Little Jewel Read Free

courtyard, at the end of which were several identical apartment blocks. She was walking more and more slowly, perhaps frightened that she would drop her shopping again. From behind, it looked as if it was too heavy for her, and that, at any moment, she was about to stumble.
    She went into one of the apartment blocks at the far end, on the left. Each building had an entrance with a sign: STAIRCASE A. STAIRCASE B. STAIRCASE C. STAIRCASE D. Hers was Staircase A. I stayed outside for a while, waiting for a light to come on in a window. But I waited in vain. I wondered if there was a lift. I pictured her climbing Staircase A, clasping the cans. That image wouldn’t fade, even in the metro on the way back.

ON SEVERAL OTHER evenings, I retraced my steps. I waited on a bench at Châtelet at exactly the same time as I had first come across her. I was on the lookout for the yellow coat.
    The barrier opens as the train leaves and the tide of passengers pours onto the platform. When the next train arrives, they’ll pile into the carriages. The platform empties, it fills again, and you let yourself drift off. With all the comings and goings, you no longer focus on anything precise, not even a yellow coat. A groundswell pushes you into one of the carriages.
    I remember that, back then, the same poster was in every station. A couple with three fair-haired children all sitting round a table in an alpine chalet in the evening.Their faces were illuminated by a lamp. Outside, it was snowing. It must have been Christmas. Written on top of the poster were the words: PUPIER, THE CHOCOLATE FOR FAMILIES .
    The first week, I went to Vincennes once. The following week, twice. Then twice more. There were always too many people in the café at around seven in the evening for anyone to notice me. The second time, I ventured to ask the chubby blond barman if the woman in the yellow coat would come today. He frowned without seeming to understand. Someone from another table called him over. I don’t think he heard me. But he wouldn’t have had time to reply. It was peak hour for him, too. Perhaps she wasn’t a regular at this café at all, and didn’t live in this neighbourhood. Perhaps the person she had called from the phone box lived in the brick apartment block and, that particular evening, she had been visiting and had brought cans of food. Later, she had taken the metro in the other direction, as I had also done, and she had gone home, and I would never know precisely where. My only point of reference was Staircase A. But I would have to knock on each door on each landing and ask whoever was prepared to answer whether they knew a woman, about fifty years old, with a yellow coat and a scar on her face. Yes, well, she had been there one evening theweek before, after buying cans of food and a packet of coffee from the grocery store on the street. What could they possibly say to me? That I had dreamed it all up?
    And yet, there she was again in the fifth week. Just as I was coming out of the entrance to the metro, I saw her in the phone box. She was wearing her yellow coat. I wondered whether she, too, had just left the station. So she might have regular commutes and timetables in her life…I had trouble imagining her holding down a day job, like everyone else on the metro at that hour. Châtelet station. It was a vague starting point for further clues. Tens of thousands of people wind up at Châtelet before scattering to all points of the compass. Their paths mingle and blur, once and for all. There are fixed points in this tide of people. I should not have been content to wait on one of the station benches. I should have spent time hanging around the ticket offices and newspaper stands, in the long corridor with the escalator, and also in the other corridors. People can be there all day, but you only notice them after they’ve become a predictable feature of the place. Homeless people. Buskers. Pickpockets.