The Night Watch (11 page)

Le temps passe très vite

et less années nous quittent . . .

un jour . . .

My name was Marcel Petiot. Alone amid these piles of suitcases. No point waiting. No train was coming. I was a young man without a future. What had I done with my youth? Day followed day followed day and I piled them up at random. Enough to fill some fifty suitcases. They give off a bittersweet smell that makes me nauseous. I’ll leave them here. They will rot where they lie. Get out of this house as fast as possible. Already the walls are
beginning
to crack and the self-portrait of Monsieur de Bel-Respiro is starting to moulder. Industrious spiders are spinning webs among the chandeliers; smoke is rising from the cellar. Some human remains burning, probably. Who am I? Petiot? Landru? In the hallway, an acrid green vapour clings to the trunks. Get away. I’ll take the wheel of the Bentley I left in front of the entrance last night. One last look up at No. 3
bis
. One of those houses you dream of settling down in. Unfortunately, I entered it illegally. There was no place there for me. No matter. I turn on the radio:

Pauvre Swing Troubadour . . .

Avenue de Malakoff. The engine is silent. I glide across a still ocean. Leaves rustle. For the first time in my life I feel absolutely weightless.

Ton destin, Swing Troubadour . . .

I stop on the corner of the Place Victor Hugo and the Rue Copernic. From my inside pocket I take the pistol with the ivory handle studded with emeralds that I found in Madame de Bel-Respiro’s nightstand.

Plus
de printemps, Swing Troubadour . . .

I set the gun down on the seat. I wait. The cafés around the square are closed. Not a soul in the streets. A black, Citroën Traction, then two, then three, then four more down the avenue Victor Hugo. My heart begins to pound. As they approach, they slow to a crawl. The first car draws alongside the Bentley. The Khedive. His face, behind the car window, is a few centimetres from mine. He stares at me with soft eyes. Then I feel my lips curling into a horrible leer. My head starts to spin. Carefully, so they can read my lips, I mouth the words:
I AM THE PRIN-CESS DE LAM-BALLE. I AM THE PRIN-CESS DE LAM-BALLE.
I grab the pistol and roll down the window. The Khedive watches, smiling, as if he has always known. I pull the trigger. I’ve wounded his left shoulder. Now they’re following me at a distance, but I know I cannot escape. Their cars are four abreast. In one of them, the henchmen of Cimarosa Square: Breton, Reocreux, Codebo, Robert le Pale, Danos, Gouari . . . Vital-Léca is driving the Khedive’s Citroën Traction. I glimpsed Lionel de Zieff, Helder, and Rosenheim in the back seat. I am back on the Avenue de Malakoff and heading towards the Trocadéro. A blue-gray Talbot appears from the
Rue
Lauriston: Philibert. Then the Delahaye Labourdette that belongs to ex-Commandant Costantini. Now they are all here, the hunt can begin. I drive slowly. They match my speed. It must look like a funeral cortège. I have no illusions: double-agents die one day, after the endless postponements, the comings, the manoeuvres, the lies, the acrobatics. Exhaustion takes hold very quickly. There’s nothing left to do but lie down on the ground, gasping for breath, and wait for the final reckoning. You cannot escape men. Avenue Henri-Martin. Boulevard Lannes. I am driving aimlessly. The others are fifty metres behind. How exactly will they finish me off? Will Breton give me the shock treatment? They consider me an important catch: the ‘Princess de Lam-balle’, leader of the CKS. What’s more, I’ve just shot at the Khedive. My actions must strike them as strange: after all, did I not deliver the ‘Knights of the Shadows’ to them? This is something I will need to explain. Will I have the strength? Boulevard Pereire. Who knows? Maybe a few years from now some lunatic will take an interest in this story. He ’ll give a lot of weight to the ‘troubled period’ we lived through, he ’ll read over old newspapers. He ’ll have a hard time analysing my personality. What was my role at Cimarosa Square,
core
of one of the most notorious arms of the French Gestapo? And at the Rue Boisrobert among the patriots of the CKS? I myself don’t know. Avenue de Wagram.

La ville est comme un grand manège

dont chaque tour

nous vieillit un peu . . .

I was making the most of Paris one last time. Every street, every junction brought back memories. Graff, where I met Lili Marlene. The Claridge, where my father stayed before he fled to Chamonix. The Bal Mabille where I used to dance with Rosita Sergent. The others were letting me continue on my journey. When would they decide to kill me? Their cars kept a steady distance of fifty metres. We turn on to the
grands boulevards
. A summer evening such as I have never seen. Snatches of music drift from open windows. People are sitting at pavement cafes or strolling in groups. Street lights flicker on. A thousand paper lanterns glow amid the leaves. Laughter erupts from everywhere. Confetti and accordion waltzes. To the east, a firework sprays pink and blue streamers. I feel that I’m living these moments in the past. We are wandering along the quays of the Seine.
The
Left Bank, the apartment I lived in with my mother. The shutters are closed.

Elle est partie

changement d’adresse . . .

