Little Jewel (8 page)

‘You mustn't be by yourself all the time like that… Otherwise you won't be able to keep fighting your demons.'

She turned and looked at me with a slightly mischievous smile. I couldn't bring myself to ask her how old she was. Perhaps ten or fifteen years older than I was, the same
age as my mother at the time of the big apartment and the two photos, of her and of me. All the same, what an odd thing to do, to go and die in Morocco. ‘She wasn't a nasty woman,' Frédérique told me one night when we were talking about my mother. ‘She was just unlucky.' She had come to Paris when she was very young, to learn classical ballet at the Paris Opera Ballet School. It was all she wanted to do. Then she'd had an accident ‘with her ankles' and had to stop ballet. At twenty, she was dancing, but as a chorus girl in obscure cabaret shows, at Ferrari, Préludes, the Moulin Rouge, all those names I'd heard, during their conversations, from the brunette who didn't like my mother and who, like her, had worked in those clubs. ‘You see,' Frédérique said, ‘because of her ankles, she was like a wounded racehorse on the way to the abattoir.'

The pharmacist leaned over and said, ‘Try to cheer up. Shut your eyes and think about pleasant things.' We had reached Rue de Rivoli, before the Louvre, and the taxi was stopped at a red light, even though there were no pedestrians and no other cars. To the right was the illuminated sign of a jazz club, hidden among the dark apartment blocks. Because the bulbs in some of the letters had burned out, you couldn't read the name of the club
anymore. I had ended up there one Sunday night, with the others, in a basement where an old orchestra was playing. If we hadn't gone there that night, I guess they would have played to an empty house. Around midnight, I left the club with Wurlitzer, and that was, I believe, the moment when I became aware of just how lonely I was. Rue de Rivoli was empty, a freezing January night…He had suggested that we go to a hotel. I knew the hotel well, with its steep staircase and musty smell. I thought it was the sort of hotel where my mother must have ended up at the same age as me, on the same Sunday nights, when she was called Suzanne Cardères. And I didn't see why everything had to start over again. So I fled. I ran off down Rue de Rivoli under the arcades.

I asked the taxi driver to stop on the corner of Boulevard de Clichy. It was time to say goodbye. ‘Thank you,' I said to the pharmacist, ‘for coming with me.'

I was trying to think of some way I could get her to stay with me. Perhaps it wasn't that late after all. We could have dinner together in the café on Place Blanche.

But she was the one who took the lead. ‘I'd really like to see where you live.'

We got out of the taxi and, just as we set off, I felt an odd sensation of lightness. It was the first time I'd walked along that street with someone. Usually, when I came home by myself at night, I would get to the corner of Rue Coustou and suddenly feel like I was leaving the present and sliding into a zone where time had stopped. And I was terrified of never being able to cross back, to return to Place Blanche, where life was being lived. I thought I would remain forever a prisoner of that little street and that room, like Sleeping Beauty. But tonight I had someone with me, and around us was nothing more than a harmless stage set cut out of cardboard. We were walking along the pavement on the right. This time I had taken her arm. She didn't seem at all surprised to be there. We walked the length of the big building at the bottom of the street; we passed the cabaret with the shadowy entrance hall. She looked up at the sign in black letters:
ZONE OUT
.

‘Have you been in there?'

I told her that I hadn't.

‘It doesn't look much fun.'

At that time of night, going past Zone Out, I was always
frightened that I'd be dragged into the hallway or, rather, sucked in, as if the laws of gravity no longer applied in that space. Out of superstition, I often walked on the opposite side of the street. The week before, I had dreamed of going to Zone Out. I was sitting there in darkness. A spotlight came on; its cold white light lit up a small stage as well as the room where I found myself at a round table. Sitting at other tables were the silhouettes of motionless men and women who I knew were no longer alive. I woke up with a start. I think I'd been screaming.

We reached number 11 Rue Coustou.

‘You'll see…It's quite shabby. And I'm worried that I didn't tidy up.'

‘That doesn't matter at all.'

I was being looked after. I no longer felt ashamed or frightened of anything. I went ahead of her on the stairs and along the corridor, but she didn't seem to mind. She followed, nonchalant, as if she knew the way.

I opened the door and switched on the lamp. As luck would have it, I'd made the bed and put my clothes in the wardrobe. There was just my coat hanging from the handle on the window.

She went over to the window. In her soothing voice,
she asked, ‘It's not too noisy outside?'

‘No, not at all.'

Down below was Rue Puget, a short street that I often took to cut through to Place Blanche. There was a bar on the corner, Le Canter, with yellow wood panelling on the façade. I'd gone there one evening to buy cigarettes. Two dark-haired men were drinking at the bar with a woman. Other men were playing cards in grim silence at a table at the back. I was told that I had to have a drink if I wanted to buy a packet of cigarettes and one of the dark-haired fellows ordered me a whisky, neat, which I downed in one go so I could be done with it. He asked me if I ‘lived with my parents'. There really was quite a strange vibe in that place.

She was glued to the window, staring out. I said that it wasn't such a great view. She made a remark about there not being any shutters or curtains. Did I find it difficult to sleep? I assured her that I didn't need curtains. The only thing that would have been really useful was an armchair or even just a chair. But until that evening I had never had any guests.

She sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to know if I felt better. Yes, I honestly felt much better than earlier, when I had first seen the neon sign of the chemist. Without that landmark, I don't know what would have happened to me.

I wanted to ask her to have dinner with me in the café in Place Blanche. But I didn't have enough money. She was going to leave and I would be alone again in this room. That prospect now seemed even worse than when I was expecting her to let me out of the taxi by myself.

