In the Café of Lost Youth (New York Review Books Classics)

by Patrick Modiano

For me, autumn has never been a sad season. The dying leaves and the days that grow shorter and shorter have never evoked the end of something for me but instead brought with them anticipation for the future.

there is an electricity in the air at dusk. Even when it rains. I don’t feel down at that time of night, nor does it seem that time is passing too swiftly. I have the feeling that anything is possible. The year begins in the month of October.

I was never really myself when I wasn’t running away. My only happy memories are memories of flight and escape.

Our having met, when I think about it now, seems like the meeting of two people who were completely without moorings in life. I think that we were both alone in the world.

In those days, we must have passed on the street without ever noticing each other.

“Neutral zones have at least one advantage: They are only a starting point and we always leave them sooner or later.”

In one of the booksellers’ green bins, I came across a pocket book entitled The Beautiful Summer. Yes, it was a beautiful summer, because to me it seemed endless.

In those days, she was still in that period of her life when youth is more resilient than all else.

Thinking back, I realize that it wasn’t only a code of conduct that she sought by reading the pale green booklets and the biography of Louise of the Void. She wanted to escape, to run farther and farther away, to break violently with her everyday life, to finally be able to breathe.

She whispered in my ear, “You’re right. We should just stay here forever.” I felt like we were far from Paris, in a small Mediterranean port. At the same time every morning, we followed the path down to the beach. I still remember the hotel’s address: 2, rue du Grand-Prieuré. Hôtel Hivernia. All throughout the bleak years that followed, whenever someone would ask me my address or telephone number, I would say, “You can always write to me at the Hôtel Hivernia, 2, rue Grand-Prieuré. It will be forwarded to me.” I really should go and pick up all the letters that have been waiting there for me for such a long time, letters that have gone unanswered. You were right, we should have stayed there forever.

There’s nothing to understand. When we really love someone, we’ve got to accept their role in the mystery. And that’s why we love them.

What mystery? I had been certain that we were so alike, she and I, because we could often read each other’s minds. We were on the same wavelength. Born the same year and the same month. And yet, believe it or not, there must have been a fundamental difference between us.

I stood still a moment and I held her arm tightly. We were there, together, in the same place, for all of eternity, and our stroll through Auteuil, we had already taken it during thousands and thousands of other lives. No need to look at my watch. I knew it was noon.

From that moment forward, there was an absence in my life, a blank space that not only gave me a feeling of emptiness but that I couldn’t bear to look at. All of that blank space blinded me with a bright and radiant light. And it will be like that until the very end.