Free After the Circus by Patrick Modiano Page B

up in this …”
    I was surprised by her categorical tone, and I got the distinct impression she knew more than I did.
    â€œYou really think we shouldn’t tell them?”
    â€œNo, of course not … They won’t trust us … and they’ll ask questions …”
    I pictured myself standing next to their table, explaining that their friend had left in a car. And the questions would rain down like blows, increasingly numerous and insistent:
    You’re sure you saw him leave? Who with?
    Who gave you this message?
    Where do these people live?
    Who are you, anyway?
    And I, unable to flee the avalanche of their questions, my legs leaden as in a nightmare.
    â€œWe shouldn’t stay here,” I said to her.
    They could have come out at any moment to look for their friend. We took Rue de la Ferme toward the Bois. As we passed by the Charells’ old building, I wondered what Alain would have thought of all this.
    I felt uneasy. A man had taken his leave of two people, saying he’d be “back in a minute.” Instead, he had been made to get in a car that had headed off toward the Seine. We were, she and I, witnesses but also accessories to this disappearance. It had all happened in a street in Neuilly, near the Bois de Boulogne, a neighborhood that reminded me of other Sundays … I used to walk in the alleys of the Bois with my father and one of his friends, a very tall, thin man, who had retained, from a time of former prosperity, only a fur coat and a blazer, which he wore according to the season. At the time, I had noticed how threadbare his clothes were. We would walk him home in the evening, to his hotel in Neuilly that looked like a boardinghouse. His room, he said, was small but adequate.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?”
    She had taken my arm. We skirted the clearing with the umbrella pines. Had we bisected it, we would have arrived faster at the place where the car was parked. But it was too dark and only Boulevard Richard-Wallace was lit.
    I was thinking about that man’s outline, his smile and well-preserved face. But after a while, you noticed that he had become one with the threadbare blazer and fur coat, and that his spirit was broken. Who was he? What had become of him? He had certainly disappeared, just like that other man, a little while ago.
    She started the car and we drove toward the Jardin d’Acclimatation. I looked at the lights in the apartment windows.
    She had stopped at a red light on Avenue de Madrid. She was frowning. She seemed to be feeling the same unease as I was.
    The building façades paraded by. It was a shame we didn’t know anyone there. We could have knocked at one of those quiet apartments. We would have been invited in to dinner, alongwith distinguished and reassuring company. I remembered what the man had said:
    â€œBook a table for tonight … There’ll be eight of us …”
    Had they made the reservation anyway, after vainly waiting for his return? In that case, the seven guests had gathered and were still waiting for the eighth to show. But the chair would remain empty.
    A restaurant open on Sunday evening … We used to go to one, my father, his friend, and I, near Place de l’Etoile. We would go early, around seven-thirty. The diners would start arriving when we had finished eating. One Sunday evening, a group of very elegant people came in and, even at age eleven, I had been dazzled by the beauty and vivaciousness of the women. The gaze of one of them suddenly fell on my father’s friend. He was wearing his threadbare blazer. She appeared stunned to see him there, but after a moment her face regained its smooth composure. She went to join her dinner companions at a table far from ours.
    He, on the other hand, had grown very pale. He leaned toward my father and said something that has been etched in my memory:
    â€œGaëlle just went by … I recognized her immediately … But