Sleep of Memory

by Patrick Modiano

  He wanted to accompany Geneviève Dalame to her office, and we walked along the median strip of the boulevard. She looked increasingly uncomfortable in his presence, as if she wanted to get rid of him. My impression was confirmed when he asked whether she still lived in that same hotel on Rue Monge. “I’m moving out next week,” she told him. “I’ve found another place, near Auteuil.” He kept asking for the address. She gave him a number on Rue Michel-Ange, as if she’d been expecting the question. From the inner pocket of his jacket he took a black leather address book and jotted down the information. Then she left us at the door of Polydor Studios, telling me, “See you later,” with a slight nod of complicity.

  I found myself alone with that fellow in the leopard-skin jacket. “What say we go have a drink?” he asked in a peremptory tone. Snow had begun falling in heavy wet flakes, almost like raindrops. “I don’t have time,” I told him. “I have to meet someone.” But he kept walking beside me, and I was tempted to shake him by running to the nearest metro stop, Chevaleret, a few hundred yards away. “Have you known Geneviève very long? Doesn’t she get on your nerves with all that crap about magic and séance tables?” “Not at all.” He asked if I lived in the neighborhood, and I was certain he’d try to find out my address so he could enter it in his little black book. “I live outside the city,” I said. And I felt a bit ashamed of that lie. “In Saint-Cloud.” He took out his black book. I had to invent an address, an avenue with a name like Anatole-France or Romain-Rolland. “And do you have a phone?” I hesitated a moment on the exchange, then came up with “Val-d’Or,” followed by four digits. He wrote it down carefully. “I want to enroll in an acting class. Do you know of any?” He gave me an insistent stare. “People tell me I’ve got the look.” He was tall, with fairly regular features and curly black hair. “You know,” I replied, “in Paris, there are bucketloads of acting classes.” He seemed taken aback, no doubt because of the expression “bucketloads.” He zipped his fake-leopard-skin jacket to his chin and turned up his collar against the snow, which was falling more heavily. I had finally reached the subway entrance. I was afraid he’d follow me and I’d never lose him. I went down the steps without saying good-bye or turning around, and I snuck onto the station platform just as the barrier swung shut behind me.

  Geneviève Dalame wasn’t surprised by how I had acted around her brother. After all, hadn’t she herself given him a false hotel address? She told me he’d come to the café to ask her for money. Naturally, he knew the café where we met early in the morning and where she worked, but she said it wasn’t hard to get rid of people. I couldn’t share her optimism. She added, in a very calm voice, that her brother would end up going back to the Vosges and living off “petty schemes”—that was the expression she used—as he’d always done. Days went by without our seeing hide or hair of him. Perhaps he really had gone back to the Vosges.

  For a time, I pictured this brother of Geneviève Dalame’s going into a phone booth and dialing the Val-d’Or number, which no one would answer. Or else, he would hear, “You have the wrong number, sir,” the sentence falling like a guillotine blade. And I imagined him taking the metro and crossing the Seine into Saint-Cloud, dressed in his fake-leopard-skin jacket. The winter that year was especially harsh, as he, collar turned up, went looking for an avenue that didn’t exist. For all eternity.

  Geneviève Dalame regularly went to visit a woman whom she considered a friend, and who, according to her, was well versed in the occult. She had told her about our meeting and that I had given her Marianne Verneuil’s Dictionary and the novel In Memory of an Angel. One day, she asked me to come with her to see this Madeleine Péraud, whose name I’ve had a hard time recalling. But with a little effort they come back to you, those names that lie dormant beneath a thin coating of snow and neglect. Yes, Madeleine Péraud. But I might be wrong about her first name.

  She lived near the start of Rue du Val-de-Grâce, at number 9. Since then, I’ve often passed by its gate, which led to a garden surrounded on three sides by building façades with large windows. I even found myself there, by chance, about two weeks ago, around the same time of day as when Geneviève Dalame and I would pass through that gate. Five o’clock on a winter evening, as darkness was falling and lights were already appearing in the windows. I felt as if I’d gone back into the past by a phenomenon we could call eternal return; or else it simply meant that, for me, time had stopped at a given period in my life.

