The Black Notebook (5 page)

I walked straight ahead, clutching the manuscript under my arm. I was afraid of losing it. A late summer afternoon. I followed Rue de la Convention toward the black façade and fences of Boucicaut Hospital.

When I awoke, I realized that the post office where I'd gone to collect the parcel in my dream was the same one where I often used to accompany Dannie. She got her mail there. I had asked her why she had her mail sent to general delivery at Rue de la Convention. She explained that she had once lived in this neighborhood, and since that time she'd had “no permanent address.”

She didn't receive much mail. A single letter each time. We would stop in a café down the street, at the corner of Rue de la Convention and Avenue Félix-Faure, just opposite the metro entrance. She would open the letter and read it in front of me. And then she would shove it in the pocket of her coat. The first time we were in that café, she told me it was a relative writing from the provinces.

She seemed sorry not to be living in the neighborhood anymore. From what I thought I understood—but sometimes she contradicted herself, and she didn't seem to have much sense of chronology—it was the first place she had lived in Paris. Not for long. A few months. I immediately sensed a certain reluctance to tell me exactly which province, which region, she came from. One day, she'd said, “When I arrived in Paris at the Gare de Lyon . . .” and that sentence must have struck me, because I recorded it in my black notebook. It was rare for her to give such precise details about herself. It was on an evening when we had gone to fetch her mail at Rue de la Convention, much later than usual. By the time we arrived at the post office, evening had already fallen and it was almost closing time. We had ended up at the café. The waiter, who must have known her since she'd lived in the neighborhood, served her, without being asked, a glass of Cointreau. She had read the letter and stuffed it in her pocket.

“When I arrived in Paris at the Gare de Lyon . . .” The day of her arrival, she told me, she had taken the metro. After several transfers, she had gotten off here, at Boucicaut station. And she nodded at the metro entrance outside the café window. Moreover, she had made the wrong transfer at one point and found herself at Michel-Ange-Auteuil. I let her talk, knowing how she eluded questions that were too specific: she changed the subject, as if she hadn't heard, her mind seemingly elsewhere. Still, I asked her, “Wasn't anybody there to meet you at the Gare de Lyon that day?” “No, nobody.” They had lent her a small apartment right near here, on Avenue Félix-Faure. She had stayed there for a few months. This was before the Cité Universitaire. I lowered my eyes. A single word, too probing a look, would be enough to stop her talking. “Later on, I'll show you the building where I lived.” I was amazed by her offer, and especially by her sorrowful voice, as if she felt bad about leaving the place. She was suddenly lost in thought. At such moments, she looked as if she wished she could retrace her steps, realizing she'd taken the wrong path. She had put the letter in her pocket. All in all, the only contact she had retained with this neighborhood was the general delivery window at the post office.

That evening, we walked up Rue de la Convention toward the Seine. Later, we would sometimes follow the same route when she had an appointment on the Right Bank, on Avenue Victor-Hugo, on afternoons when I would first accompany her to the post office so she could pick up her usual letter. On the way, she pointed out the church of Saint-Christophe-de-Javel, where she went regularly, she said, to light a candle—not that she really believed in God, but more out of superstition. It was when she had first come to Paris. Because of that, I've always had a soft spot for that brick church, and still today I have an urge to walk in and light a candle myself. But for what?

Once at the Seine, we didn't take the metro at Javel station, as we normally did to go to the Right Bank. Instead, we turned around and headed back down Rue de la Convention. She was intent on showing me the building where she'd lived. When we reached the café, we turned onto Avenue Félix-Faure, taking the right-hand sidewalk. As we approached the building, she said, “I'm going to show you the apartment . . . I've kept the key.” She had no doubt planned this visit, as she was carrying the key with her. She also said, after darting a glance at the black window of the concierge's studio: “The concierge always goes out for a bit at this time of day, but try not to make any noise on the stairs.” She didn't turn on the hall light. We made our way in the dull glimmer of a night-light on the ground floor. She leaned on my arm. We walked up the stairs pressed against each other, and I thought of an expression that made me want to laugh: “pussyfooting.”

