Free Pedigree by Patrick Modiano Page A

practically nothing, and this way I can send the rest of the money I owe Galeries Lafayette.”
    In September, in Saint-Lô, another letter from my mother: “I don’t think we’ll have any heating this winter, but we’ll manage. So I need you, my son, to send me all the money you have left.” At the time, I made a modest living by “brokering” used books. And in still another letter, a hopeful note: “The coming winter surely won’t be as harsh as the one we’ve been through …”
    I received a phone call from my father. Hehad enrolled me, without asking, in advanced literature courses at the Lycée Michel-Montaigne in Bordeaux. He was, he said, “in charge of my schooling.” He made an appointment with me for the following day, at the cafeteria of the railway station in Caen. We took the first train for Paris. At Saint-Lazare, the ersatz Mylène Demongeot was waiting for us and drove us to the Gare d’Austerlitz. I realized that she was the one who had insisted on my exile, far from Paris. My father asked me to give the ersatz Mylène Demongeot, as a token of reconciliation, an amethyst ring I was wearing, a parting gift from my friend, the “schoolgirl of old boarding schools.” I refused.
    At the Gare d’Austerlitz, my father and I caught the train to Bordeaux. I had no luggage, as if I were being kidnapped. I’d agreed to leave with him in hopes of talking things over between us: it was the first time in two years we’d been alone together, other than those furtive meetings in cafés.
    We arrived in Bordeaux that evening. Myfather took a room for the two of us at the Hôtel Splendide. The following days, we went to the shops on Rue Sainte-Catherine to buy my necessities for the school year—of which the Lycée Michel-Montaigne had sent my father a list. I tried to convince him that all this was pointless, but he stuck to his guns.
    One evening, in front of the Grand Théâtre, I started running to try to lose him. And then I felt sorry for him. Again I tried to talk things over. Why was he always so eager to get rid of me? Wouldn’t it be simpler if I just stayed in Paris? I was too old to be shut up in boarding schools … He didn’t want to hear it. So then I pretended to give in. As before, we went to the movies … The Sunday evening before school began, he brought me to the Lycée Michel-Montaigne in a taxi. He gave me 150 francs and made me sign a receipt. Why? He waited in the taxi until I had disappeared through the front door of the school. I went up to the dormitory with my suitcase. The boarders treated me as a “new kid” and forced me to read aloud a text inGreek. So I decided to run away. I left the school with my suitcase and went to have dinner at the restaurant Dubern, on Allée de Tourny, where my father had taken me on the previous days. Then I took a cab to the Gare Saint-Jean. And a night train to Paris. There was nothing left of the 150 francs. I was sorry not to have seen more of Bordeaux, the city of
The Unknown Sea;
not to have breathed in the scent of pines and their resin. The next day, in Paris, I ran into my father on the stairs in our building. He was stunned to see me. We would not speak to each other for a long time after that.
    And the days and months passed. And the seasons. Sometimes I’d like to go back in time and relive those years better than I lived them then. But how?
    I now took Rue Championnet at the hour of the afternoon when the sun is in your eyes. I spent my days in Montmartre in a kind of waking dream. I felt better there than anywhere else. The metro stop Lamarck-Caulaincourt, with its rising elevator and the San Cristobal midway upthe steps. The café at the Terrass Hôtel. For brief moments, I was happy. Get-togethers at 7 P.M . at the Rêve. The icy handrail on Rue Berthe. And me, always short of breath.
    On Thursday, April 8, 1965,