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

right . . . with the large porch . . .”
    â€œYou mean La Maladrerie?”
    Daragane had forgotten this name, which caused him a pang of emotion. He had the fleeting sense of passing beneath the porch of the house.
    â€œYes, that’s it . . . La Maladrerie . . .” and pronouncing these five syllables he suddenly experienced a feeling of dizziness, or rather of fear, as though La Maladrerie were associated for him with a bad dream.
    â€œWho spoke to you about La Maladrerie?”
    He was taken aback. It would have been better to tell Dr Voustraat the truth. Now, it was too late. He should have done so earlier, on the doorstep. “You looked after me, a very long time ago, during my childhood.” But no, he would have felt like an imposter and as though he were stealing someone else’s identity. That child seemed like a stranger to him now.
    â€œIt was the owner of the Ermitage restaurant who spoke to me about it . . .”
    He said this just in case, to put him off the track. Did this establishment still exist, and had it ever really existed apart from in his memories?
    â€œAh, yes . . . the Ermitage restaurant. I didn’t think it was called that anymore, nowadays . . . Have you known Saint-Leu for a long time?”
    Daragane sensed a surge of dizziness welling up inside him, the kind that affects you when you are on the brink of confessing to something that will alter the course of your life. There, at the top of the slope, you just have to let yourself glide, as though on a slide. At the bottom of the large garden at La Maladrerie, there had actually been a slide, probably erected by the previous owners, and its handrail was rusty.
    â€œNo. It’s the first time I’ve been to Saint-Leu-la-Forêt.” Outside, dusk was falling, and Dr Voustraat stood up to switch on a lamp and stoke the fire.
    â€œWintry weather . . . Did you see that fog just now? . . . I was right to make a fire . . .”
    He sat down in the armchair and leant over towards Daragane.
    â€œYou were lucky to have rung my bell today . . . It’s my day off . . . I should also mention that I’ve cut down on the number of my home visits . . .”
    Was this word “visits” a hint on his part that implied he had recognised him? But there had been so many home visits over the last fifteen years and so many appointments at Dr Louis Voustraat’s home, in the little room that served as his surgery, at the end of the corridor, that he could not recognise all the faces. And in any case, thought Daragane, how could one ascertain a likeness between that child and the person he was today?
    â€œLa Maladrerie was indeed lived in by some strange people . . . But do you think there’s really any point in my talking to you about them?”
    Daragane had the sense that there was something more behind these harmless words. As on the radio, for example, when the sound is blurred and two voices are broadcast one over the other. He seemed to be hearing: “Why have you come back to Saint-Leu after fifteen years?”
    â€œIt’s as though this house had a curse put on it . . . Perhaps because of its name . . .”
    â€œIts name?”
    Dr Voustraat smiled at him.
    â€œDo you know what
‘maladrerie’
means?”
    â€œOf course,” said Daragane.
    He did not know, but he was ashamed to admit this to Dr Voustraat.
    â€œBefore the war, it was lived in by a doctor like me who left Saint-Leu . . . Later on, at the time I arrived, a certain Lucien Führer used to come here regularly . . . the owner of a sleazy Paris dive . . . There were many comings and goings . . . It was from this time on that the house was visited by some strange people . . . up until the end of the fifties . . .”
    Daragane jotted down the doctor’s words in his