In the Café of Lost Youth

by Patrick Modiano

  Yes, that bookstore wasn’t only a refuge; it was also a step in my life. I would often stay there until closing time. There was a chair next to the shelves, or rather a tall step stool where I would sit as I leafed through different books. I wasn’t sure that he was even aware of my presence. After a few days, without looking up from his reading, he would speak to me, always the same sentence: “So have you found your happiness?” Much later, someone informed me with great certainty that the one thing we cannot remember is the tone of a voice. And yet even now, during my bouts of insomnia, I often hear that voice and its Parisian accent—the accent of the slopes—asking me, “So have you found your happiness?” And that phrase has lost none of its kindness or mystery.

  Late at night, stepping back out of the bookstore, I was shocked to once again find myself on the boulevard de Clichy. I didn’t really feel like going down to the Canter. My steps led me up instead. I now felt a great deal of pleasure climbing the slopes or the stairs. I counted each step. Once I had counted to thirty, I knew I was home free. Much later, Guy de Vere made me read Lost Horizon, a story about some people climbing the mountains of Tibet in search of the monastery of Shangri-La to learn great wisdom and the meaning of life. But it’s not worth the trouble going so far. I thought back on my nighttime walks. For me, Montmartre was Tibet. The slope of rue Caulaincourt was plenty for me. Up there, in front of the Château des Brouillards, I could truly breathe for the first time in my life. One day, at dawn, I snuck away from the Canter, having spent the night there with Jeannette. We were waiting for Accad and Mario Bay, who wanted to take us to Cabassud along with Godinger and another girl. I was suffocating. I came up with an excuse to step out for some fresh air. I started running. At place Blanche, all of the neon signs were dark, even that of the Moulin Rouge. I allowed myself to succumb to an intense feeling of intoxication that neither alcohol nor snow had ever given me. I climbed the slope as far as the Château des Brouillards. I had made up my mind never to see the bunch at the Canter again. Later I revisited that same intoxication every time I broke off all ties with someone. I was never really myself when I wasn’t running away. My only happy memories are memories of flight and escape. But life always regained the upper hand. Once I reached the allée des Brouillards, I felt certain that someone had asked me to meet them up there and that it would be a new beginning for me. There is a street a little farther up that I’d like to revisit one of these days. I was following it that morning. That’s where I was supposed to meet someone. But I didn’t know the number of the building. Didn’t matter, I was waiting for a sign that would let me know. At the end of the street ahead of me was wide-open sky, as if it led up to the edge of a cliff. I advanced with that feeling of lightness that can sometimes come to you in a dream. You no longer fear a thing in the world, potential dangers seem laughable. If something goes really wrong, you just need to wake yourself up. You’re invincible. I walked on, impatient to reach the end where there was nothing but blue sky and the void. What word would have best described my state of mind? Intoxication? Ecstasy? Rapture? In any case, that road was familiar to me. I felt as if I had walked it before. Soon I would reach the cliff’s edge and I would throw myself into the void. What happiness it would be to float through the air and finally know the feeling of weightlessness I had been searching for my whole life. I can still remember that morning with such clarity, that street and that sky at its end.

  And then life went on, with its ups and downs. One dismal day, feeling particularly down, as I flipped through the book Guy de Vere had lent me, Louise, Sister of the Void, I used a ballpoint pen to replace her name on the cover with my own: Jacqueline, Sister of the Void.

  THAT NIGHT, it was as if we were at a table-turning séance. We were gathered in Guy de Vere’s office, and he had turned off the lamp. Or perhaps it was simply a power outage. We listened to his voice in the darkness. He was reciting a text that he otherwise would have read under the light. Well no, I’m not being fair, Guy de Vere would have been shocked to hear me mention his name in the same breath as “table-turning” and “séance.” He deserved better than that. He would have said to me, in a slightly chiding tone, “Honestly, Roland.”

