Free Out of the Dark by Patrick Modiano Page A

never be kept.
    'I have a friend who might be able to help you,' Linda told us. 'I'll introduce you to him tomorrow.'
    They often arranged to meet in this café. She lived nearby, and he, her friend, had an office a little way up the street on Westbourne Grove, the avenue with the two movie theaters Jacqueline and I often went to. We always saw the last showing of the evening, as a way of delaying our return to the hotel, and it scarcely mattered to us that we saw the same films every night.

THE NEXT DAY, about noon, we were with Linda when Peter Rachman came into the café. He sat down at our table without even saying hello. He was smoking a cigar and dropping the ash onto the lapels of his jacket.
    I was surprised at his appearance: he seemed old to me, but he was only in his forties. He was of average height, quite fat, round face, bald in front and on top, and he wore tortoise-shell glasses. His childlike hands contrasted with his substantial build.
    Linda explained our situation to him, but she spoke too quickly for me to understand. He kept his little creased eyes on Jacqueline. From time to time he puffed nervously on his cigar and blew the smoke into Linda's face.
    She stopped talking and he smiled at us, at Jacqueline and me. But his eyes were still cold. He asked me the name of our hotel on Sussex Gardens. I told him: the Radnor. He burst out in a brief laugh.
    'Don't pay the bill … I own the place … Tell the concierge I said there would be no charge for you …' He turned to Jacqueline.
    'Is it possible that such a pretty woman could be living in the Radnor?'
    He had tried to sound suave and worldly, and it made him burst out laughing.
    'You're in the hotel business?'
    He didn't answer my question. Again he blew the smoke from his cigar into Linda's face. He shrugged his shoulders. 'Don't worry …,' he said in English.
    He repeated these words several times, speaking to himself. He got up to make a telephone call. Linda sensed that we were a little confused, and she tried to explain some things for us. This Peter Rachman was in the business of buying and reselling apartment houses. Maybe it was too great a stretch to call them 'apartment houses'; they were only decrepit old tenements, scarcely more than hovels, most of them in this neighborhood, as well as in Bayswater and Notting Hill. She didn't understand his business very well. But despite his brutish appearance, he was  – she wanted us to know from the start – really a lovely fellow.
    Rachman's Jaguar was parked a few steps down the street. Linda got into the front seat. She turned to us:
    'You can come and stay with me while you wait for Peter to find you another place …'
    He started up the car and followed along Kensington Gardens. Then he turned onto Sussex Gardens. He stopped in front of the Hotel Radnor.
    'Go pack your bags,' he told us. 'And remember, don't pay the bill…'
    There was no one at the front desk. I took the key to our room from its hook. For the whole of our stay here, we had kept our clothes in our two bags. I picked them up and we went straight downstairs. Rachman was pacing in front of the hotel, his cigar in his mouth and his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
    'Happy to be leaving the Radnor?'
    He opened the trunk of the Jaguar and I put in our bags. Before starting up again, he said to Linda:
    'I have to go by the Lido for a moment. I'll drive you home afterwards …'
    I could still smell the sickly odor of the hotel, and I wondered how many days it would be before it disappeared from our lives forever.
    The Lido was a bathing establishment in Hyde Park, on the Serpentine. Rachman bought four tickets at the window.
    'It's funny… This place reminds me of the Deligny pool in Paris,' I said to Jacqueline.
    But once we were inside, we came to a sort of riverside beach, with a few tables and parasols set up around the edge. Rachman chose a table in the shade. He still had his cigar in his mouth. We all sat down. He mopped