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STORY

T H E T I M E S PATRICK MODIANO

translated from French by IGOR POP TRAJKOV

II.2015

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1 PATRICK MODIANO T H E T I M E S

PATRICK MODIANO

THE TIMES

Translated from French into English by IGOR POP TRAJKOV

I know Guy Scheffer from the times of the sixties, later already I had no opportunity to

talk with him up till the end of the seventies: his disappearance matches the disappearance of my

youth, which happened in the second half of the twentieth century, during the economy growth

and the modernity, the expired ending that barely anybody dares at our times to pronounce

quietly.

And here we are fifteen years ago, in the entrance of the apartment of Sheffer that

resembles him: raw porphyry, chocolate walls and doors, fake orange colored ceiling from which

glows the refined neon light. Hence this light trembles and disappears instantly, as the breath that

becomes more and more fatigued.

In one of the corners, I notice a situation that Guy Scheffer calls champagne-chair

which form is as of the glass for champagne drinking: and is surrounded by the bent from

Plexiglas, with a cylindrical metal stand. What impression could you have of a Champagne-

chair fifteen years ago? Times that are behind me are telling me: the elements that are

connecting the bend from Plexiglas, are creating a certain cavity in its middle. The fluorescent

glow is exposing the whole of the upholstered porphyry and its layers that, from its flipside, are

peeling as a chocolate plague on the door.

I am entering the mail salon through the front glaze similar to those in Boulogne. Yes, it

is good that all modernity from the end of the sixties that I rediscover here, by some miracle is

preserved. Walls from polished steel. Immense couch from white vinyl. Stools from Altuglas.

On the right, after the chimney, which has a glass protection for its fire, is a round table with

some massive chairs around it. Different metal constructions in most diverse forms and junctions

towards each other, on all four sides of this room, are forming a stabile construction which is

being used for heating of this apartment during the winter. Armchairs from white plastic in a

form of ousters One night, Scheffer had mentioned to me, a distant space, all filled with all

contemporary gadgets, with which in the nowadays, he had been used to live with their time.

I am raising my head towards the welded spots of the peg placed beneath the ceiling. One

of them is as burned with a match and darkened by a shiny stain on the orange porphyry.

Through the sun rays in this end of the afternoon, the walls and the furniture are enlightening my

emotions which make me feel certain pleasure. The space, aside the peg and the ceiling, is a

spiders net weaved at the cloth.

I am passing through the room of Scheffer. The glow through the steel canopy is here,

falling on the small podium, but misses any content. The inclined layers of Plastic are lively

yellow and white, and are extended up till the ceiling and their sharp whiteness is causing me

certain repulsion. The bathroom is lighted: its ceiling is lacquered in black. The walls are in Live

red. Black porphyry in Nylon. Nobody knows, not even the servants, not even the workers. At

my return from the salon I wonder whether Scheffer still lives here.


How strange is the idea that he has a phone fifteen years after Those that made a party,

as me, in the entourage of Scheffer, those that I have forgotten or thought they were dead. I wish

I have a clean hart.

I have never erased his phone number from one of my old agendas, I left its presence

there. Only the area code was changed, it was changed with three codes that were replacing

Jasmin. I was phoning and they told me that Scheffer is not here anymore. Did they told to the

other ones the same, or just to me?

At last somebody buggered me off after few long minutes. A silence.

- May I - do I speak with Guy Scheffer?

- He - exactly he. Who wants to speak with him?

I have told him my name.

- I am glad I have met you.

- Really?

I felt somehow far-away, due to the reason of my distance and my age I expected the

expression of surprise caused by the usage of the improper phone number or that I have replaced

the right number with wrong one. But no. This voice that sounded polite, well mannered, this

approach did not emancipate anything in particular

- Come in Saturday, at six oclock in the evening. Maybe Ill be a bit later on my coming

back. I am leaving the key under the rag. Come inside. Do as you like. See you.

Silence. Actually a type of surprise. Finally I made up my mind that I am with an

impression that I have heard a recording from the tape recorder. If you would like to meet with

Scheffer, at what time would you like to make the appointment? Has he already been living here

or did he leave an agreement that we may ask for him? I was surprised by this discrete presence,

the prevailing attitude to misplace and leave: the capability to have as more meetings at one time;

and your fake company that in the same manner of cat cleverness made it possible for you to

reach his apartment.

Enter. Do whatever you like. At what time did you find me? Did it occur kind of old

fashioned? Will you tell me about it? My pain caused by the Plastic and the chintz of tis room

became even worse when I was in the middle of the salon. I exposed myself to an allergy from

all this synthetic materials that ones upon during the summer were defining the modernity and

the beginnings of my life as well. I was afraid to encounter the couch from vinyl or one of the

chairs for round sitting. I am suffocating in this salon.