She opened the door in the dark, then shut it gently behind us. She felt around for the light switch, and a yellowish glow fell from the ceiling in the foyer. She cautioned me to speak only in a whisper and not to turn on any other lights. Immediately to the right, the half-open door to a bedroom that she said had been hers. She pulled me into the hallway in front of us, scarcely brightened by the overhead foyer light. To the left was a room with a table and sideboard. The dining room? To the right was the living room, judging from the couch and the small, glass-doored cabinet containing ivory figurines. Since the curtains were drawn, she switched on a lamp on a side table. It gave the same yellowish, muted glow as the ceiling light. To the back, a bedroom containing a large brass bed and wallpaper with sky-blue patterns. A few books were piled on one of the bedside tables. I was suddenly afraid of hearing the entry door slam and the person who lived there catching us. She opened the drawers of the night tables one by one and rummaged through them. From each she pulled out a few papers that she shoved into the pocket of her coat. And I remained standing, stiff, watching her, expecting the door to slam at any moment. She opened one glass door of the cabinet facing the bed, but its shelves were empty. She closed it. “Aren't you afraid someone might come?” I murmured. She shrugged. She scanned the titles of the books on the bedside table. She took one, with a red cover, and slid that into her coat pocket as well. She must have known the person who lived here, since her key still opened the apartment door. She switched off the bedside lamp and we left the room. At the other end, the yellowish glow from the ceiling and living room lights accentuated the old-fashioned look of the place, with its dark wood sideboard, its ivory figurines in their display case, the worn carpets. “You know the people who live here?” I asked. She didn't answer. They couldn't have been her parents, since she had arrived from the provinces or abroad, at the Gare de Lyon. Someone who lived alone and had sublet a room to her?

She guided me back toward that room, to the left before the foyer. She didn't switch on the light. She left the door wide open. We could see well enough by the light from the foyer. A much smaller bed than in the back bedroom, a bare box spring. The curtains were drawn, the same black drapes as in the hotel where we had stayed near the Val-de-Grâce. Against the left-hand wall, opposite the bed, a folding table on which sat a record player in a leather-covered case and two or three LPs. With the back of her hand she wiped the dust off the record sleeves. She said, “Wait here a minute.” I sat on the box spring. When she returned, she was holding a carrier bag in which she put the record player and records. She sat down next to me on the box spring and seemed to be thinking, as if afraid she'd forgotten something. “It's too bad we can't just stay in this room,” she said aloud. She gave me a slightly tense smile. Her voice echoed strangely in the small, empty apartment. We shut the bedroom door behind us. I carried the bag with the record player and records. She turned off the light in the foyer. After opening the front door, she said, “The concierge must be back by now. We'll have to get by her place as fast as possible.” With the bag in my hand, I was afraid of stumbling on the steps in the dark. I went down the stairs ahead of her. The hall light went on, and we froze for a moment on the first-floor landing. A door shut. She whispered that it was the door to the concierge's. We again crept down the stairs, in bright light that contrasted with the muted glow of the apartment. On the ground level, the concierge's glass door was lit from inside. Press the button that would unlock the main entrance. And what if it stayed shut? Impossible to hide the carrier bag, which suddenly felt very heavy and made me look like a burglar. The locked entrance, the concierge phoning the police, the police van into which we'd climb, she and I. I know, I can't help it: one always feels guilty when one hasn't had noble, honest parents to convince us in childhood of our inalienable rights, and even of our clear superiority, in any and all circumstances. She pushed the button and the door opened. In the street, I couldn't help walking very fast, and she kept pace. Perhaps she was afraid of running into the person who lived upstairs.

When we reached Rue de la Convention, I thought we would dive into the metro, but instead she pulled me into the café where we usually went after general delivery. No customers at that hour. We sat at a table all the way in back. The waiter brought her a Cointreau, and I wondered if it was wise to let ourselves be noticed here after our clandestine visit to the apartment. I had hidden the carrier bag under the table. She pulled the book and papers from the pocket of her coat. Later, she told me she was glad to have retrieved that book, a cherished possession that someone had given her as a child. She had almost lost it several times, and each time she found it again, like those faithful objects that refuse to abandon you. It was a French translation of
Rupert of Hentzau
by Anthony Hope, an old copy with a damaged red cover. Among the papers she was examining, several letters, an expired passport, some calling cards . . .

