, living from hand to mouth doing shady deals. He immediately saw possibilities for a young girl like Sylviane. She longed to travel? That could be arranged. As it happened, his cousin worked as a ticket inspector aboard les Wagons-lits, The two men presented Sylviane a Paris–Milan return ticket. But just as the train pulled out, they also introduced her to a fat red-faced musician whose various whims she had to satisfy on the outward trip. The return journey, she made in the company of a Belgian industrialist. This peripatetic prostitution proved very lucrative since the cousins played their role as pimps magnificently. The fact that one of them was employed by the Wagons-Lits made matters easier: he could seek out ‘clients’ during the journey and Sylviane Quimphe remembered a Paris–Zurich trip during which she entertained eight men in succession in her single sleeper carriage. She had not yet turned twenty. But clearly miracles can happen. In the corridor of a train, between Basle and La Chaux-de-Fonds, she met Jean-Roger Hatmer. This sad-faced young man belonged to a family which had made its fortunes in the sugar and the textile trade. He had just come into a large inheritance and did not know what to do with it. Or with his life, for that matter. Sylviane Quimphe became his raison d’etre and he smothered her with polite passion. Not once during the four months of their life together did he take a liberty with her. Every Sunday, he gave her a briefcase stuffed full of jewels and banknotes, saying in hushed tones: ‘Just to tide you over.’ He hoped that, later, she would ‘want for nothing’. Hatmer, who dressed in black and wore steel-rimmed glasses, had the discretion, modesty and benevolence that one sometimes encounters in elderly secretaries. He was very keen on butterflies and tried to share his passion with Sylviane Quimphe, but quickly realised the subject bored her. One day, he left her a note: ‘THEY are going to make me appear before a board of guardians and probably have me confined to an asylum. We can’t see each other anymore. There is still a small Tintoretto hanging on the left-hand wall of the living room. Take it. And sell it. Just to tide you over.’ She never heard from him again. Thanks to this far-sighted young man, she had been freed of all financial worries for the rest of her life. She had many other adventures, but suddenly I find I haven’t got the heart.

  Murraille, Marcheret, Maud Gallas, Sylviane Quimphe . . . I take no pleasure in setting down their life stories. Nor am I doing it for the sake of the story, having no imagination. I focus on these misfits, these outsiders, so that, through them, I can catch the fleeting image of my father. About him, I know almost nothing. But I will think something up.

  I met him for the first time when I was seventeen. The vice-principal of the Collège Sainte-Antoine in Bordeaux came to tell me that someone was waiting for me in the visitor’s room. When he saw me, this stranger with swarthy skin wearing a dark-grey flannel suit, got to his feet.

  ‘I’m your papa . . .’

  We met again outside, on a July afternoon at the end of the school year.

  ‘I hear you passed your baccalauréat.’

  He was smiling at me. I gave a last look at the yellow walls of the school, where I had mouldered for the past eight years.

  If I delve farther back into my memories, what do I see? A grey-haired old woman to whom he had entrusted me. She had been a coat-check girl before the war at Frolic’s (a bar on the Rue de Grammont) before retiring to Libourne. It was there, in her house, that I grew up.

  Then boarding school, in Bordeaux.

  It is raining. My father and I are walking side by side, without speaking, as far as the Quai des Chartrons to the family I stayed with outside term time, the Pessacs. (One of those patrician families in the wine and cognac trade I fondly hope will soon be ruined.) The afternoons spent at their house were among the bleakest in my life, so the less said about them the better.

  We climb the monumental steps. The maid opens the front door. I rush to the box-room where I had asked permission to leave a suitcase stuffed with books (novels by Bourget, Marcel Prevost, and Duvernois, strictly forbidden at school). Suddenly I hear Monsieur Pessac’s peremptory voice: ‘What are you doing here?’ He is talking to my father. Seeing me with the suitcase in hand, he scowls: ‘You’re leaving? But who is this gentleman?’ I hesitate, then manage to blurt out: ‘MY FATHER!’ Obviously, he doesn’t believe me. Suspiciously: ‘Unless my eyes deceive me, you were sneaking away like a thief?’ This sentence is burned into my memory, because it was true that we look just like a couple of thieves caught red-handed. Confronted by this little man with his moustache and his brown smoking jacket, my father remained silent and chewed his cigar to give the impression he was calm. For my part, I myself think of only one thing: how to get out of there as soon as possible. Monsieur P
essac had turned to my father and was studying him curiously. At that moment, his wife appeared. Followed by his daughter and his eldest son. They stood, staring at us in silence leaving me feeling as though we had broken into this bourgeois mansion. When my father let ash from his cigar fall on the carpet, I noticed their expressions of amused contempt. The girl exploded with laughter. Her brother, a spotty youth who adopted ‘English style’ (much in vogue in Bordeaux), piped up in a shrill voice: ‘Perhaps Monsieur might like an ashtray? . . .’ ‘Really, Francois-Marie,’ murmured Mme Pessac. ‘Don’t be so uncouth.’ As she said this last word she looked pointedly at my father, as if to make it clear that the adjective applied to him. M. Pessac maintained a disdainful equanimity. I think what had made them so unfriendly was my father’s pale green shirt. Faced with the blatant hostility of these four people, my father looked like a butterfly caught in a net. He fumbled with his cigar, not knowing where to stub it out. He backed towards the door. The others did not move, shamelessly revelling in his embarrassment. I suddenly felt a kind of tenderness for this man I barely knew, and went over to him and said in a loud voice: ‘Let me give you a hug, monsieur.’ And, having done so, I took the cigar from his hand and painstakingly crushed it on the inlaid hall table Mme Pessac so loved. I tugged my father’s sleeve.

  ‘That’s enough, now,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  We went to the Hôtel Splendid to collect his bags. A taxi took us to the Gare Saint-Jean. In the train, we struck up a conversation of sorts. He explained that ‘business’ had made it impossible for him getting in touch, but that from now on we would live together in Paris and would never be apart again. I stammered a few words of thanks. ‘I suppose . . .,’ he said point-blank, ‘I suppose you must have been very unhappy . . .’ He suggested that I not call him ‘monsieur’. An hour passed in utter silence and I declined his invitation to go with him to the restaurant-car. I made the most of his absence to rummage through the black briefcase he had left on the seat. There was nothing in it but a Nansen passport. At least he and I shared the same surname. He had two Christian names: Chalva, Henri. He had been born in Alexandria, at a time – I imagine – when the city still shimmered with its own particular radiance.