So, by climbing the spiral stairs, I elevated myself one floor upper. Scheffer had arranged

a space that he defined as the beach. Here, I had attended many soires, when I was twenty,

when I believed I was in a happy summer. I retracted this place at some extend, which is now

designated and quiet, yet then induced with laud laughter and music. The two pink sofas have not

changed their place and their colors fit aptly with those of the walls which are in the coulour of

the honey and concrete - an ugly concrete chosen by Scheffer and which according to him

resembles the beaches of Jamaica. One portico opened towards the terrace. The front glass

vitrines of massive proportions are formed as real sun glasses or as the white cotton sunshades


that protect the shops from the heat. At the ceiling, the green winglets of the ventilator are

revolving all the time. Like this, Scheffer told me, with his distracted voice, someone may

survive here during the summer all day through

I passed beneath the fen and I placed myself at one of the sofas. The winglets were

dispersing slowly the air, during all this afternoon and I discovered again the ambience of the

soires I had when at Scheffer. Attractive soirees, attractive time through which I passed when I

was twenty. Good for the Nirvana. The achievements of the cosmonauts and the heights of

Cashmere. Entirely new travels through Asia, but as well the ones that may take you on the

moon. Some particular evenings, at the apartment of Scheffer, one may not know anymore

whether he is on Cape Canaveral or Katmandu. The lamps from the rheostat were projecting

geometrical medley of colors on the steal walls, in all colors of the spectrum. The smell of the

archaism was floating in the air and the hum of an Indian guitar. The silhouette of Scheffer was

glowing towards me accompanied in groups together with his cousins, that were all the time

intended to ask for a cigarette with marihuana. He, if he had a cigarette in his mouth, was in a

thinking mode aside the edge of the terrace, with an image of a captain that is observing the

appearance of his trans-ocean ship.

We were wondering at what age Scheffer was supposed to be. He had a look of a man in

his fifties: not tall , not short, with light blue eyes, with blond moustaches, partly bald. Suntanned

with a bronze ten and dressed in bright suits. All the people from his surrounding were young

and mostly they were gravitating around him with their intention to forget their past or to get

high and this was creating an illusion that their life had begun in the same time as ours.

Did I gain this extraordinary happiness thanks to a mysterious privilege from persons

of whose exact nature I know nothing about? I was participating in all discovery of the sixties,

entirely new man, abandoned by nobody and who is still accepting the youngsters in his ultra-

modern duplex, surrounded by the noise of the flies that were becoming more and more

numerous and that were incessantly becoming more bloated because of him : you were at

Scheffer this evening? Havent you too went by at Scheffers place? Scheffer invited you? You

know Scheffer?

I do not remember any more on my days of the green winglets of the ventilator , that life

of mine fades little by little. Those days are being dune up with the mixing of the humid air. The

day is dying. Yes, Scheffer have managed to perceive a beautiful vitality, he had his beauty from

his days, the times of the strong optimist who today to us looks kind of prehistoric with his faith

nave from the Plexiglas, the hallucinogenic drugs, the afghan waistcoats, from the vanguard

One night, both of us were withering at one of the terraces while that something was

bawling at the highest uproar. In the salon we reached the evaporating of the incense, the

reflections of the moving clouds which were floating on the walls, a music from Pink-Floyd.

Scheffer was wearing a tunic and a silk Indian foulard, all according to the fashion statements of

that time. I was happy to remain happy with my spirit as well and I asked him why he likes all

that contemporary furniture. He raised his shoulders.


- Contemporary furniture? he asked me. It gives you sort of an impression that you are

entering a completely different lifestyle, dont you think so?

He considered me as a thoughtful spirit.

- Do you prefer Louis Seize ? Not me. With the steal, the plastic and with the lively

colors around him I really had an impression that all that is new and that I didnt correct

anything We are living in an extraordinary time That surpasses its past Nothing from

what we already have in the contemporaneity and from what will arrive in the future

Many times that evening it slipped through my mind that in this particular evening the

cosmonauts begun to walk on the moon for the first time. Being there in front of the three TVs in

the apartment, the invitees, from a small group, were wondering about this issue many times.

Strong applause and enthusiastic shouts over lauded the music of Pink-Floyd.

- Thats it, told me Scheffer. We arrived at our destination Now the moon is available

for us

His face begun to glow with unusual joy. Above all, like this he looked much younger.

