Such Fine Boys

by Patrick Modiano

  A half-hour later, I saw Ludo leave the building. Now it was my turn to go back up to the apartment, on the pretext of giving Mme Portier the valise. And once upstairs . . . But when I reached the sidewalk, I hesitated; then, like an automaton, I started following Ludo.

  He was walking about twenty yards ahead of me. He opened the door of a large brown car parked on the corner of Rue Scheffer and took out a coat, which he didn’t put on but rather draped over his shoulders. He walked off down Rue Scheffer.

  As I went by, I noticed, propped against the car window, a plaque bearing the words “Severely Disabled Veteran,” precariously balanced between two packets of paper handkerchiefs and a stack of Michelin roadmaps. That neglected plaque reminded me of his nonchalant grace when he rested his elbow on the mantel.

  Now he pushed on toward Boulevard Delessert, draped in that navy blue overcoat as if it were a cape, and glanced at those mysterious stairways, on either side of the boulevard, that flank the buildings. He had a slight limp. Severely disabled veteran. Flying ace, as Mme Portier had said. I was nothing compared to this man. Why was I following him? I would have liked to talk to him about Claude, ask him questions, for we had one thing in common: we both knew that peppery perfume that blended with the smell of Royales and those olive thighs beneath the terrycloth robe.

  He halted at the bottom of the avenue, where the Trocadéro gardens began. I did, too. I set down the valise on the gravel. No, I would never have the nerve to approach him. He was smoking. With a flick of his finger, he launched the butt into the air, raising his chin as if to follow the trajectory of a shooting star.

  Both of us, that winter night, had arrived at the flank of a hill, from where we could see the lights of Paris, the Seine, the horses on the Pont d’Iéna. A tour boat passed by, and its searchlights ran over the façades lining the quays and across the gardens.

  After I left the Valvert School, I lost touch with Christian and Mme Portier.

  Twenty years later, in Nice, I was looking for a cheap hotel or boardinghouse for an old friend of my father’s who wanted to spend the winter there. It was November and already dark out. At the end of Rue Shakespeare, after the cream-colored buildings with names of flowers above the door, there was a sign on a fence: “Villa Sainte-Anne. Furnished studios. Kitchen with fridge. Bath. Garden. Sunny. Oil heat.”

  A sparsely graveled driveway led to a half-open gate. The garden was dimly lit by the yellow light from the porch, leaving a patch of lawn in semidarkness: the sound of rabbit hutches or birdcages, possibly the rustle of wings.

  I climbed the porch steps. Behind the French doors, a living room with papered walls. Rustic furniture. A table with a lace tablecloth. And the light was so yellow, so faded, that it looked as if the current had been lowered. A woman was sitting at the table, arms folded, watching television.

  I knocked on the glass but she didn’t hear. I pushed open the doors. She turned around.

  Mme Portier.

  She got up and came toward me, turning off the TV on the way.

  “Good evening . . .”

  “Good evening . . . Do you still have a studio for rent?”

  “Yes, indeed . . .”

  I had recognized her immediately. Her face was more or less unchanged, but puffier, her hair much shorter. Her mouth was slightly pinched in a bitter expression. Her eyes still had that very diluted gray or blue sparkle that had so moved me.

  “Will you be staying long?”

  “Yes, about two months.”

  “In that case, I’ll show you the unit with a bathroom and kitchen . . .”

  We circled around the house and she preceded me up a narrow staircase, its steps covered in linoleum. A hallway lit by a bare bulb on the wall. A door.

  “Go on in.”

  She turned on the light. The wooden ceiling fixture looked like a ship’s tiller into which they’d stuck light bulbs with parchment lampshades. The same linoleum as in the stairwell. Wallpaper with dark red patterns. A brass bed.

  “Over here’s the kitchenette.”

  In a closet, they had installed an ancient-model stove and a small, wheezing refrigerator.

  “Would you like to see the bathroom?”

  We again filed down the hallway. She opened a door. A white enamel clawfoot tub.

