Little Jewel (7 page)

Yes, I know, it was wrong for me to be thinking about all that, even about Jean Borand. He didn't have anything to do with it, but he, too, was part of that period of my life. That Sunday, I should never have climbed the stairs to the door of the woman who used to be called the Kraut and who is now called Death Cheater. For the moment, I was still walking aimlessly, hoping soon to find Place de la Bastille, where I would take the metro. I tried to cheer myself up: later, after I'd returned to my room, I would go out and telephone Moreau-Badmaev. He'd definitely be home on a Sunday night. I'd suggest that we have dinner together in a café in Place Blanche. I'd tell him everything: about my mother, about Jean Borand, about the apartment near the Bois de Boulogne, and about the girl they used to call Little Jewel. I was still the same person, as if Little Jewel had been preserved, intact, inside a glacier. The same terrifying panic came over me in the street and woke me with a start at five in the morning. And yet I had also experienced long periods of calm, when I ended up forgetting it all. But now that my mother was apparently alive, I no longer knew which path to take.

On a blue street sign I read:
AVENUE LEDRU-ROLLIN
. It intersected with another street, at the end of which, once again, I caught sight of the massive Gare de Lyon and the illuminated clock face. I'd gone round in circles and come back to where I'd started. The station was a magnet and I was drawn to it; it was a sign of my destiny. I had to get on a train straightaway; I had to
make a break
. The words had suddenly come into my head and I couldn't get rid of them. They gave me a bit more courage. Yes, the time had come to
make a break
. But instead of heading for the station, I kept following Avenue Ledru-Rollin. Before making a break, I had to see this through to the end, without really knowing what
to the end
meant.

There was not another soul around, which was normal for a Sunday night, but the further I walked, the darker the avenue became, as if that evening I had put on sunglasses. Perhaps my eyesight was failing? Further down, on the left-hand side, was the neon sign of a chemist. I didn't take my eyes off it, in case I lost it in the darkness. As long as the green light kept shining, I would be able to find my way. I hoped it would stay lit until I got there. A late-night chemist, that very Sunday, on Avenue Ledru-Rollin. It was so dark that I'd lost all notion of time and thought it was the middle of the
night. Behind the shop window, a brunette was sitting at the counter. She wore a white coat and a severe bun, which seemed incompatible with her sweet face. She was sorting a pile of papers and, from time to time, she made notes using a Bic pen with a green lid. Eventually, she would have to notice me staring at her, but I couldn't help myself. Her face was so different from Death Cheater's, the face I had seen in the metro and imagined behind the door on the fourth floor. Anger would never deform the face before me, nor would that mouth ever be contorted or launch a volley of abuse…There was a calmness and grace about her in the soothing glow of the light, the same warm glow I'd experienced in the evenings at Frossombronne-la-Forêt…Had I really experienced that same glow? I pushed open the glass door. I heard the faint tinkling of a bell. She raised her head. I walked towards her, but I didn't know what to say.

‘Do you feel ill?'

I couldn't utter a word. And the heaviness in my chest was still suffocating me. She came over to me.

‘You're very pale…' She took my hand. I must have given her a fright. And yet her hand felt firm in mine. ‘Sit down over here.'

She took me behind the counter, to a room with an old leather armchair. She sat me in the armchair and placed her hand on my forehead.

‘You don't have a fever…But your hands are like ice… What's the matter?'

For years I had never said a word to anyone. I had kept it all to myself.

‘It would be too complicated to explain,' I replied.

‘Why? Nothing is that complicated.'

I burst into tears, which I hadn't done since the dog had died, at least twelve years or so earlier.

‘Have you had a shock recently?' she asked, lowering her voice.

‘I've seen someone I thought was dead.'

‘Someone very close to you?'

‘It's not at all important,' I assured her, trying to smile. ‘I'm just tired.'

She stood up. I could hear her, back in the shop, opening and shutting a drawer. I was still sitting in the armchair and didn't feel any urge to move.