  He lit the candles of a candelabrum on the mantel then took his seat behind the desk. We occupied the chairs facing him, that girl, me, and a couple in their early forties whom I was meeting for the first time, both of them meticulously dressed and rather bourgeois-looking.

  I turned my head toward her and our eyes met. Guy de Vere was still talking, his chest leaned forward slightly but still naturally, almost as if he was having a casual conversation. At each one of his lectures, he read to us from a text of which he later provided photocopies. I still have the handout from that night. I had a reference point. She had given me her phone number and I had written it on the bottom of the page with a red ballpoint pen.

  “Maximum concentration is best reached lying down, the eyes closed. At the first sign of an external manifestation, dispersion and diffusion will commence. Upright, the legs eliminate a portion of the required strength. Open eyes diminish concentration levels.”

  It was all I could do to hold in a fit of laughter, and I remember it with certainty because that was the first time it had happened to me there. But the candlelight lent the reading far too much solemnity. My eyes often met those of the girl. Apparently she didn’t feel like laughing. Quite the opposite. She seemed very respectful, even worried that she might not understand the meaning of the words. She ended up passing that gravity on to me. I was almost ashamed of my initial reaction. I hardly dared think of the scene I would have caused if I had burst out laughing. And in her gaze, I thought I could see some sort of a cry for help, a question. Am I worthy of being among you? Guy de Vere had folded his hands. His voice had grown even more resolute and he was looking fixedly at her as if she were the only one he was addressing. It petrified her. Perhaps she was afraid he would ask her an unexpected question, something along the lines of “And you, I’d love to hear your opinion on this.”

  The lights came back on. We lingered in the office a short while longer, which was unusual. The lectures always took place in the living room and gathered together about a dozen people. That evening we were but four, and most likely de Vere had preferred to receive us in his office because of our small number. And the whole thing had been arranged thanks to a simple time and place, without the invitation that was customarily delivered to your home or that you might be given if you were a regular at the Vega bookstore. Like some of the photocopied texts, I’ve kept a few of those invitations, and yesterday I came across one of them.

  Dearest Roland,

  Guy de Vere would be delighted to receive you Thursday, January 16th, at 8 p.m.

  5 Lowendal Square (15th)

  2nd building on the left

  4th floor, left door

  The white bristol board card, always of the same size and with the same filigreed lettering, could have been announcing a social gathering, a cocktail party, or a birthday.

  That evening he accompanied us back down to the door of the apartment. Guy de Vere and the first-time couple all had at least twenty years on us. As the elevator was too small for four people, she and I took the stairs.

  A private street lined by identical buildings with beige and brick façades. Same wrought-iron doors under the same old-fashioned streetlights. Same rows of windows. Once through the gate, we found the square at rue Alexandre Cabanel before us. I wanted to write that name down, because that was where our paths first crossed. We lingered a moment in the middle of the square, trying to think of something to say. I was the one to break the silence.

  “Do you live in the neighborhood?”

  “No, over by Étoile.”

  I was looking for an excuse not to leave her right away. “We could walk partway together.”

  We walked under the viaduct, along boulevard de Grenelle. She had suggested we follow the stretch of the Métro that runs above ground towards Étoile
. If she got tired, she could always take the Métro the rest of the way. It must have been a Sunday night or a holiday. There was no traffic, all of the cafés were closed. In any case, as I remember it, that night we were in a deserted city. Our having met, when I think about it now, seems like the meeting of two people who were completely without moorings in life. I think that we were both alone in the world.

  “Have you known Guy de Vere long?” I asked her.

  “No, I just met him at the beginning of the year, through a friend. And you?”

  “Through the Vega bookstore.”

  She wasn’t familiar with that bookstore, a shop on boulevard Saint-Germain whose windows bore, in blue lettering, the inscription: “Orientalism and Comparative Religion.” That was where I first heard Guy de Vere speak. One evening, the bookseller had given me one of the bristol board invitation cards, telling me that I was welcome to attend the lecture. “It’s totally for people like you.” I would have liked to ask him what he meant by “people like you.” He was looking at me with a fair amount of kindness and it didn’t necessarily have to be pejorative. He even offered to “put in a good word” for me with this Guy de Vere.

