Patrick Modiano - Little Jewel

She looked at me strangely. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t have time. Through the open windows, we could hear a diesel engine. She leaned out one of the windows. I was right behind her. Down below, Monsieur Valadier was getting out of a taxi. He was carrying an overnight bag and a black leather briefcase.

When we went down to join him, he was already on the phone, sitting on his desk, and he greeted us with a wave. Then he hung up. Madame Valadier asked him if his trip had gone well.

‘Not great, Véra.’

She shook her head, absorbed. ‘But you’re not worried, are you?’

‘Overall, things are fine, but there are still a few sticking points.’

He turned to me and smiled. ‘Isn’t she at school today?’

He was referring to his daughter, but I got the impression that he wasn’t really interested and that he was merely asking out of politeness to me.

‘I let her stay at school with the boarders,’ said Madame Valadier.

Monsieur Valadier took off his navy-blue coat and placed it on his overnight bag, on the floor by the desk.

‘You know, she can just as easily come home by herself…’ He spoke softly, still smiling at me. He had the same attitude as his wife.

‘There’s something we want to discuss with you about our daughter,’ said Madame Valadier. ‘She’d like to have a dog.’

Monsieur Valadier was still sitting on the corner of his desk. He was swinging one leg in a steady rhythm. Where on earth could people sit if they came to meet him in this office? I wondered. Although I was pretty sure that no one ever came here.

‘You’ll have to explain to her that it’s not possible,’ Véra Valadier said. She seemed aghast at the idea that a dog might turn up in the house. ‘Will you tell her later?’

She looked so anxious that I couldn’t help myself from saying, ‘Yes, madame.’

She smiled at me. That had clearly taken a load off her mind.

‘I’ve already asked you to call me Véra, not madame.’

She was standing next to her husband, leaning against the desk.

‘In fact, it would be much simpler if you just called us Véra and Michel.’

Her husband was smiling at me, too. There they were, across the room, with their smooth, unlined faces, still quite young.

For me, the evil curse and the bad memories all centred on one face, that of my mother. The little girl had to contend with these two individuals whose smiles and smooth skin were of the kind we’re sometimes shocked to see on the faces of murderers who have long remained unpunished.

Monsieur Valadier removed a cigarillo from the top pocket of his jacket and lit it with his lighter. He took a puff and exhaled thoughtfully.

‘I’m counting on you to sort out this dog business.’

I saw the little girl at once. She was sitting on the bench, reading a magazine. Around her, twenty or so older girls were scattered about the schoolyard. The boarders. She wasn’t paying them the slightest attention, as if she had been waiting there all day without any idea why. She seemed surprised that I had come to collect her so early.

We went down Rue de la Ferme.

‘We don’t have to go home straightaway,’ she said.

We had reached the end of the street and we set off into the section of the Bois de Boulogne where there are pine trees. It was odd to be walking on a late-November afternoon among trees that were reminiscent of summer and the sea. When I was her age, I didn’t want to go home either. And could you even call it a home, that gigantic apartment where I had ended up with my mother, without it ever being clear to me why she was living there? The first time she took me there, I thought it belonged to some friends of hers, and I was surprised when the two of us stayed the night—‘I’m going to show you your room,’ she announced. And I was anxious when I had to go to bed. In that big empty room with the oversized bed, I expected someone to come and ask me what I was doing there. It was as if I had intuited that my mother and I were not really supposed to be on the premises.

‘Have you been living in that house for long?’ I asked the little girl.

She had been there at the beginning of the year. But she couldn’t remember exactly where she was living before that. What had struck me, the first time I went to the Valadier house, were all those empty rooms, which reminded me of the apartment where I’d lived with my mother when I was the same age as the little girl. I recalled that, in the kitchen, there was a board stuck on the wall, with white panels that lit up, the words in black lettering: DINING ROOM, STUDY and so on. I also recalled the words CHILDREN’S BEDROOM. Who could those children possibly be? They were probably going to come back at any moment and ask me why I was in their bedroom.

It was dusk and the little girl was still keen to delay our return. We had headed off in the other direction from her parents’ home. But was it really their home? Twelve years on, who still knew, for example, that my mother had also lived in Avenue Malakoff, very near the Bois de Boulogne? That apartment didn’t belong to us. I found out later that my mother was staying there while the owner was away. Frédérique and one of her women friends talked about it one evening at Fossombronne-la-Fôret, over dinner, when I was at the table. Certain words stick in children’s minds and, even if they don’t understand them at the time, they understand them twenty years later. It’s a bit like the grenades we were told to watch out for at Fossombronne-la-Fôret. Apparently, ever since the war, there were one or two buried in Kraut’s Field, and there was still a chance they could explode after all this time.

Yet another reason to be frightened. But we couldn’t resist slipping out to that overgrown vacant block and playing hide-and-seek. Frédérique had gone to the apartment to try to find something my mother had forgotten when she left.

We had arrived at the edge of the little lake where people came to ice-skate in winter. The twilight was beautiful. The trees were outlined against a blue and pink sky.

‘So, you’d like a dog.’

She was embarrassed, as if I had revealed her secret.

‘Your parents told me.’

She frowned and pursed her lips, pouting. ‘They don’t want a dog,’ she said.

‘I’m going to try to speak to them about it. They’ll come round sooner or later.’

She smiled at me. She seemed to trust me. She believed that I’d be able to persuade Véra and Michel Valadier. But I was under no illusion about those two: they were as tough as the Kraut. I had suspected as much from the beginning. With Véra, it was immediately obvious. She had a fake first name. And, in my opinion, his name wasn’t Michel Valadier, either. He must have already gone by several other names. And, indeed, there was a different address on his business card. I wondered if he wasn’t even more devious and more dangerous than his wife.

Now we had to head home, and I was regretting my empty promise to her. We were walking along the riding tracks to get back to the Jardin d’Acclimatation. I was certain that Véra and Michel Valadier wouldn’t give in.

He opened the front door and went straight back to his study on the ground floor, without saying a word to us. I heard gales of raucous, vicious laughter. Madame Valadier — Véra — was yelling, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Their voices were indistinguishable, each trying to shout over the top of the other. The little girl opened her eyes wide. She was frightened, but I sensed that she was used to this fear. In the lobby, she stood still, frozen; I should have taken her off somewhere else. But where? Madame Valadier came out of the study, looking calm and composed.