Little Jewel by Patrick Modiano Page A

little girl. I bet his mother gave him a nickname that she whispered in his ear before kissing him goodnight. Patoche. Pinky. Poulou.
    â€˜It’s not what you think,’ I said. ‘It was my stage name.’
    He frowned. He didn’t understand. At that time, my mother also had a stage name: Sonia O’Dauyé. After a while, she had given up using her assumed title, but the little copper plaque, which read COMTESSE SONIA O’DAUYÉ , had remained on the apartment door.
    â€˜Your stage name?’
    I wondered if I should start from the beginning and tell him everything. My mother’s arrival in Paris, the ballet school, the hotel on Rue Coustou, then the one onRue d’Armaillé, and my own first memories: the boarding school, the truck and the ether, that period when I wasn’t yet called Little Jewel. But I had revealed my stage name to him, so it was better that I stick to when my mother and I ended up in the big apartment. It wasn’t enough for her to have lost a dog in the Bois de Boulogne. She had to have something else that she could show off like a piece of jewellery: that’s no doubt why she gave me my name.
    He remained silent. Perhaps he thought that I was now diffident about continuing, or that I had lost track of my story. I didn’t dare look at him. I stared at the green light in the middle of the radio set, a soothing phosphorescent green.
    â€˜I’ll have to show you some photos…Then you’ll understand better.’
    And I tried to describe the two photos taken on the same day, the two head shots: ‘Sonia O’Dauyé and Little Jewel’, taken for a film in which my mother had been hired to perform, having never been a professional actress before. Why was she hired? And by whom? She wanted me to play the role of her daughter in this film. She was not the leading actress, but she insisted that I stay close to her. I had replaced the dog. For how long?
    â€˜What was the name of this film?’
    â€˜
The Crossroad of the Archers
.’
    I replied without hesitation, but they were like words we learn off by heart in childhood—a prayer or a song recited from beginning to end without our ever really grasping the meaning.
    â€˜Do you remember the shoot?’
    I had to arrive very early in the morning. It was a sort of huge warehouse. Jean Borand had taken me there. Later, in the afternoon, when I had finished and could leave, he had driven me to the nearby Buttes-Chaumont park. It was very hot: it was summer. I had performed my part; I never had to go back to the warehouse again.
    I had to lie on a bed, then sit up and say, ‘I’m scared.’ It was as simple as that. Another day, I had to keep lying on the bed and flip through a photo album. Then my mother came into the bedroom, wearing a diaphanous blue dress—the same dress she was wearing when she left the apartment on the evening after losing the dog. She sat on the bed and looked at me with big sad eyes. Then she caressed my cheek and leaned over to kiss me; I remember we had to do it several times. In everyday life, she never showed the slightest bit of affection.
    He was listening closely, and wrote something on his pad. I asked him what it was.
    â€˜The title of the film. It would be fun for you to see it again, don’t you think?’
    Over the past twelve years, the idea of seeing the film again had not even occurred to me. For me, it was as if it had never existed. I had never mentioned it to anyone.
    â€˜Do you think it would be possible to see it?’
    â€˜I’ve got a friend who works at the cinematheque. I’ll ask him.’
    Now I was worried. I was like a criminal who, with time, forgets her crime, even though incriminating evidence remains. She lives under another identity and her appearance is so changed that no one recognises her. If someone had asked me, ‘You weren’t Little Jewel, were you, a while ago?’ I would have