Family Record by Patrick Modiano

Author:Patrick Modiano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2019-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

I carefully folded the duplicate baptism certificate and slid it into my inner jacket pocket. My wife and I left.

And so I had been baptized in this little church of Saint-Martin . . . I had a vague memory of the ceremony, of my apprehension when the priest led me toward the baptismal font, and of the group formed by my brother, baptized the day before, my mother, my godmother, Madeleine Ferragus, and the two individuals “representing” my godfather. Only one clear image remained: of Rachevsky’s large white convertible, parked in front of the church. A random baptism. Whose idea was it? And why did we stay in Biarritz for almost a year, my brother and I? I think the Korean War might have had something to do with it: that because of it, with the previous war in mind, they had decided to keep us away from Paris and baptize us as a precaution. I remember something my father said, when he came to see us at Casa Montalvo before heading off to Africa: “If the war lasts much longer, I’ll take you with me to Brazzaville.” And on the world globe he had given us, he pointed out that city in French Equatorial Africa.

Other images . . . One night in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, at a toro de fuego, I hurled myself at someone who was tossing confetti at my mother. A van had knocked me down as I was leaving Sainte-Marie. The convent of Dominican nuns on Avenue de la République, which we had passed by earlier, where they had put me out with ether to tend to my injuries. The military fanfare that we listened to, my brother and I, beneath the trees in Place Pierre-Forsans.

At the end of Rue Saint-Martin, my wife and I followed Avenue J.-F.-Kennedy. Back then, it had had a different name. We sat at a sidewalk table of a small café, in the sun. Behind us, the owner and two others were discussing next Sunday’s pelota match. Through the fabric of my jacket, I fingered the copy of my baptism certificate. Many things had changed since then, there had been quite a few sorrows, but it was nonetheless comforting to have found my old parish.

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