The Black Notebook (15 page)

“Guy Torstel.”

Daragane took the address book from his pocket and opened it at the letter
T
. He read the name, at the very top of the page, but this Guy Torstel meant nothing to him.

“I can't imagine who this could be.”

“Really?”

The man seemed disappointed.

“There's a seven-digit phone number,” said Daragane. “It must date back at least thirty years . . .”

He turned over the pages. All the other phone numbers were current ones. With ten digits. And he had only been using this address book for five years.

“This name means nothing to you?”

“No.”

A few years earlier, he would have displayed some of that politeness for which he was renowned. He would have said: “Give me a bit of time to throw some light on the mystery . . .” But the words did not come.

“It's to do with a news item about which I've gathered quite a lot of information,” the man continued. “This name is mentioned. That's all . . .”

He suddenly seemed to be on the defensive.

“What kind of news item?”

Daragane has asked the question automatically, as though he were rediscovering his former courteous reflexes.

“A very old news item . . . I wanted to write an article about it . . . You know, I used to do some journalism to begin with . . .”

But Daragane's attention was flagging. He really must get rid of them quickly, otherwise this man was going to tell him his life story.

“I'm sorry,” he told him. “I've forgotten this Torstel . . . At my age, one suffers memory losses . . . I must leave you unfortunately . . .”

He stood up and shook hands with both of them. Ottolini gave him a hard stare, as though Daragane had insulted him and he was ready to respond in a violent way. The girl, for her part, had lowered her gaze.

He walked over towards the wide-open glass door that gave onto boulevard Haussmann, hoping that the man would not block his path. Outside, he breathed in deeply. What a strange idea, this meeting with a stranger, when he himself had not seen anybody for three months and was none the worse for it . . . On the contrary. In his solitude, he had never felt so light-hearted, with strange moments of elation either in the morning or the evening, as though everything were still possible and, as the title of the old film has it, adventure lay at the corner of the street . . . Never, even during the summers of his youth, had life seemed so free of oppression as it had since the beginning of this summer. But in summer, everything is uncertain—a “metaphysical” season, his philosophy teacher, Maurice Caveing, had once told him. It was odd, he remembered the name “Caveing” yet he no longer knew who this Torstel was.

It was still sunny, and a light breeze was cooling the heat. Boulevard Haussmann was deserted at this time of day.

Over the course of the past fifty years, he had often come here, and had done so even during his childhood, when his mother took him to Printemps, the large department store a little further up the boulevard. But this evening, his city seemed unfamiliar to him. He had cast off all the bonds that could still bind him to her, but perhaps it was she who had rejected him.

He sat down on a bench and took out the address book from his pocket. He was about to tear it up and scatter the shreds into the green plastic wastepaper bin beside the bench. Yet he hesitated. No, he would do so later, at home, when he had peace of mind. He leafed through the notebook absent-mindedly. Among these telephone numbers, there was not one that he would have wanted to dial. And then, the two or three missing numbers, those that had mattered to him and which he still knew by heart, would no longer respond.

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P
ATRICK
M
ODIANO
is the author of more than twenty novels, including several bestsellers. He has won the Prix Goncourt, the Grand Prix National des Lettres, and many other honors. In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Paris.

M
ARK
P
OLIZZOTTI
has translated more than forty books from the French, including five other books by Patrick Modiano. In 2016, he received a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.