Patrick Modiano - Little Jewel

When I bought my ticket at the entrance, the man seemed surprised that I was paying with such a large note. He gave me the change and let me through. It was a winter’s day. So dark, it could have been night. In the middle of this funfair, I felt like I was in a bad dream. What struck me, above all, was the silence. Most of the stalls were shut. In the silence, the merry-go-rounds were working, but there was no one on the wooden horses. And no one walking around. I arrived at the base of the roller-coaster. The carriages were whizzing up and down the slopes at full speed, but they were empty. At the entrance to the roller-coaster, I saw three boys, older than me. They were wearing scruffy shoes that didn’t match, with holes in them, and grey, torn overalls that were too short. They must have sneaked into Luna Park, because they were looking left and right, as if they were being followed. They seemed keen to get on the roller-coaster. I walked over to them and gave the biggest boy all the money I had left. And I ran away, hoping I’d be allowed to leave.

No, I wouldn’t go to the Valadiers today, but I had to let them know. I left my room and walked to the post office on Place des Abbesses, after buying some paper and an envelope at Des Moulins café-tabac . I stood at one of the counters at the post office and wrote:

Dear Véra Valadier, I will not be able to come today to look after your daughter because I am ill. I would rather take it easy until Saturday when I will be at your place as usual at 4 in the afternoon. I apologise. Best wishes to Monsieur Valadier .

THÉRÈSE

I sent the letter by pneumatic post so that it would reach her in time. Then I went for a walk in the neighbourhood. The sun was shining and, as I walked along, I felt better. My breath came easily. I arrived at the edge of the Sacré-Coeur gardens, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the cable car shuttling to and fro. I went back to my room in Rue Coustou. I lay on the bed and attempted, not for the first time, to read the book that Moreau-Badmaev had lent me. I began but, try as I might to battle my wandering mind, I kept returning to the first sentence, as if it were some sort of springboard from which I had to take the plunge. That first line has stayed in my mind: ‘In general, life in the suburbs does not offer its inhabitants the level of comfort to which inner-city residents of large metropolises are accustomed.’

I had arranged to meet her at eight in the evening at the café in Place Blanche, the one that looks like a little house. There’s a room on the first floor, but I had told her that I would be at one of the tables on the ground floor.

I got there half an hour early and chose a table near the bay window that looks out on Place Blanche. The waiter asked if I wanted to order a drink and I was tempted to get a whisky. But that would have been stupid: I didn’t need it. I wasn’t feeling the familiar weight pressing down on my chest. I told him I was waiting for someone, and just saying those few words did me as much good as any alcohol would have.

She entered the café at exactly eight o’clock. She was wearing the same fur coat as last time, and flat shoes. She caught sight of me immediately. As she walked to the table, I noticed that she carried herself like a dancer, but I found it more reassuring that she was a pharmacist. She kissed me on the forehead and sat next to me on the banquette.

‘Are you feeling better than the other evening?’

She was smiling. There was something protective about the way she was looking at me, about that smile. I hadn’t noticed that her eyes were green. I was too disoriented that Sunday in the armchair at the chemist, and later in my room the light hadn’t been as bright as now in the café.

‘I brought you something to give you a boost.’

From one of the pockets of her coat, which she had draped over the banquette, she fished out two bottles of medicine.

‘Here’s some cough mixture…you have to take it four times a day. And these are tablets to help you sleep. You take one at night, and whenever you feel a bit strange.’

She placed the two bottles in front of me on the table.

‘And I think we should give you some injections of vitamin B12.’

All I could say was thank you. I would have liked to elaborate, but I wasn’t used to being looked after, not since the nuns had been kind enough to make me inhale a pad doused in ether, the day I was knocked down by the truck.

Neither of us said anything for a moment. Even though I sensed that she would command respect in people, I had the feeling that she was just as shy as I was.

‘You weren’t a dancer, were you?’

She seemed surprised by my question, and then burst out laughing. ‘Why?’

‘Just before, I thought you walked like a dancer.’

She told me that, like most girls, she had taken dance lessons until the age of twelve, but nothing after that. I recalled another photo at the bottom of the biscuit tin. Two twelve-year-old girls wearing ballet outfits. Written in purple ink on the back of the photo, in a childish hand, were the words: ‘Josette Dagory and Suzanne’—my mother’s real first name. Jean Borand had the same photo stuck on the wall of his office in the garage. Everything was fine at the time of that photo. So when did the ankle accident happen, or the accident, full stop? How old was she? Now it was too late to find out. There was no one left to tell me.

When the waiter came over to our table, the pharmacist was surprised that I didn’t order anything.

‘You’re so pale, you should eat something to build up your strength.’

Moreau-Badmaev had said the same thing, but she had more authority than he did.

‘I’m not very hungry.’

‘Well, you can share with me.’

I didn’t dare contradict her. She put half of her meal on a plate for me and I forced myself to eat, my eyes shut, and counted the mouthfuls.

‘Do you come here often?’

I used to go mostly in the mornings, very early, when the café opened; it was the time of day when I felt best. What a relief to be done with broken sleep and bad dreams.

‘I haven’t been back to this neighbourhood for ages,’ she said. She pointed, through the bay window, at the chemist on the other side of Place Blanche. ‘I worked there when I first started as a pharmacist. It was busier than where I am now.’

She might have come across my mother, after her ‘accident’, when she had a job as a dancer in this area, and still lived in a hotel room. The years are blurring in my head.

‘I think there were a lot of dancers around here at that time,’ I said. ‘Did you know any?’

She frowned. ‘Oh, you know, there was a real mix of people in the neighbourhood.’

‘Did you work at night?’

‘Yes. Often.’ She was still frowning. ‘I don’t like talking about the past very much. You’re hardly eating a thing. Don’t be silly.’

I forced myself to eat one last mouthful to please her.

‘Do you intend to stay in this neighbourhood for much longer? Couldn’t you find a room a bit closer to the School of Oriental Languages?’

Of course, I had told her the other night that I was enrolled in the School of Oriental Languages. I’d forgotten that, in her mind, I was a student.

‘I do plan on moving as soon as I can…’

I wanted to let her in on my secret: that the banquette I was sitting on then, in Place Blanche, was probably the same one my mother had sat on twenty years ago. And that, at the time of my birth, she was living, just like I was, in a room at 11 Rue Coustou, perhaps in my room.

‘It’s quite convenient for getting to the school,’ I told her. ‘I take the metro at Place Blanche and it’s direct to Sèvres-Babylone.’