Little Jewel (13 page)

I had arranged to meet her at eight in the evening at the café in Place Blanche, the one that looks like a little house. There's a room on the first floor, but I had told her that I would be at one of the tables on the ground floor.

I got there half an hour early and chose a table near the bay window that looks out on Place Blanche. The waiter
asked if I wanted to order a drink and I was tempted to get a whisky. But that would have been stupid: I didn't need it. I wasn't feeling the familiar weight pressing down on my chest. I told him I was waiting for someone, and just saying those few words did me as much good as any alcohol would have.

She entered the café at exactly eight o'clock. She was wearing the same fur coat as last time, and flat shoes. She caught sight of me immediately. As she walked to the table, I noticed that she carried herself like a dancer, but I found it more reassuring that she was a pharmacist. She kissed me on the forehead and sat next to me on the banquette.

‘Are you feeling better than the other evening?'

She was smiling. There was something protective about the way she was looking at me, about that smile. I hadn't noticed that her eyes were green. I was too disoriented that Sunday in the armchair at the chemist, and later in my room the light hadn't been as bright as now in the café.

‘I brought you something to give you a boost.'

From one of the pockets of her coat, which she had draped over the banquette, she fished out two bottles of medicine.

‘Here's some cough mixture…you have to take it four times a day. And these are tablets to help you sleep. You take one at night, and whenever you feel a bit strange.'

She placed the two bottles in front of me on the table.

‘And I think we should give you some injections of vitamin B12.'

All I could say was thank you. I would have liked to elaborate, but I wasn't used to being looked after, not since the nuns had been kind enough to make me inhale a pad doused in ether, the day I was knocked down by the truck.

Neither of us said anything for a moment. Even though I sensed that she would command respect in people, I had the feeling that she was just as shy as I was.

‘You weren't a dancer, were you?'

She seemed surprised by my question, and then burst out laughing. ‘Why?'

‘Just before, I thought you walked like a dancer.'

She told me that, like most girls, she had taken dance lessons until the age of twelve, but nothing after that. I recalled another photo at the bottom of the biscuit tin. Two twelve-year-old girls wearing ballet outfits. Written in purple ink on the back of the photo, in a childish hand, were the words: ‘Josette Dagory and Suzanne'—my mother's real first
name. Jean Borand had the same photo stuck on the wall of his office in the garage. Everything was fine at the time of that photo. So when did the ankle accident happen, or the accident, full stop? How old was she? Now it was too late to find out. There was no one left to tell me.

When the waiter came over to our table, the pharmacist was surprised that I didn't order anything.

‘You're so pale, you should eat something to build up your strength.'

Moreau-Badmaev had said the same thing, but she had more authority than he did.

‘I'm not very hungry.'

‘Well, you can share with me.'

I didn't dare contradict her. She put half of her meal on a plate for me and I forced myself to eat, my eyes shut, and counted the mouthfuls.

‘Do you come here often?'

I used to go mostly in the mornings, very early, when the café opened; it was the time of day when I felt best. What a relief to be done with broken sleep and bad dreams.

‘I haven't been back to this neighbourhood for ages,' she said. She pointed, through the bay window, at the chemist on the other side of Place Blanche. ‘I worked
there when I first started as a pharmacist. It was busier than where I am now.'

She might have come across my mother, after her ‘accident', when she had a job as a dancer in this area, and still lived in a hotel room. The years are blurring in my head.

‘I think there were a lot of dancers around here at that time,' I said. ‘Did you know any?'

She frowned. ‘Oh, you know, there was a real mix of people in the neighbourhood.'

‘Did you work at night?'

‘Yes. Often.' She was still frowning. ‘I don't like talking about the past very much. You're hardly eating a thing. Don't be silly.'

I forced myself to eat one last mouthful to please her.

‘Do you intend to stay in this neighbourhood for much longer? Couldn't you find a room a bit closer to the School of Oriental Languages?'

Of course, I had told her the other night that I was enrolled in the School of Oriental Languages. I'd forgotten that, in her mind, I was a student.

‘I do plan on moving as soon as I can…'

I wanted to let her in on my secret: that the banquette I was sitting on then, in Place Blanche, was probably the
same one my mother had sat on twenty years ago. And that, at the time of my birth, she was living, just like I was, in a room at 11 Rue Coustou, perhaps in my room.

‘It's quite convenient for getting to the school,' I told her. ‘I take the metro at Place Blanche and it's direct to Sèvres-Babylone.'

She had that sceptical smile again, as if she wasn't taken in by my lie. I was just saying whatever came into my head. I didn't even know where the School of Oriental Languages was.

‘You look so anxious,' she said. ‘I'd like to know what's worrying you.'

She brought her face up close to mine, those green eyes fixed on me the whole time. She wanted to read my mind; I would slip into a sweet drowsiness, talk without stopping, and come clean about everything. And she wouldn't need to take notes like Moreau-Badmaev.

‘I'm going to stay for a bit longer in the neighbourhood, and then that will be the end of it.'