  Madeleine Péraud was a brunette of around forty, with hair in a bun, pale eyes, and the gait and bearing of an ex-dancer. How had Geneviève Dalame met her? I believe she had first gone to see her for yoga lessons, but I also seem to recall that before introducing us, Geneviève Dalame spoke of her as “Doctor Péraud.” Did she practice medicine? This all happened a good fifty years ago, and I have to admit that during that half-century I haven’t thought much about all those people I came across. Brief encounters.

  After Geneviève Dalame introduced us, I accompanied her several times to Madeleine Péraud’s at five in the evening—always on a Thursday. She led us in silence down a hallway and into the salon. The two tall windows looked out onto the garden and we sat down: Geneviève Dalame and I on the red sofa, facing the windows; Madeleine Péraud on a cushion, legs folded, back very straight. At our first meeting, she asked me in her deep, husky voice whether I was a student, and I told her the truth: “No, I’m not studying.” I had enrolled at the Sorbonne just to extend my military deferment, but I never went to class. I was a phantom student. She wanted to know whether I had a job, and I said I more or less supported myself by working for various booksellers, as what we might call, though I didn’t like the trade term very much, a “book dealer.” And I had joined the Composers’ and Music Publishers’ Guild in hopes of writing song lyrics. That was all. “And what about your parents?” I suddenly realized that at my age, I could have had parents who offered me moral, emotional, or financial support. But no, no parents. And my answer was so laconic that she didn’t ask anything further about my family. It was the first time I’d given such spontaneous answers to questions about my life. Until then, I had always avoided them, as I felt a natural distrust toward any form of interrogation. Perhaps I’d relaxed that evening because of Madeleine Péraud’s gaze and voice, which conveyed a sort of tranquility, the sense that someone was listening, which I wasn’t used to. She asked good questions, the way an acupuncturist knows exactly where to place his needles. And besides, hadn’t Geneviève Dalame, more than once, called her “Doctor Péraud”? And there was also the quiet of the salon, the two tall windows facing out onto the garden, the light from the floor lamp between the windows, which left areas of shadow. The silence made you wonder whether you were really in Paris. I spent most of my days outside, in the streets and in public places, cafés, the metro, hotel rooms, movie houses. And “Doctor Péraud’s” apartment stood in contrast to all that, especially in winter, the winters of the early sixties, which I remember as being much harsher than winters today. I admit that on my first visit to “Doctor Péraud,” I thought how comforting it would be to take shelter from the winter cold in her apartment, and to answer the questions she would ask me in that voice of hers, so deep and calm.

  At Madeleine Péraud’s, I took the liberty of looking through the volumes in a low bookcase, at the back of the salon. I told her I didn’t mean to be nosy; it was just out of “professional” curiosity. “If you find any books that interest you, take them.” She encouraged me with a smile. They were mostly titles devoted to the occult sciences—among them, the one I had given Geneviève Dalame, which had been published about ten years before: In Memory of an Angel. “I was surprised you knew of that novel,” said Madeleine Péraud, as if this book reminded her of something in particular: more than just literary, something personal.

  I had pulled it from the shelf and opened it mechanically. On the half-title page, a dedication in large handwriting in blue ink: “For you. A souvenir of the angels. Megève. Le M
auvais Pas. Irène.” She noticed that I’d read the inscription and seemed embarrassed. “A lovely novel,” she said. “But I have other books for the two of you to read,” she added in an authoritarian tone. One evening, she placed on the red sofa between Geneviève Dalame and me a volume called Meetings with Remarkable Men. Today, fifty years later, that title and the word “meetings” make me think of something that had never occurred to me: Unlike many people my age, I never tried to meet the four or five intellectual guides who dominated university life in those days, or become their disciple. Why? In my capacity as an absentee student, it would have been natural for me to seek out a mentor, living as I did in a state of solitude and confusion. I remember only one of those guides, and that was because I ran into him, very late one night, on Rue du Colisée: I would have expected to see him instead near the major universities. That night, I was struck by his stumbling gait, the sadness and anxiety in his eyes. He seemed lost. I took him by the arm and led him, at his request, to the nearest taxi stand.

