In the Café of Lost Youth

 

”In the Cafe of Lost Youth” by Patrick Modiano is a profound work. It is deeply philosophical, aesthetically pleasing, and filled with brilliant prose. The story is incoherent in its form, with different timelines, shifting perspectives, and various locations. But everything revolved around only one character, Louki. This novella is about this girl, told from multiple perspectives, including her own, but still, when I finish reading, I am as new to her as I was when I first read Chapter 1. Just as all the other characters felt about her. She doesn't hide much; she is as open to others as she is to herself.  But still, there is always a mysterious aura in her presence.

Roland is one of the characters from whose perspective we get to know more about Louki. He falls in love with her, dreams of a future, and in her way, Louki also reciprocates the love. He is so intrigued by the place where it all is happening, Paris. He believes that Paris has few places that he calls ‘Neutral zones’, where these places get devoid of other realities. They stand outside of the regular world, and in these neutral zones, lost souls will find comfort and refuge. Café Le Conde is one such place where young people gather around to find solace in each other's company. We are introduced to Louki in this café, sitting idly, devoid of her reality. Roland learns more about Louki as they go out together, and when he thinks he knows everything about her, he loses her. His loss makes him wonder whether he knew anything about her. That made him realize that her very own existence is just like the city of Paris, where certain places are outside of reality. The Neutral Zone. Louki becomes the personified version of this neutral zone.

The news of her death, that she committed suicide, flows into the narration so beautifully. The only thing that I could grasp about her character is that she can't handle it when she is happy in her life. Whenever everything is going fine, she has this tendency to run away from that. The decision of her death also flows into the narration like that, as if she has nowhere to go. And she kills herself just when everything was going great. Maybe she had run out of any neutral zones to escape, so she decided to choose her existence as a neutral zone to go hide.

This book offers all the puzzle pieces and shows the reader how to arrange them accordingly. Towards the end, when the puzzles are put together, we get an image that is as puzzling as the puzzle itself. This is how Modiano frames, Louki (or) Jaqueline, a character built from presence as much as absence. It is as if, leaving our footprints on the shores of a beach, the clear structure of it disappears when the next wave comes. For a moment, she feels like a girl that we might have come across every day, whom we think we know about, living a regular old life of a young girl. But when looked upon closer, she feels like a mirage in a desert.

All the events that happen in this book feel like walking through a dream. A melancholic dream. The prose flows through different timelines with ease, making no room for any confusion. Modiano’s words did not tell a story but paint an image. An image that you might think you know what it's about, but the moment you stop thinking about it fades, just like footprints on a beach, just like a mirage in a desert, just like a puzzle: that even when solved, remains puzzled.