Ring Roads by Patrick Modiano

His only answers were dismissive gestures and formulaic phrases: ‘I’ll explain later . . .’, ‘You’ll see . . .’, ‘Well, you know, life . . .’ After which he sighed and looked thoughtful.
    Paris–Austerlitz. He hesitated a moment before giving the taxi driver his address. (Later we would find ourselves being driven along Quai de Grenelle when in fact we were living on the Boulevard Kellermann. We moved so often that we got confused and only belatedly noticed our mistake.) At the time, his address was: Square Villaret-de-Joyeuse. I imagined the square to be a little park where birdsong mingled with the murmur of fountains. No. A cul-de-sac, with opulent houses on either side. His apartment was on the top floor and the windows overlooking the street had curious, small circular windows. Three low-ceilinged rooms. A large table and two shabby leather armchairs made up the furniture in the ‘living-room’. The walls were papered in a pink, imitation ‘Toile de Jouy’ pattern. A large bronze ceiling light (I am not entirely sure of this description: I tend to confuse the apartment on the Square Villaret-de-Joyeuse with the one on the Avenue Félix-Faure, which we sublet from a retired couple. Both had the same musty smell). My father nodded to the smallest room. A mattress on a bare floor. ‘Sorry about the lack of comfort,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, we won’t be staying here long. Sleep well.’ I heard him pacing the floor for hours. So began our life together.
    To begin with, he treated me with a politeness, a deference that a son rarely expects from his father. Whenever he spoke to me, I felt as though he was carefully choosing his words, but the result was terrible. He resorted to increasingly convoluted phrases and circumlocutions, and seemed to be constantly apologising or anticipating some reproach. He brought me breakfast in bed with a ceremonious manner which jarred with our surroundings: the wallpaper in my room was peeling in places, a bare bulb hung from the ceiling, and when he pulled the curtains, the curtain rail would fall down. One day, he accidently referred to me by my Christian name and was mortally embarrassed. What had I done to earn such respect? I discovered it was the fact I was a ‘
bachelier
’, when he personally wrote to the school in Bordeaux to ask them to send the certificate proving I had got my baccalauréat. When it arrived, he had it framed, and hung it between the two ‘windows’ in the ‘living-room’. I noticed that he kept a copy in his wallet. Once, on one of our nightly wanderings, he present the document to two policemen who had asked for our identity papers, and seeing they were puzzled by his Nansen passport, he told them five or six times that ‘his son was a
bachelier
. . .’ After supper (my father often prepared something he called rice
à l’égyptienne
), he would light a cigar, give an occasional, worried, glance at my diploma, then slowly sink into despair. His ‘business’, he told me, was causing him a lot of trouble. Having always been a fight, having known the ‘harsh realities of life’ at a very early age, he now felt ‘tired’, and the way he said: ‘I’ve lost heart . . .’ moved me deeply. Then, he would look up: ‘But you’ve got your whole life ahead of you!’ I would nod, politely . . . ‘Especially now you’ve got your BACCALAURÉAT . . . If only I’d had the chance . . .’ the words died in his throat, ‘the baccalauréat is really something . . .’ I can still hear this little phrase. And it still moves me, like a forgotten melody.
    At least a week passed without my knowing anything about his ‘business’. I would hear him leave early in the morning, and he only got back in time to prepare supper. From a black oilcloth bag, he would unpack the provisions – peppers, rice, spices, mutton, lard, dried fruit, semolina – tie an apron round his waist and, having taken off his rings, he would fry up the