The more she fixed me with her green eyes, the more clearly I could see myself, as if I were a separate person from myself. It was quite simple: that evening, there is a girl with brown hair, scarcely nineteen, sitting on the banquette of
a café in Place Blanche. You are five foot three inches tall, and you are wearing an off-white woollen cable-knit jumper. You're going to stay there a bit longer, and then that will be the end of it. You are there because you wanted to go back to the past one last time to try to understand. Right there, under the electric light, in Place Blanche, is where everything began. For one last time, you went back to your home country, to the beginning, to find out if there was a different path to take and if things could have turned out differently.

‘What will it be the end of?' she asked me.

I made myself eat another mouthful to please her.

‘You should have dessert.'

‘No, thank you. But perhaps we could have a drink.'

‘I don't think alcohol would be advisable in your case.'

I liked her sceptical smile and precise way of speaking.

‘When was the last time you got out of Paris?'

I told her that I hadn't left Paris since I was sixteen, except for the two or three times when that fellow I'd known, Wurlitzer, took me to the beach on the North Sea.

‘You should get some fresh air from time to time. Would you like to come with me on Saturday? I have to go to Bar-sur-Aube again for three days. It would do you good. I have a house just outside the town.'

Bar-sur-Aube. I pictured the first glimmer of sunlight, the dew on the grass, a walk along the river…Names alone set me dreaming.

She asked me again if I wanted to go with her on Saturday to Bar-sur-Aube.

‘Unfortunately, I have to work in the afternoon,' I said.

‘But I'm leaving around six in the evening.'

‘Well, it might be possible. That's really very kind of you.'

I would ask Véra Valadier if I could leave earlier than usual. And what about the little girl? They probably wouldn't mind if I took her off for a few days to Bar-sur-Aube.

We walked along the median strip of the boulevard. I didn't dare ask her to stay with me again that night. I could still call Moreau-Badmaev. But what if, by chance, he wasn't at home and was busy somewhere else until tomorrow?

She must have sensed my anxiety. She took my arm. ‘I can take you back to your place, if you'd like.'

We turned into Rue Coustou. And there, on the right, as we passed in front of the dark wooden façade of Zone Out, I saw a sign in the entrance:
CINQ-VERNE, THE GIRLS AND
THE GHOST TRAIN
. I remembered what Frédérique had said when she told me about my mother and the accident that forced her to give up ballet and work in places like this: ‘A wounded racehorse on the way to the abattoir.'

‘Are you sure you don't want to have a go on the ghost train?' the pharmacist asked. Her smile was comforting. In my room, she took the bottles of medicine out of one of the pockets of her coat and placed them on the bedside table.

‘You won't forget? I've written the instructions on the bottles.' She leaned towards me. ‘You're very pale…I think it would do you a lot of good to spend a few days outside Paris. There's a forest near the house where we can go for some lovely walks.'

She put her hand on my forehead.

‘Lie down.'

I lay down and she told me to take off my coat.

‘I have a feeling that right now I need to keep a close eye on you.'

She took off her fur coat, and laid it over me.

‘You still don't have any heating. You'll have to come and spend winter in my apartment.'

She stayed sitting on the edge of the bed and again fixed me with her green eyes.

I GOT OFF the metro at Porte Maillot and followed the path that runs along the Jardin d'Acclimatation. It was cold but the sun was shining, and the sky was cloudless and blue, as it is perhaps in Morocco. All the shutters on the windows in the Valadier house were closed. Just as I was about to ring the doorbell, I noticed a letter stuck under the door. I picked it up. It was the letter I had sent on Wednesday, from the post office on Place des Abbesses. I rang the bell. No one answered.

I waited a while, sitting on the doorstep. The sun was blinding. I stood up and rang again. Then I told myself that it wasn't worth waiting any longer. They had left. The wax seals had probably been fastened to the doors. When I was there last, I had a hunch that would happen.

I held the letter in my hand. And I felt the vertigo coming back. It had been with me since I was young, since Fossombronne, when I used to try to cross the bridge. The first time, I ran; the second time, I walked fast; the third time, I made myself walk as slowly as possible to the middle. And now, once again, I had to try to walk slowly, away from the edge, saying comforting words to myself, over and over. Bar-sur-Aube. The pharmacist.
There's a forest near the house where we can go for some lovely walks
. I was walking down the path that runs along the Jardin d'Acclimatation; I was heading away from the house with the closed shutters. The feeling of vertigo was getting stronger and stronger. It was all because of the letter that had been stuck under the door for nothing and that no one would ever open. And yet I had sent it from the post office on Place des Abbesses, a post office like any other, in Paris, in France. The letters sent to me from Morocco must have stayed unopened like this one. A wrong address on the envelope, or a small spelling mistake, that's all it would have taken for them to go astray, one after the other, and end up in some unknown post office. Unless they'd been sent back to Morocco, but even then there was already no one there anymore. They'd gone missing, like the dog.