Exchange Place

Une Falsification

The room on the first floor of 57 Rue du Bac was crowded when Kilpatrick and Gordon arrived. They stood on the threshold of the double doors. There was a dull thud, then another, and the buzz of conversation died down. Peering over shoulders, Kilpatrick saw Freddy Gabriel standing at a microphone, dressed in a navy-blue flannel suit, white shirt and burgundy silk knitted tie. He had a white carnation in his buttonhole. Beside him, on the closed lid of a grand piano, was the black briefcase and a half-filled glass of champagne. Gabriel tapped the microphone. Another dull thud. Silence. Messieurs et Mesdames, began Freddy Gabriel, and he launched into a speech alternately in French and English. The English, Kilpatrick noted, was sometimes a more or less direct translation of the French, but sometimes not, more an addendum or sidetrack. It transpired that Patrick Modiano was indisposed that evening, having been overcome by a bout of gastric flu. Monsieur Modiano vous prie d’excuser son absence. Il est désolé. However, said Gabriel, in his absence Monsieur Modiano has very generously granted his permission for me to read an extract from his current work in progress, provisionally titled Rue Daguerre. But first some words about the author.

Jean Patrick Modiano was born on 30 July 1945 at Boulogne-Billancourt on the outskirts of Paris. I cannot say why he chose to be known as Patrick, or whether it was chosen for him. But for the writer Modiano, whose work is engaged with a search for identity and its embodiment in language, the names are not without significance. Jean, or John, is the author of the eponymous Gospel, which begins, In the beginning was the Word; John the Divine is the author of Revelation; as for Patrick, the apostle of Ireland — and I am glad to welcome our Irish friends here tonight — many of the salient details of his life, such as his birthplace, are a matter of conjecture. By his own account he was born of Roman parents somewhere on the island of Britain, and taken as a slave into Ireland. He is an exile, and one could say that the protagonists of Modiano’s novel are in a state of internal exile, forever searching for a home. Or searching for an absent father; we note that the name Patrick has its roots in the Latin pater, father. Modiano’s own father is a mysterious figure …

Here Freddy Gabriel embarked on a digression on Albert Modiano, originally Alberto, but known as Aldo. The Modianos were a family of Sephardic Jews from Modena, who had emigrated to Trieste, Alexandria and Salonika before settling in Paris, where Modiano’s father was born in 1912. He discovered an early vocation for entrepreneurship — très jeune, il se livre à des affaires et trafics divers. Just before the Second World War he managed a shop selling stockings and perfumes. During the Occupation he evaded the 1940 Nazi census of Jews, living secretly under a series of assumed identities and involving himself in various ‘business deals’ — escroqueries. Among his associates was the writer Maurice Sachs …

Here Freddy Gabriel embarked on a digression on Maurice Sachs. Maurice Sachs was born in Paris in 1906 into a family of non-practising, anti-clerical and republican Jews. His father, Herbert Ettinghausen, abandoned the family when Maurice was six. His mother, Andrée, was the daughter of the jeweller George Sachs. At the age of seventeen he ran away from home and spent a year in London before returning to Paris to live by his wits — se débrouiller seul. He worked as secretary to Jean Cocteau for a period, and was employed by the couturier Coco Chanel to set up her library; in both cases the relationships ended in acrimony due to Sachs’s ‘indiscreet behaviour’. In 1925 he was converted to Catholicism by Jacques Maritain and was about to study for the priesthood when rumours of his homosexual liaisons led him to abandon that course of action. In 1930 further indiscretions led him to flee to the United States, where he had a brief success in making radio broadcasts for NBC. He converted to Protestantism in order to marry the daughter of the moderator of the Presbyterian church of the USA. Three years later he returned to Paris accompanied by a young American actor he had met in Hollywood. In 1940 he made broadcasts for Radio Mondial urging the United States to enter the war against Germany, and was placed on a Nazi blacklist. He then involved himself in the black market and other dealings, helping Jews to escape to the Unoccupied Zone in exchange for money, and becoming a Gestapo informer …

Kilpatrick looked at his watch. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Chinese Gordon doing the same. They caught each other’s eye. I don’t know about you, whispered Gordon, but I could do with another drink. Kilpatrick nodded. They slipped out. They emerged on Rue du Bac. They walked down Rue du Bac. A fog had descended and they walked from oasis of dim light to oasis of dim light under the streetlamps. Rue du Bac, Ferry Street, thought Kilpatrick. Fog rolling in from the Seine. The original ferry had transported stone from the quarries of the Left Bank to the Right Bank to build the Palais des Tuileries in the sixteenth century. Built on a site formerly occupied by a complex of tile kilns, hence the name. The palace had been destroyed by fire during the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. Fire, clay, smouldering stone ruins. It lay as a burnt-out shell until demolished in 1883. Some years ago proposals had been made to rebuild the palace in its former image, using the original plans and archive photographs. A magnificent simulacrum. Fake, if you like, what was the word? Une falsification. Kilpatrick remembered walking the Old Town of Warsaw, meticulously reconstructed after having been razed to the ground by the Nazis at the end of the Second World War. For all its period detail the area was drained of aura, the streets off the main square practically empty in contrast to the cacophony of the brutalist city beyond. It was like being on a film set. He was wearing a white trench coat and thought of himself as a detective who would find himself in a clandestine labyrinth behind the bland facades. Negotiations in dark cellars reached by darker stairwells.

Gordon halted at the corner of Rue Paul-Louis Courier. Where to? said Kilpatrick. I know a place, said Gordon. Les Caves des Changes, you’ll like it. Sort of private club, don’t you know, said Gordon, in order to be in the club you have to know about it, and not many do. Rules out practically everyone. Then it depends if they let you in. I should warn you in advance, and depending whether they let you in, that should you ever divulge its existence to anyone, you’ll be barred for life. Of course I’m one of the several exceptions to that rule, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you about it, would I? I can introduce a candidate, but Les Caves reserves the right to refuse admission. Proper order too. And who introduced you? said Kilpatrick. Why, John Bourne, said Gordon, the man I took you for.