Free Ring Roads by Patrick Modiano Page A

as Russians tend to be after midnight.
    The three of us were walking down the street towards the Place des Ternes, my father a few yards ahead, as though ashamed to find himself in such miserable company. He quickened his pace and I saw him disappear into the métro. I thought that I would never see him again. In fact, I was convinced of it.
    The old veteran gripped my arm, sobbed on my shoulder. We sat on a bench on the Avenue de Wagram. He was determined to recount in detail about the ‘terrible ordeal’ of the White Army, their flight towards Turkey. Eventually these heroes had washed up in Constantinople, in their ornate uniforms. What a terrible shame! General Baron Wrangel, apparently, was more than six foot six.
    You haven’t changed much. Just now, when you came into the Clos-Foucré, you shambled exactly as you did ten years ago. You sat down opposite me and I was about to order you a double bourbon, but I thought it would be out of place. Did you recognise me? It’s impossible to tell with you. What would be the point of shaking your shoulders, bombarding you with questions? I don’t know if you’re worth the interest I take in you.
    One day, I suddenly decided to come looking for you. I was in pretty low spirits. It has to be said that things were taking a worrying turn and that there was a stink of disaster in the air. We were living in ‘strange times’. Nothing to hold on to. Then I remembered I had a father. Of course I often thought about ‘the unfortunate incident in the George V métro’, but I didn’t harbour a grudge. There are some people you can forgive anything. Ten years had passed. What had become of you? Maybe you needed me.
    I asked tea-room waitresses, barmen and hotel porters. It was Francois, at the Silver Ring, who put me on your trail. You went about – it appeared – with a merry band of night revellers whose leading lights were Messieurs Murraille and Marcheret. If the latter name meant nothing to me, I knew the former by reputation: a hack journalist given to blackmail and bribery. A week later, I watched you all go into a restaurant on the Avenue Kléber. I hope you’ll forgive my curiosity, but I sat at the table next to yours. I was excited at having found you and intended to tap you on the shoulder, but gave up on the idea when I saw your friends. Murraille was sitting on your left and, at a glance, I found his sartorial elegance was suspect. You could see he was trying to ‘cut a dash’. Marcheret was saying to all and sundry that ‘the
foie gras
was inedible’. And I remember a red-haired woman and a curly-haired blonde, both oozing moral squalor from every pore. And, I am sorry to say, you didn’t exactly look to be at your best. (Was it the Brylcreemed hair, that haunted look?) I felt slightly sick at the sight of you and your ‘friends’. The curly-haired blonde was ostentatiously waving banknotes, the red-haired woman was rudely haranguing the head waiter and Marcheret was making his rude jokes. (I got used to them later.) Murraille spoke of his country house, where it was ‘so pleasant to spend the weekend’. I eventually gathered that this little group went there every week. That you were one of them. I couldn’t resist the idea of joining you in this charming rustic retreat.
    And now that we are sitting face to face like china dogs and I can study your great Levantine head at leisure, I AM AFRAID. What are you doing in this village in the Seine-et-Marne with these people? And how exactly did you get to know them? I must really love you to follow you along this treacherous path. And without the slightest acknowledgement from you! Maybe I’m wrong, but your position seems to me to be very precarious. I assume you’re still a stateless person, which is extremely awkward ‘in the times we live in’. I’ve lost my identity papers too, everything except the ‘diploma’ to which you attached so much importance and which means so little today as we