The woman hesitated. If it weren't for the resemblance… She didn't dare insist, but she vowed to get to the bottom of this. "I'll drop in on your mother, Jean-Jacques. You should hurry, or Mr. Crepon will yell at you again."
The cousin had other plans. "Jean-Jacques isn't going to school this morning. We're going home together."
"You know Yvonne, of course?"
"Jeanne, you mean? My poor cousin's widow is named Jeanne."
"Jeanne, of course. I'm losing my mind."
"No, we've never met. The hazards of fate… But I'm eager to meet her at last. So, if you'll excuse us-"
"Please. Later, perhaps? I'd planned to visit Jeanne this morning anyway." The woman walked off, her fears allayed. Now it was curiosity that gnawed at her. Jean-Pierre Manoir, cousin of the deceased. He looked just like his brother. He'd turned up just like that, with his hands in his pockets, but where from? A cousin fallen from the sky… What if he were a Gaullist? A parachutist from the FFL? A terrorist? One didn't quite know what to call them. Shouldn't she stay away from Jeanne's this morning? But then she'd never find out a thing!
Manoir took the boy's hand. Jean-Jacques let him, and this act of trust overwhelmed the man. He quickly wiped his tears away with the back of his free hand. The excited child skipped beside him.
"Are you going to stay for a long time?"
"I don't know. Do you want me to?"
"You'll have to play with me."
"Count on it. Do you have many toys?"
"A whole chest full! And comics, and a train-say, how come you know me if you don't know maman?"
Manoir chuckled, stalling. "Well! You think of everything, don't you! Look, the bakery's open. Do you want some cake?"
"There is no cake."
"Of course there isn't. Some sweets, maybe?"
"It's not real sugar. Martian says they make your tummy hurt."
"I see. But you like them anyway, don't you?"
Jean-Jacques smiled secretively. He didn't really mind them so much, those fake-sugar sweets that made your tummy hurt.
Manoir walked inside the store. The baker watched them with curiosity from behind her empty glass jars. She saw the boy go by every day. Sometimes she sold him sweets made with saccharin. The father had been killed in 1940. The man looked so much like him! His brother, no doubt.
"Good morning, madame. We'd like some sweets."
"Of course. Green? Yellow?"
"A few of each. Let's see…" Manoir pulled the few coins he had left from his pocket. "As many as these will buy:"
"That'll be a hundred grams."
"Excellent!"
"Do you have ration coupons?"
"Coupons? Oh no, I–I hadn't thought…"
The baker scratched her forehead. "A pity. I could give you the cracked ones? Without tickets. . "
"Of course. Whatever you can spare."
On the doorstep, Manoir handed Jean-Jacques the little bag.
"Thanks."
"Call me Uncle Jean-Pierre, if you'd like."
"Thanks, Uncle Jean-Pierre."
They walked. Jean-Jacques crunched into the broken sweets with relish.
"You know what's good? The raspberry ones."
"And the hard mint ones, and the little eggs with liqueur centers. But-
"Your father sent me your photo. I don't have it anymore. I lost it in the war."
"Oh. Was I a little baby in the photo?"
"No, not a baby really, or I wouldn't have recognized you. You were five or six."
They were getting close. At the next intersection, on the left, they spotted the house.
"Ow! You're hurting me!"
"I'm sorry." Manoir loosened his grip. Seized with feeling, he'd been crushing the child's hand. His heart was pounding. His mouth was dry. They rounded the corner.
"What's wrong? Are you sick?"
"No, no."
From this angle, the greenish grille, spotted here and there with rust, half masked the millstone and stucco facade. He'd remembered the building being taller, larger, perforated with broad windows like so many eyes wide open on Eden. In reality, it was tiny: the smallest house on the street, nestled in its few acres between two bulging villas that drowned it in shadow.
"C'mon, we're here."
Jean-Jacques dashed off and swung briefly from the handle of the bell. It let out a feeble ring. A minute went by before a window opened upstairs.
"Jean-Jacques? Why aren't you at school? Who is that with you? What's going on?"
"It's daddy's cousin. I met him on the street."
Manoir reeled at the sound of his mother's voice. He couldn't, he wasn't strong enough to see or speak to her. He'd faint, right there on the sidewalk. He had to get away. But his legs refused to obey. With one hand he hung on to the gate and closed his eyes. A thin figure appeared. He was trembling all over, his eyes clouded with tears.
"Monsieur?"
Manoir desperately swallowed his tears and smiled. His mother was as old as she'd ever get: thirty. The bomb would crush a short young woman with even features and skin already dulled by grief and worry. She had but an hour left to live, and stood up straight in her seamstress' blouse over which she'd slipped a man's jacket much too large for her.
"Monsieur?"
She, too, was trembling. This man looked so much like her husband! He'd never mentioned this man, but how could they not be related? He spoke. His very voice, his tone, awoke echoes. He introduced himself. He explained. He was in fact the only relative of the deceased. A few months before his death, he'd written his cousin; he'd even enclosed a photo of his young son with the letter. Manoir caressed jean-Jacques' hair. The boy let him. Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre Manoir had lost the letter and photo with his belongings near Sedan, in the chaos of the retreat.
Manoir ostentatiously underlined his words with gestures of his ringed hand. Jeanne gave a start.
"Pardon me, but that ring-"
At that moment, jean-Jacques, who had been watching the two adults silently, chimed in. "Yeah, did you see it, maman? He's got the same ring as Papa. The exact same one!"
Manoir held out his hand. "We ordered them together from a jeweler in P. Michel drew the chateau on the setting himself on a page of his notebook."
The truthful part of this new lie chased away whatever doubts lingered in the young woman's mind. Her husband had indeed had his ring made in P, from a sketch by his very own hand. Still, despite everything, it was strange that he'd never brought up this cousin, a dozen years his senior, whom he must have been close to in his youth, it seemed… But above all, she was inclined to rejoice in this visit that interrupted the monotony of her day and this revelation of a friendly presence in the desert of her life. She became suddenly aware of her unkempt appearance-this blouse, this shapeless jacket, really! She apologized; she'd been about to sit down to work at her machine. She did a little sewing; her war-widow's pension was quite modest.
They went inside. The impostor's throat tightened as he inhaled the old smells he'd never forgotten and staggering traces of which he sometimes came across by chance on the street. Quince cheese, a canary cage, wax polish, and vegetable soup, and from jean-Jacques' room, the slightly acrid reek of mouse droppings. The smell of secondhand clothes, for in these penurious times, Jeanne gathered, recut, and repaired more old clothes than she made new ones. The smell of the oilcan for the sewing machine. There it was. The big black Singer with its gilt chasing sat enthroned in the living room, amidst a mess of spools and needles, chalk and scissors. But he remembered a room reserved for special occasions, where you went only if you had to, in a pair of felt slippers… that was before, of course! Before the war, and his father's death. The living room had been turned into a workspace, and the slippers peeked out from under a sofa.