  “Is it any good, this Vega bookstore?”

  She had asked me the question with a hint of irony in her voice. Although maybe it was her Parisian accent that gave me that impression.

  “You can find all sorts of interesting books there. I’ll take you sometime.”

  I wanted to know what sort of books she read and what had drawn her to Guy de Vere’s lectures. The first book that de Vere had recommended to her was Lost Horizon. She had read it very carefully. She had arrived at the previous lecture before the others, and de Vere had led her into his office. He hunted through the shelves of his library, which occupied two full walls, for another book to lend her. After a moment, as if an idea had suddenly come to him, he had gone over to his desk and taken up a book that lay among the disorderly heaps of folders and letters. He told her, “You can read this one. I’d be very curious to know what you think of it.” She had been extremely intimidated. De Vere always spoke to others as if they were as intelligent and as cultivated as he was. How long could that go on? At some point he would realize that we didn’t measure up. The book that he had given her that night was called Louise, Sister of the Void. No, I wasn’t familiar with it. It related the life story of Louise of the Void, a seventeenth-century nun, and included all the letters she had written. She wasn’t reading it from front to back, she just opened it at random. Some pages really made an impression on her. Even more so than Lost Horizon. Before meeting de Vere, she had read science fiction novels like The Dreaming Jewels. And books about astronomy. What a coincidence. I too had a thing for astronomy.

  At Bir-Hakeim station, I wondered if she was going to take the Métro or if she wanted to keep walking and cross the Seine. Above our heads, at regular intervals, the clattering of the trains. We stopped on the bridge and continued our conversation.

  “I live up by Étoile, too,” I told her. “Maybe not too far from your place.”

  She was hesitating. She seemed to want to tell me something that was bothering her.

  “To be honest, I’m married. I live with my husband in Neuilly.” You would have thought she was confessing to a crime.

  “Have you been married long?”

  “No, not very long. Since last April.”

  We had resumed walking. We reached the middle of the bridge, where the stairs led to the allée des Cygnes below. She entered the stairwell and I followed her. She made her way down the steps confidently, as if she were on her way to meet someone. And she spoke more and more quickly.

  “At one point, I was looking for work. I came across an ad. It was for a job as a temp secretary.”

  Having reached the landing, we followed the allée des Cygnes. On either side, the Seine and the lights of the quays. I got the impression that I was on the promenade deck of a ship run aground in the dead of night.

  “At the office, a man gave me work to do. He was nice to me. He was older . . . After a while, he wanted to get married.”

  It seemed as if she was trying to justify herself to a childhood friend whom she hadn’t heard from in a long time and had run into in the street.

  “What about you? Did you want to get married?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, as if my question was absurd. All the while, I was waiting for her to say, “Now look, you know me well enough.”

  After all, I must have known her in a previous life.

  “He always told me he wanted what was best for me. It’s true . . . He does want what’s best for me. He kind of takes himself for my father.”

  I got the feeling she was waiting for my opinion. She didn’t seem to be in the habit of confiding in people.

  “And he never attends the lectures with you?”

  “No. He has too much work to do.”

  She had met de Vere through an old friend of her husband’s. This friend had brought de Vere with him to dinner at their place in Neuilly. She shared all of those details with me, her forehead creased, as if she was afraid to forget a single one, even the most trivial.

  We had reached the end of the alleyway, opposite the Statue de la Liberté. A bench on the right. I can’t remember which one of us took the initiative to sit down, or perhaps we both had the idea at the same time. I asked her if she shouldn’t be getting home. This was the third or fourth time she had attended Guy de Vere’s lectures, and each time, towards eleven o’clock at night, she found herself at the foot of the stairs leading into Cambronne station. And each time, at the thought of returning to Neuilly, she felt a kind of discouragement. As it stood, she was doomed to keep taking the same line of the Métro home until the end of her days. Transfer at Étoile. Get off at Sablons.