  “Toilet’s across the hall.”

  “Can I see the room again?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  The curtains were drawn. They, too, had dark red patterns—leaf shapes—just like the wallpaper. It smelled musty.

  “Is the window facing the street?” I asked.

  “No, the garden.”

  With a casual movement, she opened the drapes.

  “And may I ask how much?”

  “Twelve hundred a month.”

  Suddenly she looked much older, perhaps because she hadn’t put on any makeup.

  I went up to her.

  “You wouldn’t be Mme Portier, by any chance?”

  Her eyes widened, as if I were threatening her with a gun.

  “Why? Do you know me?”

  “Yes. A long time ago . . . I was a friend of Christian’s.”

  “Ah, a friend of Christian’s . . . You were a friend of Christian’s . . .”

  She repeated the phrase with a kind of relief.

  “We were at the Valvert School together . . . when you lived on Avenue Paul-Doumer . . .”

  “Avenue Paul-Doumer . . .”

  She focused her gaze on me.

  “I don’t recognize you . . . What was your name again?”

  “Patrick.”

  “Patrick . . . Yes, of course . . . Yes, I remember.”

  She gave me a smile and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You know, I no longer go by Portier. Life is complicated . . .”

  And full of unexpected twists. I never would have imagined that one evening, in Nice, I would find myself in a hotel room with Mme Portier.

  “I’m married now . . . to a guy who’s twenty years older than me . . .”

  She smoothed the fringes on the bedspread.

  “I’ve had my share of ups and downs . . .”

  “And what about Christian?” I asked.

  “He lives in Canada. I haven’t heard from him in ages. I think he’s cut me off . . .”

  “How come?”

  She shrugged.

  “He must hold something against me . . . Basically, I never should have had kids. The old guy I’m married to doesn’t even know I had a son.”

  “So why did you get married?”

  It was an indiscreet question, but there, in that room, she would tell me anything.

  “Truth be told, I was broke.”

  Her blue-gray eyes brightened when she smiled.

  “My husband is an old pain in the ass who might live to be a hundred . . . I act as his housekeeper. Isn’t that a kick? Can you picture me doing that?”

  I didn’t know what to answer.

  “So, you want the room?”

  “It wouldn’t be for me, but for a friend.”

  “So what do you do for a living?”

  She had caught me off-guard.

  “Oh . . . nothing much . . . I write detective novels.”

  “I’m not surprised you’ve become a writer. You were always a bit of a dreamer, weren’t you?”

  She stood up.

  “You’ll have to write a novel about me. My life’s a story with a tragic ending.”

  She let out a loud laugh, the same laugh I’d liked so much back on Avenue Paul-Doumer.

  “You get a load of the room? Pretty ugly, huh? Everything about this place is gloomy . . . My husband has no taste. And a lousy temper to boot. Like all old men.”

  She pulled me out of the room and took my arm to go downstairs.

  “You want to see my hideout? It’s the only place where he can’t come pester me.”

  At the edge of the garden stood a tiny square lodge that a guard or concierge might have lived in. She op
ened the door.

  “The old fart doesn’t have the key . . . Sometimes I lock myself in here.”

  A chandelier. An Empire bed. Pieces of furniture stacked atop each other. Mirrors. Lamps. Suitcases. An Egyptian Revival writing desk. And photos tacked to the walls.

  “This is what I managed to save from the wreckage . . . These were all at Avenue Paul-Doumer.”

  One of the photos was of her as a very young blonde, with bangs and bright eyes, wearing a satin jumpsuit with see-through lace motifs. She was resting her head on the arm of a settee and her outstretched right leg rested on the other arm. Her left leg was bent. She had on black high-heeled pumps.

  “I was eighteen there. The manager of the Société des Bains de Mer in Monaco was wild about me . . . He introduced me to Prince Pierre . . .”

  A smaller photo: her on horseback, next to another rider.

  “That was with Pagnon, a friend from Asnières. He worked for the Germans . . . He got Christian’s father and me released after we were arrested . . .”

