Other nights, however, the anxiety dissipated, and I impatiently waited for my mother’s departure so I could go out. I went down the stairs with my heart pounding, as if I were going on a date. There was no longer any need to lie to the concierge, to come up with excuses, or to ask permission. To whom? And what for? I wasn’t even certain that I would come back to the apartment. Once outside, I didn’t take the sidewalk that lay hidden in the shadows, but instead the one that led right past the entrance to the Moulin Rouge. The lights seemed even more violent than those in the movies at the Mexico. A feeling of intoxication came over me, so subtle and light. I had experienced a similar sensation the night I drank a glass of champagne at the Sans-Souci. I had my whole life ahead of me. How had I turned into such a wallflower, curled up in a little ball? And what was I afraid of? I would meet people. I just had to go into any café.
I knew a girl, a little older than me, named Jeannette Gaul. One night, in the grips of an awful migraine, I had gone into the place Blanche pharmacy to buy some aspirin and a vial of ether. As I went to pay, I realized that I hadn’t brought any money. A girl in a raincoat with short blond hair, whose eyes — green eyes — had met mine earlier, stepped forward toward the cash register and paid for me. I was embarrassed, I didn’t know how to thank her. I suggested she come back to the apartment with me so I could pay her back. I always kept a little money in my night table. She said, “No, no, next time.” She also lived in the neighborhood, but a little farther down. She looked at me, her green eyes smiling. She invited me to go get a drink with her near where she lived, and we ended up in a café—or a bar, rather — on rue de La Rochefoucauld. Not at all the same ambiance as the Condé. The walls were paneled in light wood, as were the bar and the tables, and a sort of stained-glass window looked out onto the street. Subdued lighting. Behind the bar stood a blond woman in her forties that this Jeannette Gaul must have known pretty well judging by the way she casually called her Suzanne. She served us two Pimm’s Royales.
“Cheers,” Jeannette Gaul said to me. She was still smiling at me and I got the impression her green eyes were probing me, trying to guess what was going on in my head. She asked me, “Do you live around here?”
“Yes. A little farther up.”
There were several different zones in the neighborhood, of which I knew all the boundaries, even if they were invisible. As I was intimidated and I didn’t really know what to say to her, I added, “Yeah, I live farther up. Here we’re only on the lower slopes.” She furrowed her brow.
“The lower slopes?” Those two words intrigued her, although she hadn’t lost her smile. Was it the effect of the Pimm’s? My shyness melted away. I explained to her what I meant by “the lower slopes,” an expression I had learned along with all the other schoolchildren in the neighborhood. The lower slopes begin at the Square de la Trinité. They don’t stop climbing until you get to the Château des Brouillards and Saint-Vincent Cemetery, and then they dip back down towards the borderlands past Clignancourt, way up north.
“Aren’t you just full of information,” she said to me. Her smile grew ironic. She seemed to have let her guard down a bit. She ordered two more glasses from Suzanne. I wasn’t used to drinking much in the way of alcohol, and one glass was already plenty for me. But I didn’t have the nerve to say no. To get it over with more quickly, I drank it in one go. She was still watching me silently.
“Do you go to school?”
I hesitated before I replied. I had always dreamed of being a student, because I found the idea quite glamorous. But that dream had been cut short the day they had rejected my application to the Lycée Jules-Ferry. Was it the self-confidence induced by the champagne? I leaned toward her and, perhaps in order to be more convincing, I brought my face closer to hers.
“Yes, I’m a student.”
That first time, I hadn’t noticed the other customers around us. Nothing at all like the Condé. If I wasn’t worried that I might run into certain ghosts, I would quite happily return to that place one night in order to better understand where I come from. But it pays to be prudent. That said, I’m running the risk of finding it closed down. New ownership. None of it had much of a future.
“A student of what?”
She caught me off guard. The candor of her stare had encouraged me. She certainly couldn’t suspect that I was lying.
“Oriental languages.”
She seemed impressed. She never asked me subsequently for any details about my studies in Oriental languages, nor for the schedule of the classes, nor the location of the school. She ought to have realized that I wasn’t attending any such school. But I believe that for her — and for me as well — it was in some way a title of nobility that I bore, the sort that is inherited without one having to do anything. She introduced me as “the student” to all the regulars in the bar on rue de La Rochefoucauld, and perhaps some of them there still remember me that way.
That night she accompanied me all the way home. In turn, I had wanted to know what she did with her life. She told me that she had been a dancer, but that she’d had to give up that line of work because of an injury. A ballet dancer? No, not exactly, although she had been classically trained. Looking back, I’m left with a question that never would have occurred to me at the time: Had she been a dancer as much as I had been a student? We were following rue Fontaine towards place Blanche. She explained to me that “for the time being” she was a “business partner” of Suzanne’s, one of her oldest friends, sort of her “big sister.” The two of them ran the spot she had taken me to that evening, which was also a restaurant.
She asked me if I lived alone. Yes, alone with my mother. She wanted to know what my mother did for a living. I didn’t speak the words “Moulin Rouge.” Dryly, I replied, “Certified accountant.” After all, my mother could have been a certified accountant. She was certainly serious enough and had the discretion.