Paris Nocturne (12 page)

She burst out laughing again.

‘Has he lived here long?'

‘I'm not sure exactly.'

She seemed to be teasing me. I pointed out that he wasn't in the phone book at the address on Avenue Albert-de-Mun.

‘It's crazy,' she said, ‘how much trouble you've gone to for all these details. Anyway, Solière isn't his real name. It's the name he uses for everyday life.'

‘Do you know his real name?'

‘Morawski.'

The name sounded familiar, but I didn't know why. Perhaps it was in my father's address book.

‘Even under the name Morawski, you wouldn't find anything in the phone book. Do you think it's all that important?'

She was right. I didn't really want to look in the phone book anymore.

*

I remember that we walked along the pathways of the garden, around the aquarium. I needed to breathe the open air. Normally, I lived in a kind of controlled asphyxiation—or, rather, I'd got used to taking shallow breaths, as if I had
to ration oxygen. Above all, you have to resist the panic that takes hold of you when you're afraid of suffocating. Continue to take short, even breaths and wait for the straightjacket crushing your lungs to be removed, or for it to gradually crumble of its own accord.

But that night, in the garden, I breathed deeply for the first time in a long time, since Fossombronne-la-Forêt, the period of my life I had forgotten.

We arrived in front of the aquarium. We could hardly make out the building in the half-light. I asked her if she'd ever been inside. Never.

‘Well, I'll take you one of these days…'

It was a comfort to make plans. She had taken my arm and I imagined all the multicoloured fish, close to us, circling behind the glass in the darkness and silence. My leg was painful and I limped slightly. But she, too, had the graze on her forehead. I wondered towards what future we were headed. I had the impression that we had already walked together in the same place, at the same time of day, in another time. Walking along these pathways, I no longer really knew where I was. We were almost at the top of the hill. Above us, the dark mass of one of the wings of the Palais de Chaillot. Or, rather, a big hotel in a winter sports
station in Engadin. I had never breathed such cold, soft air. It penetrated my lungs with velvet freshness. Yes, we must have been in the mountains, at high altitude.

‘You're not cold?' she asked. ‘Perhaps we could go back…'

She drew in the upturned collar of her coat. Go back where? I hesitated for a few seconds. But of course, back to the building at the end of the avenue that ran down towards the Seine. I asked if she planned on staying there long. About a month.

‘And Morawski?'

‘Oh, he'll be away from Paris the whole time.'

Again, the name seemed familiar. Had I heard my father say it? I thought about the fellow who had called me that day from the Hôtel Palym and whose voice was interrupted by the static on the line. Guy Roussotte. We had an office with your father, he had said. Roussotte. Morawski. He, too, had an office apparently. They all had offices.

I asked what it was that she could possibly do for this Morawski who was called Solière in everyday life. ‘I want to know more. I think there's something you're hiding from me.'

She remained silent. Then she said abruptly, ‘Not at
all, I've nothing to hide. Life is far simpler than you think.'

She addressed me with the familiar
tu
for the first time. She squeezed my arm and we walked alongside the aquarium building. The air was still just as cold and easy to breathe. Before crossing the avenue, I stopped on the edge of the pavement. I contemplated the car in front of the apartment building. When I came here the other night, it had looked abandoned and the avenue deserted, as if no one came this way anymore.

She said again that there was a big terrace and a view overlooking the whole of Paris. The lift climbed slowly. Her hand was resting on my shoulder and she whispered something in my ear. The timer-light went out. There was nothing above us but the glow of a night-light.

P
ATRICK
M
ODIANO
, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, in 1945, and was educated in Annecy and Paris. He published his first novel,
La Place de l'Etoile
, in 1968. In 1978, he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for
Rue des Boutiques Obscures
(published in English as
Missing Person
), and in 1996 he received the Grand Prix National des Lettres for his body of work. Mr. Modiano's other writings include a book-length interview with the writer Emmanuel Berl and, with Louis Malle, the screenplay for
Lacombe Lucien
.

P
HOEBE
W
ESTON
-E
VANS
is a freelance translator and editor.

 

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