a skeleton.
I kept the light on all that night, and every other night. I never stopped being frightened. It would be my turn after the dogâs, I was sure of it.
Strange thoughts came into my mind, so muddled that I waited ten or so years for them to take shape, before I could put them into words. One morning, sometime before seeing the woman in the yellow coat in the corridors of the metro, I woke up with a sentence running through my head, one of those sentences which seem incomprehensible, because they are the last shreds of a forgotten dream:
You had to kill the Kraut to avenge the dog
.
I GOT HOME to my room in Rue Coustou around seven in the evening, and I wasnât up to waiting until Wednesday for the pharmacist to come back. She was out of town for a couple of days. She had given me a telephone number in case I needed to speak to her: 225 Bar-sur-Aube.
In the basement of the café in Place Blanche, I asked the cloakroom woman to dial 225 Bar-sur-Aube for me. But the second she picked up the receiver, I told her not to bother. All of a sudden, I could no longer bring myself to disturb the pharmacist. I bought a token, went into the booth, and ended up calling Moreau-Badmaevâs number. He was listening to a program on the radio, but he asked me to come over anyway. I was relieved to know that someone was happy to spend the evening with me. I was loath to takethe metro to the Porte dâOrléans. I was scared of changing trains at Montparnasse-Bienvenue. The corridor was as long as the one at Châtelet, and there wasnât a moving walkway. I had enough money to take a taxi there. Once I was in the taxi at the top of the line in front of the Moulin Rouge, I suddenly felt at ease, just as I had the other evening with the pharmacist.
The green light of the radio set was switched on, and Moreau-Badmaev was sitting against the wall, writing on a pad, while a man with a tinny voice spoke in a foreign language. This time, he said, he didnât need to write in shorthand. The man was speaking so slowly that he had time to write out the words. Tonight, he was doing it for pleasure and not at all for work-related reasons. It was a poetry reading. The program was being transmitted from somewhere faraway, and from time to time the manâs voice was muffled by static. He stopped talking and some harp music came on. Badmaev held out a piece of paper that I have treasured to this day:
Mar egy hete csak a mamara
Gondolok mindig, meg-megallva
.
Nyikorgo kosarral öleben
,
Ment a padlasra, ment serénye n
En meg öszinte ember voltam
,
Orditottam toporzékoltam
.
Hagyja a dagadt ruhat masra
Emgem vigyen föl a padlasra
He translated the poem for me, but Iâve forgotten what it meant and what language it was written in. Then he lowered the volume on the radio, but the green light stayed on.
âYou seem a little out of sorts.â
He was looking at me so considerately that I felt at ease, just as I had with the pharmacist. I wanted to tell him everything. I described the afternoon Iâd spent with the little girl in the Bois de Boulogne, Véra and Michel Valadier, going back to my room in the Rue Coustou. And the dog that was lost forever almost twelve years ago. He asked me what colour the dog was.
âBlack.â
âAnd have you spoken to your mother about it since?â
âI havenât seen her since then. I thought sheâd died in Morocco.â
I was ready to tell him about coming across the woman with the yellow coat in the metro, about the large apartment block in Vincennes, the staircase and Death Cheaterâs door, where I hadnât been bold enough to knock.
âI had an odd childhoodâ¦â
He listened to the radio all day long, taking notes on his writing pad. So he might as well listen to me.
âWhen I was seven years old, they called me Little Jewel.â
He smiled at me. He probably thought that was a delightful name for a
I kept the light on all that night, and every other night. I never stopped being frightened. It would be my turn after the dogâs, I was sure of it.
Strange thoughts came into my mind, so muddled that I waited ten or so years for them to take shape, before I could put them into words. One morning, sometime before seeing the woman in the yellow coat in the corridors of the metro, I woke up with a sentence running through my head, one of those sentences which seem incomprehensible, because they are the last shreds of a forgotten dream:
You had to kill the Kraut to avenge the dog
.
I GOT HOME to my room in Rue Coustou around seven in the evening, and I wasnât up to waiting until Wednesday for the pharmacist to come back. She was out of town for a couple of days. She had given me a telephone number in case I needed to speak to her: 225 Bar-sur-Aube.
In the basement of the café in Place Blanche, I asked the cloakroom woman to dial 225 Bar-sur-Aube for me. But the second she picked up the receiver, I told her not to bother. All of a sudden, I could no longer bring myself to disturb the pharmacist. I bought a token, went into the booth, and ended up calling Moreau-Badmaevâs number. He was listening to a program on the radio, but he asked me to come over anyway. I was relieved to know that someone was happy to spend the evening with me. I was loath to takethe metro to the Porte dâOrléans. I was scared of changing trains at Montparnasse-Bienvenue. The corridor was as long as the one at Châtelet, and there wasnât a moving walkway. I had enough money to take a taxi there. Once I was in the taxi at the top of the line in front of the Moulin Rouge, I suddenly felt at ease, just as I had the other evening with the pharmacist.
The green light of the radio set was switched on, and Moreau-Badmaev was sitting against the wall, writing on a pad, while a man with a tinny voice spoke in a foreign language. This time, he said, he didnât need to write in shorthand. The man was speaking so slowly that he had time to write out the words. Tonight, he was doing it for pleasure and not at all for work-related reasons. It was a poetry reading. The program was being transmitted from somewhere faraway, and from time to time the manâs voice was muffled by static. He stopped talking and some harp music came on. Badmaev held out a piece of paper that I have treasured to this day:
Mar egy hete csak a mamara
Gondolok mindig, meg-megallva
.
Nyikorgo kosarral öleben
,
Ment a padlasra, ment serénye n
En meg öszinte ember voltam
,
Orditottam toporzékoltam
.
Hagyja a dagadt ruhat masra
Emgem vigyen föl a padlasra
He translated the poem for me, but Iâve forgotten what it meant and what language it was written in. Then he lowered the volume on the radio, but the green light stayed on.
âYou seem a little out of sorts.â
He was looking at me so considerately that I felt at ease, just as I had with the pharmacist. I wanted to tell him everything. I described the afternoon Iâd spent with the little girl in the Bois de Boulogne, Véra and Michel Valadier, going back to my room in the Rue Coustou. And the dog that was lost forever almost twelve years ago. He asked me what colour the dog was.
âBlack.â
âAnd have you spoken to your mother about it since?â
âI havenât seen her since then. I thought sheâd died in Morocco.â
I was ready to tell him about coming across the woman with the yellow coat in the metro, about the large apartment block in Vincennes, the staircase and Death Cheaterâs door, where I hadnât been bold enough to knock.
âI had an odd childhoodâ¦â
He listened to the radio all day long, taking notes on his writing pad. So he might as well listen to me.
âWhen I was seven years old, they called me Little Jewel.â
He smiled at me. He probably thought that was a delightful name for a
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