  She picked up a pillow from the floor and pulled the red velvet bedspread over the rumpled sheets.

  “The Germans beat the crap out of us . . . I wonder what Christian’s father could have been up to . . . They nearly knocked my teeth out.”

  She lifted a painting that had been laid askew on the nightstand.

  “Can you help me with this? I want to put it back there . . .”

  I leaned the painting against the wall.

  “It’s a real junk room here. I’ve got so many souvenirs. Maybe you’d be interested for your detective stories . . .”

  “I’m very interested,” I said.

  “Well, then, you’ll have to come back some afternoon to poke around . . .”

  We crossed the garden. She had slipped on an old red anorak that barely reached her waist, its color vivid against the black of her trousers. She motioned toward the cages in the shadows.

  “I’ve got about twenty birds I’m raising—it helps pass the time . . .”

  “Isn’t that hard work?”

  “Oh, no. I’ve done much harder things than that.”

  Again she took my arm as we walked down the gravel drive. She had the same supple, gliding step as in the days of Valvert.

  “I was even a circus rider when I was young.”

  “A circus rider?”

  “If your friend rents the studio, we can see each other more often . . .”

  “I’d like that.”

  We had reached the gate. She leaned her face closer to mine.

  “Do you think I’ve aged a lot?”

  “No.”

  And it was true that, in the muted light of the street, her face regained its smoothness. In any case, her supple gait and her laugh hadn’t changed a bit.

  “I’ve got to go make my husband his soup. He hasn’t said a word to me all week. He’s giving me the cold shoulder . . . Anyway, it’s impossible having a conversation—he’s deaf as a post. He’s in bed by nine . . .”

  “Would you like to have dinner some evening?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “Yes, but in that case I’ll have to give you an address and phone number where you can leave a message. The old man is always on my back, you understand? He even opens my mail.”

  She felt around the pocket of her anorak and handed me a calling card.

  “This is my hairdresser . . . Christian always wrote me at this address.”

  “Too bad the three of us can’t get together,” I said.

  She rested a hand on my shoulder.

  “You really are quite the dreamer . . .”

  Once on the sidewalk, I looked back. She was standing at the fence, forehead pressed against the bars. She smiled.

  “Don’t forget. Rue Pastorelli . . . Condé Coiffure . . .”

  XI.

  It was nine in the evening and I was walking past a waiting room in the Gare du Nord.

  A face. Forehead resting on that aquariumlike window, eyes anxious and weary. That was you, Charell.

  I rapped on the glass. He recognized me as well. After twenty years, we had hardly changed, or at least Charell hadn’t. He stood up and stared at me, blinking, as if I’d suddenly stepped out of a dream. His distinguished blond mien stood out among the rare individuals who had washed up there: a sleeping vagrant, his head on the shoulder of an old woman in a raincoat and too much makeup; a gaunt-faced Arab whose brand-new glen plaid suit tapered at the ankles, revealing sneakers without laces. Over that waiting room, with its brown wood paneling and muted light, floated a smell of urine.

  “Funny running into you here, old man,” said Charell.

  He was making a visible effort to appear relaxed, like someone who has just been caught in dubious surroundings or circumstances and tries to ward off suspicion.

  “No reason we have to stay here . . .”

  He took my arm and guided me firmly through the train station, glancing left and right with that same worried look he’d had moments before, behind the glass. What was he afraid of? That I might see him meet someone?

  Taking the exit on the building’s left flank, we emerged into a wide blind alley. We could hear shouts and whispers from groups of shadows, motionless in the dark. We nearly tripped over bodies sitting on the sidewalk, surrounded by suitcases and overnight bags. Against the alley’s open gates stood some very young girls in leather jackets; one of them wore a black headband that canceled her forehead and masked one eye. And still that stink of urine.

  We crossed Rue de Dunkerque. Traffic in front of the station was still fairly heavy at that hour, and all the cafés were lit.

  “Do you live around here?” I asked Charell.

  “Not exactly . . . I’ll explain.”