She came back into the room. She had taken off her white coat to reveal a dark-grey skirt and jumper. She handed me a glass of water, at the bottom of which a red tablet was
dissolving in bubbles. She sat next to me, on the arm of the chair.

‘Wait until it's properly dissolved.'

I couldn't take my eyes off the fizzing red water. It was phosphorescent.

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘Something good for you.'

She'd taken my hand in hers again.

‘Are your hands still as cold?'

And the way she said ‘cold', emphasising the word, suddenly reminded me of the title of a book that Frédérique used to read to me at night, in Frossombronne, when I was in my bed:
The Children of the Cold
.

I downed the drink in one gulp. It tasted bitter. But in my childhood I'd had to swallow pills that were far more bitter.

She went to get a stool from the shop and placed it in front of me so I could rest my legs.

‘Try to relax. You don't seem very good at taking it easy.'

She helped me take off my raincoat. Then she unzipped my boots and gently removed them. She came and sat on the arm of the chair again and took my pulse. At the touch of her hand, clasped round my wrist, I immediately felt safe. I
could have dropped off to sleep, and that prospect filled me with the same sense of well-being that I experienced when the nuns gave me ether to inhale, and I fell asleep. That was just before I went to live with my mother in the big apartment near the Bois de Boulogne. I was a boarder in a school somewhere and I have no idea why I was waiting in the street that day. No one had come to collect me, so I decided to cross the street, and I was knocked down by a truck. I wasn't badly hurt, only my ankle. They made me lie down in the truck, under the tarpaulin, and drove me to a nearby house. I ended up on a bed, nuns all around, one of them leaning over me. She was wearing a white veil and she gave me inhale ether.

‘Do you live in the neighbourhood?'

I told her I lived near Place de Clichy and that I was about to go home on the metro when I'd felt sick. I was on the point of telling her about my visit to the Death Cheater's apartment block in Vincennes but, for her to understand properly, I would have had to go back a long way, perhaps to that afternoon when I was waiting outside the school gate—I'd love to remember exactly where that school was. It wasn't long before everyone had gone home, the pavement was empty, the school gate shut. I was still waiting; no one
had come to collect me. Thanks to the ether, I couldn't feel the pain in my ankle anymore, and I drifted off to sleep. A year or two later, in one of the bathrooms in the apartment near the Bois de Boulogne, I came across a bottle of ether. I was mesmerised by the midnight-blue colour of the bottle. Every time my mother had one of her episodes, when she didn't want to see anyone and asked me to bring her meals to her room on a tray or to massage her ankles, I took a whiff from the bottle so I felt brave enough to go to her. It was all too much to explain now. I just wanted to lie there, without speaking, my legs up on the stool.

‘Do you feel a bit better?'

I had never met anyone who was so gentle and assured. I had to tell her everything. Did my mother really die in Morocco? The more I went through the biscuit tin, the more doubts crept into my mind. It was the photos that made me uneasy. And especially the one that my mother wanted taken of me in the studio near the Champs-Élysées. She asked the photographer who had just taken a series of shots of her in various poses. I remembered that afternoon well. I was there from the beginning of the session. And the detail in the photos reminded me of the particular accessories that had, I would go so far as to say,
branded
me. The
loose-fitting tulle dress that my mother wore belted at the waist; the tight-fitting velvet bodice; and the veil that made her look, under those bright, white camera lights, like a fake fairy. And me, in my dress: I was a fake child prodigy, a poor little circus animal. A toy poodle. Years later, looking at those photos, I finally understood that she was so keen to push me onto the dance floor because then she could make a fresh start herself. She had failed, but it was up to me to become a
star
. Was she really dead? The same old threat was still hanging over my head. But now I had the chance to talk it all through with someone. I didn't even need to say anything. I would show her the photos.

I got up from the armchair. Now was the moment to say something, but I had no idea where to begin.

‘Are you sure you're steady on your feet?'

So attentive, her voice so calm. We had left the little room and were back in the shop.

