The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano Page B

Georges, listening carefully as if he were giving instructions. I slunk toward the hotel exit as if trying not to bother them. I was afraid Aghamouri might follow me. But no, he remained seated with the others. It was just postponing the inevitable, I told myself. Tomorrow he’d ask about Dannie and me, and the prospect filled me with dread. I had nothing to tell him. Nothing. And besides, I’ve never known how to answer questions.
    Outside, I couldn’t help looking back at them through the window. And today, as I write this, I feel as if I’m still watching them, standing on that sidewalk as if I’d never left it. And yet, however much I look at Georges, the one she said was dangerous, I no longer feel the disquiet that sometimes used to grip me when I mingled with those people in the lobby of the Unic Hôtel. Paul Chastagnier, Duwelz, and Gérard Marciano lean in toward Georges for all eternity, planning what Aghamouri called “their dirty tricks.” It will end badly for them, in prison or some obscure vendetta. Aghamouri, sitting on the armrest, keeps silent, observing them with anxious eyes. He was the one who had told me, “Watch out. They can drag you down a very bad path. My advice is to break off relations while there’s still time.”
    Soon after that evening, he arranged to meet me at the entrance to the Censier branch of the university. He was eager to “clear the air.” I had thought he wanted to scare me off from seeing Dannie again. And now he, too, is behind that window for all eternity, his anxious eyes fixed on the others as they conspire in low voices. And I feel like telling him, in turn, “Watch out.” Personally, I was in no danger. But I wasn’t fully aware of that at the time. It took me several years to realize it. If I remember correctly, I nonetheless had a vague premonition that none of them would ever drag me down a “very bad path.” Langlais, questioning me at the Quai de Gesvres, had said, “You used to keep some mighty peculiar company.” He was mistaken. All those people I met, I saw only from a great distance.
    That night, I don’t know how long I remained in front of the hotel window, watching them. At a certain moment, Aghamouri stood up and walked toward the window. He would surely notice me there on the sidewalk. I didn’t budge an inch. Too bad if he came outside and joined me. But his eyes were elsewhere and he didn’t see me. The one called Georges stood up in turn and went with his heavy gait to stand next to Aghamouri. They were only a few inches away behind the window, and the second one, with his moonlike face and hard eyes, didn’t notice me either. Perhaps the glass was opaque from inside, like a one-way mirror. Or else, very simply, dozens and dozens of years stood between us: they remained frozen in the past, in the middle of that hotel lobby, and we no longer lived, they and I, in the same space of time.
    Â 
    Â 
    I wrote down very few appointments in that black notebook. Each time, I was afraid the person wouldn’t show up if I committed the date and time of our meeting to paper in advance. One should not be so certain of the future. As Paul Chastagnier said, I “kept a low profile.” I felt as if I were living a clandestine existence, and so, in this type of life, one avoids leaving traces or setting down one’s comings and goings in black and white. And yet, in the middle of one page of the notebook, I read: “Tuesday. Aghamouri. 7 p.m. Censier.” I attached no importance to that meeting, and it didn’t bother me to have it spelled out in black letters on the white sheet.
    It must have been two or three days after the night when we had arrived late at the Unic Hôtel and I’d been carrying the bag. I was surprised to receive a note from Aghamouri at 28 Rue de l’Aude, where I was renting a room. Where had he gotten my address? From Dannie? I