Villa Triste by Patrick Modiano Read Free Book Online Page A

listened to me with great attention. That made me proud. I asked her when the film would be in the theaters. Not before September, but in two weeks Madeja would no doubt have a preliminary projection in Rome “to run through the rushes.” In that case, she’d take me with her, because she really wanted to know what I thought of her “interpretation.”
    Yes, when I try to recall the first period of our “life together,” I can hear, as though on a worn-out tape, our conversations regarding her “career.” I want her to find me interesting. I flatter her …
“This film of Madeja’s is very important for you, but now you’re going to have to find someone who really knows how to showcase your talents … Some boy genius … A Jew, for instance …” She listens more and more attentively. “You think so?” “Yes, yes, I’m sure of it.”
    The innocence in her face astonishes me, and I’m all of eighteen, myself. “You really think so?” she asks again. And all around us, the room grows more and more disorderly. I don’t believe we went out for two days.
    Where did she come from? I quickly determined she didn’t live in Paris. She talked about it like a city she barely knew. She’d stayed two or three times, all of them brief, at the Windsor-Reynolds, a hotel on Rue Beaujon I remembered well. It was where my father, before his strange disappearance, used to meet me (there’s a blank spot in my memory: was it in the lobby of the Windsor-Reynolds or in the lobby of the Lutetia that I saw him for the last time?). Apart fromthe Windsor-Reynolds, all she remembered of Paris was Rue du Colonel-Moll and Boulevard Beauséjour, where she had some “friends” (I didn’t dare ask what sort). By contrast, Geneva and Milan often came up in her conversation. She’d worked in Milan, and in Geneva too. But what kind of work?
    I checked her passport on the sly. Nationality: French. Domicile: 6
bis
, Place Dorcière, Geneva. Why? To my great amazement, she’d been born in Haute-Savoie, in the very town we were in. Coincidence? Or did she actually have roots in these parts? Did she still have family here? I ventured an indirect question on this subject, but she wanted to keep something hidden from me. She answered very vaguely, telling me she’d been raised abroad. I didn’t insist. In time, I thought, I would know everything.
    She questioned me too. Was I here on holiday? For how long? She’d guessed right away, she said, that I came from Paris. I declared that I was taking a rest for several months at the insistence of “my family” (and I felt a visceral delight when I said “my family”), on account of my precarious health. As I provided her with these explanations, I saw a group of about ten very serious persons sitting around a table in a paneled room: the “family council” that was going to make some decisions about me. The windows of the room overlooked Place Malesherbes, and I belonged to the old Jewish bourgeoisie that had settled in Plaine-Monceau around 1890. She asked me pointblank: “Chmara’s a Russian name — are you Russian?” Then other things came to mind: we lived, my grandmother and I, in a ground-floorapartment near the Étoile, on Rue Lord-Byron, to be exact, or Rue de Bassano (I need precise details). We survived by selling our “family jewels,” or by depositing them in a pawnshop on Rue Pierre-Charron. Yes, I was Russian, and my title was Count Chmara. She looked impressed.
    For a few days, I was no longer afraid of anything or anyone. And then the fear came back. The old shooting pain.
    The first afternoon we left the hotel, we took the boat, the
Amiral-Guisand
, which made the circuit of the lake. She was wearing big sunglasses with impenetrable silvered lenses. You could see your reflection in them as though in a mirror.
    The boat putted along lazily, and it took at least twenty minutes to cross the lake to Saint-Jorioz. The bright sun made me blink. I could hear the