‘What does he teach?’ She smiled at me. Had she really been taken in by my lie?
‘Philosophy.’
I thought of the man I used to meet every Thursday, when we were living in the big apartment, my uncle — that’s what we called him — the so-called Jean Borand. We used to enjoy listening to the echo of our voices in the old empty garage. He was young and had a Parisian accent. He’d taken me to see The Crossroad of the Archers. He’d also taken me to the Trône fair, not far from the garage. He always wore a tie pin and, on his right wrist, a chain bracelet, which he said was a present from my mother. He called her Suzanne. He would never have understood why I claimed he was a philosophy teacher. Why lie? Especially to this woman who appeared to be so favourably disposed to me.
‘I’m going to let you sleep now…’
‘Couldn’t you stay the night with me?’
It was as if someone else was speaking. I was terribly surprised at having been so bold. I was ashamed.
She didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Are you frightened of being here alone?’
She was still sitting on the edge of the bed, next to me, looking me in the eye, and her gaze, unlike my mother’s in the painting by Tola Soungouroff, was gentle.
‘I’ll stay if that would be a comfort to you.’
And, with weary, unaffected ease, she took off her shoes. It was as if she did the same thing every evening, at the same time, in this same room. She lay back, without taking off her fur coat. I remained on the edge of the bed, motionless.
‘You should lie down, too. You need some sleep.’
I lay down next to her. I didn’t know what to say or, rather, I was frightened that the slightest word would sound false, and that she’d change her mind, get up and leave. She was silent, too. I heard music nearby; it sounded as if it was coming from in front of the building. Someone was playing a percussion instrument. The notes rang out, clear and mournful, like background music.
‘Do you think it’s coming from Zone Out?’ she said. And she burst out laughing. Suddenly, it all dropped away: everything that terrified me, made me uneasy and led me to believe that, ever since I was a child, I could never shake off an evil curse. A musician with a thin lacquered moustache was tapping a xylophone with his drumsticks. And I envisioned the stage at Zone Out, illuminated by the cold white spotlight. A man dressed as a coach driver was cracking his whip and announcing in a muffled voice, ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Death Cheater!’
The lights faded. And suddenly, under the spotlight, the woman in the yellow coat appeared, just as I had seen her in the metro. She walked slowly towards the front of the stage. The fellow with the lacquered moustache kept banging his instrument with his drumsticks. She greeted the audience with her arms raised. But there was no audience. Just a few inert, mummified figures seated at some round tables.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The music must be coming from Zone Out.’
She asked if she could turn off the light on the bedside table, which was on her side of the bed.
The neon light from the garage shone its familiar glow on the wall above us. I started to cough. She moved over, closer to me. I rested my head on her shoulder. As soon as I felt the fur’s softness, my anxiety and dark thoughts began to recede. Little Jewel, Death Cheater, the Kraut, the yellow coat…All those pathetic props now belonged to someone else’s life. I had shed them like a costume, a harness I had been made to wear for ages and which made it difficult to breathe. I felt her lips on my forehead.
‘I don’t like you coughing like that,’ she said softly. ‘You must have caught a cold in this room.’
She was right. It would soon be winter and they hadn’t yet turned on the central heating.
~ ~ ~
SHE LEFT VERY early the next morning. I had to go to Neuilly that afternoon to look after the little girl. I rang the doorbell of the Valadier home at around three o’clock. Véra Valadier opened the door and seemed surprised to see me. It was as if I’d woken her up and she’d had to get dressed quickly.
‘I didn’t know you came on Thursdays as well.’
And when I asked if the little girl was there, Véra Valadier said no. Her daughter wasn’t home from school yet. Even though it was Thursday and there was no school. But she explained that on Thursday afternoons the boarders played in the playground and the little girl was with them. I had noticed that neither Véra Valadier nor her husband ever called her by her name. They both referred to her as ‘she’. And when they called out for their daughter, they merely said, ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’ They never uttered her first name. After all these years, I couldn’t tell you now what that name was. I’ve forgotten it, and I wonder if I ever even knew it.
She took me into the ground-floor room where Monsieur Valadier usually made his phone calls, sitting on the corner of his desk. Why, I couldn’t help asking, on her daughter’s day off school, had she left her there with the boarders?
‘But she really enjoys staying back there on Thursday afternoons…’
In the past, my mother used to say things like that, and always when I was so distraught that all I wanted to do was inhale the bottle of ether.
‘You can go and collect her later…Otherwise she’ll be perfectly happy to come home by herself. Will you excuse me for a moment?’
Judging by her voice and her expression, she seemed to be somewhat upset. She disappeared in a hurry, leaving me in that room without a single chair. I was tempted to sit, like Monsieur Valadier, on the corner of the desk. It was gigantic, leather-topped, made out of light-coloured wood, with two drawers on either side, and not a single sheet of paper or even a pencil on top. Only a telephone. Perhaps Monsieur Valadier kept his files in the drawers. My curiosity got the better of me and I opened and shut the drawers in turn. They were empty, except that at the back of one I found a few business cards with the name Michel Valadier, but the address was not in Neuilly.
Sounds of an argument were coming from upstairs. I recognised Madame Valadier’s voice, and I was surprised to hear her shouting and swearing, but, every now and again, her voice became plaintive. There was the sound of a man’s voice answering her. They passed in front of the doorway. Madame Valadier’s voice became softer. Now they were speaking very quietly in the lobby. Then the front door banged shut and, from the window, I watched as a dark-haired, quite short young man wearing a suede jacket and a scarf headed off.
Madame Valadier came back into the study. ‘My apologies for deserting you…’ She approached me and I could tell by her expression that she wanted to ask me something. ‘Would you be able to help me do some tidying up?’
She led me to the stairs and I went up to the first floor behind her. We entered a big bedroom, at the end of which was a wide, low bed. It was the only item of furniture in the room. The bed was unmade, and there was a tray resting beside it, with two champagne glasses and an open bottle of champagne. A cork lay conspicuously in the middle of the grey carpet. The bedspread was hanging off the end of the bed. The sheets were tangled, the pillows scattered all over the bed, where a man’s dressing-gown in dark-blue silk had been tossed, along with a camisole and knickers and a pair of stockings. An ashtray filled with butts was on the floor.
Madame Valadier went to open the two windows. There was a sickly smell hanging in the air, a mixture of perfume and Virginia tobacco, the smell of people who have spent a long time in the same room and the same bed.
She picked up the blue dressing-gown. ‘I have to put this back in my husband’s wardrobe,’ she said.
When she came back, she asked if I wanted to help her make the bed. She pulled up the sheets and blanket. Her movements were abrupt and rapid, as if she was frightened of being caught out by someone, and I had trouble keeping up with her. She hid the lingerie and stockings under a pillow. As we finished straightening the bedspread, she caught sight of the tray.