The Black Notebook Read Online Free PDF Page A

about ten years ago, when I got it into my head to find that country house. Was it in the Paris region or farther out, near Sologne? I’ve forgotten why I chose those particular villages rather than others. I believe the sound of their names reminded me of one where we’d stopped for gas. Saint-Léger-des-Aubées. Dormelles-sur-l’Orvanne. Vaucourtois. Ormoy-la-Rivière. Lorrez-le-Bocage. Chevry-en-Sereine. Boisemont. Achères-la-Forêt. La Selle-en-Hermoy. Saint-Vincent-des-Bois.
    I had bought a Michelin road map that I’ve kept and that bears this designation: “Paris, 150-kilometer radius. North-South.” And also a Geological Survey map of the Sologne region. I spent several afternoons poring over them, trying to retrace the route we’d followed in a car that Paul Chastagnier had lent us—not his red Lancia, but a more discreet vehicle, gray in color. We left Paris via the Porte de Saint-Cloud, the tunnel, and the highway. Why this westbound road when the country house was somewhere to the south, toward Sologne?
    A little later, at the bottom of a page in the notebook where I had made some jottings about the poet Tristan Corbière, I discovered in tiny letters the word “Feuilleuse,” followed by a telephone number. The name of that village could easily have remained lost among the densely written notes about Corbière. “Feuilleuse. 437-41-10.” But of course: on one occasion I had gone to join Dannie at the country house and she’d given me the phone number. I had taken the bus at Porte de Saint-Cloud. The bus had stopped in a small town. I had phoned Dannie from a café, and she had come to pick me up in a car—the gray car that Paul Chastagnier had lent us. The country house was about a dozen miles from there. I looked up where Feuilleuse was: not in Sologne, but in the Eure-et-Loir.
    Four-three-seven, four-one, one-zero. The phone rings and rings with no answer, and I was surprised that after all these years the number was still in service. One evening, when I’d again dialed 437-41-10, I heard static and muffled voices. Perhaps it was one of those lines that had long been abandoned. The numbers were known only by the select few who used them to communicate in secret. I ended up making out a woman’s voice, which kept repeating a phrase that I couldn’t understand—a monotonous statement, like on a broken record. The voice of the talking clock? Or Dannie’s voice, calling to me from another time and from that lost country house?
    I consulted an old phone book from the Eure-et-Loir, which I had found at the Saint-Ouen flea market, dumped among hundreds of others. There were only about ten listings for Feuilleuse, and that number was indeed among them, a secret cipher that would open the “Gateway to the Past.” That was the title of a detective novel I’d taken from the library in the country house and that Dannie and I had read. Feuilleuse (Eure-et-Loir). Canton of Senonches. Mme Dorme. La Barberie. 437-41-10. Who was this Mme Dorme? Had Dannie ever mentioned her to me? Perhaps she was still alive. I needed only to get in touch with her. She would know what had happened to Dannie.
    I called information. I asked for the new number of La Barberie, in Feuilleuse, Eure-et-Loir. And, as on the day when I’d spoken with the bartender in the Café Luxembourg, my voice was sepulchral. “Is that ‘Feuilleuse’ with two l’s, sir?” I hung up. What was the use? After all this time, the name Mme Dorme had surely disappeared from the directory. The house must have known a succession of occupants, who would have remodeled it so drastically that I would never have recognized it. I spread the map of the Paris region over the table, sorry to set aside the map of Sologne, which had occupied me for an entire afternoon. The caressing sound of the word “Sologne” had led me astray. And I also