Patrick Modiano: Missing Person

“You were right to tell me that in life it is not the future which counts, but the past.”

I am nothing. Nothing but a pale silhouette that evening, on the terrace of a café. I was waiting for the rain to stop, a downpour that had started the moment Hutte left me.

I was nothing, but waves passed through me, sometimes faint, sometimes stronger, and all these scattered echoes afloat in the air crystallized and there I was.

The sand holds the traces of our footsteps but a few moments.

There under the embankment trees, I had the unpleasant sensation that I was dreaming. I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air of a Saturday evening. Why try to renew ties which had been broken and look for paths that had been blocked off long ago?

I often mention bars or restaurants, but if it were not for a street or cafe sign from time to time, how would I ever find my way?

She has already turned the corner of the street, and do not our lives dissolve into the evening as quickly as this grief of childhood?