Free The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano Page A

hand out.”
    What “works” was he talking about? In the gentlest possible voice, almost a whisper, I asked him a question, a shot in the dark:
    â€œWhen you were living at the Cité Universitaire, didn’t you feel safe?”
    He knit his brow, giving his face a studious look—no doubt the face he made at the Censier branch to reassure himself he was just a simple student.
    â€œYou know, Jean, there was a strange atmosphere in that place, the Cité, the Moroccan Pavilion . . . Frequent police checks . . . They wanted to keep an eye on the residents for political reasons. Certain students were opposed to the Moroccan government . . . and Morocco asked France to put them under surveillance . . . That’s all . . .”
    He seemed relieved to confide in me. Even a bit breathless. That’s all. After that preamble, it was surely easier for him to cut to the chase.
    â€œSo you might say my position was rather delicate . . . I was caught between the two . . . I hung out with people on both sides . . . You could even say I was playing both sides . . . But it’s much more complicated than that . . . In the end, you can never play both sides.”
    He must have been right, since he confessed it with such gravity . . . Curiously, that sentence has lodged in my memory. Over the following years, when I was alone in the street, preferably at night and in certain areas in the west of Paris—one evening near the Maison de la Radio, in fact—I heard Aghamouri’s voice saying to me from afar: “In the end, you can never play both sides.”
    â€œI wasn’t careful enough . . . I let myself get mixed up in these plots . . . You know, Jean, some of the people who frequent the Unic Hôtel maintain close ties with Morocco . . .”
    As the time passed, the noise and number of people at the tables increased. Aghamouri spoke in a murmur, and I couldn’t make out everything he said. Yes, the Unic Hôtel was the rendezvous for certain Moroccans and the Frenchmen who were “in business” with them . . . What sort of business? That Georges with the moon face, the one Paul Chastagnier had said was “no altar boy,” owned a hotel in Morocco . . . Paul Chastagnier had spent many years living in Casablanca . . . And Marciano was born there . . . And he, Aghamouri, had found himself among these people because of a Moroccan friend who spent time at the Cité Universitaire, but who actually worked for the embassy as a “security adviser.”
    He spoke faster and faster, and it was hard for me to keep up with the flood of details. Perhaps he wanted to free himself of a burden, a secret he had carried too long. He suddenly said:
    â€œForgive me . . . All this must seem incoherent . . .”
    Not at all. I was used to listening to people. And even when I didn’t understand a word they were saying, I opened my eyes wide and fixed them with a penetrating stare, which gave them the illusion they were addressing an especially attentive interlocutor. My mind would be elsewhere, but my eyes gazed steadily at them, as if I were drinking up their words. It was different with Aghamouri. He was part of Dannie’s entourage; I
wanted
to understand him. And I hoped he’d let slip a few clues about the ugly incident she was involved in.
    â€œYou’re lucky . . . You don’t have to dirty your hands like we do . . . You can keep your hands clean . . .”
    Those last words contained a hint of reproach. Who did he mean by “we”? He and Dannie? I looked at his hands. They were delicate, much more delicate than mine. And white. Dannie’s, too, had impressed me with their refinement. She had very graceful wrists.
    â€œExcept you have to be careful not to mix with the wrong people . . . However