Free So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano

dead.
    â€œDo you live in the neighbourhood?” Daragane asked him. Once again, he leant over towards him and was hesitant in his reply.
    â€œNot very far away . . . in a small hotel in the Ternes district
    â€œYou must give me the address . . .”
    â€œWould you really like me to?”
    â€œYes . . . I’d be happy to see you again.”
    He was now going to get to the heart of the matter. And he felt some apprehension. He cleared his throat.
    â€œI’d like to ask you for some information . . .”
    His voice was hollow. He noticed the surprise on Perrin de Lara’s face.
    â€œIt’s to do with somebody you may have known . . . Annie Astrand . . .”
    He had spoken this name quite loudly and articulated the syllables carefully, as you do on the telephone when interference is likely to muffle your voice.
    â€œTell me the name again . . .”
    â€œANNIE ASTRAND.”
    He had almost yelled it out and he felt as though he had been sending out a call for help.
    â€œI lived at her home for a long time in a house at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt . . .”
    The words he had just uttered were very clear and sounded metallic in the silence of this terrace, but he thought they made no difference.
    â€œYes . . . I see . . . we went to visit you there once, with your mother . . .”
    He stopped speaking, and he would say nothing further on the subject. It was purely a distant memory that did not concern him. One should never expect anyone to reply to one’s questions.
    Nevertheless, he added:
    â€œA very young woman . . . the night-club dancer sort . . . Bob Bugnand and Torstel knew her better than I did . . . and your mother too . . . I believe she had been in prison . . . And so why are you interested in this woman?”
    â€œShe meant a great deal to me.”
    â€œAh, really . . . Well, I’m sorry not to be able to give you any information . . . I had vaguely heard of her through your mother and Bob Bugnand . . .”
    His voice had taken on a sociable tone. Daragane wondered whether he was not imitating someone who had impressed him in his youth and whose mannerisms and way of speaking he had practised imitating, in the evening in front of a mirror, someone who for him, a decent, slightly naive lad, represented the height of Parisian elegance.
    â€œThe only thing that I can tell you is that she had been in prison . . . I really know nothing else about this woman . . .”
    The neon lighting on the terrace had been switched off so as to make these last two customers realise that the café was about to close. Perrin de Lara sat there silently in the half-light. Daragane thought of the cinema in Montparnasse that he had gone into the other evening to shelter from the rain. It was not heated and the few people in the audience were still wearing their overcoats. He often kept his eyes closed in the cinema. The voices and the music in a film were more evocative for him than the image. A remark from the film he had seen that evening came to mind, spoken in a muffled voice, before the lights went on, and he had been deceived into thinking that it was he himself who had spoken it: “What a peculiar path I’ve had to take in order to reach you.”
    Someone was tapping him on the shoulder:
    â€œGentlemen, we’re about to close . . . It’s time to leave . . .”
    They had crossed the avenue and were walking through the garden at the spot where, during the daytime, the stalls of the postage stamp market are set up. Daragane hesitated whether to take his leave of Perrin de Lara. The man had stopped suddenly, as though an idea had suddenly crossed his mind:
    â€œI couldn’t even tell you why she had been in prison . . .”
    He held out a hand which Daragane clasped.
    â€œSee you very soon, I hope