Little Jewel Read Free Page A

People who have lost their way and who will never go up to the outside world again. Perhaps she never left Châtelet all day, either.
    I was observing her in the phone box. It was like the first time: she didn’t seem to have got through straightaway. She dialled the number again. She was speaking now, but the call was much shorter than the other evening. She hung up abruptly. She came out of the phone box and didn’t stop at the café. She continued along Avenue de Paris, still with the gait of a dancer, until we reached the Château de Vincennes metro. Why didn’t she get off at this stop, the end of the line? Because of the phone box and the café where she drank her customary kir before going home? And those other evenings when I hadn’t seen her? Of course: she must have got off at Château de Vincennes.
    I had to speak to her, or she would end up noticing that someone was following her. I tried to think of the words. The fewest possible. I would extend my hand. ‘You used to call me Little Jewel. You must remember,’ I would say to her. We were approaching the apartment block and, as on the first evening, I couldn’t find it in me to address her. On the contrary, I let her draw further away. My legs felt heavy; I was filled with inertia. But also a sort of relief as her figure receded. That evening, she didn’t stop in the grocery store to buy cans of food. She crossed the courtyard of the apartment block, and I stayed behind the metal gate. The courtyardwas lit by a single globe above the entrance to Staircase A. In that light, the coat took on its yellow hue again. She looked exhausted as she trudged, hunching slightly, towards the staircase. At that moment, the title of a picture book I used to read, when my name was Little Jewel, came back to me:
The Old Circus Horse
.
    When she had disappeared, I went through the metal gate. On the left was a glass door with a sign stuck on it—a list of names in alphabetical order and, next to each name, the corresponding staircase. A light was on behind the glass. I knocked. In the half-open door the face of a woman appeared, a brunette, short hair, quite young. I told her that I was looking for a lady who lived there. A lady who was single and wore a yellow coat.
    Instead of shutting the door, the woman frowned, as if she was trying to remember a name.
    â€˜That must be Madame Boré. Staircase A…I’ve forgotten which floor.’
    She ran her finger down the list. She pointed to a name. Boré. Staircase A. Fourth floor. I began to cross the courtyard. When I heard the concierge shutting her door, I did an about-turn and slipped out onto the street.
    That evening, during the trip home on the metro, I kept thinking about the name. Boré. Yes, it was similar to the name of the man I had understood to be my mother’s brother, Jean Borand. On Thursdays, he used to take me to his garage. Was it just a coincidence? And yet my mother’s surname, as it appeared on my birth certificate, was Cardères. And O’Dauyé was the surname she had adopted as a sort of stage name. That was around the time when my own name was Little Jewel…
    In my bedroom, I looked at the photos once again. I opened the diary and the address book that I kept packed away in the old biscuit tin and, in the middle of the diary, I came across a piece of paper torn out of a school exercise book—I recognised that scrap only too well. The tiny handwriting in blue ink did not belong to my mother. At the top of the page were the words: SONIA CARDÈRES . Under the name was a dash, then the following lines, which ran into the margin.
    A missed opportunity. Unhappy in September. A quarrel with a blonde woman. Tendency to rely on dangerously easy solutions. What is lost will never be found. Falling for a non-Frenchman. A change in the months to come.Be careful at the end of July. A visit from a stranger. No danger, but exercise caution all