  I could feel her shoulder against mine. She told me that after the dinner at which she had met Guy de Vere for the first time, he had invited her to a talk he was giving in a small room over by Odéon. That day, the subject had been “the Great Noon” and “green light.” Upon leaving the room, she had wandered the neighborhood. She floated in the limpid green light Guy de Vere had discussed. Evening, five o’clock. There was a lot of traffic on the boulevard and, at Carrefour de l’Odéon, the crowd jostled her as she walked against the tide, not wanting to go down the stairs into the Métro with them. A deserted street led gently up towards the Jardin du Luxembourg. And there, at mid-slope, she had gone into a café below a building on the corner: the Condé. “Do you know the Condé?” She looked at me inquiringly, suddenly seeming more comfortable. No, I wasn’t familiar with the Condé. To be honest, I’m not very fond of the Latin Quarter and all of its schools. It reminded me of my childhood, of the dormitory at the boarding school from which I had been expelled, and of the school cafeteria on the corner of rue Dauphine where I ate my meals thanks to a fake student card. I was starving. Ever since that first time, she had often taken refuge at the Condé. It hadn’t taken her long to get to know most of the regulars, and in particular two writers: a fellow named Maurice Raphaël and an Arthur Adamov. Had I heard of them? Sure. I knew who Adamov was. I had even seen him around, over by Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. A worried look. I would go so far as to say terrified. He walked around wearing sandals on his bare feet. She hadn’t read any of Adamov’s books. At the Condé, he would occasionally ask her to walk him back to his hotel because he was afraid to walk alone at night. Having become a regular at the Condé, the others had given her a nickname. Her real name was Jacqueline, but they called her Louki. If I wanted, she would introduce me to Adamov and the others. And to Jimmy Campbell, an English singer. And to a Tunisian friend of hers, Ali Cherif. We could meet up at the Condé during the day. She also sometimes went at night when her husband was out. He often returned from work quite late. She looked up at me, and after a moment’s hesitation, she told me that each time, she found it a little more difficult to go back to her husband in Neuilly. She seemed troubled and said no more.


  Time for the last Métro. We were alone in the car. Before making the transfer at Étoile, she gave me her phone number.

  •

  Still to this day, some evenings I hear a voice calling me by name in the street. A somewhat husky voice. It drags a bit around certain syllables, and I recognize it immediately: It’s Louki’s voice. I turn around, but there’s nobody there. Not only in the evenings but during that sluggish part of those summer afternoons when you’re no longer even sure what year it is. All will be as it was before. The same days, the same nights, the same places, the same encounters. The Eternal Return.

  I often hear that voice in my dreams. It’s all so precise—right down to the smallest detail—that I wonder, upon waking, how it could even be possible. The other night, I dreamed I was leaving Guy de Vere’s building, at the same time of night it had been when Louki and I left that first time. I looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock at night. There was ivy climbing along one of the ground-floor windows. I passed through the metal gate and I was crossing Cambronne Square towards the above-ground Métro when I heard Louki’s voice. She was calling to me: “Roland . . .” Twice. I could feel the irony in her voice. She had made fun of my name at first, a name that wasn’t even my real name. I had chosen it to simplify matters, an all-purpose, everyday name, one that could also serve as a last name. It was quite practical, Roland. And above all, so very French. My real name was too exotic. In those days, I was trying to avoid attracting attention. “Roland . . .” I turned around. No one. I was in the middle of the square, just like that first time when we hadn’t known what to say to each other. When I awoke, I decided to go to where Guy de Vere had lived to see if there really was ivy along the ground-floor window. I took the Métro to Cambronne. It was the line Louki had taken when she was still going home to her husband in Neuilly. I accompanied her, and we often got off at Argentine station, not far from the hotel where I was living. Those evenings, she might have stayed all night in my room, but she made a final effort and went home to Neuilly. And then finally, one night she did stay with me, near Argentine.