Paris Nocturne by Patrick Modiano Page B

snowing over the previous few days and there were still patches of snow dotted around the gardens below, in front of the Musée de l’Homme.
    While I was buying cigarettes at the bigger
café
-
tabac
, a group of tourists sat down at the tables on the terrace. I could hear their peals of laughter. I was surprised that tables had been put outside and for an instant I felt a kind of vertigo. I wondered if I hadn’t perhaps confused the seasons. But no, the trees around the square had indeed lost their leaves and there would still be a long wait before summer came around again. I had been walking around for months and months in so much cold and fog that I no longer knew if the veil would ever be stripped away again. Was it really demanding too much from life to want to lie in the sun, drinking orangeade with a straw?
    I remained awhile on the esplanade breathing in the ocean air. I thought about the black dog that had come to accompany me the other night, the dog that had come from so far away, across all these years…How stupid not to have kept the phone number.
    I headed along Rue Vineuse, as I had the other night. It was still dark there. Perhaps there had been a power cut. I saw the bar or restaurant with its illuminated sign, but so faint that I could only just make out the dark mass of a car parked just before the turn in the road. When I got to it, my heart skipped a beat. It was the sea-green Fiat. It wasn’treally a surprise; I had never given up hope that I would find it. I’d just had to be patient, that was all, and I felt I had huge reserves of patience within me. Come rain or snow, I was prepared to wait for hours in the street.
    The bumper bar and one of the mudguards were damaged. There were probably a lot of sea-green Fiats in Paris, but this one certainly bore the signs of the accident. I took my passport out of the pocket of my sheepskin jacket. It contained the folded piece of paper that Solière had made me sign. Yes, it was the same licence plate number.
    I looked in through the window. A travel bag on the back seat. I could have left a note under the windscreen wiper, giving my name and the address of the Hôtel Fremiet. But I wanted to get to the bottom of it there and then. The car was parked right in front of the restaurant. So I pushed the pale wooden door and went in.
    Light fell from a wall lamp behind the bar, leaving the few tables arranged along the walls on either side in darkness. And yet, I can see these walls clearly in my memory; they are draped with very worn, red velvet that is ripped and torn here and there, as though, long ago, the place had been quite lavish, but no one went there anymore. Apart from me. At first I thought it was well after closing time. A woman wassitting at the bar wearing a dark brown coat. A young man, the size of a jockey and the look of one, was clearing the tables. He looked askance at me.
    â€˜What can I do for you?’
    It would take too long to explain. I walked towards the bar and, instead of sitting on one of the stools, I stopped behind her. I put my hand on her shoulder. She turned around with a start. She stared at me, astonished. There was a large graze across her forehead, just above the eyebrows.
    â€˜Are you Jacqueline Beausergent?’
    I was surprised by the detachment in my voice; I even had the impression that someone else had spoken for me. She gazed at me in silence. She lowered her eyes; they lingered on the stain on my sheepskin jacket, then lower down, on my shoe where the bandage was dangling out.
    â€˜We’ve already met at Place des Pyramides…’
    My voice seemed even clearer and more detached. I was standing behind her.
    â€˜Yes…Yes…I remember very well. Place des Pyramides.’
    Without looking away, she gave a slightly wry smile, the same—it seemed—as the other night, in the police van.
    â€˜Why don’t we sit down…’
    She gestured to the table closest