We cross the Place du Châtelet. I watch the Lieutenant and Saint-Georges being gunned down again on the corner of the Avenue Victoria. Before the night is over, I will meet the same end. Everyone’s turn comes eventually. Across the Seine, a dark hulking mass: the Gare d’Austerlitz. The trains have not run now for an age. Quai de la Rapée. Quai de Bercy. We turn into a deserted district. Why don’t they make the most of it? Any of these warehouses would make an ideal place – it seems to me – for them to settle their scores. The full moon is so bright that, with one accord, we switch off our headlights. Charenton-le-Pont. We are leaving Paris behind. I shed a few tears. I loved the city. She was my stamping ground. My private hell. My aging, over made-up mistress. Champigny-sur-Marne. When will they do it? I want this to be over. The faces of those I love appear for the last time. Pernety: what became of his pipe and his black leather shoes? Corvisart: he moved me, that big meathead. Jasmin:
one
night as we were crossing the Place Adolphe Cherioux, and he pointed to a star: ‘That’s Betelgeuse.’ He lent me a biography of Henri de Bournazel. Turning the pages I came across an old photo of him in a sailor suit. Obligado: his mournful face. He would often read me excerpts from his political journal. The pages are now rotting in some drawer. Picpus: his fiancée? Saint-Georges, Marbeuf, and Pelleport. Their firm handshakes and loyal eyes. The walks around Vaugirard. Our first meeting in front of the statue of Joan of Arc. The Lieutenant’s commanding voice. We have just passed Villeneuve-le-Roi. Other faces loom: my father, Alexander Stavisky. He would be ashamed of me. He wanted me to apply to the academy at Saint-Cyr. Maman. She’s in Lausanne, and I can join her. I could floor the accelerator, shake off my would-be assassins. I have plenty of cash on me. Enough for even the most diligent Swiss border guard to turn a blind eye. But I’m too exhausted. All I want is rest. Real rest. Lausanne would not be enough. Have they come to a decision? In the mirror I see the Khedive’s 11 CV closing, closing. No. It slows down abruptly. They’re playing cat and mouse. I was listening to the radio to pass the time.

Je
suis seul

ce soir

avec ma peine . . .

Coco Lacour and Esmeralda did not exist. I had jilted Lili Marlene. Denounced the brave boys of the CKS. You lose a lot of people along the way. All those faces need to be remembered, all those meetings honoured, all the promises kept. Impossible. I quickly drove on. Fleeing the scene of a crime. In a game like this you can lose yourself. Not that I’ve never known who I was. I hereby authorise my biographer to refer to me simply as ‘a man’, and wish him luck. I’ve been unable to lengthen my stride, my breath, or my sentences. He won’t understand the first thing about this story. Neither do I. We’re even.

L’Hay-les-Roses. We’ve gone through other suburbs. Now and then the Khedive’s 11 CV would overtake me. Ex-Commandant Costantini and Philibert drove alongside me for about a kilometre. I thought my time had come. Not yet. They let me gain ground again. My head bangs against the steering wheel. The road is lined with poplar trees. A single slip would be enough. I drive on, half asleep.

ALSO
AVAILABLE BY PATRICK MODIANO

LA PLACE DE L’ÉTOILE

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

The narrator of this wild and whirling satire is a hero on the edge, who imagines himself in Paris under the German Occupation. Through his mind stream a thousand different possible existences, where sometimes the Jew is king, sometimes a martyr, and where tragedy disguises itself as farce. Real and fictional characters from Maurice Sachs and Drieu La Rochelle, Marcel Proust and the French Gestapo, Captain Dreyfus and the Petainist admirals, to Freud, Hitler and Eva Braun spin past our eyes. But at the centre of this whirligig is La Place de l’Étoile, the geographical and moral centre of Paris, the capital of grief.

With
La Place de l’Étoile
Patrick Modiano burst onto the Parisian literary scene in 1968, winning two literary prizes, and preparing the way for
The Night Watch
and
Ring Roads
.

‘A Marcel Proust for our time’ Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy

RING
ROADS

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

Ring Roads
is a brilliant, almost hallucinatory evocation of the uneasy, corrupt years of the French Occupation. It tells the story of a young Jewish man in search of the father who disappeared from his life ten years earlier. Serge finds Chalva trying to survive the war years in the unlikely company of black marketeers, anti-Semites and prostitutes, putting his meagre and not entirely orthodox business skills at the service of those who have little interest in his survival.

Savage in its depiction of the anti-Semitic newspaper editor, the bullying ex-Foreign Legionnaire who treats Chalva with ever more threatening contempt, what makes
Ring Roads
exceptional is Modiano’s empathy for a man who cannot see the danger he courts.

‘Subtle, rhythmic, and hypnotic investigations into the self and its memory’

SLATE.COM

WWW.BLOOMSBURY.COM/PATRICKMODIANO

A
NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

PATRICK MODIANO was born in Paris in 1945 in the immediate aftermath of World War Two and the Nazi occupation of France, a dark period which continues to haunt him. After passing his baccalauréat, he left full-time education and dedicated himself to writing, encouraged by the French writer Raymond Queneau. From his very first book to his most recent, Modiano has pursued a quest for identity and some form of reconciliation with the past. His books have been published in forty languages and among the many prizes they have won are the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française (1972), the Prix Goncourt (1978) and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2012). In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

BY
THE SAME AUTHOR

La Place de l’Étoile

Ring Roads

First
published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz in 1972, under the title
Night Rounds

This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Originally published in France 1969 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris, as
La Ronde de Nuit

English translation first published in the United States of America by Alfred Knopf in 1971, under the title
Night Rounds

English translation by Patricia Wolf in 1971, © 1971 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, revised by Frank Wynne in 2015
La ronde de nuit
© Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1969

The moral right of the author has been asserted

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square

London

WC1B 3DP

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 978-1-4088-6792-1

To find out more about our authors and books visit
www.bloomsbury.com
. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our
newsletters
.