Marion was the only one who knew what had happened to her. Before they reached adulthood, she had told Marion about the rite of passage. At the time she referred to it in that way for she was trying to extract from the event a kind of pride. No doubt in order to bear it, to believe that its only consequence had been to help her grow up faster than the others. They had never spoken about it again, not since she told Marion the first time in the drab surroundings of a school playground. But was “tell” the right word to use in this case? She had hurriedly, somewhat randomly, strung together a series of words describing what she thought had happened to her. With a mixture of conceit and disgust, she had described what she had seen, felt, and said, and it was perhaps then that the magnitude of the event had escaped her. In Montpellier, she had realized that Marion had forgotten nothing. The three days they spent together had been slow and heavy-going. There had been enough time to understand who her friend had become and, with such a person, she could not share her past and sustain relations in the present. For as long as the conversation had moved between matters of little importance, she had not noticed a thing. But as often happens when people live and sleep in the same room, vigilance slips; living at such close quarters soon becomes trying unless you agree to go beyond mere pleasantries. And the moment they ventured down that path, she had sensed her own secret steering her friend’s remarks. Though no mention of it was ever made, it crept into her thinking, formed the basis of the logic she was using to size up her guest. As if Marion could no longer conceive of her except in terms of that central piece of information, the event confessed to years earlier. The more they talked, the harder it became to bear, and the more Marion kept returning to it, both of them coming to realize, with each passing hour, how little they had in common. Marion thought she could use the rite of passage to find a path back to intimacy, whereas for her part, she dreaded the slightest, even tacit mention of the episode. Ever since that visit, neither she nor Marion had made any attempt to get back in touch.
In front of her is the microphone. To her right, the computer. A new message has just appeared on her screen, with the number of the train, its destination, time of arrival, the platform where it has pulled in. She presses the red button at the base of the microphone. The three notes of the mini arpeggio ring out. Over to her. To talk, she uses her other voice, the one she draws up from the depths of her throat, that gives her the authority of an SNCF announcer. Articulating each syllable, she feeds the impatient travellers the details that will enable them to find their platforms.
At 4:45 pm, she leaves the office, passes through the stage door in the reverse direction. If she had a mask, she would have chosen that moment to put it on. With a sweeping, pathetic gesture, like Renée with his dark glasses. It would be a plastic mask, held on by a piece of elasticated string, in the likeness of Everyman, who would do the same job she did, but who would then get to live another life every evening. Unfortunately, the only masks on sale in the shops are those of celebrities. At the end of the day, the station concourse — a vast structure with a part-glass roof, lit from below by the nimbus of orange-tinted globes — always seems to take longer to cross. The travellers haven’t really changed places: only their identities have changed. The ones rushing head-down for the exits are those long accustomed to lonely arrivals. They are generally travelling on business and never go anywhere without a clear aim. The rest of the crowd wanders about with their noses in the air, looking for signs or a familiar face. The only people who approach strangers are the tramps. One night, she remembers, seeing one of them land a couple of slaps on a guy who’d been waiting at a café terrace with his girlfriend. The couple were enjoying a quiet kiss when the tramp came over to ask for money. He could hardly get his words out, was emitting guttural sounds in a language that no one could grasp except him. The boyfriend had shaken his head without so much as a glance. The tramp went round behind him; then clapped the filthy palms of both hands down hard on the two healthy pink cheeks. Astonishingly, the boyfriend relied only on his voice to ward off his assailant, who hurried away, limping. A beefy security guard set off in pursuit.
It seems that tonight the tramps are not out to cause a stir. They are wandering among the travellers as usual, gauging with practiced eye each one’s willingness to part with a few euros. Outside the brasseries in front of the station, foreign tourists are studying the menus, perplexed. She walks along the Boulevard Denain. At a bakery, she stops to buy a pain au chocolat with almonds. One small piece at a time, she consumes the soft, greasy confection, which she chews with the skill of an expert. Once the pastry is finished, she goes into Promod. The only people inside the store are women, their eyes riveted on the clothes hanging on rails at various heights. Pounding techno music complements the décor, making for a reasonably tolerable whole. By the entrance to the store, a young security guard is shaking his thick thigh in time to the beat. She observes him and wonders where his thoughts are sending him: a bar, a beer; to a football game, a serial on TV. . After Work. She walks over to the displays. With one hand, she slides the hanging clothes along their rails. No one is talking around her. She picks out an item at random, though not without checking its size. She makes her way over to the fitting rooms, where a young woman briefly asks her how many articles she has. The cubicle is cramped; with the curtain drawn, she has her nose pressed up against the mirror. Onto the single coat peg she piles the sweater, price tag still dangling, her jacket, and her tank top. Ten seconds later, the small bundle collapses to the floor, where she leaves it. She slips on the black sweater and surveys the result. Tugs it down, pulls up the sleeves, adjusts the neck, twists round to see the effect from the back, assessing whether any added appeal might be derived from the combination of this sweater and her chest. But everywhere the material is creased, too loose, makes her seem ugly. Needless to say, no 18-euro sweater is going to turn her into a model, and she concludes that it’s her body whose proportions are wrong, not the sweater. She slips back into her clothes — clothes she has worn long enough for them to fit. Outside the changing room, there is no sign of the salesgirl. She rolls the sweater up into a ball and stuffs it into her bag then proceeds through the displays, her eyes fixed on the automatic glass doors. She keeps her pace steady. She knows the alarm will be going off soon. The shoppers pay her no heed, not yet realizing that it is she who has made off with a measly 18-euro sweater from Promod. You earn your own living, don’t you, Miss? The security guard hasn’t spotted her yet either; his thigh is still moving to the beat, his eyes locked onto the beer he is going to drink two hours and forty-six minutes from now. She is coming up to the detector panels. The guard turns his head, sees her; she purses her lips but keeps on walking. The techno music slowly leaves her ears and is replaced by the din of car engines. She can now feel the tickle of fresh air on her face. She is out, the alarm has not gone off, she is safe. It takes her several seconds to grasp what has just happened. She hardly dares smile, for fear that a passer-by will catch her expression and report her on the spot. The métro entrance is in sight, no one is going to point the finger now. An act gone unnoticed, lost amid a thousand others, missed by an infallible electronic device. Defiance in the face of technology and science, the system failed. Pardoned without even having been convicted. Only in her own eyes will she have been, at one time in her life, a black-sweater thief.