I was not surprised by anything she said. Now, even after all these years, a vision rose before me, as if it had emerged from the deep: the grimacing face, the dilated eyes, and something like spittle on those lips. And the screeching voice, and the stream of abuse. Anyone who didn’t know her would not have been able to imagine the abrupt transformation of such a beautiful face. I could feel myself in the grip of fear again.
‘Have you come to visit her?’
‘No.’
‘You need to tell her family that she isn’t paying her rent anymore.’
Those words, and perhaps also the neighbourhood where I went to pick up the little girl every afternoon, made me think of the apartment near the Bois de Boulogne which, in spite of myself, I still remembered: the large room with three steps covered in plush; the painting by Tola Soungouroff; my bedroom, even more empty than the little girl’s. How did she pay the rent back then?
‘It will be tricky to kick her out. And, anyway, she’s known around the neighbourhood. They’ve even given her a nickname…’
‘What is it?’ I was genuinely curious. Was it the same one she had twenty years ago?
‘They call her Death Cheater.’
She said it kindly, as if it were a term of affection.
‘Sometimes we think she’s going to give up the ghost and then the next day she’s cheerful and charming, or else she does something really nasty.’
For me, the nickname had another meaning. I’d been under the impression that she’d died in Morocco and now I was discovering that she’d been resuscitated somewhere in the suburbs of Paris.
‘Has she lived here long?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes! She was here well before me. It must be more than six years now.’
So, she was living in this building while I was still at Fossombronne-la-Forêt. I recalled an overgrown vacant block that we called Kraut’s Field, not far from the church. On Thursday afternoons, when there was no school, we used to explore the jungle there, or play hide-and-seek. The remains of a helmet and a mouldy pea coat had been found on the block — no doubt left by a soldier at the end of the war — and we were always afraid of coming across his skeleton. I didn’t know what Kraut meant. Frédérique, the woman who knew my mother, and who had taken me into her home, wasn’t there the day I asked her friend, the brunette with the boxer’s face, what it meant. Perhaps she thought I was frightened by the word and wanted to reassure me. She smiled and told me that it was a name people used for the Germans, but that it wasn’t really a rude word. ‘And your mother was called the Kraut…It was a joke.’
Frédérique wasn’t very happy that the brunette had told me this, but she didn’t elaborate. She was my mother’s friend — they must have known each other when my mother was ‘a dancer’. Frédérique Chatillon was her full name. Her women friends were always at the house in Fossombronne-la-Forêt, even when she wasn’t there: Rose-Marie, Jeannette, Madeleine-Louis, others whose names I’ve forgotten, and the brunette who had also known my mother when she was ‘a dancer’ and who didn’t like her.
‘Does she live alone?’ I asked the concierge.
‘For a long time, there was a man who used to visit her. He worked with horses somewhere around here. He looked North African.’
‘Doesn’t he come anymore?’
‘Not for a while.’
Because of all my questions, she was starting to look at me somewhat suspiciously. I was tempted to tell her everything. My mother went to Paris when she was young. She was a dancer. They called her the Kraut. They called me Little Jewel. It was too long and complicated to explain right there, outside, in the courtyard of this apartment block.
‘The problem is that she owes me two hundred francs…’
I always carried my money on me, in a little canvas pouch tied around my waist. I fossicked in the pouch. I still had a hundred-franc note, a fifty-franc note and some change. I held out the two notes and told her I would come back with the rest.
‘Thank you very much.’
She slipped them into one of the pockets of her dressing-gown. Her wariness had vanished all of a sudden. I could have asked her any old question about Death Cheater.
‘About the rent…I’ll let you know when you come back.’
I hadn’t really planned on coming back. What more would I learn? And what was the point?
‘They’ve cut off her electricity a few times. And each time, I’m glad for her sake, because she uses an electric blanket — it’s dangerous.’
I imagined her plugging the cord of her electric blanket into a socket. She’d always liked those sorts of devices, which seem so cutting edge for a while and then become obsolete, or else end up as everyday items. I remembered that, back in more prosperous times for her, when we lived in the big apartment near the Bois de Boulogne, someone brought her a box covered in green leather, which allowed us to listen to the radio. Later, I worked out that it must have been one of the first transistor radios.
‘You should warn her not to use an electric blanket.’
Well, sorry, it was not as simple as that. Had she ever, in her whole life, heeded good advice? And, anyway, it was too late.
‘You don’t happen to know the name of the man who came to visit her?’
The concierge had kept a letter from him, which he sent three months ago with payment for the rent. Through the half-open door, I saw her rummaging among papers in a big box.
‘I can’t find it…Anyhow, I don’t think that man will come by again.’
He was probably the one she was calling in the evenings from the phone box. After twelve years, by some miracle, there was still someone she could count on. But she had ended up scaring him away, too. Already, back when I was called Little Jewel, she could spend whole days in her room, cut off from the world, seeing no one, not even me, and, after a while, I had no idea whether she was still there, or if she had left me alone in that huge apartment.
‘What’s her place like?’ I asked.
‘Two small rooms and a kitchen with a shower.’
Her mattress was more than likely on the floor, next to the electricity socket. That way, it would be easier to turn on the electric blanket.
‘You should go up and see her. It would be a surprise for her to have a visitor.’
If we found ourselves face to face, she wouldn’t even know who I was. She had forgotten Little Jewel and all the hopes she had invested in me when she gave me that name. Unfortunately for her, I had not become a famous artist.
‘Can you do me a favour?’ The concierge rummaged in the big box again and held out an envelope. ‘It’s a reminder about her bills. I don’t dare give it to her in person, or she’ll swear at me again.’
I took the envelope and crossed the courtyard. As I stepped onto the entrance porch of Staircase A, I felt something pressing down inside my chest; I could scarcely breathe. It was one of those staircases with cement steps and a metal handrail, like in schools or hospitals. On each landing, bright, almost white light shone through a big window. I stopped on the first landing. There was a door on each side, and one in the middle, all made of the same dark wood, with the names of the tenants marked on them. I tried to get my breath back, but the feeling of constriction was getting worse and I was frightened I was going to suffocate. To calm myself down, I imagined what the name on her door would be. Her real one or her stage name? Or just: THE KRAUT or DEATH CHEATER. In the days when I was called Little Jewel and I would come home alone to our building near the Bois de Boulogne, I used to stay back in the lift for a long time. It had a black metal gate, and to enter you had to push two glass swing doors. Inside, there was a red velvet bench, glass panels on each side, and a neon globe in the ceiling. It was like a bedroom. My clearest memories are of the lift.