‘And how is your job going?'

Perhaps I was deluding myself, but she seemed genuinely concerned about me.

‘I work with a friend,' I said. ‘We translate broadcasts made by foreign radio stations.'

What would Moreau-Badmaev have made of that lie? But I didn't want to tell her about the Taylor Agency, about Véra Valadier, or her husband, or the little girl. It all seemed too frightening to think about.

‘Do you know many foreign languages?'

And I could see in her eyes that I had gained a measure of respect. I wished it weren't a lie.

‘It's my friend who knows most of them…I'm still a student at the School of Oriental Languages.'

Student
. The word had always impressed me, while actually being one seemed somehow out of my reach. I don't think the Kraut had even graduated from primary school. She made spelling mistakes, but they weren't so obvious
because she had such big handwriting. As for me, I'd left school at fourteen.

‘So, you're a student?'

She seemed relieved for me. I wanted to put her mind at rest even more, so I added, ‘It was my uncle who advised me to enrol at the School of Oriental Languages. He's a teacher himself.'

And I conjured up an apartment in the university neighbourhood, which I barely knew and which, in my mind, was somewhere in the vicinity of the Pantheon. And there was my uncle, at his desk, by the light of a reading lamp, hunched over an old book.

‘What does he teach?' She smiled at me. Had she really been taken in by my lie?

‘Philosophy.'

I thought of the man I used to meet every Thursday, when we were living in the big apartment, my uncle—that's what we called him—the so-called Jean Borand. We used to enjoy listening to the echo of our voices in the old empty garage. He was young and had a Parisian accent. He'd taken me to see
The Crossroad of the Archers
. He'd also taken me to the Trône fair, not far from the garage. He always wore a tie pin and, on his right wrist, a chain bracelet, which he
said was a present from my mother. He called her Suzanne. He would never have understood why I claimed he was a philosophy teacher. Why lie? Especially to this woman who appeared to be so favourably disposed to me.

‘I'm going to let you sleep now…'

‘Couldn't you stay the night with me?'

It was as if someone else was speaking. I was terribly surprised at having been so bold. I was ashamed.

She didn't bat an eyelid. ‘Are you frightened of being here alone?'

She was still sitting on the edge of the bed, next to me, looking me in the eye, and her gaze, unlike my mother's in the painting by Tola Soungouroff, was gentle.

‘I'll stay if that would be a comfort to you.'

And, with weary, unaffected ease, she took off her shoes. It was as if she did the same thing every evening, at the same time, in this same room. She lay back, without taking off her fur coat. I remained on the edge of the bed, motionless.

‘You should lie down, too. You need some sleep.'

I lay down next to her. I didn't know what to say or, rather, I was frightened that the slightest word would sound false, and that she'd change her mind, get up and leave. She
was silent, too. I heard music nearby; it sounded as if it was coming from in front of the building. Someone was playing a percussion instrument. The notes rang out, clear and mournful, like background music.

‘Do you think it's coming from Zone Out?' she said. And she burst out laughing. Suddenly, it all dropped away: everything that terrified me, made me uneasy and led me to believe that, ever since I was a child, I could never shake off an evil curse. A musician with a thin lacquered moustache was tapping a xylophone with his drumsticks. And I envisioned the stage at Zone Out, illuminated by the cold white spotlight. A man dressed as a coach driver was cracking his whip and announcing in a muffled voice, ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Death Cheater!'

The lights faded. And suddenly, under the spotlight, the woman in the yellow coat appeared, just as I had seen her in the metro. She walked slowly towards the front of the stage. The fellow with the lacquered moustache kept banging his instrument with his drumsticks. She greeted the audience with her arms raised. But there was no audience. Just a few inert, mummified figures seated at some round tables.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘The music must be coming from Zone Out.'

She asked if she could turn off the light on the bedside table, which was on her side of the bed.

The neon light from the garage shone its familiar glow on the wall above us. I started to cough. She moved over, closer to me. I rested my head on her shoulder. As soon as I felt the fur's softness, my anxiety and dark thoughts began to recede. Little Jewel, Death Cheater, the Kraut, the yellow coat…All those pathetic props now belonged to someone else's life. I had shed them like a costume, a harness I had been made to wear for ages and which made it difficult to breathe. I felt her lips on my forehead.

‘I don't like you coughing like that,' she said softly. ‘You must have caught a cold in this room.'

She was right. It would soon be winter and they hadn't yet turned on the central heating.

SHE LEFT VERY early the next morning. I had to go to Neuilly that afternoon to look after the little girl. I rang the doorbell of the Valadier home at around three o'clock. Véra Valadier opened the door and seemed surprised to see me. It was as if I'd woken her up and she'd had to get dressed quickly.

‘I didn't know you came on Thursdays as well.'

And when I asked if the little girl was there, Véra Valadier said no. Her daughter wasn't home from school yet. Even though it was Thursday and there was no school. But she explained that on Thursday afternoons the boarders played in the playground and the little girl was with them. I had noticed that neither Véra Valadier nor her husband ever called her by her name. They both referred to her as ‘she'.
And when they called out for their daughter, they merely said, ‘Where are you? What are you doing?' They never uttered her first name. After all these years, I couldn't tell you now what that name was. I've forgotten it, and I wonder if I ever even knew it.

She took me into the ground-floor room where Monsieur Valadier usually made his phone calls, sitting on the corner of his desk. Why, I couldn't help asking, on her daughter's day off school, had she left her there with the boarders?

‘But she really enjoys staying back there on Thursday afternoons…'