He pattered my shoulder, which is his rather rare gesture.

- Come We will drink some champagne so that we can solve this

And this night here, the cosmonauts, the Drink, the marihuana and the trip increased the

desire in most of us to bath in the pure modernity. I found out about the enthusiasm of Scheffer:

that Guy is in his accordance with a trembling epoch as this one, and he to plunges in the same

youth spring and considering a man of his age he has successfully surpassed the operation that

the surgeons fold under the term - the lifting.

This is of no interest and for me, I am just interested in the past and I want to think about

what considering it was spoken to me by Scheffer.

One fine day, I finished up what was required by him which above all was connected

with the life and with the activities before the sixties. He bleached towards me with his brilliant

blue eye look, an eye look or a penetration of a menace.

- If you are not interested in everything. You should live in the present.

- Are you sure you are not interested?

- Yes, as the matter of fact, I am completely forgetting all that. Furthermore, I do not

exist before the sixties.

Now he laughed and by rediscovering them in himself he showed his kindness and his

inborn courtesy.

- I am forgetting subsequently, bit by bit. Do you know that I cannot remember what I

have done yesterday? This is a good method. I would advise you to accept it.

For me the people from his surrounding were people that were of no interest for me: and

this was becoming more apparent as I was surpassing my thirties.

But why Scheffer who was currently being dovetailed in the modernity in a so

scrupulous manner had chosen to live in the boulevard Richard-Wallace further more if we

consider that in Mare or on the Left bank, the apartments were also considered to be very in? I

doubted that considering this influence had certain archaism and in this direction I continued to


think about him. Does he like being here because he is lodged in a cheap quart? I never managed

to answer myself about this hence due to this I never lost my nerves.

If I knew about the time I know now of, maybe filled with joy I would have threw myself

in the anxiety of the spirit of Scheffer and would have admired, to an according to him

contemporary expression, leave a bite for me from that which is due to the meanders of his

past

The last week, I indeed went with a car to his place, with one particular P.L., a man in his

sixties who I met on a dinner organized by some friends. We were being bored at the boulevard

Richard-Wallace.

- I went few times at his place, he told me, I think that the guy that lives and gathers

many people in one of these lodges is funny. This is the way how its interior was thirty years

ago

I slowed myself as I begun to think I am falling on a slower level.

- By a coincidence, isnt he from this accommodation?

- Yes, he lives here.

- On the last floor?

- Yes. In an apartment with the terraces. Have you by any chance appointed a chat with

him? I still think you are too nave

- Isnt his name Guy Scheffer?

- His name is Pierre Pacheco I think he is with Chilean origin He disappeared on the

day after tomorrow

- But when?

- In 1950.

- A man averagely high and with blue eyes?

- Yes, with very blue eyes I forgot how were the walls of his apartment, how were they

upholstered

- That was a man at what age?

- Above forty.

- How was he making his living?

- With different things. Undoubtedly he benefited from the diplomatic immunity: he was

receiving percentage from the shipments of American cigarettes And from the ponies from

Argentina I didnt know him well I have met him here not more than ten times

- Who could tell me something about him?

- Thirty years ago many people were dead I had to find out who were the survivors

And their wives I have met two-three of them that doubtlessly could remember

Pacheco But the women werent very talkative I bet you think I am an idiot: since I was

wondering amongst such types, placed between the walls of his apartment All at the

receptions

The winglets of the fan have stopped for a moment, than continued with its movement.

Did he exist, this ventilator, in the time when Scheffer was naming himself as Pacheco?


Everything has changed during the last thirty years, the shiny walls, the furniture, the names, the

images. With an exception of this fan that emits that sound towards me, the fan that stirs the air

up till the end of times.

An hour, after Scheffer has arrived here to escort, I slowly approached him and he gave

me his hug:

- Your appearance makes me happy, my dear Pacheco So much time had pass by

Now he changed his surprise mode and his almost invisible unkindness that this evening I

noticed in him or maybe again he has placed a dagger on my neck:

- What a hell do you do in life?

- The things.

As by habit, this evening, a bunch of invitees were present in the apartment at the

Richard-Wallace boulevard. Scheffer celebrated his becoming fianc since he had a habit to

celebrate his engagements every year from May till July with a little daughter that as the years

were going by was becoming younger and younger.

- You would have been admiring if you find out about those things? You are very

curious So I will explain you

As for the occasion of his engagements, he had all dressed in white: suit, trousers,

moccasins and all that gave to his bronze ten and to the pure blue in his eyes kind of expensive

look.

