After the Circus by Patrick Modiano Read Free Book Online

Saturday morning, as during those vacation weeks when most Parisians have left the city. We crossed over to the Right Bank via the Pont de la Concorde. The quays were even emptier on that side. After the gardensof Trocadéro, we stopped at the corner of Rue de l’Alboni, beneath the elevated metro.
    She said she had to go on alone. She would meet me in an hour at the café on the quay.
    She turned around and waved good-bye.
    I wondered if she was going to vanish for good. The evening before, I’d had a reference point: I had seen her enter a building. But now, she didn’t even want me to accompany her all the way. I was never sure of anything with her.
    I preferred to walk rather than just sit and wait in that café, and one by one I took the neighboring streets and the stairways with their balusters and streetlamps. Later, I would often return to that area, and each time the stairways on Rue de l’Alboni reminded me of the Saturday when I had walked around there, waiting for her. It was November, but in my memory, because of the sun that day, a summer light bathes the neighborhood. Dappled sunlight on the sidewalks and shadows beneath the metro viaduct. A dark, narrow passageway that was once a rustic path rises through the buildings up to Rue Raynouard. Atnight, at the exit of the Passy metro stop, the streetlamps cast a pale light on the foliage.
    The other day, I wanted to reconnoiter the area one last time. I emerged into that zone of administrative pavilions on the banks of the Seine. They were demolishing most of them. Heaps of rubble and dilapidated walls, as if after a bombardment. The bulldozers cleared away the debris with sluggish movements. I headed back via Rue Charles-Dickens. I wondered what the address could have been, where she’d gone that Saturday. It was surely on Rue Charles-Dickens. When we had parted, I’d seen her turn left and, an hour later, I started heading to the café on the quay where we were to meet. I was walking along Rue Frémiet toward the Seine when I heard someone call my name. I turned around: she was coming toward me, holding a black Labrador on a leash.
    The dog, when it saw me, started wagging its tail. It rested its two front paws on my legs. I petted it.
    â€œThat’s funny … It’s like he knows you.”
    â€œIs this your dog?” I asked.
    â€œYes, but I left him with someone for a while because I couldn’t take care of him.”
    â€œWhat’s his name?”
    â€œRaymond.”
    She seemed delighted to have the dog back.
    â€œSo now, is there anything else you have to go get?”
    â€œNo, not for the moment.”
    She gave me a smile. She had probably noticed I was gently teasing her. The suitcases, the fur coat, the dog … Today I understand better those constant displacements to try to gather up the scattered pieces of a life.
    The dog jumped into the car and lay down on the back seat as if this were his usual spot. She said that before we went to the Bois de Boulogne, she had to stop by Ansart’s. She wanted to ask Jacques de Bavière if we could keep the car. Ansart and Jacques de Bavière always saw each other on Saturday, at the apartment or at Ansart’s restaurant. So these people had theirhabits, and now I had more or less become one of them, without really knowing why. I was the traveler who boards a departing train and finds himself in the company of four strangers. And he wonders whether he hasn’t got on the wrong train. But no matter … In his compartment, the others start making conversation with him.
    I turned around toward the dog.
    â€œAnd does Raymond know Ansart and Jacques de Bavière?”
    â€œOh, yes, he knows them.”
    She burst out laughing. The dog raised his head and looked at me, perking up his ears.
    She’d had the dog when she met them for the first time. She still lived in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt then. The people to whom she’d entrusted