The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano Read Free Book Online Page A

carried the bag with the record player and records. She turned off the light in the foyer. After opening the front door, she said, “The concierge must be back by now. We’ll have to get by her place as fast as possible.” With the bag in my hand, I was afraid of stumbling on the steps in the dark. I went down the stairs ahead of her. The hall light went on, and we froze for a moment on the first-floor landing. A door shut. She whispered that it was the door to the concierge’s. We again crept down the stairs, in bright light that contrasted with the muted glow of the apartment. On the ground level, the concierge’s glass door was lit from inside. Press the button that would unlock the main entrance. And what if it stayed shut? Impossible to hide the carrier bag, which suddenly felt very heavy and made me look like a burglar. The locked entrance, the concierge phoning the police, the police van into which we’d climb, she and I. I know, I can’t help it: one always feels guilty when one hasn’t had noble, honest parents to convince us in childhood of our inalienable rights, and even of our clear superiority, in any and all circumstances. She pushed the button and the door opened. In the street, I couldn’t help walking very fast, and she kept pace. Perhaps she was afraid of running into the person who lived upstairs.
    When we reached Rue de la Convention, I thought we would dive into the metro, but instead she pulled me into the café where we usually went after general delivery. No customers at that hour. We sat at a table all the way in back. The waiter brought her a Cointreau, and I wondered if it was wise to let ourselves be noticed here after our clandestine visit to the apartment. I had hidden the carrier bag under the table. She pulled the book and papers from the pocket of her coat. Later, she told me she was glad to have retrieved that book, a cherished possession that someone had given her as a child. She had almost lost it several times, and each time she found it again, like those faithful objects that refuse to abandon you. It was a French translation of
Rupert of Hentzau
by Anthony Hope, an old copy with a damaged red cover. Among the papers she was examining, several letters, an expired passport, some calling cards . . .
    It was almost nine p.m., but the waiter and the man who was his boss, on the telephone behind the bar, seemed to have forgotten our presence. “We left the light on in the living room,” she suddenly blurted out. More than anxiety, the realization caused her a certain sadness or regret, as if the banal act of going back to turn off the light was denied her. “I knew I’d forgotten something . . . I should have checked the wardrobe in my room to see if there were any clothes left.” I offered to go back up to the apartment to turn off the living room light and fetch her clothes, if she’d give me the key. Or perhaps I didn’t need the key—I could simply knock on the door. The person who lived in the apartment, if he was back, would open, and I would say that I’d come on her behalf. I proposed this as if it were the most natural thing in the world, hoping she’d tell me more. I had come to understand that you couldn’t ask her anything directly. “No, no, it’s out of the question,” she said in a calm voice. “They must think I’m dead.” “Dead?” “Yes . . . or gone, anyway.” She smiled at me to mitigate the seriousness in her voice. I pointed out that, in any case, “they” would notice someone had lit the lamp in the living room and taken the papers, the book, the record player and records. She shrugged. “They’ll think it was a ghost.” She gave a brief laugh. After the hesitation and sadness that I’d been surprised to see in her, she now looked relaxed. “She’s an old woman I rented a room from,” she said.