Little Jewel (2 page)

I sat down at a table not far from hers. I ordered a kir, too, raising my voice so she might hear, hoping she would take it as a sign of complicity. But she remained impassive. Her head was slightly tilted, her expression at once severe and wistful, her arms folded, leaning on the table, the same pose as in the painting. Whatever happened to that painting? It followed me around during my childhood. It was hanging in my bedroom in Fossombronne-la-Forêt. ‘That's the portrait of your mother,' I was told. A fellow called Tola Soungouroff had painted it in Paris. The name and the city were written in the bottom left-hand corner. Her arms were folded, like
they were now, though she was wearing a heavy chain-link bracelet around one wrist. That was my pretext for starting a conversation.
You look just like a woman whose portrait I saw last week at the flea market in Porte de Clignancourt. The painter's name was Tola Soungouroff
. But I couldn't find the wherewithal to get up and go over to her, even assuming I were able to get the words out without making a mistake:
The painter's name was Tola Soungouroff, and your first name, Sonia, was made up; the real one, as it appears on my birth certificate, was Suzanne
. But, once I'd raced through that sentence, how would it make anything clearer for me? She would pretend not to understand, or else she'd stumble over her words, and they'd come out all jumbled, because she hadn't talked to anyone for so long. Or she would lie, she would cover her tracks, like she did at the time of the portrait and the photos, by lying about her age and by giving a false first name. And surname. And even a false title of nobility. She used to let people believe that she had been born into a family from the Irish aristocracy. She must have had dealings with an Irishman, otherwise she would never have come up with that idea. An Irishman. My father, perhaps—who would be difficult to track down, and whom she must have forgotten. She had probably forgotten
everything else, and would be surprised that I had raised it with her. That person was someone else, not her. The lies had dissolved over time. But I was sure that, back then, she believed every last one of them.

The chubby blond barman brought her another kir. Now there were a lot of people standing at the bar. And all the tables were full. We would not have been able to hear each other in the hubbub. I had the feeling that I was still on the metro. Or, rather, in the waiting room of a station, without knowing exactly which train to catch. She was putting off going home. It probably wasn't far away. I was genuinely curious to know where she lived. I had no desire at all to speak to her; I felt nothing in particular towards her. Circumstances had prevented us from sharing what people call the milk of human kindness. The only thing I wanted to know was where she had washed up, twelve years after her death in Morocco.

IT WAS A little street near the Château de Vincennes or its fort. I'm not exactly sure what the difference is between the two. The street was lined with single-storey houses, garages and even stables. Indeed, it was called Rue du Quartier-de-Cavalerie. In the middle, on the right-hand side, a large dark-brick apartment block stood out. Night had fallen by the time we stepped onto the street. I was still walking a few steps behind her, but little by little I reduced the distance between us. I was certain that, even if I walked level with her, she wouldn't notice me.

I revisited this street later, during the day. You headed past the brick apartment block, and were going to end up in a wasteland. There was not a cloud in the sky. When you got to the end of the street, it opened onto a sort of
vacant lot, which bordered a much larger area. There was a sign:
ARMY OPERATIONS
. Beyond that was the Bois de Vincennes park.

But, at night, this street looked like any other suburban street: Asnières, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Levallois…She was moving slowly, with her dancer's walk. It mustn't have been easy in slipper socks.

The dark mass of the apartment block dominated all the other buildings. Why was it here, in this street? On the ground floor there was a grocery store about to close for the night. The fluorescent lighting had been turned off and the only light was at the cash register. Through the glass I could see her taking food off the back shelves, one can, then another. And a black packet. Coffee? Chicory? She clutched the cans and the packet against her coat but, once she got to the register, she fumbled. The cans and the packet tumbled to the ground. The fellow at the register picked them up. He smiled at her. Their lips were moving, and I would have liked to know what name he called her. Her true, unmarried name? She left, cradling the cans and the packet against her coat with both hands, as if she were carrying a newborn baby. I almost offered to help, but Rue du Quartier-de-Cavalerie suddenly seemed like a backwater, a
long way from Paris, in a garrison town. Soon everything would be shut, the town would be deserted, and I would miss the last train.