  At the corner of Rue de Compiègne, he pressed his forehead against the window of a large, empty café that was less brightly lit than the others. He seemed to be looking for someone. But there was no one in the main room, which was bathed in pale green light. Again he took my arm and we headed toward Boulevard Magenta.

  “I have a little pied-à-terre here . . . For me and my wife . . . I’ll explain.”

  We were at the foot of a dirty tan building that was very tall and shaped like the prow of a ship, the kind they used to build just before the war. An entrance door with frosted glass. To the left, a movie theater. They were showing several features, one of them titled Asses High.

  A dozen men spewed from the theater just as we were about to enter the building: large dark suits, black briefcases, crewcuts. They bumped into me. One of them even trod on my foot, with his heavy shoe and reinforced sole. They followed their path in a straight line, unruffled, no doubt in search of a brasserie where they could wolf down a sauerkraut-and-sausage or fish stew before catching the northbound train.

  “Strange neighborhood,” I said to Charell as the elevator rose slowly in the dark, projecting the shadow of its grate on the wall at every landing.

  The outside of the apartment door was reinforced with a rust-pocked armor plate. Charell stood aside to let me pass. We crossed through a foyer with red velvet walls, on which sconces with crystal pendants gave off a blinding light. The carpet was the same red as the velvet.

  “This way, old man . . .”

  A room with blank walls, its parquet floor gleaming under the ceiling fixtures. No furniture, save a wide leather couch on which a black girl of about twenty was asleep, wrapped in a plaid blanket. One of the two windows was open and looked out onto the narrow alley between the buildings.

  “Have a seat, old man. Don’t worry . . . when that one’s asleep, she’s dead to the world.”

  He pulled the window shut. We sat at the end of the couch. She was sleeping, her head thrown back slightly, neck arched. On the floor, a dog of impressive size, with long, curly black fur, was also asleep.

  “She’s pretty, don’t you think?” Charell said, nodding at the girl. “I picked her up one evening on Rue de Maubeuge . . .”

  Yes.
She had a sweet, childlike face and a delicate neck.

  “One of the reasons I rent this pied-à-terre,” Charell said pensively, “is that I’d rather bring girls here than to our apartment in Neuilly. There was one once who made off with my wife’s entire wardrobe.”

  I waited for him to offer some explanation. The girl had turned over and muttered a few indistinct words in her sleep. I admired her neck.

  “It’s also handy having this place because I travel north a lot for business. I’ll explain . . .”

  But he never explained a thing. A woman’s ringing laugh broke the silence that had fallen between us. A shrill laugh, coming from the next room. Then a man’s voice. And the laugh gradually became huskier.

  Someone banged against the door. The laughing stopped. Sounds of a struggle or chase. Charell didn’t react and lit a cigarette. I heard the woman’s laugh again. After a while, moans that stretched longer and longer.

  “When I said I traveled north,” Charell said in a toneless voice, “I meant Belgium . . . I’ve got someone there who looks after my affairs. You know my father was Belgian. So am I . . .”

  He was evidently trying to distract me. The dog emitted a few yaps, like an echo of the prolonged whimpers behind the door.

  “But . . . you don’t really live here, do you?” I asked.

  “No, my wife and I live in Neuilly. Rue de la Ferme. Right near where my parents lived . . . You remember what Rue de la Ferme was like.”

  “Yes.”

  “They tore down all the riding stables on the street . . .”

  He suddenly looked devastated.

  “A lot of things have changed since Valvert, old man . . .”

  “Have you been married long?”

  “Ten years. Suzanne is a lovely woman, you’ll see.”

  I didn’t dare ask if she was the one moaning and grunting behind the door. The sounds increased, then died down. Silence. We heard only the regular breathing of the black girl next to us, and less and less frequent yaps from the dog.

  The door opened and a man appeared, in a light-colored checked jacket, a huge signet ring on his right hand. Blond, tall, stocky, with a mustache.

  “This is François Duveltz, a friend,” Charell said to me.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” the other man said.