Little Jewel Read Free Page B

the same. The journey will end well
.
    She had been to see a fortune teller or a palm reader. I assume she was uncertain about her future.
Tendency to rely on dangerously easy solutions
. All of a sudden, she had become frightened, like being on the scenic railway ride at an amusement park. It’s too late to get off. It speeds up and soon you’re wondering if the carriages will fly off the tracks. She could sense that everything was about to come tumbling down.
    Unhappy in September
. That was probably the summer when, out of the blue, I found myself alone in the country. The train was packed. I was wearing a label around my neck with an address written on it.
What is lost will never be found
. In the country, not long after, I received a postcard. It’s in the bottom of the biscuit tin. Casablanca. La Place de France. ‘Lots of love.’ Not even a signature. Large handwriting, the same as in the diary and the address book. In the past, girls of my mother’s age were taught to write in large script.
Falling for a non-Frenchman
—but which one? Several names that are not French feature in the addressbook.
Be careful at the end of July
. That was the month I was sent off to the country, to Fossombronne-la-Forêt. The painting by Tola Soungouroff was hanging on the wall of my bedroom so that, every morning when I woke up, my mother’s eyes were staring at me. After receiving the postcard, I never heard another thing. All that was left was that gaze in the morning, and at night when I was in bed reading, or when I was sick. After a while, it dawned on me that she was staring not at me but into space.
    No danger, but exercise caution all the same. The journey will end well
. Words you repeat to yourself in the dark for reassurance. The day she went to see the clairvoyant, she probably knew that she was bound to leave for Morocco. And, anyway, it was there in the cards or in the lines of her hand. A journey. She left after I did: she was the one who took me to the Gare d’Austerlitz. I remember driving there, along the Seine. The station was next to the river. Many years later, I noticed that, if I happened to be near the Gare d’Austerlitz, I experienced an odd sensation. Everything suddenly felt colder and darker.
    I had no idea where the painting could possibly be. Had they left it in my old room in Fossombronne-la-Forêt? Or else, after all this time, had it turned up, as I’d imagined,in some flea market on the outskirts of Paris? She had written the details of the painter, Tola Soungouroff, in her address book. It was the first name under S. The colour of the ink was different from the other names, the writing was smaller, as if she had wanted to make an effort. I presume Tola Soungouroff was one of the first people she met in Paris. One evening during her childhood, she had arrived at the Gare d’Austerlitz: I was almost certain about that.
The journey will end well
. I think the fortune teller made a mistake, but perhaps she disguised some of the truth so that her customers wouldn’t be disheartened.
    I would have liked to know what my mother was wearing that day at the Gare d’Austerlitz when she arrived in Paris. Not the yellow coat. And I wished I hadn’t lost the picture book called
The Old Circus Horse
. It was given to me in the country, at Fossombronne-la-Forêt. No, that’s wrong: I think I already had it in the apartment in Paris. And the painting was also hanging on the wall of one of the rooms in that apartment, the huge room with the three steps covered in white plush. The cover of the book featured a black horse. It was doing a lap, it looked like its last, its head bowed; it seemed exhausted, as if about to collapse. Yes, when I saw her crossing the courtyard of the apartment block, theimage of the black horse came back to me. The horse was walking around the track and the harness seemed like a huge weight for it to bear. The harness was the