Little Jewel (14 page)

When I got out of the metro, the sun was still shining, the blue Moroccan sky. I went to the Monoprix in Rue Fontaine and bought a bottle of mineral water and a block of hazelnut milk chocolate. I crossed Place Blanche and took the shortcut down Rue Puget.

Back in my room, I sat on the edge of the bed, facing the window. I put the bottle of mineral water on the ground and the block of chocolate on the bed. I opened one of the bottles the pharmacist had given me and poured some of the pills into the palm of my hand. Little white pills. I put them in my mouth and swallowed them, along with a mouthful straight out of the bottle. Then I munched on a piece of chocolate. And repeated the procedure a few times. They went down better with the chocolate.

At first, I had no idea where I was. White walls and an electric light. I was lying on a bed that was not my bed from Rue Coustou. There was no pillow. My head was flat on the sheet. A nurse, a brunette, brought me some yoghurt.
She placed it a little way back, behind my head, on the sheet. She stood there, watching me. I said to her, ‘I can't reach it.' She said, ‘Give it a go. You need to make an effort.' She left. I burst into tears.

I was in a big glass cage. I looked around. There were aquariums in other glass cages. The pharmacist must have brought me here. We had arranged to meet at six o'clock in the evening to leave for Bar-sur-Aube. Inside the aquariums, I thought I could see shadows moving: fish, perhaps. I heard the noise of waterfalls, getting louder and louder. I had been trapped in icefields a long time ago, and now there was the gushing sound of them melting. I wondered what the shadows in the aquariums could possibly be. They told me later that there had been no more room, so they put me in the ward for premature babies. For a long time to come, I heard the noise of waterfalls, a sign that for me, too, from that day on, life was beginning.

P
ATRICK
M
ODIANO
, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, in 1945, and was educated in Annecy and Paris. He published his first novel,
La Place de l'Etoile
, in 1968. In 1978, he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for
Rue des Boutiques Obscures
(published in English as
Missing Person
), and in 1996 he received the Grand Prix National des Lettres for his body of work. Mr. Modiano's other writings include a book-length interview with the writer Emmanuel Berl and, with Louis Malle, the screenplay for
Lacombe Lucien
.

P
ENNY
H
UESTON
is an editor and translator.

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