The Black Notebook

by Patrick Modiano

I was sending out coded signals to the future. Yes, it’s as if I wanted to leave clues, in black and white, that would help me clarify at some later date what I’d been living through at the time without really understanding it.

Last night, I traced on the map, with my index finger, the route from Paris to Feuilleuse. I travelled back in time. The present no longer counted, with its indistinguishable days in their doleful light, which must be the light of old age, when you feel as if you’re merely living on.