- I have a fine company of music publishers and one publishing house for music records

that foremost export ambient music Mostly in America and Japan They spread this music in

the elevators, the hotel halls, supermarkets, self-services, parking spaces We are talking about

very tender music Essential music Listen

The invitees left the salon heading towards the terraces and I began to hear a distant

music. This music went well with the furniture from Rhodoid and with the vinyl, with the

champagne-chairs from Plexiglas, with the motley from the rheostat, with all modernity

which was preserved in my twenties and in the apartment of Scheffer. I could very well

distinguish the violins, the saxophone or the trumpet, but I couldnt define, so to speak, which

one from these robots entertainers with its instruments or which was the machine that played this

sound ambiance that was causing me an impression of sweet sorrow.

- I have already signed the contracts for exclusive emitting of this music in most of the

international airports

He emphasized to me with an insistence.

- You became pale. Why do you dislike it? This is to some extend the music of the two

thousandth

Somebody was passing away his day and night in his apartment. I have given up from my

habit and today I have rediscovered all of the piled music records in beneath the pink sofa I

lied down and began to look at their covers one by one as all of them were covered with golden

dust, that sand color of the Jamaican beaches, as Scheffer would have sad. Some of these records

were gondolas since the sun was bathing this space. I had no reason to turn on the gramophone: I


listened to their music in my head. The music that is empty, the freezing-music, the shallow

music from the airports that are discovering the trembling of the one of those White airports

from Anglicania ; posh music from those times that are not formed yet as of one appear that

emerges from the marble that had forever conserved the youth

Due to this unusual coincidence I dont have even a piece of paper from what Scheffer

was telling me about this music from the airport , an old issue of a magazine? I have

discovered a professional report dedicated to a pilot from a destination who is not added with his

name, but here there are plenty of photographs of him, in enface and profile, he attracted my

attention. With very bright eyes With a very empathic appearance Athletic silhouette in a

uniform of the commander of the board Yes, I think that I remember Scheffer quite well, one

Scheffer younger some twenty years since the magazine dates from the times of the fifties

I never dared to speak to him but today once again I remembered tha Scheffer had left in

my eyes images that are illustrateing the special edition of the Air France Revue, named

Africa and her see. One Constellation before which the steel that shines disappears in the blue

of the sky, leaves the airport El-Aouina or the one in Pointe-Noare. Scheffer is with arrival

commands. In Port-Gentil, he is passing slowly the arrival area, with that white uniform on his

shoulders and with a silhouette that disappears on the other side in the depots which tin roars

under the blows of the wind

The emblem of his house with the records is a phoenix, the phoenix that again with no

chance of anybody stopping him rebirths from his ashes. I had accepted a telephone call from

P.L. , during a night shift:

- Hallo I think this will interest you I have other data for you considering the case

Pacheco.

- All right then?

-This data is from a friend that he knew of long time ago. She tried to remain anonymous.

She met Pacheco in 1934, 1935. At this time he had surpassed twenty-five Than Pacheco was

managing the club with the Bask play with a little ball in Paris

- Club for a Bask play?

- Yes In a big garage in the 7th arrondissement, at the street of the Horse-riders He

also owned the highest floors of a gymnasium, tennis and table tennis playgrounds and a terrace

with a fronton of the bask game The day we talked I have told you that Pacheco is Chilean

He originates from a Bask family that has migrated to Chile Since then he has been living in

his apartment in the boulevard Richard-Wallace

- In 1934?

- Yes. His presence is from that time. And then through 1936-1937, Pacheco has

disappeared. Me, I have met him in 1947-1948

- And in the meantime?

- I dont know. Certainly at this age a man has some blank spaces in his memory.

- Yes, certainly.

- I dont know, if I find some new inquiry, I will communicate you. All the best.


A club for a Bask game in Paris. A lift is elevating, slowly and quietly, up till the terrace

boarded with the green crusaders. The white fronton is showing its decoupage on the blue of the

sky. On the left, a bar on open with a pergola: the joyriders here are drinking the appetitive and

Scheffer, that now again calls himself Pacheco, goes to sit, young, with a smile on his face, with

a drink in his hand Downstairs, this Paris, is a summer Paris from where arrives the rustle of

the leaves and the overwhelming noise of the car sirens and from where Scheffer passed few

seconds ago so that he can return back in his apartment. And then he again rediscovers himself

on the terraces, amongst his invitees and later in the salon with its shiny walls. Decidedly, this

man knows how to live. The first question I have asked him after his arrival, was this one:

- Is this the reason why you wanted to inscribe me in the club for the Bask game in Paris?

