Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano Read Free Book Online

but so far away and so absent …
    From what he’d confided, he had known the Meyendorffs long before the time when they’d figured in the photo, in the garden with Colette Laurent. He’d met them when he was nineteen. Then the war had broken out. Since Mme de Meyendorff was American, she and her husband had set sail for the United States, leaving Jansen the keys to their Paris apartment and their country house, where he had spent the first two years of the Occupation.
    I’ve often thought that the Meyendorffs would have been the people most likely to provide information about Jansen. When heleft Paris, I had finished my work: all the materials I’d gathered about him were in the red notebook, the alphabetical index, and the album Snow and Sun , which he’d been kind enough to give me. Yes, if I had wanted to write a book about Jansen, I’d have had to go see the Meyendorffs and take notes on what they said.

Some fifteen years ago, I was leafing through the red Clairefontaine notebook and, discovering Dr. de Meyendorff’s calling card in its pages, I dialed his phone number, but it was “no longer in service.” The doctor wasn’t listed in that year’s phone book. To settle the matter once and for all, I went to 12 Rue Ribéra, where the concierge told me she didn’t know anyone by that name in the building.
    That Saturday in June, so close to summer vacation season, it was very warm at around two in the afternoon. I was alone in Paris, with the prospect of a long, idle day ahead of me. I decided to go to the other address on the doctor’s card, in the Seine-et-Marne region. Naturally, I could have tried information to find out if a Meyendorff still lived in Fossombrone, and if so call him on the phone, but I decided I’d rather see for myself, on site.
    I took the metro to the Gare de Lyon, then bought a ticket for Fossombrone at the window for the commuter trains. I had to change at Melun. The compartment I entered was empty, and I was practically giddy at the thought of having found a purpose to my day.
    It was while waiting on the platform of Melun station for the branch line to Fossombrone that my mood shifted. The early afternoon sun, the few travelers, and the thought of visiting people whom I’d only seen once, fifteen years before, and who had probably either died or forgotten me, suddenly made everything seem unreal.
    There were two of us in the small local train: a woman in her sixties, carrying a shopping bag, had sat down opposite me.
    “Good lord, this heat …”
    I was reassured at hearing her voice, but surprised that it was soclear, with a slight echo. The leather of the seats was burning hot. There wasn’t a single area in the shade.
    “Will we arrive in Fossombrone soon?” I asked her.
    “It’s the third stop.”
    She rummaged through her shopping bag and finally found what she was looking for: a black wallet. She kept silent.
    I wished I could have broken the silence.
    She got off at the second stop. The local started up again and I was gripped by panic. I was alone now. I was afraid the train would take me on an endless journey, gradually gathering more and more speed. But it slowed down and stopped at a small station with tan walls on which I read FOSSOMBRONE in dark red letters. Inside the station, next to the ticket windows, a newspaper stand. I bought a daily after making sure of the date and skimmed the headlines.
    I asked the news dealer if he knew a house named Le Moulin. He told me to follow the main road out of the village and continue straight on to the edge of the forest.
    The shutters of the houses on the main road were closed to ward off the sun. No one was outdoors, and perhaps I should have worried about being alone in the middle of this unfamiliar village. The main road now turned into a wide path lined with plane trees, whose leaves barely let the sun’s rays filter through. The silence, the stillness of the leaves, the dapples of sunlight I walked on brought back