  I had guessed early on that “Doctor Péraud” wielded some influence over Geneviève Dalame. One evening as we were leaving her place, after crossing the garden, she told me that Madeleine Péraud belonged to a “group”—a kind of secret society—where they practiced “magic.” She couldn’t tell me any more, as she didn’t understand much about it herself. Madeleine Péraud would allude to this group, but always in vague terms, no doubt to observe Geneviève Dalame’s reaction, before getting down to business. Still, it seemed to me that Geneviève Dalame knew more about this than she let on, especially when she blurted out: “You could talk to her about it.” We were skirting the garden wall, before the church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas. “Yes, you should talk to her about it.” I was surprised at her insistence. “Have you known her very long?” I asked. “Not very long. I met her one afternoon, in a café, near where she lives, across from the Val-de-Grâce.” She seemed about to provide other details, but then she fell silent. We came out onto that very wide street that borders the modern buildings of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole de Physique et Chimie, which make you feel like you’ve wandered by mistake into a foreign city—Berlin, Lausanne, or even Rome, in the Parioli neighborhood—so much so that you begin to wonder if you’re walking in a dream, and you end up doubting your own identity. “You really should talk to her about it,” Geneviève Dalame repeated. Her voice sounded anxious, as if she were sending me a call for help. “She’ll bring you up to speed . . .” I was about to ask, “Up to speed about what?” but I sensed that such a direct question would only heighten her discomfort and that she really was under the sway of “Doctor Péraud.” “Yes, of course I’ll talk to her,” and I labored to affect a calm, detached tone. “Next Thursday, when we go see her. I’m intrigued by that woman. She seems very smart. I’d like to know more about her.”

  We had reached the entrance to her hotel. She looked relieved. She gave me a smile. I believe she was grateful for my apparent eagerness to learn more. I had truly meant what I said. Ever since my childhood and adolescence, I’d felt a lively curiosity and a particular attraction for anything related to the mysteries of Paris.

  But I didn’t wait for the following Thursday to “know more.” One morning, after I’d accompanied Geneviève Dalame from her hotel to Polydor Studios, I took the metro in the opposite direction and, exiting at Censier-Daubenton, headed to the Val-de-Grâce.

  I arrived at the gate and walked across the garden without breaking stride. As I was passing through the main door to the building, it occurred to me that I should have phoned Madeleine Péraud to ask whether she was available.

  I was surprised by the sound of her doorbell, which I hadn’t noticed when I was on that landing with Geneviève Dalame: spindly, muted notes that sounded like they might die out at any second. I kept my finger on the button, not sure that Madeleine Péraud could hear the ring if she happened to be in the back room.

  The door opened partway without my having heard the slightest sound of steps. Did she camp out behind it, waiting for possible visitors? She didn’t seem surprised to see me. As always, she led me in silence down the hallway. It was the first time I’d been in that salon in daytime. Sunlight dappled the parquet floor. Through the window, I could see the garden under a thin coating of snow. I felt even farther from Paris than on the evenings when I came here with Geneviève Dalame.

  She sat on my left on the red sofa, in the spot usually occupied by Geneviève Dalame. She stared at me.

  “Geneviève just called to say you wanted to see me. I was expecting you.”

  So this visit had been planned behind my back. Perhaps the two of them had hypnotized me without my knowing it.

  “She called?”

  I felt as if I’d already lived through this scene in a dream. A ray of sunlight hit the bookcase on the back wall. There was a moment of silence. It was my turn to break it.

  “I read the book you lent me . . . Meetings with Remarkable Men . . . I’d already heard of it . . .”

