In the Café of Lost Youth

by Patrick Modiano

We live at the mercy of certain silences. We know a good deal about one another. So we try to avoid each other. The best thing, of course, is to lose touch for good.

If everything was down in black and white, it meant that it was over, just like tombstones that have names and dates carved on them.

There’s nothing we can do, we’ve been brought up the hard way. Sink or swim. If I fell, others would continue to walk along boulevard de Clichy.

She wanted to escape, to run ever further away, to make a sudden break from day-to-day life, so that she could breathe the fresh air. And then there was also that panic-stricken fear, from time to time, at the thought that the hangers-on you have left behind can come back and find you and ask you for explanations. You had to hide to escape these blackmailers, hoping that one day you would be beyond their reach for good. Up there, in the air of the mountain crests. Or in the sea air.