Villa Triste by Patrick Modiano Read Free Book Online

onto the backseat by himself. He succeeded with difficulty, and then he just stayed there. His arms were hanging limply, his face a little flushed. He paid no attention to Yvonne and Meinthe. He was looking more and more like a spaniel.
    “Well then, Monsieur …” he murmured. “I wish you good luck.”
    Meinthe drove off slowly. Before the car reached the first curve, I turned around and looked back. He was standing in the middle of the road, very close to a streetlight that lit up his rough tweed jacket and his cuffed beige pants. All he was missing, in short, was the
Kon-Tiki
under his arm. There are some mysterious persons — always the same ones — who stand like sentinels at every crossroads in your life.

6.
    At the Hermitage, she had not only a bedroom but also a living room, whose furniture included three armchairs covered with some printed fabric, a round mahogany table, and a sofa. The wallpaper in the living room and bedroom reproduced Toile de Jouy patterns. I had my wardrobe trunk placed in a corner of the room, standing upright so that the things in the drawers were within easy reach. Sweaters or old newspapers. I myself pushed the suitcases to the far end of the bathroom. I didn’t open them, because you have to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice and should consider any room you wind up in a temporary refuge.
    Besides, where could I have put my clothes, my books, and my telephone directories? Her dresses and shoes filled every closet, and some were lying around on the chairs and sofa in the living room. The mahogany table was cluttered with beauty products. A film actress’s hotel room, I thought. The kind of disorder journalists described in
Ciné Mondial
and
Stars
. Reading all those magazines had made a strong impression on me. And I was dreaming. I therefore avoided making overly abrupt movements and asking overly precise questions so that I wouldn’t have to wake up.
    It was on the very first evening, I think, that she asked me to read the script of the Rolf Madeja film she’d justplayed a part in. I was very touched. The movie,
Liebesbriefe auf der Berg
(Love Letters from the Mountain), is the story of a ski instructor named Kurt Weiss. In the winter, he gives skiing lessons to rich foreign women, guests at an elegant holiday resort in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. Thanks to his tanned skin and his great physical beauty, he seduces them all. But eventually he falls madly in love with one of them, Lena, the wife of a Hungarian industrialist, and she requites his feelings. They go dancing until two in the morning at the resort’s very “chic” bar, before the other women’s envious eyes. Then Kurtie and Lena end the night in the Bauhaus Hotel. They swear eternal love and talk about their future life in an isolated mountain cabin. She must go back to Budapest, but she promises to return as soon as possible. “Now the screen fills with images of snow falling, followed by singing waterfalls and trees covered with young leaves. It’s spring, and soon summer will come.” Kurt Weiss is practicing his real profession — he’s a bricklayer — and it’s hard to recognize in him the handsome, bronzed ski instructor of the previous winter. Every afternoon he writes a letter to Lena and waits in vain for a reply. A local girl visits him from time to time. They take long walks together. She loves him, but he never stops thinking of Lena. After various twists and turns I’ve forgotten, the memory of Lena gradually fades, to be replaced in Kurtie’s heart by the young girl (this was the role Yvonne played), as he comes to realize that no one has the right to ignore such tender devotion. In the final scene, they kiss against a background of mountains at sunset.
    The portrait of a winter sports resort, of its habitués and their lifestyle, struck me as very well “painted.” As for theyoung woman played by Yvonne, it was “an excellent part for a beginner.”
    I told her my opinion. She