I asked you about this too late, some fifty years, but this was of no importance for you

Actually before it became clear to me, Scheffer was outwitting the times. His eclipses -

according to the way P.L. expressed himself - were based undoubtedly on a tactic and as well on

something more than a tactic: an asceticism. He would have dived in a period of hibernation and

afterwards he was waking up, his imagery was polishing, so that he could begin with a new life.

In a period of few years, he again entered hibernation. No matter how much he was economizing

- he had to force himself because of witch more and more he supported the monotony of the days

that followed after the days so bit by bit they were fading, he preferred the short periods of

intense life that were condensed in a healing dream as long as the one of the very slept Beauty.

I asked him to reveal to me the secret of his eclipses and above all his exact age: all this

was possible thankfully to such a discipline, perhaps formed in a duration of hundred years.

Nothing interests me more than his life organized in a manner of discontinuity, with brutal

interceptions, with eruptions of light separated with those of the darkness, the friends, the

women, those that were losing the contact with him with an edgy manner when he was becoming

hurt and when he was disappearing or when nobody could well recognize his reappearing twenty

years later from another identity. The only place that was stable: the apartment on boulevard

Richard-Wallace with its walls and various furniture crisscrossed by the years burst asunder as

the play of the crystals in a kaleidoscope

It didnt rest anything from that not even to visit Schefer. I awaited the movement of the

ventilator with its fine rumor that caused me vertigo so I entered in this room continuing till the

beach where I often used to run away, in the festive nights. Walls in beige-pink, very low layer

covered with white drape. The window - widely opened towards one of the terraces with

enclosure in a form of a line of canes according to which somebody could believe he is on the

board of a big ship that was arriving all day through between the spacy trees of Boulogne.

That was the room of a brunette with blue eyes with whom Scheffer had celebrated his

engagement in the summer of 1966. She had disappeared about a month later without ever giving

anything to this room with bow windows, she had her times to make an installment of a big

placard that I had separated from the panel with the cloth. It rolled beneath the ceiling spreading

dust which dazzled me.


Her closet was all day so, untouched. I left beneath the ceilings that were one beneath

another. Mini-skirts in free style ; silver trousers with a high waistline ; white dress-tunic from

vinyl ; blank raincoat with dropping collar ; silk scarfs rayed in pink and white ; costume

trousers with elephant drawers . And the boots, bowls of boots: high up till the thigh from

tanned leather in all possible colors, boots with belts, transparent boots, short boots from white

leather with a sharp end She also left in the corridor by the stairs a purse in which I found his

passport, expired since then fifteen years already. Absent-mindedly I passed it in the inner pocket

of my suit.

Somebody did this three times. I began to climb the spiral stairs, my hart beats. But no,

that is not Scheffer. Somebody interpolated at the door a telegram whitely contrasting the beige

with soil color. It is addressed to my name, for Mr. Scheffer :

It is sad that you didnt keep your word. I have quit Paris much longer than I expected. I

went to Hawaii three years ago and the past from Paris in my present is gone with the wind. I am

living across the beach in Waikiki in a big house where I hope one day I will receive you. I am

giving you my address and the telephone number: Sheffer, Pioncanas-House, Kalia-Road,

Honolulu, Hawaii - 74.22.11. Thank you that you remembered me. I am leaving the key beneath

the rag. Aloha. Guy.

Aloha. One of the records of Guy was named exactly Blue Aloha . A music from the

airport as all the others but far more sophisticated and airy thankfully to the sonority of the

Hawaiian guitars.

I placed myself at one of the stools from Altuglas in the saloon therefore the music of

Blue Aloha penetrated me with its hug of Passat. This condition undoubtedly had the hearer

and was accompanying his pale eyes all along his walks for smoking of the cigarette that to

Scheffer gave the idea to begin a new life in Hawaii.

The sun at eight oclock in the evening disperses the glow over the steel than on the

glasses from the furniture, those rays of light, till some extend brighter from the orangey of the

porphyry. Behind the glass outlet for the window, is visible the mist caused by the heat above the

hum of the trees from the forest of Boulogne. I dont know why, I cannot leave this saloon

emotionlessly and quiet as in my twenties, no matter how hard I try, in the horizon, is netted the

silhouette of Scheffer in contra-jour who has decided to spread around in this early evening. The

silhouette disappears in the cavity beneath the waves while it is more visible at their ridge as it

lets to be carried away by the waves that heat the shore and the last sun rays - silhouette of young

man or mummy, who is very successful even when he had to skid, as unreachable as his exact

times.

July 1983

Front page: painting from Heinrich Hansen Bedekammeret 1861

the times

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