Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano Read Free Book Online Page A

the sensation of being in a dream. I again checked the date and the headlines on the newspaper I was holding, to keep me tied to the outside world.
    On the left, just at the edge of the forest, stood a low surrounding wall and green wooden gate on which LE MOULIN was written in white paint. I stepped back from the wall and went across the path to get a better view of the house. It seemed to be composed of several farm buildings cobbled together, with nothing rustic about them: the balcony, the large windows, and the ivy climbing up the façade made them look like bungalows. The neglected garden was now just a clearing.
    The surrounding wall made a right angle and continued for another hundred or so yards along a pathway that skirted the forest and led to several other properties. The one next to Le Moulin was a white villa shaped like a bunker with bay windows. It was separated from the pathway by a white fence and privet hedges. A woman in a straw hat was mowing the lawn and I was relieved to hear the hum of a motor break the silence.
    I waited until she was near the entrance gate. When she saw me, she shut off the lawnmower. She took off her straw hat. A blonde. She came over and opened the gate.
    “Does Doctor de Meyendorff still live at Le Moulin?”
    I’d had trouble pronouncing those syllables. They sounded weird.
    The blonde looked at me in surprise. My voice, my awkwardness, the sound of “Meyendorff” had something incongruous and formal about them.
    “Le Moulin hasn’t been lived in for a long time,” she said. “At least not since I’ve been in this house.”
    “Is it possible to go inside?”
    “You’d have to ask the caretaker. He comes three times a week. He lives in Chailly-en-Bière.”
    “You wouldn’t know where the owners are, by any chance?”
    “I think they live in the States.”
    In which case, there was a good chance it was still the Meyendorffs.
    “Are you interested in the house? I’m sure it’s for sale.”
    She had invited me into her garden and closed the gate behind me.
    “I’m writing a book on someone who used to live here and I just wanted to see what the place was like.”
    Once again I felt as if I’d used too formal a tone.
    She led me to the back of her garden. A fence marked the boundary with the neglected grounds of Le Moulin. There was a large hole in the fence and she pointed to it.
    “It’s easy to get to the other side …”
    I couldn’t believe it. Her voice was so gentle, her eyes so clear, she was being so thoughtful … She had moved closer to me and I suddenly wondered if I was doing the right thing prowling around an abandoned house, on “the other side,” as she said, instead of staying with her and getting to know her better.
    “While you’re over there, would you mind lending me your paper?”
    “With pleasure.”
    “I wanted to see what’s on television.”
    I handed her the paper. She said:
    “Take your time. And don’t worry—I’ll keep a lookout.”
    I slid through the hole in the fence and emerged into the clearing. I walked toward the house. As I moved forward, the clearing gave way to an unkempt lawn bisected by a gravel path. Up close Le Moulin looked as much like a bungalow as it had from the entrance gate. To the left, the main house extended into a chapel, on which the door had been removed and which was now just a storage shed.
    The shutters on the ground floor were closed, as were the two green panels of a French window. Two tall plane trees stood about ten yards apart, and their intermeshed foliage formed a roof of greenery that reminded me of a mall in a southern town. The sun was beating down, and it felt noticeably cooler in the shade.
    It was definitely here that Jansen had taken the picture of Colette Laurent and the Meyendorffs. I recognized the plane trees and, to the right, the ivy-covered well with its coping. In the red notebook, I had written, “Photo of the Meyendorffs and Colette Laurent in Fossombrone. Shadows.