‘You should see a doctor. Perhaps you're anaemic.' She looked me in the eye, and smiled. ‘The doctor will prescribe vitamin B injections for you. I'm not giving them to you right now…Come back and see me.'

I stood in front of her. I was trying to delay the moment when I'd walk out of the chemist and find myself alone again.

‘How are you getting home?'

‘On the metro.'

At that time of evening there were plenty of people in the metro. They were on their way home after a movie or a stroll down the Grands Boulevards. I no longer felt up to the metro trip back to my room. This time I was frightened of getting lost for good. And then there was the other problem: if I had to change trains at Châtelet, I did not want to risk coming across that yellow coat again. Everything was going to happen all over again, in the same places, at the same times, until the end. I was trapped in the same old chain of events.

‘I'll come with you.'

She saved my life; it was a close call.

She turned off the lights in the chemist and locked the door. The neon sign stayed on. We walked side by side, something I was so unaccustomed to that I could scarcely believe it. I was terrified that, at any moment, I'd wake up in my room. Her hands were in the pockets of her fur coat. I was too scared to take her arm. She was taller than I was.

‘What are you thinking about?' she asked.

And she took my arm.

We had reached the intersection that I had crossed
earlier and we were now going down the street at the end of which I could see the Gare de Lyon and the clock.

‘I think you're really nice and that I'm wasting your time.'

She turned towards me. The collar of her fur coat brushed her cheek.

‘Of course not. You're not wasting my time at all.' She paused for a second. ‘I was wondering if your parents are still alive.'

I told her that I still had a mother, who lived in the suburbs.

‘And your father?'

My father? He must have been somewhere in the suburbs, too, or in central Paris, or somewhere far away in the big wide world. Or else he died a long time ago.

‘I'm not sure about my father's identity.'

I kept my tone casual, as I was worried about making her uneasy. And I wasn't used to confiding in people.

She remained silent. I had shocked her with all that sadness and gloom. I tried to think of something more cheerful, a brighter note.

‘But fortunately I was brought up by an uncle who was kind to me.'

It wasn't really a lie. For two or three years, Jean Borand had looked after me every Thursday. Once he had taken me to the Trône fair, not far from his place. Was he my uncle? Perhaps he was my father, after all? When we were living in the apartment near the Bois de Boulogne, my mother used to cover her tracks and embellish the truth. She said to me one day that she ‘didn't like vulgar things'; I had no idea what she was referring to. Back when we were living in the big apartment, her name wasn't Suzanne Cardères anymore. She was the Comtesse Sonia O'Dauyé.

‘I don't want to bore you with my family stories.'

She still had her arm in mine. We had arrived at the Gare de Lyon, near the metro station. So it was all over now. She would leave me at the top of the stairs.

‘I'll take you home in a taxi.'

She led me over to the station. I was so surprised I couldn't bring myself to thank her. There was a line of taxis along the street. Next thing, the taxi driver was waiting for directions. I managed to say, ‘Place Blanche.'

The pharmacist asked if I had been living in the neighbourhood for long. No, just a few months. A room in a place on a little street. It used to be a hotel. The rent wasn't much. Besides, I'd found a job. The taxi drove along
the river and the empty streets.

‘But you've got friends, haven't you?'

At Trois Quartiers, one of my co-workers, Muriel, had introduced me to a small group of people she went out with on Saturday nights. For a little while, I'd been part of the gang. They would go out to dinner and then on to a nightclub. Sales girls, fellows who were starting off at the stock exchange or in jewellery shops or car dealerships. Department managers. One of them seemed more interesting than the others and I went out with him. He used to invite me to dinner and to Studio 28, a cinema in Montmartre, to watch old American movies. One night, after the movie, he took me to a hotel near Châtelet, and I let him have his way. I have only a vague memory of all those people and all those evenings out. None of it mattered at all to me. I couldn't even remember his first name. His surname was all I'd retained: Wurlitzer.

‘I don't have many friends anymore,' I said.