Read Online The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano - Free Book Online Page A

And every time they were surprised—and disappointed—because I had listened so attentively, wide-eyed like a good pupil or pleasant young man. We walked past the low houses that bordered the Jardin des Plantes. I think it was the part of the botanical gardens that contained the zoo. The street was dimly lit, and at the end of the darkness and silence I was afraid we would hear the growls of roaming beasts.
    â€œI should have said something earlier . . . It’s about Dannie . . .”
    I turned to look at him, but he was resolutely facing forward. I wondered if he wasn’t deliberately avoiding my eyes.
    â€œI met Dannie at the Cité Universitaire . . . She was looking for someone to lend her a room, and even a student ID . . .”
    He spoke slowly, as if trying with every word to inject as much clarity as possible into a very muddled topic.
    â€œI always suspected someone had told her to look me up . . . Otherwise she never would have thought of coming to the Cité Universitaire . . .”
    I, too, had often wondered how a girl like Dannie would know about the Cité. I had asked her one evening when we’d gone to the post office. “You know,” she had answered, “I did come to Paris to study.” Yes, but study what?
    â€œThrough a friend in the Moroccan Pavilion, I was able to get her a student ID and residence card . . . in my wife’s name . . .”
    Why in his wife’s name? He had stopped walking.
    â€œShe was afraid to use her own ID . . . When I had to leave the Cité Universitaire, she didn’t want to stay there. I introduced her to the others at the hotel in Montparnasse . . . I think they helped her get false papers . . .”
    He gripped my arm and pulled me to the opposite sidewalk. I was surprised by his abrupt desire to cross the street. We had stopped in front of a small building, and perhaps he was afraid someone might overhear us through the windows. On the other side, no such danger. We skirted the gates of the Central Wine Market, bathed in shadow and even more deserted and silent than the street.
    â€œAnd why,” I asked, “did she need false papers?”
    It felt like a dream. This often happened in that period of my life, especially after nightfall. Exhaustion? Or that strange, overpowering sensation of déjà vu, also due to lack of sleep? Everything gets jumbled in your mind, past, present, and future; everything is superimposed. And still today, Rue Cuvier strikes me as detached from Paris, in some unknown provincial town, and I can hardly believe that the man walking next to me ever really existed. I still hear my voice in a distant echo: “Why did she need false papers?”
    â€œBut her name really
is
Dannie, isn’t it?” I asked Aghamouri in a falsely casual tone, dreading what he might reveal.
    â€œYes, probably,” he said curtly. “On her new ID card, I’m not sure. It’s not really important . . . On the card I gave her at the Cité Universitaire, she has my wife’s name, Michèle Aghamouri.”
    I asked him a question that I regretted the moment I’d said it:
    â€œAnd what about your wife—does she know about all this?”
    â€œNo.”
    He again became what he had been a few moments earlier, the person I still remember very clearly: a worried man, eternally on the alert.
    â€œThis stays between us, all right?”
    â€œYou know,” I said to him, “I’ve known how to keep my mouth shut since I was little.”
    The solemn tone in which I’d spoken those words surprised even me.
    â€œShe’s done something pretty serious and they might hold her accountable,” he blurted out. “That’s why she wanted new ID papers.”
    â€œPretty serious? Like what?”
    â€œAsk her yourself. The problem is, if you do ask her, she’ll know you heard it