It was almost nine p.m., but the waiter and the man who was his boss, on the telephone behind the bar, seemed to have forgotten our presence. “We left the light on in the living room,” she suddenly blurted out. More than anxiety, the realization caused her a certain sadness or regret, as if the banal act of going back to turn off the light was denied her. “I knew I'd forgotten something . . . I should have checked the wardrobe in my room to see if there were any clothes left.” I offered to go back up to the apartment to turn off the living room light and fetch her clothes, if she'd give me the key. Or perhaps I didn't need the key—I could simply knock on the door. The person who lived in the apartment, if he was back, would open, and I would say that I'd come on her behalf. I proposed this as if it were the most natural thing in the world, hoping she'd tell me more. I had come to understand that you couldn't ask her anything directly. “No, no, it's out of the question,” she said in a calm voice. “They must think I'm dead.” “Dead?” “Yes . . . or gone, anyway.” She smiled at me to mitigate the seriousness in her voice. I pointed out that, in any case, “they” would notice someone had lit the lamp in the living room and taken the papers, the book, the record player and records. She shrugged. “They'll think it was a ghost.” She gave a brief laugh. After the hesitation and sadness that I'd been surprised to see in her, she now looked relaxed. “She's an old woman I rented a room from,” she said. “And she probably couldn't understand how I could just up and leave one day without a word. But I'd rather make a clean break. I don't like goodbyes.” I wondered if that was the truth or if she was trying to mollify me and avoid further questions. Why, if it was an “old woman,” had she initially said “they”? No matter. There in that café, I didn't feel the need to ask her any questions. Rather than always subjecting others to interrogation, it's better to accept them as they are, without comment. Besides, I might have had a vague premonition that I would be asking myself those same questions later on.

And in fact, three or four years later, I was in a car one evening at the Rond-Point Mirabeau and saw Rue de la Convention stretching in front of me. I had the illusion that if I just stepped out of the car, left it there in the middle of the blocked traffic and started down that street on foot, I would finally be in the open air, weightless. I would trip effortlessly down the right-hand sidewalk. On the way, I would light a candle in the church of Saint-Christophe-de-Javel. And a little farther on I would find myself between the café and the metro entrance. The waiter wouldn't be surprised to see me, and without my even asking, he'd bring me two Cointreaus, setting the glasses side by side. I would ring at the door of the apartment to retrieve her clothes. The problem was that I didn't know the exact address of the building, and the façades and entrances in that part of Avenue Félix-Faure looked too much alike for me to recognize the right one. That same evening, I thought I heard her slightly husky voice telling me, “An old woman I rented a room from,” and that voice sounded so near . . . An old woman . . . I consulted the street directory to try to find the address. I remembered walking past a hotel and a large display window, in which I was surprised to see rows of telephones gleaming in the twilight. One afternoon when she'd gone to get her mail, she had arranged to meet me in the café, and I strolled along Avenue Félix-Faure toward the building where we had entered like thieves a few evenings before. Parents were waiting on the sidewalk outside a girls' school. The street directory confirmed my recollections. Burgunder telephones. Hôtel Aviation—that was before the building, I was certain of it. But the girls' school at number 56? Before or after? In any case, the building came before the intersection where the avenue met Rue Duranton. I wanted to verify it firsthand. But what was the use? All those façades looked too much alike. “An old woman I rented a room from.” In the directory, there was, in fact, at number 62, a Mme Baulé.

She had handed me the book with the red cover,
Rupert of Hentzau
by Anthony Hope, so I could stash it in the carrier bag with the records and record player. I asked her if she'd read it. Yes, once, as a child, all the way to the end, without understanding a word. After that, she read chapters at random. It was getting on nine o'clock. The waiter said the café was about to close. We found ourselves outside in the rain. I was carrying the bag, and one of her coat pockets was distended from all the papers she'd crammed into it. We waited a long time for the metro, and even longer for the transfer at La Motte-Picquet. At that hour, the train was empty. She dug into her pocket and sorted what looked like calling cards from among the papers. When she realized I was watching with some curiosity, she said, smiling, “I'll show you all this . . . You'll see . . . It's not very interesting.”