She went through the metal gate. The minute I saw this dark-brick building, I had an intuition that she lived there. She crossed the courtyard, at the end of which were several identical apartment blocks. She was walking more and more slowly, perhaps frightened that she would drop her shopping again. From behind, it looked as if it was too heavy for her, and that, at any moment, she was about to stumble.

She went into one of the apartment blocks at the far end, on the left. Each building had an entrance with a sign:
STAIRCASE A. STAIRCASE B. STAIRCASE C. STAIRCASE D.
Hers was Staircase A. I stayed outside for a while, waiting for a light to come on in a window. But I waited in vain. I wondered if there was a lift. I pictured her climbing Staircase A, clasping the cans. That image wouldn't fade, even in the metro on the way back.

ON SEVERAL OTHER evenings, I retraced my steps. I waited on a bench at Châtelet at exactly the same time as I had first come across her. I was on the lookout for the yellow coat.

The barrier opens as the train leaves and the tide of passengers pours onto the platform. When the next train arrives, they'll pile into the carriages. The platform empties, it fills again, and you let yourself drift off. With all the comings and goings, you no longer focus on anything precise, not even a yellow coat. A groundswell pushes you into one of the carriages.

I remember that, back then, the same poster was in every station. A couple with three fair-haired children all sitting round a table in an alpine chalet in the evening.
Their faces were illuminated by a lamp. Outside, it was snowing. It must have been Christmas. Written on top of the poster were the words:
PUPIER, THE CHOCOLATE FOR FAMILIES
.

The first week, I went to Vincennes once. The following week, twice. Then twice more. There were always too many people in the café at around seven in the evening for anyone to notice me. The second time, I ventured to ask the chubby blond barman if the woman in the yellow coat would come today. He frowned without seeming to understand. Someone from another table called him over. I don't think he heard me. But he wouldn't have had time to reply. It was peak hour for him, too. Perhaps she wasn't a regular at this café at all, and didn't live in this neighbourhood. Perhaps the person she had called from the phone box lived in the brick apartment block and, that particular evening, she had been visiting and had brought cans of food. Later, she had taken the metro in the other direction, as I had also done, and she had gone home, and I would never know precisely where. My only point of reference was Staircase A. But I would have to knock on each door on each landing and ask whoever was prepared to answer whether they knew a woman, about fifty years old, with a yellow coat and a scar on her face. Yes, well, she had been there one evening the
week before, after buying cans of food and a packet of coffee from the grocery store on the street. What could they possibly say to me? That I had dreamed it all up?

And yet, there she was again in the fifth week. Just as I was coming out of the entrance to the metro, I saw her in the phone box. She was wearing her yellow coat. I wondered whether she, too, had just left the station. So she might have regular commutes and timetables in her life…I had trouble imagining her holding down a day job, like everyone else on the metro at that hour. Châtelet station. It was a vague starting point for further clues. Tens of thousands of people wind up at Châtelet before scattering to all points of the compass. Their paths mingle and blur, once and for all. There are fixed points in this tide of people. I should not have been content to wait on one of the station benches. I should have spent time hanging around the ticket offices and newspaper stands, in the long corridor with the escalator, and also in the other corridors. People can be there all day, but you only notice them after they've become a predictable feature of the place. Homeless people. Buskers. Pickpockets. People who have lost their way and who will never go up to the outside world again. Perhaps she never left Châtelet all day, either.

I was observing her in the phone box. It was like the first time: she didn't seem to have got through straightaway. She dialled the number again. She was speaking now, but the call was much shorter than the other evening. She hung up abruptly. She came out of the phone box and didn't stop at the café. She continued along Avenue de Paris, still with the gait of a dancer, until we reached the Château de Vincennes metro. Why didn't she get off at this stop, the end of the line? Because of the phone box and the café where she drank her customary kir before going home? And those other evenings when I hadn't seen her? Of course: she must have got off at Château de Vincennes.