  One of my classmates at boarding school in the Haute-Savoie, Pierre Andrieux, had told me that his parents were disciples of the book’s author, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a “spiritual teacher.” On one of our days off, Pierre Andrieux’s mother had driven us to the Plateau d’Assy to visit a woman she was friends with, a pharmacist and another follower of this Gurdjieff. I had overheard bits of their conversation. It was about the “groups” that this man had created around himself, the better to disseminate his “teaching.” And the term groups had piqued my interest.

  “Is that so? You’d heard of it? In what circumstances?”

  Her expression was at once worried and interested, as if she feared I might be privy to certain secrets.

  “I spent a lot of time in the Haute-Savoie. There were several disciples of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff . . .”

  I had said this slowly, holding her gaze.

  “In the Haute-Savoie?”

  Apparently, she wasn’t expecting me to provide this detail. It was as if I were a cop who tries to obtain a confession through surprise. But I wasn’t a cop. At most a nice young man.

  “Yes . . . in the Haute-Savoie . . . near the Plateau d’Assy . . . not far from Megève . . .”

  I remembered the inscription on the novel In Memory of an Angel that was surely meant for her. “For you . . . Megève . . . Le Mauvais Pas . . .”

  “And you met some disciples of Gurdjieff . . . in the Haute-Savoie?”

  “Yes, a few.”

  I had the impression she was waiting nervously for me to name names.

  “The mother of one of my classmates at school . . . She brought us to see a friend of hers who was also a follower of Gurdjieff . . . a pharmacist . . . in the Plateau d’Assy.”

  I read the astonishment on her face.

  “But I knew her, a long time ago . . . I knew that pharmacist in the Plateau d’Assy . . . She was also called Geneviève—Geneviève Lief . . .”

  “I never knew her name,” I said.

  She tilted her head as if trying to remember the woman more clearly. And perhaps to recall other details of that time in her life.

  “I went to see her several times, in the Plateau d’Assy . . .”

  She had forgotten my presence. I kept silent, not wanting to distract her from her thoughts. After a moment, she turned to face me.

  “I would never have expected you to remind me of all these things.”

  She appeared so unsettled that I wondered whether I shouldn’t change the subject.

  “Geneviève said you give yoga lessons. I’d like very much to study yoga with you.”

  She hadn’t heard me. Her head tilted once more; she was no doubt trying to regroup her few remaining memories of that pharmacist from the Plateau d’Assy.

  She leaned closer to me. Our faces were almost touching. She said in a murmur:

  “I was very young . . . I must have been your age . . . I had a friend named Irène . . . She was the one who brought m
e to the meetings at Gurdjieff’s, in Paris, on Rue des Colonels-Renard . . . There was a whole group of disciples around him . . .”

  She spoke rapidly, in staccato, as if talking to a confessor. I felt a little embarrassed. I was neither old enough nor experienced enough to play the role of confessor.

  “And then I left with my friend Irène for the Haute-Savoie, to Megève and the Plateau d’Assy . . . She needed treatment in a sanatorium in the Plateau d’Assy . . .”

  She was ready to tell me her life story. All kinds of people have done so in the years since, and I’ve often wondered why. I must inspire trust. I like to listen to people and ask questions. I often happened to catch bits of strangers’ conversations in cafés. I would jot them down as discreetly as possible. At least those words wouldn’t be lost forever. They fill five notebooks, replete with dates and ellipses.

  “Is Irène the one who inscribed In Memory of an Angel to you?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “At the end of the inscription, she wrote ‘Le Mauvais Pas.’ I know the Mauvais Pas.”

  She knit her brow and looked as if she were searching her memory.

  “It was a kind of nightclub where I used to go with Irène.”

  I hadn’t forgotten that derelict building on the road to Mont d’Arbois, part of which bore traces of a fire. On its façade hung a sign in light-colored wood, with, in red letters, the words “Mauvais Pas”—the “Tight Spot.” I had spent several months in a children’s home, a few hundred yards from there and a bit farther up.