I had to speak to her, or she would end up noticing that someone was following her. I tried to think of the words. The fewest possible. I would extend my hand. ‘You used to call me Little Jewel. You must remember,' I would say to her. We were approaching the apartment block and, as on the first evening, I couldn't find it in me to address her. On the contrary, I let her draw further away. My legs felt heavy; I was filled with inertia. But also a sort of relief as her figure receded. That evening, she didn't stop in the grocery store to buy cans of food. She crossed the courtyard of the apartment block, and I stayed behind the metal gate. The courtyard
was lit by a single globe above the entrance to Staircase A. In that light, the coat took on its yellow hue again. She looked exhausted as she trudged, hunching slightly, towards the staircase. At that moment, the title of a picture book I used to read, when my name was Little Jewel, came back to me:
The Old Circus Horse
.

When she had disappeared, I went through the metal gate. On the left was a glass door with a sign stuck on it—a list of names in alphabetical order and, next to each name, the corresponding staircase. A light was on behind the glass. I knocked. In the half-open door the face of a woman appeared, a brunette, short hair, quite young. I told her that I was looking for a lady who lived there. A lady who was single and wore a yellow coat.

Instead of shutting the door, the woman frowned, as if she was trying to remember a name.

‘That must be Madame Boré. Staircase A…I've forgotten which floor.'

She ran her finger down the list. She pointed to a name. Boré. Staircase A. Fourth floor. I began to cross the courtyard. When I heard the concierge shutting her door, I did an about-turn and slipped out onto the street.

That evening, during the trip home on the metro, I kept thinking about the name. Boré. Yes, it was similar to the name of the man I had understood to be my mother's brother, Jean Borand. On Thursdays, he used to take me to his garage. Was it just a coincidence? And yet my mother's surname, as it appeared on my birth certificate, was Cardères. And O'Dauyé was the surname she had adopted as a sort of stage name. That was around the time when my own name was Little Jewel…

In my bedroom, I looked at the photos once again. I opened the diary and the address book that I kept packed away in the old biscuit tin and, in the middle of the diary, I came across a piece of paper torn out of a school exercise book—I recognised that scrap only too well. The tiny handwriting in blue ink did not belong to my mother. At the top of the page were the words:
SONIA CARDÈRES
. Under the name was a dash, then the following lines, which ran into the margin.

A missed opportunity. Unhappy in September. A quarrel with a blonde woman. Tendency to rely on dangerously easy solutions. What is lost will never be found. Falling for a non-Frenchman. A change in the months to come.
Be careful at the end of July. A visit from a stranger. No danger, but exercise caution all the same. The journey will end well
.

She had been to see a fortune teller or a palm reader. I assume she was uncertain about her future.
Tendency to rely on dangerously easy solutions
. All of a sudden, she had become frightened, like being on the scenic railway ride at an amusement park. It's too late to get off. It speeds up and soon you're wondering if the carriages will fly off the tracks. She could sense that everything was about to come tumbling down.

Unhappy in September
. That was probably the summer when, out of the blue, I found myself alone in the country. The train was packed. I was wearing a label around my neck with an address written on it.
What is lost will never be found
. In the country, not long after, I received a postcard. It's in the bottom of the biscuit tin. Casablanca. La Place de France. ‘Lots of love.' Not even a signature. Large handwriting, the same as in the diary and the address book. In the past, girls of my mother's age were taught to write in large script.
Falling for a non-Frenchman
—but which one? Several names that are not French feature in the address
book.
Be careful at the end of July
. That was the month I was sent off to the country, to Fossombronne-la-Forêt. The painting by Tola Soungouroff was hanging on the wall of my bedroom so that, every morning when I woke up, my mother's eyes were staring at me. After receiving the postcard, I never heard another thing. All that was left was that gaze in the morning, and at night when I was in bed reading, or when I was sick. After a while, it dawned on me that she was staring not at me but into space.